Tribes by Seth Godin

The book itself is full of repetivite “filler” – an excellent showcase of how to turn an idea worth a few pages into a book, well done Seth.

The main points are valid albeit scattered across the pages:

• People are hard wired to want to belong, just waiting for you to lead them as a tribe.
• Reliability, size of company and time in the market are no longer the main selling points, in fact, it may become a liability. People want new innovative ideas, fresh faces and change.

The main steps and principles are mercifully listed on a single page spread (88-89) and are as follows.

5 steps:

1. Publish a manifesto. Give it away, make it easy to spread. It’s a mantra and a motto and way of looking at the world.
2. Make it easy for your followers to connect with you.
3. Make it easy for your followers to connect with one another.
4. Money is not the point of movement.
5. Track your progress. Do it publicly and make it easy for your followers to contribute to it.

The Art of Relationship – Emotional & Physical Sexuality

Doing another great free online course from HMI. Applying the model taught to my relationships has lead to a number of startling illuminations about myself which I have documented here along with course notes. See part 1 below and follow the link above or YouTube to watch part 2.

HMI is an amazing online education resource through which I studied hypnosis for free by remote education a couple of years ago and I highly recommend them. This particular course is about recognizing the two primary subconscious behavior patterns humans share and how they manifest in relationships. It describes how to recognize which of the two types (emotional/E or physical/P) me or someone else is and how to predict and subsequently shape other’s behavior. It also addresses the patterns of relationships we tend to fall into as well as the universal pattern of “opposites attract”.

Core traits that determine whether someone is an emotional or a physical:

1. Which type was their father. Unlike the traditional psychology model that daughters tend to grow up to marry their “fathers” and sons their “mothers”, the e&p model suggests that children of both sexes tend to grow up with the same pattern as their father and opposite of their mother unless some external circumstances interfere at the cryptical development stage between 0 – 14 years old. It certainly seems very true in my family.
2. How they take rejection. Physical tends to come forward when rejected, try harder. Emotional tends to withdraw, and in fact frequently subconsciously starts withdrawing much earlier that any noticeable changes happen in the relationship, often causing the physical to try harder and harder until they give up and end it. So even if it looks like the physical ends the relationship, in fact it was the emotional’s early withdrawal and rejection that lead to it – they frequently stop feeling first. Emotionals also dislike confrontation and are incredibly susceptible to feelings of guilt (while physicals are almost impervious to it), both of which contribute to the withdrawal pattern forcing the other partner to make the necessary decision to end the relationship.
3. Their relationship with their body. Physicals fully inhabit their body, immediately feel emotions in their body and tend to be very physical, touchy, forward in communication. Emotionals have a certain disconnect from their bodies, often need time to figure out how their feel about something or someone, need a certain amount of physical space around them and feel uncomfortable when it is being invaded by someone new.
4. The last tell tale sign is their relationship pattern. If you tend to attract mostly emotionals, it would suggest that you are a physical. It might not be necessarily in terms of numbers, but most certainly in terms of intensity of relationship. For example, a physical might be very hurt in a relationship with emotional which makes him shut down and seek to recover by having relationships with other physicals for a while (which tend to turn platonic) until they are brave enough to attempt another relationship with an emotional which will have more intensity and subconscious appeal for them.

Verdict: I have Emotional written all over me with a capital E.

How do life priorities of the two differ?

Emotional                                                  Physical
1. Career/$ security                         Relationship/sex
2. Hobbies *                                          Family/kids
3. Relationship/family                     Hobbies
4. Sex                                                       Career/$ security

* for some emotionals kids or friends might be their hobbies

For emotional relationship and sex are two separate areas which is the byproduct of their disconnect from their bodies. For the physical however, the physicalness of sex is how they give and receive love so for them it is one and the same.

At first glance I was going to protest that “no way!”, for me the relationship is the most important thing. But a closer examination and retrospection revealed some startling thruths. First of all, the reason the relationship is usually the most important area for me is that my career and $ security are both where I want them to be, no stress in that area. Secondly, I am guilty of frequently making the relationship my hobby. And thirdly, which was the hardest to spot and admit, the one time in my life when career and $ security where threatened, I turned to using relationships to improve that area! Plus just the other day I have commented to a friend, that my business always comes first, then me, then if there is time and effort left over, others. I am just lucky/smart enough to have minimized the things that need to be done in my business as well my own personal needs so there is in fact time left over for others.

All these realizations call for a long thoughtful pause, accompanied by a “Hmmmmmmmm…”

Emotional really don’t know what they feel, that is why they get with the physical for – to tell them what they feel.

Emotionals cycle up and down. For example, even love for their mate comes and goes for them in a cycle, while for the physical it’s always there. It can be a 3,5 7 day cycle. Under stress each cycle can extend for weeks or even months.

When you get together with your opposite not only the intensity is higher but also the vulnerability and potential for greater depths of intimacy.

In the beginning of relationship, the honeymoon stage, what happens is emotional notices the physical and comes forward, pursues them. But only on their most physical day (for example every third day if they are on a 3 day cycle). Since the physical is not getting rejected, they do NOT come forward, but allow themselves to be pursued and perceive the emotional in their most physical expression. As the relationship evolves and they spend more time together, the physical starts encountering the emotional on their least physical/most emotional day and discovers almost an entirely different person – one that is totally focused on their career and hobbies, puts their partner at number 3/4 on priorities list, etc. Then physical feels rejected and starts to come forward and pursue. Inevitably they pursue and attempt sex on the emotional’s OFF days and for the emotional the experience will feel worse than in the beginning when they were engaging on their ON days. So the emotional then starts wondering: what changed? Is it me or them? And they go and find another person to engage with to find the answer to that question (sexually or just verbally), inevitably on their ON days, and get the false confirmation that they have not changed, so it must be their partner that changed. Physical, on the other hand, will get angry and hurt and if choosing to cheat will do so with another angry hurt physical. They will get together and have angry hurt sex, which is ultimately not satisfying.

The solution, through becoming aware of the differences and the emotional’s cycling dynamic, is for the physical to firstly chart the emotional’s cycle. Then to hold back and allow emotional to come after them on their ON days. And it might not be very forward at all, it might just be subtle signs that they are more receptive, more in their physical that day. The result would be that the encounter would be more satisfactory for the emotional and thus the cycle will begin to shorten as he/she subconsciously seeks to repeat it more often. Secretly, what the emotional wants is to learn to be more like the physical, and the only way the physical can do that for them is not by smothering them, but by being aware of their cycles and holding back to allow the emotional to step into and exercise their own subdominant physical trait.

Concept of giving a Twinkie: how can each type give the other something to immediately satisfy their needs. Emotional can give the physical: hugs, a card, some flowers, tell them they love them. Physical can give emotional: space to focus on career or hobbies, become a help in career (without taking over or domineering)

Difference between dominance and control. As far as physical is concerned, it is their house and the emotional lives there with them. They seek to dominate. Emotionals don’t seek to dominate.

Tips for physicals to keep the honeymoon stage alive forever:

• Stop giving too much. Only give as much as you get.
• Have a life outside of the relationship, keep yourself hot and in demand. Emotional does not know how they feel about you so they rely on external cues.
• Subtly reject them, keep them guessing, don’t disclose all your plans. It is not about compromising the trust, it is about keeping the spark and a small possibility to keep the mind of emotional turning. Just a tiniest sliver of guessing, insecurity in their brain. For them it is exciting.
• For the emotional it all happens in the brain.
• Chart the emotional’s cycle, this will help you have patience to hold off your affections and wait for them to pursue you and your affections when you know their ON day is coming in a couple of days. Make them work for it.
• When emotionals are not in their ON days, give them space, have enough interests and life outside of relationship to occupy yourself in the meantime.
• Emotionals want to exercise their physicalness so give them space and motivation to pursue you. If at all possible, let them come to you.
• Pretend to be an emotional and see if that won’t trigger their physicalness!

Endlessly creative

Cheated today, left my “morning” pages till the very evening. But it’s ok, I have a good excuse, which I am not going to disclose here. But it was definitely worth it. At least I am writing, I was deliberating for a long time whether to take a “well deserved” break for a day.

I am really outdoing myself on the cooking front. Raw cooking for a year was a fun adventure, but now expanding to “normal” cooking also – my God the possibilities are endless. I have made 5 types of pizzas yesterday with varieties like mushroom/pesto/goat’s cheese or goat’s cheese/artichoke hearts/sun-dried tomatoes or tomato/basil/olive/mozzarella - oh my, it was a treat! I will be a healthy gourmet home cook before long. I was called “endlessly creative” then – my ego was beside itself with glee.

I am continuously being blown away by the Book of Secrets. The only reason I have not created a separate Quotes post to jot down pearl of wisdom from that book is because every single paragraph is so dense with meaning that I would probably end up transcribing the book verbatim, like it happened last year while reading Krishnamurti’s Mirror of Relationship. And at 1000+ pages long that would be a lot of quoting/transcribing. So it is easier to just supply a link to the actual manuscript, kindly provided by my friend who has urged me to read the book and is currently reading, quoting and providing his own commentary on it here.

Yesterday I have read the first few breath meditations and the ones about sex (read or listen to 48, 49, 50 here)  The breath awareness was never my forte so no major illuminations there (and no wonder most mainstream meditation methods have never worked for me). But the methods around the sexual act have given me a number of affirmations of my own personal experiences and even an answer to the question “Is there even anything beyond this level?” that I have asked myself just the other day, having reached what many sex theories dub the pinnacle of orgasmic experience. Needless to say, excited and elated, and happy to explore further.

I can hear the horse drawn carriage pass by outside the window – quite surreal. It is lovely staying so close to the historical centre, the carriages that are aplenty there make their way past the apartment a few times a day – an instant through back a couple of centuries in the past, I can have a whole imagination journey if I close my eyes… and no cars drive by at the same time!

Really, between writing Morning Pages, cooking and studying German, with each activity seeming to take at least a few hours to accomplish, I have very little time to do anything else during the day. That speeding up of time has got me again! No matter how much awareness I bring to the present moment, it flies by way too quickly to accomplish anything else so I am limiting my activities to jus these essentials and squeezing a few pages of the Book before bedtime.

Should I utter the magic words now, after which inevitably some theme worthy of writing springs to mind: I don’t know what to write! And I have 1 more page to go…

Hmm, it didn’t work… still have nothing to say.

Horray! I have used another suggestion of my aforementioned friend and have found and inserted an image related to my post for my dear readers’ subtle visual break from all the text. Now, this is going to sound terribly uncool but – the heart shaped pizza image is sooooo cute!

Oh my God! The worst disaster of all has just struck! I have run out of nail polish remover with one hand full of chipped nail polish still to go, and worse yet, on the eve of Sunday, the day when the shops across the whole Vienna are shut (for that alone, I can’t believe how it managed to consistently make it it into the top of the most liveable cities on Earth). Wow, I just read the list myself for the first time – what is Adelaide doing on it anyway?? I guess I will have to visit to find out, but I have never heard anyone say a single good thing about it, but heard a few “it’s boring” type comments. And it looks like I will have to make a point of properly visiting Canada sometimes soon to be able to say with absolute certainty: “I have visited the top 10 most liveable cities in the world and I find that… Vanuatu is still better” :-p

Awareness

Awareness shifts happening everywhere – the Book of Secrets is amazing, my personal Bible! Not only the things I have so far read and practised brought me the results promised, but there are observable changes happening everywhere else across all daily activities. Noticing habitual patterns and easily breaking free from them simply through awareness. Everything that I read, either in the normal course of the book or by picking methods that sound good and reading just them, everything seems to be addressing and shifting the precise issues I am working on at this present time (or have been working on for a while):

• trying to developer a habit to chew, eat slowly, be present to the taste of every bite – all of it happened completely automatically at the last meal with no effort whatsoever and was a completely different eating experience, awareness was there as if by its own accord.
• unconscious eating and overeating – gone. Perhaps only for the day, but maybe not, we’ll see.
• dissipating energy throughout the day in a myriad of unnecessary compulsive actions – solved by the STOP method. Whenever I have an impulse to do something – simply STOP – completely freeze, even stop breathing. An impulse is the energy wanting to move out and if you stop, but the energy is still moving, it will not go out but will go back in. Practice with any impulse – to sneeze, to drink, to sleep. I have had some amazing results using it with drowsiness – as soon as I feel drowsy – STOP – and I can feel the energy moving inwards and revitalising me – drowsiness gone! Its incredible.
• habit of having chocolate with my tea – worse yet, while I read. Sounds harmless enough but I was able to see for the first time how totally unconscious it was! What is the purpose, I can not taste anything anyway while I am reading or doing something else. If I want to drink tea – pour a cup, put the book down, enjoy the taste and have a contemplative break. And if I want some chocolate – get a piece and enjoy the taste fully, don’t even contemplate while at it, just be present with the taste. So simple but what a completely different experience once the awareness was brought to it. I can’t wait to discover what other silly habits I can deconstruct now.
• attempting to drink 2 litres of water every day – putting my unconscious to work – simply placing a bottle of water within easy reach and voila - unconscious reaches out and has some every half an hour or so.

I am close to giving up this morning. Really, really nothing comes to mind to write about. It feels like torture.

I will summarize here the results of my emotional saga of the past month and a half titled “To Vanuatu or Not to Vanuatu”. Its last culmination happened a few weeks ago in Italy with the Result of NOT following my feelings and it has since subsided entirely. I have written and talked about it to anyone and everyone who’d listen and, as if by magic, while typing up my internal emotional state yet again in yet another email, it finally dawned on me what the lesson in all this conundrum was – I need to let go of what little planning I still was attempting to do in my mind and leave utterly and completely in the present moment. Ever since that realization happened all my emotional ups and downs completely subsided and its a simple matter of asking myself each day (lol sounds like a program code, might as well write it that way for fun):

If (Am I still happy here? = yes)
Then
stay another day
Else
book ticket and leave

Also following my friend’s advice to connect with what Vanuatu means for me and bring it into my present experience has finally taken root. So all I am doing all day is doing a bit of work and online stuff, writing, reading, learning things, walking around and enjoying nature, cooking and eating. Simple really.

I also wanted to dive deeper into my chocolate making obsession. I have attempted to do it here but alas Viennese shops don’t stock vanilla extract (only vanilla sugar in multiple varieties everywhere!) and forget about trying to find raw chocolate. So the result was most definitely sub par so I gave up and started buying the bar again. But yesterday I finally tackled austrian ebay and with the help of trusty google translate manage to find myself my superfood ingredients and vanilla. Impatiently waiting for it all to arrive so I can create my chocolate goodness again – yeepee!

Experimental life

Yesterday not only have I managed the 3 obligatory morning pages by delaying feeding myself, but since it was close to 6pm as I was wrapping up with all my “morning” online activities (work, pages, language learning) I decided to skip food for the day all together. While intermittent 1 day fasts were easy enough to do last year in Melbourne while I was barely present home and always running around doing stuff (what stuff I don’t even recall myself now), sitting at home in Vienna makes it more difficult. Even right now, 24 hours on, I don’t feel hunger as such, but the psychological addiction to food is too pervasive. And probably not so much the addiction to food, as the lack of a strong motivation to not eat. 1 day fast is a good practice to give the body a break, 1 week or more is a good detox and overall organism revitaliser, but 2-3 days only don’t seem to carry that much health value so I am bound to make my way into the kitchen eventually and eat something.

I just realized what all this “I don’t know what to write” constant thought is – a writer’s block! I must be a writer then, heh?

I have contemplated a number of times of picking a particular topic to write about which should make it easier to come up with words, inspire some opinion. But the Morning Pages instructions are to write whatever is on my mind, and I still have not figured out why it is so hard to do. I mean I have somewhat of an idea – it is because it is published and readable by others so it prevents me to truly ramble on 3 pages of totally incoherent unfinished sentences which seem to reflect my internal thought reality. But somehow contemplating writing private Morning Pages does not give me a good feeling, but maybe I should try just as an experiment.

I seem to be doing lots of experiments lately, in fact, the whole life is an experiment. If you can’t really take for granted anything anyone says, experimenting is really the only way to go. Do something and see how it makes me feel and what result it produces. Forbidding myself food until the 3 pages are written seems draconian and rather brute, yet it works with multiple positive side benefits. Another wacky experiment I have done yesterday was from Osho’s Book of Secrets that I am currently devouring: a test to see if you have a strong imagination or if it has been destroyed by all the learning. I knew I had one powerful imagination, I manifest most things I choose to, and those that I haven’t yet manifested in my physical reality I indulge in quite frequently and with abandon during my numerous lucid day dreams. But I also acquired a lot of learning. So I approached the experiment proposed by Osho with some trepidation – I did not want to have my imagination self esteem damaged in case I “failed” it. All that was required to do is to lock my hands together and for 5 minutes pretend in my imagination that they are stuck together and can not be unstuck. Which I did, vividly imagining that the hands locked at the fingers have grown a single layer of skin and are in fact one limb now coming out of both shoulder joined in the middle. I even imagined how I would go about my day and do various activities if I had just one limb like that. 10 minutes on (I cheated just to make sure I give my possibly weakened by all the learning imagination the time to work) – lo and behold – I could not pull my fingers apart. Just like experiment suggested, I tried harder and harder and exerted some will yet to no avail, even the singularly joined at the tips thumbs would not come apart. So it was not until I really wanted to turn off the alarm clock going off beside me for some time now, I have used Osho’s advice for those who find themselves suddenly with stuck hands, to use the power of imagination to imagine them unstuck. As imagined the hands come apart forming a miraculous 2 limbs with even more astonishing 10 limb fingers at the end (quite a sudden upgrade from a single limb with a joint at the end) I could then pull them apart with glee.

Having proved the formidable power of my imagination with the above experiment, I could then dedicate myself fully to one of the 112 suggested meditation techniques, one that is particularly good for people with strong imaginations. The amazing coincidence that brought all this about to begin with started with Osho’s suggestion to explore all 112 methods and choose one that is right for me (to read all 1000+ pages of the manuscript to do so – I think NOT!). So I went looking online for the accompanying Book of Secrets card deck mentioned in the book for a more intuitive and FAST mediation method selection but could not find anything of this sort anywhere at first. Finally I found one site that provided such a deck (along with other Osho’s decks) for online perusal (I think the site might have made them up from the book excerpts!) and the very first card I pulled had the “Imagine any part of your form and limitless” meditation with the preceding experiment to test whether your imagination is strong enough for this method to be of use to you. Herein comes the coincidence part – I have had just such an experience a couple of months ago during my first Shamanic Breathwork experience and ever since then the perceptions of reality altered in just such a way for me – every time I close my eyes, I experience fully and completely having absolutely no body, only a single point of perception in the formless limitless whole, a point of observation. Physical sensations and thought still arise, but they are more like electric blips on a heart rate machine: Blip… and then nothing… Blip again… So there you have it, total randomness of a series of events including 1 card out of 112 probability brings me the exact method that has invited itself into my life experience and have been patiently waiting for me to play with it. Which I am going to go do right now before venturing into the kitchen to make the long awaited experimental mushroom hash browns – meditation time!

Negative ion addiction

It is hard to write hungry. But so far the experiment is working out fine – I really don’t feel like writing but nevertheless here I am doing it. It is all a bit strange really, I want to be a writer, so I am doing this Morning Pages to develop my writing, yet every morning I don’t feel like writing – so how much of a writer am I really?..

All this is just mental masturbation really, which I guess feels good, being masturbation after all. I am approaching 400 posts soon, quite a milestone, quite inspiring in its own right to keep at it.

I seriously can’t believe it, I have such short attention span, nearly got distracted to go something else just now. Come to think of it, I don’t think I have finished a single morning pages without at least one distraction break. So let me torture myself even further by committing to finishing these ones without a single diversion.

I started reading Osho’s Book of Secrets yesterday – fascinating stuff. Chapter 1 was like a condensed 10 page version of the most influential spiritual books I have read to date – can’t wait to read the other 79 and obviously highly highly recommend him. Considering hist Being In Love book was the one that have induced a major irreversible paradigm shift from monogamy to polyamory for me back 3 years ago, I wonder why it took me that long to read something else of his, but with this Book of Secrets it was most certainly worth the wait.

Just caught another distraction impulse and stopped it in its tracks, this might actually turn out to be fun. While the purpose of Morning Pages is to make me aware of and then silence my inner critic, if I commit to distraction free writing it will make me (painfully) aware of my inner ADD child.

I swung  on swings yesterday for about 2 hours no stop – could not walk properly afterwards for a few minutes but it felt great. I think I could have done it for hours more really, the trick is to find swings where your fee don’t touch the ground at the lowest point then you can swing without having to pick up the legs each time and thus the muscles don’t get worn out. Polina’s swinging 101 tips and tricks. It is a great place to learn another language, listen to music, day dream and people watch – all while enjoying the near weightlessness near flying state. I can’t believe more people aren’t into it as much as I am.

And here come the food thoughts – bought a kilo of mushrooms yesterday, can’t wait to see what I can make with them. I have made Russian style fried potatoes with mushrooms the other day which tasted delightful, but today i am thinking to experiment and make mushroom and potato hash browns – fry mushrooms a bit and then mix them with shredded potato and egg mixture. Can’t wait to see how it will turn out, but both mushroom and hash browns being some of my favourite foods I am anticipating a delicious result.

1 page left to go. It really doesn’t get any easier with time or practice… A glass of Earl Grey Green tea later – still didn’t get any easier… And not a glass of tea is not a distraction, it is a focus aid.

I have finally carved myself a little home niche at my friend’s generously shared apartment.  It might sound wierd but the key piece that makes any space into a home for me is my 2kg totally anti-minimalist travel accessory – hymalayan pink salt crystal lamp which doubles as my essential oil diffuser. I have finally replaced the blown globe after several weeks and as if by magic I suddenly feel grounded and “at home”. I am probably addicted to those negative ions dispersed when it heats up – a portable ocean front feeling.

I have really turned it into quite a lifestyle living at other people’s places. Invite me for a visit and you might get stuck with me for weeks on end, or until the visa runs out But I buy groceries, cook, clean, organize the space, decorate and right at this moment practising empathy and listening skills so I guess I make a nice house elf, or house pixie, as it be. I think I would keep myself around if I was my own guest.

Alright – on the home stretch, 100 words to go. No new browser tabs open, although some fiddling with the Internet radio, nails, tea and essential oils diffuser did occur during the time of writing these pages. I filled in the missing 100 words a few paragraphs above where there belong more appropriately so now comes the mushroom hash brown creation time – YeeeHaaa!

D day

Aha, lets see how well this trick will work – I am not allowed to eat until the morning pages are written! A bit extreme, I know, but hopefully that will prevent me from taking hours, sometimes even days, to write 3 pages of whatever comes to mind. I guess either way it should have a positive effect – either 3 morning pages promptly written or a day of fasting.

Really the only things that come to my mind over and over as I write my morning pages can be summarized in one sentence: “I can’t believe how hard it is to write these morning pages!” But how many times can I really repeat that sentence and how in the world it is meant to unleash my creativity later in the day? I think I will have to end this experiment soon with my favourite language staple of all: “This is STUPID!”

Gasp! Am I trying to make a writer out of totally non writer material like myself? Sure enough I have plenty of experiences and paradigm shifts weekly, if not daily. But I seem completely at loss when it comes to not only relaying them, but to even thinking of something to relay in the first place. I am forever doomed to be the silent experiencer of the world instead. It calls for a solemn pause…

300 more words to go. Who knew hunger can be such an excellent motivator? I can just see my future morning pages all turning into descriptions of things I am about to cook and eat just to fill in the space so I can finally go and eat them. I wonder if I write “this is stupid” over and over again 250 times, does that count as a genuine morning pages entry if this is what is genuenly on my mind? OMG, the spell check does not know how to spell genuenly. It does not help a bit that I don’t know how to spell it either, but that is what I have the spell check for. Better go ask Google, it always has the best auto correct suggestions – beats me then why Google Chrome doesn’t! Aha – genuinely. That’s better, even the spell check is satisfied.

I would like to express my personal upset with the fact that the Universe is speeding up. I am fully aware of late of just how quickly the hours whiz by, and a day is gone in just a few blinks of an eye, whether its full of activities or completely devoid of them. Damn you, Universe, I want to actually feel this lifetime before its time to close my eyes forever.

Nearly there, I can almost smell the aroma of cooking eggs wafting at me from the near future. Might as well be, since the time has been compressed so much I bet the various smells can start traversing the small barrier between now and the near future. Next, I will be hearing myself cooking from the future, while I am still here typing up the last few words.

Wait a minute, what’s that?

Clunk, BAM, crack, sizzle…

In the present moment

Hello morning pages, it has been a while. I was going to put you off for another day making up some “I don’t feel like it” excuse but there is an interesting contradictory feeling inside of me: part of me does not want to write, but another part keeps egging me on “That’s precisely why you should write them – because you don’t want to!” Indeed it feels the second part is right, I usually stop doing anything at the point where I no longer feel like it, and probably miss out on the growth and breakthrough to the next level that usually follows such slumps in motivation. So here I am, writing away, with no idea about what, as usual…

I am finding myself resting increasingly more frequently in the pleasure of the present moment. Like right now, with a pot of freshly brewed tea and a door wide open to the chilly inner city garden, wrapped in blanket… simply “Ahhhh…” I really don’t need much else to be happy. But as I was pondering lately, the journey that inevitably brings me to the simple pleasures of life is one of multitude of experiences. It will not do to say to someone who has not seen or done much to live simply, as they would think that true happiness is behind the next thing or experience. But having had plenty of things and experiences, I can now simply rest in the present moment.

I could not finish the morning pages, not that day, not the next, not the following. Here is a short video I filmed that day, which goes to further show how at the moment I find myself with absolutely nothing to say.