Chop wood, carry water.

A new monk asked the old monk what he needs to do to achieve enlightenment - so the story goes. The old monk said go and chop wood and carry water for the monastery.

After a few years the new monk came back and asked what else he must do. The answer, chop wood and carry water.

Doing yoga at this stage in my life made this story come back to me as I am told by my teacher to do Downward facing dog - a lot! This is a basic pose and I am still struggling and maybe in a few years I will get it right or maybe not.

But it is not important that I get it perfect, in life we have to do the basics right and keep on practicing it otherwise the other things will not work as it should. 

In yoga, the same principles that is applicable to the downward facing dog pose is applicable to all the other poses. Basics. Chop wood carry water!

In life we have to serve our fellow human beings (and the environment) in whatever we do and we have to practice it every day our whole life. The problem is that this wisdom comes so much later in life. In the beginning we are so arrogant and driven to serve ourselves that we don't consciously serve others and the environment- we tend to be takers and not givers.

Service is what life is all about and to do this we have to do the basics over and over - love, peace, patience, joy, good, kind, gentle, faithful and self control to name the important ones. We can never do it well enough so that we can say I have mastered it. Chop wood, carry water.

Enlightenment only comes when I realise that it is really not about me. When you practise the basics the Universe seems to open up to an abundance that blows your mind.

Connecting the Dots

Connecting the Dots 

 

As a kid we used to get these books with lots of dots with numbers 

and when you connect the dots in sequence of the numbers, like 

magic, a picture appears. This makes me think that it is so much 

like what we are supposed to do in life – Connecting the Dots. 

 

What do I mean by this? 

 

Every experience we have in life leaves a DOT in our subconscious, 

every experience is meant for us to learn from, everything 

happens for a reason, there are no coincidences. 

 

If you check back in a previous rambling of mine you will find 

something on the 7th Sense. (Nonsense) 

 

Connecting the dots starts with living in the moment. You have to 

experience everything going on around you. Some people think 

they cannot multi task but that is not true! At the same time we 

are seeing, we hear, we feel, we taste and we smell. You cannot 

help it. It is how we are created. The problem comes with our 

minds. We don’t register these things that we are experiencing. 

What a waste!  

 

Why don’t we register these experiences if we know that we need 

them? The simple answer is that we tend to not live in moment or 

in the present and that is where these things are happening. We 

operate on autopilot. Now this is not a bad thing per se. 

Sometimes we have to go somewhere and shut the conscious off 

so our subconscious can get a chance to “Connect the dots".

 

Connecting the dots in life comes from adding every experience 

consciously into our brain. You cannot overload it. It is said that 

people in general only utilize about 10% of their brainpower. So 

don’t be shy, there is an abundance of storage space in your brain, 

load it up with what is happening right at this moment. 

 

Think about smells for a moment and lets think about the good 

ones for now. You walk past a bakery and you can smell the fresh 

bread and it makes your mouth water. What would have happened 

if you never connected the dots between the smell of freshly baked 

bread and the taste of it? At thecsame time we also experience the feeling 

of being with mom in the kitchen or having a great family meal 

and experience the love we felt then and you can visualize your 

folks and siblings and friends. Wow, just by smelling freshly baked 

bread! What if we have never experienced or even taken note of bread being baked? Then we would walk right past the bakery and it will mean nothing to me.  

 

If you knew that the things that are happening within your sphere 

of influence right now would shape your future in one way or 

another, would you still ignore it? 

 

Now lets think about the people that we meet. Do we meet them 

by chance? I don’t think so. Everyone we meet has a purpose, 

either we are making a contribution to his or her lives or they are 

making one to ours. There is no neutral ground. This may mean a 

long friendship or a moment. Sometimes when we smile at another 

person, it may just be what he or she wanted at that moment. I 

would not even know his name but I have made someone’s life 

better. Other times we meet someone and it becomes a long 

friendship or partnership and we are sharing ideas and 

experiences (connecting the dots between our lives). 

 

In Sanskrit there is a word “seva” which means “voluntary action” 

or “selfless service” This could mean you see a kid in a dangerous 

situation and you react without thinking to get the kid out of 

trouble – voluntary action or you see someone that looks as 

though they are lost and you offer to take them to their 

destination – selfless service. 

 

To be able to live up to “seva” you have to somehow connect the 

dots, be in the present to see the danger for the kid, having a dot 

in your subconscious that tells you what the danger is, or notice 

the behavior (connect the dots) of someone that needs direction. 

Maybe because you know how you act or feel when you are lost 

and would have loved someone to offer you help. 

 

By taking notice of your experiences when you live in the moment, 

you are giving numbers to your dots, just like in the game. By not 

paying attention to what is going on round you in the present is 

still leaving a dot but with no number! If you didn’t get the 

numbers on the dots, you will not know which dots to connect to 

each other. Then you really get into the 7th Sense of “Nonsense” 

and never into the ultimate sense called “Common Sense” 

 

Then you venture into meta physics where you get 3 types of 

matter 

 

“Matter”, “ Anti Matter” and if you don’t pay attention to your 

experiences “Doesn’t matter”