picture tuesday

There's a few things wrong with this picture. The kitchen color scheme.  There is that guy wearing the sleeveless t-shirt in a not ironic way.  Not to mention the fire hazard of the paper towels sitting on the stove.

Do you see that one cat (kind of closer to the man) staring straight into the camera? 
I can't tell if it's a plea for help or if the cat actually likes being there and is giving us a I know I'm in a sea of fools take over the world look.

never trust a big butt and a smile.

If I met this guy in a foreign country and he was a murderer, I would probably be murdered bc I would trust him.

direction of energy

talking more about the senses....

i don't want to downplay the senses as these five narrow slits our physical body has as tools to observe the world with.  the senses are very important.

but i still think they can be distractions.  and not just distractions from our spiritual self but also distractions from one another.

in yoga one of the yamas is brahmacharya. its strictest form is complete celibacy. i'm not sure of the full scope of brahmacharya but something always stressed seemed to be that yogis didn't want men wasting their male energy through ejaculation.  

that is a little overboard to me but i do think there is a lesson to learn about direction of energy and maybe how you use your time [and perhaps another one on moderation as well, fellas]. [tyson lost a lot of fights when he was whorin it up].

i'm focusing more on direction of energy. if you want to really stress something, you minimize other things.  compare/contrast. creatures of comparison as a coworker puts it. 

if i want to taste something better, i might turn off the tv.

if i need to see better while i'm driving, i turn off the radio. (a lot of people do this when they're lost)

if i want to hear what someone is saying, i shut my mouth and stop thinking of the next thing to say.

if i need to tell someone something, i stop whatever else i'm doing.

if i want to feel, i close my eyes.

manage your body. you only have so much attention to divert.

still learning

I don't talk a lot about teaching yoga or yoga philosophy.  Mainly because I don't know wtf I'm talking about half the time because I have 75% of the beginning of the idea and I don't quite understand the end. Or I have a hard time transitioning from the base to the final result of the thought.

But I am starting to understand how our senses can be distractions.  And how they can mislead us at times even.  You think your eyes and your hands and your ears ARE reality.  And I'm saying they can obfuscate truth.

Take for instance your eyes.  Without getting too much into the science part of it (see also: "mainly because I don't know wtf I'm talking about half the time ...), your brain is presenting something different than what your eyes actually see.
I've read that we "learn" to see just like we learn to walk. Our brains form images based on pattern recognition.  Pattern recognition is why car drivers run over bicyclists or motorcyclists.  We just aren't used to seeing them on the road so when they are on the road . . . we just dont see them.
Also, your eyes can only see about 2 degrees of your view clearly.  The eyes are constantly scanning to send the brain a sharper idea of what's going on.  You get a clear picture of everything from the brain flipping, rotating and putting everything in a nice little package for you.
Just the definition of optical illusions should tell you the eyes can only do so much with reality.  [There's even a theory out there saying our brains are actually "perceiving the future" since there's a 1/10th lag in the eyes seeing and the brain making it into an actual image.]
Even if I'm wrong about the eyes, most people would agree that a large part of what we see is actually our brain's interpretation of eye data.

This is why I hardly write about these things.  I just get all wordy and complicated and it's not very eloquent.

My senses convey my reality but not the reality.  Images ... our visual reality ... is constructed within.

The life lesson for me is that I try not to assume I know everything.  And so I think it's nice to close the eyes sometimes.

Back to yoga ...
At the end of every yoga class, I ask everyone to close their eyes.  From doing this small action, their breath softens and their mind slows down.
I had an aha! moment (See also: Oprah) during yoga when I closed my eyes.  I have always been told I was a spiritual being in church and by mom.  But it was while my eyes were closed where I actually felt the strongest affirmation of a spiritual being stirring inside me.

The eyes remind us of a lot of truths.  But I think they distract us from a few as well.

I'm reading a book.

I'm reading The History Of Love by Nicole Krauss.  She's married to Jonathan Safran Foer.  I had no clue. He's the more famous author and I'm reading his wife's work without ever have read his.

Anyways, here's some word for word excerpts or something like it.

At times I believed that the last page of my book and the last page of my life were one and the same, that when my book ended I’d end, a great wind would sweep through my rooms carrying the pages away, and when the air cleared of all those fluttering white sheets the room would be silent, the chair where I sat empty.

There were rumors of unfathomable things, and because we couldn't fathom them we failed to believe them, until we had no choice and it was too late.

What is larger than life? To sit in the front row and look up at a beautiful girl’s face two stories high and have the vibrations of her voice massaging your legs is to be reminded of the size of life. So I sit in the front row. If I leave with a crick in my neck and a fading hard-on it was a good seat. I’m not a dirty man, I’m a man who wanted to be as large as life.

There are passages of my book I know by heart.

By heart, this is not an expression I use lightly.

/quotes

I love the last one. Taking something we say quite a bit "I know this song by heart!" and dissecting the words to their actual meaning.  "by heart" "know" "we"
I don't know what I'm really trying to say.  I feel like my head is filled with half thoughts or almost there thoughts most of the time.
All of the time.

kthxbye

steal this look

But what about the belt? What about the belt . . . 

Watching football w my stepdad and mom yells this from her bedroom

Me: wow, Michael Turner has a big ass.

Stepdad: all muscle. there was a football player that had 36 inch thighs.

Mom (from the bedroom): 36 inch penis?! I saw a sideshow at the circus where the guy had a 20 in long penis.