Intimacy and the Art of Relating
Below is a brief introduction to a four-fold model of intimacy and relating that I presented at a c3 event called “Return to the Source – The Art of Conscious Loving“. Been working on this particular model for the last few months since a lovely young lady asked me last December what my stance was on relationships (my proclaiming to be a monk has been confusing at times). As I believe we are in a time where we redefine how we relate with each other, where traditional group labels and relationship patterns are dissolving, I think it is crucial to have some foundational agreements around language we use to communicate about our relating. This model is a beginning on this journey.
Living the lifestyle…
… of transformation is a curious thing. Talked with my yoga teacher not too long ago about the Krya of Yoga, the three tenets of openness, proper reflection and changing habits. Have been pondering them quite a bit and am adopting them into my own concept of a transformational lifestyle.
A transformational lifestyle would in this case consist of three elements:
- Openness to Transformation – Instead of shunning or merely accepting change, inviting it and embracing it fully, making it willful and hence transformation. It is the willful dying after every exhale, and the understanding that each time we inhale, we make choices – we create ourselves and the entire universe around us anew. “The most important thing in life is to give up who you are at any point for who you could become.“
- Proper Reflection – inviting those into our lives that give us honest and loving feedback, and taking it even if it comes in a different package. Listenting to all otherness, seeing ourselves in others, realizing that when we point at someone, three fingers point back. It is reviewing and seeing ourselves as much from an objective perspective as our subjective perspective allows. And this also includes saying “Thank you” when someone compliments you. It is, as we perceive reality and our relations no matter if we like them or not, to hold the mantra “I created this, because I wanted to…“
- New habits – The majority of our daily experience is based on habit, and this is necessary to some extent – if you had to rethink walking for every step, you would probably not move very fast. This is okay in as long as our habits serve us. Many of the programs our little bio robot runs, though, have become obsolete and require replacement. In order to replace them, though, we need to create new ones. In yoga it is taught to begin good new habits and old bad habits will fall away. Or, as Bucky Fuller put it “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
Now, this is a tall order. Really living this fully might seem something better left to saints. But it is a continuum, on which we can move and advance. Striving toward those imeasurables is what matters.
The last weeks have been filled with an atmosphere of change. The ides of March, the end of the year just before spring blossoms. It is a violent time, seeds are being cracked open, a brutal death for the known structures of comfort. Old shells have to fall away as new life emerges…
How deep do you want it up the rabbit hole?
Inspired by the good ole Alice, this lovely shirt expresses universe’ lovely twisted sense of humor. It appears that as we ascend deeper and deeper into the realms of reality, we sometime feel a little violated afterwards… It is a fine question to ask your self as you progress into more and more authentic self-expression…
The four-fold body as a rockband…
Woke up this morning from an interesting dream. Actually the second day in a row that I dreamt about four-fold structures (and one of many as this theme keeps haunting me in general, if it’s not four, it’s octaves). Yesterday’s dream was about how the four are folding into each other and how the first stage is already enveloped in the fourth stage. Have had images of superstrings in my head since…
You are a Rockband
Today’s dream was about looking at the four-fold being of body, emotions, mind and energy as a rockband. Body being drums, emotions being bass, mind being lead guitar and energy the vocals – spirit, of course, as the fifth element holding it all together. Similar to the exercise of hearing music separated into individual tracks, we can then listen to our being in each of the separate parts, knowing that all play together, and that we are both their totality and each of them, none solely. It allows us to focus on being spirit and using our band to express ourselves fully.
Death – a real tear jerker…
Had the pleasure yesterday of seeing a screening of LeVar Burton’s new movie “Reach for me.” A rather interesting experience I have to say. There had been a reason why I had been avoiding Lifetime channel and movies they would show: anytime I see someone cry, I have a hard time not crying myself. Sucky. Especially when watching a movie, the mental body fully aware of being manipulated emotionally with sound and vision, and the emotional body just loosing it… Ahhhhh emotions… Was definitely a good exercise in containment 
But that was not the point. The movie dealt with death and described the transformation of a grumpy old patient in a hospice from waiting to die toward embracing the last moments of his life. In the Q&A afterward LeVar was talking about how he wanted to make the movie because in our society death is a taboo and we don’t deal with it…
I’ve been down on “The Secret…”
When someone first sent me the link to “The Secret” before it came out officially, I was initially a bit down on it. While I was excited to see that it was bringing Attraction 101 to a mass audience, I was also a bit concerned about its focus on the material existence. I have since defended it more often than put it down in conversations with fellow consciousness players, as – while I think these tools are not there to attract a Lexus or a big villa – I think it is crucial for our time that people become aware of their part in creating reality.
Fashion, fashion, fashion…
It’s been a while since I updated my blog. In part this was due to the last eight months spent commuting back and forth between LA and New York every week. Had a lovely time there, but am happy to be back in the sunshine world of Los Angeles. While in New York, I was working on a project for an international $5b fashion company and – due to my working on integration and finance systems – I got to learn about the whole wing-to-wing process in fashion. Another industry under my belt…
Each time, I work on a project like this, I wonder what I am supposed to learn and how that can help my overall mission of global transformation through authentic self-expression. Well, fashion is one of the original forms of self-expression. From the first humanoid who decided to put on special furs or animal horns to stand out, to today’s multi-billion dollar fashion industry, the clothes we wear are an expression of who we are and what we want to share with the world.
While there, I decided that after years of wearing only plain clothing, it was time to express myself in new ways. Meditating on Yoko Ono’s quote that you have not created art unless half of your audience is booing at the end, I went all out and elaborated on the “Fuck” theme I had started a while ago.
Hence I created scapegoat.us, a new label, and have been wearing my t-shirts on a daily basis. In addition to that, there is also a bunch of lovely other merchandise. Christmas is coming up, so get yours now!
Some people misunderstand the “fuck” as an aggressive or negative thing. This could not be further from the truth, it’s about giving it up. Be done. Stop suffering, shame, fear, pain, anger, worry, all of those emotions that do not help in the least. You will feel them, sure, you definitely should not suppress them, but for fuck’s sake, make them useful! Use them to grow and become more and more of who you really are…
So don’t hesitate! Get your own personal reminder now!
doxaworx is born
Life isn’t about finding yourself, it’s about creating yourself. In the face of a culture that worships material goods, nationalistic politics, and shallow pop entertainment, we figured it’s time for something different. So a few of my lovely friends and I got together and created doxaworx – our own culturelab.
On doxaworx you will be able to find neat stuff we are coming across online, art, poetry, whatever we find interesting enough to put up there. Enjoy!
Expect Miracles – Talk to Trees
After all the flying back and forth I ended up staying in New York last weekend. In part, because I wanted to meet some wonderful friends of mine, Bo and Jordan. Bo is one of the two masterminds behind The Bright Room (formerly known as Horror Crash Puzzle). They recently relocated to New York from LA thus I hadn’t seen them in a while and wanted to check out their new digs. Had a lovely evening with them, synchronistically ending up in a restaurant the delightful stranger I met on the plane the week prior had recommended.
The other reason was that I wanted to go to COSM, the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, a project by Alex and Allyson Grey, two amazing artists I cherish quite a bit. Enjoyed an inspiring tour by Alex on Saturday evening and highly recommend you check out his work if you are not familiar with it – and maybe even support his cause with COSM…
The prelude for the weekend was that with my being in New York, my friend deposited a check for me last week, which under normal circumstances should have cleared within the week. Well, the bank decided to hold it for two weeks, much to my dismay. I called them up Saturday morning just to be told that there was nothing at all they could do about this, and that the earliest ANY of the funds would be available would be a week later.
This was quite troubling to me as I was starting to run out of cash and could not fathom a whole other week in New York without these funds. I was actually quite pissed and angry, worried and frustrated about all this. Fortunately, I remembered that no matter what the circumstances, the only thing I can control is my state of being. So I decided to go for a walk in Central Park and talk to a tree about all this. If you have never taken the time to talk to a tree, I highly recommend it. I know it might sound somewhat insane, but then we live in a rather insane world, and logically, doing insane things in an insane world more often than not might be quite sane…
Anyway, as soon as I left the house I found a penny. If you did not read my post about pennies, I usually take them as a sign from the universe that everything will be just fine and that I do not need to worry. As I was walking I focused on my breathing and emptying my mind, and intuition guided me to a beautiful tree. I approached the tree and asked for permission to sit with it for a while.
Sitting on a root of the tree I closed my eyes and focused on emptying my mind, inhaling and exhaling. I vowed not to open my eyes or leave the tree until I felt completely calm again, and all the pissed off energy had left my body. Slowly but surely it began to dissipate and serenity began to take over.
After about twenty minutes I felt completely calm, knowing that everything would be just fine. Sure enough, as I opened my eyes, there was a penny, right in front of me laying by the root of the tree. I have no idea if it was there before, but even if – out of all the trees in Central Park I picked one with a penny right beside it… I laughed and knew that everything was going to be just fine. Walking back to the apartment, I had my normal joyous state of being back, bounced a little in my gait and knew that all would be well. Sure enough, as I arrived back at the apartment, I decided to check my account balance… The whole check had miraculously cleared (thank you tree!).
So, next time you are frustrated, angry, pissed off or worried, remember to adjust your thinking. That is the only thing you ultimately have control over. And if you can’t do it by yourself, find yourself a tree and ask for help… Miracles do happen…
East Cost/West Coast and the bi-cameral mind
Coming back from New York to LA the other day I laughed as I walked down the hallway and picked up that week’s LA Weekly. Love the wonderous ways in which the universe talks sometimes… (and there has been a lot of that including tons more pennies).
Am officially bi-coastal in that I now have apartments in both places and spend equal amount of time in each city, with an additional half-day of my week spent above the clouds (and another one in airports). Beautifully disorienting creating a very conscious imprint vulnerability…
What is particularly intriguing to me is that I get to have such wonderful cross-brain training: on the right coast I work on a finance transformation initiative a rather left brain focused endeavor (as much as it is an art as well) and I live in a corporate apartment. On the left coast, I live in an artist loft and am building an organization dedicated to conscious creativity…
Fortunately, balance is already in the making, the system strives for equilibrium thanks to connecting with some lovely friends in New York and to making some wonderful connections at work with the first conversations on yoga, life, meaning etc. already in full gear… Yesterday my friend Tammy from the Self Centered Tour and I met at COSM, a most wonderful place I recommend to anyone in New York. Experienced a beautiful story-telling based presentation on Ayuasca with presenters like Alex Grey and Daniel Pinchbeck from Reality Sandwich. Several of the stories that night were touching and it was great to see over 200 people assembled, intersted in expanding their human capacities through expanding their consciousness using age old traditions.
Then had a lovely new acquaintance on the airplane today who gave me a list of places to check out in New York (bizarrely enough, while I was waiting to board, I had noticed her and decided I wanted to sit next to her in the airplane – and sure enough did…).
Looking forward to exploring the conscious and art side of New York, while building c3 into a business in LA…
Twitter- 40 of the Most Interesting and Creative Guerrilla and Ambient Advertising Campains - http://b2l.me/kf49p
- Worry be gone! You can do it! Just this week! Check out http://monkday.com and feel better!
- Financial freedom does not come from having a certain amount of money, it comes from knowing that you will always have enough
- Let's add "know thy worth" to "know thy self" - just to spell it out
- Trying to be "normal" is the attempt to abdicate the responsibility for being an individual
- Trust your robot. Kick back. Adjust high-level programs and the rest will follow
- find out who REALLY won best actor at http://monkday.com
- If everyone focused on actively loving everyone around them, nobody would ever have to worry about not feeling loved...
- RT @samrosen: RT @newsweek How Different Cultures Shape the Brain http://bit.ly/cWBNXx --- how about activating all of it??
- RT @zenext: whatever you think you need permission for, consider that one of your gifts that deserves to be shared
- Posts by others I enjoyed reading
- This will be outdated soon…
- Everyone Ever in the World
- Indra's Net: Alchemy and Chaos Theory as Templates for Transformation
- Now You Can Wear Your Windows
- Your Personal Memory Device. You Could Have One Today
- MUSHROOMS IN WONDERLAND
- Altimeter Report: The 18 Use Cases of Social CRM, The New Rules of Relationship Management
- Roadmap: Make Your Corporate Websites Relevant by Integrating Facebook, Google, MySpace, LinkedIn, or Twitter
- Can you pass the Acid Test?
- OK Go Rube Goldberg video: meet the makers!
- Going Global: Social Innovation
- Future neuro-cognitive warfare
- Go Cognitive guide to the brain
- The Anywhen Manifesto
- Moving things are fun…
- You Are Culture (Quote of the Week)
- Monkey See or Is One Man’s Fix Another’s Enhancement?
- Can You Find Consciousness In The Brain?
- Kill Busywork: The One Skill to Focus On What Matters
- The Art Of Procrastination