Sa ne ascultam corpul !

“Nu trebuie să ignorăm manifestările, cât de mici, ale corpului nostru”

În filosofia de viaţă pe care o promovezi se spune că organismul este cel mai bun aliat al omului şi că acesta ne semnalează din timp când ceva nu funcţionează bine. Ce transformări ale corpului trebuie să ne dea de gândit?
Luminiţa Băltăreţu - Să încercăm să comparăm corpul nostru cu un vehicul şi să fim atenţi la ce se întâmplă. Dacă pe panoul de bord se aprinde beculeţul roşu, ce facem? Ne oprim să vedem despre ce este vorba. Aşa trebuie să facem şi cu propriul corp. Nu trebuie să ignorăm manifestările, cât de mici, ale corpului nostru. Să nu aşteptăm să ajungem la boli grave. Să fim atenţi la micile neplăceri, micile afecţiuni fizice. Bolile se manifestă atunci când o persoană ajunge la limitele ei fizice. Fiecare dintre noi are o limită de energie fizică, emoţională şi mentală diferită. Ne naştem având aceste limite diferite. Cu cât este mai mare rezerva de energie a cuiva, cu atât va ajunge mai târziu la limita sa fizică. Acea persoană va ajunge la limita sa fizică după ce a ajuns înainte la limită emoţională şi cea mentală.

Ce anume ne poate determina să ignorăm cu desăvârşire limitele propriului organism? Este ambiţia? Este teama că ne vom pierde poziţia în companie?

Epuizarea profesională se produce la persoane care au lucruri de reglat cu părintele de acelaşi sex. Fiind tineri, ei au vrut să impresioneze acest părinte, făcând totul ca să-i placă, dar nu au primit niciodată recunoştinţa aşteptată. Neavând încredere în valoarea lor, aceste persoane au luat obiceiul de a performa pentru a dovedi ce sunt. Ele amestecă “a face” cu “a fi”. Au foarte multe aşteptări şi se simt foarte singure când nu sunt recunoscute pentru ceea ce fac. Ele sfârşesc prin a se descuraja. Trebuie să recunoşti cine eşti, să recunoşti că, fiind tânăr, tu eşti cel care a decis că, făcând mai mult, părintele de acelaşi sex te va iubi mai mult. Tu singur poţi schimba această decizie. Nimeni pe lume, nici măcar tu, nu are dreptul să îţi ceară mai mult decât poţi. A te iubi înseamnă a-ţi recunoaşte talentele, limitele şi slăbiciunile, cu tot ceea ce implică asta. Ai dreptul să spui nu atunci când crezi că este prea mult pentru tine. Respectându-ţi limitele, vei fi mult mai puţin înclinat să îi critici pe ceilalţi şi vei fi mai fericit.

Legătura dintre cancer, ură, ranchiună şi invidie

Asta spune că noi, românii, avem nişte credinţe populare foarte puternice. Cancerul are ca principală cauză nerecunoaşterea anumitor emoţii pe care le avem: ură, ranchiună, invidie, şi toate astea trăite în primul rând în relaţia cu părinţii. Câţi dintre noi au puterea să recunoască faptul că şi-au dispreţuit părinţii la un moment dat?
Sunt convinsă că are legătură şi cu anii petrecuţi în comunism, când am fost educaţi să nu spunem ce dorim, ce gândim, eram împiedicaţi să devenim ceea ce ne-am fi dorit, eram educaţi să facem ce ni se spune. Asta a condus la un anumit tip de mentalitate şi anumite convingeri care încă ne apasă şi ne tarează.

Cum ai explica predispoziţia pentru cancerul pulmonar, cea mai răspândită formă de cancer la români?
Cancerul pulmonar înseamnă o noţiune de eşec foarte marcată. Înseamnă pierderea raţiunii de a exista. Înseamnă să mă simt obligat să trăiesc o situaţie până la sfârşitul vieţii. Sunt de obicei drastic în toate judecăţile pe care le fac. Totul este alb sau negru. Îmi este frică să îmi exteriorizez gândurile, opiniile. Trăiesc o mare neputinţă. Ceilalţi mă judecă pentru cum trăiesc şi eu îi critic la rândul meu. Se spune că fumatul este cauza principală a cancerului pulmonar. În timp ce fumez, îmi acopăr emoţiile care mă deranjează şi care mă împiedică să trăiesc.

Ne pasă prea mult de ce spun ceilalţi

Dintr-o statistică a Ministerului Sănătăţii reiese că afecţiunile aparatului circulator au cauzat 253.000 decese printre români în 2008. Dintre acestea, accidentele vasculare cerebrale au făcut cele mai multe victime, urmate de cardiopatii ischemice şi hipertensiune arterială. Ce trăsătură de caracter a noastră, a românilor, ne expune unor asemenea diagnostice?
Pentru a asigura buna funcţionare a unui vehicul, trebuie să îi procurăm un carburant de calitate. Carburantul corpului este sângele, care pentru a fi eficace trebuie să circule liber în tot corpul.
Sângele reprezintă bucuria de a trăi, reprezintă energia care circulă în noi, simbolizează dorinţa de a evolua. Atunci când cineva are o problemă de circulaţie, acest lucru înseamnă că are o dificultate în a-şi administra corect viaţa, în funcţie de adevăratele sale nevoi. Este o persoană care dramatizează prea mult anumite situaţii, ceea ce o împiedică să aibă o viziune globală asupra vieţii. Îşi face sânge rău, adică este îngrijorată pentru tot şi pentru toată lumea. Este foarte emotivă şi îşi blochează sensibilitatea, are nevoie să îşi acorde o transfuzie de acceptare necondiţionată a propriei persoane. O altă modalitate de a-şi bloca sensibilitatea este aceea de a avea mult sânge rece, adică a fi o persoană impasibilă, rece, care îşi ascunde bine sentimentele. Persoana afectată este lipsită de bucurie din cauza unui profund sentiment de lipsă. A trăi cu adevărat înseamnă, pentru o fiinţă umană, a trece prin diferite experiente in acceptare si bucurie.

Care-s mentalităţile cele mai păguboase care fac ravagii în organism?
Să nu-ţi dai voie să fii tu însuţi! Nouă, românilor, ne pasă prea mult de ce spun ceilalţi, de imaginea pe care o avem, nu ne permitem să ne arătăm vulnerabilitatea, să ne arătăm fricile, întotdeauna ne-am dorit să ne arătăm ceea ce nu suntem. Dorinţa asta e foarte mare la români. Să ne arătăm muşchii, să ne arătăm puternici, să-i impresionăm pe ceilalţi cu realizările noastre, cu maşinile pe care le avem, cu casele, e o chestie sâlbatică, primitivă. Şi mai avem până când lucrurile se vor aşeza.

E o mare diferenţă între a fi responsabil şi a fi vinovat

Foarte mulţi dintre oamenii pe care îi întâlnim în metrou, în tramvai stau cu capul în pământ, cu umerii adunaţi şi au ochii trişti. Ce spune asta despre noi?
Că noi, românii, suntem foarte dependenţi de iubirea celorlalţi, de celălalt….

Deci cum recunoşti o rană? În primul rând după corpul fizic şi apoi asculţi pe cine acuză. Persoanele care sunt dependente îl acuză mereu pe celălalt, ceilalţi sunt de vină, nu mi-a dat nimeni, n-am primit ce trebuia, îşi acuză soţul, mama, sistemul… Să ştii că la fel face şi dominatorul, numai că el nu are înfăţişarea unui tip trist, cocoşat de griji. El e puternic şi adesea seducător. Însă şi el e convins că altcineva este de vină pentru nefericirea lui. Ceilalţi, fugarul şi rigidul, adică oamenii care suferă răni de respingere şi de abandon, aceştia se acuză pe sine.

Păi, până la urmă, nimeni nu e vinovat. E vorba despre responsabilitate, nu vină… Noi suntem responsabili de tot ce am creat în jurul nostru. Dacă ajungi să înţelegi noţiunea de responsabilitate şi să ţi-o asumi, atunci nu te mai acuzi nici pe tine, nici pe ceilalţi. Spui da, asta e urmarea, consecinţa faptelor, dorinţelor mele, vorbelor mele şi îţi vindeci rănile. E o mare diferenţă între a fi responsabil şi a fi vinovat.

Contează cum percepe fiecare ceea ce i se întâmplă”, a adăugat Luminiţa Băltăreţu.

The Journey into DEEP is a courageous one

How did my life turn out like this?

We are in a time where many people are finding themselves asking deeper questions about their lives…

Questions like: What explanation have you had for your life being the way it is?
Pause for a second, take a deep breath, and really consider that question.

I’m not only referring to the difficulties in your life, I’m also referring to where your life is fantastic. Let me clarify. I’m talking about all of it; your life as a package.

…Maybe you feel you are where you are due to fate. Maybe as you ask that question you hear a voice in your head that tells you, you are lucky; or unlucky. Do either of those statements truly serve as satisfactory explanations as to why your life is the way it is?

Maybe the way you see it is that you got to where you are in life through something called Karma; that God is some kind of mega-accountant in the sky who does yearly, monthly, weekly, and daily tallies of all your good and bad deeds (or was that Santa?). Then, this magnificent accounting god dishes out the luck, both good and bad, in accordance with what’s in your good/bad account.

Does this sound ludicrous to you? Great, now we’re on the same page.

If those reasons are not how you get what shows up in your life, then maybe this concept (which I’m sure you’ve heard before) is the correct one: “Let us create mankind in our own image.”

Over the last twenty plus years of teaching workshops, seminars and working with people one-on-one it has become very obvious that…

The outer circumstances of your life are a direct result of the inner state of your being.
One of the most important things you will ever learn about success, whatever that means to you, is that what’s going on inside your thoughts and feeling ends up showing up outside, in your reality.

We are not victims of circumstance…

We are both the one who manufacturers and experiences these circumstances.
No one magically finds themselves in a divorce court, a prison cell or having a bullet removed with it being a result of something that was going on within them.

These events are a direct result of all the beliefs, thoughts, emotions feelings and behaviors you have had up to that point. That doesn’t make you wrong or right, what it makes you is either paying attention or being ignorant of what’s been going on inside you. Either way, it’s your choice, it’s your result.

Few will ever be brave enough to enter, let alone complete the Emotional Healing and Growth that is required to Reclaim the Authentic Self.

“Deep” is a hero’s journey to go back and find what was left behind in a place falsely named ‘history’. It is falsely named because…

History does not only exist in the past. History lives in every cell and every fiber of our being. It is the calcified tears we dared not cry that stiffen not only our bones but the expression of our lives. History is the constriction of our veins and arteries from laughter that dare not be laughed in a childhood where children must be adults because the adults around them never grew up and faced their own
pain."

Who among us is brave enough to stand as a champion, a guide and a warrior for that lost child?


Who among us is bold enough to say; it wasn’t good enough, the child deserved to be fully alive in all it’s feelings including play?


Who is now willing to go back and get that child, hold it in it’s sadness and give it permission to cry all of it’s tears?


Who is now willing to go back and free that child’s spirit to play in the universe of imaginings?

Who will now hold up that child’s spirit as a great light to the world that can laugh deeper, wilder and more authentically than was permitted?

Below I’d like to share a poem with you, yes you, who still hear the distant voice of a lost child that is yourself, not in some distant history, but the child who lives in the moments where you fall in love with yourself again and again.

Who will cry for the little boy
by Antwone Fisher

“Who will cry for the little boy, lost and all alone?
Who will cry for the little boy, abandoned without his own?
Who will cry for the little boy? He cried himself to sleep.
Who will cry for the little boy? He never had for keeps.
Who will cry for the little boy? He walked the burning sand.
Who will cry for the little boy? The boy inside the man.
Who will cry for the little boy? Who knows well hurt and pain.
Who will cry for the little boy? He died and died again.
Who will cry for the little boy? A good boy he tried to be.
Who will cry for the little boy, who cries inside of me?”

Looking for your life’s purpose can be a great way to stay busy enough to never fulfill it!


Sometimes you’ve just got to be willing to go in the direction of. There is any number of ways of finding your purpose, doing what you came here to do etc. It’s important to stay open to the clues, listen to your intuition etcetera. However, a major factor of discovering your purpose is this; be open to everything and attached to nothing.

Many of the most successful and happy people I know are in their 50’s and 60’s and they still don’t know what they want to do when they grow up. This however does not stop them living something that maybe even more important than living your life’s purpose: Living a purposeful life !

Start each day knowing that there will be fear and say ‘so what’, there will also be love. Each day could contain tears, ‘so what’, that same day can also contain laughter, so choose to live a life of purpose.

The fact is that living your life on purpose means you wake up each morning with a commitment to feel grateful that you are doing just that; living your life on purpose. We can move forward with clear focus toward what we want to achieve and that could be money, possessions or status, but always remember what you, we all of us are actually want is a “feeling” and you can start by deciding what feeling you want to start each day with and then deciding to create it. Take a deep breath and as you breath out step off the cliff and you’ll discover you can fly. Be willing to be surprised at how often something wonderful and wondrous shows up…

Leave me your comments and feedback about finding your life’s purpose and living purposfully below, I look forward to hearing from you.

With deep gratitude and sincere purpose.

Do you have the stones to give with it?

You could avoid it heck, that’s what most people will do, and if you want to be just like everyone else you can tell yourself..’it’s okay’. But if you know there is something within you that’s been fighting to get out, (your real self, your authentic self), It’s time to take action…

The path of least resistance is lined with the corpses of the mediocre.
Just think about that statement for a sec.

To become free we must be able to overcome the obstacles that appear before us. Telling yourself and anyone else who will listen, how tough it is, does nothing but validate that it’s okay to quit on yourself.

Those who don’t have the courage to stand up for who they really are and what they really want, die having lived lives that are, at best, half lived and all too often sadly forgotten.
These are the forgotten lives of the mediocre, whose fear of offending others has ruled them like a cruel master.

Now, it’s important that you understand something here.

All courage is subjective; so, what’s easy for one person is not necessarily easy for another. It could be the most difficult thing in the world for them.

Stop and take a moment now to acknowledge the courage you’ve already displayed in your life, and at the same time turn your back on complacency.

Because celebrating your success is an excellent thing to do; however, staying in celebration mode when it’s time to move on is like wearing your Christmas hat in February; it gets a little stale
You know what you’ve got to do, and you know that no excuse will ever really do. So stop with the excuses because I’m sorry to say, no one is really listening to the excuses anyway.

The quality of your life is not measured by the quality of your excuses…

The quality of your life is measured by your commitment in spite of all the great excuses you could come up with.
Listen, It’s never quite the right time, there is always going to be another place that needs the money, and there will always be someone who thinks your crazy for even considering ‘it.’

I don’t know what ‘it’ is that you need to do to fulfill your purpose, heal your soul or make a difference. What I do know is this; we rarely know the value of something until we’ve been through it! And when you look back on your life, no excuse will have been good enough for you to feel good about not doing what your soul cried out for.

I care about you, not your excuses.

It’s easy to tell yourself that the emotional upheavals in your life are “all in the past”, yet the question remains: Are they really?
When you stop and think about it much of our daily experiences are nothing than the same past experiences playing out in a new senerio.

What we don’t look at actually controls us; Because it becomes the undercurrent of our personality. Just because “it” is in your past on a time line doesn’t mean that you have actually let “it” go. Here’s a quick exercise.

Think about the last time someone cut you off in traffic, or some other equally frustrating behaviour.

If you remember that you got way beyond mad … and into the range of pure outrage, that’s called a ‘disproportionate response.’

Simply put, it means that from an onlookers standpoint the incident might have rated a ‘3’ on an anger response scale; however, your reaction was more like a 6 or more.

And if you can’t remember a traffic incident, think of another time where you’ve become incredibly angry at the drop of a hat. (Even if, because you have become masterfull at stuffing it no one else would know?

Anytime that happens, it’s a reliable indicator that there’s other ‘stuff’ that you’re upset about. Being outraged at this driver is just a safe place to express what you don’t feel safe expressing in another situation.

Bottom line: If you are having disproportionate responses, your past is not in the past at all and until you deal with “it”, it’s running your life!

What we refuse to acknowledge about ourselves becomes the driving force for a destiny we may not desire.
Try this: Watch for disproportionate responses and ask yourself: “What might I be angry about that actually has nothing to do with this situation?”

There is magnificence within you… Who you are is so much greater than your history. However, until you look at your history you are destined to repeat it in one form or another.

“Most people’s lives are nothing more than the realization of a promise they made to themselves”

Let’s take this a little deeper…

These promises that we made to ourselves were in all likelihood ‘unconsciously’ chosen and chances are you made them when you were very young. (Although as you read this you may have had a ‘light bulb moment’ and realized exactly when you made your promise and why you did it).

I spend a lot of my time teaching people how to create thier reality. However, what I also say is that most people are creating their realty at a very unconscious level. In fact many of them only get conscious of ‘creating reality’ when something different shows up and they quickly scramble to get things back to “normal”.

Now there’s that fascinating word: “Normal”. For most people reading this you are bright enough to realize that normal is at least somewhat subjective. I n that what’s normal for you may not be normal at all for someone living on a different continent in a completely different culture.

However, ‘normal’ goes much “Deeper” than that. Most people without even knowing it, for the most part are unconsciously busy doing their best to keep things normal. But again please note; the normal I’m speaking about is your own version of normal.

For some people when I say normal they think of the suburban family with two point five kids, a white picket fence and an minivan. But that’s not the kind of normal I am discussing here.

What I’m referring to is your own particular brand of normal. Have you ever heard the saying: “Situation Normal All F*%ked Up?” Well for some people that kind of situation is as indicated, their own brand of ‘normal’. Normal is relative to the individual, as normal as church on Sunday is to one person, smoking crack is to another.

So here’s my challenge to you to bathe in these questions for a while…

What have you made normal that might not be healthy? And…

What promise might you have made to yourself that without you realizing it, is in fact keeping your life pretty much the same as it was?

CHANGE WITHOUT CHANGING?

“people want to change as long as they don’t have to change”.

But here’s the news: You do know what’s going on underneath! You can fool some of the people some of the time, heck you can even fool yourself some of the time.

But the truth is in your quiet moments you know when the time has come and you are either going to box yourself into a deeper and deeper level of numb, where not only your sadness and pain get buried in your body but, so does any chance of true joy, fulfillment and happiness…

Or you’re on a steady slope into your own personal version of hell, where it will eventually get so painful that you will move mountains in order to change. (I know that I’ve done both and you don’t have to do either)

I challenge you to decide because, today you stand at the crossroads. You can let your ego tell you that I’m an ass for saying this, that I’m only in it for the money or some other crap about how it’s not that bad.

THE PROMISES YOU KEEP TO YOURSELF

Is your future going to be your past with a paint job?

Let me explain what I mean… If you were to take a look into the future of most peoples lives you would see that for the largest majority of them, their future will be pretty consistent with their past – except there’s possibly a slight and fairly uninspiring level of improvement. It’s like they took the old jalopy and gave it a paint job in order to convince themselves it was new.

Seriously, put some thought into it, most people are “waiting” for something or someone to bring about the change they say they want. Maybe “the secret” or some other magical thing will come along and solve their problems, but in all likelihood it won’t and in a moment I’ll tell you why.

Why is it that most people lives pretty much the same from year to year? Why are so many people ‘stuck’ when we live in the wealthiest time in history, a time when there is more knowledge and more availability to that knowledge than ever before?

Are we on automatic and if we are, can we get off it?

Let yourself marinade in this thought:

“Most people’s lives are nothing more than the realization of a promise. A promise to who, you ask. A promise or a series of promises they make to themselves”.

We either (consciously or unconsciously) promise to live ‘better’ than we have, and than those around us have, which means we are willing to butt up against the people, situations and what’s ‘normal’ in our lives. We are not talking about being a rebel without a cause here, we are talking about going “Deep” within to discover what’s authentic.

Or the other option is: We promise to not be a ‘problem’, which means we take a look around, decide what’s ‘normal’, be quiet, accept our circumstances and how we get treated as a result of being with the people we’re with in those circumstances.

The question worth asking yourself is which set of promises are you living by?

Mottos of LIFE

To find, recognize and embrace your beloved you must become the beloved.

To become the beloved you must be able to be-loved. So let love in through the front door, by first remembering that you are a gift from God whose worthiness of love is inherent, for at your essence, love is what you are.

To truly love we must rid ourselves of the fears that keep us silent and lazy.

We must never settle for a mere sent or flavour of love, we must not settle for the idea of love. For the true heart, the true soul has both patience and courage, for they know love is the holy grail we all seek, if only secretly.

So have patience because waiting for love gives you the time to earn the gift of true self love without which you would never know that depth that is a soul love shared.

Love is the rain that falls on the dry seed of our soul;

Fearing love and craving love are two sides of the same coin…

Both can have us holding on to someone or something, so desperately that we squeeze all the life out of it.

When you learn to love yourself you will embrace love, even knowing that its encounter may wound you. For love its self cannot wound, only the illusion of love paid for with currency of self respect leaves us wounded and emotionally bankrupt. From this bankruptcy of the heart many try to quit, swearing off love, rather than, swearing off the illusions placed upon it.

There are also those who have been wounded and they learn, they know these are not the wounds of the weak; these are the wounds that empower us to return to a deeper place of love. For the potion with which we bathe and heal the wounds of loves encounters is a rich distillation of self and mutual respect.

Only by learning to love yourself can you truly recognize love when it arrives at your door. However without knowing and embracing self respect, true love will remain hidden from you as the greatest mystery of life.

To know love, we must take a chance at love. Love is the baptism that has and that can if we let it, cleanse the heart, soul and mind of all its illusions. However, what the mind and body combined call love can also be the author of illusion.

To truly know the depth of this life we must be willing to engage in the adventure of a lifetime, knowing that love has the power to crush us under foot and at the same time raise us on the wings of angels to the heights we could have only dreamed.

Love is the rain that falls on the dry seed of our soul;
it fertilizes and nourishes that which has lain dormant in the desert of fear. Through love we learn to question our limitations so as to express our soul’s purpose.

To truly love we must rid ourselves of the fears that keep us silent and lazy.
We must never settle for a mere sent or flavour of love, we must not settle for the idea of love. For the true heart, the true soul has both patience and courage, for they know love is the holy grail we all seek, if only secretly.

So have patience because waiting for love gives you the time to earn the gift of true self love without which you would never know that depth that is a soul love shared.


To find, recognize and embrace your beloved you must become the beloved.
To become the beloved you must be able to be-loved. So let love in through the front door, by first remembering that you are a gift from God whose worthiness of love is inherent, for at your essence, love is what you are.


We can no longer afford to be ignorant!
Now is the time to step forward into the power of who you really are!


Those who choose to quickly embrace change will flourish.

We are standing on the bridge between two realities.

Your primary relationship is… The one you have with yourself!

Meditation- good for emotional skills

(NaturalNews) People who practice meditating on feelings of compassion increase the activity of sections of the brain associated with empathy, according to a study conducted by researchers from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

"There is such a thing as expertise when it comes to complex emotions or emotional skills, such as the one of cultivating benevolence," said lead researcher Antoine Lutz. "That raises the possibility that you can train someone to cultivate this positive emotion."

The researchers took functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans of the brains of 16 veteran meditators, including some Tibetan monks, and 16 people from the United States with no meditation experience. The novices were given basic training in meditation practice before beginning the study.

The fMRI scans measured the blood flow in participants' brains as they either meditated or did not meditate on compassionate feelings while hearing a series of sounds designed to elicit emotional responses.

In the group of expert meditators, blood flow increased to the insula, associated with visceral emotional response, when the sound of a woman's scream was played while they were meditating.

While they were not meditating, the experts still experienced more activity in the right temporal-parietal juncture than the novices did when hearing a woman scream or a baby laugh. This area of the brain is believed to play an essential function in helping interpret others' emotions.

"The way you are going to understand the emotion of someone else is by somehow simulating, experiencing the emotion," Lutz said. "It makes sense that we found some activation of the brain region which is critical for the experience of an emotion."

The researchers are following up on their findings with a long-term study into whether and how the brain can be trained to experience empathy over time. In addition, they are studying whether different kinds of meditation, such as simple concentration vs. concentration on compassion, have different effects.

Be CREATIVE, feel FREE to EXPRESS yourselves!

TRANSFORMING THE FUTURE OF NAIL POLISH




SEPTEMBER 4, 2008- MODERN ALCHEMY AND IMAGINATION



I have just dipped into a book about the future that has become a best seller. I notice some familiar themes: go beyond the ego, surrender to life, find unity with Spirit, ascend to a state of mind in which the present moment becomes All.

I would call these prescriptions tranquilizers. Their effect is to convince a person he is gaining in wisdom as he becomes more passive. Perhaps that is not the intent, but it works out that way.

Why? One reason is, the word ego, used negatively, is vague. People come to believe they need to repress certain energies and self-ish impulses in favor of sacrifices.

It’s a muddle.

Another reason is, people who recommend attaining some “elevated” state of mind as a direct goal are trying to ignore ACTION.

And that action is creative. It has a everything to do with imagination.

Trying to attain or inhabit a permanent state of satisfied mind is a very slippery proposition. You find a glimmer of it and then it vanishes.

One of the keys to living a creative life is discovering that you want to EXPRESS something. You may not know exactly what it is, but that doesn’t matter.

And here is where people drop the ball. Purposely. They think expressing something high and wide and deep could get them into trouble with their friends and family. They will go beyond the norm. They’ll stick out in the crowd. They’ll experience rejection. They’ll find themselves up the creek without a paddle.

So they back down and try to fit in. They cut the link between themselves and their own imagination. Because EXPRESSION has everything to do with imagination.

And then, in the aftermath of giving up on expression, people are available for all sorts of “self-improvement” advice that advances the theme of success without true creativity. Or they redefine creativity as something that will help them sell candy or hairpins or nail polish more effectively.

Society as a group places no emphasis on exploring great works of imagination. It places less than no emphasis on becoming inspired by the people who created those works. Well, what else would you expect? Society always forwards the goals of the group. Expression and imagination are all about the individual as distinct from the group.

Once you are embedded in a group, whether or not it has a name and defined objectives, you quickly discover you are involved with conflicts and resentments and gossip. You are involved with proving you can set aside your own desires for the sake of other people. The desire to express something is buried under a welter of nonsense.

The group, and its preoccupations, tends to conceal its naked reality behind a mask of prescriptions and slogans and pathetic advice couched in appealing terms. It may even appear that the group has some concern for the fate of the individual. But when you track down those concerns to their core, you find it was all a sham. The true aim is to embed the individual in those emotions that spring from the notion that the group is All.

In such a world, how does the individual maintain his own independence? He does it by living through creative action, by expressing his own imagination. You can try to tap dance around that one, but there is no easy fix. This is not a typical problem that has a solution. This is not something you can deflect by acquiring more money. This isn’t a puzzle you can work out with an ingenious answer. This isn’t a structural flaw you can correct. No amount of meditation or contemplation will do it for you.

People who are used to relying on systems will inevitably try to make this crossroad into an opportunity by applying yet another system. And they will find themselves in a stale vacuum.

Living through and by imagination is a solution that goes beyond any other solution. It goes so far beyond it that it isn’t a solution at all. It’s a new life.

JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com

Use your creativity to LIVE, not only to exist!

THE EXIT FROM THE MAZE

Release Date 2008-08-26
http://www.nomorefakenews.com/archives/arc...ew.php?key=3473


The vast majority of people look around at the conflict and confusion in society and decide it’s too much to deal with. They want out. They want to get out of the maze.

Politics is a maze, government is a maze, the economy is a maze, a job can be a maze….what to do?

Most people try to hunker down and define their existence in smaller and smaller terms. They try to define it in a shape they can work with. Then they put on blinders and plunge ahead.

In other words, they escape by shrinking.

Well, it doesn’t work too well.

Transformation achieved by shrinking really isn’t transformation.

However, every person possesses a faculty that can exit from nonsense and insanity. It is called imagination. I’m not talking about spinning brief fantasies and pretty images.

I’m talking about creating a life.

Once that idea takes hold---really takes hold---all sorts of things can happen. The confusion recedes. The connection to the maze is broken.

Imagination is a potential infinity. It doesn’t take orders from the status quo. And it delivers Power to the individual. That power is the motive force that takes you out of the maze.

People instinctively believe that the five ordinary senses of perception and the thinking mind are what they have to work with. But, actually, imagination is another sense perception---it perceives what it creates.

That’s the Paranormal clue that people are looking for.

You have to get used to working with imagination. You have to launch the ship, so to speak, and then look around and see what’s happening. You can’t rely exclusively on old maps.

Fifty years ago, this was better understood, because the individual still had some cache in this society. And of course the individual is where it all starts. Society is not the ultimate reference point.

The individual creates. The individual invents. The individual imagines. Without limits.

That idea has to be restored. That strength has to be confirmed.

If you look at what’s happening in this election season, you will hear almost no mention of the individual from the two major parties. That’s very interesting, because at the beginning of the country that was the core of what was being asserted. But now, we have the group. The group is all. The group has needs and those needs must be satisfied.

The group is actually a much more primitive concept than the individual.

Once you accept the premise of the group and its needs and make that the shining star, the maze appears in the gloom and makes its presence felt.

After the group comes sacrifice, and with sacrifice you get some version of the old religions.

Imagination is the force that changes all this. It always was.

JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com