Technology for Living

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As evidenced in the last couple of posts, I’ve been noticing how my life is changing/growing recently. This reminded me of a passage from the Camelot musical that impacted me as a kid. The wizard Merlin impressed upon young Arthur that a great skill for coping with sadness is to strive to learn something. In my own experience, I’ve found this to be very true. Beyond that, I find that unless I am actively learning something, I’m just not the same individual. I have less drive, less joie de vivre as I do when I’m actually learning something.

It’s not a cure-all, however: Focusing on learning to the point of forgetting to actually engage in life will also backfire. It is tempting to think that with just a little more knowledge suddenly the path will open for you and it’ll be smooth sailing. Unfortunately, this is almost never the case.

(On a side-note: You do get experiences like that, but they tend to happen when you’re putting forth the effort and engaging life. Suddenly, a new bit of knowledge makes your efforts much easier and/or more effective. Book learning and hands-on learning are compliments, not opposites.)

When I occasionally feel overwhelmed at life, one thing which I tend to do is to ask myself what I’m learning. This is actually a bit of a sucker play: The act of doing so starts a process of analyzing what’s going on in life for new lessons. That and a review of what I am/have been learning recently remind me that I am still moving forward in my journey, and that while I may feel like a becalmed ship, the currents are still taking me where I want to go.

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Having decided to take better care of myself and my health recently, I have had time to re-evaluate my thoughts and decisions. I’ve asked myself if I wish that things had been done differently. As always I had no desire to turn back the clock and change things, but I wanted to really dig into why. Here is what I came to:

“Everything in excess! To enjoy the flavor of life, take big bites. Moderation is for monks.”
-Robert Heinlein

Even though I wound up paying for it, and even though I may not have gotten the end result I was looking for, I had priceless learning and experience. This wasn’t some pre-packaged, sanitized, game-with-cheat-codes-on, this was me stepping up to the plate and taking a big swing.

This is something which I hadn’t really done in a while. It’s the tendency of all of us to stay within areas that are more-or-less safe. Even the risks we take are usually planned out and carefully managed. That’s not to say that we should be jumping off bridges every day, but my point is that few of us actually take a serious step beyond those boundaries that we build. We’re safe there, we know what to expect, and how the story goes.

I have been given a rare and precious gift: I’ve actually over the course of the last little while moved outside my old boundaries somewhat. Of course, I’m not “free” of them - they’re as necessary a tool as your skin. However, being able to move beyond those boundaries is vital if you actually want to breathe with life instead of being a cog in the machine. I’m not just talking about work, here, either: You can let gravity bring you down until all you think about is the area of ground ahead of your feet that you’re looking at. You can stay that way all of your days. Alternately, you can take a chance and look up. You might stumble, or you might see a beautiful sky, or a work of art that captures your attention, or a case of need that you can fill.

Take a chance on yourself and take a chance with the world. At the very least, you’ll be able to say you’ve done it. If it’s still not for you, then you can go back to staring at the ground, but you’ll still be the richer for the experience.

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I have been pursuing many different things recently. One thing has been my meditation practice. I’ve been looking to get certain results from my meditation beyond relaxation and such. I fancy myself something of an explorer, and I wanted to use my meditative practice as part of that.

I have been following a specific path for so long, that it took an outside view to really make me aware that I was completely missing what I was looking for. I had been so focused, so intent, on the process, that I was unable to accept the result. I had quieted my mind to hear, but still I wasn’t listening.

The equivalent is if you are standing in the woods and you’re listening for a specific bird. You may be focusing on standing still. You may be trying to make your breath as quiet as possible, You may be trying to be as unobtrusive as possible so as not to scare the wildlife around you. However, if you are consumed with these thoughts, you will never actually listen to hear the birdsong.

Quite often, in our mad rush to accomplish, to get and to have, we don’t recognize that most of what we want, we pretty much already have. In the Sedona method, you learn to let go of the sense of lack. In the process you find that you have more of what you thought you were lacking than you ever imagined. Take the time to remember what you truly have and who you are. You are a uniquely gifted individual. Don’t throw those gifts aside because they don’t appear the way you expect.

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Welcome to the March 12, 2008 edition of Technology for Living Carnival.

Ivan presents 10 Benefits of Keeping a Journal, and What to Write in It posted at makeGENIUS.com.

Ivan presents 7 Steps to Create Your Own Thinking-Room posted at makeGENIUS.com.

Ivan presents How Exercise Makes You More Creative posted at makeGENIUS.com.

Awareness

Alex Blackwell presents 45 Tips for a Happier, Simpler and More Productive Life posted at The Next 45 Years.

Aaron Brandon presents Overcoming Negativity posted at Aaron Brandon.

Lexi Sundell presents The Internet as Playground for Creative Evolution of Consciousness posted at Energies of Creation, saying, “The internet as a playground for the evolution of human consciousness is explored in this article.”

Shamelle presents Not Tonight Dear, I Have A Modem! posted at Enhance Life.

Finding Your Truth

Anna Farmery presents The Art of Forgiveness posted at Widows Quest.

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of technology for living carnival using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Technorati tags: technology for living carnival, blog carnival.

The more I work to better myself, the more I notice a certain trend: When I fail to meditate as much as I should or times when my emotions get away from me, I find a rather disturbing fact: I gave my permission for this to happen. This is what I desired to have happen, and I created the scenario.

A difficult thing to look at. It’s not pretty. “Oh, gee, I got too wrapped up in (insert mundane task here) to meditate. Darn, that really is too bad.” Well, yes, it is too bad. But I also am honest enough with myself at this point to realize that I made it happen. I knew that time was running short, and that while the mundane task would hold, getting my meditation practice in wouldn’t.

I find much the same whenever I push the envelope, and encounter resistance. I can usually identify resistance these days. The thing is that now I have to do some growing up to look it and myself in the eye and work past it. Like all resistance, it works from a whisper and then puts me entirely off track if left alone:

• First, a distraction will take my immediate focus off the issue at hand. This can either be a road-bump or something outside the context entirely.
• Now that my attention is diverted, I sidestep making real progress by working through whatever it is that has been brought to my attention. The longer this persists, the harder it is to get back on track.
• Almost always I find that on some level I am aware of the whole process.
• Ironically, I tend to get back on focus when it is just too late. This builds remorse and threatens a scenario in which I start beating myself up. Such behavior (of course) only reinforces the same pattern the next time.

Obviously, the most effective time to handle such cases is as early as possible. Simple procrastination gimmicks can help, but unless you really know what’s going on, they’ll be weak at best. Recognizing the pattern, and striving to break it is starting to yield some results for me, but the thing to keep in mind is to keep sniffing for that first wisp of smoke, and not let it get any further.

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