TURQUOISE BUTTERIES: a "ted talk" about finding joy!

some people believe that finding joy is the highest pursuit of life.

some people believe that money is the most important pursuit in life.

the beatles sang "money can't buy you love".

in the ted talk above by amanda gore , you'll get a quick lesson on how the heart works and how to send love (and help heal the planet) by sending TURQUOISE BUTTERFLIES in the form of ZOOMS!

zoom, zoom!

When A Jade Cicada Comes into your Life, GRAB IT!

Cicada Symbolism ~ Rebirth, Authenticity, Eternity

Cicadas are the longest living animals, which immediately cause them to be an obvious and appropriate symbol of longevity in animal totems. This and rebirth are the most common themes associated with the musical cicada, and these symbols are interpreted as highly personal. They speak to individuals directly, not only through their song but in the messages that their lives send.

Cicadas as spirit guides aid in the development, recognition, and emergence of the self throughout the various phases of the life cycle.

They have a long and transformative life cycle themselves, which is why they are associated with the past and present, metamorphosis, reincarnation, and change. Their appearance and calling may come later in a person’s life, after a period of isolation and seclusion, just as this insect experiences in nature.

After staying underground for much of its life, the cicada insect breaks free and loses its shell. This serves as a direct calling to people who need to come out from hiding and break free of the restrictions that you put on yourself – “to shed your skin”. The Cicada symbolism shows a person’s ability to deeply reflect and be reborn as a new, better individual who can express him/herself honestly.

Often times, you may find it difficult to understand and be comfortable and honest with your true self. You may feel completely and utterly lost and do not know where to look. Ironically, the information and insight that individuals seek usually lies just below the surface anyway, guarded only by blockades that we’ve created for ourselves.

When the cicada animal totem emerges from its life underground, it symbolizes rebirth into a new life, but also places importance on examining what can and should be resurrected from the old life. Re-examining elements of the past does not necessarily need to hinder growth and progress in the future. If you can learn one thing from the past, that knowledge will prove useful in a positive re-emergence into the future. 

These songstresses can teach you the commonly neglected art of communicating with yourself. Cicadas are strong communicators and inspire the same trait in people through their songs. They have a very distinct sound that is all their own, which symbolizes the need to channel your own voice and march to the beat of your own drum.

The Cicada spiritual totems thus help you to understand and be in tune with yourself by aiding in uncovering deep truths and thoughts that have been forgotten. After putting you in touch with your own voice, they aid in connecting it with your most heartfelt desires.

Because of this, you are enabled to behave and live in a style authentic to yourself. You can attain the rewards of all of those desires, as long as you are patient with the cicada symbol’s teachings. While your own voice is of the utmost importance, the cicada also requires a balance of speaking and listening. Although they play their own individual songs, they do so in harmony with their community by listening to their surroundings and others around them.

The cicada symbol’s themes of communication and self-discovery also have solar connections. They are heat-lovers who expose themselves in the hot, summer months. The summer season and the radiant sun that accompanies it symbolize light, expression, and nourishment, all of which are things that you need to take care of yourself.

Without light, nothing can live and without expression, you cannot nourish your soul. The cicada meaning shows that summer is the time for you to be aware of your self-nourishment. Are you warming your heart and the hearts of your community with positive expression and passion?

If not, it is time to reassess and illuminate yourself. You must let your own light grow inside of you before you can connect with those around you in the way that a community of cicadas join their individual songs in harmony.

NOTE:  The cicadas come out of the ground every seventeen years. On a scientific level, this is to emerge when their predators are low in numbers. On a deeper level, 17 is actually, in numerology, the number 8. The symbol for eternity is a sideways 8. In China, 8 represents the totality of the universe. In the English alphabet, the number 8 is perfectly balanced. Its energy encourages balance in us, resolution of dualities.
       Traditionally the number eight is a symbol of power and leadership, material gain. Financial and material abundance have the capacity to come  more easily during this season of the cicadas, but the key is, it will come to you only as much as your commitment to rebirth and authenticity come too. Like the cicadas, we who are ready and willing will shed our old skin, and emerge as a truer version of ourselves.

Make your goal weight: JOY!

CHALLENGE YOURSELF TO BE THE BEST YOU CAN BE!

MOMENTUM OF THOUGHTS abraham hicks

two power-houses of "new age" thinking sit down and bash it out (see video) these are ideas whose time has come! it seems crazy at first, but i believe it's true. just like the world will consider the most unlikely candidates to be president, they will also consider the most unlikely ideas. (And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. -nin) remember that song from the 60's that said, "this is the dawning of the age of aquarius"? mark my words...the sun is about to rise over the mountains. 

UNDERSTANDING is the first step to HEALING

BBC PRESENTS: The Truth About Sugar - New Documentary 2015

The Canadian Broadcast Company's Science Channel National Geographic Reports on SUGAR. (2015)

How does SUGAR affect the BRAIN?

Louise Hay leads the way in guiding us all to becoming the person we want to be.

saying "be in the moment, be in the now" is very well and good,

but it is not a roadmap to how to do it. how to do it is still a mystery.

louise hay lays it out like apples, peaches and pears on a golden kitchen table flooded with golden light. she teaches, gently, how to think. how to forgive and how to heal.

these things are hard for most to comprehend. i was for me.

but louise shows the way. this is just one of many of her magical, accessible recordings.

don't judge, just listen. give it a chance. it works!

the gabriel method: brain waves

http://www.thegabrielmethod.com/

LISTEN TO THIS: https://soundcloud.com/hay-house/visualization-for-weight-loss-with-jon-gabriel

the AMAZING louise hay!

PICKING UP THE PIECES, STARTING AGAIN this time with the help of Susan Peirce Thompson & BRIGHT LINE EATING

i didn't think i could start again.

i had done everything i could think of to beat obesity, lentils, veggies, turmeric, garlic, no sugar or flour (or at least that much) and i even got a food coach/nutritionist.

i wrote a frickin' blog about it: what i ate, how i ate, what i drank and what i could no longer drink. i juiced, i walked, i swam, i sweat and all along the way pouring my little heart out, every win! every failure.... and I LOST 30LBS....S L O W L Y!

and then one day the thought of keeping it all up, endlessly forever overtook me with hopelessness.  the binges started small and infrequent, but increased in number and severity.

My dear friend Lynn. An inspiration in so many ways.

AND all the while i would talk to my dear friend (Lynn) on the phone, who was also struggling with her own food issues 2000 miles away. she was "raw" when i first met her,  then vegan and then "mcdougall"(https://www.drmcdougall.com/health/education/free-mcdougall-program/). we talked about everything and laughed and cried at our successes and failures.
a year later she started talking about "bright line eating" and this woman named Susan Peirce Thompson. i was skeptical. this friend seemed so much more capable of maintaining rigid food regiments than i was. when she described the program to me it thought she was on to the next crazy solution that would come and go. but she kept on talking and i kept on listening and eventually i began to understand that this was not a diet plan, it was a life plan that could help me become what i so desperately wanted, needed, to become: healthy, thin and free.

TODAY is my second day on the program. 
i feel great. but more importantly i feel confident that this IS DOABLE! something i never thought i would ever say.

AMAZINGLY, today (on DAY 2 of BRIGHT LINE EATING), i am already re-booting my 50 POUNDS TO PASSION blog. here you will see all the things i tried and all the things that failed, not because the don't work, but because even tho i was eating all the right stuff, i was eating too much of it, too often and without control.

i may only on day 2! and you may laugh. you are welcome to laugh, "let's see how long his enthusiasm lasted this time!". but this program will work for me and i will become:
HAPPY, THIN & FREE!

One of the BEST explanations of Diabetes I have found:

This video is really good at explaining the disease, just don't bother clicking on the link. It leads to some miracle cure. The miracle cure is simple: STOP EATING SUGAR, FLOUR AND ALCOHOL.

You are eating too much sugar! STOP IT!

Sugar!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utXcI3FqzeM

Some Extra Inspiration

as i continue my ongoing walk toward good health and spiritual clarity, i am finding inspiration form the places i have already begin. take a look at my interest page to get some good ideas and remind yourself how good, and easy weightloss can be! nameste!

https://www.pinterest.com/independentman/50-pounds-to-passion/

Less of This, More of That!

BECOMING WHO I AM

When I first started the "50 Pounds to Passion" blog a little over a year ago, I was focusing on all the things weighing me down, and holding me back, and what I needed to give up in order to find my passion. I lost 40 pounds of weight, and began to question if this was the way I wanted to be: always half hunger, struggling, losing and sometimes missing out. Life sort of got boring. It was like, true enlightenment lay just around the corner, after more meditation and yoga and raw foods. Was this who I wanted to be? A health fanatic(!).

Where was the fun and joy of life? I returned to my old and comfortable patterns. It was good to be me again. Like so many other people who had lost weight, the pounds came creeping back. And in a way I welcomed those pounds. There is a certain anesthesia to eating and being comfortably fat. No one sees you. You don't need to "be anybody" or "anything" because no one expects anything. When you are fat, you are invisible. People are comfortable around you because you offer "no threat". When you are fat you are not asked to move to the front of the line, more like you are asked to step to the side as you are somehow in the way. And when others treat you this way, it's really easy to start treating yourself way too. When you are not respected, you begin to disrespect yourself. Then, feeling disrespected, its easy to find comfort in more food. "You might as well your tell yourself", you wont be going back to the misery of starving and being fat too. It's just too much to bear.

Then once the weight is all back, the idea of beginning again is so overwhelming and frustrating that putting a frozen pizza in the oven, or taking a carton out of the fridge seem like a much nicer option. It is around this time that the mind begins its complicated journey of twists and turns in an attempt to re-imagine how and when and where to start again. Navigating the world of diet advice is like unraveling a the mystery of a rubic's cube. And all the while you get fatter, and friends and strangers offer advice designed to enlighten you. The all potato diet, wheat grass, no eating after 3, more water, no sugar, no flour, no meat, raw only, vegan! Oh and lose it slowly! (which means do everything differently for weeks, but see no results, but "know you are changing on the inside".) 

It's all too much. I realized I can't diet. I can't lose anything. It's not in our nature to lose. We live in an an acquire culture. It is our nature to want more and to want what we want now. And so with this in mind, I realized that the only way to get what I want to to have it now, in the present moment.

What does that mean? It means that I have to get into being healthy today, for the purpose of being healthier today (not in some imagined future perfect world). Being healthy today means making choices that reflect my perfect self.
I need to take the action required to be the closest to who I have always envisioned myself to be, the person I was put on this earth to be. I know deep in my heart that that person is not a fat, self loathing, depressed being, but rather an active, fully engaged, happy person. To that end, I can be that person to the best of my ability today. The object of my desire the, is not some distant thing that i will someday be, it is rather who I am becoming in this moment.

The Temple

 

for a long time i thought i needed to lose something. but losing something, operating in the negative, is not how the brain works. the goal is always to attain. to improve, get stronger. so instead of thinking of weight-loss, i decided to focus on building something: a stronger body. 

this is a path that does not require a scale. the change that takes place, evolves from the inside out. when you start to build a stronger body, you will choose the best building materials, not the skimpiest. you will choose vegetables and fruit and nuts- whatever, but not low-cal fast foods and skipping meals. you will exercise your body so that it works better, not because you want to make it less (weigh less). the idea of building is empowering. the idea of losing weight is surrounded by deprivation and lacking. when you choose to drink water over eating a snack, do it because your body needs water more than a candy bar so it can flush out toxins. after you drink your 8 glasses of water a day you can think about other options. but drink the water first.

your body is a temple. an amazing gift. it's the best piece of real estate  you can get. you own it. it is a garden. what do you want to plant there? you are the landlord, you are the gardener. does your house and garden serve you? do you serve it? don't you struggle to HAVE the best? then struggle to EAT the best.

Be grateful for what you have. If you can walk and talk and get out of bed in the morning you are way ahead of a lot of people in this world. Be thankful for that- it will get you a lot farther than hating yourself and feeling sorry for yourself for being overweight. Being overweight is a privilege! Thank your lucky stars! And then know that you also have the privilage to be choosy. 

I have a project! and i get to work on that project 10 times a day. I get to build a better body morning ,noon and night. when i take a break at work, i can work on improving myself by eating something that will nourish and sustain my temple. and i also get the immediate satisfaction of being in a temple that will serve me today  and tomorrow. 

have you ever been in a beautiful temple? a temple that was in your mind perfect? and did you wonder about how much work it took to build such a thing? the time and all the choices and all the materials. It may have taken years to make, and when it was complete there must have been a celebration, and after the celebration the people who built it maintained the temple, with love and devotion. what i am saying is, that it takes a lot of work to build a beautiful temple. but it is a labor of love.

what you possess may not feel like a temple, but it is one. you are one of the lucky ones! you have inherited a "fixer-upper" temple! rejoice at the opportunity and thankful for the challenge. stop saying, "all i got was this lousy temple, i hate it". and for heavens sake, stop throwing gasoline and matches on your "hated temple", because believe me one day it will catch on fire.

i am serious about the language change too. change the way you talk to yourself, whether you are "building temple" or "repairing your vehicle" you have to get it into your head that this is not YOU, but rather the thing you are in. it's a vessel. it's a rocket-ship sailing through space. in this way you begin to change the relationship. instead of saying "i'm sad or mad or glad... i want to (or deserve to) eat a cookie as a reward", say "i feel sad... this is what sadness feels like" and then say "thank god i have my project to work on. what can i eat or drink or do to move my temple project forward?". your project, your temple, your vessel, your vehicle is the one thing in life that you have absolute ownership of. you are the sole proprietor! so work on it! fix it up. make it work better. turn it into a temple!