Happiness is....

According to Mathieu Ricard in Happiness:  "a deep sense of flourishing that arises from an exceptionally healthy mind.  This is not a mere pleasurable feeling, a fleeting emotion, or a mood, but an optimal state of being.  Happiness is also a way of interpreting the world, since while it may  be difficult to change the world, it is always possible to change the way we look at it."

This has been the most stressful year of my life and I'm not out of the woods yet.

But I can get out.

I will get out because I have such a fantastic skill with standing.  It is the fundamental skill of happiness.  It is the path to the flourishing sense of well being that Mathieu Ricard talks about.

Most of my life has been about acquiring knowledge.  My mother was a professor, my father a journalist.  That's the way I was raised.  I've never really thought about acquiring skills as a value.  It was all about acquiring knowledge.

But programming has changed that.

I feel the flourishing of knowledge as I do this.  Just as I have felt the flourishing of peace when I commit to standing.

I will get out.

Because when you have a  healthy mind you see the patterns.  You see the right patterns.  You see what needs to be done and you do it.

Inner programmer

I keep forgetting that she's there, this inner programmer who speaks to me with such confidence every time I stand.  The polar opposite of everything I am usually thinking or feeling.

I stand and she emerges, and life is simple.  Just stand, she says, just stand and everything will be fine.  Just stand and your energy will grow.  Just stand and your vitality will grow.  Just stand and you will stay close to your values and strengths.  Just stand and your body will remember all the great things it is capable of, and your mind will have the thoughts you need to have.

Keep standing.  Just keep standing.  That's my voice.

Keep writing is my father's voice.

Keep standing is my voice.

Listen to me, she says.  Listen.

You're going to be fine.

Just relax and you're going to be fine.

Chi is the goal and the way.  You can't go wrong. It's impossible.

Making Standing My Default Behaviour

I've had an insight this morning.  A life changing insight.

My way out of debt, out of despair, out of this mid-life crisis really is this simple.  Make standing the default behaviour for whenever I'm feeling anxious, bored, distracted, lost, lonely, afraid.  I do that and I'm on a non stop path towards vitality and growth and power.

It's science.  It works for me.  It always works for me.  Standing makes me stronger, emotionally, psychically, creatively.  There has never been anything that I've done that has brought as much well being and pure energy into my life.  I don't have to believe in "myself."  I just need to believe in standing. Because standing put me in touch with all the energy and power that I need.

The beauty of this is that all my "negative" emotions become fuel for this positive energy.  Like fossil fuel.  Always renewable energy.  I don't want them to go away, because they are useful.  They help to feed the loop.  This is stress management, not stress eradication.

With this I don't have to imagine becoming rich, or becoming successful.  It's just a matter of course.  Just a matter of course correction.

Meaningful Goals

I'm back to standing regularly.

Not because I have an urge to stand.  Not because I believe, at this moment, that it's good for me.  Not for any of the reasons I did in the past.

I'm back because I have written this out as a meaningful goal.  To continue my morning standing practice.  It is a goal, like getting a book contract, that is important to me at a level deeper than just feeling.

For the next while, I'm going to place less trust in my feelings and intuitions.  More trust in what I know works and doesn't work in my life.  Standing works to make me feel better and stronger and more vital.  It always has.  It helps me manage my stress, and keep my body and energy strong.  It makes me feel powerful, whatever the circumstances in my life.

No let's correct that.  It doesn't make me "feel" powerful.  It makes me powerful.  If I work on the exercises and push myself, it makes me powerful. Through it I tap into power.

I am, and have always been afraid of being powerful.  Because there is anxiety in power.

I made a mistake a while back, I think, in deciding that I was no longer going to be driven by anxiety.  There is healthy anxiety and that can be a good force in one's life.  If one taps it, it can be really helpful, make you focus, get you moving.

Right now I'm feeling a lot of anxiety and I can use that to make a better life for myself and Ben.

I can use standing to manage that anxiety, and to manage the anxiety that comes with having a thriving, busy life.  I want to live quietly, but having a rich life is still important to me.  Seeing and living with life's complexity is important to me.

So, I stand.

When did I lose faith?

When did I lose faith in standing?  I must have, since a barely do it anymore.

Now there are other practices: running, morning writing, body scanning.  All important practices.  But once I was deeply committed to standing.  It was the only thing that I knew guaranteed me spectacular things.  It worked, and I stopped.

I'm going to try and approach this without judgement.  Just a quiet and gentle analysis.

I remember stopping in Banff because no one wanted me to go into the woods in the morning because of the Elk.  I never quite got the practice back, in large part because in Banff I started to become aware of what bad cardiovascular shape I was in.  So I started running.

Then I started becoming afraid of trees because birds were attacking me in the spring.  Then I realized I was going to lose this apartment, and it became painful to stay attached to that place.

I feel the judgement creeping up.  "You can't stay committed to anything."

Priming isn't working. I've had this as my homepage.  It hasn't encouraged me to stand.

Maybe it's time to officially give up?

Sleep

It's well after midnight and I've been struggling with insomnia, obsessions, some positive, some negative.

It's occurred to me now that I haven't done a corpse pose for a while.

Before standing there was lying, and just stillness.

I think I could use a little death right now.

Faith

According to Thich Nhat Han, faith is the first and foremost energy you have to cultivate if you're going to have real power in your life.

When I feel powerless over my life, I know that what is gone is faith.  Faith in myself, faith in my society, faith in the path that I've chosen for myself.

I've lost a lot of faith in myself this year.  Or rather faith in writing to sustain me.  Writing was always my path, and for a long time that path seemed to be leading me to the life I imagined.  I saw it as a sacred skill that I had cultivated and that would keep my safe.

Then I discovered standing.  I learned that there was an energy beneath writing that needed to be tapped if I was going to write well.

But something in me has stopped caring about writing.  Something in me has stopped believing, and without that, sometimes it's hard to keep up my passion for the standing.

At the same time, if I'm going to make the changes in my life that I have to make, I'm going to have to get used to some excitement.

I'm in exciting times right now, with the Maker Faire, and all I'm learning and mastering in technology.

It's good to temper that.  But I also need to learn how to tap it.

I don't want to undermine the path I'm on just because I'm afraid of some excitement.