The Wise Turtle blog has moved!

Yep, this blog has grown up, matured, moved out of it’s parents basement, and gotten a place of her own.

Please go to blog.thewiseturtle.com for the latest version. Thanks!

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How do you know what to love?

Can you think of a good reason not to love everything?

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A Thousand Names for Joy

In the next week or so, I will be offering up reviews and thoughts about Byron Katie’s new book, A Thousand Names for Joy. The book is essentially a conversation between a 2500 year old book on Zen philosophy – the Tao Te Ching – and Ms. Katie. The fact that the Tao Te Ching’s author – a Zen monk named Lao-tzu – is long since dead is of little importance to Ms. Katie, and she joyfully wanders through the passages of the Tao Te Ching, adding bits of her own wisdom, and meandering off into random, and highly fascinating tangents. It’s not a book for beginners of any sort, but definitely an interesting read for anyone who’s familiar with either Byron Katie’s work or Zen philosophy.

For a bit of a teaser, and to start this review series off, I’ll tell you about the projector…

Katie suggests that our minds are like film projectors. We watch the universe unfold inside our heads as our minds project sights and sounds and smells and so on, for us to enjoy. But sometimes we don’t enjoy the show. When this happens, Katie suggests that the best way (if not the only way) to fix the problem is not to fiddle with the film itself but with the projector. In other words, the outside world isn’t what’s making us want to boo and hiss. The film is perfect, just the way the director, actors, and producers want it to be. Instead, it’s a faulty projector that is causing our grief: a smudge on the lens, a missing gear, a slipping belt, or maybe even an unplugged cord. So, if we want to go back to enjoying the show, we first need to work on making the projector – our minds – project things more clearly. To do that, we can use a process of inquiry, such as Socratic dialogue, that helps us question any prejudices, biases, and just plain dumb things we have been led to believe.

So, if your movie doesn’t make sense, take a look at what smudges might be blurring your own mind, clear them off, and refocus your projector. And, for heavens’s sake, if you find yourself watching some trashy horror movie from the ’50s in your mind, enjoy it, but don’t take it seriously, ok?

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Listen

What do you hear? Can you hear anything with that brain of yours babbling away inside your head like some talk radio dj who gets paid by the word? Does your mind drown out the rest of the world?

We spend a lot of time and money trying to drown out all the external noise that comes with modern society – cars, noisy neighbors, angry yelling, crying babies, barking dogs, and whatever style of music the generation after ours likes to listen to. Quietness is something we value highly, for obvious reasons…

But how often do we, ourselves, be quiet and let the loudest noise of all, our own thoughts, receed? How often do we really listen to the sounds of the world? And, how much of what the world has to say do we really hear?

Do you think you could go a whole day without talking, and only listening? A week?

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Pick a philosophy, any philosophy…

What’s your philosophy of life? Maybe you’re looking for a new philosophy, something a little bit beyond Charlie Brown’s sister Sally’s new philosophy of “Why are you telling me?” Well then, head on over to the new exploration called What’s my philosophy? on The Wise Turtle website and try out some of the living philosophies that are popular these days.

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Happiness isn’t really a warm blanket.

Happiness = meaning + moderate challenge

Happiness lives in the left prefrontal cortex of the human brain (just above your left eye). If you wave to this part of your brain you might make yourself smile!

And while a warm blanket is, arguably, a wonderful thing to have on a chilly day, it’s not going to bring you happiness for very long if you are bored to tears under that blanket (and those tears of boredom will get your warm blanket all wet pretty quickly!). So, while you are snuggling under your toasty blanket, find something a little bit difficult to do and do it with enough creativity that someone else finds it useful, and your prefrontal cortex will thank you.

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The Universe Has a Plan

The Universe seems to have two main guiding principles:

• Expansion
• Contraction

Both seem equally important, and actually are probably dependent upon each other for existence.

The galaxies are expanding into space, while the solar systems are contracting into planets and stars. Ecosystems are diversifying, while diverse collections of matter and energy are coalescing into an individual lifeforms.

Similarly, we humans are contracting into like-minded communities, while we are also expanding into global exploration.

Without the push there could be no pull, without the independence there could be no collective, without the local there could be no global. If the Universe is to be trusted, there must always be both expansion and contraction, and we would do well to honor that fact as we make our way through life, because no matter how much we try to only push, there will always be something to pull us back, end vice versa. And if we don’t want to get whiplash when the giant universal rubber band of life snaps us back into our proper place, we’d better be prepared…

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Doing the right thing is just like riding a bicycle.

Sometimes we tend to think that doing the right thing will take too much effort, that we just aren’t up for it. We convince ourselves that it’s hard work being healthy and happy and productive and compassionate and all that other good stuff we want in life. We think of inertia as the tendency of a body at rest to stay at rest. But the truth is that inertia also is the tendency of a body in motion to stay in motion. It’s only difficult to drastically change direction or get out from that place we may be stuck in, but once we’ve managed to muster up that initial burst of energy needed to get us in motion, staying in motion is easy. Once we’ve given our bike that first kick start, inertia keeps the bike heading steadily off towards wherever we want to go. We only need to keep pedaling along with some minimal effort and some attention to the steering so that we keep going in the direction we want to go. Sure, we may hit some hills along the way, but once we’ve pedaled ourselves to the top, we get to fly downhill for a while and thoroughly enjoy our hill climbing efforts.

Occasionally we fall off our bikes or get thrown off by some careless passerby, but if we just give up and stay laying in the ditch, we’re not going to have much fun. So, even though we know that it will take a bit of effort to get back on and get going again, we also know that once we do, the journey will be much easier and more fun. And we realize that this bicycle we’re on is the most efficient vehicle known to humankind, so if we want to go somewhere, this is the easiest way to do it.

So, when you find yourself stuck in a ditch after falling or being pushed off your path, you only need to find that one small thing that will get you right back up again and heading off towards all the good stuff in life, like friends, a hearty lunch, a beer, or maybe a really good biking story.

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Fun

Fun = discovering a new way to get what you need without preventing you from getting anything else you need. In other words, fun is not having two left wings when you’re trying to make a beeline for some sexy flower stamen you just found.

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What is real?

Newton taught the world that only matter is real.

Quantum physics teaches the world that only relationships are real.

Nonduality teaches the world that both matter and relationships are real (and not real) at the same time!

Go figure.

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