I have been a rather reluctant user of Twitter because I could not find a tool that was easy enough to use. Twitter itself is so so, I wanted something easier. Along came TwitterFox which is a Firefox extension that notifies you of your friends’ status messages on Twitter.
You get a small icon on the status bar that notifies you when your friends update their status and you can use Twitterfox small text input field to update your own status.
Tim at A Life Coach’s Blog has an interesting post about The Skinny Of Raw Food. The photos he has selected are reasons enough to go there but it is also a post well worth reading.
As I mention in Milk and Sugar I have started to gradually change what I eat. I am a long way from eating raw food only, I am not even a vegetarian, and I find this comforting:
Raw foodism actually isn’t really about eating raw. No, raw foodism is actually about being conscious about what you’re eating. Just paying attention.
That is where I am, being conscious and paying attention to what I eat and how it makes me feel. What about YOU?
Update January 29, 2009.
Jonathan Mead has an interesting post over at Zen Habits, 10 Reasons Eating Raw is Healthier For You and the Planet.
Yoga and my spiritual development makes me change gradually what I eat. The two things I focus on at present is to eliminate or at least cut down on sugar and dairy. When it comes to sweets I do not like the concept of artificial sweeteners, I avoid them completely.
Zen Habits has a great post about sugar: Beat the Sugar Habit: 3 Steps to Cut Sweets (Mostly) Out of Your Life. There is a list of the bad things with sugar as well as a list of tips on how to beat the sugar habit.
Epic Self raises an interesting question in Dare We Eat Dairy?:
When it comes to nutrition, the milk debate is probably as confusing and controversial as it gets. Is cow’s milk a cancer fighting, PMS subduing, osteoporosis preventing super food? Or is it just another multi-billion dollar industry working with the government to alter dietary guidelines in their favor?
It also says:
Today we tend to look to scientific evidence to tell us what and how much to eat. But, what happened to paying attention to how you personally feel after eating certain products? Tuning into the internal workings of your own body will give you some clues into how to moderate or in some cases eliminate dairy from your diet.
My own experience is that dropping sugar and dairy makes me feel better.
A while back I finished a book by Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever you go there you are – Mindfulness Mediation in Everyday Life. I love Jon’s low key style. The book which consists of very short chapters, most of them only a few pages long, covers different aspects of mindfulness and meditation. There are also practices in many of the chapters. The easiest way to describe the book is to take part of the introduction:
In this book Jon Kabat-Zinn maps out a somple path for cultivating mindfulness in one’s own life. It speaks both to those coming to meditation for the first time and to longtime practitioners, anyone who cares deeply about reclaiming the richness of his or her moments.
Here comes some quotes from the book, texts that hooked me:
Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment and nonjudgementally.
Meditation is not about feeling a certain way. It is about feeling the way you feel.
Non-doing simply means letting things be and allowing them to unfold in their own way.
Meditation means cultivating a non-judging attitude towards what comes up in the mind, come what may.
Being whole and simultaneously part of a larger whole, we can change the world simply by chaing ourselves.
There is no successful escaping from yourself in the long run, only transformation.
And finally this reassuring quote:
You are already perfect.
See also:
Mindfulness with Jon Kabat-Zinn
Mindfulness for Beginners
Arriving at your own Door
As I mention in Lightworker I woke up one morning and had two words ringing in my head. The first one, ochoa, is Basque and means wolf. That did not ring any bell back then but today it makes sense. I came across Finding Your Howl over at ChangeThis.
To find our howl we have to pay a price… This process may feel like a death and may at its most intense terrify us and at its least unsettle us. This is the price of finding our howl, our own one of a kind authentic voice, and there is no way around it…
The only way out of our self-erected prison is to go through it completely. There is no quick escape, every square inch of our imprisonment must be touched and lived through before it can be abandoned.
About a week ago I had the phrase “Find my voice” spinning in my head. Like many I am searching for my authentic voice, my own howl. We hope it will be easy but as the e-book, says, it comes with a price.
This post is moved to at Bengt’s Notes.
When I woke up today I had two words spinning in my head. The first one, ochoa, is Basque and means wolf. That does not ring any bell so I guess it was not important after all. The other word was lightworker which I had to look up. At Wikipedia it says that:
Lightworkers are people who feel inspired to help others through “Shining Their Light”, teaching, spiritual meditation, healing, prayer, writing and speaking with Universal Love.
This makes more sense and I searched for more information. At Steve Pavlina I found a very interesting post about something he calls the Lightworker Syndrome.
This is what happens when someone wakes up to a higher level of consciousness, but they can’t figure out how to live on purpose and feed themselves at the same time.
Steve Pavlina ends his post with a quote by Marianne Williamson. The quote starts like this:
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
I have found my passion but there is also my spiritual interest. Now I need to figure out how to make a living from my passion and spiritual interest.
It is hard to miss the fact that the Large Hadron Collider started now. Daily Bits writes about The Day of the Large Hadron Collider. There are links to Wikipedia as well as an interesting TED-presentation at YouTube, Brian Cox: What really goes on at the Large Hadron Collider.
The Large Hadron Rap is facts presented in a very different way. And finally you can check Has the Large Hadron Collider destroyed the world yet?
This text turned up in a comment at cheerfulmonk.com, a blog I read, and it says something about life:
Oh, life is so like a bluebird
The poet Omar hath said.
Sometimes it sings at your window,
And sometimes it dumps on your head.
Mindfulness for Beginners is a set with two CD’s with Jon Kabat-Zinn, each CD lasts around 70 minutes. The first CD is an introduction to mindfulness, awareness and to MBSR, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction. The second CD has five guided meditations.
The first CD has sessions about:
• The only moment we have
• What is mindfulness
• Awareness, a sixth sense
• Being present in our lives
• Mind and heart
• An ethical foundation
• Non-judgementing, patience, beginner’s mind, trust
• Non-striving, acceptance, letting go
• Thinking and awareness
I think this is a great introduction to mindfulness plus that you get some meditations.
