REAL ANSWERS TO COMMON QUESTIONS
The Wine Valley Vibe: That Friday Feeling
Question: What’s going on?
Beyond the scope of our five familiar senses, there is a vast and intricate world in motion. Our limited human perception captures only a fraction of the grand symphony that surrounds us. A few simple examples of what you are missing would be high and low frequencies animals can hear but are imperceptible to humans. For instance, canines possess an acute sense of smell, detecting aromas that elude our noses entirely. Infrared light and microwave radiation remain hidden from view yet play crucial roles in the universe.
If you truly want to know what’s going on, at least begin by using your full spectrum of physical senses, focusing mindful attention on what you see, smell, taste, hear and touch—and throw yourself into everything around you (especially nature) instead of thinking so hard and so much about yourself, your past and your future.
Or, as Gestalt therapy founder Fritz Perls liked to say around the Esalen Institute, a Big Sur, California humanistic retreat: Lose your mind and come to your senses.
Beyond that, endeavor to escape from the box in which you reside (Plato’s allegorical cave of wrongful perception and illusion of separation) so that homeostasis may be disrupted and awareness heightened.
Question: Whattaya know?
Answer: Hardly a micro-fraction of anything. But enough to understand that.
Question: Whats up?
Answer: My mood, having embraced positive or “hedonic” psychology (a bright outlook) meshed with the right balance of nutrients (fresh air, sunshine, the purest water, healthy foods), being in motion, enjoying interpersonal relationships and, as much as possible, living in a state of flow, otherwise known as in the zone.
This works especially well if you are engaged in designing or discovering something new.
The mind, wrote Andrew Carnegie, can be moved from the shade into sunshine. Or put another way: Light can always overpower darkness but darkness can never overpower light.
Or, put into New Age lingo: Lighten up.
