By Katia Grodecki

originally published on http://naturessecretwhispers.blogspot.com

You may have heard the advice to never lose the childish enthusiasm that is so valuable and so easily forgotten, often tossed aside along with fairytale books. When was the last time you truly experienced that sense of enthusiasm? As we grow older, the feeling of natural joy can easily become replaced with ‘grown up’ thoughts that may sometimes distort the picture, changing our experience. We need a gentle reminder to allow ourselves to re-discover the natural state of joy, and cherish this state to the best of our ability.

Think back to your childhood and the times when you saw something or someone for the first time, or when you first experienced something new. This may be the time when you first visited the zoo, pet a dog, swam in a lake or the sea, or when you tasted ice cream for the first time. Please try, for just a minute, to remember how you felt through those experiences. Remember the thrill and the joy you felt at tasting or seeing something new. If you, at this time, cannot recall the actual experience, perhaps you can imagine what it may have felt like. Additionally, by watching children on a playground, we may be able to recall many wonderful memories of our own childhood.

Although I would hope that many of us are still enthusiastic about the prospect of swimming in the sea, or eating a wonderful dessert, the sweetness of which fills our entire being with the same soothing taste, many of us simply forget to savour the moment and its spherical beauty that resonates in so many wonderful directions at the same time! Somehow, when life becomes busy and our minds are occupied with thoughts of arriving somewhere on time, preparing for an important meeting, or organizing our day, it is easy to completely dismiss the very important feeling of enthusiasm, allowing it to slip by us swiftly, unnoticed. And it’s not until later, when the worries and stress overwhelm us and we finally take a break, that we realize that simply by holding on to the joy and maintaining a positive point of view, the worries and stress of the everyday routine can actually disappear. After all, our state of mind governs the outcome of the day.

I would like to propose the following exercise:

Set the intention, each morning, of viewing each experience through the eyes of a child. When opening your eyes in the morning, pay attention to everything in the room and feel the joy of waking up to experience another day, with all the wonderful opportunities that it brings (these opportunities include the pleasant times, as well as the more challenging moments). View each day as an exciting adventure on which you are ready to embark.

On your way to work or school, notice ‘ordinary’ details. Take the time to actually savour what is around you, and marvel at the beauty of everything. When eating breakfast, lunch, dinner, or simply having a snack, pretend that you have never tasted food before. Pay attention to the texture, the flavour, the feeling in all parts of your body, as you enjoy the experience of eating.

See each familiar person as someone you have never met before in your life. Notice everything about the individual’s appearance, and find the beauty in the existence of everything and everyone, including your own existence. You may wish to play a game by imagining that you have just a moment ago met your partner or a dear friend, whom you have actually known for a long time. When sitting down to enjoy dinner, pay careful attention to the appearance of your friend or partner, to the sound of his or her voice and laughter, and cherish each moment you spend together.
Finally, when closing your eyes before falling asleep, clear your mind completely of any worries or thoughts about the day that has just passed and plans for the day that is to come. Instead, look forward to the exciting dreams that you are about to experience. Just for fun, count sheep as you drift off to sleep!

Enjoy every single moment and remember that each experience is what you make it. If we look closely, we might find that fairytales are made of the same substance that we all share in our personal lives. Instead of tossing that substance aside, if we invest a bit of extra time in cultivating our imagination, we will find that we are already blessed with magic.

Affirmation: From the moment I open my eyes in the morning until I close my eyes and prepare to rest for the night, I view the entire day through the eyes of a child. I fill my day with a sense of enthusiasm that follows me in everything I do and everywhere I go, reminding me that the gift of joy is always with me.

By Gayle Etcheverry

www.MatterOfTrust.org

Lisa Craig Gautier and her husband Patrice Oliver Gautier started their nonprofit, Matter Of Trust, Inc with the intention to link ideas, spark action and materialize sustainable systems among nonprofits – or in other words, to help match nonprofits with appropriate networking leads. They started this group in 1999 and have been busy ever since.

Many groups they network with are grassroots organizations, recyclers, green businesses and other creative projects. One exceptional project they are involved in is creating Oil Spill Hair Mats. That’s right, Hair Mats!

Everyone knows the best way to care for oily hair is to shampoo it, but Phil McCrory, a stylist from Alabama is the one who realized hair could be used as an efficient and abundant tool in collecting and containing hazardous oil spills. He came up with this brilliant idea after watching a CNN story on the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill. To test his theory, he took five pounds of hair clippings from his salon, stuffed them into an old pair of his wife’s nylons, and then he tied the ankles together to make a ring. He filled his son’s plastic kiddy pool with water and a gallon of used motor oil and then placed the hair filled panty hose in the oil bath. In less than two minutes, the water was crystal clear. All the oil soaked into the hair contraption! (To watch a demonstration of this click here)

Now, Matter of Trust is taking this incredible idea and collaborating with thousands of salons, barbers & pet groomers across the US and abroad to collect donated hair clippings to be made into hair mats. In the US alone, there are over 370,000 hair salons that each cut about one pound of hair a day!

These hair mats are very versatile and can be used in drip pans for oil changes, under leaky cars, under machinery, pipelines, and booms for storm drains. Hair can also be used as a fertilizer with a slow nitrogen and keratin protein release, helps prevent weed growth and can reduce water evaporation up to about 50%. To learn more about how you can use hair mats in gardening please visit SmartGrow.net

Matter of Trust partners with The East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse and the San Francisco Carpet Recycling to have the donated hair to be needle punched into hair mats. Also, Phil McCrory (Inventor of the Hair Mat) and SmartGrow.net have donated to Matter of Trust to help make the patented mats.

The Hair Mats are just one example of how Matter of Trust collaborates with great thinkers & nonprofits to help turn their visions into an efficiently working projects. To learn more about this project and many others that Matter of Trust is involved with please visit their website at MatterOfTrust.org

If you would like more information on where to mail your donated hair clippings or recycled nylons, please click here.

By Hal Manogue

www.shortsleeves.net

I am the one whose praise echoes on high.  I adorn all the earth.  I am the breeze that nurtures all things green.  I encourage blossoms to flourish with ripening fruits  .I am led by the spirit to feed the purest streams.  I am the rain coming from the dew that causes the grasses to laugh with the joy of life  .I am the yearning for good.

Hildegard of Bingen was born in 1098. She was a German abbess, artist, author, naturalist, philosopher, herbalist, poet, visionary and composer. She founded the monasteries of Rupertsberg in 1150 and Eibinger in 1165.

Her poem brings many thoughts to mind. She certainly looked at her life in a different way. Her 12th century notion of being one with everything has gotten lost in the shuffle of modern thought. As a collective consciousness we chose separation instead of integration and became an island of fear rather than a world of love with sensitivity for everything in it. This island is lost in a sea of chaos and moves through time not realizing what it is and how it survives.

The quest for dominance over everything worships destruction instead of growth and nothing is sacred, all things are expendable. Love comes from a bottle or a pill and death is the final act of egomania.

Well, that island is changing and it begins with me. It begins with acceptance, with forgiveness and a prayer of awakening. I am opening my thoughts and feel the love that flies from tree to tree. I am hearing the sound of unity chirp in laughter and I see insects building temples of freedom. I watch the rain drip from a rose petal and sense the purity that water innately expresses. I wandered in my dreams and enjoy myself as I swim with the dolphins. I climb a mountain and am captured by its beauty and entrenched in its diversity. I sit by a stream and begin to flow over each rock and the presence of consciousness gently kisses me and I become one again.

I am the breeze, I am led by spirit, and I am the rain in all its splendor, but I am so much more than those things because I create what I believe. I created the island so I can remodel it. I constantly change in thought and form and expand in the stream of all consciousness.

I do it all to remember and to become what I have always been a whole part consciousness that has many parts and is connected to the whole of another consciousness that is the foundation for all life. The expansion of consciousness is endless and the joy of the physical life experience is priceless.

By Merrill Moore

http://godblesshumanity3.hubhub.org

“Oh **** It’s Wednesday!”  My husband exclaimed as he wrenched open the cabinet door that held our trash and recycling. He gathered up all he could manage as I quickly ran upstairs to gather each room’s trash. I hurried downstairs to see my husband running down our several-hundred-yard driveway with our trashcan trailing behind him. I ran out the door with bag in hand, my hair still piled high on top of my head wearing my pink robe and slippers and most likely a few creases on my cheek from my pillow. All the while having to stop every 6 feet or so to shake the gravel out of my slippers as I hurried to the sound of the wheezing trash truck struggling it’s way up our very steep road. “We’re recycling” I heard a man yell and having chosen the wrong bin to lug to the street first, my husband wheeled around to sprint past me for the recycling bin, he had just enough time to get it to the curb as the truck went past us to start at the end of the street. Finally it stopped in front of our driveway. “You guys are awesome recyclers” I heard him say. I beamed. I was so struck by that, I don’t know why, but I was suddenly really proud of our efforts. We always try to clean everything well and almost always add the proper recycle-able materials to our bin. I was very conscious of the importance but never expected to be complimented on it. Those are always the nicest compliments, the kind that take you by surprise.

I hope everyone takes a minute to ponder the question, “Are you an awesome recycler?” You will feel great, even if you don’t get to hear the words come from the mouths of the very people handling your recyclables, you can bet they appreciate the few extra seconds it takes to “do it right”.

I know everyone knows how to recycle but here’s a gentle reminder for conscious recycling:

1.    Decide what to recycle—Evaluate how much space you have to sort and store materials and what items you tend to go through the most. Paper products are a pretty safe bet and aluminum or steel cans are valuable. Other commonly accepted items include glass and plastic bottles.
2.    Find a vendor—Check with your local recycling center, municipality and waste hauler to find out what kind of materials are accepted in your area.
3.    Decide on storage—Washable plastic bins or trashcans are the best and cardboard boxes are good too. Be sure to rinse out the containers that held food to avoid critters.
4.    Educate participants—If items are put in the wrong containers, it means more work for you and could mean materials might not be recycled. Let the people know what to do.
5.    Label bins—Print up a sheet of special instructions, such as: remove caps, stomp on containers, break down cardboard boxes, bundle newspapers, remove food residue etc.

Electronics are a huge convenience and have revolutionized our lives. The e-waste can bypass the landfill to be refurbished and given to organizations that need these items. For more info on proper e-waste management visit http://earth911.org/electronics/

At our house we always have a zip-loc bag labeled “used” in our junk drawer for discarded batteries, when it’s full we take it to the proper place to have them recycled. Here’s more info on recycling batteries. http://earth911.org/blog/2007/07/05/how-to-recycle-and-properly-dispose-of-batteries/

Don’t forget you can also recycle used motor oil and paint.

If you need to find a recycling/re-use location near you or just want more info about recycling in general you can search this great website. http://earth911.org/

Oh and don’t forget the other 2 important R’s, REDUCE AND REUSE!

by Shihan Mike Genko Berger

www.wayoflifekarate.com

When we think of meditation, we often think of some strange, esoteric religious practice, replete with incense, chanting and sitting motionless in an unbearable full lotus pose in an ancient temple.

In reality, meditation is a practice that may or may not have religious connotations, can be expressed in both movement and non-movement forms, and can include a variety of health and spiritual goals and benefits.

Most of us, as martial artists, have had some exposure to a brief meditation period that often precedes or follows our training periods, known as MOKUSO or MOKUTO. But many of us do not really know why we are doing it, or even what we are supposed to be doing…

While many meditation practices had their origins in ancient religious practices, there are some commonalities with regard to practice of meditation itself. Most practices seek to focus the ‘ceaselessly seeking mind’, the racing ‘monkey mind’ that jumps from thought to thought to thought, by focusing the mind on an object, a word, a mantra, a chant, a koan, or by using various techniques of following or working with the breath. Used in the Zen tradition, a koan is a story, question, or phrase that cannot be solved with the rational mind, designed to break one free of conditioned understanding, thereby deepening one’s spiritual insight and understanding.. My own practice also includes another popular practice of the Soto school of Zen, that of shikantaza, or just sitting, with dropped off body and mind. There are many other unique practices, some of which include listening to sounds or focusing on aspects of nature, like those of water, fire, the wind, or rain. Some practice chanting, or work practice (samu). Generally speaking, when we are intensely focused one thought or event, it is difficult to concentrate on a multitude of others. I’m sure that some of you have experienced the phenomena of transcending conscious thought, of the thinking without thinking or doing without doing that results by transcending the intense concentrated state of focused mind. Perhaps you have had a glimpse of these moments, of these spaces between thoughts. It may have occurred while you were washing the dishes, raking the lawn, or while practicing kata or kumite. Athletes have referred to these phenomena as ‘Being in the Zone.’

Simply explained, the function of the mind is to produce thoughts… so many that we are constantly bombarded with so many thoughts that we are not present or mindful at all, but rather racing ahead to the future or stuck hopelessly in the loop of rehashing the past, neither of which can be productive to what we are doing at this moment, both of which take us away from leading the richer lives of being more mindful, focused, and present. It only makes sense, that if you really want to look at something; it is difficult to do while it is racing out of control in constant motion. Only by stilling the raging waters can we see with clarity into the clear, mirrored waters of the mind and of the self.

The breath is sometimes referred to as the bridge between the self and that which lies outside of the self, between our physical bodies and minds, and that which lies outside of that realm. By slowing the breath, chanting, or focusing on an object, a kata or a koan, not only do we focus our attention, we can realize numerous health benefits. These include inhibition of the sympathetic nervous system while encouraging parasympathetic responses, slowing the heart rate, decreasing blood pressure, decreasing stress, relaxing … etc, etc, etc.

On a physical level, these numerous health and medical benefits of meditation are now scientifically well documented, most notably by such large organizations as the National Institute of Health and World Health Organization.

In addition, we slow down the racing nature of the mind; brain wave patterns are affected, the turbulent waves subside, and suddenly, we can see. We see into ourselves, observe how we respond to life, and shift our perceptions, emotions, and understanding. By increasing the spaces between conscious thought, we can strive for kensho or satori states of “enlightenment.”

On a spiritual level, we can aspire to narrow the gap between self and other, this and that, yes and no, so that perhaps we can understand different perspectives of truth and ultimately become more compassionate, loving people. What could be more valuable?

The great Zen master Dogen said, “To study the Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things of the universe.”

Throughout history there has been an inextricable link between Zen and the martial arts. The 6th patriarch of Zen, Bodhidharma, is often credited with introducing martial arts to the Shaolin Temple, and although most historians now concur that this was untrue, and that martial arts existed long before his arrival from India, he certainly influenced the movement of Zen and martial arts significantly. In the 12th century, Zen became popular amongst the Samurai, influenced by the teachings of great masters like Dogen and Eisei. The samurai found that by accepting the idea of death, the idea of ‘no self’ they could enter a state of mushin, of non-mind / no mind, free functioning mind, a mind not restricted and inhibited by conscious thought. This fluid state of mind, of doing without doing, made their actions and responses more intuitive, and ultimately made them better warriors.

A good way to begin your practice is by counting the breath. Find a quiet place and sit either in seiza or in half/full/quarter lotus, or with the legs in Burmese position, with your ears over your shoulders and your spine straight. Some feel that it is best to have your knees grounded, providing a solid foundation, but if you are unable to do so, sitting in a chair is also acceptable. Place your hands into a mudra, with your left hand resting in your right hand, and the tips of your thumbs touching lightly. Now rest your hands lightly touching over your lower abdomen. Direct the gaze out past the tip of your nose, with your eyes slightly open, and inhale deeply into the tanden, a point about one hand breadth below your naval and into your body center. Keep your attention here throughout, dropping off body and mind. As you exhale, count to yourself ONE. Continue inhaling and exhaling naturally, counting each time you exhale, until you reach TEN. Then start over. As thoughts come to mind, simply observe them drifting by, as if they were passing bubbles, and just return to concentrating on the breath. If you lose count, just start again with ONE.

Ideally, your practice should be supervised by a qualified teacher, who can guide you and help you as you encounter certain things and monitor you as you progress in your training.

For me, this is the ultimate practice.

So don’t just do something, sit there!