Category Archives: Metaphysical/Spiritual

Diabetes, Metaphysical/Spiritual, Yoga

Veterans’ Day

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So…..Today is Veterans’ Day. I appreciate all of you who have served, are serving now, and will serve. My sense of appreciation encompasses your husbands, your wives, your mom, your dad, your children, your extended family, your friends. This weekend is UFC 205. It is a stacked card with 3 title fights. Conor Mcgregor is fighting Alvarez. Big fight with the most bombastic fighter in the “game.” Whether or not you feel you lost or whether you won what is needed right now is to find the athlete within you. For all my friends who have played a sport you know what it is to lose a big game and you know what it feels like to win one too. Politics is a game. I know this because I had the opportunity to study political science and philosophy and religion at the University of Rochester and have continued my inquiry throughout my life. This week is my 40th anniversary of being diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. This has been my fight. We all have something….right? Look….we live in a world of duality, at a minimum. You may think you are right and those who disagree with you are wrong. WRONG. It is so ironic that those who embrace relativism are so absolute in their views. The Bhagavad Gita says that humility is the foundational condition necessary to enter the path of enlightenment. Be humble in your confidence, righteousness, judgements, perspective. Inject all of these things with Mercy. If you lose then pick yourself up, allow yourself to be embraced. Make a game plan. If you won then care for your opponent. While it may appear that these fighters are trying to hurt each other just like the fight for the presidency appears like people were destroying each other…..you are right. They want to “submit”, knockout or win a decision. This is the objective of the “game.” But once it happens…….Once the fight is over then it’s over and what is needed is humility, caring, compassion, respect. The Decision has been made. Don’t be a bad winner. If you do that you are an asshole. Don’t be a sore loser. If you do that then you are a victim. The yoga path starts with the Yamas. The first Yama is Ahisma – Non Violence. At a deep level this means to not put distress on another. You might be distressed over the decision. That’s Life! The “isness” of life is that you win some and you lose some. Both the Democratic Party and The Republican Party are now divided. We have just undergone the last stage of a double mitosis in the political landscape in our country, and for that matter, on this planet. It really doesn’t matter what you believe or you don’t believe. Belief is not what is needed right now. The visionaries of today are those who can suspend their disbelief. Watch the video and understand that the UFC is a metaphor for fighting the good fight. I predict the UFC is going to expand and go through a huge growth in the next few years. I am not a huge fan of the sport although I recognize that they are truly the most refined athletes in the world. Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) is a metaphor for how to engage in the game of life. They all have great respect for the Art and each other. There are rules. It is one of the few sports that puts emphasis on following the rules. Those who disregard them are shunned. Golf is the epitome of an integral sport. Other sports encourage stretching the rules or trying to get away with breaking them. The recent political fight was not very integral. Anyone can see that. But, nevertheless, the decision has been made. Our only free will is to either see this moment as a threat or an opportunity. Choose opportunity…….Please. If you stay in fear and feel threatened you will shrink and then strike out in fear. Diabetes is a difficult dis-ease. It is 24/7 and it is dangerous. The root of the word Diabetes is Diablo. The game of life is, ultimately, a spiritual war between The Light and The Dark. The paradox is that one cannot be revealed without the other. It’s a Brave New World. Don’t run away from it or try and abort it. Embrace it. Love it. See it as an opportunity.

Moments of pure sportsmanship between fighters
Beautiful moment of sportsmanship & respect between fighters MMA T-shirts – http://www.frenkel7.com/search?q=MMA
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Diabetes, Metaphysical/Spiritual, Yoga

Now….That is A Yoga Pose!

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I was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes in November of 1976 at the age of 14.   My biggest desire in life has been and remains to find the root cause and correct it.  Seventeen years ago I was introduced to yoga.

My first yoga class was at a Bikram Yoga Studio in Boca Raton, Florida in November of 1999.  The room is heated to 110 degrees and there are 26 postures that are repeated each class.  I sweated so much I lost 4 lbs during the class.  The postures are designed to “squeeze” the toxins from every aspect of your being; physical, mental and emotional.  Class is over and the 90 degree heat in Boca feels like a cool breeze.  I would go to Bikram yoga classes almost every day for the next 6 years.  Sometimes I would do two classes; “A double.”  In 2002 I had the opportunity to take three months off from work.  I would wake up, go to the 7am class.  Come home, go for a 3 mile run around 1pm and then go to the 4pm class.  I literally, transformed myself.  Bikram began to get old.  The same routine, the heat, the stink….

I decided I wanted to deepen my practice so, in September of 2006, I went to a 200 hour yoga teacher training course at Kripalu in Massachusetts in the Berkshire Mountains.  While Bikram had systemized yoga into a 90 minute “torture chamber” that had tremendous benefit, it was very narrow in its exploration of the “map” of yoga.  Kripalu enlightened me to a much deeper understanding of what yoga is.  The yoga postures; poses; Asana’s are but one aspect of many in the map of yoga.  When I told one of the senior teachers at Kripalu that I had been living with type 1 diabetes since age 14, she said, “Now that is a yoga pose.”  Since 2006 I have continued to practice yoga and even guide some others in the inquiry of yoga.  Yoga is, ultimately, not something you do…….It is, instead a path of inquiry.  As such, it has accelerated my quest to understanding and correcting diabetes.

Metaphysical/Spiritual

The Truth

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The Truth is not relative. It is what it is and no matter what “take” you have, it will always be what it is and nothing else. “I’ve come to realize that the biggest problem in the world is that people’s perspectives of reality are compulsively filtered through the mesh of what they want and do not want to be true.” Travis Walton.

The inquiry into what is real and what is not is the highest work of a human being. There are many starting points but all lead to the same destination – THE TRUTH. What is needed right now are more people searching for, understanding and living The Truth. I suggest the following entry points of inquiry – Yoga, Vipassana Meditation, The Bible, The Bahgavad Gita, Kabbalah, Christian Science, Philanthropy, Integral Theory, (www.integrallife.com), Volunteering, Teaching Dharma, The Buddha, Christ. Choose one, choose two, choose all of them just choose. When I say choose I don’t mean become a devotee or believe or have faith in….I mean inquire, check out, investigate, discover. Awaken the seeking mind so that you can awaken the mind that seeks “The Way.” I am not a religious person. My personal inquiry has shown me that most all religion is, at best, corrupted. However, that does not mean there is no Truth to found in religion. You have to dig deep but it is there. And what you find are gold nuggets on the journey. Our job is not to “know” the truth. Not one human being has that ability. It is our job to seek the Truth. With that said, I will end with this quote from The Bible….The words of the Bible were never meant to be taken literally. It is code. Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. “I will bless those who bless you, but I will curse the one who curses you, and all the families of the earth will bless one another by your name.”

Metaphysical/Spiritual

Important Information

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Human consciousness is evolving.  This is not my opinion.  Do the research.  It is an empirical fact.  Transpersonal psychologists and others have mapped it.  There are many ways to represent this map, however, essentially, humans have undergone 5 general stage shifts in their developmental journey forward.  Watch this 22 min video by Ken Wilber describing these stages and the critical importance of the next stage, the 6th stage, emerging now………

Metaphysical/Spiritual

The Spiritual Path (Part 3); The Big Picture

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If you step back and take a look at “it” and by “it” I mean everything, and you start breaking it down and what I mean by breaking it down is to see the parts and how they interact, you can’t but help feel a sense of awe.  Most of everything that is going on we can’t see, touch, hear, feel, taste or smell; we can’t sense it.  We aren’t  conscious of these things.  Are you aware of the neural firings in the brain or the release of peptides and the docking of proteins on individual cells?  How often do you think of earth as one planet among trillions of other planets in the universe?    What about Black Holes and superstring theory?  We don’t “sense” these things.

What is “The Big Picture?”  The Big Picture is a description, representation, perspective of everything.  Now, I am not aware of everything.  And neither are you.  However, there is a way to inquire into it. Religion has tried to corner the market on The Big Picture. Each religion has its own Creation “story” and destination and rules of the game.    Science has progressed rapidly in describing what it sees. Science can only describe.  By its nature it is unable to explain.

So, where do we start?  In studying mystical teachings and practices like yoga we discover that there are essentially two fundamental components that make up the whole.  They are emptiness and form. As most of you know by now I like to provide multiple perspectives. Other ways to understand these two components are:

The Creator and The Created;  Ground of Being and The Physical World; Yang and Yin; Male and Female;  Light and Dark;  The Light and The Vessel…….

The problem we have is that we seem to be unable to focus on both of these components at the same time.  Everything arises in duality in our universe.  You ever think about that?  Anything that arises must do so with its polar opposite or it can not exist.  We can’t have a sense of sweet without knowing bitter.  If something is right then something is wrong.  A governing principle in Chinese Medicine is “As above so below.”  This principle is so profound and very valuable in our search for the Big Picture.  It provides us with the starting point.

There are many paths of inquiry from here.