Moment by Moment ...an Ageless Process

So here I go ...again. I thought I'd done this before, but it appears too many moments have gone by since I did this (here, anyway). I have been blogging on my own website, nancyswayzee.com, for going on four years. As happens often in life, you get all excited about a project, and have EVERY intention of staying with it, and then ...
It's called LIFE - and definitely in capital letters. LIFE seems to get in the way of everything, but that's actually because we aren't really noticing LIFE, we are busy planning it, or regretting it, or trying to change it. We seldom stop and just appreciate it - yet it's all there is. Well, there is the alternative, but think how many sunsets or clouds or bird songs or babies faces you'd miss if you take THAT route. Now, I'm just as guilty as everyone else, and I WRITE about it. What's up with that?
Anyway, as my first (actually second) first blog, I thought I's send you something I wrote last year. It was to be the title of a new book ...and well may be, but for now, just take "the moment" to read it, and let me know what you think. The Infinite Now It is the only thing there is. It was there before, and all there is to come. It's the place where all questions are answered and it is the place of deepest quiet… the place of ultimate peace. It is the Infinite Now. It is the home of the heart, the state of greatest awareness and the experience of all feeling. It is where you can go to, return to and abide…if you choose. It is always there. It is the only thing that's real… It is what is. No matter how we strive, we cannot change or undo the past. We can correct past mistakes, by making amends, restitution or changing our mind or direction, but what ever was in the past, is just that … in the past! It's not in the now. The future is time that isn't here yet. It is unformed, it is a desire or a belief, or as someone described it … "It is everything that hasn't happened yet." What is now is feeling - or emptiness. What is now, is movement or stillness, awareness or just existing. What is now, is knowing, or being unconscious. In Buddhist terms, Now is being awake, conscious, a sentient being…one that is aware of his or her life. Being requires awareness, it requires experiencing. It requires participating…but not in a way that demands action, it only asks for "noticing"….paying attention…being conscious of. On the other hand, living implies nothing, it’s just existing; responding to the basic instincts that were incorporated into our genetic makeup. Being alive, is a completely different thing. It has to do with the essence, the quality, the consciousness of living. *** Nancylister Swayzee 2012 s

A Year of Renewed Passion

Well, It's taken me 62 years, but I said I wanted to be a writer when I was 10, and although I have had two books published and written many lectures and articles, my life has been about raising a family and becoming an expert at what I do, which is all about the body &and the brain.
Writing has been something I have done to complete a task, or prepare a presentation or blog....fit in between everything else I was doing; Never given the respect and time as my primary work.  It always came "when I could make the time".
2011 is different.  Now, writing is what I do...most of the hours of the day.  I still am teaching the 5 exercises classes a week.  Still shooting the tv series, still upgrading my website;but those things are now just a momentary distraction from what I am doing and thinking about all the time.
I have just entered 3 literary contests, with a compliation of my 30 years of poetry.  I have completed a short story, which is another compilation of 3 short stories I started 25 years ago, and I'm entering a novella I wrote 35 years ago into my computer.  I'm so excited I can hardly stand it.  I'm really a writer!
Yeah!! It feels wonderful.
See, the being published doesn't make you a writer.  Being so passionate about writing that you make it your primary use of time is being a writer.  I'm finally there, and I feel as though I have finally come home.
n

Walking on Eggshells

Morning is a "held sacred" time for many of us. By sacred, I don't mean holy. I mean personal, set apart,completely our own, inviolable. The one time we want (and need) to prepare ourselves for each day, however peaceful or frenetic that may be...depending on our worlds. Something I have felt, no matter where I traveled, or visited or had to stay for a while, if it was in someone else's home, was the sense of needing to "walk on eggshells" when I first leave my room and enter the space of the person I'm visiting. It isn't due to any action or intent on their part, it's something I just always experience...a hesistancy, even shyness upon intruding into their private world of waking up and doing the typical morning routines of making coffee, reading the newspaper, journaling or whatever their particular habitual practice is. We all have one (or two), but those habits are usually partially unconscious as we are leaving our other world of dreams and sub-conscious meanderings, wanderings or odysseys.
Oddly enough, I don't ever feel that when someone comes to visit me, unless they have stayed too long - then that quiet resentment that is hardly noticable, creeps in just before the smile goes on the face and the cheery "Good Morning" is rung out. The little girl in me is always happy to see whoever is visiting since it's such a rare treat.
I think that reactions to intruders into our morning space is completely natural and probably common. I will be interested in getting feedback from you readers as to whether you know to what I am referring.
Evenings are different. That's the time you let your hair, your guard and your defenses down. A few sips of wine can do wonders to sidestep perimeters, barriers and yes, boundaries; but the solitude of sleep does wonders for forgiveness and even forgetfulness. The new day is always the "new day" and a chance at redemption. Visiting is a wonderful treat for both visitor and visitee...as long as one knows when it's time to leave. That knowledge is what sets the stage for another visit, because we never want to lose the preciousness of looking forward to another one.
n

(This is another transfer from my Moment by Moment blog.  I start some new material here when I see I'm getting new viewers.)

Where has it gone?

This is the latest blog on my nancyswayzee.com blog, Moment by Moment...
I decided to share it here to see if readers to this site share the same reaction to my musings as they do on MBM.  I'm anxious for feedback, so feel free....

It has been a year since I started this blog. I had just come back from visiting my daughter Lori, in Washington state and I was so full of sweet images that I had so consciously taken in, I began to share my thoughts about learning to live in the moment,from the book I was writing.
Well, I'm about to go back, this time to spend Christmas with her which is something we have not been able to do for over 7 years. I am full of anticipation (not expectations), about seeing her new home, revisiting the beauty of where she lives and the joy of just getting to BE with someone I love so much...my precious daughter.
Anticipation and expectation are two very different things, and I think we sometimes let our anticipation be built on our expectations, which often leads to disappointment.
When anticipation is experienced through the eyes of a child, we are open to surprise, wonder and the delight of the unexpected...always feeling new and magical. When each moment is seen with openness, accepting each moment as "Being as it should be", to quote Deepak Chprah, our hearts and minds capture the experience as a whole,so when we remember that time in our lives we automatically smile, rather than pick and choose the things we liked about it. It makes life so much more joyful and satisfying. Expectations are a direct path to discontent, and discontent is a direct path to a mind that is not focused and clear and an immune system that doesn't work as well as it should.
To move on to another aspect of living in the moment...my title of this blog, "Where has it gone?", is also a result of packing our life so full of trying to "do, be and have" it all, one minute bumps into another in our scurrying to fulfill that unreasonable effort.
I have been guilty of that myself this year, even tho this year has been full of miraculous events, some expected (there's that word!) and some not. This year has flown by at lightening speed, and since that literally is impossible - time stays the same, it means I have tried to get two moments out of each one, and therefore appeared to cut the time in half. At 71 that probably isn't too bright. My goal for 2011 is to slow down...Stop! and smell the roses.
n

It Is What It Is

I find it so interesting that so many new experiences are happening to me in my 70's. It completely wipes out any pre-conception of how old age was going to be dull! To those of you who have been following my Moment by Moment blog on my website,  you know I've been having some reticence about getting out there in the big wide webb world. Well, I jumped off the end of the diving board, so to speak. I joined something called "Biznik", a networking site for professionals and entrepeneurs who want to connect with others to increase their visibility. Fear of failure (an emotion most people have in common), has kept me from putting myself "out there", yet here I am...doing it.
I guess it's been one of the things on my "bucket list". Anyway, within just a few hours of submitting my article, I got published and some positive comments, This is an enormous shot of adrenaline. Now I want to write articles everywhere. I just submitted another one to a website called ezinearticles.com, which is interested in articles from professionals about their area of expertise. I kind of snuck in, not writing about the brain, but about how we live our lives - another big topic of interest for me.
I have submitted 2 other articles and have now been upgraded to an "Expert Author".   Beginning this new blog here, is an attempt to gain some recognition as a writer (my NY agent suggested it!), but also to see how many others are pondering their lives in these difficult times. 
When things get tough (and as we get older), there is a tendency to look back at our choices and to also evaluate our values.  Now I'm not talking about self-judgement.  I don't believe in mistakes, I genuinely believe that what ever path we choose when we are faced with a choice, has enormous value.  Maybe we don't see it for years...maybe we don't ever see it at all - but our children do, or our choice ultimately benefited someone we didn't even know.
In the middle of a sleepless night, I finished reading a book I had read 40 years ago... "Siddhartha".  In it, as he comes to his moment of enlightenment, he says, "The world is not imperfect, or slowly evolving along a path to perfection. No, it is perfect at every moment;every sin carries grace within it, all small children [are potentially old men and dying people - eternal life .  It seems to me that everything is necessary, everything needs only my agreement, my assent, my loving understanding; then all is well and nothing can harm me".]  
So although the path I am on right now is a little scary, at 71 I am moving from the goldfish bowl to the big pond.  A big step...but as Deepak Choprah wrote so many years ago, "This moment is as it should be".  
nancy

Breathworks for your Brain

How do I add Reactions to my blog?

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