You are currently browsing the category archive for the 'Uncategorized' category.
Just back from my hill run,
As I turned the corner, there stood my hill, just as I left her, except this time she is bathed in a golden light.
I feel affection arise, and gratitude.
A struggle is ahead of me, but a welcome, self imposed one.
As I near the top, everything relaxes into its proper place.
The small things are seen as small, and almost everything is small.
There is but one large thing, and that is the awareness that contains it all, the hill, the light, the gratitude and struggle.
I have un-become, and all is right with the world.
In an average, modern day social situation, a question commonly heard asked is, “what do you do?”, which generally means, what do you do for a living?
The answer you give to that question is one way others can get some information about you, what you value and maybe even a hint at your education, intelligence, interests etc.
In an average, modern day spiritual situation, a question commonly heard asked is, “what is your Sadhana?”, which means, what is your spiritual approach, experiment, or practice? What is your moment to moment approach to life?
The answer you give to that question may give some information regarding the depth of your spiritual life, as well as what has been determined to be your biggest challenge in your spiritual evolution.
For instance, if someone were to ask me what my Sadhana is, my answer would include the following:
1. The continuous practice of maintaining attention to the basic felt sense of existence, I Am-ness, presence or aliveness.
This means I attempt to maintain a wordless awareness of the experience of being alive by placing and resting attention in the open space of the heart.
This practice undermines and undoes a lifetime of bad habits including:
- being lost in useless ’self-talk’ that erodes the quality of your moment to moment experience of life.
- inattention to the sweet and subtle moments of life’s beauty because you aren’t really there for them.
- poor quality of thought because your thinking mind is not sourced from a place of silence and stillness.
- avoidance of experiencing the most sublime and blissful way of life, which is a life lived with attention firmly rooted and anchored in a place where it is actually pleasurable, JUST TO BE ALIVE!
2. The practice of recognizing what draws my attention away from the openness and direct experience of the heart space, and into the concepts and self-talk of the head space.
This means I am vigilant and watchful for triggers that cause me to react with thoughts, judgments and interpretations, which will almost always lead to emotional reactivity such as anger, frustration and disdain.
The most amazing thing about this Sadhana, or practice, is that it turns your mental/emotional reaction triggers into opportunities to practice connecting with, resting in, and living from, your own deep, wise and loving heart.
Put differently, living in the head space is ONLY a habit, a bad habit that destroys the quality of your life, and a sure sign that you too may “lead a life of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in you” to quote Thoreau.
So let me ask you this: What is YOUR Sadhana? What is your moment to moment approach to life? What is your ongoing method of living life deeply?
I’ve been a little hard on the Tweeters who quote other people rather than going deep and having something quotable fall from their mouth. So why not come on a brief Re-Tweet with me and look at a few of my best Tweets?:
The weakest link in most forms of PD is the lack of implementation. Being Awake IS implementation.
How does it feel to know that everything that has ever happened is what SHOULD have happened, because it DID happen? Reality says so.
Transformational Speaking, is mostly about the speaker. The Transformational Speaker, is ALL about the audience.
Life is a magical display, an amusement park, a living lab — IF you have the eyes to see. Have you had your eyes checked lately?
Most quotes on Twitter are like hand-me-down clothes – outdated, unoriginal, old and smelly!
I’m wondering why everyone quotes other people, rather than saying something quotable. In other words, go DEEP and speak from that place.
A Caring Professional uses their livelihood to learn how to open their heart to the world. Are you one?
Chasing a mirage of cool-aide instead of a mirage of water, still leaves you dead of thirst.
The truth of ‘your’ existence is the truth OF existence. Remove ‘you’, to remove what keeps you in a state of suspended foolishness.
Considering how, of the virtues of faith, hope, and charity, faith is the most childish and least evolved.
Did you know that your life is the size of your awareness?
There are only a few things we can say about life with any real certainty. What do you know for sure?
Wondering if you have ’self-knowledge’, or the understanding of how your body/mind is patterned?
You will very seldom have a thought that is anywhere nearly as profound as the silence it springs from. If you do, it just HAPPENED to you.
Most approaches to personal development are heavy on the personal and absent on the development. Validation does NOT equal growth.
Considering how the silent mind is the reflective mind, seeing without embellishing, watching the naked moment display itself, unadorned.
The fact that ‘Affirmations’ are seen to be so valuable in our society, just makes me sad…
Resting in the understanding that incessant yearning for what ISN’T, cripples our ability to contentedly be with what IS.
Affirmations and positive self talk is for children and sleeping adults… No kidding!
I’m thinking that if I wasn’t me I’d wanna know me because I’m into the coolest stuff EVER!
Until you can you can’t!
Emotional reactivity happens when we are asleep, eyes wide open!
Maturity is the ability to contain experience long enough to determine if it’s wise to share it. Being awake is the key to maturity.
Handcuffed and procrastinating, neck deep in organizational and time management books, finally, I let myself drowwwnnnnn……
Contemplating the fact that a life dependent on materialism and externals for happiness is unstable. Happiness without condition? You bet!
Hey money grubbers! Have you ever heard of the idea of living with an open heart?
If you believe the thinking mind is where creativity comes from, maybe it’s time I told ya the truth about Santa Clause too
72 hours of balls out creativity and productivity, done with an empty mind and an open heart. Keeping perspective is KEY.
Juggling chainsaws, glass balls, rubber widgets, and puppy dogs is easier when there is ALMOST too much at stake, and too much to do
I’m considering how I can explain the idea that we all live with closed hearts and busy minds, a product of our less than ideal upbringing.
Awake is a term I use to describe the capacity to remain energetically connected to your experience, moment by moment, without drifting off or getting lost in thought.
You are aware of what is going on inside of you (thoughts, emotions, sensations) as well as what is going on around you (stimuli, input, movement).
There is a heightened sense of aliveness because you are the center-point of your life, and you are aware that your life is dancing and shimmering and fading before your very eyes.
As you read these words, are you also aware you are alive? Can you feel your aliveness? Are you breathing? Are you relaxed? Is your heart open?
Are you aware that you are the living, breathing – still-point – around which your life turns?
Transformational Speaking, is mostly about the speaker.
The Transformational Speaker, is ALL about the audience.
More soon!
Dear Colleague and Caring Professional!
I salute you for committing to the most noble of professions. It is my intention that by completing this workbook you will possess and enjoy a variety of skills, tools and perspectives that will:
=> Dramatically enhance your job satisfaction, allowing you to rekindle your passion and joy for your work …
=> Help you to manage difficult emotions, volatile interactions and stressful situations with grace, wisdom and maturity.
=> Vastly improve your effectiveness, efficiency, and productivity, while also experiencing much less stress! (Yes, it IS possible, I call it Friction Free Flow)
=> Help you to keep things in perspective by keeping you in touch with your most cherished values and deepest vision of life…
=> Allow you the ability to stay connected to your kind and caring heart, offering an attention that is open, accepting and comforting…
=> Show you how you can get paid to improve your personality, your life, your job, and your relationships, all while touching the lives of those around you (I laugh my head off every payday, because I know this secret)
=> Help you to manage workplace gossip, backbiters, abrasive personalities, energy vampires, and other potentially harmful characters…
=> Show you how to silence your mind just by looking at it (like my Dad used to do to me!), enabling you to see things clearly, free of distortion …
=> Help you to balance and integrate your work-life with your home-life, by always being larger than either…
This workbook will serve you as a lifelong guide, helping you to create the conditions for re-invigorating your care providing career.
A ‘How To’ Guide to a Livelihood of Superior Functioning, Deep
Fulfillment, Meaningful Interactions and Stress Free Productivity.
For Care Providers, Educators, Social Workers, Leaders, Parents and
Anyone Else Who Cares About HOW They Care.
Finally, a practical, yet profound guide to leveraging every waking moment of your work-life and your home-life, while learning how to:
- manage difficult emotions, volatile interactions and stressful situations with grace, wisdom and maturity (these are high level executive skills)
- stay connected to your kind and caring heart, offering an attention that is open and comforting (be the silent center of your workplace chaos)
- get paid to improve your personality, your job, your relationships, and your life, all while touching the lives of those around you in a magical way
- manage workplace gossip, energy vampires, backbiters, dark clouds, abrasive personalities and other potentially harmful characters
- silence the life-eroding ’self talk’ of your chatty mind, just by looking at it!
It isn’t easy being human these days!
What kind of situations put you out of your heart, causing you to speak and act with indifference, impatience, or unkindness?
What are the triggers that cause you to react from your busy mind, rather than respond from your gentle heart?
What kind of people cause your heart to close down and your mind to create harmful, mental stories and judgments?
This field-guide and companion will help the Caring Professional to begin to use the workplace as an arena to transform difficult situations into opportunities for opening the heart and sharing a kind of care that is deep, profound, and non-negotiable.
Waking up to the Heart of Care is a series of reflections which dramatically point the way toward learning how to bless those we care for, both in the workplace and in any relationship that matters to us.
Contact Aaron to a arrange a talk with your group of Caring Professionals
(Excerpted from the forthcoming, Waking Up to the Heart of Care)
As I approached the top of my beloved hill in Kin Canyon this morning, I could see him sitting there.
He was bare shirt, dirty and disheveled, and although his back was to me, I knew that it was him.
I’ve seen him in many places and times throughout my life, and although his shape and face was always different, to me he was always the same.
As a child I was terrorized by him and his older brother.
As a teenager, I fought him to defend my friend.
As a young man, I watched him closely from a distance, ready to throw down once again.
Now, as an older man, the patterns that were created from these past encounters continued to exert themselves, but something was different. The emotions seemed to arise with the same ferocity, but the container was much larger, stronger and spacious.
There was a recognition of the familiar play of patterns, and an openness that allowed everything to stay semi-relaxed, rather than a clutching and the predictable gaining of a momentum of tension.
I smiled and nodded as I moved toward him.
He stared at me vacantly, but I held my ground.
“How’s it goin?”, I asked.
He looked down as his body tensed, reaching for the bag between his legs.
Then, as my hair-trigger fight-or-fight system began to kick in, and as he pulled his nasty hand from the bag, he simply asked, “Cherry?”, as he popped one past his toothy grin.
“Sure”, I said, “that’s nice of you”, as my patterns of fear and anger relaxed open, allowing me to enjoy some fruit with this familiar stranger who has been a part of my life for so long.
(Excerpted from the forthcoming, Waking Up to the Heart of Care)
Is it even possible to come up with a more uninspired term than wellness?
Blandness? Okness? Balance? Also-ran-ness? Just-about-really-nice-ness?
How about, goshI’mreallyswell-ness?
How did this term get a foothold in our society, even coming to be the promoted goal for health-care professionals, educators, leaders and other high-faluitin’ types?
Rather than raising the bar for something to strive for, should we just set the bar down on the ground so that everyone can get over it?
Then we can promote wellness as a goal attainable to all.
I mean, our history’s greatest beings shot for wellness, didn’t they?
Not!
I can see the term wellness being used for a population who have little hope of high function and are struggling to maintain their health on a day to day basis.
But how did wellness become a catchphrase that is promoted as if its some sort of accomplishment? (Like having nice hair or a small belly.) When did we decide to promote a term that has all the inspiration of the goal of coming in last place, to our own peers and colleagues?
Rather than shooting for the stars, why don’t we shoot for the middle of the pack?
Instead of superior function, how about stably adequate?
Not peak performance or optimal output… wellness?
I know there will be people who will read this and say: “But wellness means so much more than lack of disease…etc.”
Wellness shmellness.
As a nurse attempting to model high function and the possibility of actualizing very high levels of performance, wellness has no room in my vocabulary. In fact, if wellness ever becomes a word that represents my goals for health, I hope I am very very old, having lost all desire for anything beyond the colorless and bland world of ok-ness.
Until then, please keep your wellness plans away from me.
I’m too busy exploring the magic and mystery of unfolding as an ever-evolving and dynamic human being, to take part in something as banal as wellness as a goal.
