Disco is My Cosmos

Life can be pretty stressful, particularly around the holidays. Things can seem way out of proportion. So I decided to put into practice "the newsworthy test." Take your problem for the day. In your mind, or out loud, say it in a newscaster's voice. There is no other context in human interaction that a person could get away with such strange emphasis on words and timing as a newscaster. They just pick random words and sing them in the international newscaster's song. So take this voice and state your problem. For example: "Susie's mom gave Susie explicit instructions not to touch the applesauce jar on the kitchen counter top. Susie is too young and not tall enough to successfully remove the jar without incident. This morning, at 7:48 am, Susie did not heed her mother's advice, and dropped the jar on the floor. There was applesauce everywhere!" This is just an example, but if you read it like a newscaster, it sounds ridiculous! As do a lot ...

While I was meditating this morning, the realization came to me that my thoughts have been on "automatic pilot" lately. That is, they just pop in my head, and I take them as truth and often act on them, without even considering if they are "good" thoughts. That is, are they thoughts that serve me? Or are they ego-driven thoughts, sent by my ego just to make sure it still is in the cockpit, the captain of my thoughts. There's some, what I would call, "unhealthy" thoughts, self-deprecating thoughts, which I then internalize. By the end of the day, I'm exhausted dealing with these thoughts. These speculations that dwell in the past or the future, but never in the present. Do I need to listen to all these thoughts, or do what they say, or take them into my emotional core? No. A big, resounding, NO. The trick is to figure out which thoughts are coming from where. But it's becoming easier for me to see through the ego's charade. Usua...

I've been looking at battery life today. My cell phone, my mp3 player...these devices give clear indications of the battery life left in them. Once the battery is low, you simply re-charge them. You stick them into an electrical outlet and in an hour or so they are fully up and running again. It's clear-cut and simple. But what about a human's "battery life", and by that, I don't necessarily mean their entire battery life, or whole life, but these bursts of energy we have each day, before we must re-charge every night with sleep. We have multiple levels of "batteries", and multiple ways to re-charge them. Instead of a clear-cut gauge, we can only guess when our batteries are low. We may feel tired, unmotivated, or groggy. Not only can we feel physically exhausted, but we can feel mentally, emotionally, and spiritually exhausted. This resembles those multiple ink levels on the printer. There's usually black, cyan, magenta, and yellow. So...