Awakening

The Creative Art of Awakening and Living Well

If you are reading this, you are probably someone who has a bit of curiosity and yearning for learning. When I was in high school, some of us just couldn’t wait to get out, and not have to “study”. It seems now that was a short sighted point of view. Just having a technical skill and doing a job is not my definition of living. For anyone who might be seeking a better, more satisfying and even joyful life, I am here to add my encouragement. I have some relative perspective on what I experienced as a young man, and now. My purpose is to encourage your curiosity into finding out what there is that is so much more useful and fulfilling as a life position to stand on. A place for looking around, and feeling one’s own positive place in this world. This is nothing to sell to you, I can not really give you, and you must find for yourself. The embracing of those things which you may find, can produce a wondrously fulfilling sense of life as never before experienced, the experience of which can be astoundingly rewarding.

There was a time when I was easily bored. This was not really a problem, since I didn’t want much from life, and was just traveling along, getting some of the usual goodies. That was before I “woke up” around age 40. There was then a nagging in the back of my mind that had me want to find out “more”. With pre-existing conditions like the mental attitude that doing less was somehow going to give me a satisfying life, I was simply a consumer.

Since, I have grown into a wonderfully different experience of life in general. By the kind suggestion of caring people I trusted, I enrolled in some self improvement courses, to try to fix what was “wrong”. Pretty soon I found that there were books that were interesting to read, various kinds, that would stimulate my mind more than television. Going places became an interesting facet of the time spent here on earth. Some of the places were pretty, relaxing, and some were even stimulating in ways that were foreign to my previous existence.

Early on, Hawaii was the favorite family destination for the pretty and relaxing part, and Lake Tahoe in the summer can be quite an experience for hiking and in the winter skiing can’t be beat for a challenge to the couch potato. Moving into more stimulation, Scuba diving is a great way to “see the world” in a different way, and only have to nominally swim. I grew up with no real ability to swim, since I had a minor heart disease as a child. Since taking in scuba diving, I found that once you have found a good place to hang out underwater, relaxing is simply the best way to have a great time and see it all. Fish come to YOU, and drifting along with the current by plan gives you ever changing scenery.

I grew up in a Midwestern Protestant religious experience which was OK. I really lost any religious faith when my father died the year I was 14. I managed to navigate high school, and adopted photography as a hobby. I came out to the west coast for college and never left, and beginning about age 40 began to find a great body of my own spirituality through various experiences. The difference is like night and day. NIGHT and DAY. Disclaimer, I am not going to tell you what to do, or what is better. The search must be your own, and that is a primary part of the quest. Learning to trust your own feelings, intuition, intelligence, and body of knowledge, is a blessing in itself. But it can’t be done in the safety of your own couch, or just in a book. Life is an experiment, trial and error, but without that trial and error, few treasures will be found.