Category Archives: Illucidations

Illucidations, Perspectives, Tools for Evolution

Benefit the World Right Now

How can I benefit the world, you may ask? (Go ahead… ask!)

What IS “the world”?

Good question.

The world is our environment… where we live, but more than the physical planet we call Earth.

The world includes all living things, and all dead things, all elements, everything we can see, hear, touch, taste, and smell, our thoughts and mental environment and, for that matter, things we can’t sense and the source of all potential.

So that being the case, everything we say and do and think affects this larger “environment”. There’s a common saying that reflects this concept: that a single butterfly flapping its wings in Africa affects the entire world.

So, with this perspective of “the world”, any loving thought or deed, benefits the world.

So, wherever you are, at any time, you can do something or even think something that benefits the world, whether you’re alone in a room, in front of a computer, or in a crowd, or out in nature.

And, of course, the more “Minutes of Focus” you put into benefitting the world, the better you get at it and the more benefit there is, and the more people involved in the same thing increases its effectiveness.

Do you see the power you have? A good thing to use wisely, right?

Seymour Lovejoy

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Illucidations, Perspectives, Steps

Steps

Steps are phases of focus. The term “minutes of focus” has been used by proponents of focus, and often their sales, like “10 minutes of focus a day will create a new you”. I like to use it as a measurement of where you spend your time… as in, “Rate your activities in ‘Minutes Of Focus’, or “MOF’s.”, if you will. It’s a simple way to categorize, quantify or measure what you have experienced, i.e. by accumulated duration. The directions of focus measured in minutes of focus, when placed in order by total, as a report, will be a clear indicator of the personality you have accumulated to the present.

Then, of course, you can choose a new set for the future.

Before I started writing this, I decided to google the term “Minutes of Focus” and found a site for the book “Focus Manifesto” (http://focusmanifesto.com/) that has a Zen approach to a calm, creative lifestyle. It appears to be very clear, as one might expect from thousands of MOFs in Zen practice.

This begins a series of blog entries under the category of “Steps”. These can be steps forward, back, or to the side, mine and those of others, mankind even, factual or conceptual. I hesitate to label anything as a step forward or backward, proffering an opinion, as it were, but generally I would consider peaceful creative living, love and compassion as forward, and warring, hateful injurious activities as backward. But, hey, the world is unlimited in expression, and, of course, there’s the old saying “10 million idiots can’t be wrong”. I would hesitate to call anyone an idiot (unless,  perhaps it’s referencing a clinical condition) because even an idiot, has a large number of MOF’s in some category and could be considered highly experienced and very knowledgeable in that category, all things being equal. And we’ve all been “idiots” and we still dabble in “idiocy” on occasion. Right?

Seymour Lovejoy

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Illucidations, Perspectives, Tools for Evolution

Live Efficiently: Train Your Subconscious

Your subconscious can be your friend or your foe. It’s simple: If you are “at odds with yourself”, it will slow you down. If your subconscious is in tune with your goals, you’ll get to them faster. Conclusion: program your subconscious so that your subconscious assists you on your path.

Your subconscious is your programming, the images of your physical and mental experience up to this point plus the feelings accompanying them. What’s gone in has already gone in, but how you respond to it and the significance you give it can change. You can reprogram your operating system: You version 2.0.

So you have two simultaneous programming activities: adding new features and fixing old bugs. The highest priority bugs to fix are the ones that slow you down the most. Some of those are fear, believing you’re all alone, and believing you can’t do something, or believing that something is impossible.

 Fix the bugs-

Perhaps my favorite response to someone believing something to be impossible is: “How about existence itself?” If you can believe that we and other things exist, which is a pretty strange and fantastic all-pervasive phenomenon, if you ask me, how can you rule out the possibility anything else? As creative beings we surpass our previous assumed limits daily. Once you’ve accepted that anything is possible, you can start to expect and look for open doors and guidance in tune with your goals.

Spending time and consciousness on fear is inefficient with respect to achieving goals, because it focuses on what you don’t want, versus what you do want. What you think is what you get. Karma is designed to help us learn to make choices that benefit ourselves and others. Focusing on something draws it to you, so if you focus on what you don’t want, it gets created so that you can learn to release that fear and learn to not put your attention there again. Put your focus on beneficial things, things that enhance life.

So you think you’re alone? You’re just missing a letter and a space: “all one”. If you invite your guides to participate in enhancing your life and the lives of others, and listen to the thoughts that pop in and watch the happenings around you’ll see clear evidence that there’s more going on behind the scenes on your behalf than you previously realized, and you’ll laugh at how you thought you were alone.

Adding new features

Now that you have a team to assist, make it easy on yourself and the team. If you believe you have to do “a”, “b” and “c” before you get to “d”, you might be overlooking a simpler, “fast track” solution that may be presented to you as your day unwinds. (Watch for it!) However, at a minimum you will have to have the mindset and the skills that “d” requires. You can’t plant an apple seed and expect an orange to sprout, though if you give someone an apple, they might give you an orange. If you want to win a vocal contest like “The Voice”, you have to be able to sing well and be “likeable”, do what it takes to audition, and exceed peoples’ expectations. As you see, though, there’s always personal work, focus time, getting ready to qualify, developing skill, confidence and personal traits that people can resonate with.

So think about it. How can you apply this to you?

–Seymour Lovejoy

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Illucidations, Perspectives, Tools for Evolution

Where’s your focus?

Based upon what we’ve individually achieved, it seems rather apparent that in order to accomplish anything, a certain amount of focus is required, i.e. time focused upon an activity, cycles of repetition, learning, training the subconscious in the direction of our goal, getting to the point of adeptness where your subconscious takes care of the details and, humorously, not as much conscious focus is required! Like walking.

However as my Tai Chi Teacher, David Cheng, said, “Whenever you do anything, do it with consciousness”. He gave the example, “When you’re driving, just drive.” as opposed to listening to the radio, talking or thinking about something else. Doing things with consciousness is being “the watcher”, watching yourself do what you’re doing, and watching the thoughts that pop in, recognizing thoughts that are guidance, and using that guidance to enhance your activities.

OK, so we have this faculty of awareness that we can focus to accomplish things. What do you want to focus on? What do you want? … As opposed to need. Need is another topic.

If we’re talking about what you want, we’re talking about a value system. What do you value? What is most important and what is less important. Your whole life rotates about what you give importance, and the beauty is that it’s configurable. If we give “spirituality” a high value, then “Divine Will” and being of service to All That Is become a focus. The Teachers say that Divine Will is, simply, that All That Is be enhanced. So as instruments of Divine Will, creative delegates, our job is to enhance our lives and the lives of others, thus enhancing All That Is. It’s doable by anyone and everyone in the moment, and on the big stage we call life.  In fact, if all you do is appreciate and be kind to others, and appreciate life and all it has to offer, you will have added great value to the world.

A values system is the DNA of your life. I suggest that the most efficient and beneficial primary value for one’s lifetime is to enhance life itself — your life and the lives of others, from individual atoms and cells to the whole and beyond. This benefits you and the world. Let that be your primary mission and the primary criterion for your choices and actions. Then create and do things within that structure.

But for efficiency’s sake, take the shortest path to your goals. The Taoists say “Do by not doing”, i.e. use the minimum effort necessary to accomplish the task, or, at an esoteric level, create the environment where it manifests itself. The Evergreens talk about “protocol”, i.e. the necessary steps to accomplish something, and advise us to create a path minimizing those steps, by not assuming you have to go through a, b, and c to get to d, and by not imposing an expectation of difficulty in any of those steps. If you connect with your guides and trust in your moment-to-moment intuitive guidance, you can ride first class on a luxury jet from a to d rather than walk barefoot through the desert. The right doors will open at the right time and you’ll know to walk through. Similarly, the Hindu concept of Advaita Vedanta suggests that by putting your consciousness at the goal, you will be there. All good advice. Take the luxury jet. Be joyful and watch and listen. Make sense?

Seymour Lovejoy

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Illucidations, Perspectives, Tools for Evolution

Showtime!

Some time ago I saw the movie “All That Jazz” about the life of dancer/chorographer Bob Fossi, who, always before a show, would look in the mirror, do “jazz hands” and say, “Showtime!” to put himself in the right frame of mind to give his best performance.

Being a musician, I realized that just thinking “Showtime!” was a good practice for me so that I could “put my best foot forward”  for the audience’s enjoyment, but then I realized that this could also be a reminder to radiate joy wherever I was.  Maybe people will wonder why you’re smiling, but maybe you will move their consciousness to joy, if only for an instant, and because of your consciousness, there will be more love and joy in the collective consciousness.

Time to put on a great show in your life, don’t you think?

–Seymour Lovejoy

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Illucidations, Perspectives

Radiating Joy – Silent Laughing

Here’s a quick and quiet way to radiate joy as a blessing to all – laugh silently.  Laugh “in your head”.  Laugh with no reason at all as if something is hilarious.  And imagine that everyone is laughing with you.  You know what unconditional love is. This is unconditional joy. It’s a very powerful practice that can be done any time anywhere.

The inner mantra: Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha!

Go through your day laughing silently and radiating joy.

It’s loads of fun.

–Seymour Lovejoy

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Illucidations, Perspectives

School for Angels

What is Earth?  For that matter, what is our “Universe”? It’s a class room.

As has already been stated, we have “The Creator’s” DNA and are creators ourselves. So why don’t most of us seem like angels or gods, for that matter? We’re just kids in kindergarten. We have to go to be trained to use our inherited capabilities.  Grade schools, high schools, colleges, universities and tech schools  teach other things, which are good, but they don’t necessarily know about or teach skills which harmonize with or bring out our divine (beneficial creator) potential. It’s as if you weren’t taught to talk.

That’s why there are specialty schools such as this, a school for angels, a Master’s program, if you will,  to help learn you take your consciousness where it hasn’t been before.

The  intention of Temple Teachers and the Temple Teachings is to make you aware of your divine potential so that you might begin to practice and get down to using your divine creative potential to enhance life, which is, in essence,  the divine intent or divine will.

–Seymour Lovejoy

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Illucidations

What do you take? What do you leave?

Comedian George Carlin had a wonderful routine about “stuff” that directly addressed the issue of what to take and what to leave, i.e. if you go on a vacation, what do you take with you? Then, if while there you get invited to stay the night somewhere, what subset of your stuff do you take with you? His delivery is hilarious.

But let’s ask the same question in several other contexts?

Suppose you’re a handyman, it’s Saturday morning and you have 3 appointments scheduled. Based upon the appointments you may take a general purpose toolbox, and perhaps several other tools to fit the specific needs of the appointments. And then your wife gives you a “honey-do” list for the day and tells you to remember your lunch… and “can you bring something back for dinner?” If you wish to keep your wife and your clients happy, it would behoove you to be organized and have all your “to-do’s” written down in an organized fashion, and take with you all the tools and paperwork required.

So let’s say you get your truck loaded, you check your list, open the garage door and drive away to the day’s adventure. What did you take, and what did you leave? 1) You took you consciousness and your capabilities, you took the things you needed for the day, and all your experience and beliefs, and all your expectations as to what will happen, what time you will return, and your feelings and sensations. 2) You left the world you call “home”, i.e. house, wife, family, dog, and related categories, and all your accumulation of stuff.

You’ve all heard the question: “Would there be a sound if a tree fell in the forest and no one (and no instrument) was there to hear it?” So here’s another question. Is “home” still in existence when you leave it, taking your consciousness to another environ? Whether or not your home continues to exist in perceived “physicality”, you expect that it persists and that, for the most part, it will not have changed when you return. And dependent on the forces of the moment, you’ll get what you expect.

But let’s look at this from another angle. How are you adding to and enhancing your experience, and the experience of others, and what are your “takeaways”? What do you take with you when you leave any environ? Your experiences and your conclusions (which are experiences too), i.e. what you learn. The book of Deuteronomy has a great suggestion, something to the effect of: “I have set before you Life and Death. Therefore choose Life.” So take those experiences that come to you, learn from them, be joyful, and move on to the next experience.

–Seymour Lovejoy

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Illucidations, Perspectives, Tools for Evolution

Blissings.Org: A Global Portal for Unconditional Love

Critical mass describes the point, like the boiling point of water, where, due to an increase of some kind, something fundamentally changes.

In order for the collective human consciousness to evolve in any direction, a significant percentage of people on earth must share a common viewpoint.

To that end, the Blissings.org website was created to provide a means for people to unite in consciousness and increase the amount of unconditional love in the world.

We’re familiar with the concept of a blessing. When we “bless” food, we take a moment to give thanks for what we have, and ask that the food be divinely enriched for our betterment. The Teachers say that our blessing and appreciating the food increases its value and makes it harmonize with us so that it’s better assimilated into our systems.

When we send blessings to others we are expressing our wish that good things happen to them. A “blissing”, however, is a very special type of blessing. It includes the intention that the recipient experience a moment of true bliss, the feeling of being loved and appreciated, and a moment of realization and enlightenment that leads them to express more love and appreciation to others. Surely we all need to feel loved and appreciated, and we would all benefit from certain people and organizations experiencing a moment of enlightenment that leads them to be more loving and compassionate.

When you visit the Blissings.org website, you enter the name of a person or organization to receive a blissing, click the “Send Blissing” button, a light flashes and the cumulative number of blissings sent to the recipient is shown, as well the top ten blissings recipients and their totals. If no recipient is specified, Mother Earth is the default.

The beauty of the website is that, regardless of its simplicity, it is a global portal through which unconditional love is expressed, is demonstrated and grows. As more people use it over and over, humanity approaches that critical mass where love, peace and joy become the status quo.

Now that’s what I call evolution. What do you think?

–Seymour Lovejoy

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Illucidations, Tools for Evolution

Exercise in Creation #237

Here’s an exercise and an act of creation:

Take about 2 minutes in a quiet place. Close your eyes, take a few breaths and imagine feeling a hug so wonderful, so completing that it makes up for all the hugs you‘ve ever wanted and not received. Bask in that feeling.

Do the exercise as many times as it takes to remember and feel the feeling at will.

–Seymour Lovejoy

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