Sangha of Auspicious Companions

InnerNet Weekly: Making Friends with the Present Moment

Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser. Making Friends with the Present Moment by Alan Zulch [Listen to Audio!] Some months ago, for three successive nights, I was awakened by three insights that came to me – persistently and repeatedly – one per night. The first night’s message was: "Only the present moment is real." The second night’s message was: "You can trust the present moment." The third night’s message was: "Make friends with the present moment." How do I surrender the primacy of my conditioned mind and egoic will, and allow – moment-by-moment – space for stillness and the arising of my natural state of awareness? Doing so, for me, involves a certain amount of rational insight to initially coax the thinking mind from its constant daydreaming in the foreground into letting go and taking a secondary position in the background. This shift is facilitated by the first night’s message. With the mind’s move into the background, my body comes alive, my hearing clears and ambient sounds are bright. I’m alert but feeling a deep peace…I’m fully here, having taken a "backward step" into the present moment. Staying here, however, is a real trick – an all-or-nothing opportunity. One thought – indeed any mind intrusion – and I’m instantly back in my ego identity. Allowing my ego to step aside requires trust – not only that a larger intelligence is holding me, but that it’s capable of actively engaging in my practical affairs. This slow building of trust is assisted by the second night’s message. Some days, when I am especially calm, I can ease into the present moment for longer periods…successfully relaxing into this friendly – indeed loving – universe. Slowly, I’m making friends with the present moment, with being, in accordance with the third night’s message. Making friends with the universe is very, very enticing. Like a moth to a flame. My goal is to abide in presence, allowing being to inform my doing. It entails a fundamental shift of my identity, of who I take myself to be. Am I the ego? Or, am I the consciousness that is observing – with equanimity – from behind the drama? To the ego, simply being sounds dangerously disengaged. But now I know – gradually gradually – that being fully present is radically transformative and just the opposite of passivity, allowing one to be responsive rather than reactive, and in service to the need at hand. Ultimately, I can think of no higher aspiration than to become an instrument through which larger creative and healing forces of a friendly, loving universe can come into the world. This can only happen in the present moment, with complete trust. Gradually gradually. –Alan Zulch Share the Wisdom: Latest Community Insights Making Friends with the Present Moment PK wrote: I remember a scene in Peaceful Warrior movie where the hero asks the teacher to help him be in the present moment — and do it quickly because he needs to go to class soon. The teacher nods and throws… Conrad P Pritscher wrote: Thank you Alan for a wonderful statement. thank you Somik for sending it. I find it very difficult to stay in the present. I find myself staying in the present for relatively few sec… David Doane wrote: I certainly agree with your statement, Alan, and your three insights/messages. They’re actually very basic truths about life, it’s just that we humans often don’t accept them a… Samata wrote: Dear Friends, May this letter find you well and in good health. This is an very nice and interesting piece and I would like to initially address the idea of thought as a mental intrusion. I fe… Ricky wrote: I’ll begin with a quote from Richard Bach: ‘ You are led through your lifetime by the inner learning creature, the playful spiritual being that is your real self.’ After the fi… Share/Read Reflections >> Wednesday Meditation: Many years ago, a couple friends got together to sit in silence for an hour, and share personal aha-moments. That birthed this newsletter, and later became “Wednesdays”, which now ripple out to living rooms around the world. To join, RSVP online. Audio Reflections From last week’s Bay-Area circle on The Secret of Work … Some Good News Cat Saves Owner’s Life Hours After Adoption Five Tips For Making Travel Meaningful The Sweet Spot between Doing and Being Video of the Week Designing For Generosity Kindness Stories To Whoever Finds This A Heart Touched By A Musical Soul The Hands We Are Dealt About Back in 1997, one person started sending this simple “meditation reminder” to a few friends. Soon after, “Wednesdays” started, CharityFocus blossomed, and the humble experiments of service took a life of its own. If you’d like to start a Wednesday style meditation gathering in your area, we’d be happy to help you get started. InnerNet Weekly is an email service that delivers a little bit of wisdom to 70,607 subscribers each week. We never spam nor do we host any advertising. Archives, from the last 10+ years, are freely available online. You can unsubscribe anytime, within seconds. A Gift Economy offering of CharityFocus.org (2008)

Year of Dancing with Life – Week 22

Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser. Week 22: Attachment to Desire To receive Phillip’s weekly teaching, click here: http://www.lifebalanceinstitute.com/ dharmawisdom/dancing-with-life/ teaching/attachment-desire May your study of this material deepen your meditation practice and inspire your dance with life. If you are interested in studying Dancing with Life in more depth, sign up to receive your on-line study guide and other supplemental materials.

Five Tips For Making Travel Meaningful

The person susceptible to “wanderlust” is not so much addicted to movement as committed to transformation. — Pico Iyer

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Good News of the Day:
Few know more about the art of travel than acclaimed writers Paul Theroux and Pico Iyer, who have a combined six decades of experience chronicling their adventures around the world. These two world wanderers shared a list of the things they do to make travel meaningful and how they go about being a traveler rather than a tourist. Their first piece of advice? “Pick a destination that raises more questions than answers.” Along with their list, this NPR piece also includes beautiful excerpts from the two authors’ writing.
http://premiere.whatcounts.com/t?ctl=16A812C:C3009629A010612CF08B5CC38B48F29BB4B847859706E37D&

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Be The Change:
As you move about today and this week, consider how your travels offer up opportunities to transform.

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Smile Newsletter: The Girl Who Gave Me Apples

Mar 4, 2012 âIf you want the truth, Iâll tell you the truth: Listen to the secret sound, the real sound, which is inside you.â â Kabir “I recently ran into an inspiring story of a man who goes by Suelo. One day, he left all his money in a phone booth and walked away to live like a monk. On his website, he wrote, “I’ve been living without a cent to my name since the autumn of 2000. I don’t use or accept money or conscious barter, and I don’t take food stamps or other government dole. Why? I simply got tired of acknowledging as real this most common world-wide belief called money! I simply got tired of being unreal.” — Rev. Heng Sure [ share your story >> ] You can also contribute comments on each story! A Heart Touched By A Musical Soul >> The Hands We Are Dealt >> The Girl Who Gave Me Apples >> More Stories >> “Being kind not only helps others, but it also helps me feel better about myself. All it takes is simply asking “How are you today?” or smiling and saying Hello. If I can do anything to help make a persons day a little brighter I want to do that. We never know the impact we make on others by one simple act of kindness. I want to have that impact on as many as I can. I have been impacted by others showing me kindness and I definitely want to pay that forward.”

The Power of Metaphors

An expert is a person who has few new ideas; a beginner is a person with many. — Albert Einstein

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Inspiration of the Day:
“When Pablo Picasso, the Spanish artist, was a schoolboy, he was terrible at math because whenever the teacher had him write a number on the chalkboard, he saw something different. The number four looked like a nose to him and he kept doodling until he filled in the rest of the face. The number 1 looked like a tree, 9 looked like a person walking against the wind, and 8 resembled an angel. Everyone else in the classroom saw numbers on the chalkboard; Picasso perceived a variety of different images. The connection between perspective and creative thinking has to do with habituation and over-familiarization. Where creative thinking is concerned, that is the irony of the skill: the more adept you are at something, the less likely you are to look at it in a different way.” In this article, author Michael Michalko explores the power of metaphors.
http://premiere.whatcounts.com/t?ctl=16A80CF:C3009629A010612C11B395A87817AAB9B4B847859706E37D&

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Be The Change:
On the topic of ‘Beginner’s Mind,’ this passage starts by proposing an interesting TV experiment: “I want you to watch TV with acute awareness, mindfulness, and precision …”
http://premiere.whatcounts.com/t?ctl=16A80D0:C3009629A010612C11B395A87817AAB9B4B847859706E37D&

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Kindness Daily: A Heart Touched By A Musical Soul

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A Heart Touched By A Musical Soul March 3, 2012 – Posted by flowerpower I was feeling a little blue because my mother had been laid off from her job and she had lots of bills to pay. It left me wondering what was going to happen to us now. But it reassured me some when my mother told me she was relieved to be leaving since her boss wasn’t the nicest person to be around. I got off the college shuttle bus and started walking. That’s when I heard piano music and singing rising above the noise of the people and the traffic. I walked a little slower so I could find out to where it was coming from. Through the crowd I saw a young lady sitting at a piano with a carriage next to her. She was singing songs about love, keeping on trying, and not underestimating the power within yourself. The way she was singing comforted me a bit. I stood there watching her play for about fifteen minutes, thinking that it must take courage to perform on your own in the middle of a crowded New York ferry terminal. So I stood there listening. She must have felt my presence because she would occasionally look in my direction. By now I was telling myself that if she could perform in front of hundreds of people she didn’t know the I could at least tell her how good she sounded. I walked over and put some money in her carriage and she said, "Thank you." Instead of continuing my way home, I said to her, "I have been going through a rough time lately, but you’ve made me hopeful again." "I’m happy that I could help," she replied. "Why are you so sad?" "Well, my mum told me she had got fired from her job, and that made me sad. I’m not so sure what to do …" "You see, here’s the problem," she explained. "The way you were walking, your head was down. Don’t look defeated, because opportunity come in different ways and if your head is down you might never see it. You should smile more … lift your head up." I smiled faintly, amazed by how she was encouraging me. So, I asked her, "Why are you playing the piano in the middle of a crowded place? I’ve seen you do this more then once." She explained to me that she sees a lot of negative people in the world and she tries to alleviate the pain and bring more positivity by sharing motivational music. She told me that when she wasn’t making music she studied psychology. So, that was how she knew some of the things she was telling me. I smiled a little wider because I knew that she was doing a good thing. So, after that we parted, my heart touched and lightened by a musical soul! Add/View Comment >> About Newsletter Kindness Daily is an email that delivers today’s featured story from HelpOthers.org. If you’d rather not receive this email, you can also unsubscribe. Similar Stories Oprah’s 24 Acts of Kindness, by Jesse “Mahalo Nui Loa”, by hiloecho Life is Like Hot Chocolate, by Popat I Wish You Enough, by brighteyes The Mani Man, by Santosh Helpful Links Smile Cards: do an act of kindness and leave a card behind to keep the chain going. Smile Decks: 52 cards with a kindness idea on each! Smile Groups: share your own stories, make friends, spread the good. Smile Ideas: loads of ideas that can support your drive of kindness. Unsubscribe If you’d rather not receive these stories by email, you can remove yourself with two easy clicks. Community

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Competing with Love

When you start loving what you are learning, it will no longer look like work. Everything will fall in place after that. Just fall in love. — A. K. Raha

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Inspiration of the Day:
“I had a hard time with most of my subjects, especially math. One day, after looking at my grades, my father had a heart-to-heart chat with me. He said, ‘The way to crack your subjects is to fall in love with them. When you start loving what you are learning, it will no longer look like work. Everything will fall in place after that. Just fall in love.’ I was in sixth grade around then, and decided to take him seriously and literally said, ‘I love you’ to my math textbook. Then, something strange happened. I actually fell in love. I started enjoying the mystery behind each geometric question, soaking in it, and experiencing joy when I was able to solve it. Over the years, it got to a point where I would finish all the exercises in the textbook in a day.” On the art of competing with love:
http://premiere.whatcounts.com/t?ctl=16A8009:C3009629A010612CEB2EBD59844F066DB4B847859706E37D&

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Be The Change:
Learn. Love. Work. Learn to love work; love to learn work; work to learn love.

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Dalai Lama Quote from Snow Lion Publications

Dalai Lama Quote of the Week What is progress? How do we recognize it? The teachings are like a mirror before which we should hold our activities of body, speech, and mind. Think back to a year ago and compare the stream of activities of your body, speech, and mind at that time with their present condition. If we practice well, then the traces of some improvement should be reflected in the mirror of Dharma. The problem with having expectations is that we usually do not expect the right things. Not knowing what spiritual progress is, we search for signs of it in the wrong areas of our being. What can we hope for but frustration? It would be far better to examine any practice with full reasoning before adopting it, and then to practice it steadily and consistently while observing the inner changes one undergoes, rather than expecting this or that fantasy to become real. The mind is an evolving organism, not a machine that goes on and off with the flip of a switch. The forces that bind and limit the mind, hurling it into unsatisfactory states of being, are impermanent and transient agents. When we persistently apply the practices to them, they have no option but to fade away and disappear. Ignorance and the “I”-grasping syndrome have been with us since beginningless time, and the instincts of attachments, aversion, anger, jealousy and so forth are very deeply rooted in our mindstreams. Eliminating them is not as simple as turning on a light to chase away the darkness of a room. When we practice steadily, the forces of darkness are undermined, and the spiritual qualities that counteract them and illuminate the mind are strengthened and made firm. Therefore, we should strive by means of both contemplative and settled meditation to gain stability in the various Lam Rim topics.(p.176) –from The Path to Enlightenment by H.H. the Dalai Lama, edited and translated by Glenn H. Mullin, published by Snow Lion Publications The Path to Enlightenment • Now at 5O% off! (Good until March 9th).

Video of the Week: Designing For Generosity

You’re receiving this newsletter because you are a KarmaTube subscriber. Having trouble reading this mail? View it in your browser. Not interested anymore? Unsubscribe Video of the Week Mar 02, 2012 Designing For Generosity What would the world look like if we designed for generosity? Instead of assuming that people want to simply maximize self-interest, what if our institutions and organizations catered to our deeper motivations? This compelling TEDx talk explores this question and introduces the concept of Giftivism: the practice of radically generous acts that change the world. The video is charged with stories of such acts, ranging from: the largest peaceful transfer of land in human history, to a pay-it-forward restaurant, to a 10-year-old’s unconventional birthday celebration, and the stunning interaction between a victim and his teenage mugger. With clarity and insight, it details the common threads that runs through all these gift manifestations, and invites us to participate through everyday acts of kindness — in an uplifting global movement. Share: Related KarmaTube Videos A Teacher in Tokyo The Koh Panyee Football Club Of Forests and Men Four Fingered Pianist About KarmaTube: KarmaTube is a collection of inspiring videos accompanied by simple actions every viewer can take. We invite you to get involved. Other ServiceSpace Projects: DailyGood // Conversations // iJourney // HelpOthers MovedByLove // CF Sites // Karma Kitchen // More Thank you for helping us spread the good. This newsletter now reaches 41,686 subscribers.

Designing for Generosity

Good design is a renaissance attitude that combines technology, cognitive science, human need, and beauty to produce something that the world didn’t know it was missing. — Paola Antonelli

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Inspiration of the Day:
What would the world look like if we designed for generosity? Instead of assuming that people want to simply maximize self-interest, what if our institutions and organizations were built around our deepest motivations? A recent TEDx talk explores this question and introduces the concept of Giftivism: the practice of radically generous acts that change the world. The video is charged with stories of such acts, ranging from: the largest peaceful transfer of land in human history, to a pay-it-forward restaurant, to a 10-year-old’s unconventional birthday celebration, and the stunning interaction between a victim and his teenage mugger. With clarity and insight, it details the common threads that runs through all these gift manifestations, and invites us to participate through everyday acts of kindness — in an uplifting global movement.
http://premiere.whatcounts.com/t?ctl=16A7D5C:C3009629A010612C1098C42192E4F69BB4B847859706E37D&

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Be The Change:
Engage in an act of giftivism. Do something radically generous, with focus on your inner experience, and observe its ripple effect.

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