Joy of Being

Personally, I feel that a story with highs and lows, or with ups and downs, appears as more attractive to me now than a middle-of-the-road story dominated by equanimity.

Believe me, there have also been times where I would have absolutely welcomed equanimity to replace pain and whatever came before as well as whatever would come after.

However, looking back at such episodes, I see how experiences of discomfort often turned out to become building blocks for later moments with new depths of comfort.

And though it sounds like bliss to learn to continue to sense such deep comfort even in the face of any discomfort, wouldn't that just be yet another story? Don't all stories pale in comparison to the joy of being here to have a story?

Your Story

So who do you think you are?

When you think you are nothing but a person, you might take your experience very seriously, and intensely believe that even an already good story should be better or could get worse, with the accompanying feelings of sadness or fear.

When you think you are at least also consciousness witnessing the existence of a person very intimately, you might simply enjoy your story, no matter what experiences in it, because of the unique quality the story is brought to you with.

Id-Entity

Can you really 'just' choose to enjoy any random experience?
Can you really 'just' emphasize only the good times and be happy?

What could be hindering to simply want all that you are seeing anyway?
What could be hindering to discern between what your are seeing and seeing who sees?

Who is identifying with the entity that is doing, feeling, thinking and wanting a certain way?
Who is identifying with the entity that witnesses all possible experiencing?

Can you see the difference depending on such a specific id-entity?
Can you see the difference depending on level of awareness?

Choosing to Enjoy

"No matter what happens, you can choose to enjoy the experience.
As difficult as that sounds, what's the benefit of not doing it?"
- Michael A. Singer

What One Emphasizes

"The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same."
- Carlos Castaneda

Getting Lucky

After yesterday's first look at the lyrics, today you can decide for yourself whether this song is about a guy who is excited to go on a date, or about the magnificence of remaining awake in dark times for the opportunity to integrate feminine and masculine energies in order to experience universal oneness again. Or is that basically the same anyway?

You could of course also 'just' enjoy sensing the aliveness and vibration that is clearly breathing through the extraordinarily catchy tune and impressively majestic sounding mellow music...

Good Times

In spite of all whole-heartedness and honest attempts to simply want what we see, occasionally we still suffer, sometimes friends and family die, and often friends and family and other loved ones seriously struggle through life.

So... Here's an amazingly terrific tribute to the good times, Chic featuring Nile Rodgers at Glastonbury Festival 2013:

And this is what you can hear the crowd sing at the end:
"Like the legend of the phoenix,
our ends were beginnings.
What keeps the planet spinning,
the force from the beginning.
We've come too far
to give up who we are.
So let's raise the bar,
and our cups to the stars."

(These are the first lines of the song 'Get Lucky' by Daft Punk, written and performed by the very same musician/composer/producer Nile Rodgers, with vocals of Pharrell Williams.)

Whole-Heartedness

"The happiest people I know have something in common: they are whole-hearted in how they engage in their lives... whole-hearted in relating with others, in work, in meditation, and in play. They have a capacity to give themselves thoroughly to the present moment."
- Tara Brach

Simple Versus Easy

You probably have also started to see that there is no holding óf life.

You might have also started to see that there is not even real holding ín life.

Everything in life is constantly moving.

Nothing in life is permanent.

Nothing in life is permanent, with the exception of experiencing.

We can witness experiencing through witnessing our breathing.

We can witness experiencing through witnessing our feeling.

We can witness experiencing through witnessing our thinking.

We can witness experiencing through witnessing our wanting.

How we breathe, feel, and think, depends on what we want, versus what we see.

Wanting what we see in every moment is bliss.

Simple.

Simple, yet not so easy.

Focusing Attention

"The purpose of meditation is to create focus. It is about focusing your attention on your experience. The reason for focus: it allows you to be here now. Your only reality is This Moment, right here, right now. Peace is found in such awareness."
- Neale Donald Walsch

Impermanent Nature

"The breath is the greatest guru of all.
It is always present to remind us of the impermanent nature of things."
- Jeff Foster

Only Movement

"Trust only movement. Life happens at the level of events, not of words. Trust movement."
- Alfred Adler

Anything

Can you actually really hold anything?

Holding

Can you hold life ever?

Hand Palm

Can you hold life in the palm of your hand?

Intentional Direction

Really, honestly, genuinely I'm asking you to think about this, where does our will come from?

How do we set an intentional direction?

How do we decide on our courses?

How do we sense what we want?

Independence

"Where there's a will, there's a way."

Again I don't know who said this first.
Again I do know that there's a lot of truth in it.
Again I love the idea that people can independently come to similar insights.

Or is there never any real independence between human experiences?

Where does experience come from?
Where does insight come from?
Where does will come from?

Way to Peace

"There is no way to peace, peace is the way."

I don't know who said this first.

It could have been Mahatma Gandhi.
It could have been Abraham Johannes Muste.

I do know however that there is a whole lot of truth in the saying.

And I totally love the idea that it is possible for somebody from India and for somebody from The Netherlands, to come to a similar important insight at a similar important time.

Ebb and Flow

The tide goes out,
the tide comes back in.

Our breath goes out,
our breath comes back in.

We build dams,
we build dikes,
and the water keeps on flowing.

We put up walls,
we develop defenses,
and the air keeps on flowing.

What does not flow?

Gee You Are You

Whenever I hear about or read about Osho, I am automatically reminded of my dear friend and previously mentioned enigmatically striking listener Krishna Prem. Krishna has been sharing as much as possible about his experience with Osho, not only through his famous workshops that he calls 'playshops', but also through his newsletters, his website, his blog, and through his book 'Gee You Are You'.

Herewith I would like to try and share something about my experience of reading Krishna's book, as everything in it I see as a genuine aim to practice core conscious living. Where Osho when pointing to the moon would say "don't look at my finger, look at the moon", and Krishna when pointing at Osho would say "don't look at my finger, look at what Osho is pointing at", I would now while pointing to Krishna Prem like to say "don't look at my finger, look at what Krishna Prem is pointing at".

Gee You Are You (G.U.R.U.) is not like any other book I have ever read. At least I don't remember to have ever looked forward to reading every next chapter this much. For sure it was a very long time ago that I cried tears of laughter with so many passages. I believe it must have helped to have met Krishna Prem in person for the first time already years before in a place called 'Bagels & Wraps' in Amsterdam, though I trust that also without being accused of taking too long with his favorite newspaper, you will most definitely sense his fierce lightness straightaway. Even without having seen his videos on YouTube or without having heard any of his radio-interviews, everybody will recognize the wonderful weaving together of brilliance and boldness mixed with an attitude of never having aged a day since a youth in Boston.

I won't even try to come near to something of a summary of the book, but what in my opinion makes it so worthwhile to read outside of the already guaranteed fun and laughter, is the wholehearted balance between lessons learned from Osho and brutally honest examples and reflections around these lessons from Krishna's intimately personal life. In a very elegant way quite a number of moments are spent in the space where we are able to sit back and enjoy watching what we are doing, no matter what it is. On top of all of this there is a relevant quote from people like among others Rumi and Thich Nhat Hanh on the bottom of every two pages, as well as a suggestion for a different practical meditation at the end of every chapter.

To give you a further idea of the contents of the book, here are Krishna's chapter headings, which are titles of Osho books he has loved:
Chapter 1  I Celebrate Myself - God is No Where, Life is Now Here
Chapter 2  Courage - The Joy of Living Dangerously
Chapter 3  Bliss - Living Beyond Happiness and Misery
Chapter 4  Creativity - Unleashing the Forces Within
Chapter 5  Maturity - The Responsibility of Being Oneself
Chapter 6  Tantra - The Supreme Understanding
Chapter 7  Ecstasy - The Forgotten Language

Anyway, please feel free to share Your experience of 'Gee You Are You' too!

Let It Be

"If you love a flower, don't pick it up.

Because if you pick it up it dies

and it ceases to be what you love.

So if you love a flower, let it be.

Love is not about possession.

Love is about appreciation."

Osho

Always Fulfilled

What I like so much about the term fulfilling, is that it relates to spaciousness.

When seeing ourselves as the space in which our experience is held, with a quality of its own independent of the content of our experience, once again we find that we can't nót be fulfilled.

We are always fulfilled.

However, we can sometimes not be aware of being fulfilled.

Like a glass can't ever be totally empty. It can be filled with water. It can be filled with air. It can be half filled with water and half filled with air, yet it's always full. Even when the content of the glass would be as much nothingness as we can imagine, then it would still be full with that nothingness.

We are always fulfilled. Whether we are aware of it or not.

So why bother with a practice to become aware of being fulfilled? Why strive for something that supposedly would end any striving? Why not skip any striving right away?

Because it is the awareness of being fulfilled that makes you feel fulfilled. The upgrade from a knowing of fulfillment to a feeling of fulfillment allows you to enjoy living it. Only in this living of it the striving for ending striving makes sense, as well as that the end of striving means accepting striving makes sense.

We are always fulfilled. Being aware of this and feeling this is bliss. Just so you know, now.

Fulfilling

Should we actually place our focus on feeling as fulfilled as possible?

Shouldn't we accept everything and every moment exactly as it appears?

But why would we do that for any other reason than thinking that then that will feel more fulfilling?

Always Now

Today is yesterday's tomorrow. This moment is last moment's next moment.

So where should we place our focus to feel as fulfilled as possible?

On what's next? Or on what's now?

And what if we don't like this moment now? Or the next?

Or when we don't like that we don't like like this or any moment?

How about opening ourselves up for what wants to present itself in our awareness?

Notice how that includes what wants to present itself in our awareness in response to what wants to present itself in our awareness. Always now.

Many Moments

How many moments of now have you remembered to be aware of being aware today?

I hope more than yesterday.
I hope less than tomorrow.

Added Value

When we couldn't have been doing anything else but being.

When we couldn't have been anywhere else but here.

When we couldn't have been any other time than now.

Then why do the words 'be here now' resonate with us?

Even when we know that there's no way we could ever nót be here now, we feel that hearing to 'be here now' is valuable. So what does hearing that ádd to what was already here now?

Perhaps the only thing that through such sage advice could be added to already being here now, is the knówing of being here now. Highly likely we were already even knowing of being here now, except our attention was not focused on it, so we weren't aware of the knowing in this particular moment of now.

Hearing to be here now, nów, helps us to pay attention to being here now, nów, which leads to direct experience of being here now, nów, resulting in knowing of being here now, nów, including thís moment of now, nów, all in all remembering that we are now, also nów.

But how about now, nów?

Questions

How could you not be here now?

Whose being are we talking about?
Whose here are we talking about?
Whose now are we talking about?

What-else than being could we have been being?

Where-else than here could we have been being?

When-else than now could we have been being?

Be Here Now

"Be here now."
Ram Dass

Just Be

We all are doing, feeling, thinking and wanting.

Fact of life.

Trying to not do, not feel, not think or not want, equals fighting reality.
Even desiring to would mean that you are wanting something.

Then how in earth's name can you 'just' be?

Well, actually you can not NOT 'just' be!
How could you ever be more than 'just' what you are being?!
Your doing, feeling, thinking and wanting are expressions of 'just' that being!!!

When you desire peace of mind,
when you desire profound inner calmness,
when you desire to live in total harmony with what is,
then start by recognizing there is desire in you in the first place.

Who knows where desire comes from?
Perhaps desire comes from will to live?
And where does will to live come from?

As We Speak

When 'conscious living'
rather than living on automatic pilot
means that you
live with awareness of being where you are at.

When 'conscious living'
in stead of doing what you have always done 
means that you
do what you believe is best for as many as possible people.

When 'conscious living'
as opposed to responding to situations in similar ways out of habit
means that you
respond to situations in a way you choose coming from your heart.

Then I hope 'core conscious living'
means that you
live with awareness of being where you are at RIGHT NOW.

Then I hope 'core conscious living'
means that you
do what you believe is best for as many as possible people THIS MOMENT.

Then I hope 'core conscious living'
means that you
respond to situations in a way you choose coming from your heart AS WE SPEAK.

And don't our words mean exactly what we say that we desire them to mean, at least to us?

Life-Force Inside

What do you become aware of when looking at the Core Conscious Living Manifesto?