COLD FUSION LIVING: Owing a Little Dried Grape

Salut Christian & Faith...

Have you figure out yet what the title means?

"Owing a Little Dried Grape"

1. When you owe something that is called a, "debt."

2. A little dried grape is called a, "raisin."

Put those together and you get, "raisin debt."

OK ... so it was a really lame way to say, "raison d'être."

Yep - I'm still harping on the purpose thing ... do you know your raison d'être ... your "reason to be?"

If not ... get on that. if you do ... then life is already making more sense to you than it does to most people because the fact remains ....

.... most people don't owe any little dried grapes. And they really should.

Love you.

Dad

PS ... not every blog needs to be long to make the point.

COLD FUSION LIVING: Life at the speed of light

Happy Easter Weekend Kids...

I hope you both are taking advantage of the long weekend and getting some down-time and recovery. That's an important part of the whole human energy equation.

Today, I'm adding on to where I started in last post. 

Did you know that you can make the clock stop? As in ... time stands still! 

Today's title is "Life at the Speed of Light."  What the heck am I getting at? Quite simply this; Einstein showed us (111 years ago) that time is relative to how fast you are moving ... and for things moving really fast, time appears to move slower than it does for slower moving things ... at least relative to the slower moving things. The fastest that anything can move is the speed of light. But here's the thing ... at that speed, time doesn't move. You can't really wrap your head around it you just have to understand the math and then accept that truth. For a photon of light moving at its unique speed, time stands still ... it is always in the present ... there is no past or future. Weird, I know.

Well there is a time, when, for we human beings, time can really slow down ... and sometimes, almost appear to be stopped. It is when we are doing something at which we are highly skilled, and our task is also highly challenging ... but just a bit more challenging than our skill permits us to accomplish without extreme concentration.

What I just described is a mental state in which you are fully immersed in doing something and you have an intense or energized focus. This condition, named "flow," by Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, has been described by many (myself included) as being amongst life's peak experiences. You might have heard it described another way: "being in the zone."

In flow, your emotions are not just contained and channeled, but they are actually energized in a way that aligns with the task you are doing. Your focus is so completely drawn into your activity that you are unaware of anything else, including yourself ... and it's as if time is standing still.

It is a spectacularly joyful experience. I believe that we were made this way so that we would enjoy mission-oriented activities ... especially when we understand the mission that we are on (more on this in the next couple of weeks).

You may know the Law of Architecture ... that, "form follows function." This is very logical; a building's form should be dictated by it's function. That's why an outhouse looks like it does and why an airplane hangar looks like it does and why a hockey rink looks like it does; they are all designed according to the function that they will serve.

The Law of People is exactly the opposite ... function follows form. Anyone who argues with this simply hasn't lived long enough to get it, or they have never experienced flow. The function we serve does not dictate how we have been formed. How we are formed dictates the function we should serve. This is how we properly define strengths and weaknesses: a strength isn't something that you are good at ... a strength is something that strengthens you and makes you come alive when you do it. And, of course, if an activity is highly enjoyable then you are more likely to spend more time doing it ... and after enough time you will get very good at it just out of sheer practice. Your high skill in that activity now makes it possible to get "into the zone" when doing it if you tackle things that are just a bit harder than your skill permits.

Therefore my children ... as much as possible ... put your efforts into building skills in areas that are already personal strengths (things that jazz you). It was this thinking that dictated my planned early retirement and has taken me on a very different (and joyful) journey over the last decade, beginning before I even retired.

Let me leave you with this image below ... I created it a decade ago when I first stumbled on this teaching. The annotations are mine but the main image can be found on the Wiki site called, "Flow."

I love you ... see ya in 2 weeks when I look at, "Owing Little Dried Grapes."

Dad

.

I have also discovered

COLD FUSION LIVING: Spontaneous Human Combustion

Let's light 'em up today guys...

The next theme I'm calling COLD FUSION LIVING. Christian knows what cold fusion is ... Faith, I'm not sure you do .... so here it is in a nutshell.

Cold fusion is a speculated kind of nuclear reaction that can occur at room temperature, which essentially means that you can get more energy out than you put in. Some claim to have discovered it, but their experiments have not be able to be reproduced. It would be amazing if it were possible because it would essentially be seen as a source of "free energy."

I'm putting this next series of posts under this title because I've discovered in my life that is absolutely possible to get "free energy" ... at least in terms of life-energy.


Spontaneous Human Combustion
Surely you must have heard about this ... the phenomenon where people suddenly burst into flames where no accelerant or outside "spark" has been provided. 

Well, in a less dramatic, but more personally amazing kind of way, I have found the way to initiate an intense spark inside of me that ignites into white-hot energy. It is called purpose.

OK, before you cry foul and remind me that I've already spoken about this a couple of times (including the very last post), let me explain why I'm mentioning it again .... because there are fewer things in your life that will ever matter more. Without purpose life is a soul-sucking drudgery. But with purpose, a limitless cold-fusion-type thing inside you keeps you endlessly energized ... spontaneously igniting passion and desire and interest and focus until you almost feel ready to combust .... in a very very good way.


That's it. Just make sure that you do what you do for a reason ... for a purpose ... and never ever allow yourself to live without it.  There really isn't that much more that is more important.

OK guys ... see you in a couple weeks when I talk about living at the speed of light.

I love you both.

Dad

PERSONAL CRAP DETECTOR: Spiritual BS

Happy leap-year day mes enfants....

OK, so I didn't complete the blog by this date because I knew you guys weren't both reading it so I decided to not focus my energy on something in vain.

Now that you're back ... I'm back.

I've also decided to ease up on the speed of delivery and post bi-weekly rather than weekly. I already know that this will be fine with you. I'll start a new theme in a couple weeks and will shift my post-dates back to Saturdays .... so the next theme will begin on Saturday March 12.

Now let's wrap up the BS. Literally. First you need to make sure that you've read my previous post from August 24, 2015 ... otherwise this one won't make sense.

OK, read it? Back now? Good .... here's the graphic again. And you'll be pleased (I think) to see that this post is short. And there's a good reason ... because it is an easy point that I need to make.

The spiritual point of life is the focal point ... where "X" marks the spot. This is the force of your life energy. Not the source of it ... but the point to which all of your energy is directed. And here's a fact; when you have a clear focal point in life, it actually feeds more energy into the system (I believe at the emotional level by burning away some of the clouds).

You have probably already figured out what I'm talking about. Purpose!

What is your life purpose? Now this can be the large existential question, "what are you doing with your life?" or it can be the day-to-day, moment-by-moment matter of, "what are you doing right now .... and why?"

When life has been not good for me it is almost always because I have had a blind spot (the first kind of BS) to one truth; I lost my sense of purpose. Boredom comes when we are not clear, in a given moment, about what our purpose is in that moment. It is disorienting. It is debilitating. We are purpose-driven creatures and living any other way is soul-crushing.

Time again for me to tell you that if you are coasting and living without purpose on any given day, week, month or year, you need to cut the crap (the other BS). The graphic above shows that our inner energy system hinges entirely on having an ultimate point (purpose) to which I need to direct my energy .... even if that means sometimes that my focus is to disconnect and recharge. That in itself is also a focal point.

I've asked before and I'll ask it here again to wrap up the BS theme:

"Do you do what you do because you have a reason to, or do you do what you do because you don't see a better reason not to?"

If the former ... excellent. 

If the latter ... cut the crap ... that's no way to live. Trust me. I know.

I love you both very much.

See ya March 12 as we launch into the next theme.

Yer Fadder

I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaaack!!

Morning Guys...

Well, I've been away from the blog since August. Why you ask?  Because you weren't reading it. I know that at least one of you said you will read it all someday ... so I figured that I would get back to writing it: someday!

Now that one of you have asked the question, "where is the blog?" I shall resume .... beginning on Monday Feb. 29 ... the day that I had originally expected to be ending it. But no worries ... I still have half my thoughts and ideas yet to share. So, stay tuned for

BLOG - PART 2 in a couple weeks.

Love ya

Dad