deZengo is about the "Art of Beautiful Living." Finding beauty in the strangest places and oddest objects. Being open to the most important discovery of our life--SELF DISCOVERY. It is my hope that as we heal our own pains, angers, fears, regrets...we can begin to heal the world.
As we continue to work independently and interdependently something wonderful takes place. Unity! Creation through collaboration. Life is not meant to be lived through the blinders of fear - step out of your comfort zone and into the NamaZone. Truly we care and our efforts to unite different cultures, backgrounds, genres, and yoga styles together is an enormous undertaking, but someone had to do it. We seek to create bridges between the different practices for those who seek truth and live love.
Pull up a cyber chair, sip some tea and enjoy a relaxing afternoon with Bonsai Yoga at their online hub or hang around here with the deZengo folks. We double down dog dare you!
In my knitting adventures I often come across people who have picked up needlecrafts in response to a stressful or traumatic event in their lives. Loss of a loved one, loss of a job, empty nest, post traumatic stress- the list could go on. Author, artist and knitter Gregory Patrick is one such person. I met Gregory online and his story is both interesting and compelling. He is a self-taught knitter whose command of the craft is precise and beautiful and his workmanship is of the highest quality. He developed his interest in knitting after he spotted a sweater in a store. "I wanted a sweater from J. Crew. Cashmere. Beautiful. Couldn't afford it. I was determined to have one, though. SO I taught myself." He bought a book and taught himself to knit.
But Gregory's story doesn't end at the beautiful pieces he creates: In fact, knitting is where it all begins. Knitting, as Gregory explains, literally "saved my life".
Circumstances found Gregory without a home or money. He explains, "I had nowhere to go except my grandfather’s abandoned country home 20 miles from nowhere. My income, being so far from anything, are the knitted items I sell in my shop, and the books that I sell through Amazon." Most other people in his situation would have given up but Gregory chose to dig into the skill he had taught himself that day after the cashmere sweater lit a fire in his soul for wielding a pair of needles. His product was knitted teddy bears. "What I find fascinating is that I never even intended to make bears....THEY decided they wanted to be made....so I go with whatever the needles ask of me." He opened up an Etsy shop and created the blog Madman Knitting to self promote his work. When asked about reactions to his knitting he replies, "Its odd being out in public doing it. People find me....odd? They don't wanna talk about the craft- they wanna know why a guy who looks like he works construction knits!" Stories such as this spread fast throughout the knitting community and soon many in the community were also spreading the word- and buying bears.
Circumstances in Gregory's life continue to leave him on a roller coaster but he has found, like so many of us, that knitting is an anchor. As long as he has his knitting he has a way to create income. When asked about the highs and lows in his life at the moment, he relates to me the following story: "I met one of my customers a few days ago. She asked to pick it up in person. My first local. She said the bear was for a woman who was finally, after 4 miscariages, coming to term with her first baby. That's why my bears decided to be made, I think." As an artist, especially one that produces crafts, it is a major compliment to see people using the products you make. These little bears are going places and I see them becoming heirlooms and collectibles- each carrying with it an incredible story of the resilence of the human spirit.
Leila Cook is an artist, writer and activist- she lives in Tennessee with her husand Earnie and five children. You can find her at www.leilacookartist.weebly.com
Health & Wellness : Dec 2011 - Giving is the Best Way to Receive
“You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.” ~Kahlil Gibran
Have you ever wondered why it feels good to give and help others out or if there are actual measureable benefits for the giver as well as the receiver? Do we lose true altruism if all parties benefit? Want to feel better? Live longer? Dodge a bad mood? Lift yourself up? It’s easy. Go help someone else!
“Helper’s high” has been well documented in numerous studies. For those into evidence-based medicine, check a few abstracts. [1]
To get the strongest effects, the altruistic acts should involve direct contact and be voluntary, come from the heart.
It’s really pretty simple, says Stephen G. Post, director of the Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care and Bioethics at Stony Brook University: “To rid yourself of negative emotional states,” he said, “you need to push them aside with positive emotional states and the simplest way to do that is to just go out and lend a helping hand to somebody.” Although not necessarily a cure, giving simply is a coping mechanism and a simple tool you can use that can help you change your thinking about each life experience [2]
Benefits to Giver
Altruism, volunteering, giving back or reaching out to help, eases the stress in the body, which results in these beneficial health factors:
- Strengthening the immune-system.
- A decrease in both the intensity and the awareness of physical pain.
- Activation of the emotions that are vital to the maintaining good health.
-Reduction of the incidence of attitudes, such as chronic hostility, that negatively arouse and damage the body.
- Experiencing a "helper's high," a rush of euphoria, followed by a longer period of calm, after performing a kind act.
- This initial rush from the "Helper's High" is followed by a longer-lasting period of improved emotional well-being.
- Release of the body's natural painkillers, the endorphins as part of the "Helper's High." [3]
This year when you consider giving, remember that you also provide benefits toward reaching your health & wellness goals. Let “giving” begin and hearts expand!
This is true prayer—the seeker’s admission of his sense of limitedness and his heartfelt cry for assistance in transcendence. It is not a prayer for the things of the world. It is not a pray for food, shelter, health, partnership, riches, success, fame, glory or even for heaven1. One who recites these three mantras has realized that such things are full of holes, soaked in pain and, even in abundance, will forever leave him wanting. It is in this full understanding that one turns to this prayer. The essence of each of these three mantras is the same: "O, Guru, help me free myself from my sundry misunderstandings regarding myself, the universe and God and bless me with true knowledge."
It is in this spirit that people throughout the world are regularly chanting these mantras, and in which they are chanted twice daily at Amma’s ashrams—both at the conclusion of the morning arcana and after the evening arati.
The first mantra—asato ma sadgamaya—means, "Lead me from the asat to the sat." In fact, it is best to not translate sat (nor its negative counterpart asat) for, as with many Sanskrit words, sat has many meanings and not only are most of them applicable here, their deliberate combined import provides a depth that no one of them could hold independently. These co-applicable meanings include: existence, reality and truth. (Co-applicable meanings for asat being: non-existence, non-reality and untruth.)
We often speak of religion or philosophy as a search for Truth. But only in India’s philosophy of Advaita Vedanta has the concept of "truth" been so meticulously and successfully dissected. According to Advaita, for something to be considered true in the ultimate sense, it must be true not just at one given moment, but always be true—true in all three periods of time: the past, present and future. In fact, Advaita goes one step further. It says if something does not exist in all three periods of time that it does not truly exist, it is not ultimately real. Thus, truth, existence and reality are one and the same. That reality, Vedanta says, is what we call God.
The universe and its things are in a constant state of change. The planets are in constant motion, their positions in relation to each other and the other astral bodies are in continuous flux. The seasons similarly are ever-shifting. Scientifically, we can easily understand that our bodies (and the cells within them) come into existence, are born and then go through periods of growth, sustenance, deterioration and death. In fact these six modifications are part-and-parcel of everything in creation. On the level of emotions, we move back and forth between happiness, sorrow and anger. Even our intellectual convictions rarely stay fixed for very long. So, according to Vedanta, we cannot call this world ultimately real. It is not ultimately true. Ultimately, it does not exist. It seems real etc. but it is not. Such a thing is called asat.
The seeker giving voice to this prayer has come to understand the finite nature of all the objects of the world, and he wants the Guru to guide him from the asat to the sat. He is fed up with depending on things that are not real. Why? Because just as the sandcastle is always washed away by the tide, dependence on the asat always ends in pain. Sat is our True Self—the blissful consciousness that ever was, is and ever will be. Being beyond time, this consciousness can never be washed away by the time’s tides. In fact, sat is there as the essential part of all of the asat objects. It is a matter of separating the wheat from the chaff, as it were.
When speaking about the ultimate reality, Sages say it is of the nature of sat-cit-ananda: pure existence, pure consciousness and pure bliss.
The second mantra—tamaso ma jyotirgamaya—means "Lead me from darkness to light." When the Vedas refer to darkness and light, they mean ignorance and knowledge, respectfully. This is so because ignorance, like darkness, obscures true understanding. And in the same way that the only remedy for darkness is light, the only remedy for ignorance is knowledge. The knowledge spoken of here is again the knowledge of one’s true nature.
Currently, in the darkness of our ignorance, we believe ourselves to be bound and limited (otherwise we would not be reciting these mantras in the first place). But the Guru and the scriptures are telling us that, in truth, we are not, never will be and never have been bound. Eternally we sat-cit-ananda. The only thing that can remove our ignorance regarding our true nature is a spiritual education at the hands of a True Master like Amma. At the culmination of such an education, light floods the room, as it were; darkness vanishes.
The final mantra—mrtyorma amrtam gamaya—means: "Lead me from death to immortality." This should not be taken as a prayer to live endless years in heaven or on earth. It is a prayer to the Guru for assistance in realizing the truth that "I was never born, nor can ever die, as I am not the body, mind and intellect, but the eternal, blissful consciousness that serves as the substratum of all creation."
It is important to remember that, with all these mantras, the leading is not a physical leading. The Atma is not something far away that we have to make a pilgrimage to, nor is it something we need to transform ourselves into. Atma means "self." We don’t need to transform our self into our self. Nor do we need to travel to it. We are it. The journey is a journey of knowledge. It is journey from what we misunderstand to be our self to what truly is our self. What the mantras really means is "Lead me to the understanding that I am not the limited body, mind and intellect, but am, was and always will be that eternal, absolute, blissful consciousness that serves as their substratum."
Once, when discussing these mantras, Amma said the first step in attaining the knowledge for which one is praying when they chant these mantras is satsang: listening to spiritual talks, reading spiritual books and being in the company of spiritual seekers and, of most importantly, spiritual masters. "We need to continuously be fed the knowledge that our true nature is the Atma and not the body mind and intellect," Amma said. Through satsang, our attachment to the asat gradually lessens. "Slowly as you understand that everything in the world—all worldly relationship, all worldly things—are ever-changing an impermanent, your attitude towards the world changes. We gain detachment." As we become more and more detached, our desires also naturally decrease, because we know that the things of the world are impermanent and cannot bring us lasting happiness. As the desires decrease, the mind becomes less and less agitated. It obtains serenity, stillness, peace. Then, with this stilled, subtle, penetrating mind we can finally come to realize our true nature.
—Vedarat
source : http://ping.fm/dL9aH
Youtube video: http://ping.fm/Zytf1
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we learned here. - Marianne Williamson
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
For each new morning with its light, For rest and shelter of the night, For health and food, for love and friends, For everything Thy goodness sends. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
Saturday, November 19, 2011
“It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.” ~ Albert Einstein
“Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.” ~ Albert Einstein
“There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.” ~ Albert Einstein quote
“I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being.” ~ Hafiz of Persia
“We have come into this exquisite world to experience ever and ever more deeply our divine courage, freedom and light!” ~Hafiz of Persia
OM Times Radio : Spiritual Perspective Yoga with deZengo: November 15
SACREDspace Studio, a Pilot Yoga Studio Project, with Humanity Healing International, is creating a certification program for Yoga Studios who are inlignment with and support making yoga available to every man, woman, child. Founder, deZengo Moore will be sharing a few moments with Spiritual Perspecitives Radio and talking about the local and global studio / project, as well as yoga, and how it helped her cope with breast cancer as she began the process of true healing from the INside :: OUT! Currently, Ms. Moore resides in Middle Tennessee, where she created and runs the Yoga-2-GO Program to accommodate the need for Yoga in her local rural communities. There is no market for a full time business to thrive, but there is a growing number of residents willing to try yoga for a variety of health reasons. With Yoga-2-GO, the equipment, music, and accessories are brought on site. We work with the schedules of the people we serve, not vice versa.
If you would like to build with us, find out more about the certification process, have questions about yoga, breast cancer and how we can get back to living our life the way it was meant to be - healthy & happy contact us at :Yoga@deZengo.com or visit us online www.deZengo.com
OM Times Radio : Spiritual Perspective Yoga with deZengo: November 15
Sara Vitale & Dawn Katzinwith special weekly guestTuesdays 4PM EST
This program will not only teach people who to use their hands and create something artistic or crafty, the finished pieces will be donated to those in need. Cancer centers, homeless shelters, afterschool programs etc...
This program will not only teach people who to use their hands and create something artistic or crafty, the finished pieces will be donated to those in need. Cancer centers, homeless shelters, afterschool programs etc...
Visit our partners web site: www.humanityheailng.org When I'm not out helping my community, I'm, Working on projects that connect & collaborate with other conscious businesses.
I got inspired to do this project because of my work with the Yarn Therapist, who has taken crafty healing to a new level
I'm the right person to make this project happen because I have lot's of friends who are also willing to help bring this to fruition!
