Monday, March 30, 2009
Crane Migration
Chris will be visiting the Platte River in Central Nebraska to experience the annual crane migration. Over 500,000 sandhill cranes visit the river on their way north.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Chris on the Job
Chris is working out glitches in some new recording software. He'll take his guitars and gear when he heads to Centrum next month.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Chris Receives Residency
Chris was accepted for a two-week artist residency in April at Centrum, on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State. Located at Fort Worden State Park, he will have a comfortable house right near the water and use the time to work on editing, and recording and narration for Dancing with Thoreau. Of course he is bringing his cameras also, this is such a beautiful area and he will surely get some more footage for the film.
(Photo: Chris and Gabe with their beach art last summer, near Fort Worden.)
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Traversing Chris's New Guide for Observing Nature
I wanted to explain a little bit about Chris’s new Guide for Observing Nature. I feel it is almost more of a guide to meditation. This explains why observation nature can help us regain peace in our lives, balance, and so forth. Nature is constantly, naturally, in this state, and therefore, purposefully putting ourselves on the same wave length with the natural world places us in a direct line of access with creation, pure and unaldarterated by judgment, complaining, and even to a great extent fear. It’s almost as if we allow ourselves to be influenced by how nature unfolds, expose ourselves to her, so to speak, and then when we resume our “regular lives” we carry within us a consciousness of calm, heightened awareness, and rhythmic living. It’s quite practical actually!
I have read the Guide many times, and was recently inspired to apply the nine practices in the book, one by one, to my own life, beginning with the first...
SLOW DOWN
I have just completed about two weeks of “slowing down.” The first couple of days, I was only able to remember to slow down for about five minutes each day! Pretty pathetic! And as I became more determined, I was able to meet face to face with my various alter-egos. One is the woman who says, “Keep busy busy all day long, and you will never be faced with boredom, or have to face the fear of being with yourself during an empty moment!” Another warns, “You are driven by a ‘super woman’ mentality that says you have to do it all, there is no TIME to slow down—things won’t get done!” But I finally did it, I was able to take a couple of days, and went through my tasks with presence and deliberation, only setting a couple of small goals for myself. I found myself with long stretches of time, with nothing to do, wondering around the house looking dazed. One day I even turned the TV on, and in comes Chris to find me watching Ellen and Oprah. He looked perplexed. “I am slowing down,” I said. “Slowing down does not mean reclining on the couch on the middle of the afternoon watching television. That’s not what I meant!”
Needless to say as the next couple of days went by a sort of miracle happened. I have worked with enough spiritual practices over many years to the point where I can clearly identify a “shift” in energy. Spiritual results always come in the back door, and according to the timing of the universe, not our own narrow expectations. Just when you think “nothing is happening,” it’s as if the gears in our universal psyche shift and we are on to another frequency, or into another state of perception.
And this is what happened for me, after a few bumpy, and a bit awkward moments, I settled into this Slow Down rhythm. My anxiety that if I wasn’t moving a mile a minute, that things would not get done dissipated. It sounds paradoxical, but even though I was slowing down, it seemed as if I was getting more accomplished. My motivation was coming from a quieter, less frantic place. Tasks seemed to go unusually smoothly. The universe seemed to be meeting me half way—people who I was waiting to hear from suddenly called, work based solutions were at my finger tips, ideas flowed. And yet, I had extra time. I was inspired resume a writing project, read two books, got back into a new meditation routine, decluttered my house, and reconnected very strongly with my creative impulse, leading to new ideas and possibilities for current and future projects.
A key to successful spiritual development is the understanding that we have many other way of accomplishing tasks besides sheer will. Once again we turn to the effortlessness of nature, how much she accomplishes and how much abundance she has to share with us. It certainly belittles us as we flounder to get though each day and our seemingly important tasks. The beauty of it is that we can tap into this generous energy of nature, we are woven from the same cloth, it is inherent in it, so all we have to do is become aware of it, and this is what Chris has set out to do in this little Guide. Thank you Chris!
I have read the Guide many times, and was recently inspired to apply the nine practices in the book, one by one, to my own life, beginning with the first...
SLOW DOWN
I have just completed about two weeks of “slowing down.” The first couple of days, I was only able to remember to slow down for about five minutes each day! Pretty pathetic! And as I became more determined, I was able to meet face to face with my various alter-egos. One is the woman who says, “Keep busy busy all day long, and you will never be faced with boredom, or have to face the fear of being with yourself during an empty moment!” Another warns, “You are driven by a ‘super woman’ mentality that says you have to do it all, there is no TIME to slow down—things won’t get done!” But I finally did it, I was able to take a couple of days, and went through my tasks with presence and deliberation, only setting a couple of small goals for myself. I found myself with long stretches of time, with nothing to do, wondering around the house looking dazed. One day I even turned the TV on, and in comes Chris to find me watching Ellen and Oprah. He looked perplexed. “I am slowing down,” I said. “Slowing down does not mean reclining on the couch on the middle of the afternoon watching television. That’s not what I meant!”
Needless to say as the next couple of days went by a sort of miracle happened. I have worked with enough spiritual practices over many years to the point where I can clearly identify a “shift” in energy. Spiritual results always come in the back door, and according to the timing of the universe, not our own narrow expectations. Just when you think “nothing is happening,” it’s as if the gears in our universal psyche shift and we are on to another frequency, or into another state of perception.
And this is what happened for me, after a few bumpy, and a bit awkward moments, I settled into this Slow Down rhythm. My anxiety that if I wasn’t moving a mile a minute, that things would not get done dissipated. It sounds paradoxical, but even though I was slowing down, it seemed as if I was getting more accomplished. My motivation was coming from a quieter, less frantic place. Tasks seemed to go unusually smoothly. The universe seemed to be meeting me half way—people who I was waiting to hear from suddenly called, work based solutions were at my finger tips, ideas flowed. And yet, I had extra time. I was inspired resume a writing project, read two books, got back into a new meditation routine, decluttered my house, and reconnected very strongly with my creative impulse, leading to new ideas and possibilities for current and future projects.
A key to successful spiritual development is the understanding that we have many other way of accomplishing tasks besides sheer will. Once again we turn to the effortlessness of nature, how much she accomplishes and how much abundance she has to share with us. It certainly belittles us as we flounder to get though each day and our seemingly important tasks. The beauty of it is that we can tap into this generous energy of nature, we are woven from the same cloth, it is inherent in it, so all we have to do is become aware of it, and this is what Chris has set out to do in this little Guide. Thank you Chris!
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