Living a Life of Freedom and Balance

I am a fan of Ted Talks, and now that they are available on Netflix, I try to spend at least a half an hour a day learning something new through these videos.

I recently watched a video on success by Alain de Botton: A Kinder, Gentler Philosophy of Success.

I enjoyed this video very much, and agreed with much of it. At some point, Alain made a comment along the lines of how, whenever we choose something in which we want to succeed, we are at the same time choosing to neglect something else. While I can see truth in this statement, I also have a different perspective, from my practice of Feng Shui.


Feng Shui identifies Nine general Areas of Life:

1. Career, Life Mission and Individuality
2. Marriage, Relationships and Partnerships
3. Health, Family and Community
4. Wealth, Prosperity and Self Worth
5. Center of Good Fortune and Gratitude
6. Spirituality, Helpful People and Travel
7. Children, Creativity and Fun
8. Wisdom, Self Knowledge and Calm
9. Fame, Reputation and Social Life

All of the above Life Areas have to be tended to for a person to be truly happy, prosperous and free. However, not all these life areas have the same importance during all of the stages of our lives.


Moreover, if we dedicated the same amount of energy and time to each of these life areas at any given point in our lives, we would end up with a very unbalanced life. To give you an example, consider life area number 3: Health, Family and Community. This is a life area that you have to tend to every day, and devote at least a few hours every day to prepare/eat wholesome meals, walk or exercise a few times every week, and attend your church, clubs or organizations at least once a month to feel connected to a community. Now compare that to life area number 7: Children, Creativity and Entertainment. This is a life area that depending on the circumstances and stage in your life may take over most of your day (e.g. taking care of a baby or toddler), or just need a couple of hours a week to satisfy your need for fun or entertainment at a movie theater. Of course, ideally, you would be able to make time every day to nurture your creativity and to have fun, but these may not be realistic at certain points in our lives, say, for example, while going through a graduate program or during the first few years of a career.


The dilemma is: how to know how much time and energy need to be devoted every day to each life area in order to live a balanced life?

I don't believe there is an intellectual answer to this question. Whenever we try to give intellectual answers to the bigger questions of life we fall into the temptation of assuming that life can be lived based on recipes, instead of feeling the authenticity of each moment. I believe, however that there is an intuitive answer to this dilemma, an "inner knowing," so to speak.

For this reason, when Florida healer and artist Bill Austin and I were working on the Feng Shui Healing Book Feng Shui Cures for the Life Areas https://www.createspace.com/3464762, I asked him to create a piece of his vibrational healing art devoted to this subject. Then I placed his abstract art into the shape of a wheel. The life areas, when used in Feng Shui, are placed in an arrangement that resembles a wheel, called the bagua. I call this wheel, the Wheel of Life Areas. Below you can see an image of the Wheel of Life Areas. If you click on the image you can check out the various products available with this image:

Please visit our CafePress store Feng Shui Cures to explore 6 different products you might get for your home or office that contain this image, to assist you in your sincere intent to live a balanced and happy life.

Are You Truly Free?

Freedom is defined as "the capacity to perform choice, and not being under the domination or control of another; not being bound or enslaved."

I was born in what some call the Third World, in a little country called Ecuador, about the size of the state of Colorado. There, I never experienced anything but freedom.

When I was very young my father was a great admirer of the United States of America and tried to follow their lead. When I was a pre-teen my father started studying Sociology at the University and became enamored with Marxist theory, which came with a deep hatred of the United States.

My perception of the United States came to me, not through my parents beliefs, but by what I saw in movies and TV series, and by what people who had lived in the US told me. As a teen, I thought the USA was full of libertine people, who practiced free sex anywhere (like in "Dynasty") knew nothing of loyalty and murdered each other routinely.

As a young woman, I watched the news and read newspapers and became acquainted with US foreign policy. I couldn't help notice that the US always used freedom as a supporting philosophy of all their actions, but adapted the definition of freedom to the situation. For example, they opposed Castro's government in Cuba based on the fact that it wasn't a democratic government, while vigorously supporting Pinochet in Chile, one of the most vicious dictatorships in the modern history of the planet.

When I first moved to the United States I thought to myself, "This is the country of freedom?" I looked around and all I saw was people working too hard, sometimes two or three jobs, to make ends meet, or to fit a standard of living that they had not chosen themselves, but which had been suggested to them by the media.

I saw people who had the freedom to get credit cards, to then have to pay liberal amounts of interest. I met women who chose to go to work, even though they had the freedom to stay home, because their neighborhoods were desolate during the day and there was no one with whom to interact.

I mostly saw people who were good and lived by a set of decent morals and values – nothing like the people in most US TV series or movies -- caring people, with good intentions, willing and ready to offer help. I was surprised to see so much natural beauty and so many people with such a strong interest in the environment.

I now realize that compared to some countries in Africa and the Middle East, the US is really a haven for freedom. Compared to Latin American countries, I am not so sure. As I write this, I am aware that my perspective comes from living a life of privilege, and not a life of poverty, in South America.

The only freedom I saw in the US that I didn't already have in my native Ecuador, was the freedom to publicly criticize or even make fun of the president of the country without getting in immediate trouble.  But what good is freedom of speech when you don't have time to exercise your freedom of thought?

We need to make time in our busy lives to enjoy our blessings, including our freedom. If we feel we desperately need a vacation, maybe it is time to make some changes to our daily lifestyle.

These are some of the best resources I have found to make significant changes in the way we live, which is a direct result from our daily choices:

• The Simplicity Movement - especially the book Circles of Simplicity by Cecile Andrews, which is basically a manual to simplify your life in order to live your passions, while at the same time building friendships and stronger communities.

• The book Making Room for Life by Randy Frazee.

Our family has made choices that baffle some of the people who know us. I started saving money four years before I got pregnant to get the equipment that would enable me to work from home and stay with the children. We homeschool. My husband left a job managing a Chiropractic practice for a large corporation to open a home based practice, so he can be close to us and not miss the children growing up. In some ways, we have traded income for time, and our wealth, happiness and quality of life have increased.

I invite you to explore ways in which your own life might be simplified. I invite you to live a life that responds to your own values and standards and not to what other people have led you to believe will make you happy.

Lecture series on Feng Shui, Affirmations, Wealth

I recently gave a series of four lectures on the Feng Shui perspective on Affirmations, Manifesting and Wealth at the Positive Living Center of Knoxville (formerly known as Religious Science Church of Knoxville). I have embedded the videos below:

1. The Feng Shui Home as a Positive Feedback Loop for Your Affirmations

2. Getting Through the Dark Night of the Soul with the Help of the Home.

The “dark night of the soul” is a metaphor used to describe a phase in a person’s spiritual life, marked by a sense of loneliness and desolation. Moni Castaneda talks about how using your home as a healing tool can help you get through this and other hard moments in life.

 

3. The Feng Shui Gratitude Box

 

4. Wealth and Spirituality and the Use of the Wealth Poster

Zumba - Hot Latin Guys... for Inspiration

As it gets colder, we all need some inspiration to get through the cold winter days.

I thought I'd share my favorite Hot Latin Guys with you.

(Make sure to check out my favorite Hot Latin Guy at the bottom of this post, then tell me who is your favorite Hot Latin Guy)

Hot Latin Guy #7: Chayanne

(Not my type but a lot of ladies like him)

Hot Latin Guy #6: Ricky Martin
(sure he is gay, so what? He is still hot)

Hot Latin Guy #5: Marc Anthony 

(not handsome, but such a sensual voice!)

Hot Latin Guy #4: David Bisbal 

(has that Spanish bravado)

Hot Latin Guy #3: Juanes

Colombian singer/songwriter

Hot Latin Guy #2: Carlos Vives

This is also my favorite Zumba song:

Hot Latin Guy #1: Marco E. Castaneda

The Hottest Latin Guy: The one that shows up, and stays through thin and thick, who changed diapers and bathed babies, and whom my children call Dada: Dr. C. (Really hot too, but he wouldn't let me take a pic of him without his shirt on). Today, December 8th of 2011 is our 17 Year Wedding Anniversary!

To My Friends

In Latin culture there is a devotion to friendship. There is a moment, in really good parties, when you are tired of dancing, that someone takes out a guitar and we sing songs about friendship.

Friends and no one else. The rest: a jungle.  Jorge Guillén, Spanish Poet

Translation to English of the song "A Mis Amigos." (To My Friends) by Alberto Cortez, sung by Facundo Cabral and Alberto Cortez

You can watch/listen to this song at the bottom of this post.

I am indebted to my friends for their tenderness and their words of encouragement and the hugs... and splitting the bill which life presents us - step by step - with all of them.

I am indebted to my friends for their patience in tolerating the sharpest thorns, the bursts of temper, the negligence, the vanities, the fears and the doubts.

Sometimes friendship seems like a fragile paper boat, but the most violent storm can't destroy it, because on that paper boat, as captain and steersman, holds on to the steering wheel... a heart, a heart, my heart.

(the heart of [names of friends], the heart of a friend I call master, because every time I talk with him I learn four or five words I didn't know before.)

I am indebted to my friends for the annoyances that have disturbed some times our harmony. We all know it can't be a sin, to sometimes argue about small things. 

To my friends I will leave, when I die, the legacy of my devotion on a note of my guitar and, among the forgotten verses of a poem, my poor incorrigible soul of a cicada.

Sometimes friendship seems like a fragile paper boat, but the most violent storm can't destroy it, because on that paper boat, as captain and steersman, holds on to the steering wheel... a heart, a heart, my heart.

My friend, if this song, like the wind, wherever you want to listen to it, speaks to you, you will be a plural, because feelings are not exhibited when friends are carried in the soul.

Facundo Cabral and the Love of Life

I asked my eight year old son not long ago, while we were lying down on the grass enjoying the sunshine, to tell me something about the world. He said, "OK," thought for five seconds, then said, "the world is peaceful, graceful, and beautiful." This comes of course from the child who, when he and his brother were asked what they think Heaven is like, described their current life. (We must be doing something right.)

My son's statement about the world is a lot truer than what the media shows in what we call "the news." I don't usually watch the news. When I was younger I believed I should watch the news to be informed about what was going on in the world, but it didn't take long for me to notice that watching the news was just a way to be informed about all the bad things that happen in the world, collected and put together to make it seem like the world is a terrible place. The truth is most of the world is at peace and free of tragedy most of the time, the larger part of the world is like my son Awan says, "peaceful, graceful and beautiful" – even in the Third World, where I was born.

I don't watch the news, but I also don't want to be the only person at a meeting who doesn't know about some major world event that just happened, so sometimes I watch the muted headliners that the Spanish channel shows during the night time soap opera (yes, I confess to watching soap operas).

It was through the headline briefs that I learned of the death of Facundo Cabral, a beloved Latin American singer, songwriter and poet. To describe the shock and pain of this discovery, of what the tragic death of this singer means to the Latin world, the only thing I can think of is to compare it to what people in the US felt when they learned about the untimely death of princess Diana.

Facundo Cabral agreed with me and my son that the world is beautiful, in spite of all the strife, and Cabral knew a lot about strife.

He was the seventh child of a very poor family in Argentina. His father abandoned the family a day after his birth.  He said in interviews that at the age of nine he stopped the official vehicle of then-President Juan Domingo Peron and his wife, Evita, to ask for work for his mother, Sara. Eva Duarte, Argentina's first lady is quoted as saying that was the first decent thing she had heard that day. Everyone else was asking for charity, but Cabral had asked for work. This meeting led to the family moving to the city of Tandil, Cabral worked on a farm and had his first exposure to Argentinean folk music but also to alcohol and criminal activity.

Facundo said he was an alcoholic by age nine and up to no good in the streets, until he became a thief and was sent to a reformatory, at age fourteen, due to an act of violence. It was in this reformatory that he met a Jesuit priest who taught him to read and write and introduced him to classic literature. In three years, Cabral completed the equivalents to elementary, middle school and high school.

Cabral said that as a teen he had an encounter with a vagabond named Simon, who introduced him to religion and encouraged him to seek a career in music.

As a young man Facundo got a job playing an a hotel in a coastal city in Argentina. He had moderate success until he composed his most famous song: "No soy de aquí ni soy de allá" (I am not from here and I am not from there"translated at the bottom of this post)

Cabral found the love of his life and got married at forty, but both his wife and one year old daughter died in a plane crash a few years later. Cabral, devastated, went to meet Mother Theresa. He related that when she saw him she told him, "I know what your problem is" to which he thought that everybody knew what his problem was and that the world was a mess. She then continued, "Your problem is that you don't know where to put your love. You have so much of it, and now you don't know where to put it." This led to Cabral moving to Calcutta for a while to help Mother Teresa tend to people suffering from leprosy.

Cabral never remarried, devoting his life to his music. He wrote 66 books. On July 9 of 2011 Facundo Cabral was murdered while driving to the airport in Guatemala, where he had given a concert the night before. The target, some news services say, may have been his Nicaraguan promoter. He was 74 years old when he died.

For someone with his history it is amazing to read some of his quotes or to listen to the lyrics of his songs. Here are some examples:

• "Every morning is good news, every child that is born is good news, every just man is good news, every singer is good news, because every singer is one less soldier."
  
• "I'm amazed to form part of this amazing universe and I'm proud of the hunger that keeps me awake. Because when man is full he falls asleep."
  
• I always ask God, why did you give me so much? You gave me misery, hunger, happiness, struggle, lights... I saw everything. I know there is cancer, syphilis and spring, and apple fritters..
  
•  ...You think you lost something – it is not true, everything was given to you... You have lost no one -- those you loved who have passed on, are just ahead of you, and wait for you when your time comes.

The last quote is from his musical poem You are not depressed, only distracted, which you can listen to or read below:

I AM NOT HERE AND NOT FROM THERE (translated lyrics)


I like to walk, but I don't follow the paths, what is for sure is already devoid of mystery. I like to go very far in the summer, but go back to my mother in the winter, and see the dogs who never forgot me, and get the hugs I receive from my brothers. I like that, I like that.


Of course I like that.


I like the sunshine, Alice and doves, good cigars and the Spanish guitar,  jumping walls and opening windows, and girls in April.


I like wine as much as flowers, and rabbits, but not tractors, home made bread and the voice of Dolores, and the sea wetting my feet.


I am not from here and I am not from there, I have no age, or future, and being happy is the color of my identity.


I love to lie down always on the sand, or chase Manuela on my bike, or having all the time in the world to watch the stars while lying down with Maria on the wheat fields.

I am not from here and I am not from there, I have no age, or future, and being happy is the color of my identity.

Are you a Christian? And what does Yoga have to do with it.

Are you a Christian?

This is a question my family and I are often confronted with living in Knoxville, TN, what some call the “buckle of the Bible belt.”

It is also a question to which -- however I answer -- sometimes I am telling the truth and I am also at the same time lying.

Four years ago, when we were new in town, I was dumbfounded when a teenager at a doctor’s waiting room was immediately attracted to our family and came to play with the boys, then about 4 and 2, but caught herself and asked, “Wait – are you Christians?” I told her we were and she immediately relaxed and continued to be cute with them. I couldn’t help wonder what she would have done if I had said no. Would she have turned around and gone back to her chair and ignored us for the rest of the time? Perhaps she would have tried to sit next to me and share “the Good News.”

About two years ago I had taken the boys to a play date at a water park in Powell. When the play date was over, our friends left a few minutes before us. An attractive young woman dressed in a nice sweater and a long skirt approached me with a smile. I smiled back. You see, where I grew up and in the two communities in the United States where I have lived (the Mississippi Gulf Coast and Davenport, IA) such an attire is often a sign of an open mind. Come to find out, in Tennessee, it often is a sign of belonging to a fundamentalist church where wearing pants or showing one’s calves are considered sins.

Soon after the conversation started I could tell she was a fanatic and started hurrying up picking up our things so we could leave. When she asked me if I was a Christian, this time I told her no, grabbed the children’s hands and started walking towards the parking lot. She followed us to the car, leaving her own children unsupervised in the playground, and tried to push pamphlets into my hands, while she asked one question after another, without giving me a chance to answer: Do you believe in God? Do you believe Jesus is God? Do your believe Jesus died in the cross for your sins? and on and on. Once I had the boys safely buckled in the car I told her to step back and leave us alone in no uncertain terms.

So why did I answer “yes” to the same question four years ago and “no” a couple of years ago?

This is why: all my life I have believed that a Christian is a follower of Jesus, someone who agrees with the teachings of Jesus and does their best to live their life according to them. In this sense I have always been a Christian. In this sense many of the people I know who would not define themselves as Christians, really are Christians. In this sense, some of the people we have met in East Tennessee who claim to be Christians, really are not – they spread fear instead of love. Below is an example.

My husband, a chiropractor, had some lettering added to the back window of his car. It had the name of his practice, “Genesis Chiropractic,” the phone number and website and in Spanish “El Dr. Habla Español” (The Doctor Speaks Spanish). One day he had gone to the East side of town to pick up something and was coming back home the back way. Close to the Mall Center he noticed a car seemed to be following him. This went on for about twenty minutes, all the way to our home. An irate woman parked on our driveway, right behind his car. She got out and started screaming at him. First, of course, she asked him if he was a Christian, to which he answered “yes.” She made a comment as to wanting to make sure he had the right to call his practice Genesis. Then she asked if he knew what he was doing with a message in Spanish: encouraging illegal immigrants to come to this country to take away the jobs from good American citizens who were Christian and law abiding. She said immigrants are criminals infested with illnesses that they are bringing to the US. Didn’t he read the news about Mexicans bringing leprosy into California? Her rage seemed to be focused on Hispanics. She must not have noticed my husband is Hispanic himself – he has a lighter complexion than most Latin people and, being born in the US, he has no accent.

There was also the family in Halls who defined themselves as our “best friends” but stopped talking to us when they learned that the church we attended (TVUUC) welcomed gay people. Or the man at the gym that never greeted us again after we had a conversation about liberal Christianity.

Soon after we moved to Knoxville we learned the definition of “Christian” here can encompass many things, and that unfortunately often those who define themselves as Christians are people who affirm to take the Bible literally, yet focus only on  passages that, artfully taken out of context, seem to support their world view, which is extremely right wing, misogynistic and racist. These people may say that they believe in Jesus Christ, but their behavior is far removed from the teachings of Jesus.

So this is why when people in East Tennessee ask me if I am a Christian, there is no easy answer to this question. If I say that I am a Christian – will the person assume that I am a judgmental person whose only motivation to try to be good is the fear of hell? Or someone who justifies their lack of goodness in the fact that they only have “to believe” in order to be saved?

If I say I am not a Christian, will the other person assume that I do not believe in or follow the teachings of Jesus?

I feel at this point I should make a distinction between fundamentalist and evangelical. We have very good friends who are evangelical Christians. My own grandmother and a couple of my aunts ditched the traditional religion of Latin Americans, Catholicism, for evangelical Christianity. We respect each other’s views and guide our relationships from our hearts. They do not feel a need to impose their particular set of beliefs on us and are open to different views of the world.

You are probably wondering as to the word yoga in the title of this blog and where it comes in.

I have actually found a formula to figure out if there is potential for friendship with someone who defines themselves as a Christian in East Tennessee: I ask them how they feel about yoga.

If they tell me yoga is dangerous because it opens up the mind for sin, or that it comes from the devil, I know that it is very unlikely this person can build a friendship with us. As soon as they learn I do Feng Shui and Reiki, they would run the other way, or worse, try to “convert” me.

If the person is OK with yoga, I can tell they are open minded to goodness and wisdom that comes from other cultures and even other religions. This is a good sign.

Recently I was delighted to see the new billboards for an international Christian health and fitness organization, displaying a woman doing a yoga pose, in an area where some pastors are telling their congregations that if they do yoga they will go to hell. This gives me hope.