Ants
Posted: September 3, 2015 Filed under: Kindness, Meditation, Mindfulness, Yoga | Tags: Ants, beauty, compassion, Daniel Hoffman, gratitude, love, nature, Omaha 6 Comments…
Theirs is a perfection of pure form.
Nobody but has his proper place and knows it.
Everything they do is functional.
Each foray in a zigzag line
Each prodigious lifting
Of thirty-two times their own weight
Each excavation into the earth’s core
Each erection
Of a crumbly parapetted tower —
None of these feats is a private pleasure,
None of them done
For the sake of the skill alone —
They’ve got a going concern down there,
A full egg-hatchery
A wet-nursery of aphids
A trained troop of maintenance engineers
Sanitation experts
A corps of hunters
And butchers
An army
A queen
Each
Is nothing without the others, each being a part
Of something greater than all of them put together
A purpose which none of them knows
Since each is only
The one thing that he does. There is
A true consistency
Toward which their actions tend.
The ants have bred and inbred to perfection.
The strains of their genes that survive survive.
Every possible contingency
Has been foreseen and written into the plan.
Nothing they do will be wrong.
Simplicity
Posted: August 13, 2015 Filed under: Kindness, Meditation, Mindfulness, Yoga | Tags: compassion, Dreams, Henry David Thoreau, life, love, Mindfulness, nature, passion, simplicity 2 Comments…
Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as
two or three, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail …
I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time.
To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome
and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the
companion that was so companionable as solitude …
If one advances confidently in the direction of his
dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has
imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in
common hour …
A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener.
So our prospects brighten on the influx of better thoughts.
We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and
took advantage of every accident that befell us. Sometimes, in
a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my
sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the
pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and
stillness, while the birds sing around or flitted noiseless through
the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the
noise of some traveller’s wagon on the distant highway, I was
reminded of the lapse of time.
: New Moon :
Posted: June 16, 2015 Filed under: Kindness, Meditation, Mindfulness, Yoga | Tags: Being, Buddhism, College World Series, Kiindness, love, meditation, Mindfulness, Mysore, nature, New Moon, Omaha, passion, star wars, yoga, Zen 2 CommentsDo not swear by the moon, for she changes constantly. then your love would also change-
When I was a young lad, my next door neighbor shared with me, that the phases of the moon tend to make people crazy every 29.532 days, or so, or whatever it reads on the calendar.
She lamented, that it was caused by the gravitational pull of the moon on the Earth, the same tidal forces that cause high and low tides in our nearby lakes and streams, the argument being that our bodies are more than 45-73% water, and being composed mostly of water, we are thus influenced by the moon.
I was impressionable and fascinated by her voodoo science, seriously, who isn’t at that age? Having long since stored this tasty nugget of information into the darkest folds of my “brain“, the new moon last night, and a dear friend, reminded me of this theory and awakened my curiosity to do a little more research of my own.
Does a new moon, or any moon? The Death Star?!? Really have a measurable effect on our Being?
…
Before we turn into forest sprite’s and start dancing around the campfire, we need to define what a “full moon” or “new moon” really is. The moon-thingy revolves around the Earth, and this Earth-thingy revolves around the sun, which is gently rising in the East this morning – Let me know if this ever changes! The phases of the moon, simply represent the portions illuminated by the sun.
Now we can start dancing, for you see, all of this motion creates a very dynamic display for us forest sprite’s and werewolves – The moon dancing in the sky. So when you see that little sliver slice of heaven up above, or not, the rest of the moon is still there—the sun’s rays just aren’t reflected on the surface we are witnessing.
Daily Meditation:
The full moon, new moon or any moon, may or may NOT be causing any mini gravitational tides in our slushy, water filled bodies. The extra light, and the lack of light, is literally messing with our heads, somehow, and seeing that this is not a research based science blog … Truth be told, we’re likely just being paranoid and superstitious. Or perhaps those who claim “lunacy” are those who transform into cheeky little forest sprite’s and hairy werewolves a handful of times during a calendar year – 365.242374 ish days.
London Roses
Posted: May 28, 2015 Filed under: Kindness, Meditation, Mindfulness, Yoga | Tags: compassion, gratitude, kindness, love, nature, nebraska, Omaha, passion, Roses, Willa Cather, yoga 2 Comments…
ROWSES, Rowses! Penny a bunch!” they tell you–
Slattern girls in Trafalgar, eager to sell you.
Roses, roses, red in the Kensington sun,
Holland Road, High Street, Bayswater, see you and smell you–
Roses of London town, red till the summer is done.
Roses, roses, locust and lilac, perfuming
West End, East End, wondrously budding and blooming
Out of the black earth, rubbed in a million hands,
Foot-trod, sweat-sour over and under, entombing
Highways of darkness, deep gutted with iron bands.
“Rowses, rowses! Penny a bunch!” they tell you,
Ruddy blooms of corruption, see you and smell you,
Born of stale earth, fallowed with squalor and tears–
North shire, south shire, none are like these, I tell you,
Roses of London perfumed with a thousand years.
: Fantasy :
Posted: May 26, 2015 Filed under: Kindness, Meditation, Mindfulness, Yoga | Tags: blogging, Body Image, compassion, Compitition, cycling, happiness, health, kindness, life, love, lululemon, marathon, meditation, Mindfulness, motivation, natural, nature, Omaha, passion, pilates, running, Seva, trail running, writing, yoga, Zen 4 CommentsGaze into the fire, into the clouds, and as soon as the inner voices begin to speak… surrender to them. Don’t ask first whether it’s permitted, or would please your teachers or father or some god. You will ruin yourself if you do that-
There are many misconceptions about the role “results” play in achieving our goals (whatever they may be.)
We should define a couple of words before we move on – outcome and process. An outcome is centered on results, beating others and posting it on social media. A process involves focusing on what we need to do perform our very best, such as how we prepare and nurture our souls, training, or even practicing mindfulness. Notice how an outcome is focused on “things” outside of you. While in contrast, a process is focused entirely on you?
…
Most of us think that (myself included at times), in order to get the results we want, we need to focus on those results. Wanna get better at yoga? Gotta be more flexible! Loose a few pounds before summer begins … When does the outcome of a competition occur? At the end of course. If we become obsessed on the outcome, we are not focused on the process – What we need to do to perform our best from the start to the finish. What makes you nervous before yoga class or a big ride, the process or the outcome? It’s the outcome, and more specifically, a bad outcome such as not performing well or tumbling over trying to reach your “peak” pose. When we focus on the outcome, we are far less likely to get the outcome we want.
When we pause to focus on the process, we increase the chances of achieving the results we so richly deserve.
Daily Meditation:
Sometimes, I can’t shift my heart from the outcome to process, the best thing I can do when this happens, is to get out of my mind completely. In other words, I go for an early morning walk, bike ride, or like yesterday morning – yoga practice in a quiet park. These moments gently take me from thinking about the outcome to, feeling the process.
CultFit 