Adventures with Ideas: Truth, Beauty and the Paradoxes of Life
Juliet Bennett's Blog
  • About
  • My Story
  • Research
  • Photography
  • Modeling
  • 2009
  • 2010
  • 2011
  • 2012
  • 2013
  • 2014
  • 2015
  • About
  • My Story
  • Research
  • Photography
  • Modeling
  • 2009
  • 2010
  • 2011
  • 2012
  • 2013
  • 2014
  • 2015
  • Home
  • Random Life Stuff
  • How my day got better.

How my day got better.

21 Oct ’10 Leave a Comment Written by Juliet Bennett

After facing rejection and depression that followed some emails and the lecture on Palestine and Israel, I went to the library and found myself inside my own little metaphoric story:

I was looking for a book but I couldn’t find it. The number system can be confusing in Fisher library (which is MASSIVE) but I thought I had it mastered. I checked the shelves where books that had just been returned go, then I checked the front desk, then I rechecked the computer, then I decided to go up the six flights of stairs for one final look.

I still couldn’t find it.

Then, just before giving up, I had a look one more time at the stacking shelves. I realised that the books on these shelves were not in order – searching through title by title I finally found the book I was looking for. It had taken almost an hour, and had sent me around and around in like circles, but eventually I succeeded.

If you fail then try and try again I advised myself, applying it to my previous nihilism, even if you feel you are going around in circles, you will soon realise it’s a spiral, and you are closer to your objective.

Leaving the library I met a friend to try a new yoga studio. Meeting my friend my mind was still a bad place, complaining about all that had happened. Then, in a room heated to around 30 degrees but doing a lighter yoga than bikram, I found my peace. It was intermittent – moments in the relaxation and meditation time and when the entire room of around 50 people were humming ‘Om’ coordinated only by our different breathing lengths. Here I felt my mind and body unified as one. Even if it only lasted a few minutes, this sense of peace reminded me of two things: peace might not last forever, but it is possible, and peace starts within.

This feeling of peace inside me may not last forever, but some remanence of this feeling is still with me now, some two and a half hours later. And I’m sure I’ll continue to reap the benefits of the feeling of balance as I go to sleep and maybe even tomorrow. Yoga helped me deal with my day. Hopefully the destructive part of my mind will allow this constructive practice to spiral me upward – inspiring me to go to more yoga classes and furthering this feeling of united mind and body. It really feels great!

If this scenario plays out I might look forward to reaping the corresponding mental and bodily health benefits and the compounding life benefits that come with that. Fingers crossed this is my new story – but you never know what tomorrow will bring.

Random Life Stuff
Life in Oz, Yoga
Similar posts
  • My policy wishlist for Australia’s re... — As of 2020, scientists estimate a remaining cumulative emissions budget of 400 gigatonnes of greenhouse gases measured in carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2e) to keep global average surface temperature within 1.5°C of preindustrial levels (Rogelj et al. 2019).[1] Business-as-usual adds 40 GtCO2 to the atmosphere each year, using up our 1.5°C budget in 10 years. The budget estimated to correspond with [...]
  • 2015 in review — ‘Repetition produces a gradual lowering of vivid appreciation. Convention dominates. A learned orthodoxy suppresses adventure.’ [1] “Without adventure civilization is in full decay. … in their day the great achievements of the past were the adventures of the past. Only the adventurous can understand the greatness of the past.“ At the start of 2015 I was writing an article on [...]
  • Reframing your mind: changing negativ... — “Whatever you want to succeed at, you need to replace any negative scripts you might have with positive ones” (Ash and Gerrand 2002: 7). We need to reframe our minds, changing negative stories to positive stories, one micro story at a time. Eve Ash and Rob Gerrand’s (2002) Rewrite your life! is a book full of tips on how to [...]
  • Taming the beast: technology, corpora... — Have we reached a point in the processes of industrialisation, globalisation, and corporatisation in which we have lost control over our culture, our lives and our shared future? Looking at my life, the lives of those around me, the media and global politics and economics, I think we have. It seems to me that technology controls us, rather than us [...]
  • Slave to society — Society draws us into its world of the trivial, making us slaves to the superficial, the menial, its time-wasting ego-based self-absorbed naval-gazing meaninglessness. It is evermore relentlessness with its inescapable myriad of communication paths that bath you in guilt. “I haven’t replied to this.” “I haven’t called that person back.” “I have to do this.” “I must remember that.” The [...]
The day everything went wrong
A deeper exploration of Resolution Theory

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

TRUTH

BEAUTY

ADVENTURE

ART

PEACE

  • Popular
  • Recent
  • Comments
  • Is “God” a Fractal?
    15 Feb ’11
  • Is Lindt chocolate slave chocolate?
    11 Sep ’09
  • Creativism – a philosophy for life
    10 Sep ’09
  • Free Documentaries: The Truth Is Free
    17 Apr ’10
  • Coming to grips with the elephant in the room
    28 Jun ’10
  • Optimum Trajectory, swimming against the current, and man who stare at goats.
    4 Aug ’10
  • A short biography
    2 Sep ’09
  • Sex or chess? Peace, the world’s trump card
    13 Apr ’10
  • Alan Watts Fan Club
    3 Dec ’12
  • The Very Short Life and Times of Me and Kombi Xee
    23 Feb ’11
  • My policy wishlist for Australia’s response to climate change
    17 Jan ’20
  • Business leadership in climate change
    1 May ’19
  • A story of (mis)fortune: the farmer and his son
    8 Oct ’18
  • What is life really about?
    1 Mar ’17
  • Why the right (brain) is right…
    22 Feb ’17
  • New life: reflections on being a new mum
    29 Dec ’16
  • Orwellian Australia: the “[Un]Fairer Parental Leave Bill 2015”
    1 May ’16
  • Alan Watts’ ‘dramatic model’ and the pursuit of peace
    18 Mar ’16
  • A new lens to view the world: the world as process
    14 Jan ’16
  • 2015 in review
    1 Jan ’16

Adventures with Ideas... on Facebook

Archives

Categories

  • Academic (35)
  • Adventure (119)
  • Beauty (23)
  • Featured Posts (10)
  • Peace (124)
  • Random Life Stuff (102)
  • Truth (164)
Constitutional Recognition

Rights of Indigenous Peoples: A Personal Statement

As a "non-indigenous" Australian living on what was once the land of the Cadigal and Wangal Wangal communities, I wish to acknowledge the inter-generational responsibility that I feel toward the colonial past. As a beneficiary of "White Australia", to the Eora people of Sydney, I request your forgiveness. I stand in solidarity with your rightful demands to self determination and active participation in governmental decisions, and I hope I may learn from your eco-spiritual connection. May we, as Tom Trevorrow of the Ngarrindjeri puts it, learn to 'respect, care and share' the gifts that our planet offers us.

Tags

Alan Watts Atheism Big History Bridge Series Central America Chocolate climate change Conflict Transformation Creativism Ecology Europe God Health India India/Nepal inspiration Life in Oz Life philosophy Meaning of life Modeling My Brazilian My Christian Journey Narrative Narratology Occupy optimal trajectory Panentheism peace philosophy Photography Politics population Potentialism poverty religion slavery social construction South America The Pyramid Travel United States War What is God Wikileaks Yoga

Related posts

  • Life in Oz
    • The Very Short Life and Times of Me and Kombi Xee
    • Depression
    • Tangled up in knots
    • Practicing what I preach
    • Loving What Is
  • Yoga
    • India’s default detox
    • And now, I relax
    • Hippies and happiness (Pokhara)
    • Yoga – always a good decision
    • Clutter to clarity – using mantras Soham and Humsa

Donation

evolve theme by Theme4Press  •  Powered by WordPress