Follow the Calmness

I have posted documents of quotes/summaries of two Michael Pollan books I have read, Second Nature and In Defense of Food. Click here to check them out. :)

Quote of the day: It could take a thousand years, it could happen in a night.

Quotes from The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, by Deepak Chopra.

All actions are karmic episodes. Action generates memory, and memory has the ability or the potentiality to generate desire. And desire generates action again. Your soul is a bundle of consciousness that has the seeds of karma, memory, and desire. By becoming conscious of these seeds of manifestation, you become a conscious generator of reality. By becoming a conscious choice maker, you begin to generate actions that are evolutionary for you and for everyone. And that's all you need to do.

The third way to deal with karma is to transcend it. This, of course, is done through meditation.

Ishmael Quotes

"Say, didn't we make for the garden a certain tree whose fruit is the knowledge of good and evil?"

"But it's not going to be this easy for the Takers. It's going to be hard as hell for them to give it up, because what they're doing is right, and they have to go on doing it even if it means destroying the world and mankind with it...It would mean spitting out the fruit of that tree and giving the rule of the world back to the gods."

"When Adam accepted the fruit of that tree, he succumbed to the temptation to live without limit...Whenever a Taker couple talk about how wonderful it would be to have a big family...why stop at four kids or six? we can have fifteen if we like. All we have to do is plow under another few hundred acres of rain forest--and who cares if a dozen other species disappear as a result?"

"Man was innocent until he discovered the difference between good and evil. When he was no longer innocent of that knowledge, he became a fallen creature."

"People can't just give up a story. That's what the kids tried to do in the sixties and seventies. They tried to stop living like Takers, but there was no other way for them to live. They failed because you can't just stop being in a story, you have to have another story to be in."
"And what do you suppose this story is about?"
"Well, you should at least know that it's about the meaning of the world, about divine intentions in the world, and about the destiny of man."

"They need a vision of the world and of themselves that inspires them."
"Yes. Definitely. Stopping pollution is not inspiring. Sorting your trash is not inspiring. Cutting down on fluorocarbons is not inspiring. But this...thinking of ourselves in a new way, thinking of the world in a new way...This..." I let it go. What the hell, he knew what I was trying to say.

"What I've been at pains to give you is a new paradigm of human history. The Leaver life is not an antiquated thing that is 'back there' somewhere. Your task is not to reach back but to reach forward."
"But to what?"
"You're an inventive people, aren't you? You pride yourselves on that, don't you?"
"Yes."
"Then invent."

"White or black, male or female, what the people of this culture want is to have as much wealth and power in the Taker prison as they can get. They don't give a damn that it's a prison and they don't give a damn that it's destroying the world."

"In my experience, you never really know how you're going to handle a problem until you actually have it."


Link of the day: The Eight Extraordinary Meridians

You are eternal

Sunset

Sunrise

Nyingma Instiute Garden

Enlightenment Stupa

Buddha statue in the Japanese Tea Garden, Golden Gate Park

Japanese Tea Garden

View from Strawberry Hill in Golden Gate Park

Ocean Beach

California

I'm currently in my cousin's beautiful apartment in Emeryville, CA. My time so far in the Bay Area has been wonderful for the most part, even though Mercury is in retrograde and with traveling you should be extra cautious and aware. When I arrived yesterday I was greeted by a lovely soul, my friend Katherine, who hosted me for Saturday night in her home in the hills of Orinda. The air was fresh and the views were stunning and gorgeous (pictures to come). We ate delicious split pea soup and salmon. Then on Saturday evening we went to the Niroga Center in Berkeley for a youth sangha meditation sitting and discussion, which was enlightening, even though I was pretty exhausted from traveling. We discussed the question "Is there suffering?" and defining the ego, among other things. Because we are all part of the collective consciousness, since we are all one, every single action we take leaves an imprint on the collective consciousness, and therefore affects everyone. I'm really glad this was brought to the forefront of my thinking again because I had kind of put it on the back burner for a while, it was getting muddled with so many other thoughts. But now I'm definitely going to be more conscious of each action I take, and just how it will affect others. When you do things that are good for yourself, positive things, you are doing good for everyone.
This morning we visited the Nyingma Institute, also in Berkeley, for some morning Tibetan Yoga, after a nutritious breakfast of amaranth with wheatgrass green powder, agave, flax oil, and bee pollen. I had never done any Tibetan Yoga before, but I enjoyed it, this session was like a mix of kundalini yoga and tai chi, as well as a good amount of guided meditation. We worked on opening the heart chakra for most of the class and I really was able to feel the shift in my energetics. I also liked when we were standing and did an exercise in which to "sway like a water plant" which was a pretty neat analogy, to pretend to be a water plant for a minute. :) After class we walked around the bookstore at the institute, and the garden, which was lovely.
Before I parted ways with Katherine we ate lunch at Cafe Gratitude, which was awesome because when she was describing it to me, I remembered that earlier this summer I had read a very inspiring article in Ode magazine about this same restaurant! (Everything is connected).
It's an excellent vegan/raw foods restaurant in Berkeley with positive vibes and wonderful energy. I really liked the artwork and the taoist quotes on the walls.

Quote of the day (from Cafe Gratitude): By letting go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try and try, the world is beyond winning. -Lao Tzu

Currently reading:
Mindfulness, Bliss, and Beyond, by Ajahn Brahm
The Tao of Health, Sex, and Longevity by Daniel Reid
Traditional Foods are your Best Medicine, by Ronald Schmid
The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, Deepak Chopra
and catching up on my Scientific American issues:)

What I've been listening to:

Wale, a rapper from DC
Duffy, a singer from the U.K.
Lady Gaga, acoustic version of Poker Face.
Amorphous androgynous, I especially love their website's design.
The Best Hip Hop albums of 2008 - thanks Bloom

This link is a great resource for lots of excellent books on various topics, especially spiritually minded topics, the Gaia "Our Favorite Books" page. My favorite book is also the favorite of the Gaia community, The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho.

What I'm currently working on, becoming LEED Accredited.

Secrets of Super-Healthy People, from WebMD.

Astronomical update: The winter sky has some of the brightest stars visible from Earth. Of the twelve brightest stars, seven shine in winter: Sirius, Capella, Rigel, Procyon, Betelgeuse, Aldebaran, and Pollux.

Quote for the new year:
"The koan can do a miracle, although it is just a device. The question is with what urgency, with what totality you make your whole mind concerned with only the koan, twenty-four hours. It is not something you do for one hour and forget about it." ~Osho