nature

What Is The Nature Of Your Mind?

When asked to tune into what is going on in the mind, most people listen for a minute or two and then let their thoughts take over.

In my work I often have people spend time becoming acquainted with what is going on in their mind. Most have difficulty because the mind can hardly sit still especially without practice.

What I have noticed in my own exploration is my thoughts are endless. Research states that people have approximately 50,000 to 60,000 thoughts per day. You can do your own research.

Try sitting down for 15 minutes and noting down each time you have a thought. You will be surprised at how much is going on upstairs.

These thoughts represent a lifetime of programming. About 80-90% of the thoughts we have today are the same thoughts we have had over and over again. Imagine a powerful computer running the same script repeatedly. This is the nature of your mind – it keeps repeating itself.

Would this inner script shape your experience of life?

6 Life-Changing Lessons I Learned By Taking A Chance On Freedom

I love living at the ocean. It feels as though I have come home. It has been a year this week since we took a chance and uprooted our lives by moving to the Oregon coast. In preparation, I quit my job, we sold one of our cars, filled a large rental truck to capacity and said goodbye to the great friends we made in Colorado.

My wife Bobbi, Pax our dog and myself headed out on the road late one afternoon for what we thought would be a two-day journey. Not long into Wyoming the rental truck hit some rough roads and began to rock side-to-side. I thought, “Holy Shit! I am going to dump this truck on its side and all our stuff we be scattered across Hwy 80."

5 Simple Ways To Chill Out That You Can Share With Everyone You Know

Is your life a rollercoaster of thoughts and emotions? Maybe you have grown impatient with yourself and you wonder when you are going to get your act together?

Good luck doing that without taking a step out of the ordinary and leaving the habits and grooves of life behind. You are stuck in a muck of your own design.

Stop the poor me. Stop the noisy inner critic. Neither ever works for the better. Instead, raise your head up, look into a mirror and see the great possibility in those windows of your soul. You are in truth a soul in the midst of a human experience. Not the drama you find yourself caught up in.

Tapping Into The Energy Of The Universe

Each day some part of the aliveness outdoors seems to touch my soul.

I wish you all could walk with me in the stream as it enters the ocean and feel the flow of both forces.

If you could only encounter the silence in the forest up behind where I live you would know more about the stillness within.

Entering the Stream Part II

After I posted Entering the Stream below something deeper in me was triggered. Last night in my dreams I experienced myself as connected with this huge mighty river that flowed both powerfully and peacefully. Have you ever stood along a big vibrant river and heard how quiet it could be? Yet if you stepped into it, you would be pulled down stream with incredible force. 

Imagine consciously joining into the flow of such power as this river.

Imagine the 80% water that you are made up of is flowing in the freedom of this river of life.

Imagine this flow is made up of all the love and compassion on this planet.

Imagine this flow is the light of the highest consciousness.

Imagine this flow being the abundance of the entire Universe.

Imagine this flow being the aliveness and energy from the source of all creation.

Imagine this flow and you as one.

The reality is that you are much more the flow of the Universe than you are a separate body, or a personality. Forget the life long programming, step back from arguing for your limitations, instead move boldly into the greater reality of your expanded nature. You and the Universe are One.



Entering The Stream

I am blessed to live in a beautiful place where nature touches me deeply each day. There is a stream I often walk into that crosses our beach as it enters the ocean. I love stepping into the flow of this clear aliveness. It is as if I am renewed and realigned in some essential way.  Nature has that capacity. I am sure you have noticed that.

Since moving here I have come to feel my connection with nature like never before. I realize that all that surrounds me is also within me.

I join with the flow of the stream.

I breathe in the negative ions of the ocean that naturally uplift.

The forests that surround us nurture me.

I drink from the stream of life with gratitude for the gift of living each day.

I am water; my body is much more like a stream with cells flowing than something fixed and inflexible. 

I feel great appreciation for the beauty of the world around me I am enriched by it. My heart and my mind both wonder how can I begin to give back all I am given.

Note: I am changing my blog posts. They will be shorter because I know your time is very valuable. I will share my ideas briefly and to the point. Please let me know what you think of my changes. Also I would love for you to sign my for my email list. I will treat you and your email with great respect.

Check This Out: A few days ago I listen to a TED Talk by Paul Gilding titled: The Earth Is Full.  It shook me up like a rude wake up call. I knew things were not going well as far as our human impact on the planet but this was too much reality to be ignored.  I would encourage you to listen to Paul Gildings talk.

I hope you will consider joining me and together we can enter the stream of life and look out for each other.



3.5 Simple Steps To Inner Peace In 2012

How is your year going so far? This is going to be an amazing year and challenges could arise that could make it hard to find your peace within. I have a free guide to inner peace here at this blog if you want to access it – look above in Free Stuff section.  I also want to offer you a basic plan you can use every day to build a momentum of inner peace within you. Everyone one can use a little extra inner peace in reserve.

Here are my three steps for you to have more peace of mind in 2012:

1.  Occupy your own mind by becoming mindful. With about 50-60,000 per day there is one heck of a lot of things going on upstairs. If there are old stuck ideas, negative inner dialogue, or a critical voice going on in your head then becoming mindful is essential to your well being. You cannot have any inner peace if you thought keep you feeling worried and depressed. 

Take the time to become acquainted with the tone and content of your thoughts. Notice what is going on up there by listening inward. Most people believe their minds are doing just fine until they really listen to how they talk to themselves, how they beat themselves up, how they judge themselves so harshly or how they have such unrealistic expectations on who they should be. Albert Ellis, a famous cognitive therapist, says, “People need to quit ‘shoulding’ on themselves.” If your inner talk is unkind then it needs to change.

Being mindful is a way to be kind to your mind. If you get to know how you think and talk to yourself, you can better shape your experience of life.  Mindfulness enriches your experience of yourself because it is about finding who you are and just being present in a supportive way.  This makes inner peace much more available. In the future I am planning on doing a series of short video podcasts on mindful practices

Remember you are not your thoughts.

2.  Be in touch with how you feel. Your mind is the source of most of what you feel. If you mind is off course your emotions may be very disruptive to any sense of peace within you. The place to begin with feelings is to note what you feel, acknowledge those feelings and then accept them as okay. Feelings naturally change on their own when they are acknowledged and accepted.

Feeling can be understood as signs of how you are doing or at least how you think you are doing. If you have feels of fear and worry then something is not going well for you and a change of direction or focus may be needed. If you feel at peace then your mind and your circumstances are most likely how you want them to be.

A peaceful heart is a key component of feeling at ease inside. Your heart when open and flowing with compassion and loving-kindness will bring peace to how you feel. If your heart is closed and guarded there will not be peace inside.  If you want to feel at peace, open your heart and let it flow out into the world in ways that feel good to you.

Peace and hope can only happen in the now.

3.  Exploring your silence is so important. Your days can be full of noise, your mind can be overflowing with words, your body uptight with tension, and your feelings like a rollercoaster. Sometimes you can get go so out of touch with yourself that you don’t feel at home in your own heart. Silence is the way back home.

Silence is golden because in the silence you access your higher and more peaceful nature. Your higher nature shows you how to live your life in ways that feel right and that allow the best in you to be expressed. This intuitive knowing you have is always waiting to guide you towards more peaceful and rewarding outcomes. Listening to your intuition reduces suffering.

In the silence is also the voice of your soul, this is your connection to the collective and infinite wisdom of humanity, the universe and the Divine. When you sit quietly with your soul, you know peace as it truly is. This peace is the pure freedom to be all that is possible within you. In the silence of your eternal nature there is a world of peace that extends forever.

The peace of silence is a wonderful oasis in trying times.

.5  Slowing down is part of finding the silence. You live in a hurry and worry world filled with impatience.  Sometimes even to wait for a moment is a bother. Impatience can be off the chart. Slowing down is easily as taking a less direct path to enjoy the moment, to see the beauty, to tune in and just be with yourself. Try a day when you start slowly, go patiently and wind down before you ever wind up.  Smell the roses, watch kids play, dance to a song, read something that lifts you up, write a poem. Slowing down feels so good.

*My new posting schedule is going to be Monday and Thursday*. Sometimes I may add other shorter posts during the week. I am really focusing on additional writing, new directions I am exploring, and ways to make more of a difference, so my posting will be less frequent. Let me know if there is any way I can be of assistance to you.