I'm Now My Best Friend - Day 38 - Daily Haiku

I'm now my best friend
That was not true for more years
than I care to count

Cori MacNaughton

Having just finished my post about gratitude and Byron Katie's "The Work," which is essentially a form of radical mindfulness and acceptance of what is, this seemed the appropriate haiku to share.

This was one of roughly twenty haiku that I wrote on the morning of February 11th. What can I say . . . I've been inspired. Thanks again, @brokemancode.

So does doing "The Work" mean that I no longer have bad days? Please.

The whole point of "The Work" is that we humans tend to be ruled by our thoughts, particularly negative thoughts, because that is how we are hard wired. Our government, media, schools and society in general train us each and every day to do just that - to believe, and thus be ruled by, our thoughts. The very idea of taking back the reins is anathema to some.

What "The Work" does is to give us a simple and very effective method of examining the beliefs that create our thoughts, and by doing so, to free ourselves of the judgments we create as a result. Keeping in mind that simple does not always equate with easy, it is quite profound, often enlightening, and very freeing. Give it a try.

I was lucky in that I was taught meditation from the age of seventeen, and really from childhood if you count prayer, which is in itself a form of meditation.

When I added a yoga practice, at age eighteen, which like Tai Chi and Qi Gong is a form of moving meditation, it helped me further to remain grounded and calm in a world that often seemed on the brink of insanity. I was able, from quite a young age, to detach myself from the cacophany surrounding me, and thus to find relative peace amid the chaos.

It wasn't perfect, but it usually worked, except on the rare occasions when it didn't.

For which I am grateful to have found "The Work." Which simply works. If you actually do it.

In the past year I have taken several courses, and read several books, that have brought this practice of acceptance and mindfulness to a new level. First, I read the book "The Code of the Extraordinary Mind," by Vishen Lakhiani, founder of Mindvalley, and kept a journal while doing the exercises.

Then, concurrently with reading and doing the exercises in the last half of "The Code," I took Mindvalley's "Quest for Personal Mastery," by Dr. Srikumar Rao, for which I kept a separate journal, and was constantly amazed at how the two courses dovetailed. Each was insightful and profound, in and of itself, but I found that by taking them together, I got more out of both courses than I probably would have had I taken them separately.

This was followed by Dr. Pedram Shojai's online journey "Roadmap to Prosperity," culminating with his remarkable film "Prosperity," which delineated what I've been trying to do for the past couple of years with our business www.AquaTrust.org, which is to couple a profit-making venture with a nonprofit section of the business.

Through Dr. Shojai's work, I learned of the new business entity the For Benefit Corporation, which does exactly that; coupling profit and nonprofit benefit into a single corporate structure. Unlike a typical corporation, in a For Benefit corporation, stockholder profits are only a part of the equation, and they take a back seat to the stated purpose of the company, which is to provide a specific benefit to a given sector of the populace, whatever that may be, as it differs with each corporation.

As one example, with our company www.AquaTrust.org, we make and distribute prototype structured water units. Please forgive the website, which I am in the process of updating, as we speak.

From the first, our company has donated a structured water unit to a person or family in need, for every unit we have sold. Tom's Shoes was my inspiration. My goal is to ultimately make our living from other income streams, such as Steemit, so that we can take every bit of profit from AquaTrust, and more, and donate units all over the world, starting with those who still have no access to clean water sources in Puerto Rico.

This series was followed by Neale Donald Walsch's "Conversations with God" series of books (I'm currently reading book four of seven), and Ken Wilber's Superhuman Operating System (of which I'm just beginning the second level). And Marek is on this journey with me, and just finished Eckhardt Tolle's book "The Power of Now," which I've already read.

Amazing and profound stuff . . . all of them. All of these courses and books are building on the same themes. And these are only the latest.

I recommend them highly.

Love is the most powerful force in the universe. We are ALL divine. We are all One. There IS only One.

Be blessed.

All words and images are my own unless otherwise attributed. This shot was taken in August 2016, probably with my LG V10 Android phone, or else with my Canon PowerShot SX30iS. This little guy landed right in front of me, and posed by the side of our driveway, while I took this portrait.

Resteeming is welcome, and you may link to my post from your own website or blog, but please ask for permission before using any excerpts or images, as all rights are reserved.