To Ponder

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
~Rumi

Another "Duh!" Moment

Why haven't I thought of this before?

I am a music lover. I love to play music, sing, dance along, all things music really. I also love love love to dance, especially Indian and Brazilian dancing the belly dancing and all of that good stuff. I also love to meditate as you know, and sometimes I play music to aid my meditation/Reiki time. I find that music helps me go deeper into my meditation. So since I'm always recommending books, why not recommend music as well?

Now we're on to something.

So here's one I love: Deva Premal. Her music is hindu words and chants with lovely Indian instrument accompaniment. Her voice is beautifully etheral and soulful at the same time. Just gorgeous. Here is her extensive CD list on Amazon.

This CD cover featured is a bit of a faster tempo if you're looking for something more upbeat. I also highly recommend Dakshima. Here's a sample song, probably my favorite:
"Aad Guray"

Skinny Bitch by Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin

Well, I have some mixed thoughts on this one. First of all, this isn't too spiritual in nature. This is about a chemical free, organic vegan diet and why it's good for the body and Earth. As a 14 year vegetarian and a freshly minted vegan, I was looking for some help navigating my food options. In that way, this book definitely helps. It also makes a very convincing argument for the obliteration of refined sugar, high fructose corn syrup, aspartame, and a few other disgusting ingredients.

The voice, as the title suggests, is a bit harsh and negative. While I found that entertaining sometimes, the entire book in this voice was a bit much.

It's a great starting point for anyone trying to live a healthy lifestyle, but it's certainly not the bible of veganism or health.

The Paradox of Our Age by The Dalai Lama

We have bigger houses but smaller families;
More conveniences, but less time;
We have more degrees, but less sense;
More knowledge, but less judgment;
More experts, but more problems;
More medicines, but less healthiness;
We've been all the way to the moon and back,
but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor.
We build more computers to hold more information to produce more copies than ever
but have less communication.
We have become long on quantity,but short on quality.
These are times of fast foods but slow digestion;
Tall man but short character;
Steep profits but shallow relationships.
It's a time when there is much in the window,but nothing in the room.

Women, Food, and God by Geneen Roth

This book is written by a mind-reader.

As someone with a lifetime of food issues, she knows exactly what is going on with my problem in a way that even I didn't know. In fact, these ideas are so new to me and so imbedded in my unconscious that this book is on repeat for me. I am just reading it cover to cover continuously until it begins to seep into my brain.

It will change the way you look at food. Whether you're overweight, underweight, or a healthy weight but feel like the refrigerator is a battlefield, this book is for you.

I dare you to listen to this song and NOT dance

I love the dancing! I want to be in this video, or at least have Shakira teach me the moves. I couldn't really care less about soccer, so in my opinion this is the best product to ever come from the soccer experience.

To Ponder

"Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own unguarded thoughts."
~The Buddha

Don't Delay

Issues with self esteem and self worth take all kinds of bizarre forms. As I've been trying to get healthy by focusing on a vegan diet, restrictive calories, and an ambitious workout routine, I find myself longing for yoga and dancing classes. As much as I want to get involved in these activities, I also feel so out of shape and big that I anticipate failure before I've even started. So I decided that once I hit a certain magic number in my head, I will "reward" myself with yoga and dance classes.

On the one hand, it's great that I'm rewarding myself with activities instead of food, since food used to be my blanket reward for all things. But what's the problem here?

I really wonder if it's right to deny myself something that makes me healthy, gets me more comfortable with my body, and is something I would really love to do. Although it looks like I have a logical explanation for a delay, I really think this is a worthiness issue in disguise. In fact, I think there's beauty in going for it. Perhaps by doing things that a healthy body would do, I will then inhabit a healthy body. Revolutionary, right?

So to throw this back at you, what do you really want, but are denying yourself under the false belief that you are not worthy?

The Wise Heart by Jack Kornfield

As I said before, I read many books on my blog hiatus, and this one is one worth sharing. First of all, don't be scared of the word "Buddhist." You don't need to be Buddhist to read this book, and you don't even need to know what Buddhism is. This book is about Buddhist psychology, meaning a Buddhist way to approach the mind. It is not an approach in conflict with any faith system at all.

Buddhist psychology is freedom. It instructs us on how to observe our thoughts (called mindfulness) in a way that helps us detach from our emotions. The end result is that instead of being a slave to our desires and feelings, we are able to observe them as they float by and are free of their imprisonment.

And yeah, it's harder to do than I'd like it to be.

The text is a bit overwhelming, and I'll admit that by 300 pages in, I had hit my limit on new information; however, I will be reading it again and again.

What more is there to say? It's fabulous, and if I was into gurus I would totally make Jack Kornfield my guru.

Simple Math

Math was never my strong suit, but this kind of math made perfect sense to me. One day, I was meditating on selflessness. I was thinking about how for most of the day and our life, we are rooted in selfish interests, and I was thinking about how unfortunate it is.

I began to ask my angels and guides, how can we overcome selfishness? And here's what they said:

"When each person only cares for themselves, the world is full of many people struggling to survive on the love and support of one person only. But if everyone made it their responsibility to care for everyone that they could, instead of having just one struggling person watching out for us, we could be cared for by hundreds, thousands, millions. We are stronger as a collective than we are on our own, but we must look outside ourselves to see this truth."

I never thought of it that way, and it is so completely true.

What's New with You?

I have a few friends who, due to busy schedules, I am only able to see a few times a year. This post is going to be like one of those meetings. I will feverishly catch you up on the highlights of my life while I was on hiatus in a matter of minutes.

I started getting into photography while we were on a "break." It's okay, I still love you too. I got a fancy DSLR camera, and after 1000+ photos of my dog Rocky(I'm not kidding), I think at least 4 of them are good. Photography is totally addictive.

I got into cooking. Once a week I challenge myself with a new recipe that is vegetarian and both me and my husband could potentially enjoy. This just in: in the process of cooking, I began to examine my choices and am making a slow transition from vegetarian (14+ years running) to vegan. In a word, it's hard. I am having to re-wire my brain. But this is not an overnight revolution, so I'm willing to give it time.

I joined a gym, and I use the word gym loosely. I mean Curves. I am trying to take better care of my body, and I'm one month into that change and so far so good! I like it because it's very non-intimidating (all women, as little as 30 minutes), and you make it what you want to make it. I'll keep you updated.
I read some more really good books. More on that later.

I started volunteering. I volunteer at a no-kill animal shelter walking the doggies while they wait to find families. They're adorable, and there usually involves a lot of debate about who Rocky might actually get along with. Fortunately, there's been no adoptiong yet.

I'm writing a book. This is the newest update, and I'm just in the initial stages. I feel guided to make my writing focused and help others through written word. Who knows where it will go! It might just stay a lengthy stream-of-consciousness word document on my computer.

Oh, Hello There!

Fancy seeing you here. Have we met? Yeah, I used to come here all the time, but I actually haven't been in months. I thought I'd check this place out again. What brings you here?

There is a season for everything, right? And so around May of 2010 I retreated from this blog. There's a few reasons for that:

• my work and thoughts had gone on autopilot to some extent to where I wasn't noticing my thoughts anymore. I wasn't making the connection as to what should be shared.
• honestly, I doubted my ability to have anything to say! I don't believe in talking/blogging for the sake of it, but only if there's really something meaningful/insightful to contribute. I have doubted whether or not my thoughts are original.

I'm excellent at having an argument with myself. A professional really. I always lose. And win.

So when it comes to whether or not my thoughts are original, I got over that. Maybe what I say has already been said. But what about my network of knowing? Maybe the people who read this blog have not encountered those other sources. Maybe I'm the window in this case. Louise Hay and Mona Lisa Schulz have many of the same thoughts, but likely have reached different audiences. And so this little light of mine is gonna shine, y'all.