LIFE IS SIMPLE AND WE SIMPLY COMPLICATE IT
New Helper With You In Mind
This 8½ x 11 inches 254 pages, large format, durable plastic cover and spiral bound book is structured for easy use and access.
Price: $35.00
If you're interested in emotional growth and spiritual development, this book can help. In it you will find
In the workbook section there are
- Easy exercises to help you find new depths and meanings in the fascinating self. (example)
- General life storyline helps you remember life from birth to your present age and see more clearly behavior patterns you have developed.
- Life storyline for specific areas also helps you discover both successful and unsuccessful behavior patterns in the five areas of Self-Expression (includes Creativity) Relationship, Finance, Career and Health
- Applaud yourself for successful patterns of thoughts, feelings and actions
- Change patterns of unsuccessful behaviors by turning to tool kit in the appendix
S M I L E
Would you like a new experience-or even the same one differently? If so here you go-a new book-Life Is Simple and We Simply Complicate It.
Thrive means to reach out, to wonder, to explore, to be curious, to experiment, to invent and try out new things and improve on what we know. Why is it then that life is fundamentally simple and we simply complicate it in our ordinary behaviors? Perhaps it's because thriving pushes us beyond the boundaries of tried-and-true and into new thoughts, feelings and actions, so that our needs to survive and thrive oppose each other at times.
If we lived in a culture that freely allowed thriving, we could grow up accepting disappointment of failure, discouragement of rejection, the hurts and sadness that come with loss. We could accept the fears and angers others hurl at us. But in our early developmental years most of us were trained not to accept life on its terms but to tacitly agree with the values set for us by others and do whatever is necessary to produce results matching those standards.
Emotional scarring is often a major result of cultural training. However, the good news is that we can learn to deal with damage in ways that make it nurturing, so that life, with all its complexities, becomes simple again. When this happens we have returned to innocent (undamaged) mind.
With its interesting discussions, strange but simple questions, short-short stories, illuminating exercises and Your Life's Storylines Life Is Simple and We Simply Complicate It is a book that can help you return to innocent mind.
A Few Simple Hints- Life is simple when we realize that complication is part of thriving
- Returning to innocent mind is innocence with knowledge
- What doesn't kill you makes you stronger and hopefully wiser
- The purpose for humans on planet earth is self-discovery-enlightenment
After reading the stories and discussions, considering the questions and working with the exercises, I'm sure you'll agree that Life Is Simple and We Simply Complicate It.
GLASS DOORS
Aside from supporting the race, why would anyone want children?
Like a hunting dog pointing at quail, Julie's mind pondered this question often. But today there was something in the way Arnold's body asked the question. It was like leaning into a wind that would hold him up without blowing him over.
Julie wanted to believe this was the most important, most real proposition he'd ever considered. Indeed why would she want children? Maybe she'd never heard the question until now. Perhaps Arnold had never asked the question before, even though he claimed he'd asked it of every girl for the past twelve years ... and there had been many.
Laying her seat back, Julie watched the picture perfect white surf and blue sky as they drove with the slow summer traffic through Carlsbad, with Arnold's hand resting on her bare thigh just below the hem of her white tennis shorts. Today she'd allow it.
In this traffic, San Diego could be more than an hour away. She closed her eyes. Unseen until the last moment, sleep approached like a circling hawk.
Then her eyes jerked open. Again she saw the surf and sky and felt the hand on her leg and now wanted to ask, Oh really? But her sleep-hawk circled and circled, slow and silent. She let its shadow descend, cover and consume.
When the engine shut off, Julie awoke. There was no sky or surf. On the right were large, glass, double doors. On the left were black steel posts supporting the high dark green roof. In front was a street busy with cars. Behind was another busy street. Arnold was saying, "...sweetheart we're here. Time for sleeping beauty to come to the party." She hated his cavalier attitude.
On the door, in gold script letters, she read the words SEA BREEZE CLINIC. Never would she select that font again. There were lots of graphic artists. If customers insisted on that style, they'd have to go somewhere else, and she wouldn't care if they did.
Heart pounding to no recognizable rhythm, Julie was short of breath. The hypnosis sessions, had they worked?
Tears she'd never let be seen, closed her throat. Arnold reached a hand out. She pushed it away and refused to look at him. In one motion, her hand yanked the handle as her shoulder slammed outward. The heavy Taurus door crunched against the black steel post. Julie was on her feet in the next swift motion. "I'll park hon and..." The door banged shut behind her.
Going up three cement steps, a whimper escaped. She'd never had an abortion. How could she know what to expect?
Why did Julie push Arnold's hand away? Would the story have to be different if Julie had accepted his hand?
What About Relationships
Relating is necessary to enlightenment. Enlightenment is the state of knowing self as all, while being a separate entity. Such a state could not occur for an individual if he was the only item in the universe.
We only know ourselves through reflection from within and from without. Each moment and all realities within that moment reflect us to us. In each moment we can see who and what we've been, who and what we are and who and what we are becoming.
Relationship with ourselves is the same as our relationship with items and other life forms including humans. Some people tend to think they relate differently to animals, flowers, worms and birds etc. than to themselves and other people. Not true. If I have fear in my relationship with myself I have fears, trepidations, anxieties (however you want to speak of it) about how items and other life forms will impact me. That puts fear somewhere close to the base of my relationships.
Relationship comes from being related, which means something in common. If we are related in no other way, we have existence in common with all things. The suffix (ship) means to deal with, to do something about. So when we relate in any way, we are creating a relationship.
Relating is our nature. It's not something we can stop doing, but we can determine that we will relate in a way that does or does not empower, and that choice is always ours.
The human-to-human level gives our relationships their form of parent/child, husband/wife, teacher/student, boss/employee, lovers, playmates, workmates, enemies etc. These relationships can always be nurturing or toxic. Again, that choice is ours.
What if God and the Devil were simply each other in drag and nobody knew it?
An Exercise
IMAGINE
Imagine a three-position toggle switch…on, middle and off. Call the on position positive, the off position negative and the middle position neutral or zero.
- Recall an event (pleasant or unpleasant). While keeping your attention focused on it, put the handle of the switch in the on or positive position and notice how you feel physically and emotionally. Next put the switch handle in the off or negative position and notice what you feel physically and emotionally.
- Now switch to the neutral or zero position (not positive or negative) and be aware of how you feel physically and emotionally.
- If you are feeling blank, nothing, empty, relaxed, stirred up or just different from the other two positions, you are moving toward quietude.
If you have an intention to experience quietude in the midst of daily life, in time you will get there. Alan Watts used to say, "If you can't meditate in a boiler factory you can't meditate." In other words, if you can't experience quiet in the midst of noise, you can't experience quiet.