Daily Routines of notable folks

This one is simple and golden.

But the site is filled with awesome thinkers and doers, each reporting how they organize themselves to do their work. I like that I can look down the selections by Occupations, like artists and mathematicians, and by Habits, like Nap-takers, haha, that's me, and Procrastinators, haha Ha!

Feel the earth, do nothing extra

(Took the following out of my email response to brother bobby, Judge Bob, riffing off Mt. Shasta sodas at the old Pack Saddle store near our house at the edge of town:)

 

A simple cycle of four phrases jumped out at me from a TaiChi book quite a few years ago, and I have been using them ever since. They are "Breathe. Relax. Feel the earth. Do nothing extra."

 

You were supposed to stand and follow those commands in preparation for a certain movement, called the Grand Chi.  I thought, cool! and tried out the Grand Chi. But I found that the words themselves without the movement were their own Pure Gold (maybe that's a good translation for Grand Chi, haha) and your body and mind respond and teach you how to use them. 

 

I started experimenting with the word cycle, like I have done forever with affirmations or practices.  Mom and I enjoyed sharing and comparing such things and what was working for us, but this was after that so probably about 14 years ago. Anyway, this little cycle of word prompts opened up for me in a powerful way and I have used it ever since. The commands are their own coach. They work anywhere, excellent for calming oneself in a busy moment, as a refocusing tool to clear the chatter or anxiety of the moment.

 

Because cycle works so well, it has earned my Top Honors as my opener for centering prayerwork: I attend to each command with as much gentle awareness as I can muster at that moment. Just that first set throws a lot of preoccupations out the door and renews. I kind of "coast" or float on the clean silence that is generated within from completing the set and holding them as a harmonic chord. By repeating the cycle when it seems needed, I continue to slough off the "extra" baggage that is not necessary,  going deeper, more refined in awareness, and reach a place of pure Float, suspended Being. ahhh. (It can't help but be holy, can't help but be In God.)

 

Of course, you can be sure my think-think-thinker Self pops her head in after a bit to take over. But just as often my contemplation will take me to lofty heights of pure gratitude, of Grace and "Seeing anew". Either way is good, fine. In all cases, once I realize I have left the wordless repose to either rejoin the ThinkFactory or be in some wondrous, exquisite Joy, I take a note of where I've come to, and either I am complete, or I go for another round. (I think this cycling process may be the same as what Thomas Keating calls "Jacobs ladder" where you experience the fruits of your efforts and have to leave that sweet space and "Start Again").

 

For a meditative centering prayer, I aim to sustain 4 full minutes of that pure being, finding that can fully replenish your whole self and feed your spirit like nothing else. It takes at least 20 minutes sitting to get 4 minutes. If you are lucky. I mostly fail, haha, but go wonderful places in trying, and when I DO catch 4 minutes, the next thing I know it has been 20 more, of full and glorious atOnement.  ahhh. And even though I do "mostly fail" the effort is no failure at all. It is like what happens when you are reading a Great Book, and after putting it down it expands throughout your day in fresh insight and understanding. A particular Grace seems to lift you in Order and glide you through the kind of  tangled crunch of imperatives that show up often in the afternoon. So even failing, you thrive!

 

Anyway, the interesting thing is that there is actually a sense of "feeling the earth", as if a fish might suddenly realize his suspension afloat an ocean of water, one can sense the anchored pull of the planet deep from the center of the world. It was a big help for me when Lauren was in China and Tibet -- my 16-year-old baby so very far away!!! -- I found comfort and connection that we were joined in the Deep by the pull of the mighty earth, and from that grounding I could telegraph my heart's love across the vast global arc to my darling at the "Rooftop of the World". Above and Below, we were connected.

 

Over the years, I have observed that my sense of the pull is much different in different locales. That's why I bring it up here: Shasta is the deepest pull I have experienced, about twice deeper than the next deepest, which is anywhere in the view of my own mountain, aboriginal name Avikwitch for Steep Slope, now called Mt. San Jacinto.

 

I realized several years back that, "Oh no!" I couldn't "feel the earth" here in Oregon. It didn't pull deep at all here at home or anywhere else. What had I done?!!! Moved to a place where I could not feel that pull, and now I am stuck here! Bummer.

 

But just this year, I realized why: here the "energy" rises up, like springwater, it pushes up all the time, like every green shoot, it streams upward constantly, in a flow that disperses right about hand level, as if you are ambling through a field of wild mustard. This is a new perception for me, and have to see where it takes me over these next many years.

 

OK, OK, probably said Enough, haha, woo-woo level reaching "Rronnkk-Rronnkk" levels.

Pythagorean Shrine

This lovely Pythagorean Triple Scattershot image created by Trigonometrist Michael Taylor, charts the ??location??results?? (haha, whooo outta my league) of every calculation for this:

"... Pythagorus’s Theorem works for powers of two but not for higher powers. In 2007, mathematician Sam Daoud plotted Pythagorean triples for right-angled triangles with non-hypotenuse side-lengths up to 4500 – a staggering total of 11730 value pairs. What is remarkable is that there are some obvious and some less-obvious patterns which are explainable. For example, whenever the legs (a,b) of a Pythagorean triple appear in the plot, all integer multiples of (a,b) must also appear in the plot. This produces the appearance of lines radiating from the origin. There are also sets of parabolic patterns with a high density of points and all their foci at the origin:"

I tell you, that Greek was in some deep understanding, look at the dance of pattern applied in a new orchestration. He was already strumming the tune.

I also love the code itself, 93 pages of microsoft word, here was the end of it, filling the screen after I opened the file in Notepad. I love the 21st Century and 2700-year-old Isle of Samos Man, whose birth was foretold by the Apollo's messenger, the Pythia of Delphi.