Truth in a simple raisin

"Researchers investigated whether mindfulness meditation, i.e. buddhist-style meditation, could be combined with cognitive therapy to help prevent depression in people with a history of depression.

for many people, that when they focus on moment-by-moment way of being, it’s almost a way of being instead of doing all the time, instead of being driven all the time, that they discover in that moment that they can feel their thoughts coming out, their negative thoughts, even positive thoughts, or body sensations they haven’t wanted like pain, and they can watch them come and go, instead of having to strive, to struggle, to worry, and so on. They begin to be able to see their thoughts like clouds going across the sky, and it’s an amazing revelation that if they wait patiently, just being gently curious about how they are in that ...
eventually the sun comes out...

simple practice meditation starting with eating meditation, where they get to eat just one raisin. But do it mindfully, do it slowly, just focus on that one thing...
...You start by actually looking at it, perhaps turning it over in your hand, and you take time to turn it over in your hand. Then maybe you smell it, maybe you even turn it over near your ear, see if it’s got a sound, but you pay all your attention to the raisin. If you find your mind wandering, you just gently bring your mind back to the raisin. Then eventually you take it to your lips, you put it in your mouth, noticing your hand knows pretty well how to reach your mouth without you telling it to do.

Your whole world is focused on the raisin. You take it into your mouth, you don’t chew, you just leave it there and see what your tongue feels like on the raisin, and then very mindfully, with great awareness, you just chew. And then you feel the intention to swallow coming up, and then you give in to it and swallow, and then you’re one raisin heavier.

...It’s a mind-focusing technique; it gives people a gateway into mindfulness meditation, which shows them that meditation isn’t just about breathing, or just about the full lotus posture, or about anything particularly weird, it’s about doing things and noticing that you’re doing them, doing things perhaps one at a time. And then having the choice about whether to continue to do it like that, or where else to put your mind."

-ABC online

The riddle of life...

...the sun rises in all its glory and colour and how do we perceive it, but as a time-based container of (mainly) physical change...we begrudgingly perform all manner of often mundane, prosaic tasks we hate...why? To answer obtrusive relatives' questions, to wear badges, to go way past satisfaction of simple respirational needs, until these needs cease to exist...
because we don't...

Somewhere along the line, the respirational need of procreation may occur,- maybe repeatedly, and thus we increase the intensity of our hateful occupations until those offspring are similarly processed.

Mix and repeat process...

Blog in flux

OK- so this blog is in renovation... I have decided to go to the dark-neon side and get some advertising, but my template is in distress...please just wade through the mess...speaking of wading, I was just on a walk and I had left my house by blocks when I noticed three turtles lined up on a log emerging from the lagoon I was about to pass...

I needed to have that shot...

So, I walked home and returned, camera in hand. I approached the bridge and to my delight, the turtles were still there lined up, basking trustingly in the sun, water rippling oh-so-photogenically, around them.

It was my shot awaiting me...

possibilities abounding...

I approached and noticed a boy on a bike passing and a noisy car and thought "surely the turtles will be frightened by these sounds"- so I ran to get my winning shot before they were frightened away and in doing so-

I frightened them away.



Now, little grasshoppers, there must be a moral here to be derived...could it be:


have patience

do not pre-judge catastrophe or you will cause what you fear

or

take it easy- don't push the turtle...



right, Homer...?

Blogging in Tongues

Maybe it's just my brain or the Pink Floyd playing, but when I saw the key-words that have referred people to my site, the list seemed to spell out a train-of-thought prose...am I blogging in tongues?!!!



kitty hello cthulu the elmo tigger inna gadda polynesia bluniverse tickle vida green nimbin mikmaq black albino video webcam absynthe and maq simpsons rabbit bunny being sheep easy background mik microinjection isnt pigs look light cant cyclone kittys micmaq kermit 2005 boning frog art star glow under alba linda...  




By the way, did you know that langue is French for tongue, so we speak in tonguage....

Solbeaming!

I've been linked to a blog named Solbeam for a year now. When I was last connected to the net, I used to love reading this blog. I found the author intelligent and loved her witty wordplay.

Now, after my '40' days and nights in the desert without the net, upon revisiting her site, it seems much has progressed...

She is travelling in Tibet and meeting her adventures with humility and humour.

Update: Sadly, this blog seems to have deleted. Why? Sorry if you were offended, wherever you are...

Further update: It's back! I don't get it, but I'm glad- and relieved...I was spooked to see the whole wonderful thing missing all but its title and background only hours after I first published this post...

Curiouser and curiouser...

Conclusion: OK- now I get it- her blog is no longer a blog;- it's a web site that uses her old blog links and it's her blog that is now abandoned...

One click away from you...

Just one click away from 6666 visitors to my Bluniverse. Does this number actually mean anything, or is it like an extra chromasome of evil that just comes out of dodgy character- not well meaning, but not quite cluey enough to be cunning...sort of like the calliber of class snitch...or narc...or host of a patronising make0ver show...

hmmmmmmmmmm...

Online again...

Finally I'm back online. Broadband, PO box, Yellow Pages advertising, business course, new G5 Mac, digital video camera, lights, a plethora of 'Idiot's Guides', a business name and number and I'm a soul -er, sole trader. Finally, I'm selling my art...sleeping with the art Devil, vaccuuming the dust from the dark corners... I'm becoming some kind of Prozac Poster-Girl...minus the evil SSRI...but, hey, what's a little tryptophan between neurotransmitters...

I've just spent the last 5 days facing this screen with its ever-freezing grimace.

Restart...restart...

Happy Mac- thank God...

After so many hours face-to-face with my aging electronic friend, it was a little bitter-sweet to complete the last real project on this blue baby...albeit the feeling of battening hatches in the fiercest of storms, my craft falling apart beneath my feet, just praying to complete the journey to success...exhausted and gritting sand...

So, why am I on here again today? Guess it's like battery hens who return to their cage upon being freed because that hell is all they know...but not to jest about these creatures' suffering...it's a terrible thing and very good reason to BUY FREE-RANGE EGGS OR BETTER, NONE AT ALL...but I digress...


I've just been watching a doco on the Life of Sylvia Plath. What a beautiful painter of so many shades of pain- words the bloody paint of her ever-fraying canvas...


I must read her work...

Sylvia Plath, Brett Whitely, Frances Farmer, Vincent Van Gogh what do you think of when you read these names?


Think it's time to go see the brilliant light of day...