"Simplicity" Paraliminal with Dr. Paul Scheele and Janet Luhrs

Well, this is a session where we're going to play with a concept called simplicity. Now, to give you a little bit of a background on this, I had the opportunity to study in a tradition called Himalayan yoga meditation. And this was the path called Raja Yoga. And one of the things that my teacher said is there is a term in Sanskrit called rasa, and rasa doesn't have a direct translation into English language. But think of it this way. If you could find the most beautiful orange tree in the entire world, and then find on that orange tree the most perfect piece of fruit, and you could open that orange and find the most perfect section within it, and then open that and find the most perfect piece of pulp. And then you could insert a straw into that piece of pulp the size of a capillary, and draw the juice from that pulp onto your tongue and experience that.

That's rasa. And it is the joy, it is the.

Full experience.

That comes.

From concentration, the ability to focus your mind, to be fully concentrated on something that. That really is the place where we find enjoyment in life. What's happened to our modern world is we've got so much, We've got so many choices, we've got so many things trying to get our attention, and many people walk around with quite an emptiness inside of them. So what do we do with. We consume all of these choices in order to fill that emptiness, but it never quite goes away. So we try to consume more. Now in the Western world, especially here in the United States, we've got a fraction of the population of the world, and yet we consume three fifths of the resources of the world. Why? There's such an emptiness that's trying to be filled. My doctoral dissertation work was studying a program called the Pachamama Symposium, the Pachamama Alliance Symposium called Awaken the Dream or Change the Dream. It's to awaken from that nightmare thinking that we're going to fill that emptiness by the stuff of the world and come back to an understanding of the true beauty of nature. So simplicity as a paralliminals is helping us to come back to make those distinctions, those finer discernments of what brings us joy, what brings us peace. Instead of adding more and more and more in hopes that we're going to find joy and peace, and we begin to uncomplicate our agenda that's creating a lot of constriction. We start to unclutter our space and keep only those possessions that bring us true joy and happiness. And this idea of simplifying is a way to do that. So I'd like to give you a couple of other ways of thinking about the intent of simplicity, because in order to get to that place where you can release what doesn't bring you joy, let go of those things that are complicating your life, is to come back to a discernment, a distinction that says, this matters, this is important to me, and it's worth keeping.

What are the activities that are worth keeping? What are the things that you're agreeing to that don't really need to be agreeing to? They don't bring you the joy or the satisfaction that you want. So there are a couple of areas in which we would teach this concept to be able to model it and consuming products like coffee, chocolate, wine, whiskey, those sorts of things where people could be connoisseurs of it that you would identify as a connoisseur, or what is it that they do? Well, for example, my son told me about, in Australia, you could go to a coffee bar and they would have tasting notes, little bottles, little vials of tasting notes. So you'd see what the coffee is of the day. You'd read the description of the notes, the coffee notes. For example, there's maple or there's molasses, or there's chocolate, or there's toast, or there's hints of apricot or oak in it, whatever it might be. You'd identify those. You'd place those on separate cards, little drops of those tasting notes, and you'd smell them, taste the coffee, smell it, and see if you could discern those particular aromas or flavors within that coffee. Brilliant. In America, what do we do? We go to a gas station, we get a massive cup of coffee, and people think, oh, I need the caffeine, so I'm going to get a really dark roast. No, there's more caffeine in a light roast. But you get the idea. No discernment, no distinction, just going for the more. Well, I realized at some point in my life, if I were. If I would go out to a restaurant and get an invitation to select a wine, I didn't really know wines. A colleague of mine said, hey, we're starting a group where we're pairing wines with food and we're reading this book called Wine or Drink this Wine Made Simple. And what they would do is this author selected seven varietals, and we'd pick one at a time, and we would study that wine at three different levels of cost. We would understand and read the history of the wine, the background, the Terroir in which it's grown, the climate, what's important, what makes this grape unique, how is it fermented, what are the ways in which it's used? And then all the tasting notes. And so what we would do is one couple would be in charge of appetizers, another, the main, another, the dessert, all paired with this particular varietal. And then we get little cups out. So this particular red wine had notes of leather in it or tobacco in it. And so we'd get leather and we'd get tobacco, and we'd get coffee, because that was one of the tasting notes. And we'd have those out. And again, we would sip, smell, taste, try to educate our palate to make these finer discernments. And once we did, when we then would eat the food, which would enhance the experience of the wine, and the wine the experience of the food, we could suddenly discover that more comes from less.

And after studying many varietals, we came to a couple that were always my favorite one being Pinot Noir. And to understand it now from a level of educating my mind and my palate was absolutely delightful. There was another wine, Chardonnay. And I noticed that there are two really distinct types of Chardonnay. The ones that are oaky and buttery, and the ones that are more fruit forward, more acidic, more tart. And I couldn't quite understand what made one the way it was compared to the other. Well, by studying it, I realized that the tartar wines had more of the fruit acids, what are called malic acids. And they're fermented in stainless steel, and they tend to move right from the stainless steel vats into the bottling. The ones that are oaky or buttery, there is a yeast that's placed in it, monracher yeast, which turns malic acid into lactic acid. And lactic acid is that milk acid. And they would take that yeast and use it as butter substitute in many products. But this now more lactic acid would.

Ferment, would be placed in oak casks. And so the richness of it, the oakiness of it, the buttery ness of it, was a result of this different process, same grape, Chardonnay. Interesting distinctions. So an appreciation of what it is you take in or consume.

In any area of your life comes from the distinctions you can make and the concentration that you have when you take it. So somebody asks you, could they come into your agenda and could you have a get together with them? You look, you discern who are you welcoming in to the room, who do you bring in to your room, this is your life.

It'S a one way door. Whoever you welcome in is not necessarily easy to kick out. Again, so be discerning at the front end of what you add to your agenda, what you put in your calendar, and you will discover that you can say no to a lot more.

Because you're making this distinction now. Within that is the joy of relationships, it's the joy of a good dialogue, it's the enrichment of your life. Because as a tribal species, we do need to interact with others. But what are the interactions that we have? Are they positive in nature? Are they supportive? Are they expansive? Are they negative and complaining and cutting people down? My wife noticed that there were several of her friends that whenever they would have a get together, they drink too much wine and they engage in husband bashing. And she didn't like to participate in that. She said, you know.

I'm not interested. I really like you people, but I just can't engage in this husband bashing. I really like my husband. And this month we're celebrating our 44th wedding anniversary. You know, and that's one of the reasons why, is because we can think well of each other. Same thing. The idea being what we're interested in doing is we're interested in connecting with people.

That will enhance the quality of our lives, that share values, that expand our minds, that open our hearts, that encourage our willful choice to create the life that we want to live in.

That means you're going to simplify. What are the movies you choose to watch? What are the books you choose to read? What are the magazines that you bring into your life? If you find that you have a subscription to magazines, but month after month after month, you never look at that. Thank you for sharing that. If you never look at the magazine that comes to you, maybe it's because you're not interested in what's there. You could say, oh, I just need to make time for it. Well, you're not making time for it. Is there a reason why is it important for you to make time.

For the things that matter most to you? And that really is a distinction that you have to be able to make for yourself.

Same thing. Look at the possessions, look at the books you have. You may love the books, but if you buy the books and don't read them, what good is it? I had a person come into my photo reading class and he decided prior to taking the class that he would take an inventory of all the books he had. And he had actually built sheds to house all the books that he had bought. And when he was doing the inventory of some 25,000 books, he realized that he had, in some cases, three or even five copies of the same book. Why? Because he'd go to a book sale or go to a bookstore and he'd see a book, oh, that looks really good. He'd buy it, never read it. Three months later, four months later, half a year later, he goes into another bookstore and looks at a book, says, oh, that looks good, I'd love to read that. He brings it home. This is the exact same book, but he had forgotten that that was what he bought. It's not about more books.

It'S about more life.

And this book.

Is written to encourage a greater expression of what you value most, the life that you're choosing to live and create.

So as you listen to the Simplicity Paralimal, I invite you to really think. What is it that brings you joy? What is it that opens your heart? What is it that expands your mind? What is it that gives you the courage to move boldly into your life, to create it as you want it to be? That's what the Simplicity Paralympical will help you with. I hope you enjoy it. If you don't have it, listen to any other one and keep these ideas in mind. Right. Have a wonderful day, peace and blessings, and we'll see you in our next session. Bye for now.