D.M. Kenyon's Blog, page 3
April 11, 2012
Today’s Karmic Workout – Contemplate The Complexity Of Your Shoes
Today’s Exercise: Contemplate Complexity Of Your Shoes
[Preparatory Note: for this exercise we are going to use a simple manufactured object made of materials with which we are familiar. An object like a shoe, for example, would be perfect for this exercise and because everyone has access to shoes, it will suffice. The other advantage of using your shoes for this exercise is that you almost always have them with you so you can do this exercise virtually anywhere. You might augment this exercise with some internet research to give it more depth.
We are going to study the karma of our shoes. In other words, we are going to look at what it took to have our shoes on our feet and all of the complex interconnects that had to come together to make this so. Far too often, we look at common objects in our reality as simple "things", but they are actually intensely complex "events". When you start to notice that the world around you is actually the manifestation of complexity and interrelationship, you start to realize that you do not live in a world of simple dead objects. As the say: "nothing is as simple as it seems."]
Find a quiet place to think and turn off your cellphone.
Establish your meditative breathing by taking slow, deep inhales and make equally long exhales. Repeat this process until you are relaxed and focused on your breathing.
Take off one of your shoes and look at it studying it in detail. You want to notice the different materials, how the materials are shaped, how the materials are joined together and the complexity of the different elements. A running shoe, for example, has several layers. Notice the precision of the manufacture of the shoe.
Now think of the machines that were used to make your shoe. There might be sewing machines, stamping machines to cut the material into shapes, shaping machines and mechanical cutting devices.
Now think about the people who had to design those machines and the tools that they had to have to be able to make the machines that made your shoes. Think about the engineering that had to go into the hundreds of devices that were used to make the machines that made the machines that made your shoes.
Think of the training that was required to train the engineers who designed the machines that made the machines that made your shoes. Think about the training that was needed to educate the various factory workers who made the machines that made your shoes.
Think of the processes and people that made the packaging that your shoes came in, that transported your shoes (most likely half-way around the world) and then provided the retail operations that were the point of sale of your shoes.
Now notice that your shoes are made of materials that were manufactured by similar processes. When all is accounted for, thousands of people had a part in making the very shoe that you are studying. Millions of dollars were spent on the machines to make these shoes and to make the machines that transported them to you. Notice how this is an enormous web of humanity and technology that is all directly related to you wearing shoes.
Now consider how much stuff you own and the millions of people that were involved making the objects in your reality.
You can augment your experience by researching videos and other materials that more fully describe the manufacture of your shoes.
Training Note:
The Myth of Me is a lie. You cannot even wear shoes by yourself. You are part of an enormous matrix of being that cooperates to make life possible. While it massive, this field of complexity connects one piece at a time. Each piece being rather simple to comprehend. It can get overwhelming for us to consider it all when we try to look at the whole system at once. This is the problem with complexity. It can be a lot to think about and it often makes us frustrated because it takes some effort to grasp. So what do we do about it? We stereotype and simplify our conceptual understanding — not because our brains cannot grasp the intricate interrelationships at play, but because it is emotionally more comfortable not to have to stretch ourselves.
We see the oversimplification of our world everywhere in the Information Age. We have apps on our phones that manage complex tasks in a single touch. In fact, we are so overwhelmed by complexity that we have become a demand for simplistic reduction. And yet, when we make things simple by use of machines, or by trying to lump our understanding in over-simplified concepts, we lose sight of what is really going on. We disengage from the matrix of human inter-connectivity to focus almost exclusively on fabricated simplicity that makes us functional, yet detached. There is no cellphone app that creates real relationship. All of this virtual technology creates proxies for real relationship. You cannot feel the warmth of a human hand through a Facebook post. We are filling our existence with post-it notes of information that are artifacts of connection, but not connection itself.
Karmic Benefits:
Your World Is Intensely Complex – Deal With It: our experience of information overload is making us nervous and then angry. When we believe that there are problems with our world, we look for a sound bite that sounds reasonable and our critical thinking stops. When then use the sound bite to direct blame without real understanding what is actually going on. Whole governments have been toppled with this kind of shallow-sightedness. It is the consciousness of angry mobs. Embracing complexity is the road to understanding and understanding is the road to real solutions in a complicated world.
There Is No Way To Accurately Simplify Complexity: when an newscaster or a pundit reduces something like global economy to a sentence or two, there is simply no way that you are getting the “truth”. In the world of modern media, attempts are made to reduce intensely complex subjects to bite-sized morsels of opinion. Opinion is not knowledge. This explains the media wars that have scarred our political landscape and left our population on the edge of civil war ready to fight over fraudulent explanations of complex problems. Understanding something as seemingly simple as your shoes actually takes quite a bit more than a sound bite. If we stop our consideration of an issue at a sound bite and do not think about it further, we are easily bamboozled.
Sound-bite Awareness Is A Harmful Addiction: in our busy lives as we try to make sense of things in the midst of a bombardment of information (not necessarily facts). We desperately want easy answers to latch on to so we can move on to the next thing. We get addicted to quick answers and rapid conceptual formations that are often far removed from fact and are far from helpful. Unfortunately for us, this type of “post-it note” thinking makes us feel better emotionally even though it has us vote for things that actually hurt us. It has us buy things that we do not need or really want. The largest part of the harm being done to the world and to our lives happens because we do not think things through.
It May Be Fiction, But It Is One Heck Of A Karmic Workout.
Read The Lotus Blossom, D. M. Kenyon’s fictional account of a teenage girl who turns off her cellphone and enters the very real, but mystical world of Budo warriors. Humorous, irreverent and heart-wrenching, The Lotus Blossom is an unforgettable tale of a Midwestern teenage girl’s transformation into a budo warrior in the midst of the turmoil of the Information Age. Available in all digital formats, paperback and soon to be released in hardcover.
Available at : Amazon.com Smashwords.com Barnes & Noble
Share Your Experience:
Leave a comment when you have completed the exercise.
Enter your email address to subscribe to TLB’s Daily Karmic Workout:
Delivered by FeedBurner
Today's Karmic Workout – Contemplate The Complexity Of Your Shoes
Today's Exercise: Contemplate Complexity Of Your Shoes
[Preparatory Note: for this exercise we are going to use a simple manufactured object made of materials with which we are familiar. An object like a shoe, for example, would be perfect for this exercise and because everyone has access to shoes, it will suffice. The other advantage of using your shoes for this exercise is that you almost always have them with you so you can do this exercise virtually anywhere. You might augment this exercise with some internet research to give it more depth.
We are going to study the karma of our shoes. In other words, we are going to look at what it took to have our shoes on our feet and all of the complex interconnects that had to come together to make this so. Far too often, we look at common objects in our reality as simple "things", but they are actually intensely complex "events". When you start to notice that the world around you is actually the manifestation of complexity and interrelationship, you start to realize that you do not live in a world of simple dead objects. As the say: "nothing is as simple as it seems."]
Find a quiet place to think and turn off your cellphone.
Establish your meditative breathing by taking slow, deep inhales and make equally long exhales. Repeat this process until you are relaxed and focused on your breathing.
Take off one of your shoes and look at it studying it in detail. You want to notice the different materials, how the materials are shaped, how the materials are joined together and the complexity of the different elements. A running shoe, for example, has several layers. Notice the precision of the manufacture of the shoe.
Now think of the machines that were used to make your shoe. There might be sewing machines, stamping machines to cut the material into shapes, shaping machines and mechanical cutting devices.
Now think about the people who had to design those machines and the tools that they had to have to be able to make the machines that made your shoes. Think about the engineering that had to go into the hundreds of devices that were used to make the machines that made the machines that made your shoes.
Think of the training that was required to train the engineers who designed the machines that made the machines that made your shoes. Think about the training that was needed to educate the various factory workers who made the machines that made your shoes.
Think of the processes and people that made the packaging that your shoes came in, that transported your shoes (most likely half-way around the world) and then provided the retail operations that were the point of sale of your shoes.
Now notice that your shoes are made of materials that were manufactured by similar processes. When all is accounted for, thousands of people had a part in making the very shoe that you are studying. Millions of dollars were spent on the machines to make these shoes and to make the machines that transported them to you. Notice how this is an enormous web of humanity and technology that is all directly related to you wearing shoes.
Now consider how much stuff you own and the millions of people that were involved making the objects in your reality.
You can augment your experience by researching videos and other materials that more fully describe the manufacture of your shoes.
Training Note:
The Myth of Me is a lie. You cannot even wear shoes by yourself. You are part of an enormous matrix of being that cooperates to make life possible. While it massive, this field of complexity connects one piece at a time. Each piece being rather simple to comprehend. It can get overwhelming for us to consider it all when we try to look at the whole system at once. This is the problem with complexity. It can be a lot to think about and it often makes us frustrated because it takes some effort to grasp. So what do we do about it? We stereotype and simplify our conceptual understanding — not because our brains cannot grasp the intricate interrelationships at play, but because it is emotionally more comfortable not to have to stretch ourselves.
We see the oversimplification of our world everywhere in the Information Age. We have apps on our phones that manage complex tasks in a single touch. In fact, we are so overwhelmed by complexity that we have become a demand for simplistic reduction. And yet, when we make things simple by use of machines, or by trying to lump our understanding in over-simplified concepts, we lose sight of what is really going on. We disengage from the matrix of human inter-connectivity to focus almost exclusively on fabricated simplicity that makes us functional, yet detached. There is no cellphone app that creates real relationship. All of this virtual technology creates proxies for real relationship. You cannot feel the warmth of a human hand through a Facebook post. We are filling our existence with post-it notes of information that are artifacts of connection, but not connection itself.
Karmic Benefits:
Your World Is Intensely Complex – Deal With It: our experience of information overload is making us nervous and then angry. When we believe that there are problems with our world, we look for a sound bite that sounds reasonable and our critical thinking stops. When then use the sound bite to direct blame without real understanding what is actually going on. Whole governments have been toppled with this kind of shallow-sightedness. It is the consciousness of angry mobs. Embracing complexity is the road to understanding and understanding is the road to real solutions in a complicated world.
There Is No Way To Accurately Simplify Complexity: when an newscaster or a pundit reduces something like global economy to a sentence or two, there is simply no way that you are getting the "truth". In the world of modern media, attempts are made to reduce intensely complex subjects to bite-sized morsels of opinion. Opinion is not knowledge. This explains the media wars that have scarred our political landscape and left our population on the edge of civil war ready to fight over fraudulent explanations of complex problems. Understanding something as seemingly simple as your shoes actually takes quite a bit more than a sound bite. If we stop our consideration of an issue at a sound bite and do not think about it further, we are easily bamboozled.
Sound-bite Awareness Is A Harmful Addiction: in our busy lives as we try to make sense of things in the midst of a bombardment of information (not necessarily facts). We desperately want easy answers to latch on to so we can move on to the next thing. We get addicted to quick answers and rapid conceptual formations that are often far removed from fact and are far from helpful. Unfortunately for us, this type of "post-it note" thinking makes us feel better emotionally even though it has us vote for things that actually hurt us. It has us buy things that we do not need or really want. The largest part of the harm being done to the world and to our lives happens because we do not think things through.
It May Be Fiction, But It Is One Heck Of A Karmic Workout.
Read The Lotus Blossom, D. M. Kenyon's fictional account of a teenage girl who turns off her cellphone and enters the very real, but mystical world of Budo warriors. Humorous, irreverent and heart-wrenching, The Lotus Blossom is an unforgettable tale of a Midwestern teenage girl's transformation into a budo warrior in the midst of the turmoil of the Information Age. Available in all digital formats, paperback and soon to be released in hardcover.
Available at : Amazon.com Smashwords.com Barnes & Noble
Share Your Experience:
Leave a comment when you have completed the exercise.
Enter your email address to subscribe to TLB's Daily Karmic Workout:
Delivered by FeedBurner
April 9, 2012
Today’s Karmic Workout – Shut Up And Do Something
Today’s Exercise: Shut Up And Do Something
[Preparatory Note: the irony about complaining is that it is not a plea for action or remedy. Complaining is a purely designed to vent emotional negativity. When you really want a remedy, you roll up your sleeves and resolve your problem. When we want to make ourselves out to be victims and wallow in our righteous indignation, we complain. In the Yiddish language they have a wonderful word for this; they call it "kvetching". Many people call it "bitching".
What we will be doing in this exercise is identifying things that we complain about, but do nothing to change. We are going on a expedition for our inner hypocrite. Many of us rant and rave bout global warming while we drive our cars, by ourselves, to work or leave the lights on at home. We scream bloody murder about politicians but don't register to vote and don't take part in the political process. We have a list of complaints that are not addressed by corresponding action list, but are simply there to so that we can claim to be against them even though we leave the source of these problems undisturbed in our actions.
To prepare for today's Karmic Workout, you will need to prepare a list of your top 5 pet peeves in the human condition. These items should be the 5 things that you think are really wrong about the world. These are not just any things, but the top five things that you complain about the most or are the source of greatest irritation to you when you are reminded of them. ]
Find a quiet place to do this exercise. The initial phase will take about 10 minutes. Turn off you cellphone.
Establish meditative breathing by taking in long inhales and making equally long exhales.
Look at the first item on your list of things you complain about. Take a minute to consider what, if anything, you done to try to change the thing that you complain about. Write down the actions that you have taken to try to resolve your complaint.
Repeat step #3 for the remaining 4 items on your list.
Look at the list of actions, if it exists at all, and ask yourself “am I really trying to resolve my complaint or do I just like to complain about it?”
For each item on your list plan a simple action to address each complaint. If you are angry at politicians, prepare an email to send to the politician you are most angry with and ask them politely to change their course action or state what you think that he or she should do. You can also leave a comment on a discussion board or political web site expressing your point of view a social ill or demand change from a company that you believe is doing something harmful.
Write on you list, “I promise not to say a word about my pet peeves until I have take at least one action to try to change them.” Sign your name to your promise. If you really want to add some juice to the exercise and earn extra Karma Builder bonus points, give your promise not to complain about your peeves to someone close to you that you know will hold you to your no-complaint-without-action vow.
Training Note:
Complaining is an insidious human behavior. In most cases, it is not designed to resolve the problem that we complain about, but rather is simply a behavior that allows us to vent our frustrations. There are some pretty nasty by-products that come from idle complaining. First, we begin to identify ourselves as victims of the object of our complaint. Second, we reinforce our cynical belief that the the object of our complaint cannot be changed. Third, we actually relieve ourselves psychologically from any responsibility for resolving the problems that we complain about. Over time, we begin to believe that complaining actually does something. Complaining is, however, mindless chatter. It is full of hot air. Action, and action alone, solves the problems of the world though sometimes we can initiate action with intentional communiction.
When you complain and take no action, you are become a quasi-enabler. Oh sure, we are all deeply impressed that you have taken a verbal stand against global warming. You might even take that stand while talking to someone at the gas station while you fill your gas guzzler. The point of this exercise is not to change the world, per se, it is to break up the paralysis that complaining creates and associate in our minds a direct link between action and remedy. What we are doing here is taking real action, however modest, to address our complaints, but more importantly using this experience to practice taking responsibility. When we complain we are not bringing change to the world. We are simply regurgitating our angst and negativity. This is like dumping your garbage on someone’s shoes. It is messy and useless.
Karmic Benefits:
Whiners Do Not Change The World: talk is cheap. In fact, it is so cheap that is it is often good for nothing. It is common in our society to expect that the world is supposed to work out because we pay taxes. We look at our government as a concierge service. We expect to be waited on hand and foot by the people who provide services or sell us products. We expect that someone else will solve our problems. And yet, for all our whining, nothing changes. In fact, whining is pretty much a guaranteed method to ensure that nothing ever changes.
It Is Incredibly Hypocritical To Complain and Not Take Action To Provide A Remedy: If you do not like the way the world is working then criticizing the conditions around you without taking action to cause change is incredibly hypocritical. Opinions do not change anything. Action does. Yes, you will have to switch off your favorite current events rant and rave show on television (for we no longer have news broadcasts), put down the remote and go do something to solve your problems. But look at it this way, getting off the couch is exercise that immediately provides you with a karmic benefit.
Complaining Turns Us Into Actionless Zombies: because complaining makes us feel like we have addressed a problem, we fall into the habit of addressing most of our problems with complaining instead of actually creating solutions. Look around you, thousands of people are whining and complaining and yet they do not lift a finger to actually take action to solve problems. Because this behavior keeps problems in place, it gives them more to complain about. After a while, complaining becomes a lifestyle. Wake up and get busy. People who are busy solving problems rarely have time to complain.
It May Be Fiction, But It Is One Heck Of A Karmic Workout.
Read The Lotus Blossom, D. M. Kenyon’s fictional account of a teenage girl who turns off her cellphone and enters the very real, but mystical world of Budo warriors. Humorous, irreverent and heart-wrenching, The Lotus Blossom is an unforgettable tale of a Midwestern teenage girl’s transformation into a budo warrior in the midst of the turmoil of the Information Age. Available in all digital formats, paperback and soon to be released in hardcover.
Available at : Amazon.com Smashwords.com Barnes & Noble
Share Your Experience:
Leave a comment when you have completed the exercise.
Enter your email address to subscribe to TLB’s Daily Karmic Workout:
Delivered by FeedBurner
Today's Karmic Workout – Shut Up And Do Something
Today's Exercise: Shut Up And Do Something
[Preparatory Note: the irony about complaining is that it is not a plea for action or remedy. Complaining is a purely designed to vent emotional negativity. When you really want a remedy, you roll up your sleeves and resolve your problem. When we want to make ourselves out to be victims and wallow in our righteous indignation, we complain. In the Yiddish language they have a wonderful word for this; they call it "kvetching". Many people call it "bitching".
What we will be doing in this exercise is identifying things that we complain about, but do nothing to change. We are going on a expedition for our inner hypocrite. Many of us rant and rave bout global warming while we drive our cars, by ourselves, to work or leave the lights on at home. We scream bloody murder about politicians but don't register to vote and don't take part in the political process. We have a list of complaints that are not addressed by corresponding action list, but are simply there to so that we can claim to be against them even though we leave the source of these problems undisturbed in our actions.
To prepare for today's Karmic Workout, you will need to prepare a list of your top 5 pet peeves in the human condition. These items should be the 5 things that you think are really wrong about the world. These are not just any things, but the top five things that you complain about the most or are the source of greatest irritation to you when you are reminded of them. ]
Find a quiet place to do this exercise. The initial phase will take about 10 minutes. Turn off you cellphone.
Establish meditative breathing by taking in long inhales and making equally long exhales.
Look at the first item on your list of things you complain about. Take a minute to consider what, if anything, you done to try to change the thing that you complain about. Write down the actions that you have taken to try to resolve your complaint.
Repeat step #3 for the remaining 4 items on your list.
Look at the list of actions, if it exists at all, and ask yourself "am I really trying to resolve my complaint or do I just like to complain about it?"
For each item on your list plan a simple action to address each complaint. If you are angry at politicians, prepare an email to send to the politician you are most angry with and ask them politely to change their course action or state what you think that he or she should do. You can also leave a comment on a discussion board or political web site expressing your point of view a social ill or demand change from a company that you believe is doing something harmful.
Write on you list, "I promise not to say a word about my pet peeves until I have take at least one action to try to change them." Sign your name to your promise. If you really want to add some juice to the exercise and earn extra Karma Builder bonus points, give your promise not to complain about your peeves to someone close to you that you know will hold you to your no-complaint-without-action vow.
Training Note:
Complaining is an insidious human behavior. In most cases, it is not designed to resolve the problem that we complain about, but rather is simply a behavior that allows us to vent our frustrations. There are some pretty nasty by-products that come from idle complaining. First, we begin to identify ourselves as victims of the object of our complaint. Second, we reinforce our cynical belief that the the object of our complaint cannot be changed. Third, we actually relieve ourselves psychologically from any responsibility for resolving the problems that we complain about. Over time, we begin to believe that complaining actually does something. Complaining is, however, mindless chatter. It is full of hot air. Action, and action alone, solves the problems of the world though sometimes we can initiate action with intentional communiction.
When you complain and take no action, you are become a quasi-enabler. Oh sure, we are all deeply impressed that you have taken a verbal stand against global warming. You might even take that stand while talking to someone at the gas station while you fill your gas guzzler. The point of this exercise is not to change the world, per se, it is to break up the paralysis that complaining creates and associate in our minds a direct link between action and remedy. What we are doing here is taking real action, however modest, to address our complaints, but more importantly using this experience to practice taking responsibility. When we complain we are not bringing change to the world. We are simply regurgitating our angst and negativity. This is like dumping your garbage on someone's shoes. It is messy and useless.
Karmic Benefits:
Whiners Do Not Change The World: talk is cheap. In fact, it is so cheap that is it is often good for nothing. It is common in our society to expect that the world is supposed to work out because we pay taxes. We look at our government as a concierge service. We expect to be waited on hand and foot by the people who provide services or sell us products. We expect that someone else will solve our problems. And yet, for all our whining, nothing changes. In fact, whining is pretty much a guaranteed method to ensure that nothing ever changes.
It Is Incredibly Hypocritical To Complain and Not Take Action To Provide A Remedy: If you do not like the way the world is working then criticizing the conditions around you without taking action to cause change is incredibly hypocritical. Opinions do not change anything. Action does. Yes, you will have to switch off your favorite current events rant and rave show on television (for we no longer have news broadcasts), put down the remote and go do something to solve your problems. But look at it this way, getting off the couch is exercise that immediately provides you with a karmic benefit.
Complaining Turns Us Into Actionless Zombies: because complaining makes us feel like we have addressed a problem, we fall into the habit of addressing most of our problems with complaining instead of actually creating solutions. Look around you, thousands of people are whining and complaining and yet they do not lift a finger to actually take action to solve problems. Because this behavior keeps problems in place, it gives them more to complain about. After a while, complaining becomes a lifestyle. Wake up and get busy. People who are busy solving problems rarely have time to complain.
It May Be Fiction, But It Is One Heck Of A Karmic Workout.
Read The Lotus Blossom, D. M. Kenyon's fictional account of a teenage girl who turns off her cellphone and enters the very real, but mystical world of Budo warriors. Humorous, irreverent and heart-wrenching, The Lotus Blossom is an unforgettable tale of a Midwestern teenage girl's transformation into a budo warrior in the midst of the turmoil of the Information Age. Available in all digital formats, paperback and soon to be released in hardcover.
Available at : Amazon.com Smashwords.com Barnes & Noble
Share Your Experience:
Leave a comment when you have completed the exercise.
Enter your email address to subscribe to TLB's Daily Karmic Workout:
Delivered by FeedBurner
April 8, 2012
Karma Builder: Today’s Karmic Workout – Sacrifice
Today’s Exercise: Sacrifice
[About The Graphic: a human shield is a form of sacrifice. There is, however, a big difference as to who is making the sacrifice and for whose benefit.]
[Preparatory Note: sacrifice is a word that everyone understands and yet nearly nobody does. In the Information Age, our culture has all but made sacrifice an archaic behavior. In the olden days, before the internet, individuals often identified themselves as something greater than a "me". Some took on the identity of their religion, some took on the identity of their nation. In those days, people who lived their lives for causes bigger than themselves where able to inspire collaborations that advanced the human condition in great strides. Conversely, self-concern was considered sinful or evil and those who lived selfishly were not likely to be held in esteem. Nowadays, we call people who only think about themselves "normal".
In modern times, we do not take responsibility for much of anything beyond our own personal needs and wants. We live in a myth that each person is responsible for his own survival and happiness even though this is technically impossible. We complain about government and taxes as if we were being personally persecuted even though we pay the least amount of tax of an citizenry in the industrial world. We expect sound roads and good schools, but we are not willing to pay for them. We expect a great job, but don't really like to work. Like spoiled children, we whine and moan about how hard our lives are especially when we cannot find the television remote.
What is a sacrifice? A sacrifice is a contribution that causes benefit for others at the expense of the contributor. It is a gift that is not made because the recipient deserves it, but rather comes into being only by the grace of the contributor. The word is derived from the Latin sacer, or "holy" and facere meaning "to make". For the purpose of this exercise, the sacrifice will be intentionally created for the benefit of others at the expense of the person making the sacrifice. In the broad sense, a sacrifice is an act of giving of ourselves to the point that it can hurt or even kill us, but with an outcome that spreads benefit. The fact of the matter is that the greatest benefits known to humanity cannot come into existence without individual sacrifice. In our times, this has become a lost art. The loss of this art is an artifact of the modern focus on selfishness. ]
Identify a person or cause in need. Find a person or an organization that is in trouble and needs help. This exercise works best if the person or organization does not know you.
Calculate what you think can afford to provide for this person or organization and prepare your contribution. Your sacrifice can be an object, money or providing a service.
Whatever you intended to sacrifice – double it. Double it even if it hurts to do so.
Make your sacrifice to the person or organization you intend to benefit. If you find yourself downsizing your sacrifice your are getting it wrong.
If you find yourself rationalizing with yourself, confront your selfishness. Make note of your reasons why you do not want to make the sacrifice. Then notice that most of the 7 billion people on the planet are perpetually having the same conversation with themselves as you are. Recognize the price that we as a species pay for that selfishness. Political turmoil, poverty, sickness, war, torture — these all arise from thoughts. It is only thought that restrains our generosity and leaves us living with the chaos all around us. Chaos and indifference are karmic cousins.
Training Note:
To cheat this exercise is to cheat yourself. It leaves in tact your tendency to accumulate way more than you need for yourself at the expense of a world that would run much more smoothly if you were more generous. We are a species literally choking on our delusions that we do not have enough, must have more and do not care who we have to hurt to get it. We are a species that will pollute the very air that we breath to have fifty pairs of shoes when we only have two feet. We live in a nation that is divided and the hostility between neighbors and regions is growing into petty hatred by the day. Our leaders fan the fire of greed by promising us more stuff when what we really need is more contribution.
Greed is unsustainable. Eventually, without fail, a system of excessive accumulation will snap. History shows us that when a few people dominate most of the wealth there will be war. When we do not educate everyone, we all suffer. There is no way to insulate ourselves from the ill-effects of social disparity. In physics, heat will always spread to cooler locations through the process of entropy. Water will always spread along the path of least resistance through the process of osmosis. Every building will eventually crumble to dust. Everything will die and give up its materials so that something new can come into existence. Mankind and all its technology cannot stop this. Nature will find balance if it has to crush you to create it and it will eventually crush you. We can keep dumping carbon into our atmosphere because physics has a solution for pollution. It will eventually heat up the planet to the point that the offending species is destroyed taking many innocent species with it. You can live in denial. You can think that you are immune. But if you are going to live that way, you should get busy dying before nature takes care of it for you.
Giving of ourselves is a way without being compelled by the force of nature, but rather by the force of our own grace is a way in which mankind can fill in the holes of inequity before nature inevitably levels the playing field. The karmic reality of this is that you can either ride the wave or be crushed by it.
Karmic Benefits:
Notice The Need Around You: you do not have too look to far to find people in trouble or causes that need allies. But you do have to open your eyes and look. Opportunity, assets and assistance do not get allocated evenly throughout our world without human assistance. Human awareness, however, can spot need and supply assistance nearly instantaneously, provided that there is a will to do so. The purpose of this exercise is not to do anything in particular. It is about confronting your own self-concern that stands in the way of you lending a hand naturally.
Fill The Need: the terrain of human existence is very uneven. There is need everywhere. Standing next to the sink hole of need is usually a perfectly capable person with a dozen excuses as to why he should not lend assistance. The human race is better at making excuses that it is solving problems because excuses take no effort.
Get Real About What You Really Need: when you look at how much you have and what you really need, the odds are that the assets and need are not equal in your life. The point of noticing our own excess is not necessarily to point ourselves toward austerity although a little austerity can be a good thing. It is to notice that what really prevents us from making sacrifices for the benefits of other is not a shortage of supply, but a shortage awareness and a shortage of will to make a difference. Hoarding your assets and abilities does not benefit you. A tool is of no use unless it is in use. A skill is not a skill unless it is exercised. Expanding your sphere of personal impact will make greater use of your assets and skills. Fulfillment cannot be found in having, but you get closer to it in doing and find it in being.
You Are Not Entitled To Survival: the great motivator of selfishness is the delusion that we are entitled to be rich, we are entitled to have more or that we are entitled to be alive in the first place. In an indifferent universe, you are not entitled to anything. You exist because you have found a way to collaborate with others to get what you need to survive. If left to our own devices, most of us would be dead in a matter of weeks. Sacrifice and contribution simply establishes the sphere of collaboration in a wider pattern including a greater number of beneficiaries who, because of your sacrifice are able to defy chaos and indifference and survive just like you. Great things happen when a person becomes a river unto her people and to her planet.
It May Be Fiction, But It Is One Heck Of A Karmic Workout.
Read The Lotus Blossom, D. M. Kenyon’s fictional account of a teenage girl who turns off her cellphone and enters the very real, but mystical world of Budo warriors. Humorous, irreverent and heart-wrenching, The Lotus Blossom is an unforgettable tale of a Midwestern teenage girl’s transformation into a budo warrior in the midst of the turmoil of the Information Age. Available in all digital formats, paperback and soon to be released in hardcover.
Available at : Amazon.com Smashwords.com Barnes & Noble
Share Your Experience:
Leave a comment when you have completed the exercise.
Enter your email address to subscribe to TLB’s Daily Karmic Workout:
Delivered by FeedBurner
Karma Builder: Today's Karmic Workout – Sacrifice
Today's Exercise: Sacrifice
[About The Graphic: a human shield is a form of sacrifice. There is a big difference as to who is making the sacrifice and for what benefit.]
[Preparatory Note: sacrifice is a word that everyone understands and yet nearly nobody does. In the Information Age, our culture has all but made sacrifice an archaic behavior. In the olden days, before the internet, individuals often identified themselves as something greater than a "me". Some took on the identity of their religion, some took on the identity of their nation. In those days, a person who lived their lives for causes bigger than themselves where able to cause collaborations that advanced the human condition great strides. Conversely, those who only thought about themselves were considered evil and were not likely to be held in esteem. Nowadays, we call people who only think about themselves "normal".
In modern times, we do not take responsibility for much of anything beyond our own personal needs and wants. We live in a myth that each person is responsible for his own survival and happiness even though this is technically impossible. We complain about government and taxes as if we were being personally persecuted even though we pay the least amount of tax of an citizenry in the industrial world. We expect sound roads and good schools, but we are not willing to pay for them. We expect a great job, but don't really like to work. Like spoiled children, we whine and moan about how hard our lives are especially when we cannot find the television remote.
What is a sacrifice? A sacrifice is a contribution that causes benefits others at the expense of the contributor. It is gift that is not made because the recipient deserves it, but rather comes into being only by the grace of the contributor. The word is derived from the Latin sacer, or "holy" and facere meaning "to make". For the purpose of this exercise, the sacrifice will be intentionally created for the benefit of others at the expense of the person making the sacrifice. In the broad sense, a sacrifice is an act of giving of ourselves to the point that it can hurt or even kill us, but with an outcome that spreads benefit. The fact of the matter is that the greatest benefits known to humanity cannot come into existence without individual sacrifice. In our times, this has become a lost art. The loss of this art is artifact of the modern focus on selfishness. ]
Identify a person or cause in need. Find a person or an organization that is in trouble and needs help. This exercise works best if the person or organization does not know you.
Calculate what you think can afford to provide for this person or organization and prepare your contribution. Your sacrifice can be an object, money or providing a service.
Whatever you intended to sacrifice – double it. Double it even if it hurts to do so.
Make your sacrifice to the person or organization you intend to benefit. If you find yourself downsizing your sacrifice your are getting it wrong.
If you find yourself rationalizing with yourself, confront your selfishness. Make note of your reasons why you do not want to make the sacrifice. Then notice that most of the 7 billion people on the planet are perpetually having the same conversation with themselves as you are. Recognize the price that we as a species pay for that selfishness. Political turmoil, poverty, sickness, war, torture — these all arise from thoughts. It is only thought that restrains our generosity and leaves us living with the chaos all around us. Chaos and indifference are karmic cousins.
Training Note:
To cheat this exercise is to cheat yourself. It leaves in tact your tendency to accumulate way more than you need for yourself at the expense of a world that would run much more smoothly if you were more generous. We are a species literally choking on our delusions that we do not have enough, must have more and do not care who we have to hurt to get it. We are a species that will pollute the very air that we breath to have fifty pairs of shoes when we only have two feet. We live in a nation that is divided and the hostility between neighbors and regions is growing into petty hatred by the day. Our leaders fan the fire of greed by promising us more stuff when what we really need is more contribution.
Greed is unsustainable. Eventually, without fail, a system of excessive accumulation will snap. History shows us that when a few people dominate most of the wealth there will be war. When we do not educate everyone, we all suffer. There is no way to insulate ourselves from disparity. In physics, heat will always spread to cooler locations through the process of entropy. Water will always spread along the path of least resistance through the process of osmosis. Every building will eventually crumble to dust. Everything will die and give up its materials so that something new can come into existence. Mankind and all its technology cannot stop this. Nature will find balance if it has to crush you to create it and it will eventually crush you. We can keep dumping carbon into our atmosphere because physics has a solution for pollution. It will eventually heat up the planet to the point that the offending species is destroyed taking many innocent species with it. You can live in denial. You can think that you are immune. But if you are going to live that way, you should get busy dying before nature takes care of it for you.
Giving of ourselves is a way without being compelled by the force of nature, but rather by the force of our own grace is a way in which mankind can fill in the holes of inequity before nature inevitably levels the playing field. The karmic reality of this is that you can either ride the wave or be crushed by it.
Karmic Benefits:
Notice The Need Around You: you do not have too look to far to find people in trouble or causes that need allies. But you do have to open your eyes and look. Opportunity, assets and assistance do not get allocated evenly throughout our world without human assistance. Human awareness, however, can spot need and supply assistance nearly instantaneously, provided that there is a will to do so. The purpose of this exercise is not to do anything in particular. It is about confronting your own self-concern that stands in the way of you lending a hand naturally.
Fill The Need: the terrain of human existence is very uneven. There is need everywhere. Standing next to the sink hole of need is usually a perfectly capable person with a dozen excuses as to why he should not lend assistance. The human race is better at making excuses that it is solving problems because excuses take no effort.
Get Real About What You Really Need: when you look at how much you have and what you really need, the odds are that the assets and need are not equal in your life. The point of noticing our own excess is not necessarily to point ourselves toward austerity although a little austerity can be a good thing. It is to notice that what really prevents us from making sacrifices for the benefits of other is not a shortage of supply, but a shortage awareness and a shortage of will to make a difference. Hoarding your assets and abilities does not benefit you. A tool is of no use unless it is in use. A skill is not a skill unless it is exercised. Expanding your sphere of personal impact will make greater use of your assets and skills. Fulfillment cannot be found in having, but you get closer to it in doing and find it in being.
You Are Not Entitled To Survival: the great motivator of selfishness is the delusion that we are entitled to be rich, we are entitled to have more or that we are entitled to be alive in the first place. In an indifferent universe, you are not entitled to anything. You exist because you have found a way to collaborate with others to get what you need to survive. If left to our own devices, most of us would be dead in a matter of weeks. Sacrifice and contribution simply establishes the sphere of collaboration in a wider pattern including a greater number of beneficiaries who, because of your sacrifice are able to defy chaos and indifference and survive just like you. Great things happen when a person becomes a river unto her people and to her planet.
It May Be Fiction, But It Is One Heck Of A Karmic Workout.
Read The Lotus Blossom, D. M. Kenyon's fictional account of a teenage girl who turns off her cellphone and enters the very real, but mystical world of Budo warriors. Humorous, irreverent and heart-wrenching, The Lotus Blossom is an unforgettable tale of a Midwestern teenage girl's transformation into a budo warrior in the midst of the turmoil of the Information Age. Available in all digital formats, paperback and soon to be released in hardcover.
Available at : Amazon.com Smashwords.com Barnes & Noble
Share Your Experience:
Leave a comment when you have completed the exercise.
Enter your email address to subscribe to TLB's Daily Karmic Workout:
Delivered by FeedBurner
April 6, 2012
Karma Builder: Today’s Karmic Workout – Wear The Fear Of Your Enemy
Today’s Exercise: Wear The Fear Of Your Enemy
[Preparatory Note: for this exercise you are going to have to dig deep. You will need to identify a person or group that you fundamentally dislike. It does not matter who they are, but they need to represent the "opposite" of who you know yourself to be. In this heated political season, finding an enemy will be the easy part of this workout. The hard part is going to be doing the exercise with at least some measure of objectivity.]
On a piece of paper write the name of the person or group that you oppose on a fundamental level.
Establish your meditative breathing with long inhales and equally long exhales for at least 2 minutes. Do not think about the enemy that you have written on the paper. If they come to mind, let them slip out of your mind like a floating cloud.
Without engaging your opinion of the enemy indicated on the paper, make a list of what this person or group is afraid of. Avoid being cynical about these fears. Try to identify what makes your enemy afraid as objectively as you can.
Without engaging in your opinion of the enemy indicated on the paper, make a list of what makes this person or group sad. Avoid being cynical. Try to envision them being sad.
Clear you mind and breathe for at least a full minute.
In you mind step into the fear and sadness of your enemy taking on the point of view that causes this fear and sadness. Try to visualize a scene that they see in their mind(s) that scares them and makes them sad. Continually, bring your mind to this fear and sadness for at least 2 minutes.
Clear you mind and breathe for at least 2 minutes letting go of the fear and sadness that you have assumed.
Training Note:
We fight because we are afraid. We take positions to avoid sadness. The more fear and sadness we feel, the more rigorous we are in our cause. When we look at the immense amount of turmoil and struggle going on in our world as factions fight each other politically and sometimes physically, we do not see the motives of our enemies. We only see threat to our own values and opinions. This narrow point of view only serves to make conflict more entrenched because if all you see is threat, then all there is to do is fight.
Behind every political position and every opinion is a basic human desire for some sort of peaceful existence that is believed to be under threat. Take the abortion debate. Advocates of legalized abortion are not generally for abortion, they support the right to maintain the human body beyond government intervention. In every other area outside of the abortion controversy, most people would agree that the individual should be free to maintain their body as their own. Likewise, those who oppose abortion are not in favor of government intrusion into the individual’s maintenance of her body, they are against ending human life. We are all opposed to ending human life unnaturally. Sometimes we find ourselves in battles over principles that seem to be miles apart, but are actually separated only by a hair’s breadth. Politicians frequently pump up the rhetoric to their advantage and turn these controversies into wars. But when we reduce conflict to a fundamental human level what do we see? We see the torture of a rape victim being forced to give birth to the product of rape. We see a life that is cut off without seeing the light of day. We see fear. We see sadness. We see a hopeless conundrum. Better to see tragedy with no apparent solution and know the sadness and fear that arises on either side of the conflict than to hate and wage war against someone who is simply afraid and sad. When we engage social conflict on a human level, we become aware that even if one side wins the conflict, there will be no victory in it in the long run.
When two sides are pitted against each other, we can have struggle and hate or we can stop trying to find a solution at the expense of the other and look for an unforeseen possibility through innovation and thinking outside the battle lines. Peace is a creative process and often takes ingenuity. But it begins by knowing and embracing the fear of your enemy.
Karmic Benefits:
You Are More Like Your Enemy Than You Think: when two forces resist each other, it is remarkable how similar they look to a disinterested third party. Take the conflicts that arise regularly between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. Western Christians are often baffled by the hatred between these two groups when their theology is so similar. In Northern Ireland when Protestants and Catholics were killing each other, Hindus looked on in confusion. Don’t they source their spiritual beliefs from the same book? Obviously, it is not that simple, but in some ways it is. At a fundamental level, all human beings want essentially the same things. They fear the same things. They are saddened by the same things.
Stop Looking At The Fist And Search For The Heart Behind It : when we are in conflict we do not see the heart of our enemy. We see only her fist. Because this is a threat to us, we remove the mental obstacles that might weaken our resistance to the threat. We do this by dehumanizing our enemies and by demonizing them all the while staring at the fist in our face and not seeing the heart behind it. This is a fundamental human instinct, but it blinds us to a more profound reality. The solution is to look past the fist and see the fear that has caused our enemy to make the fist in the first place.
We All Share Fear And Sadness : human beings are naturally tolerant when they are not threatened. It is only when we perceive threat that we start making distinctions between “us” and “them”. This is a mental form of pushing away. We do this to preserve our identity or our beliefs that evoke our sense of righteousness. And yet, for all our posturing, what is driving both sides in a conflict is usually the fear of loss or the sadness over having already lost something of value. At the end of the day, both sides in a conflict are usually nearly identical in their most basic mental states.
It May Be Fiction, But It Is One Heck Of A Karmic Workout.
Read The Lotus Blossom, D. M. Kenyon’s fictional account of a teenage girl who turns off her cellphone and enters the very real, but mystical world of Budo warriors. Humorous, irreverent and heart-wrenching, The Lotus Blossom is an unforgettable tale of a Midwestern teenage girl’s transformation into a budo warrior in the midst of the turmoil of the Information Age. Available in all digital formats, paperback and soon to be released in hardcover.
Available at : Amazon.com Smashwords.com Barnes & Noble
Share Your Experience:
Leave a comment when you have completed the exercise.
Enter your email address to subscribe to TLB’s Daily Karmic Workout:
Delivered by FeedBurner
Karma Builder: Today's Karmic Workout – Wear The Fear Of Your Enemy
Today's Exercise: Wear The Fear Of Your Enemy
[Preparatory Note: for this exercise you are going to have to dig deep. You will need to identify a person or group that you fundamentally dislike. It does not matter who they are, but they need to represent the "opposite" of who you know yourself to be. In this heated political season, finding an enemy will be the easy part of this workout. The hard part is going to be doing the exercise with at least some measure of objectivity.]
On a piece of paper write the name of the person or group that you oppose on a fundamental level.
Establish your meditative breathing with long inhales and equally long exhales for at least 2 minutes. Do not think about the enemy that you have written on the paper. If they come to mind, let them slip out of your mind like a floating cloud.
Without engaging your opinion of the enemy indicated on the paper, make a list of what this person or group is afraid of. Avoid being cynical about these fears. Try to identify what makes your enemy afraid as objectively as you can.
Without engaging in your opinion of the enemy indicated on the paper, make a list of what makes this person or group sad. Avoid being cynical. Try to envision them being sad.
Clear you mind and breathe for at least a full minute.
In you mind step into the fear and sadness of your enemy taking on the point of view that causes this fear and sadness. Try to visualize a scene that they see in their mind(s) that scares them and makes them sad. Continually, bring your mind to this fear and sadness for at least 2 minutes.
Clear you mind and breathe for at least 2 minutes letting go of the fear and sadness that you have assumed.
Training Note:
We fight because we are afraid. We take positions to avoid sadness. The more fear and sadness we feel, the more rigorous we are in our cause. When we look at the immense amount of turmoil and struggle going on in our world as factions fight each other politically and sometimes physically, we do not see the motives of our enemies. We only see threat to our own values and opinions. This narrow point of view only serves to make conflict more entrenched because if all you see is threat, then all there is to do is fight.
Behind every political position and every opinion is a basic human desire for some sort of peaceful existence that is believed to be under threat. Take the abortion debate. Advocates of legalized abortion are not generally for abortion, they support the right to maintain the human body beyond government intervention. In every other area outside of the abortion controversy, most people would agree that the individual should be free to maintain their body as their own. Likewise, those who oppose abortion are not in favor of government intrusion into the individual's maintenance of her body, they are against ending human life. We are all opposed to ending human life unnaturally. Sometimes we find ourselves in battles over principles that seem to be miles apart, but are actually separated only by a hair's breadth. Politicians frequently pump up the rhetoric to their advantage and turn these controversies into wars. But when we reduce conflict to a fundamental human level what do we see? We see the torture of a rape victim being forced to give birth to the product of rape. We see a life that is cut off without seeing the light of day. We see fear. We see sadness. We see a hopeless conundrum. Better to see tragedy with no apparent solution and know the sadness and fear that arises on either side of the conflict than to hate and wage war against someone who is simply afraid and sad. When we engage social conflict on a human level, we become aware that even if one side wins the conflict, there will be no victory in it in the long run.
When two sides are pitted against each other, we can have struggle and hate or we can stop trying to find a solution at the expense of the other and look for an unforeseen possibility through innovation and thinking outside the battle lines. Peace is a creative process and often takes ingenuity. But it begins by knowing and embracing the fear of your enemy.
Karmic Benefits:
You Are More Like Your Enemy Than You Think: when two forces resist each other, it is remarkable how similar they look to a disinterested third party. Take the conflicts that arise regularly between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. Western Christians are often baffled by the hatred between these two groups when their theology is so similar. In Northern Ireland when Protestants and Catholics were killing each other, Hindus looked on in confusion. Don't they source their spiritual beliefs from the same book? Obviously, it is not that simple, but in some ways it is. At a fundamental level, all human beings want essentially the same things. They fear the same things. They are saddened by the same things.
Stop Looking At The Fist And Search For The Heart Behind It : when we are in conflict we do not see the heart of our enemy. We see only her fist. Because this is a threat to us, we remove the mental obstacles that might weaken our resistance to the threat. We do this by dehumanizing our enemies and by demonizing them all the while staring at the fist in our face and not seeing the heart behind it. This is a fundamental human instinct, but it blinds us to a more profound reality. The solution is to look past the fist and see the fear that has caused our enemy to make the fist in the first place.
We All Share Fear And Sadness : human beings are naturally tolerant when they are not threatened. It is only when we perceive threat that we start making distinctions between "us" and "them". This is a mental form of pushing away. We do this to preserve our identity or our beliefs that evoke our sense of righteousness. And yet, for all our posturing, what is driving both sides in a conflict is usually the fear of loss or the sadness over having already lost something of value. At the end of the day, both sides in a conflict are usually nearly identical in their most basic mental states.
It May Be Fiction, But It Is One Heck Of A Karmic Workout.
Read The Lotus Blossom, D. M. Kenyon's fictional account of a teenage girl who turns off her cellphone and enters the very real, but mystical world of Budo warriors. Humorous, irreverent and heart-wrenching, The Lotus Blossom is an unforgettable tale of a Midwestern teenage girl's transformation into a budo warrior in the midst of the turmoil of the Information Age. Available in all digital formats, paperback and soon to be released in hardcover.
Available at : Amazon.com Smashwords.com Barnes & Noble
Share Your Experience:
Leave a comment when you have completed the exercise.
Enter your email address to subscribe to TLB's Daily Karmic Workout:
Delivered by FeedBurner
April 5, 2012
Karma Builder: Today’s Karmic Workout – Break Bread
Today’s Exercise: Break Bread
[Preparatory Note: for this exercise you are going to need a food item that you can offer and share with another. You want to make sure that this is an item that will fit within the dietary restrictions of those with whom you you intend to share it. You can use cakes or pies, though people on restrictive diets may not be able to accept your offer. On the other hand, even something as modest as cookies and cupcakes might do the trick. It is absolutely important to success of this exercise that you do not use pre-divided portions. In other words, the exercise depends on dividing a piece of food in front of your friend and visibly making the gesture of sharing the very same piece.
To add an element of thoughtfulness, you might use a highly nutritional food like a dense whole-grain bread or something similar. The point is that you want to use a food item that is likely to be accepted and reflects the intention of creating fellowship that you are going to convey. Be creative. Homemade items are perfect for this exercise.
Breaking bread is a legendary gesture of fellowship. In the ancient times before fast-food, sharing bread was an act of generosity in that food resources were often precious. Breaking bread, however, goes beyond asset sharing. It was a gesture of inclusion in that a person was not being invited to share in just any food, she was being invited to share "my food". Bread breaking has come to symbolize sharing of life itself and should be viewed this way during this exercise. The act of breaking bread should be intimate deeply personal.]
Prepare your chosen food item and invite one or more people to share it with you.
Before you divide the food item take a moment to acknowledge your friends tell them that you are inviting them into your heart. Convey to them that it is your intention to eat the food item together as gesture of friendship. It is important to make your statements authentically and in a way that makes it perfectly clear that it is heart-felt, but you do not need to give a sermon.
Break or divide the food item in front of those with whom you are sharing it and make sure that it is understood that you are sharing the exact same item. It is the intimacy of this sameness that makes the difference.
Spend at least a few minutes together chatting, or even better, talking about intentional communion.
Thank your guests for joining you when you are done.
Training Note:
What used to be a universally understood gesture of fellowship may cause some eye-rolling and suspicion these days, but only because we are not used to communion. We are used to disunion. But when your friends understand that you are sincere, they usually are touched with a spark of awareness that you have just created an intimate bond. It is hard to imagine in these times that intimate bonds can be made by something as simple as break of bread, but this is very old news, although perhaps not to your friends. If you can create relationship with a simple loaf of bread, consider what you can do if you expand your intention to a whole meal. There is not a reason in the world why you cannot break bread with hundreds of people and create a real social network that puts digital social media to shame. Digital socialization does not leave crumbs and that is one of the many deficiencies of it.
Karmic Benefits:
Sharing Something Ordinary Can Be Extraordinary: it is not the gift that expresses generosity and communion – it is the intention. A very large part of intention gets expressed in body language and presence. Emails and texts do not express being nearly as effectively as the broadband communication of eye contact. In these times wherein we usually avoid thinking about people except to pigeonhole them into an stereotype, real connection can be almost shocking. It is, at the very least, noteworthy. This is a good thing because it rouses awareness and opens the flow of relatedness and being. A little bread and cheese can go a very long way depending on your intention.
The Lost Art Of Communion: in the olden days, you could not afford to leave relationships to chance. You had to make strong bonds to survive. While we might be able to survive hiding in the cupboard under the stairs these days, there really is no life happening when we do. Texting and posting are useful for hurling information at someone, but most of this type of communication does not cause communion. It is more often than not an informational exchange with the intimacy of spam. Real community does not occur in communication alone. It happens when we share an existence. A great way to enter into a shared existence is to break bread or share a cookie face to face.
Your Relationships Are Only As Strong As Your Intentions: most us form relationships by accident. We meet someone; we find them interesting; we hang out. It never occurs to us that we can actually shape our relationships with our intentions. It is amazing what turns up when you start actually causing relationships. Intentional relationships start by getting past your opinions of people and begin behaving in such a way that expresses the being that you say should be present. People are not things. They are events. Maybe we should start treating them that way.
It May Be Fiction, But It Is One Heck Of A Karmic Workout.
Read The Lotus Blossom, D. M. Kenyon’s fictional account of a teenage girl who turns off her cellphone and enters the very real, but mystical world of Budo warriors. Humorous, irreverent and heart-wrenching, The Lotus Blossom is an unforgettable tale of a Midwestern teenage girl’s transformation into a budo warrior in the midst of the turmoil of the Information Age. Available in all digital formats, paperback and soon to be released in hardcover.
Available at : Amazon.com Smashwords.com Barnes & Noble
Share Your Experience:
Leave a comment when you have completed the exercise.
Enter your email address to subscribe to TLB’s Daily Karmic Workout:
Delivered by FeedBurner
Karma Builder: Today's Karmic Workout – Break Bread
Today's Exercise: Break Bread
[Preparatory Note: for this exercise you are going to need a food item that you can offer and share with another. You want to make sure that this is an item that will fit within the dietary restrictions of those with whom you you intend to share it. You can use cakes or pies, though people on restrictive diets may not be able to accept your offer. On the other hand, even something as modest as cookies and cupcakes might do the trick. It is absolutely important to success of this exercise that you do not use pre-divided portions. In other words, the exercise depends on dividing a piece of food in front of your friend and visibly making the gesture of sharing the very same piece.
To add an element of thoughtfulness, you might use a highly nutritional food like a dense whole-grain bread or something similar. The point is that you want to use a food item that is likely to be accepted and reflects the intention of creating fellowship that you are going to convey. Be creative. Homemade items are perfect for this exercise.
Breaking bread is a legendary gesture of fellowship. In the ancient times before fast-food, sharing bread was an act of generosity in that food resources were often precious. Breaking bread, however, goes beyond asset sharing. It was a gesture of inclusion in that a person was not being invited to share in just any food, she was being invited to share "my food". Bread breaking has come to symbolize sharing of life itself and should be viewed this way during this exercise. The act of breaking bread should be intimate deeply personal.]
Prepare your chosen food item and invite one or more people to share it with you.
Before you divide the food item take a moment to acknowledge your friends tell them that you are inviting them into your heart. Convey to them that it is your intention to eat the food item together as gesture of friendship. It is important to make your statements authentically and in a way that makes it perfectly clear that it is heart-felt, but you do not need to give a sermon.
Break or divide the food item in front of those with whom you are sharing it and make sure that it is understood that you are sharing the exact same item. It is the intimacy of this sameness that makes the difference.
Spend at least a few minutes together chatting, or even better, talking about intentional communion.
Thank your guests for joining you when you are done.
Training Note:
What used to be a universally understood gesture of fellowship may cause some eye-rolling and suspicion these days, but only because we are not used to communion. We are used to disunion. But when your friends understand that you are sincere, they usually are touched with a spark of awareness that you have just created an intimate bond. It is hard to imagine in these times that intimate bonds can be made by something as simple as break of bread, but this is very old news, although perhaps not to your friends. If you can create relationship with a simple loaf of bread, consider what you can do if you expand your intention to a whole meal. There is not a reason in the world why you cannot break bread with hundreds of people and create a real social network that puts digital social media to shame. Digital socialization does not leave crumbs and that is one of the many deficiencies of it.
Karmic Benefits:
Sharing Something Ordinary Can Be Extraordinary: it is not the gift that expresses generosity and communion – it is the intention. A very large part of intention gets expressed in body language and presence. Emails and texts do not express being nearly as effectively as the broadband communication of eye contact. In these times wherein we usually avoid thinking about people except to pigeonhole them into an stereotype, real connection can be almost shocking. It is, at the very least, noteworthy. This is a good thing because it rouses awareness and opens the flow of relatedness and being. A little bread and cheese can go a very long way depending on your intention.
The Lost Art Of Communion: in the olden days, you could not afford to leave relationships to chance. You had to make strong bonds to survive. While we might be able to survive hiding in the cupboard under the stairs these days, there really is no life happening when we do. Texting and posting are useful for hurling information at someone, but most of this type of communication does not cause communion. It is more often than not an informational exchange with the intimacy of spam. Real community does not occur in communication alone. It happens when we share an existence. A great way to enter into a shared existence is to break bread or share a cookie face to face.
Your Relationships Are Only As Strong As Your Intentions: most us form relationships by accident. We meet someone; we find them interesting; we hang out. It never occurs to us that we can actually shape our relationships with our intentions. It is amazing what turns up when you start actually causing relationships. Intentional relationships start by getting past your opinions of people and begin behaving in such a way that expresses the being that you say should be present. People are not things. They are events. Maybe we should start treating them that way.
It May Be Fiction, But It Is One Heck Of A Karmic Workout.
Read The Lotus Blossom, D. M. Kenyon's fictional account of a teenage girl who turns off her cellphone and enters the very real, but mystical world of Budo warriors. Humorous, irreverent and heart-wrenching, The Lotus Blossom is an unforgettable tale of a Midwestern teenage girl's transformation into a budo warrior in the midst of the turmoil of the Information Age. Available in all digital formats, paperback and soon to be released in hardcover.
Available at : Amazon.com Smashwords.com Barnes & Noble
Share Your Experience:
Leave a comment when you have completed the exercise.
Enter your email address to subscribe to TLB's Daily Karmic Workout:
Delivered by FeedBurner
