Steve’s tip is to do “wild, whacky and unusual” experiments on yourself, and report how things are going—this will keep the readers hooked. He talks about how he did a polyphasic sleep experiment, where he slept for 20 minutes at a time around the clock, and about how he ate nothing but raw food last January.

As it happens, Steve was in the middle of his raw food experiment when I discovered him. He kept putting up photos of his meals on his blog… endless photos of raw food on dinner plates.

This inspired my partner Frank to start taking photos of his late-night sandwiches in the making—something he still does now and then. Here are a few:

Unusual experiments

After hearing Steve’s tips, I was wondering… what wild, whacky and unusual experiment could I do, to write about on this blog? I don’t want to deprive myself of sleep, or stop cooking my food.

Then I thought… hang on a minute, this blog is actually about living forever! That is, doing away with aging, illness and death. Isn’t that wild, whacky and unusual enough?

Now I suppose an “experiment” is when you try something, and see how things go. I believe we choose our ideas, and that we all experiment with them constantly (and some of us are more willing to tweak them than others).

So how am I going with the ideas behind my outlandish blog topic?

There are 4 aspects to my experimentations, I think:

1. Wanting to live

I’ve got this nailed—I find my life is satisfying, exciting and expanding, and I feel I’ll be able to deal with any hiccups that might occur. I don’t believe dying gets us anywhere—but that we just come back again after a nice rest, anyway (and that we are “with God” now while in a body just as much as we would be if we were dead).

2. Being young and healthy

This is the biggy, of course—lots of people have wanted to live, and died anyway. As for me, people say I look young for my age… “surely you aren’t fifty-five!“, but I know I have aged. Frank took the little photo at the top of my blog last summer—there is a larger version of it on my StumbleUpon profile. He took the photo I’ve got on my About page this winter, so I look pretty pasty… it’s accurate.

I’ve been having some relatively minor but annoying health issues, one of which is I’ve put on weight, another is I’ve had a dodgy knee lately, and it is my intention to reverse them. I had a kinesiology session a couple of days ago and it moved heaps of energy—I know something has shifted. I’ll see. But I don’t believe aging and death are a natural state of affairs, so I’ll keep plugging away at the various healing techniques.

3. Living in the now

Although this blog is about living forever and I keep using those words, I don’t really think in terms of the years stretching out indefinitely before me. It’s more about slipping into the eternal present moment, with a background understanding that aging and death are not on the cards. I think I’ve got a healthy balance between thinking and not thinking about the future… I have goals and plans for it, without worrying about it. And it is so much easier to go with the flow in the present when I believe I have plenty of time to express the different parts of myself (if I can’t do something now, I can do it later on).

4. The evangelical side

One thing I don’t like about this blog is the evangelical side of it… I don’t like to feel I am pushing ideas onto people. I have been into these ideas since 1986, and most people I know would have no idea I was into them, because I rarely mention them. And here I am plastering it on the internet—at least people can hit the back button on their browser—it’s not like I’m haranguing them down at the coffee shop! I do feel a bit uncomfortable writing about it.

However…
I felt the urge to do this blog, and there must be a reason why. It’s probably mainly to help me to “get it”—after all, it would be easier for me to get healthy and reverse the aging process if there were a whole lot of 70 year-olds running around looking like they were 30, wouldn’t it?

My hope is that other writers on this topic will come out of the woodwork, and it will become more commonplace to hear about it—maybe my blog could nudge this along. From where I sit, I feel this could assist the shift that I believe is happening to humanity… a shift that is happening in many different guises.

Experiment results

So I’ll keep experimenting with my ideas and see where it takes me. They are working for me so far.

Anyway… who wouldn’t want to live forever with Frank’s cooking to look forward to?

Bloggers Recording Project

To those of you interested in participating, don’t forget to send me your recordings! The deadline is now December 8. I keep updating the post about it, Bloggers Recording Project, adding tips and so on… so if you have read it in your RSS reader it will be different by now—you might want to check it out again.

What do you think? Comments are very welcome!

Related posts:
Reincarnation… A Scenario
But I’d Be So Bored
Is Death Natural?

photo by B~

photo by kthypryn

To all my blogging friends… I want to hear your voices!

In a recent email conversation I had with Harmony from Golden Zen I said something like “I want to hear your funny accent!” And she said something along the lines of “I’ve got a funny accent?” To which I replied that all North Americans have funny accents, don’t they?

After I first found out about blogging, late last year, I soon came across Darren Rowse’s blog ProBlogger. I had a look at it, watched some video, and thought “some American guy making money” and went on to something else—no offense meant to American guys who make money, here, I just didn’t relate (or understand blogs yet). The thing is, I didn’t pick up his accent! Even though it turns out he lives in the exact same city as me… Melbourne, Australia. (And these days I love reading ProBlogger, by the way.)

My guess is I didn’t pick up his accent because it’s the same as mine! (I think that’s how it works.)

Blogging Without A Blog

Now the latest is that Barbara from over at Blogging Without A Blog has featured me, and Kelly from SHE-POWER, in her post NSNBOTWs - 2 Gals From Down Under! (NSNBOTW standing for Not So New Blog Of The Week.)

Barbara’s blogless blog is a great meeting place for bloggers—her community is terrific. She has gone to great lengths to support other bloggers, by presenting information and discussions, and by introducing new bloggers to everyone in her New Blog Of The Week series.

I’d suggest to bloggers that you head over there for some action, and if you aren’t a blogger, you will find lots of great blogs to check out in the discussion section. And if you are a new blogger looking for some good ol’ community comfort (and attention), you might even get lucky and be nominated NBOTW!

I’m really thrilled to be highlighted in this series… so thanks Barbara and congratulations Kelly! Kelly has a great blog and I’m honoured to “appear” with her! For me the experience has really enhanced the community feeling that I have experienced from blogging.

Which brings me to accents—what would Kelly’s and my international visitors make of our “down under” voices? And what would it be like to hear the voices of people I feel I have got to know online? From all around the world? Not just to hear their accents, but to hear the warmth and character of their voices?

Recording Project

So all of this has lead one way or another to… the Bloggers’ Recording Project!

If you would like to participate, email me a recording of youself introducing you and your blog, and saying a few other words. I will string these recordings together into one or two “tracks”, which I will put in a mid-December post, for everyone’s listening pleasure.

Guidelines:

1. I’d love to include a recording from anyone who has ever left a comment on this blog, up till now.

2. Send your recording by email to robin[@]letsliveforever[.]net
You attach the file (e.g. MP3) to the email the same way you do any attachment.

3. I would like recordings in by December 8, please, so I can start editing.

4. Any file format will do—we are sound engineers… we can cope! I’m thinking it shouldn’t be too hard to find a way of recording your voice. If you are really stuck, most digital cameras have video recording on them—you could send me a video and I’ll get the sound off it (I won’t show it).

5. If you have any technical questions, ask in the comments below or email me.

6. I will be posting the finished recording in December, so your message could include a Christmas or holiday greeting.

7. As an example, my recording will be something like: “Hello everyone, my name’s Robin, my blog is let’s live forever and I’m in Australia. Merry Christmas everyone!” Feel free to be a tad more creative than that, and to speak for a little longer.

Methods bloggers have used so far:

I will add to this as I receive recordings

So bloggers clear your throats and let us hear your voices. I want to hear your funny accents!

photo by Savannah Grandfather

We find real happiness by sensing our intuitive impulses and acting upon them.

That’s it, there is no other way.

My point is that this process is individual. It won’t be the same for any two people. We sense our intuition deeply inside ourselves—it’s deeply personal. Only we know what our intuition feels like, and only we know what we need to do to act on it, and how we feel about that.

If we look at what makes someone else happy, and then do that thing, we may feel happiness, but the experience might also be empty. If someone says: “Do this! It’s great! It made me so happy!”… well it might work for us, but if it made them happy it was because they were following their intuition at the time, and it might not be what our intuition is telling us.

So…
Meditating won’t make us happy if our intuition is telling us to go shopping in the city (we might need the energy of motion).
Traveling won’t make us happy if our intuition is saying to stay home and make a garden (we might start having it off with the gardener).
Health food won’t make us happy if our intuition is saying fast food (who knows who we might meet in the take-out joint).
Finding a job won’t make us happy if our intuition is saying DON”T DO IT! (Having little money might teach us something about our values.)

The intuition challenge

Our intuition is wild and unpredictable, and will send us in the direction of the most growth. This direction may take us away from our own sacred cows, and away from what other people expect of us.

So we will invariably need some courage to follow it, at some point.

I don’t mean that the things it tells us to do, or not do, will necessarily be wild and over-the-top, but that they might be challenging for us.

For example, someone with a history of being afraid of intimacy might get an intuitive impulse to share something very personal with someone close—this might be a challenge for them. Or someone who has always been vague about money might get the urge to start doing some book-keeping, or hire an accountant. If someone has a habit of complicating everything in their life, they might be lead to going with the flow. And someone may have a business idea that is a bit scary for them.

Knowing ourselves

When we get used to following own own intuition (rather than someone else’s), we start to really know ourselves. We have experimented, won, lost, and seen what works. We have got to know what was intuition and what was emotional reactions or silly ideas. We are tried and tested.

Also, when we get to this point, we know we know ourselves, and I think this is the basis of real happiness. Now, for most of the time, the things we do are satisfying, our relationships are satisfying, our possessions are satisfying, and if we have to say “no” to something, it’s no big deal.

When people don’t know themselves, they start filling themselves up from the outside, and the results aren’t very pretty. They might travel around the world, buy lots of outfits, go to the best parties, keep busy busy busy… but they always feel empty inside. They know they don’t know themselves (and they are desperate to hide this fact from everyone).

I think those of us with even moderately successful lives know how to follow our intuition very well, and as we get older we develop more faith in our inner “knowing” and feel happier as we get older as a result. And I think anyone with a basically positive outlook on life experiences this growth naturally as a part of life.

I believe we can reach the “knowing” and “happier” bit sooner by honing our intuition… that is, by getting really good at sensing it and acting on it.

This post is inspired very much by Shakti Gawain’s book Living In The Light, which I have listed on my Recommended page. I love this book—I have read it many times over the years. I prefer the first edition to the second… the paperback has a yellow cover.

What do you think about this? Have you found strength and happiness from tuning into your own guidance?

Fortunately for you, this post is not about my digestive system…

…but is about how I followed my intuition even though it went against the grain, and things worked out for the best.

The photo above was taken at our local shops! Ten minutes walk from our house. I found it on a Melbourne newspaper’s website, the day a huge wind storm hit most of the state (Victoria, Australia), earlier this year.

I had arranged to go to my mother’s place that day. She lives in the country, about two hour’s drive from Melbourne, and I always stay the night if I visit. I usually go two nights a week, and without going into details, I feel I need to get there.

The day before, I didn’t want to go. The thought of it was draining—I felt listless at the very idea. I contemplated canceling, but I felt my mother needed me. (I might say here that my sister lives near Mum and does the lion’s share of daughterly assistance.)

A windy day
The day dawned and I still didn’t want to go. My partner Frank was suggesting I cancel. Mum had even rung the night before and said the weather forecast was really bad, with wind warnings for the country roads, so I might want to put it off, but I said “oh no, of course I’ll come!”

Frank and I started the day in our usual way, by walking down to the local shops for some latte sipping at a corner cafe. It was a little bit windy, but nothing exceptional. When we got home I rang Mum and cancelled—I knew I didn’t want to go, and I decided to respect that. It wasn’t because of the weather forecast, which I hadn’t seen myself.

Next followed several hours of wind mayhem. Frank and I cowered inside, looking out the windows in amazement. The internet was throwing up readers’ photos of fallen trees, and we discovered THREE large trees had blown over at our local shops, at about 3 pm. After things quietened down at about 6 pm, we went for a walk to the shops to check things out—here’s a photo Frank took of the scene we found:

Incidentally, here’s another photo I found on the newspaper’s website… the wind had actually brought a dust storm to Melbourne as well as lots of damage, but we didn’t get it on our side of the city. You can just make out the city buildings through the orange dust (the bathing boxes in the foreground are at Brighton Beach).

Off to Mum’s
The next day I drove up to Mum’s… quite happily, with no tug-of-war in my head. I drove up the highway, rather than the back road I usually travel on for the last 25 minutes of the journey. It turned out the back road had had quite a few trees down—to drive along it the day before would have been plain dangerous.

Here’s a photo of the back road—it’s very pretty, but not the best place to be in a windstorm (when I drove along it a week later, there were still some trees lying half on the road):

Of course if I had actually made the trip the day before, I probably would have taken the highway instead (or taken shelter), but it has trees along it, too, and the trip wouldn’t have been much fun.

Intuition
It was really interesting to me that I was so willing to go to Mum’s that next day. I felt this was showing me that my reservations hadn’t been for any reasons other than that my intuition was saying DON”T GO.

I work with the idea that intuition doesn’t tell us why we want to do or not do things, it just tells us what to do. We can’t know why, we can only trust things will work out for the best if we follow it. To put it another way, it speaks to us through our guts, not our head (perhaps this post is about my digestive system after all). And we can trust that we will always go in the best direction for ourselves and everyone else if we allow ourselves to be guided by it.

The challenge, of course, is to be able to do just that.

What do you think? Have you had a situation where you followed your intuition, even though it seemed the “wrong” thing to do, and things worked out for the best? OR… have you not acted on intuitive impulses, because it was not the “right” thing to do, and later wished you had?

photos of tree on car and dust storm from The Age

photo by Victor Bezrukov

I thought I’d like to write about what emotional balance means to me. As I mentioned in an earlier post Feelings Are There To Be Felt, I haven’t quite got emotions “worked out”. But I’ve needed to focus on mine lots so I reckon I should really be an expert by now. Ha.

In my younger days I was very withheld emotionally. No-one knew what I thought, or how I felt. I didn’t know how I felt. At school I was very quiet and awkward, and didn’t connect much. One time a group of kids made a list of everyone in the class, with a brief description, to submit to the school magazine. For me they put “Silent Brain”. I misread this and thought it said “Silent Drain”—I was extremely upset! (inside) (It didn’t make the magazine.)

The only time I felt love was for the cat.

I remember when I had my first boyfriend for 9 months when I was 18, I didn’t feel anything about him. I knew I liked him, I suppose, but I was totally out of touch with any feelings of love or affection. He quite freely expressed love for me, but I was just an emotionless blob. The poor guy! I did feel upset after he broke up with me (after first finishing my exams), so I must have felt something.

I usually had one or two “best friends” at any time, but no more boyfriends, and generally the trend of not being able to connect, and feeling isolated, strange and different continued until I found the alternative healing world just before my 33rd birthday (in 1986). Desperation drove me to it—something was not right and I knew that at the rate I was going I would NEVER be happy.

Emotions and connection
I started having rebirthing sessions, where you use breathing to allow feelings you didn’t know you had flow through you. These days the process is often called breathwork or conscious connected breathing, to avoid connotations of people trying to re-live their birth (which I didn’t ever—not in an obvious way, anyway). I also started doing workshops that removed blocks to feeling connected to others, and between the two things, I began to connect with other people really well.

I started noticing and valuing my emotions… Ah Hah! Here comes an EMOTION! I’m gonna let myself feel ANGRY! Or SAD! And I’m also going to ASSERT MYSELF, because I CAN!

This lead to a phase I think many people might go through (I read in a book somewhere that they do, anyway). That is… after learning to let some (or lots of) emotions express, we may go overboard with them for a while, before coming into balance.

So at times I would stomp around being angry, or be very quick to yell at the driver who had done me wrong on the roads. From rebirthing I knew how to breathe through emotional episodes, so the emotion passes through pretty quickly and it doesn’t become a wallowing session, and you are left feeling light and cleansed. I’m so grateful I have that skill up my sleeve, and I have used it lots. But I didn’t always do it… sometimes I preferred to be emotional.

Astrology
Years later, well into my 40s, I found myself turning to astrology for understanding. I was living in a flat by myself, was not working much, had little money, and had become isolated again (except when I did see someone occasionally, I connected with them really well, heh heh). I should say here that I did some really good, creative, performance-type work in this period… it was more that I was socially isolated. And I was also very happy much of the time—but I knew there was more, and I had got to the point where I was feeling that being over-emotional wasn’t serving me.

I came across Jan Spiller’s books ‘Astrology For The Soul’ and ‘Spiritual Astrology’. What amazing books! I discovered that being over-emotional would indeed be my issue, and they clearly described how to deal with all this in a way that made sense to me.

This totally changed things around for me—I had the books out from the library and I kept renewing them and reading them again and again. Probably I had been so cut off from my emotions when I was young because my emotions were so strong that I was scared to feel them.

In these books, Jan discusses our past lives, and the path we are embarking on in this life to bring things into balance. For example, according to this, I had lots of past lives being at home and sheltered from the big, wide world in some way. My joy in this life would be to get out into the world, and I would be successful when I did, but my inclination might be to go with my past life pattern of staying at home. Also, people with this pattern tend to be over-emotional… “These folks can be so overrun by their emotions that they can’t think, they can’t function, and they don’t know why.”

She also describes how things can look when we have got to the point of really integrating the energies and are functioning well. Something we can look forward to when we have got things together. For my pattern it reads, in part:

You sense that your emotional fiber is actually not personal at all but rather your link with the universe. As you listen to your emotional body, and allow it to be expressed honestly and naturally, without censorship, in whatever environment you find yourself, you restore a healthy emotional balance for those around you. Thus, giving your own feelings a voice, expressing the subtle emotional undercurrents you sense going on around you, clears the emotional atmosphere for everyone involved.

Sounds good!

Today I think I’ve got the flow of emotions thing working pretty well. I can let myself feel them without being run by them. I’m still avoiding some of them though, which I know because I have been overeating over the long, cold winter we have just had here in Melbourne, with disastrous results for my waistline. But these days I know I feel love for people and myself and everything, and Frank and I freely say we love each other.

This post is my contribution to the Life Balance Group Writing Project Stacey is running on her blog Create A Balance. Thanks for running it Stacey!

PS - for any astrology buffs out there, I have Mars in Cancer, the moon’s North Node in the 10th house and my pre-natal lunar eclipse in Leo in the 4th.

Comments are very welcome!