i finished a book!!

...here are the last couple pages...
(read and insert my 'i told you so...' where applicable)
!!!!!!!!!!!!

"People can be happy in almost any situation. External conditions determine well-being much less than we usually think. Extensive studies have shown that the enjoyment of life is neither a question of age nor of gender. It doesn't depend on your IQ, or on how many children you have, or on the size of your bank account. A craftsman in Bangladesh has different but not fewer opportunities for enjoyment than an office worker in Boston. Both--all of us--have to use the opportunities at hand...
...And neuroscience has shown something else: happiness is more than simply the absence of unhappiness. We have dedicated circuits in our heads for positive feelings, enabling pleasure and enjoyment to thwart negative emotions such as sadness and fear...Our ability to make our lives happier rests on these two basic principles: we can strengthen the circuits for the positive feelings with conscious practice, and we can seek out situations that give us pleasure and enjoyment...
-The well-being of body and the well-being of mind are inseparably linked...Exercise and sex have proven the surest means of raising our spirits.
-Activity makes us happier than doing nothing...Our controls over thoughts, intentions, and feelings are closely connected in the brain, so we worry easily when the brain lacks anything else to keep busy. On the other hand, the brain's expectation system releases a sense of anticipation as soon as we set a goal, and we experience triumph when we reach it. Thus, activity almost always leads to positive feelings.
-An alert mind increases a sense of well-being even when it's only observing. Concentrated perception is often accompanied by feelings of elation...This capacity for enjoyment through attentiveness is something we can learn.
-By giving into negative emotions like anger and sadness, not only do we fail to appease them, but we actually reinforce them...
-Variety gives pleasure...When we change our pleasures more frequently, we avoid taking something for granted. And in learning to value the unexpected and to see from new perspectives, we stoke our vitality.
-When in doubt, it's better to have control over our decisions than to have our wishes fulfilled. The control over our own fate is for most of us an absolute condition for happiness and satisfaction. Helplessness is one of the least bearable of all feelings...When a wish is fulfilled only at the price of dependence (going into debt, for example), one usually does better by choosing freedom.
But what is most important of all for well-being is our relationship to other people. It is no exaggeration to equate happiness with friendship and love. The attention we pay to those close to us redounds to our happiness..
The choice has to be yours.
Therefore, the most important task in the search for happiness is to know yourself. We will all discover our own answers. We are six billion people, and there are six billion paths to happiness."
-The Science of Happiness (Stefan Klein, PhD)

AMEN. (ps I don't have a PhD and I've been saying all this all along!)

reality check

...quite possible...
...that its not impossible...

********************************************
"...you are suffering; you do not fundamentally enjoy your life. Your entertainments, your playful affairs...are temporary ways to distract you from your underlying sense of fear...for you they are addictions, not enjoyments. You use them to distract you from your chaotic inner life - the parade of regrets, anxieties, and fantasies you call your mind...If you don't get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don't want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can't hold onto it forever. Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free to change, free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is the law, and no amount of pretending will alter that reality...Life is not suffering; it's just that you will suffer it, rather than enjoy it, until you let go of your mind's attachments and just go for the ride freely, no matter what happens."
-Way of the Peaceful Warrior (Dan Millman)

tilted

sit inside
the distance
(between the sun and the earth)
where snowflakes are born
beautiful
lone
crystalline droplets
each unique
from the next
none like another
the ground seemed cold
but will warm when lined
with the pages of books
and the sparks of the mandolin
the beauty and magic
of the season
has left you saturated
soaked through to the skin
unbutton it from yourself
peel off the layers
and leave only your nakedness
hang it out to dry
and trust
the distance
(between the sun and the earth)
the gravity
that will keep you on the ground
and upright once again

you came like thunder, stayed like christmas, and you feel better than the sun
-chris robinson

Best Birthday...

and the goofiest one was actually the most sober!

a reply: insistence on the proof

love is not a fantasy. love exists.

When it exists in reality, it is a world of beautiful truth, a world that admits it knows no 'forever' and cannot and does not fathom 'always.' It is the world of two becoming, never one, but TWO happier individuals, a world of real love, of falling in love, and of appreciating love and its potentially fleeting composition which lends to its beauty. Its not to be worshipped, but respected, admired, and cultivated, only to the extent that it is never a chore or an obligation. It is patient with pains that don’t need or want to heal,and there to help in whatever way it can or is asked to. It can captivate, but is never the pinnacle of all things, only the rungs on the ladder to freedom and happiness. It most certainly can inspire, but should not be a sole source of inspiration.

What the wise see as love is the sometimes synchronistic tendency of two individuals’ thoughts, smiles, emotions, hormones, and intellect. It should never attempt to join these individuals as one, because what should have brought the two together in the first place was the admiration for the other’s wholeness, not the admiration for the other’s admiration. Real love understands that its okay to never completely know, understand, think, or feel as one, and this ensures an attainable reality with lack of expectations that will inevitably be incredibly satisfying for both individuals. There will always be wonder and novelty in rediscovering the other, and watching from the sidelines as the other makes their own discoveries to share if they wish. Real love knows that this love should not become everything in the other's life, and understands that it is not possible find or be all the things that one needs in another person. Completeness should come from within one’s self, not from being with or possessing the parts of another.

Love should never become a tangled web of obligation and expectation where consolation is found by the pacification of long term fears with short term joys. Desires and demands must be dropped, and attachment will not have the roots to grow. Only then will the truth shine through allowing moments of beauty that overshadow any fantasy that could have been imagined (but fantasizing should be dropped as its simply expectation’s easy cousin).

If there is ANY greediness revealed, it should only be a hankering for the other’s happiness to be found wherever it occurs naturally, without claiming credit. Love should never be pursued, only found in the flow of one’s own life, allowing the other to share where they fit. Time has no bearing, as there is only now, and the present IS the present, the best gift to receive. Shared interests and activities should only enhance and should diverge when the flow of energy diverts those things to other people and places, like the two people themselves. When the beauty is overshadowed by efforts, struggles, bargains, and fights, the two should admit their purpose in each other’s lives has been served and move on with their individual lives once again. If others observe the love, that is fine, but its not something to be shown off or worn like a medal of conquest. Real love should be impossible to pin down, and undesirable once fenced in, a product of the appreciation of its free spirit, intangibility, and inability to be defined or put in any sort of box, impossible to be collected in any sort of way, and an expression of an honest overflowing of happiness.

Only then is love right, and only for as long as these qualities can be felt...

Love is "...not its meaning, but its feeling; not its permanence, but its moment; not its fulfillment of our expectation, but its truth; not its “fantasy”, but its reality.”

...only then will love become so much more...

appreciation. synchronicity. wordlessness.

so that last post may have seemed a little silly, but i just don't know what to say.
and if i did, i certainly wouldn't know how to say it, in a way that could possibly do it any justice.
to make comparisons is entirely lacking, though it might help one to understand, because this is really a thing with no comparison, no equal, suspect to never have even been experienced before, by myself or anyone who would read this.

"When there is so much to say, it is always difficult to say it..Whenever you feel something overwhelming, it is impossible to say it, because words are too narrow to contain anything essential...All that is great is beyond language [oh but watch me try anyway], and when you find that nothing can be expressed, then you have arrived. Then life is full of great beauty, great love, great joy, great celebration"
-osho-

so much more than...

...

yup.
wondermazing.
etc. etc. etc.

when change is allowed into the equation...

words = just words
tiny, inadequate
incomplete lines and ink
humans lack the capability
or capacity
music or
the universe
will be the only possible
analogous beauty
knowing = known
answers = answered
someday = today
wISh = (just) IS
thIS = (just) IS
.it.

Quote

"The more completely the majority adapt to the purposes which the dominant minority prescribe for them (thereby depriving them of the right to their own purposes), the more easily the minority can continue to prescribe"

-Freire

7 mile addiction?

On my way home from the gym today, I wondered if perhaps it was possible that I could develop an addiction to my runner's high? Nothing to worry about, my dinner reading assured me. Out of my 8 half finished books, I once again picked up the right one at the right time (psst! the answers ARE in books!)...

"The positive effect of physical exertion on healthy people is even stronger...As Rousseau wrote, "For the mind's sake, it's necessary to exercise the body." Exercise improves our mood in many ways. Moving muscles stimulates the production of hormones like serotonin and presumably also endorphins that can trigger feelings of slight euphoria...as the body begins to exert itself, the limbs warm up, the muscles relax, and the pulse increases a bit - and it is precisely these responses that reflect the body's sense of well being. By moving, we can gently manipulate the neurons in our brain, coaxing the organism into the condition that it otherwise experiences in moments of happiness - and from the appropriate physiological signals, the brain, in turn, automatically generates positive feelings....

...Physical movement has a two-fold effect on our feelings. First, when it's done right, it always gives a feeling of success...People who don't like physical activity balk at the effort, the sweat, the ordeal of it all - but therein lies its power. There is a guaranteed reward for beating your inner couch potato: just knowing that you've done something for yourself by facing down your sense of lazy comfort can chase away a good deal of sadness.

Second, physical activity has a direct effect on the brain. Movement encourages the growth and even the new formation of neurons...neuroscientist Fred Gage...put rats on a simple treadmill in a cage and observed greatly improved scores in subsequent memory tests. Even the mice that had not learned well were better able to do so after running...that ran had more nerve growth factors and twice as many newly formed neurons as those that had just hung around...
Regular exercise for half an hour three times a week is as effective against melancholy with some people as the best medications currently available."

From The Science of Happiness
Stephan Klein, PhD

300 days of sunshine baby

I'm a lobo, that's right, a lobo.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/casaverdesol/2061791999/in/pool-unmflickr/

http://www.flickr.com/groups/unmflickr

p.s. tao pi zen (and lots of blue moon with a guinness float)

bears repeating...

"If they are dependent on each other, clinging, possessive, if they don't allow each other to be alone, if they don't allow each other space enough to grow, they are enemies, not lovers; they are destructive to each other, they are not helping each other to find their souls, their beings. What kind of love is this? It may be just fear of being alone; hence they are clinging to each other. But real love knows no fear. Real love is capable of being alone, utterly alone, and out of that aloneness grows a togetherness.

Kahlil Gibran says: Two lovers are like two pillars of a temple - they support the same roof, but they stand separate; together as far as supporting the same roof is concerned, but utterly separate as far as their own being is concerned. Be pillars of a temple, supporting the same temple of love, the same roof of love, yet rooted in your own being, not distracted from there. And then you will know both the beauty, the purity, the cleanliness, the health, the wholeness of aloneness, and you will also know the joy, the dance, the music of being together.

There is a beauty when somebody is playing a solo instrument - a solo flute player - there is tremendous beauty in that. And there is also beauty in an orchestra. And love knows both together: it knows how to be a solo flute player and it also knows how to be in rhythm, harmony with the other..."

More wisdom from The Book

"The speed and efficiency of transportation by super highway and air in many ways restricts freedom of travel. It is increasingly difficult to take a walk...All in the cause of "safety first" and foolproof living...Orderly travel now means going at the maximum speed for safety from point to point, but most reachable points are increasingly cluttered with people and parked cars, and so less worth going to see...
...Real travel requires a maximum of unscheduled wandering, for there is no other way of discovering surprise and marvels, which, as I see it, is the only good reason for not staying at home."
The Book, Alan Watts

my girl friends suck

9 times out of 10
(the 4 times out of 8 that they actually get BACK to me)
they can't hang out
maybe thats normal
but it certainly makes my guy friends seem
incredible in comparison
i wonder what would happen
if i had lesbian friends...

Passage for my girl friends...

"Self knowledge is only possible in deep aloneness. Ordinarily whatever we know about ourselves is the opinion of others. They say "you are good," and we think we are good. They say,"You are beautiful, " and we think we are beautiful...whatsoever people say about us, we go on collecting. That becomes our self-identity. It is utterly false because nobody else can know you--nobody can know who you are except you, yourself. They know only aspects, and those aspects are very superficial. They know only momentary moods; they cannot penetrate your center. Not even your lover can penetrate to the very core of your being. There you are utterly alone, and only there will you come to know who you are. People live their whole lives believing in what others say, dependent on others...Because you have to depend on their opinions, you have to continuously conform to their ideas; otherwise they will change their opinions. This creates a slaver, a very subtle slavery. If you want to be known as good, worthy, beautiful, intelligent, then you have to concede, you have to compromise continuously with people on whom you are dependent. And another problem arises. Because there are so many people, they go on feeding your mind with different types of opinions--conflicting opinions, too...hence a great confusion exists inside you...You become suspicious about yourself, about who you are...a wavering...You have many voices inside you. Whenever you ask who you are, many answers will come. Some answers will be your mother's, some will be your father's...and so on and so forth. And it is impossible to decide which one is the right answer...This is where man is lost. This is self-ignorance. But because you depend on others, you are afraid to go into aloneness--because the moment you start going into aloneness, you start becoming afraid of losing yourself. You don't have yourself in the first place, but whatever self you have created out of others' opinions will have to be left behind...the deeper you go, the less you know who you are. So in fact when you are moving toward self knowledge, before it happens you will have to drop all ideas about the self. There will be a gap; there will be a kind of nothingness. You will become a nonentity....mystics call this "the dark night of the soul." It has to be passed, and once you have passed it, there is the dawn. The sun rises, and one comes to know oneself for the first time...all is fulfilled...all is attained."

Self and World: Readings in Philosophy by James Ogilvy

"absolute solitude is on this showing the ineluctable destiny of the soul."
-Ryle

8.5 miles to exERcise my demons...

choose one of the following:

[oh the things i'll do for...]

or

[small price to pay for...]


a beer, bed for the day, some sanity regained

**************************************

Love ain't the answer,
nor is work,
the truth alludes me
so much it hurts
-jamie cullum

ooh! she said, i feel so free!
i am a butterfly, you are a tree!
yes, i said, and a lucky tree
of all of the forest, you land on me...
do you love me
the way i love you
when you love me
the way that you do
-railroad earth

lack

...seems as though the dopamine levels will drop/have dropped/are dropping.
take your pick. doesn't much matter. and i certainly don't have the desire to figure out which.

somewhere over the rainbow...

you may find joules




What does it "mine"?
"Dopamine helps control our alertness and attention. It stimulate curiosity, the ability to learn, imagination, creativity, and sexual drive...the brain releases this transmitter whenever we desire something or someone...(my desire, in a biological sense, reawakened?)...Under its influence we feel motivated, optimistic, and full of self-confidence...enables us to feel euphoria...feel a surge of happiness, a joyful and excited...it makes us aware of particularly interesting situations...to remember good experiences - dopamine supports learning. (!!)...dopamine encourages the creation of new connections in the brain. Desire and understanding are very closely linked. Desire makes us smart, and without it, learning is difficult...
...The union of curiosity and desire that dopamine creates in the brain is also the root of creativity...Jean-Paul Sartre wrote his last books in an artificially induced surge of creativity. Facing encroaching blindness, the aging French philosopher took amphetamines, drugs that raise the dopamine level, in an attempt to win the race against time...
...in a milder form, these feelings stimulate creativity. They enable us to see connections that are otherwise hidden and to combine things that have never been brought together...Mood, then, influences mental ability...happiness and reason are not mutually exclusive...Students who can laugh and are comfortable in class learn more easily."

The Science of Happiness
Stefan Klein, PhD

names i can't seem to escape these days:

steven pinker
oliver sachs
daniel levitin
noam chomsky
sartre
pat metheny
david gilmour
steven levitt
stephen dubner
steven landsburg
(lots of stev(ph)ens!)
gestalt
descartes

mirrors again..."the guitar sound of pat metheny or david gilmore use multiple delays of the signal to give an otherworldly haunting effect that triggers parts of our brain in ways that humans had never experienced before, by simulating the sound of an enclosed cave with multiple echoes such as would never actually occur in the real world - an auditory equivalent of the barbershop mirrors that repeated infinitely"
-daniel levitin