BootsnAll Travel Community

This looks like the perfect exercise for me, I don't really know where I am, and I know even less about where I want to go.

Thank you.

Jeroen

This is a wonderful dialog...

I'm a fairly old hippy myself. I have used visualization to list and or see my way through a design career that started in high school and now has me a SVP of Creative Operations at an industry leading company in the midwest. Those same techniques took my family through many educational adventures like the top of Mt. Fuji, Mt. Kilimanjaro and clown school. I love researching trips! This 'stuff" really works.

My artistic talent was ready to be cultivated but I never knew where my people skills came from although I used them to great effect. It was not until I read the book, "Now, Discover Your Strengths" by Buckingham/Clifton that I realized my core strength was Empathy. I have a natural "radar" for interpersonal communication. I highly recomend the book to give anyone a starting point or sign post in your journeys.
There are 34 different strength catagories in the book. An online test gives you your results.

The book also had a paragraph about; fear of one's true self. Amazingly, I soon uncovered an additional quote by Nelson Mandela called; Moving Beyond Fear...
" Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, successful, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are we NOT to be? You are a child of god. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in EVERYONE! And as we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others!"

That "special stuff" inside us is there whether you believe in god or not.

I have spent most of my life trying to get out of my own way. Many times I have, sometimes not...
The book and the quote are recent discoveries that have helped me understand why some stuff happened to me.
Because of my age they are explainations as well as guides.

Growth also comes when you make yourself susceptible to opportunities for discovery.

Have fun out there...

I hope some of you find value in these.

ED

Howdy All...a warm howdy to everyone out there in Bootsnall Land!!!

Thanks Al for the messages - I am going to keep my eye out for that book.

Its funny how a book can trigger memories and can easily put our past events in some sort of perspective.

Can I ask are you keeping a journal?

Cheers

(Hi Howdy!)

Cheesehead - don't know if you'll see this message, but maybe others could chime in too. I did the Now, Discover your Strengths test through work a few yrs ago; my strengths didn't really surprise me - Connectedness, Deliberative, Input, Intellection, and Strategic. I know I have all of those strengths, as that stuff comes naturally to me; however, what if as I get older the intellectual/bookwormy/strategizing/logic seems dull to me?? That part of me is starting to irritate me at times!! I guess I sometimes get bored w/ my strengths, and my strengths would just lead me into a career, such as I'm in, stuck in a building all day, thinking. Which I don't exactly want to do, as there's so much other stuff that I like, although I have a 2nd interview for a job that would be much like that...which I admit would be much more to my liking than what I'm currently doing, so I think it would be an improvement from today. BUT there's a whole other side of me, an artistic side, and being in nature, and that's what I really find exciting and interesting.

I guess I'm not seeking a specific answer, as only I can figure out what I want to do...just the general question of - what if one doesn't particularly enjoy what he's good at? :-)

Oh - and I agree about your comment that much of life is trying to get out of your own way, and your own obstacles you build up!!

EOWYN218
Thank you for responding...and yes, I wander this site often.
I read up on "Connectedness". The strength that jumped out to me was; "sensitive to the invisible hand, you can give others comfort that there is a purpose beyond their humdrum lives". What a wonderful gift to build upon.
I certainly don't have any road maps for others to follow but I've found that making myself "available" for life has rendered many opportunities.
Good luck on your journey...

Hey oldhippy, I think since I was born my destiny was to answer lifes questions, I have always been on a path of self discovery, trying every religion, asking why when who how, depicting truth from lies, the place I am at now is a path of realising that its so easy to get lost on the path of fate instead of making our own instinctive decisons. The questions I am asking myself at the moment actually over the past 4 or so months is who is it I want to be I have talents as we all do yes but do I seek the traditions of western life the house kids husband, food on the table, money in the bank etc or is it that I should give my life to helping the rest of the world that are unable to obtain these things since they are easily at my reach. Anyhow before I tell my life story I would love to be apart of this journey (experiment)

"your thoughts create your reality "

I want to welcome all the new folk who have posted to this thread, and say howdy to all of the ol timers here!

I have been a bit remote lately...traveling...taking care of health & awareness isssues.

I am pleased a forum such as this is constantly regenerated by the energy of those that care to add their thoughts and feelings.

I am curious of any issues that have come up for you in your self discovery process have been frustrating or tough to tackle?

Any personal/spiritual issues got you bogged down in thought?

I myself have found that life is like a washing machine...for just as you cycle to the top of your awareness, you soon must recycle all the way back thru it!

It is almost like our whole purpose in life is to constantly make new meaning of our personal life experience...and just when you think you got it...you get to start all over again.

Oh Ohhhh...here comes the spin cycle!!!!

How's life been treating you?

Best of life to you all!

good to see your name again friend

i couldnt have said it better myself..

quote:

Oh Ohhhh...here comes the spin cycle!!!!

Lovin' the spin I'm in....

Old Hippy, this experiment still going on? It's been a while since you posted... but I'd like to know more about it.

This experiment is continual. Our friend oldhippy may not frequent the boards as much, lately, but the questions are still valid, and your answers are still waiting for you oldhippy is a very special person, but in truth, we all are. we can all give perspective on our spiritual journies, and learn from one another. Not everyone has the 'clarity' of our hippie friend, but all they need to do is realize life. welcome!

Hello all!

What a wonderful gem of a thread to stumble onto.

Recent events in my life have conspired to make me take an honest to goodness inventory of my life. I've always been philosophical and introspective but oh boy, only now am I doing it with the walls down and the armor off. I love the adventure of it and absolutely love that there are others to share the adventure with, if I may...?

As to what brought me here, I recently put myself on the life-setting path to live my dreams as a filmmaker. It is the most exhilirating thing and I feel like my entire previous life was preparation just for this. I feel as if the universe is opening up to me, as I am opening up to the universe.

Sadly, I am also just coming off a particularly intense and painful situation with a man who was fantastically wrong for me. I saw the red flags and still fell into it--utterly and hopelessly, as I've never done before. It was also exhilirating for a little while as I caught a glimpse of what sharing a life with someone really means and what I have in me to make it happen; and, what I don't have in me to make it happen.

And thus here I am, with one of the biggest, most important projects I can ever embark on...me!

I've begun to seriously read up on Zen lately and its paradigms and non-paradigms are helping me so much to draw out the answers and questions I'm seeking. I am hoping to join a zendo soon.

I'll talk to all you guys later as I try to do some more thinking...the open road, sandbars and ocean breezes, kindness, respect, gratitude, truth, perception, flux, centeredness, Me, the Other...

zen is a good and noble path. one of the few that constantly points away from itself to show the truth. its also quite interesting in the idea that you can not "practice" zen, as it is simply realizing your being, or current state of being. zen is life, and life is zen. it, like all else, is yet another item making up the whole of every-thing. realizing that we already know, we do not "search" for these things that we perceived as missing. That "nothing" we experience allows us to experience the "everything" we perceive we are without.

Personally, i like allegories, so ill use one! There was a person walking through the hills, enjoying the scenery. they walked for days just taking in the grandeur. On one of his/her last days, they noticed there was a rock in his/her shoe. The shoe was taken off, emptied, and put back on again good as new. He wondered how long it had been there...

On the surface it might seem like this story is random, without meaning. But, as with every other story in our experience we can garner very important information. Truly, how long HAD that rock been in there? There is no way to know. It only came into that persons "reality" when they stepped on it. What we are is vastly beyond the bodies we currently inhabit. However, the bodies we are in, and the perceptions they produce, are limited. Its possible that rock was in there even before the shoe was bought, but only when it was stepped on did it come into being, in that reality. The person/body was not in control of when that would happen, but surely it happened precisely when it was "supposed" to. To realize our limitations, without deception, is the path to limitlessness. "when nothing is special, everything can be."

Oh! and taking it too seriously may make you take it not seriously enough

There is a lightness of being in zen. It affirms and denies everything and nothing, in the same breath and in the self-same way. We only "have" the self and in the self is the whole universe--the absolute unity of all things.

But the self is often imprisoned in destructive patterns, many of which were laid down early in life and hardened through time into personal truths and dogma. The ego ropes us in, it is obsessive and selfish. It clouds our vision and so we keep feeding our selfish fears and desires--for approval, for control, for approval from those we wish to control, for control from whom we want approval, whatever.

To see through them and see only one's true self in the here and now, there is no past or future. Zen is how we live moment to moment, in the dust of everyday existence.

What a gift this simplicity must be, to cling to neither pride nor possessions.

But heck I can still feel myself using reason here. So I'm just trying to live life the best I can, fully present in the moment, attentive to the Other, and in continuous joy. Hopefully I'll bump into some enlightenment along the way.

enlightenment is a funny concept, but im sure you will remember it again.

sometimes we can make things very complicated, and in the end, we find the glasses were right on our foreheads the whole time

zen is everything you are now, your doubts, your uncertainty about your enlightenment, your experience, and your being. But even saying such things is going too far, or not far enough! its excluding everything else zen is, which is everything and the nothing that defines it. To put it into words, we must limit it to being that (and not, say, a bullfrog). all of a sudden, that is not this, and this is not that. when, correctly, i am not this, not that, and not the other (neti-neti-neti). perspectives! Words can never express it, but when we think about it we use words, pictures, limitation. every-thing and no-thing... its odd, saying what zen is, automatically defines what zen is not. and since zen is every-thing and no-thing, its a bit of a paradox!

Its very, very fun to reason things out, its what our minds are for! The problem is in thinking it can present the whole picture. its all beyond words, and its the words themselves. Its our entire being now, and everythings being always. its the collision of trillions of different realities to form one living self, on every level.

well, thats my "perspective".. ..for now anyway

Sinahptik, you express your perspective well. I can "see" you over there where you're sitting.

I'm going on my first trip alone in a few months. Let's see what it's like jumping off a cliff..