and I thought my posts were being cross posted to here, but they were not.  My apologies, I didn't even check.  My life is over-busy, and I wish for more quiet time, fewer interruptions, less activity.  How to do it?  I am not sure.  I'm 55 years old now and so I figure my time is already half spent or more... What was it that I wanted to do with this life?  Have I done it?  Am I still doing it?  This is debatable and deserves a great deal more thought.  Given that only death is certain and the time of death uncertain, what should I do?

I hope you are well and that you know your priorities and choose accordingly!

How did I live to be 50 before I watched this classic movie?  Bill Murray plays a sunovabitch who because of a glitch in time learns to be a decent human.  The glitch: every day is the same day, Groundhog day.  He is a TV weather man who is accumstomed to being rude, selfish, and sarcastic to everyone.  He discovers along the way that one of the people he gets to relive this day with is a truly wonderful woman, and it takes him a long time to become a man worthy of her.  People told me it was a great movie but for some reason the groundhog part turned me off.  Funny, maybe I'm learning.

I've been trying to be polite. I am more dedicated to my own practice than to any teacher. I've studied under many teachers, and in many schools. Some new teachers were far better than some veterans. Every teacher teaches me something. Every school has taught me something.

Sometimes the thing I learn is a negative. Part of growing up and separating from your parents is deciding "I don't want to ever do that." What I have been learning recently is that many teachers are so busy teaching that they don't take the time to breathe. That is to say, the best teachers are the ones who are truly present with us in the practice, and not simply filling airspace with instructions.

My yoga practice involves tuning in to my own inner voice, and being present with my breath and body. This was a great learning for me, because I grew up very American, unaware of my body, or worse, in denial of it.

( Exhale, inhale...Collapse )

What do you think? Have you ever fallen into that pit where you had no "real" life and your entire life existed through a keyboard and screen? Have you found your way back into the land of living and breathing? Have you discovered your body? Are you OK being alone with yourself??

Got me started thinking about this (again):
http://vimeo.com/70534716

I had a housemate once who would become completely obsessed with a new video game and play it continuously until he had completed all the levels. It took a couple months for him to master Grand Theft Auto. He took me for a ride in it. Our virtual reality was shared in living and breathing space, and he was not a lost cause. I don't think. I hope not.

I have a friend who lives a good fraction of her life in second life. She is married in this life and has a significant other in second life. Her 2nd life SO is known to her and her husband. He has a wife and kids. They visit together, eat icecream, break ankles, breathe the same air. Second life has merged with first life.

I have a sister whose occupation is building things for the second world. That is, she obtains or develops images and sounds that she can sell for virtual money. Her reality is beyond my comprehension, except that when she is there beside me she is just as solidly herself as she has ever been, with a sharpened wit.

I have a boyfriend who barely exists on the internet. I told him how many fb friends I have now and he laughed at me. I think he is afraid that I will go where my sister went, or my friend. He likes to exercise and play his guitar and garden and read. Doing all those other things sounds far better than this. I'm outta here.

http://hereistoday.com/

Nice illustration of where a day falls in the scheme of things. I enjoyed it.

Eventually all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.
--Norman Maclean

Another person discovers that having too much stuff is a burden on one's life.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/opinion/sunday/living-with-less-a-lot-less.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

In a recent study, the Northwestern University psychologist Galen V. Bodenhausen linked consumption with aberrant, antisocial behavior. Professor Bodenhausen found that “Irrespective of personality, in situations that activate a consumer mind-set, people show the same sorts of problematic patterns in well-being, including negative affect and social disengagement.” Though American consumer activity has increased substantially since the 1950s, happiness levels have flat-lined.