habit(at) for the soul

Having a soul is like having a cat as a pet.
No book you ever read about the creature is ever going to give you as much understanding about it, as living with one.

It is quite funny.
I can speak with authority: I had my first cat from the age of 19, for 19 years.
Fairly soon after this fantastic creature had to pass on after a good healthy cat’s life with me, I met my soul and welcomed it as a loyal companion in my life.

To my own surprise! 

Until then, ‘ souls’ where not on my radar, whether it would be having one or being one.
A body, yes....
A mind..... yeah, I could pinpoint them in my human being household.
But a soul......?
I couldn’t have begun to say anything with any form of authority about that.

Now, I find myself not only aware of it, I have gained a lot of understanding about it, simply by living with it and observing it.

And just as devoted I was to living with my cat and supplying it with what it needed, I can’t picture myself living without an awareness of (my) ‘soul’ anymore.

Any cat owner will tell you that they are great Zen masters and you can learn a lot about life just living with one.

Well, try living with ‘soul’, if you’d be interested in finding out about life!!!

This morning, my soul gently licked my forehead on waking up as an invitation to start the day playing with new inspiration.
I had fallen asleep on a question about some unusual behaviour for my part for this week
In wonderment, I’d expressed a desire to understand why I went through such a deep painful ditch of existential misery all of a sudden?

My soul, having consulted the Knowing, informed me why this has been a Good Thing, so I could learn from it.

The answer?

A soul-need had dropped under its existential minimum levels, causing all sorts of havoc.

Anybody who has lived with a cat knows how a soft furry dream like gentle Master of the Universe  can turn within seconds into a nightmare like hairy expression of indignation and resentment if the life sustaining services leave a lot to be desired.
Like a cat always finds a way to get its point across, without using a single word, the soul is also an expert. It attracts, one way or the other, what it needs.

But a soul need is a soul need. If you mess with those, you mess with the dynamics of life itself.
So, as challenging as it may be, it is actually a Good Thing that the soul has such power, to sort things out on its own account.

Most people ( with pleasantly smooth and smiling faces) don’t make a habit of only feeding the cat after days, when it jumps at your face on your arrival with al claws aiming for your eyes.  A regular supply of what it needs keeps everybody involved happy and healthy.

The soul is not very interested in food, it is interested in energy, in vibrations.

It needs variety, depth and relief to function well within  the body-mind-soul constellation.
It needs an e-scape it can thrive in and you’ve got to provide it with something that has all the characteristics of it natural habitat, to feel well with you.

This morning, my soul explained it to me in very clear energy in formation.

The e-scape needs to have three elements for it to thrive:

(be aware this is all energy speak, which doesn’t use words and is not about anything other than pure energy! That makes any description anywhere near accurate at best a good analogy!)

• -          Continuity of a structure to play in, work from(a home, a comfort zone, with recognisable characteristics like  shape, rhythm, flow)
• -          Inspiration to follow( new interesting influences, of a high(er) quality , more complexion, with (more) depth to it  relief variety and a reasonable amount of challenge)
• -          Express itself to its highest joy and be followed(initiating a change, taking the lead in a dynamic system, feel the response of other being tuning into its highest joy)

Much more understanding about how to view this was conveyed in this split second on waking up.
But there is more play and another e-scape than this computer to be enjoyed now.

To be continued in some other blog post......

Positions on the scale of creation

In previous blog posts I spoke about ‘ consumer’ and ‘ creator’ as positions in information management/ life. 

I took online database management as an illustration, to show that your power to change things depends on where you are in the system.

To me, these positions are not just ‘ two’ positions.
I would say there is a gradual scale between being fully consumed by being a consumer and being fully creative as being a creator and all the positions in between have their rightful and useful place on the scale.

I’ve put it in an image:

Being passive, on either side of the scale, means that you don’t relate much with your personal values to what is happening and why.
Being watchful, on either side on the scale, means that you are paying attention to what is happening and why and you relate observantly  to the values presenting themselves.
Being creative, on either side of the scale, means that you are causing things to happen, you are acting, actively influencing events by organising and expressing  your own values in a meaningful order.

Please take notice of the idea that it is a gradual scale. So you don’t ‘ jump’ from being passive to being watchful. You increase gradually the amount of attention you pay to what is happening and  why and in doing so you increasingly become aware of the presented values in relation to what is happening  and why.

What are your values?
I would say, it is everything your belief system produces.
Roughly, I would say the most elementary categories since they are the closest to home are:  thoughts & feelings.

It is what matters to you and how it matters to you, how you experience it.

In 6 more pictures it is related to your position to theavailable data in the field.

See how the persons mental positions moves from a distance to the heart of it.

Passive Consumer position

Watchful Consumer position

Creative Consumer position

Passive Creator position

Watchful Creator position

Creative Creator position

In doing so, there is an increase in attention, moving from the periphery to the centre.
But, once logged in, its focus shifts, from details ( on the consumer side) to the overall structural integrity on the creator side.

Ideally, in a vivid cycle, one moves gracefully this path, over and over and over again.

Since the creator, in the heart simply can’t see and appreciate the detailed results, so he needs to look back on ‘ himself’ and play with it, to experience his creation and acquire user input with valuable data on the perception of details and suggestions for improvement.

Anybody who has been involved in the back-end of a database-based website will recognise this workflow.

Anybody reading quite some spiritual teachings will recognise this last paragraph from a reality on macro scale:

The Creator needs human beings for it to experience itself.
Those experiences are stored and made retrievable, in the Knowing.

introducing me-time

In the previous two blog post I introduced:

-          Two meanings of content

-          Two positions of content: (co-)creator and end-users

I started to explain how being actively involved in the content of your life, as a co-creator, opens the way to make structural changes in a sustainable way.

But only logging in in the right place, isn’t changing anything structurally to the system, yet. Although ..... chances are you feel already in a slightly better position (more content-A).

In that frame of mind, you probably also see opportunities for small changes that would  improve the quality of the content (B). You feel your own influence and so you feel more content-A too.

Compared it again to logging into a database environment online.
Looking at the data stored, you see typo’s in the text somewhere and correct them, you make grammar corrections, update a link here and there and replace a photo with a more recent one. Or you remove to the achieve a whole lot of things nobody has been using for ages. Simple, relatively inconsequential changes, easy to make.

This is nice too and doing these things familiarises yourself with various ways of keeping your data up tot date, which is part of the purpose of the management system.

Structurally however, nothing much has changed.

For structural changes to take place, you need to relate to all data, all routines. That means, moving a step deeper into the settings of your systems, to the heart of it, the core, the control centre.

This may take a little more imagination to do in your off-line life shaping exercises.
It also takes a little bit more discipline in paying attention with full focus, courage and awareness of consequences.
Changing a setting in your core settings, has much more effect in more places than changing a ‘;’ into a ‘,’ in a text, as you can imagine.

Just ‘ doing it’ and ‘ see what happens’ may not be the wisest strategy to apply.
If all your systems go down as a result, can anybody support you?
If your whole appearance ( what you present to the world) changes in look and feel, will it scare your loyal customers ( friends, family, co-workers, clients etc) away? Do you want that?

But then again, if your system settings are outdated and not producing desirable results to your highest standard of quality anymore to your single most loyal end-user who spends a  complete lifetime with you (yourself!) anymore...something needs to be done!

From here it may get even a little bit more abstract.
The issue here is that, as far as I know, there is no concrete physical control panel to change these settings with your fingertips, that I can show you where it is, what it looks like  and how it works.
These settings are made using your mind, your thoughts.

But since that is the same ‘ device’ and ‘ interface’ you use as a user, you really have got to be aware of where you are in the process. There is no icon in the right hand corner indicating that you are logged in, no impressive menu structure looking distinctively differently from the users-interface.

What helps, to my mind, is to divide your time actively between two distinctively different things:

-          Service as usual, where you are open to the outside world, to work, play, socialise etc.

-          Me-time, where you are disconnected from the outside world. You are not involved in tasks for or with anybody else.

Me-time is the time where you go to the centre of your world, the core of your being and spend some time being completely in control of what you do and how you do it.
You are in the centre of your own attention and if and when you feel it is useful, you  monitor your systems. Just observe, to start with.
How am I doing? How am I feeling? What is on my mind?

Change nothing... just observe what asks for your attention, rolls over the screens of your inner eyes and see ( most of) it disappear.

Learn to see that in this mode.... none of what you see( or feel) is what appears like this on the outside. But it is giving you clues about what is going on under the bonnet, the place where you can make the desired changes, by the time you’ve got a good feel for it all.

To most of the people in the Western World at the moment, me-time is difficult.
We have programmed ourselves with the understanding that we need to be available and actively ‘doing’ something all day. That we are not-productive, doing ‘nothing’, and anti-social.
We have programmed ourselves with the understanding that  mind chatter is a bad thing that needs to be switched of.
We have programmed ourselves with the understanding that there are ‘ bad’ feelings and if you feel them there is something wrong with you.
... just to name a few.....

These programs kick you out of where your power for change lies, in no-time!

Before you can do anything else, under the bonnet, you’ve got to reprogram the time-out time on your device (your mind) . This is the  time your system allows any logged in user to sit and observe without doing anything.

Set a timer and take every 20 minutes a 5 minute break in which you ‘ do nothing’, you just are, alone with yourself.
You leave all the tasks you were working on and don’t pick up new ones ( no, not even eating, drinking, active toilet use, or smoking!).
You go somewhere where you are alone and you don’t talk to anybody.
All devices are switched of or left behind ( phones, p.c.’s)
You don’t take any input in ( no books, no food, no drinks) except for air, preferably fresh air.

If doing nothing is hard, you can walk. Preferably ‘ to nowhere in particular’, preferably in nature, away from human activities/ energies.

Every time before you go back into the world, ask yourself, do I feel centred?

It doesn’t matter if you don’t, or even have no idea what that would be.
You’ll recognise it when it is there.

That is the feeling that is indicating: you are in full control, right in the middle of you own Universe.

Create the routine of having (that often? Yes! You need to become comfortable with spending time with yourself in the core)  me-time  and feel this centred-feeling when it occurs. 

That is your indicator that you are in the right place to make sustainable structural changes to your life. You are logged in and all control powers are available to you. Happy in yourself.

Happily and confidently self -centred in a complete different meaning than egotistical.

These are the differences:

Happily self-centred: your awareness is involvend in all that is part of your Universe

Happily egotistical:
 your awareness is only involvend in all the parts of the Universe that you feel are pleasing you.
What you don't like (although relevant to your world) is kicked out of the awareness.

To be continued....

positions and roles in content

This blog post continues where I left of yesterday, where I introduced the idea to change ( mental ) position looking at ‘ content’.

Let go of the idea that you need to create the sensation of feeling content with what is in your reality.
Adopt the idea that you need to be content(B), with what is in your reality... see: in the other meaning!!! Be content(B), be part of the data-set in your reality, complete with all your honest feelings and thoughts about it ( simply: more relevant data!).

OK, so, that is the core idea. Now what?

Now it is time to actively partake in it, start playing with it all.

How?
It begins with actively reminding yourself of the (positive) meaning this whole dataset, with you in it, has in your eyes. That means answering the question:
“How can being here, in amongst this set of data, actually been viewed as a good thing?”

Keep in mind. In doing this, you don’t have to deny that you don’t  like all of it, in the order it is presenting itself  in right now! You are not pretending nor denying anything, just shifting focus (for now).
The point of this part of the whole process here is to acknowledge that you got yourself here as a result of all the choices you made before today. There must have been good reasons for choosing these elements, otherwise you wouldn’t have chosen them. Even if you believe it was your loved-ones, teachers or society choosing these things ‘ for you’, there are reasons why you are invested in these very same things too.

List them, openly, honestly, as many as you can think of:
“I am here, in amongst this lot, because it provide(s/d)  me with the joy of .......”

Making such a list, viewing the available data from within, in a meaningful and positive light, relating it to the meaning they once had (and maybe still have)  to yourself, is allowing the same set of data produced by the creator (content-B) to be re-viewed in a semi-OK style (content-A).
That is the first step to happiness, like content ( B)  is only a step into becoming information ( that selection of data that is meaningful for the end-user).

Don’t stop here, if you desire to see significant changes!
Only looking at what is missing is just as ineffective  as only focussing on the blessings.

You are now aware of all the keys ingredients: what is missing and what you like about it and why.
Having both sides in mind, is allowing yourself to shift into the position with much more creative power, you are shifting now from the perspective of the end-user to the perspective of the creator.

These are two different roles you have in the process of shaping your life: you are both creator of content (B)  and end-user ( hopefully: content A).

It really helps to make a distinction between those roles.
As long a s you are confusing yourself with yourself, there is not much either of you sees they can structurally and meaningfully do.
Confusing?

Bear with me a while longer, I’ll explain that some more, comparing this with similar processes you are probably more familiar with: internet websites.

In information management (think database management for websites), when you are a client/customer, you may have some adding-, structuring-  and changing rights on the users-end, but you have no rights to change anything in the structural order of the overall system!
Only those who log-into the database as a creator, can make any really significant structural changes to its structure and programs.

As a consumer, you can’t change anything under the bonnet of ‘ Google’ , ‘ Amazon’ or ‘ Facebook’.
Yes, you are allowed to create your own account, change the look and feel, add information in your profile. Fine, jolly nice. You can feel very creative with the options given.
But you can’t add functionality to it that Google, Amazon or Facebook haven’t allowed you to.
Try changing a price for a book, try influencing the order Google shows results to others, try altering something on somebody else’s Facebook page.
It is not happening through the front door... you don’t have the creative rights to do so.

Even a developer working for Google/Amazon or Facebook, can’t change anything structural entering the system using the customer entrance. They need to go through the staff-entrance, to have access to their control panels, in the back-office of the system.
They don’t need to leave their chair for it, they can use the same device for it... they just need to login differently.

The same principle applies in your own off-line life creating exercise.

If you look at the appearance of data in your life as  a non-content(A) (end-) consumer,  ...... you are not in the right(full)  creative position to make structural, significant changes.
There, in that position, you can see what is presented. You can have an opinion on what you like and what you don’t like.  You might even have suggestions what would please you more.
However, unless you personally get ‘in’-volved with the fields where all the data are controlled and handled,  you very objectively can’t see all the options to make it better. You don’t have access to the control panels of all of it and so you can’t make sustainable meaningful changes with structural integrity.

That has nothing to do with the fact that you are not pleased with the results, (being a human or spiritual malpractice... doing something ‘ wrong’)
It has everything to do with the fact that you are not, under the bonnet, logged in as (co-)creator, who knows why this structure was made, knows the reasons why this composition is arranged like this, in favour of other possibilities.

A creator also knows all the consequences of changing ‘ one thing’ somewhere  deep in the structure.  It often has consequences on many levels. As simple as it may seem on the users-end...... those structural changes need consideration and handling with care.

But if all the end-users complain structurally about something and give signals that they need different things, the (co-)creator is obviously more than willing to be at service and re-creates.
A (co-)creator does the necessary to evolve the system from 6.1 in to 6.2, or revolutionizes it in jumping from 6.2 to 7.0, if more drastic changes are necessary to be made.  Usually, after testing the new routines, before putting them life, by the way.

Being in it now, acknowledging you are the creator, under the bonnet of the meaningful infrastructure of the data, you are now in a position to look around and see (and adjust) the order in it.

That is the only position, where you have all creation rights ( to your own creations).

This is where I have to put in a comment on my use of the deliberate use of the word co-creation . Usually (unless you are a hermit, living entirely away from everybody else) you’ve got various plug-ins running in your system.  Pieces of programming more people are involved in (co-workers, partners, friends). Even though you are a co-creator of those programs, they’ll not appreciate it much if you make fundamental changes tothat without them being in the loop of your actions, preferably acting with their consent on the proposed changes.

Here is an illustration of what I said so far about positions.

The orange O is the mental position you take, relative to the data (X's) in your world.

End-user perspective:
 looking at what is going on in your life from a distance, based on it's appearances.
Not in a position to change it's structure.

Content (A):
Logged in as being part of the content (B)
Being aware of appearances as well as positive reasons for this (own) co-creation

You are ' in' the content (B) state. Time to look at your control panel and explore your possibilities.

Moving from simply being in a content ( A+B) state to a happy and centered state:

Centered: in the content heart of control 

More on that, in the next blog post.

The art (and benefits) of being content

There are two meanings to the word ‘ content’.

·         In common speak: it refers to a sensation, a feeling, indicating that things are in reasonable good order,  in their world. Nothing to complain about really, but also not super duper fantastic. ( Meaning A in this piece)

·         In information management jargon, it is a set of data as they are put meaningful together by a creator. Technically, this is before they become information, because that is at the point where an end-user relates to them as ‘ meaningful’. ( Meaning B in this piece)

These two meanings may seem ‘ worlds apart’ at first glance. 

This morning, I had a play relating them very closely to each other.
I really liked what I saw (was content (A) with it) and decided this was to be the content (B) for today’s blog post.

Do you want to see how my creation sits with you?

Here it is:

If you are not content (A), you are definitely not happy with your situation.
You, being on the receiving end,  are not calling what is happening ‘fantastic, useful and meaningful‘.
Your overall impression is that something is missing...( usually ‘in the outside world’).
You reckon that something needs to be added to the mix of your life, enabling you to be happy.

More often than not, even if that ‘ thing’ you pointed out to be missing is added, it doesn’t fulfil you, really, or satisfy  you, really..... something (else) is apparently missing and so the search goes on.

What if...under the bonnet of your awareness, this is the case:

What is actually missing is.... something essential (from) you.
Your heart is not in it, your core being, your drive, your essence is not in it, not really, not fully.

What if...
you, yourself are not a part of the set of data you are looking at ( and you are always looking at and interpreting data!) you are not part of the content (B).
You are not content(A+B)... Yes, this time meaning both meanings simultaneously.

What if ...
you need to be content first, with the data (not about the data) before you can be happy?

Oh dear me......am I saying here, like so many spiritually inspired self-development websites and books, that you need to be content with things, even if you don’t feel that way about them, before you get anywhere near happiness? ( Sigh)
Am I saying, again like most of those writings, that you’ve got to mean it too!?
Pretending apparently doesn’t count, the Universe is watching you and knows always what your real feelings are.

This appears to be a catch-22 situation.
How the **** can that ever be done?

If you are interested in how I see it can be done, read on.
I am not leaving you empty handed here, I am sharing my experience.

Change ( mental ) position!

In this case:

Let go of the idea that you need to create the sensation of feeling content with what is in your reality.
Adopt the idea that you need to be content(B), with what is in your reality... see: in the other meaning!!! Be content(B), be part of the data-set in your reality, complete with all your honest feelings and thoughts about it ( simply: more relevant data!).

I’ll describe how this minor change, of using the same word in a different way, has a great deal of effect, giving you access to your full creative power. 

To be continued..... in following blog posts.

Changing position

This whole blog is about processing information.  “Bleuh... nerd alert......booooooring!” (????  )

Well, if you like the topic of ‘ simply being happy and enjoying yourself’ better, than this may be of more interest to you than meets the eye.

I work from the understanding that life is a creative process. How you process information is, to my mind, of high influence on two scores:

·         how much you like what is going on in your life and

·         how much influence you feel you have on how it takes shape.

Both are known to be strong indicators for happiness and a sense of wellbeing.

If I had to point out one activity I find helpful for boosting up your wellbeing, than it would be ‘change your position’.

I see so much benefits in this, that I say (and live by) :” If it is no joy, change your position”.
Which refers always primarily to ‘changing my mental position’ even in the cases when changing my body position is part of it, or doing something else.

Changing the angle of how you look at something, changes the experience and gives you new, fresh, information.

It works everywhere, always.

Taking pictures on eye-level and finding them a bit boring with the horizon always as a flat centrepiece in the composition?
Change the angle, bend you neck  and see what happens. Look down from a birds-eye perspective, (or up) and.....there are no more flat lines in the centre of your attention anymore.
Zoom in, see the details of the scene, or zoom out, see the patterns of the scene, the broader picture and be amazed by the new things  you see., the lines and shapes in the completely new composition of the exact same reality, without you stepping away from it.

Bored with looking? Close your eyes and listen, feel, taste, smell..... taking your eyes out of the equation changes the whole experience again.

General advise:
Bored with doing the same things over and over again in the same way?
Do them differently!

Walk an ordinary boring trip to the wheelie bin with bare feet and it is surely not boring anymore.
Eat the same-old meal on another location, presented in a different way and observe how different it tastes. Or use the very same ingredients and see how many completely different meals you can make from it, in taste, flavour, texture.

What I find important to point out is what happens ‘ under the bonnet’. Usually fairly soon, what is boosting your happiness, is that you are changing your relative position to the formation, the order of the ‘data’ you receive.

In looking at the ‘ data’ in a different order, from a different angle, you see different things. Things that were hidden, from the position you were in, are now more obvious. Things that where ‘in your face’ but you had reached your’ levels of satisfaction’ with, are moving to the background, making room for other things to be viewed as more important, relevant to the overall composition of the reality you are in right now.

Which gives the joy of knowing to have a choice, the choice to see (more of) what is meaningful to you at any given moment. You can influence the quality of the experience, you can influence how much you like what you see, by looking at it differently.

That may be perceived as ‘ well, nothing has really changed then, has it? It is just adding another veneer on the same situation!’ What use has that?

Good point, if this was all that was to it. However, the joy doesn’t stop there! It influences your next step.

From that different mental position, you are attracted to different things in the set of available data.
Another snippet of data in the formation has become more meaningful ( compared to the others in the same field). It is allowed to take the lead in the formation.
In allowing that to happen, you get from the very same set of data, a different experience, different information and so you’ll make different decisions. 

You have opened yourself up to the possibility to move from there into another direction than the directions you are familiar with. Especially useful if you’ve had enough of taking certain routes that you find not so joyful  (anymore).

Yes, I can tell you in advance based on my own experiences: not all experiments on changing your position will produce glorious new ways.

However, in improving your experimenting skills of changing your mental position and looking at the same set of data differently, you are learning to see what it is you actually like to see more of, more often and which directions you prefer, seeing now a palette of choice.

Seen like this, the way you look at things, does make a world of difference.