How to find profound spiritual meaning in the silence and stillness of solitude.
Whether young or old, alone or with a partner, we can use solitude to guide us towards inner freedom. But this can only happen as we embrace solitude for what it is: a potentially creative and life-altering experience. In its space--and perhaps only there--we learn to harness our inner power and contemplate those things we wish to pursue to make ourselves whole. That's when we begin to listen to what our own voice is telling us and move to our own rhythms. With newfound self-awareness, we are able to change our perspective, step out of old ways of behaving, and live and love fully and creatively.
1. Learn to Befriend Solitude
Solitude has a bad reputation. We tend to think of it as a lonely state. Nothing can be further from the truth. We need the rich soil of solitude to grow into ourselves. Spend a few minutes each day in solitude. Turn off your cell phone and TV and just let yourself be in stillness. Gradually, as you befriend solitude, rather than flee from it, you will begin to hear the voice of your own authentic self.
2. Stay Patient
To be in solitude takes patience. Patience allows us to stay in the present so that we can reflect and change. Most of us are feverishly impatient. We want change and we want it now. Being in solitude takes patience so that we have time to rest, reflect, and restore ourselves. That's when we start to listen to ourselves so that true change can happen.
3. Start Where You Are
In solitude, you start where you are, with whatever feelings you have, not where you want to be. Expect that at first all sorts of raw emotions will come up, like fear, anger, frustration, shame or guilt. They belong to the old voices that tell us how we should be and what we ought to do. Question every should and ought that crosses your path. Know that you are on the right path--your path--when you feel your own voice kicking inside you like a babe in the womb.
4. Begin Your Sorting Process
In fairy tales, the princess is often given the task of sorting before she can begin to weave her new life. Solitude gives us the same opportunity. We sort and separate out the old voices from our own personal voice, the old story from the new story, which is about us, what we desire, and how to get it.
5. Take Time for Self-Blessing
A blessing is an act of reverence that bestows protection, holiness, and love on the benefactor. But the deepest blessing is the one you bestow on yourself. As we enter solitude, we let ourselves breathe deeply and quietly. Then we need to bless ourselves and our journey so that we might gain, or renew, a sense of our own loveliness.
6. Close the "Knowing vs. Living" Gap
We all know many things we want to nurture ourselves. Yet we often don't give those things to ourselves because the 'gap' feels too wide. Know that it is not. In solitude, chose one thing you want to nurture your growth and give it to yourself as your gift.
7. Remember the Small Moments
Wonder and joy are almost always found in the small moments that make up our lives: listening to the sound of a seashell, walking through the woods, knitting a new scarf, baking bread, listening to a bird sing. Solitude teaches us to pay attention to these small moments and realize that they are the jewels of our life.
8. Reconnect to the Sacred
As you take time to be in solitude, you will learn that it is food for the deprived self. We enter solitude for many reasons: to rest, to nurse our grief, to ease the strain of giving others more than we give ourselves, to hear the sound of our own voice, to nurture our creative energies, and for many of us, to honor our search for a spiritual life.
9. Step Into Your Own Life
Stepping out is an act, a self-assertion, a movement beyond whatever steps you have taken before. It means something different to each of us. Solitude, however, is a dynamic state that will in time lead you to where you want to be. Suddenly, without knowing exactly how or why, you will find yourself ready to be, or act, in ways you never could before.
10. Be There for Others
Solitude teaches us that we are both alone and all one. As we grow stronger in ourselves, we find that we have more to give to others-our partners, children, friends, but also the larger community of which we are a part. Spend some time to be with those who have been deprived of love and mentoring and desperately need it. -Florence Falk
This was on CNN this morning. I swear I could have written this article. Nice to know that I am not the only female in the world sexually-challenged and relationshiply-challenged. Whoever Martha Beck is....sista I feel ya girl!!!!! I so can relate to this,
"She can toss her head and attract men; I can -- to cite just one example -- toss fried chicken and attract cats." _______________________________________________________________________
By Martha Beck
(OPRAH.com) -- We'd been waiting 30 minutes for someone to take our order in a busy Mexican restaurant when my friend Cathy decided to take extreme measures.
Expert: Different flirting techniques can get you anyone or the one you really want.
"Watch this," she whispered. Then she tugged the clip from her hair, opened a collar button, and tossed her head like a frolicking foal. Almost magically, she went from being simply beautiful to what is referred to in the vernacular as "like, totally hot."
Three waiters rushed our table like linebackers. Cathy fluttered her lashes at one, cooing, "Hon, could we order now?" It was a virtuoso performance of attraction in action.
For me, this was like watching documentary footage about something ("Mating Behavior Among Bipedal Primates of the American Southwest") that I've never personally experienced. It's not that I totally lack skills like Cathy's. She can toss her head and attract men; I can -- to cite just one example -- toss fried chicken and attract cats.
But I could never use feminine wiles the way Cathy can. I'm not sure I've ever had a single wile. I used to enjoy pitying myself for this, until one day I realized that everyone for whom I've felt genuine sexual interest eventually expressed reciprocal interest in me. While shortchanging me compared with Cathy, Mother Nature still provided me with the instinctive ability to make the connections I really wanted.
Now, if you have Gisele Bündchen problems (your Manolo Blahniks keep skidding in puddles of drool left by lustful admirers), please turn directly to an underwear ad and enjoy the company of other genetically blessed people like you. This column contains instructions on seduction for the rest of us. Oprah.com: How to reconnect with your inner bombshell
Flirtation 101: What to do if it doesn't come naturally
Don't Miss Oprah.com: Answers from life coach Martha Beck Oprah.com: Give your confidence a boost! Oprah.com: Release your inner sexpot Scientists tell us that females of all cultures make sexual connections through sequences of specific flirting behaviors. The ethologist Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt captured this on film some 30 years ago, with a camera that appeared to point in one direction while actually shooting in another. He found that women of all languages, classes and religious backgrounds attracted men through the same gestures.
This was further documented by psychologists who spent months scientifically lurking around in lounges, watching couples hook up. As "Psychology Today's" contributor Joann Ellison Rodgers described the flirtation ritual: "Women smiled, gazed, swayed, giggled, licked their lips and aided and abetted by the wearing of high heels; they swayed their backs, forcing their buttocks to tilt out and up and their chests to thrust forward."
In researching this article, I recently tried enacting these behaviors in a local Starbucks. Sure enough, I attracted immediate male attention: An elderly gentleman asked me if I needed medical help. The answer was yes. I think I ruptured something.
The bottom line (pardon the pun) is that buttock tilting and back swaying come about as naturally to me as spaceflight. Though flirting is supposedly wired into our brains, my brain appears to have shorted out in regard to giggling and licking my lips. And yet even I have stumbled upon a set of seductive behaviors that work surprisingly well for me. If you share my chronic back spasms and total lack of sexual self-confidence, you too might find them useful. Oprah.com: Open up to your life's purpose
Step 1: Identify a specific person with whom you really, truly want to have sex
After our waiter spilled all over himself serving Cathy her enchiladas, I asked her what it felt like to exercise such awesome sexual control.
"It's not that great," she said with a sigh. "In fact, it can get lonely. You have to learn to get past casual sex and create lasting relationships, and that isn't easy."
I stared at her. She might as well have asked me how you get past calculus to create a mud pie. I associate the word casual with khaki pants, not carnal pants. Why? Because for some reason, I just can't help indulging in forethought before getting to foreplay.
This isn't true for most people: Sexual signals usually zip right past the rational brain, because as Rodgers puts it, if two people "immediately considered all the possible risks and vulnerabilities they might face if they mated or had children, they'd run screaming from the room."
Now, that I can understand. To actually have sex, I must be not only in love but also in full legal possession of the other party's medical records. The advantage of this approach is that what you miss in casual thrills, you gain in long-term compatibility. That initial spark of interest leads not to the nearest motel room but to the prolonged scrutiny you would give an unrecognizable substance before deciding to include it in a cake.
If you consistently wake up next to people you no longer respect, try doing deliberately what I do involuntarily: Hold in your mind a vivid picture of a genital wart. (The Internet provides plenty, and I am here to tell you, they're the opposite of pornographic.)
Superimpose this image over the dashing smile of that cute guy at the bar. This should give you pause -- a pause you can use to investigate whether the dashing smile is backed up by kindness, humor, honesty, and other qualities you probably want in a mate.
If you do this, you're on the verge of discovering something amazing: Simple, sustained attention can be more powerfully seductive than all the eyelash-fluttering, tongue-flicking, back-swaying displays that make men want to fondle the likes of Cathy and prescribe seizure medication for the likes of me.
Step 2: Lust for the other person's subjective experience
Here is the secret of sexual success for the confidence impaired: While people will decide to have casual sex with you based on how you look, they'll decide to have meaningful sex with you based on how you see.
The reason I've managed to make the connections I desired is that I'm fascinated by people's stories. Beneath the small-talk surface, every life is a fascinating novel, so I always follow the suggestion from Proverbs 4:7, "With all thy getting get understanding." This directive means stand under, in the relatively lowly position of student, and let whomever we're trying to understand occupy the high ground of teacher. And -- this is key -- the body language we use to do this overlaps significantly with the biology of flirting.
Anthropologist David Givens, author of the book "Love Signals: A Practical Field Guide to the Body Language of Courtship," says that a crucial sexual-attraction message is "I am harmless." We communicate this with "submissive displays," such as turning our hands palm up, tilting our heads, exposing our vulnerable necks. A tilted-head half-shrug is typical of sexually attracted people having their first conversation. It's also a posture you'll unconsciously assume when you're trying to understand another person's experience.
I suspect this is a major reason so many clients fall in love with their therapists: The counselor who tilts her head while gazing quizzically at a patient, trying to see into his soul, may unwittingly be signaling that she'd also like to see into his pants.
Throughout my adolescence, I had terrifying encounters with innocent, well-meaning boys who interpreted my intense curiosity as sexual interest. A handful told me in so many words that, despite my obvious flaws, they had decided to accept me as a mate. In this way I learned that detached, genuine interest in another person's inner experience is, if anything, more seductive than the hair flips I will never master. This realization was almost worth the time I spent hiding behind trees and under staircases to avoid those poor misguided fellows.
Step 3: Get a life
Speaking of watching people, reality television provides an interesting barometer to indicate which behaviors humans find most fascinating. Some programs, like "The Bachelor," have no real point except to show gorgeous individuals attracting or rejecting one another. Personally, I find them marginally less interesting than having my teeth cleaned.
I favor reality shows in which people do things that require skill, talent, or daring: crab fishing, singing, clothing design, Latin dance. The popularity of these shows suggests I'm not the only person tuning in. Generally, the harder the participants have to work, the more interesting the process.
Even when cameras aren't rolling, people love to watch others work hard, learn skills, and take risks. Remember the old "Peanuts" cartoons in which Lucy mooned endlessly over Schroeder, whose only interest was the piano? That stereotype is based in truth: People who are mastering something that fascinates them become fascinating to others. If you want to capture people's attention, put your own attention on something that has nothing to do with them: oil painting, cooking, wildlife rescue. The more you get lost in what you're doing, the more interesting you'll become.
Best Practices: The one-two-three-punch combination
If you use the three steps above in quick succession, you'll become an attention magnet. It's like a trick move in martial arts: Target your person of interest, focus entirely on them, then abruptly divert your attention. Pow, pow, pow!
These steps allow any flirtatiously challenged person to bypass the whole complicated, alarming world of sexual tension and attraction among normal people. You can do the dance of seduction without even meaning to -- simply by letting yourself be openly drawn to people, their stories, and your own deepest fascinations.
That's all you'll ever need to get what you desire. Unless what you desire is quick Mexican food. In that case, you might want to call Cathy.
By Martha Beck from "O, The Oprah Magazine," September 2007
Currently
listening
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We Started Nothing
By
The Ting Tings
Release date: 2008-06-03
Fun Day Yea!!!! I <3 LA!!!!!
Current mood: cultured
Category: Art and Photography
The Getty Art Museum is way awesome. So awesome will make a zombie get a sunburn! Had a fun time with a fun dude. Got to see ANDY WARHOL PHOTOGRAPHS!!!!!!!!!!! Ones that the MAN HIMSELF took and 1 was of John-Micheal Baisquait and other of Keith Harring. Saw Rembrants and Monets-real ones not copies or prints!!!
Can you believe that there are record stores in LA? I can't. But we were going to go to one but the traffic was so backed up on the highway we missed the turn. So I guess it is still a myth untill i see it with my own eyes and have an allergy attack from the dust. More to come on this one.
I can not wait to go to the LAMOCA!!! You are next on the list!!!!
This past Friday night marked 1 full week in my new place. Last weekend was crazy trying to get everything I need-not much fun. Still don't have everything I need but enuff to get going.
This weekend was the weekend to get out. Started my morning off with Roscoe's Chicken and Waffels--County Boy-3 chicken wings and a waffel-good god it was awesome-crispy fried chicken that just falls off the bone.
Got my annual pass to Disneyland. Spent Saturday there just milling around relaxing. Got my rollercoaster on. Watched to Electrical Light parade. Now that brings back memories as a kid going to Walt Disney World. That was the coolest ever-and still kinda is.
Since I gotta get out and feed the meter every Saturday-Saturday is going to be my get in the car and go somewhere day. Hopefully I can take classes on Saturday. No more parking tickets for me.
Today I am doing laundry organizing the mess that I have made all week trying to get settled. Just made the best salad ever-spinach, mushrooms, blue cheese crumbles, this salad topper nut mix from trader joes, freeze dried green beans and Newman's Baslamic Vinagarette Dressing. Following all that up with some Trader Joe's Turkey Jerky.
California Love
Current mood: content
Category: Life
I have been in my new place here in Long Beach since this past Friday. Busy weekend. Work Monday off today and tomorrow to take care of 'things'.
Got my car insurance and drivers liscense squared away today.
Got my first parking ticket today. Well first one here. The last time I got a parking ticket was when I wa training people in Ashland, KY like 7 years ago-that parking ticket was only $5.00. This parking ticket is 8 times that!
Long Beach, so far is GREAT. Everything is in my neighborhood, except for work.
Met my first 'local' chinese crested today and his human. The crested-a fabulous true hairless coal black male called 'One Eyed Jack'. He was a rescue and only has one eye! Super coolness-a pirate dog! His human seemed super cool too. You know I called Joel with the 'Crested Sighting'.
Plan for tomorrow is get the a/c fixed in the car and ger her 'smog checked'. The next big thing I need to do is get the car registered here.
Moving is such FUN! Thank god I moved to a cool place.
i always felt something was missing for the Noah's Ark story.....
Current mood: shocked
New museum says dinosaurs were on Noah's Ark By Andrea Hopkins Sat May 26, 11:54 AM ET
PETERSBURG, Ky (Reuters) - Like many modern museums, the newest U.S. tourist attraction includes some awesome exhibits -- roaring dinosaurs and a life-sized ship.
But only at the Creation Museum in Kentucky do the dinosaurs sail on the ship -- Noah's Ark, to be precise.
The Christian creators of the sprawling museum, unveiled on Saturday, hope to draw as many as half a million people each year to their state-of-the-art project, which depicts the Bible's first book, Genesis, as literal truth.
While the $27 million museum near Cincinnati has drawn snickers from media and condemnation from U.S. scientists, those who believe God created the heavens and the Earth in six days about 6,000 years ago say their views are finally being represented.
"What we've done here is to give people an opportunity to hear information that is not readily available ... to challenge them that really you can believe the Bible's history," said Ken Ham, president of the group Answers in Genesis that founded the museum.
Here exhibits show the Grand Canyon took just days to form during Noah's flood, dinosaurs coexisted with humans and had a place on Noah's Ark, and Cain married his sister to people the earth, among other Biblical wonders.
Scientists, secularists and moderate Christians have pledged to protest the museum's public opening on Monday. An airplane trailing a "Thou Shalt Not Lie" banner buzzed overhead during the museum's opening news conference.
Opponents argue that children who see the exhibits will be confused when they learn in school that the universe is 14 billion years old rather than 6,000.
"Teachers don't deserve a student coming into class saying 'Gee Mrs. Brown, I went to this fancy museum and it said you're teaching me a lie,"' Dr. Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, told reporters before the museum opened.
A Gallup poll last year showed almost half of Americans believe that humans did not evolve but were created by God in their present form within the last 10,000 years.
Three of 10 Republican presidential candidates said in a recent debate that they did not believe in evolution.
Currently
listening
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Datarock
By
Datarock
Release date: 28 July, 2005
OMG!!! This makes me want to cry!
Current mood: aggravated
Category: News and Politics
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Brian Emmett's childhood fantasy came true when he won a free trip to outer space.
But the 31-year-old was crushed when he had to cancel his reservation because of Uncle Sam.
Emmett won his ticket to the stars in a 2005 sweepstakes by Oracle Corp., in which he answered a series of online questions on Java computer code.
He became an instant celebrity, giving media interviews and appearing on stage at Oracle's trade show.
For the self-described space buff who has attended space camp and watched shuttle launches from Kennedy Space Center, it seemed like a chance to become an astronaut on a dime.
Then reality hit. After some number-crunching, Emmett realized he would have to report the $138,000 galactic joy ride as income and owe $25,000 in taxes.
Unwilling to sink into debt, the software consultant from the San Francisco Bay area gave up his seat.
"There was definitely a period of mourning. I was totally crestfallen," Emmett said. "Everything you had hoped for as a kid sort of evaporates in front of you."
With commercial spaceships still under development, it's uncertain when the infant space tourism industry will actually get off the ground.
Still, ultra-rich thrill-seekers are already plunking down big -- though refundable -- deposits to experience a few minutes of weightlessness 60 miles above Earth.
A visit to the stars for a black hole in the wallet
And in recent years, space tourism companies have teamed with major corporations to stage contests with future suborbital spaceflights as the grand prize.
The partnerships have interstellar hype -- but as Emmett found out, they can get mired in that most earthbound hassle: taxes.
"From a consumer perspective ... I'd be wary," said Kathleen Allen, director of the University of Southern California's Marshall Center for Technology Commercialization. "I'd check to see the fine print."
Since the Internal Revenue Service requires winnings from lottery drawings, TV game shows and other contests to be reported as taxable income, tax experts contend there's no such thing as a free spaceflight. Some contest sponsors provide a check to cover taxes, but that income is also taxable.
"I don't see how an average person can swing that kind of tax payment. It's a big, big bite," said tax attorney Donna LeValley, contributing editor for J.K. Lasser's annual tax guide.
To reduce the financial burden, winners can argue that they don't owe any taxes until their flight lifts off. Another option is working out an installment plan to pay taxes over time, said Greg Jenner of the American Bar Association.
The IRS declined to comment, saying it does not talk about individual matters.
Despite Emmett's cancellation, Oracle said its contest was a success. The software giant is in the process of naming his replacement and still has two other winners on board from Asia and Europe.
That spaceflight will be provided by Space Adventures Ltd., the same company that brokers deals for trips on Russian rockets to the orbiting international space station for a reported $20 million per customer.
Eric Anderson, the company's chief executive, insists that contests are the best way for most people to get into space. He said Space Adventures has given away about 20 reservations through competitions, and the majority of winners are satisfied.
Space contest rules vary widely but generally require winners to undergo astronaut training before the trip and sign a waiver freeing the sponsors from any liability if there's an accident.
Microsoft Corp. is the latest company to dangle a free space ride. This month it launched an elaborate online puzzle game as part of its promotional campaign for its new Vista PC operating system.
The grand prize winner -- to be named this week -- gets a seat with Rocketplane Ltd., which is building a souped-up Lear jet it hopes will ferry passengers to space in late 2009.
The $50,000 check that comes with the prize, which is valued at $253,500, should cover the winner's taxes, said Brian Marr, group marketing manager for Vista.
It's common for contest winners to have to play a waiting game.
Virgin Galactic customer Doug Ramsburg won his ticket in a Volvo sweepstakes during the 2005 Super Bowl.
His family and friends often hound him about when he'll reach the cosmos. After all, Virgin Galactic doesn't have any spacecraft yet.
Even without an itinerary, Ramsburg says he's not worried. He said he's confident in the man tasked to build Virgin's commercial spacecraft -- aerospace designer Burt Rutan, whose SpaceShipOne became the first privately manned rocket to reach space in 2004.
Ramsburg considers the prize a "blessing" but declined to talk about the financial arrangements, except to say the $100,000 check that came with the prize should make him the first free Virgin Galactic passenger.
"You don't have to be a superhero in order to go to space," said Ramsburg, 43, who works in the admissions office of the University of Colorado at Denver.
Back on Earth, Emmett said he has no regrets about turning down his trip and doesn't blame anyone.
"I was, however briefly, a potential astronaut," he wrote last fall in a blog entry titled "Clipped Wings."
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