I did it again: I’ve got a head cold slowly migrating into my chest, and until today I’d forgotten I’d blogged about the same thing before.  I have no excuse.  I should have recognized it immediately.  I began the week with 2 days of  upset stomach, which morphed into a giant headcold for 2 days and is now moving into my chest.  I’m so seldom sick and when I am, it’s over quickly and never too uncomfortable.  Now I’m just playing the waiting game and letting it run its course.  It does kick my butt, though, and feeling weak and tired makes me gripey and whiney.  Poor Roomi.  I’m used to spending hours and hours in silence with my own thoughts and now each time I run into the office to type here, I feel like Grandfather sneaking behind the shed to smoke his cigs to get away from Grandmother.  But now I recognize that I’m both the grandfather AND the grandmother.  If I am who I say I am, what am I hiding from, and why does it make me snippy?

Carlos Nibaldo Cotal

“Everyone with rare exception knows that you attract into your life a reflection of what you think. But you also attract into your life what you judge. If you think men are players, you attract players, if you think people are dishonest, you attract dishonest people. If you are focused on a sickness or disease, you attract more. If you focus on poverty or lack, you gain nothing more than an empty bank account. Everything you hold in your conscious thought becomes your cage and your reality.   Why not fake it until you make it.  See abundance, see honesty in all, embrace good healthy, emotionally healthy people, focus on the beauty and not the ugly. And for crying out loud fix what hurts you, heal what aches, mend your mind and restore it to perfection. You were born of perfection, it is your core, meditate, exercise, eat nutritionally and address what you are harboring, then you will attract lovely all day long.”
Sun Gazing

"You'll do as I say!"

A friend’s daughter posted on Facebook “I miss my daddy and I wish he’d come visit.”   Of course that tugged on his heart.  He is several states away from her and unable to visit due to actions of her mother.  And she knows this.  And he knows that she knows this.  It doesn’t take spidey sense to know that she made the post under duress, with mom standing over her threatening her with who knows what if she didn’t.  People, get as crazy as you want but leave the kids out of it.

To prevent big loss, copy every credit card in your wallet and keep it with the toll free numbers.  You can save hours of time doing this:  Read this and make a copy for your files in case you need to refer to it someday. A corporate attorney sent the following out to the employees in his company:

1. Do not sign the back of your credit cards. Instead, put ‘PHOTO ID REQUIRED.’ (I use “See ID,” though maybe 10% of clerks actually notice it.) Continue reading →

If you put your hands on this oar with me, they will never harm another, and they will come to find they hold everything you want.

If you put your hands on this oar with me, they would no longer lift anything to your mouth that might wound your precious land – that sacred earth that is your body.

If you put your soul against this oar with me, the power that made the universe will enter your sinew from a source not outside your limbs, but from a holy realm that lives in us.

Exuberant is existence, time a husk.
When the moment cracks open, ecstasy leaps out and devours space;
love goes mad with the blessings, like my words give.

Why lay yourself on the torturer’s rack of the past and the future?  The mind that tries to shape tomorrow beyond its capacities will find no rest.

Be kind to yourself, dear – to our innocent follies.
Forget any sounds or touch you knew that did not help you dance.
You will come to see that all evolves us.

~ Rumi ~

A friend and writing partner has been spending time here as we work together on various projects, and he’s become a regular fixture in the other room.  I’m someone who is used to — for a dozen years at a stretch – being alone, spending time alone, living alone.  Most friends and family, no matter how beloved, I tend to allow them to distract me from whatever I perceive my purpose to be in the moment, so I seldom have people over.  It’s nice to find a brother on the Path who is equally motivated and dedicated, and who is so easy to share space with. We’ll have the computers side by side sometimes, quietly working on our individual stuff.  I even got to impose upon him to sneak over and feel the kitties last week after a tummy upset confined me to my room.  As I drifted in and out of sleep during the next day, it was comforting hearing him typing or playing music in the other room.  He stopped in a few times to see if I needed anything, brought me fluids and saltines. But he mostly let me know someone was there and cared about my well being.  Kinda cool when that happens.

I had a food epiphany this weekend.  The last month, I’ve been cooking for a friend and eating foods I don’t typically eat, like sandwiches, chips, granola bars, popcorn. While I wasn’t really overeating, I was eating heavier and greasier stuff (bread, meat, cheese) than I typically eat. Then I had a craving for Cantonese Lo Mein and two days later I had a bout of upset tummy and purging for a vigorous 18 hours.   I kn0w the lo mein has a lot of oil in it.   Since 2006, I keep my fat grams under 60 a day.  I’m sure the one serving of lo mein had 80+ grams.   Continue reading →

Domino asks “What is it about when I can’t wait to be with him and a few hours together I can’t wait to be away for a few minutes, then all I do is text and email and Facebook him until I see him again and then it starts all over. What is that about?”

Just a few moments ago they were bathing in the concrete bath in the east garden, they must have followed me here.