What is th Flow?

Oren Harris has somehow a new website, and i really enjoyed reading through it.

 Here are some of the highlights:

What is the Flow?

The Flow is a state of being in which the infinite is introduced to and perfectly integrated with the finite. It is infinite possibilities and the exact conclusion. It is all knowing and knows nothing. It is all of existence and non-existence. When you work and live from the Flow, you exist and work in the relative world from the perspective of the unbounded world. You spontaneously act in the most intelligent and life supporting way. Life becomes more effortless and charming.


 

Bruce Lee : Legendary Martial artist

Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water my friend.

ESB

Energy sensitive beings have a different operating system and therefore a different success blueprint in the areas of relationship, business, communication and transformation. These services are specifically designed for Energy Sensitive Beings (ESB’S). We engage in a process of discovering the immense gift of sensitivity and how to effectively, powerfully, joyfully, and abundantly operate in the world as a highly sensitive being.

My fast for Body and Soul

“Only in quiet waters do thing mirror themselves undistorted. Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world.” – Hans Margolius

I think fasting from time to time is important for everyone of us. But what most people do as fasting, (not eating this, starving, not eating that, etc) is not what I have in mind.

My kind of fast should be more life supporting, it should have a long lasting positive effect on my physical and (more important) psychological health.

I am inspired by various articles I read on blogs about minimalism. One of them is about A Media Fast on the zenhabits blog. I did something similar last year, when i put away my laptop for 2 weeks and did not have a cell phone anyways. But this time I want to set myself some clearer goals for the fast.

The goal is to get rid of all these little addictions that form my life like caffeine and sugar. But also get rid of all these little habits that influence me, like spending too much time in front of the computer, cluttering my life and not getting enough physical exercise.

Some of the media fast stuff will not be too hard for me, since I do not have a TV, a radio, DVD player. No newspaper is coming to my door every day and  I don't go to the theater very often. But on the other hand my computer has become my all in one doorway to the media world. I watch movies and TV series on it, I read newspapers and blogs on it, I use it for communication and for listening to music. (And during my internship I sat in front of it 8 hours a day during work)

That has to change. Therefore the most important part of my fast is to reduce the time I spend in front of my computer from currently 8 - 10 hours a day down to 30 mins a day maximum. But there are other things I want to change too. Currently I am drinking something with caffeine every day. Also I think that I am running around with my headphones plugged into my ears too much. So, to summarize it, I listed my does and don't s for the fast.

What I will not do in these 2 weeks:

• No Caffeine
• No extra Sugar
• No Alcohol
• only organic, fresh, vegetarian food
• No TV
• No Music (meaning: not using my mp3 player  and other music devices to distract me)
• minimize Cell phone use (not sure how, but probably turn off the whole day and only use when really necessary)
• use Computer max 30 mins a day
• go to bed before 11 pm

I assume through these changes there will be a tremendous amount of "extra time" that i will have every day. Therefore here is a list of things I want to accomplish with this "extra time".

What I will do:

• de-clutter my possessions and give away everything i do not need anymore
• create a vision board
• spend more time with people that are important to me
• be active, do sports (Volleyball, Soccer, Riding my bike, etc)
• Solitude: get more clear about who i am and what i want
• meditate twice a day
• finally start learning to play guitar
• do whatever else I want to do and does not conflict with the rest of my fast

I am sure that there is a million other things that i will discover while doing the fast that i will want to do. I will try to do all of them as long as they go along with the rest of my fast. 

Putting friends into boxes

Since I am doing my internship here in Lancaster, I have a little more time to do, lets say, organizational stuff for my "online life". I have cleared out the 8.340 e-mails in my gmail account, I registered a blog, and finally, I organized my Facebook friendlist.

Unbelievably I have 642 "friends" now, and every once in a while i am wondering "Who are all of these people?!?"

So, I just started with A like Aaron Hickenbottom Jr , going all the way through to Zack Phillips (Zack Phillips ॐ), or actually: ユウキ カドタ  (whoever that is....) and putting everybody into a category.

Since I did not have categries yet, i just started one, for everybody i did not know where to put them. But surprisingly I ended up with only 7 Categories.
Bad Ischl - my old friends fomr high school, where i used to live between age 10 and 19.
Family - all my family sibblings, parrents, uncels, nephews and nieces, their boy- and girlfriends
Gastein - The City where I used to work as a Snowboard teacher and spend my holidays
Lancaster - the smallest group so far,
Linz - all people i got to know during the time i lived in Linz when i was 19 until 26.
MUM - all the people i got to know since i go to MUM
Others - 27 people i did not really know where to put. Friends of friends and people i do not actually know.

Suprisingly for me, the by far biggest group is the MUM group with an incredible number of 344 friends in it. Clearly not all of them are really MUM students, but its all the people all over the USA i got to know since I am here, and it still suprises me how many of them there are.
Due to the fact that i came to facebook only 2 month before i left to Fairfield, there is not so many people from Austria in this group, but still, 300 people from the good old days, back home :)

And going through the list, i found a lot of people that i otherwise would have forgotten. Friends that i had not heard of in a long time, people i would have no idea what they are up to and ex-girlfriends that i have not talked to in much too long!

It's interesting to see all of these people, and it makes me happy to see how my friends from high school made their own way through life in all various kinds of ways.

But it also reminds me, that looking back at them all is nothing more than a memory. I should not put to much energy in the thoughts about what happened, cause it's all just the past.
And my life happens now.

My new Minimalism

My new Minimalism


I just stumbled over this guy: Leo Babauta
and he is a really interesting guy.
Not only has he written a bock which's title definitely interests me: "The Fine Art of Less -the fine art of limiting yourself to the essential". I think, I'll gonna need this.


Do Less. Get More Done.


also he has two blogs that attracted my attention:

http://zenhabits.net/  and http://mnmlist.com/ 

with interesting posts like 

rethinking necessities

The elements of change or

50 Amazing and Essential Novels to Enrich Your Library

This guy totally got me. The people he quotes in his blogs, the topics he writes about - everything sounds pretty cool! I think i'll spend some time in the near future reading what he has to say.

Here are some of the quotes that I really liked:

‘Without accepting the fact that everything changes, we cannot find perfect composure. But unfortunately, although it is true, it is difficult for us to accept it. Because we cannot accept the truth of transience, we suffer.’ ~Shunryu Suzuki

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.”Aristotle

"With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson 

mnmlist : less

• Stop buying unnecessary things.
• Toss half your stuff, learn contentedness.
• Reduce half again.
• List 4 essential things in your life,
• stop doing non-essential things.
• Do these essentials first each day, clear distractions
• focus on each moment.
• Let go of attachment to doing, having more.
• Fall in love with less.

also, he made me think about my own lifestyle right now.
One thing i did almost a year ago, when i left Austria to come to the USA, was to give away as much of my stuff as i could. Simply because of the fact that I moved out of my apartment and i could not bring anything with me anyways. Therefore i gave away most of my furniture and stored the rest of the stuff in my parents house. Rethinking now, i should have given away more, but that's ok, i can still do when i come back.


Thinking back, it was liberating for me to give away all these things. Less to carry with me, less to be worried about. Having no car and no cell phone for a year was the best that could have happened to me, and i think i want to continue on this path. Keep less and have more space to be. Just be.


We will see how it works :)

AWAKENING

found this short video about spiritual awakening.
its kind of interesting, summarizing a lot i have been thinking about.

But what is this shift that is occuring? What is happening there? Is something happening?
Are we awakening? or is it just hip to be awakened?
eckhart tolle with oprah?!?! a live streamed awakening online class?!?!

i like Tolle, but some of his stuff is too mainstream for me...

what is it? a pseudo-trend?
a hype?
am i talking about awakening because Jim Carrey does?
and if so, is it wrong?

but also, if we are this awakening and this is a new world, why is it so dark?
why is war dominating, why are we killing each other? destroying the earth, spreading hatred and grief...

what´s going wrong?!