Scratch and the New Pleasure

I’m a bookseller and yesterday an old lady (who was a mathematics teacher years ago, she told me) asked me about Scratch (“a block-based visual programming language and online community targeted primarily at children”).

Her granddaughter was studying it and she wanted to learn it, being curious. I was amazed, because… it’s not very common.

As she was a bit doubtful, I explained her it was easy to learn, and told her about my pleasure learning HTML and, a long time ago, programming for days in the BASIC language.

But then, I could hear myself telling her about pleasure.

Because I do remember very well the pleasure of programming!

It’s not like writing an article. Maybe more like composing music! It’s something you build (or you weave) and you constantly check if it works properly. You have to develop other ways of thinking, imagine processes. It’s invention!

So it puts you in the state of “flow“. But more important : programming puts your brain in another state, maybe similar to kids’ when they play Lego.

I felt this when I learned English too.

So what I realized is : it’s good sometimes to learn how to do something you don’t know at all. I wonder where it comes from (probably because your brain connects new things)…

What would you choose?

 

Thanks for reading!

 

Basic :

Scratch : 

Toltecking a crying colleague

Many people smile when they open this book, the Toltec Agreements. One does not understand why it’s such a hit, constantly and in many countries. “Always do your best, hahaha I don’t need a book to know this, right?”.

Well, they are printed and pinned on the wall in my apartement. Little by little they probably impregnate the guy…

A few months ago I toltecked a colleague, a young woman bawling her eyes out walking out a meeting with a rude manager. She needed to talk, obviously. What I told her followed the book by the book… but unthinkingly.

Of course there are many ways to deal with managers who manage nothing and then yell once in a while. You can fight back (man to man or with union), you can protect-mute, you can don’t-give-a-shit or quit, choose your way). My way is to deal with these like with the weather (I wrote about it here : Marcus Aurelius VS bad management).

 

1. It’s useless to comment, you can’t fix anybody. Let go and inner erase what bothers you. Focus on good people.
2. People deal with their strange patterns, their dispositions (from culture, childhood, etc). It’s interesting.
3. Trying to guess what’s happening and “why is this” is losing time. Sometimes it rains.
4. Focus on what’s important in your job, and do it well for colleagues or clients.

 

Have a nice day!

 

 

 

The Four Agreements are:

1. Be Impeccable with your Word: Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the Word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your Word in the direction of truth and love.

2. Don’t Take Anything Personally
Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.

3. Don’t Make Assumptions
Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

4. Always Do Your Best
Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse, and regret.

 

Inventing Ecstasy? Inventer l’extase…

ONE

As a teenager, I was, for some months, fascinated by the idea of the “Perfect Moment”.

I dug in my father’s shelves to find books, elements to think on.

It was from the Oriental “nirvana” and “satori” to the special moment in summer when all is quiet and you have the feeling that “all is in place”.

We all know this feeling, the “Perfect Moment”. After or during good linked sex, in a concert with choir, fireworks, or religion of course.

TWO

When you hear about that, there’s a danger : you wait for it, or more, you crave. You’re impatient. Rapture, you want do deserve it, to know what it is.

Problem is : the more you want the Perfect Moment, the less you have a chance to live it.

I heard about one recently invented Church, where you’d better be visited by God’s angel (or messenger whatever) to become a real part of the community. So your choices are few : you fake to be visited (that’s another article : Because there’s no god in the sky? Because god has other cats to whip? Because you’re not ready?), or you begin to think that all this stuff is a theater, or you run away over the hill to have a glass of French wine.

I can perfectly imagine a girl who hears about crying after an incredible orgasm, from a friend, and then feels nothing like that ever (because she waits for it too much?).

I watched one day a TV program about a grown up man who was in love with a painting (in a Russian museum, I think). Of course the TV team travelled and brought the obsessed guy, blindfolded, in front of the painting. The camera straight on him, watching out for… his emotions. Of course he cried, kneeled, blah blah blah.

Maybe it was real? It was not.

THREE

You can’t invent ecstasy and rapture. Perfect Moments exist and happen, and they catch you by surprise always. It’ll end in tears, most of the times. It’s marvelous!

FOUR

A wrong way up is to look for it, and another one is to fake it. One day, it’ll happen, though. It can be so quiet and peaceful, or you can feel like you’re in front of the Sun.

This feeling, when you feel it’s going away…

Thanks for reading!

Instagram : body_language

What is Happiness really? – The Flow & Autotelic persons – #Csikszentmihalyi

This little article is just made of things I found on the web. It’s made for people who never heard about the “Flow”. I added a little complement with Autotelism…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)

 

Mister Csikszentmihalyi is an Hungarian psychologist. He was interested in happiness, and found out a very curious thing : one is happy when one is… busy.

The components of this happiness are :

1. challenge-skill balance
2. merging of action and awareness
3. clarity of goals
4. immediate and unambiguous feedback
5. concentration on the task at hand
6. paradox of control
7. transformation of time
8. loss of self-consciousness
9. autotelic experience

 

For this last word, I copy paste wiki :

The autotelic personality is one in which a person performs acts because they are intrinsically rewarding, rather than to achieve external goals. Csikszentmihalyi describes the autotelic personality as a trait possessed by individuals who can learn to enjoy situations that most other people would find miserable. Research has shown that aspects associated with the autotelic personality include curiosity, persistence, and humility.

 

People who have experienced flow, describe the following feelings:

1. Completely involved in what we are doing – focused, concentrated.
2. A sense of ecstasy – of being outside everyday reality.
3. Great inner clarity – knowing what needs to be done, and how well we are doing.
4. Knowing that the activity is doable – that our skills are adequate to the task.
5. A sense of serenity – no worries about oneself, and a feeling of growing beyond the boundaries of the ego.
6. Timelessness – thoroughly focused on the present, hours seem to pass by the minute.
7. Intrinsic motivation – whatever produces flow becomes it own reward.

 

You can find this when you flirt, when you blog, when you videogame, when you… work. Sometimes you have to think back about it when you ask yourself about happiness. It’s a way to show that it can be reached with(in) yourself…

 

Have a nice day!

 

Proust & les Hirondelles : Chronicle 4

Absolutely no cunning could prevent a man
from being smashed against his dreams

 

I’m French, I’m sorry : my english is clumsy these days…

Have you ever visited the school you were in as a very little child, now you’re an adult? Among all the memories and the heartbeats you feel, you also find that… everything around is very little, right? You’re taller, now… you’re different. Perspective.

Today is the “braderie” in the city of La Madeleine. We love braderies in the North of France. It’s like your US garage sales, all along some streets : today was about 1.200 exhibitors (or displayers, how to say that?). I took a cool picture of motorbikes toys, you like it?

I’ve been asked one day about my “goals in life“. I have been very disturbed by this question, which is so… all about efficiency. I couldn’t think of a goal, even one. I feel like Cioran, in shock and in anger, after being asked about what he was “preparing”. If a French says he has “goals” in life, he sounds ridiculously Action Man, that’s it. The idea itself is a nightmare – at least when you’re more than 22 years old. I don’t want to be efficient, I just try to live, right? Dreams, maybe… Dreams, OK.

Absolutely no cunning could… etc…

I’m too lazy to find it, but the stupidest quote ever is something like “Give yourself a very high goal, then maybe you’ll reach a lower but good stage”. Of course there’s a more accurate one, saying that while you try to do that, you fail choosing the right path to achievement, you stay blind to feedbacks, etc. Typical Wrong Way Up. Well yes, these are words only, I know.

I have no goal, not one. It could be “to be happy” or “to be creative” or “to be a better human” or “to help others”, but I already failed in all these fields, obviously! And who will feed my cat, while I John Wayne?

If you want some fun, though, Google Image “Goals Quotes”. Plenty of orders in capitals. Like : <<DON’T LET ANYTHING STOP YOU FROM REACHING YOUR GOAL>>. Ohlalalaa, my French eyes are hurt! I need a beer, I think.

So I found a goal : stay zen in front of bullsh*t 🙂

It’s when the weather change (warmer air, higher sun, sudden showers) than you can have a rush of childhood memories. Or teenhood, say. Suddenly it’s HERE, you feel the same feeling you had in your mother’s arms, or at school when you were loving some shy redhead in silence, or when you were gathering interesting rocks under open sky. The idea of memories in Madeleines de Proust come from the food, but also from a smell (freshly cut grass, chocolate cake baking, little pot of white glue in kindergarten) or a sound (of swallows flying hunting between streets, or the familiar engine’s roar of you’re father’s car), but also from the light in the air, the clouds, a coming thunderstorm…

Marguerite Duras says somewhere that she can NOT write if the bed is not made. Strange thing is : I never forgot that, because… that’s true.

I bought a Raymond Carver book, “The American Chekhov”, as they say. I know Carver’s work pretty well, but I never read him in English. Good exercise. I can’t resist to a blurb on a book saying “The (Italian, Canadian, whatever country you choose) Chekhov”…

They have something in common, that’s right : they watch meticulously our little renunciations, our microscopic failures, our rushes never said, our words, spoken and immediately regretted, our love silliness, our boredom. But it’s not “laments”. It’s more like : “This is it, brother human, and it not even THAT dramatic”.

I found a rose, there. Is a rose, is a rose, Mrs Stein. Look where she is (“une rose”) :

In the shades of break-up moods, you have the yellow poison of jealousy, the dark corners of loneliness, the twinge of uncertainty and many more. The invisible bitterness of “having being loved and then not” is sometimes like swimming against the cold current of a long deep river.

In the shades of illness… Oh, another time, OK?

You can read books (or see a therapist, it depends on how you’re made), self help or philosophy : you’ll read everywhere that you have to find your happiness inside you, right? Again? I “have to”? The capitalized ORDER quote is <<BE HAPPY AND SMILE>>. Yes, each time, you want to punch the author in the face! Bim! Paf! Pouf!

Give birth to a dancing star from the chaos you have within

Strange star, but that could be my Nietzsche goal, maybe… Well, see?

Thanks for reading! Merci!

Fecundity of Limits

If you’re a creative person, you encountered the “Fecundity of Limits” concept, obviously. Fruition. I’d distinguish :

1. the limits you choose yourself
2. the limits given to you by someone in charge
3. the limits you encounter while you’re building your stuff.

Choosing your own limits is such… a pleasure. It’s about preparing your work. Paint something with 3 colors only. Write a book in a month. Travel, but no more than 5 miles a day.

Limits coming as instructions can be a relief. Many actors talk about the freedom you have while you have to obey strict orders. It’s about unfolding inside a frame : perfect for certain personalities.

The limits you encounter are parts of the building process. Your technical shortfalls is a good example. You then move forward “within” your capacities – trying maybe to push them back. The budget can be a limit. You’ll discover the others while you work : It’s a stream, a current!

Tool : Choose, change them, ask someone for limits (as seeds), think about them while your create, and then… forget your feedback : you’re in the flow, a good one!

Thanks for reading! Work well! Travaillez bien !

The Castaway Syndrome

At some moments in your life, you really have the feeling that you’re “helped”. By whom, well, you will never know, silly!

If you want to spend time to figure it out, you’ll find books about that : God, your Angel, Quantum Mechanics or The Universe (please add Capitals everywhere, this is important).

For me, it’s useless to try to guess, because you will never know. Use all of it, though! Coincidences and signs, good intuitions, instinct, speed, meeting the right persons at the perfect time, this is all magic and a source of joy and amazement. Dance with them, c’est la vie !

But.

Irony of life is very powerful too. You meet the right person, but at the wrong moment. You encounter failure and betrayal, craziness, slowing downs or closed doors. Everything seems to brake. You make bad choices, you’re wrong. You probably expected too much, or in the wrong way, and life begins to slap your face and hit your skull, ouchy! Coincidences are stupidly useless, signs become dirty fuchsia feathers in a gutter.

Okeyyy so what? Your exhibition is a mess, your published book has no success at all, your future wife chose another guy, your startup starts to go down, c’est la merde, oui ?

“Time to move forward” and “Keep smiling” and “You build your own Happiness” don’t work for the moment. Try, and you’ll feel (and look) ridiculous. Insisting is wrong. Curiously, everybody “needs space” around you. And in space, nobody can hear you scream!

It’s time to wait, to park, to rest, to think. Shipwrecked, sailor! Castaway!

Find a corner. Narrow your goals. Regroup. Think without overthink. Put some puzzle pieces. Find your peace. Or scream, OK, but inside your belly. Real screams annoys everyone…

OK, in your car, on the highway : SCREAM!

Then, also, do something unusual.

Thanks for reading!

Instagram : katrinalbertnyc

Proposition

A proposition is disturbing, a proposition comes to you, towards you : it’s an impetus, it gives you something to feel, a proposition is the contrary of a steady lukewarm attitude, a proposition is showing a potential of actions : if you accept it, it will build, with you, another state of your life, a proposition can be interesting, a proposition can move your brain, your spirit, or put you on alert, a proposition is an invitation, a proposition shows you a new way to organize the world, a proposition shows you a contrast between what you have and what you could have, a proposition is an upsurge : the world is talking to you, you can be modified by it, a proposition can make you move, a proposition can destabilize you, a proposition can trigger a rearrangement, a proposition can result to a big satisfaction, to a richer moment, a fulfillment which could join up with your personal library of experiences and make you available for more exploring paths.

Instagram : bodylanguage

Arthur Rimbaud & Glenn Gould : The “Big Less” Temptation

Rimbaud was a French poet who had a huge influence on Arts and Literature, but stopped writing at 21. He became a merchant, mostly in Africa (in coffee trading, for example!), and died at 37.

Gould was a Canadian pianist who stopped giving concerts at the age of 31 and became an eccentric hermit in recording studios.

Different destinies, but a similar pattern : at one moment, they stopped completely something they succeeding in, they closed a door.

Rimbaud stopped writing. Many wondered why : The artist had said everything? He wanted to explore another face of his personality? He had a secret wound? Dead wordsourcespring?
Gould didn’t stop making music, but never came back playing in concert, and he explained himself about that.

I write this because I wonder if sometimes we should consider a similar flip. A combination of levers & dials, studying what’s good in our life, considering that insisting (even in different ways) could be, from now, a failure : it’s maybe time for a closure?…

 

The Big Less is about considering to close a part of you which… works. Why would you do that, like “I park it”? Why would you stop what works? You feel you miss something? It’s too easy? You reached a plateau? I works but the wrong way? You lost a goal? You need to experiment to enrich? Fresh air? You need to get smaller to go faster? A fresh start to go elsewhere? You’re afraid of some ticking-over routine? Is it a bad idea? Why?

And who knows what will happen after some years? Maybe you’ll realize you needed the big disturbance of it? Maybe a bigger room will open? A secret path will appear? Maybe you’ll make good Bach records, or trade coffee?

Have a nice day!

The Disillusion of Level 2

In my life I met many times the Disillusion of Level 2. You just have to listen to people’s stories.

We all know this process, especially when we are young :

1. You desire something strongly (a job, a love, a change, a project)
2. You act to achieve this goal
3. You fail, you are disillusioned, disenchanted, disappointed
4. You rethink, invent new goals, with more confidence, you do the contrary, you take another path which, at least, will be the good one!
5. You act to achieve this goal
6. You fail, you are disillusioned, disenchanted, disappointed

Yes, it’s like a loop!

This triggers a few questions :

• Do we always expect too much all the time?
• Isn’t “expecting disillusion” a way to be lazy?
• Is there a way of drawing a “good map”?
• What do you do when you see a friend about to be on this path?
• Where is the Level 3?
• What’s the knowledge we gain after these?
• Is it about daring more? Being more casual? Expect nothing?
• Or is it about stopping?
• What is the “need of change”?
• Who is wise, and why?

Now apply that to any concept of life you know : love, job, hobby, politics, arts, goals, etc. What do you find? What are the stories you know? What do you think?

Merci ! Bonne journée !

Instagram : bodylanguage

Overthinking Ways

The memory is cursed with what hasn’t happened, says Marguerite Duras, and that’s a good example of overthinking. In fact, it’s the seed of a whole tree!

What are ways of overthinking? What are the subjects? The past (what it’s been, what it could have been). The future(s). About what you did or will do (or say). And I’ll stop it here : you perfectly know your ways of overthinking!

What are the ways OUT of this curse (which it is, right?). Most books show these paths :

1. Mindfulness
2. Dare and do something

Voilà! You just saved a bunch of money! Put these books back in the shelves!

1 Mindfulness is a way to focus on the now (let the past sleep/just enable the future) – well, you can try!

2 Acting-Doing has many good effects, from “keeping you busy” to “stop thinking a bit”, by way of “changing what I can”… instead of thinking about it.

Tool :

Of course you can use another path, which could be “smart overthinking”, taking a wheel (if you find it) to drive it somewhere else, to tame it, to use it, to link it with others – or with books (which is the same), to divide it up like a sheaf, to make it a dance, to fight it, to… What about you?

You go girl! Merci et bonne route! Thanks for reading.

 

 

Something is lacking

It’s just a little dial. Something is lacking. And then you ask questions just to pull out things :

• Where? In your life? In a recipe? In the way you do something? In your job?
• How much is lacking? From complete change to “just a little thing”…
• How did you realize? Comparison? Thinking? Someone told you?
• What can you do? A movement (what kind?)? An inner change? Adding something?

But there are many “shades” of that.

1. Something is lacking : just add it, and problem solved!
2. Something is lacking, you know it, but you don’t know what it is lacking. You have to search, to explore and compare.
3. You have the feeling that something is lacking, but no clue about the nature of it and even if it’s true! It’s called incompleteness.

So what? I don’t know! You maybe just have to let it go!

Thanks for reading!

Instagram : danurben

 

 

The “So What” Disillusion

Well that’s a fact that we all partly grow up with disillusion. What you chose is NOT that easy, nor simple, etc.

When you see younger people taking the path of “This will be perfect for me, easy and simple”, you sometime want to poke them, but you don’t, because, obviously, they have to experiment it.

The “So What” disillusion, as you can guess, is when you succeed to live your dream (to publish your book, to make your first movie, to work for “this” company, to find a lover, to get this job), and you realize that you absolutely f*cking don’t care.

Dial : How is it possible to be so lured by ourselves? 

So what?
Probably let go. Your brain will also find another rabbit to chase, right?

Instagram : aykutmaykut

The Splendid Paradox of #Divorce

I never married, and I will never understand the idea of divorce, it’s like a loop in my head. Why would you ever consider to divorce… since you are married??! Isn’t marriage a commitment? Then, well, it’s exactly it : when you meet a problem, some difficulties, betrayal, whatever, you’re supposed to work on it, right? Because, well, you’re MARRIED! So yes, I realize that I’m much more solemn than I should be. Or not : I never married, after all. Voilà!

Tool : what is a commitment? As it IS a commitment, what can it bring to you? What if you feel prisoner, in a cage? What if a commitment was REALLY a commitment, which means that you can’t even have the possibility to consider there’s a way to change or cut it? Can this happen in friendship, like the “Best Friends Forever” you hear in teens’ mouths? What if it was a real commitment?

Instagram : ___bodylanguage___

“Amor Fati” is a Love of Fate #Tango ! #SequereDeum

Let me embrace thee, sour adversity, for wise men say it is the wisest course.

William Shakespeare

Amor Fati what?? Wait wait wait, don’t worry. Latin in involved, but it’s easy and useful.

Let’s translate : amor fati says “love of fate”.

Wikipedia “Amor Fati” : It is used to describe an attitude in which one sees everything that happens in one’s life, including suffering and loss, as good or, at the very least, necessary, in that they are among the facts of one’s life and existence, so they are always necessarily there whether one likes them or not.

And in fact, you’ll find all kinds of “shades” about “accepting reality”, in literature, in reality, in books :

If you’re an amputee after an accident, you can go from terrible distress to grey resignation to “what do I do, now”, to… you know where I’m going, right ? Aren’t we all fascinated by people who blossom AFTER a terrible event?

It’s just an example, but you got me : Amor Fati contains Amor : “one sees everything that happens in one’s life, including suffering and loss, as good or, at the very least, necessary“. Of course, it’s not “necessary”, but, as says Shakespeare, you can embrace it, though.

Seeing life as a Tango, a continuous creative almost oriental dance, is just a thing that we can consider. It is certainly not resignation, but the love of what is given to us. Even if it’s hard. Use this tool with a combination of Propensity, and… you’ll see!

Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart

Marcus Aurelius

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amor_fati

Thanks for reading!

<< Confine yourself to the present >>

Marcus Aurelius

Instagram : charlottabramow & amcaptures

 

 

“What are amulets?” – Don’t expect salvation from an external principle

What are talimans, amulets? Don’t expect salvation from an external principle

This intriguing assertion comes from Friedrich Georg Jünger, Ernst Jünger’s brother. It’s like a warning against a useless tool.

And apart from medical issues maybe, I like to keep it in mind. If you want to stop smoking for example, you can use patches or pills or therapy or whatever, but the solution comes from you : discipline. The rest is nothing. You’re in charge. Take care.

Thanks for reading!

Instagram : tombeeducamion

Paul-Jean Toulet, #French #poetry #poem

Toute allégresse a son défaut
Et se brise elle-même.
Si vous voulez que je vous aime ;
Ne riez pas trop haut.

C’est à voix basse qu’on enchante
Sous la cendre d’hiver
Ce coeur, pareil au feu couvert,
Qui se consume et chante.

Paul-Jean Toulet

 

I try a translation :

All glee has its fault
And breaks up itself.
If you want me to love you;
Do not laugh too loud.

It is in a low voice that you delight
Under the winter ashes
This heart, like the covered fire,
Who consumes and sings.

Instagram : hallieartwork

 

“Biases to Pieces” – when life goes wrong, do something unusual – #change

When something goes wrong in our lives, we try to find solutions, we meet people or therapists, we try to entertain, we read, we think, we cry, et cetera.

There’s also this oblique tool : do something unusual. Change something, hair, paths, house, habits, anything. Dare, and be a little more casual. Breathe a new air, open unusual windows. This is a beginning. It can work, or not. So what?

If you know how to wait, your “charge” will inflate up until you’ll explode into a solution. This is where you will be able to say afterwards : “I can’t even recognize my own soul”, which is another way to say “What did I do?”. So what??

Whatever! : change was urgent, and needed.

Tools :

Stay on you horse, let go the reins, and go faster. Let the horse choose.

Your need to be disturbed is there, and it’s HUGE. Try disturbing paths. Push unknown doors. Walk forward in unknown places and ways.

Do the contrary. Love the guy you don’t love. Choose the opposite. Say no to your yesses and yes to your nos. Try random. Be crazy. Quit. Don’t explain. Shut up and move. Search for your fears and attack them. Slam the door to reason’s face and listen to your guts. Find your wolf inside (or your dark parrot). Take your biases to pieces. Burn your bridges. Or not. Or for a moment. Step inside, step back, breathe back home. Push nugget-risks inside the grey. Find your explosives. Use them where you never did. Bam.

Merci ! Thanks for reading!

 

Instagram : thejohnnysmith

Opposite Course/Wrong Foot – Another type of Self Help “Be Happy!” Books

Almost all of these “Self Help” books tell the same thing : be strong, wake up early, don’t look in the past, find new goals, move forward, be mindful, accept the reality, be happy, smile, be positive, have hope, succeed, quit toxic people, surround with good energy friends, build very high expectations and reach your goals, love yourself, you’re perfect…

L’injonction au bonheur / Injunction to be happy, mhh?

I noticed, though, that the most interesting books tells us something else :

1. It’s always more complex
2. You are not perfect and you will never be and the path is complicated
3. The contrary of these “injunctions” is probably true too

Voilà. It’s a game you can activate by yourself. Find the Opposite Course books. Or borrow the typical ones, and, just for fun, try to fight them.

• Being weak is useful and slows you down from grey or wrong goals
• Being positive “on demand” is just impossible because you have no cursor for that.
• Quitting “toxic people” is not easy, and they are not as-toxic-as-that, it’s maybe a wrong opinion, and maybe they can help you in an oblique way.
• If you expect too high you may just don’t reach it, and you’ll despair…
• Etc.

Can you REALLY wake up and smile? Every single morning? Don’t you look like a freaky frog?

Allez! Have a nice splendid day!

 

 

 

The only thing you can count on, it’s the change

 

 

 

How to #meditate ? Try the candle! #mindfulness #meditation

 

You read many books about meditation, about mindfulness. Perfect. You tried.

You understood, I hope, that nobody can “really” meditate. Even skilled masters. It’s a process. You just try. You climb, very slowly.

You understood that it’s just BORING, and that’s a part of it, right?

You understood that you can not and will not stop your spirit. It “thinks”. It’s life, after all. Your brain is an engine, and you will never tame it. OK.

This is a good path. Meditation is a process.

What you know now, it’s that in order to meditate you have to focus on something which is “there” but has absolutely no importance.

You can serve tea the Japanese way, you can stare at a mandala, you can speak a mantra in loop (I suggest “Tululu” – no, just joking), you can visualize the path of air going in your respiratory system. Inhale/Exhale. Good! You can even meditate when you watch the course of the clouds…

Something works perfectly : the candling candle.

A candle is great because it’s warm and beautiful, but mainly because it’s, at the same time, always the same thing (breathe/mantra) and at the same time, the flame is like going to you : “HEY, watch me!”. Like one finger calling you : “Focus, silly!”. It moves!

A flame is like a little firm and fair beast telling you constantly to be there. And it “means” nothing. It’s just there, with you.

You just have to follow her way of being in the world… Sshhh…

Thanks for reading! Have a nice day!

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Feather moon
Scarlet sky
Living clouds
My blinded eye
Waters black
Wood in snow
Dead of night
How bright you glow[Chorus (4x):]
Breathe in breathe out
Exhale and inhale

Seven sins
God of stone
All is true
Down to the bone
Feather moon
Scarlet sky
I love you endlessly
Not knowing why

[Chorus (8x)]

Exhale and inhale…
Exhale and inhale…

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