Life

Nothing's Gonna Change My World

September 13, 2015 By Julian Kaufmann

Nearly 2600 years ago a wise man noted that the only thing that is constant in life is change. Heraclitus taught, “The world is not to be identified with any particular substance, but rather with an ongoing process governed by a law of change.” 1

Change is the ultimate reality of life and how we deal with this fact influences our lives greatly. For all our existence we have struggled with how to come to terms with the varying nature of life and its impermanence. After all, the world will keep on spinning and tomorrow will bring a new day. What will we do with the moment we have now?

While accepting the ever-changing nature of life is ultimately the key to finding peace, it can be difficult to practice and master. All too often we unknowingly cling to attachments – be it people or things. We suffer as a result when the world inevitably changes, potentially severing our attachments in the process. Fearing loss we may clutch onto people or conversely avoid any deep connections, neither of these allows us to fully experience the connection to life itself.

The Tao Te Ching offers guidance stating to “let all things come and go effortlessly, without desire.” Of course actually doing these things can at times go against our very nature.

Likewise the bible reminds us that while we are in this world we are not of this world. This distinction of separating our true self from the world we experience, if we are able to make it, can allow us to connect with our higher consciousness. We make contact with the infinite source.

When we are no longer able to change a situation – we are challenged to change ourselves. -Viktor E. Frankl

One of my favorite Beatle songs is Across The Universe. Its chorus goes:
Jai Guru Deva, om
Nothing’s gonna change my world
Nothing’s gonna change my world
Nothing’s gonna change my world
Nothing’s gonna change my world

Being comfortable with discomfort and change allows us to live more fully. Leaning into the vulnerability and volatility of life, opens us to vast array of wonderful experiences. I am grateful to God for each day and the variety we can experience.

Meanwhile my words are flying out like endless rain into a paper cup.

“Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Sept. 2015. http://www.iep.utm.edu/heraclit/

What Will Bowen taught me about the world’s largest ball of paint

September 2, 2015 By Julian Kaufmann

This weekend I was fortunate to meet and listen to Will Bowen, the best selling author most widely known for his Complaint Free World book and its accompanying challenge. The Complaint Free World challenge is to simply go 21-consecutive days without complaining. Sounds easy right? That is until you realize just how damn hard it is. (I just complained!)

As a queue to help you remember not to complain and to track your progress, Will includes purple rubber bracelets you wear daily on your wrist. Whenever you complain you switch the bracelet to the other wrist and reset your clock. Day 1 begins each time you switch wrists. This process repeats until you go 21-days without complaining, thus keeping the bracelet on the same wrist for that length of time.

Bowen says it can take between 4-8 months to make actually make it through 21- no complaint days. What makes the challenge difficult is that we often do not even realize how habitual our complaining is, so the first step is to become aware of our thoughts and then we can make adjustments. Bowen went on to stress that life unfolds day by day and is cumulative. That is, the little things we do each day add up to determine the body of work we create.

This is where the world’s largest ball of paint comes in.

Bowen shared the story of how he and his daughter went on vacation touring obscure sites throughout the Midwest. Part of their journey brought them to Alexandria, Indiana, which is home to a giant ball of paint that is over 14 feet in circumference and weighs over 2.5 tons.

What is remarkable is this present day paint planet started out as an ordinary baseball, which has a circumference of 9-9.25 inches and weighs between 5-5.25 ounces. (32,000 ounces is equal to 1-ton) Each day since January 1, 1977 the ball’s owner has had a single layer of paint applied on it. According to the Dampney Engineered coatings company, a single coat of paint has a theoretical thickness of 1 mil (.001inch). So for the past 14,123 days the ball has been growing through having a fresh coat of paint applied to it. While each day the addition of a new coat may not seem to be much, over time this cumulative addition is quite profound.

As the saying goes “Rome was not built in a day.”

Now back to what we are building each day with our lives.

Eliminating complaining for 21-days is a challenging experiment, but one that can dramatically improve your life and the lives of those around you. Imagine what we could build with our lives if we kept complaint free for our remaining days.

Links

A Complaint Free World http://www.acomplaintfreeworld.org/

World’s Largest Ball of Paint http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/9792

Baseball (ball) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseball_(ball)

Today's Menu

August 26, 2015 By Julian Kaufmann

It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters. –Epictetus

Once upon a time a man found out that he had cancer. After receiving his diagnosis from his doctor, the man left the office feeling dazed and confused. A surge of emotions gripped him as he walked towards his home. He wondered what would happen to him, his family and his friends if he were to die as a result of the disease. He kept replaying his doctor’s words in his mind and his imagination would take him away to some very frightening outcomes. He was completely engrossed in his thoughts as he shuffled home, oblivious to the world around him.

When he returned home he told his family about the news from the doctor and they reacted as you might expect, with tears and worried concern. Later that night the man was alone in the kitchen when his father, a cancer survivor himself, came in to speak with his son.

After hugging his son, the father told the son to please sit down while he show him a valuable lesson his own father had shown him many year ago after he had lost his job. The son reluctantly complied with his father’s request and watched as the old man took out 3-pots, filling them with water and then placing them on the stove. The father then took out an egg, a carrot and some coffee beans that he also grinded. The son, growing impatient said, “Dad I am not hungry. Don’t you understand what has happened to me?” The father slowly turned to his son and said, “I know you are not hungry for food, my son. What I am about to show you will nourish your soul.” The father then placed the egg, the carrot, and the coffee in the water filled pots and then proceeded to boil them all.

The son sat at the table, growing impatient with his elderly father’s demonstration while at the same time his thoughts became more anxious about the news he had received from his doctor.

After placing the egg and carrot on plates and then pouring the coffee into a small mug, the father returned to his son at the table presenting to him what he had just cooked. “Well what do you see?” the father asked. “A carrot and egg and some coffee”, said the son.

“Let’s look closer,” the father said and asked his son to feel the carrot, to peel the egg -shell and sip the coffee. As the son did these things the father said, “All of these things faced the same adversity, the boiling water. The carrot once hard and strong has become soft. The delicate fragile egg has hardened. Yet the coffee bean has changed the water into something magical and delicious.” The question for you my son is which of these are you going to be as we confront your diagnosis.”

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom – Victor Frankl

Life happens. Things don’t go our way and tragic events are also often part of the experience of being alive. Life can make a hard person soft – wearing them down and they in turn may wither. On the other hand life can toughen a person changing the once fragile heart into something hard. Still we have another way and that is to recognize the power to choose our response to circumstances. We can be a transformative agent that can change the environment itself and in that process make the world a better place.

Which will you choose?

Playing what's not there and the sound of silence

August 19, 2015 By Julian Kaufmann

Miles Davis was a luminary figure in the world of jazz music. His distinctive phrasing and muted playing are hallmarks of his singular sound. Through his music, Miles expresses the unique talents he possesses and the result is a sound unlike any other.

What I love about Miles is the expansiveness in which he plays. His songs are both rich and deep, yet he can seem to play sparingly. Still when he does play, it is done impeccably and elegantly. Miles can often create more emotion in his few notes that another player can by playing a more complex riff. With Davis and his music, often less is indeed more.

Much of what I find so appealing to his sound is that he often is pausing, doing nothing and making no sound. It is from this place of silence that his notes resonate so well when he does play. The contrasts in sound and his use of silence for his muted trumpet are exquisite to my ears.

Unfortunately we often do mot have enough silence in our lives. We become focused on whatever role we are playing, whatever we are desiring or not, and the resulting music we make with our life becomes scattered without much melody or rhythm.

Our roles we often play in our lives include our jobs, our relationships, our health issues, etc. If our sense of identity becomes wrapped up in these activities or roles, our ego dominates our consciousness and we appear to lose our connection with the divine. Instead of just being, our focus is shifted on doing. Instead of allowing for silence and space, we try to cram more and more into our day. The result is a frantic, jumbled sound.

If a musical measure where an analogy for your day, how would it look and how would it sound? Would it be monotone (one long note) or perhaps many, very fragmented, dissonant notes?

If your day is filled with one long note or if there were so many notes crammed on top of each other into the measure of the day, it would not be pleasing to listen to. The measure would be full, but there would be no space for our ear to process the music. The resulting notes would not be very appealing musically speaking, probably a dull hum. Melody, rhythm and harmonies are keys to a good piece of music and the same is true for us and the measures of our days.

Space between the notes is needed to create music.

Wayne Dyer in his Getting in the Gap book described the space between our thoughts as the gap. Dyer further called the gap, the “exquisite” place where miracles occur and what awaits us there is the experience of activating the higher human dimensions of insight, intuition, creativity, and peak performance; as well as coming to know relaxation, enchantment, bliss, and the peace of making conscious contact with God[1].”

We need our downtime – a time of pause and rest.

More and more research points to the importance of sleep. I confess to having some Type A personality traits and that the phrase “ I can sleep when I die” was a type of mantra for me in my driven, early days. Today I am much more mindful of the need for and the restorative benefits of sleep. The sleep state is an extreme example of the space between conscious thoughts.

Meditation and prayer allow us to connect with our higher power – allowing the creative genius that reside within us the ability to come out and play.

Measure your measure – open up and allow your creativity to come forth. Make room for your self to breathe.

Like Miles Davis said – “Don’t play what’s there; play what’s not there.”

As a practice – begin to focus on what is not there.

The gap – the exquisite space that can lead a greater connection with God.

What is not there is the un-manifest – the divine creative energy from which all things emanate.

[1] Dyer, Dr. Wayne W. (2012-12-03). Getting In the Gap: Making Conscious Contact with God Through Meditation (Kindle Locations 76-78). Hay House. Kindle Edition.

What is Secondary Energy?

August 12, 2015 By Julian Kaufmann

Secondary is energy is energy that is derived from another energy, the primary energy.

One of the most common examples of secondary energy that enhances our lives is electricity.

Electricity, the flow of electrons resulting from electric forces, is caused by another primary energy being expended to create the driving force – the voltage. The electricity we use to power our homes and offices primarily comes the burning of natural gas or coal, nuclear fission, and increasingly through the power of the sun or the harnessing of wind.

In the case of wind-powered electricity, the primary energy would be due to temperature differences that cause winds that blow throughout the earth. Thermal currents result as air travels. Electricity is produced by the blowing wind rotating the turbine blades that in turn creates an electric force in the generator. The primary energy of the wind is transformed into the secondary energy of electricity.

Electricity can be easily observed and experienced as a secondary energy, while we may not be aware of the primary energy that is the true source of its power. For example we can merely flick a switch and then have light whenever we want. The electricity surges at our command, utilizing its energy to fulfill our wishes, providing light and/or power. Too often though we lose sight of the primary energy that is at the heart of all life itself.

The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao[i].

The name that can be named is not the eternal Name.

The Tao Te Ching is wonderful book that contains timeless wisdom and its opening lines speak of the difficulty we have with conceptualizing the true source of all there is. In many ways we tend to focus on the secondary energies that are more readily apparent that the ultimate primary energy – God or the Tao.

Since the Tao could only create itself it was said that it fell in on itself creating the first force of Yin. As a result of the creation of Yin and the falling inward, a resulting opposite force, one that pushes out, was created which is known as Yang. Isaac Newton later postulated his 3rd law[ii] which states for every action there is an equal an opposite reaction. The phenomenon Newton codified of action and opposite reaction played out as Yin fell in and Yang pushed out. This back and forth of poles (Yin and Yang) gave rise to a third force Chi – which is the life force that we are most aware.

Chi, Prana and the Holy Spirit are all names for the animating force that energizes living things. But just like the Tao Te Ching stated several thousand years ago, that the name that can be named is not the eternal name.

While we have many names for the observable, derived energies, there is one, ultimate energy, an ultimate power, from which we all come from.

[i] Mitchell, Stephen (2009-10-13). Tao Te Ching (Perennial Classics) (p. 3). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

[ii] http://www.physicsclassroom.com/class/newtlaws/Lesson-4/Newton-s-Third-Law