Kinds of Wild

Today I got this message from The Universe (aka Mike Dooley):

”Those who are needy of attention, Veronica, hide from themselves their greatness.
Those who are needy of opportunity, Veronica, hide from themselves their power to create.
And those who are needy of love, Veronica, hide from themselves what's already there.
But boy, oh boy, are they in for a wild ride.”
Love you like crazy,

The Universe

Thoughts become things... choose the good ones! ®

© www.tut.com ®

So true...check up their site and sign up, if you please, to receive these daily reminders that ~life's magical, we are powerful and dreams do come true~ as their declared mission is.

The Purpose of Money

Today I read this idea by Arnold Patent: ”The sole purpose of money is to express appreciation.”

and...I didn't get it. It puzzled me though... so, I kept on reading about it.

What the hell does this mean?? And this guy went on explaining:

~We think it's just for buying or paying for things, but in reality, if you look at the deeper spiritual, metaphysical, or psychological reason behind it, you're really saying ~Thank you!~

In other words, you are just expressing your appreciation for something you received. Now that's something to ponder and let sink in.

Love as the vein attempt to possess freedom as freedom

"If you are mine, I lose, through possessing you, her whom I honor." J.J. Rousseau

Paul Watzlawick- The Situation is Hopeless, but not Serious- The Pursuit of Unhappiness

By now I heard it so often that to pursue happiness is a sure and trusted way to become unhappy. So, the question poppped into my mind and the minds of the tens of clients seeking help in dealing with their persistent issues: what shall we do instead?

Being on the look for solutions to this cul-de-sac I stumbled upon this book, who’s declared purpose is, in the very words of the author: ”What this book wants to offer, […], is a methodic, basic introduction- drawn from decades of clinical experience- into the most useful and reliable mechanisms for the pursuit of unhappiness.” (Paul Watzlawick- The Situation is Hopeless, but not Serious- The Pursuit of Unhappiness)

Hmmm... I said to myself while ordering it immediately from Book Depository (my favorite book store online). Could this be something?

I’ll let you decide, but will give you a teaser sample:

„Of all the knots, tangles, and other booby traps in the arsenal of an experienced relationship demolition expert (RDE), the ~Be spontaneous!~ paradox is by far the most universally utilized. And a real kosher paradox it is satisfying even the most stringent requirements of formal logic. In the pristine halls of logical Olympus, coercion and spontaneity  (i.e. that which proceeds from within without constraint and external force) are incompatible. To do spontaneously what one has been commanded to do is just as impossible as to forget by an act of conscious decision or to deliberately sleep more deeply. Either we act spontaneously, that is, at our own discretion, or we comply with a command and therefore do not act spontaneously. From a purely logical point of view we cannot do both at the same time.

But so what? What do we care about logic?

[...]

It does not seem to make much difference whether we prescribe the ~Be happy!~paradox to ourselves or whether it is imposed on us by some outside authority. Furthermore, ~Be happy!~is only one of the many variations on one basic theme of ~Be spontaneous!~. Virtually any spontaneous behavior lends itself to the construction of inescapable traps: the demand for spontaneous remembering or forgetting; the wish for a particular gift and the disappointment when one receives it „only” because one stated that wish; the attempt to will an erection or an orgasm, which makes impossible precisely that which it was supposed to achieve; the resolve to fall asleep because one wants to sleep; or the demand for love as a moral obligation that leads to the impossibility of loving.”

Jon Kabat-Zinn- Coming To Our Senses

“That insensitivity is particularly onerous, even destructive, when we attempt, as we often do, to force things to be a certain way, ~my way~, without regard for the potential violence, even on the tiniest but still significant scale, that such a break in the rhythm of things carries with it. Sooner or later, such forcing denies the reciprocity, the beauty of the give-and-take and the complexity of the dance itself; we wind up stepping, wittingly or unwittingly, on a lot of toes. Such insensitivity, such out-of-touchness, isolates us from our own possibilities. In refusing to acknowledge how things actually are in any moment, perhaps because we don’t want them to be that way, and in attempting to compel a situation or a relationship to be the way we want it to be out of fear that otherwise we may not get our needs met, we are forgetting that most of the time we hardly know what our own way really is; we only think we do. And we forget that this dance is one of extraordinary complexity as well as simplicity, and that new and interesting things happen when we do not collapse in the presence of our fears, and instead stop imposing and start living our truth, well beyond our limited ability to assert tight control over anything for very long.” Jon Kabat-Zinn- Coming To Our Senses

Well, many people know and talk about mindfulness today and even the scientific community is now very eager to incorporate it in all treatment protocols, but this guy started on it more then 30 years ago being ridiculed and all about it. Still, he was a student of famous teachers like Thich Nhat Hanh and founded the mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) program helping people to cope with stress, anxiety, pain and illness.

This book, as well as others written by him, are gems of wisdom. I like to read a paragraph or two in the morning and sit on it. His hypnotic phrases take you to places you never visited inside yourself. Places you want to spend some time in. You can find the guided meditations as well, but this entire book is a invitation to take that journey you didn't even know you longed so much for. Enjoy!