Kids, the teachers - Day 8

Good morning everyone! Or good afternoon or goodnight if you are reading this later in the day! It is an exciting day. Last day before we leave to Austin for Chris and Marynes’ wedding! Yoohoo! Today is the big day. In my first day of my 30 day commitment I gathered the courage to offer to volunteer giving an English class to kids in the pre-school next door. Today is that day!  The first day I get the chance to work with kids.

My plan is to interact with them only in English since I read from the article Tracy sent me (thanks Tracy), that kids learn by sensing and if they are immersed in English in my class they will learn the best by listening and then by trying to repeat. As for materials, I will buy a bunch of fruits and will have a show and tell of the fruit names, colors, shapes and how many there are of each and in total. I will then have them say the colors and numbers themselves and then I will have them interact with the fruit so they can experience it fully. Maybe next class will be actually eating the fruit. More sensing, tasting! This is the basis for the class. I am excited, because I have heard that the pre-school teacher is really creative so I am going to have a great opportunity to learn from her and to learn from the kids themselves. I know kids are the greatest teachers especially if you spend a lot of time with them.

Young kids are one of the closest sources of wisdom from Being. They have just arrived from the Source with all the wisdom to develop themselves. They do not have all the filters created by the belief systems that grownups have. Actually, kids have all the wisdom and then their filters and brain patterns start forming as they learn. It is important to me that kids learn through their curiosity and senses so the brain patterns that are formed let them continue to use their curiosity and senses to explore life as they grow up. Their learned brain patterns should let them grow and evolve always instead of blocking them based on fear of doing something wrong. I trust that Being will give me the wisdom to interact with the kids in a way that expands them and not contracts them. I will let the kids guide me since they are the source of wisdom.

Below is a picture of Tommy and me soaking up the Sun as little kids with my mom and grandma Rorra. The second picture is my mom with one of the families she works with. She also is an educator. I will definitely have a post about her soon.

Mami, Tommy, Allan and Abuela Rorra

Mami and one of her families.

Grounded to Fly - Day 7

Hello everyone! Happy Tuesday! Here I am in my home in Atenas, Costa Rica with my almost everyday morning mate, after my almost everyday smoothie and almost everyday tortillas with cheese, avocado and spicy sauce. Mmmmm! I want seconds! Also, this morning I did my yoga session and sent some prayers to the universe so the floods in the Austin, TX stop and so my brother Chris and Marynes can get married under the nice shiny Sun on Saturday. If you can send some prayers that way that would be amazing. At the end is the suggested prayer that you can focus on. I also went to the bathroom to do number two, which felt great, and took a shower. Now I am writing here. After this I will be ready to tackle the routine.

Routine and creation station.

 

As you can read, this is what I try to do every morning of a routine day, and by routine day I mean days in which I have do work for my work. Basically, I do a routine in the morning so I can then step into the work day’s routine. The yoga and the writing are new parts in my morning routine and I LOVE them! For any of you that have not tried yoga or tried it but did not stay with it, I encourage you to look into it. Find a place in your area to practice it and if you can find a good teacher that teaches you the meaning of every pose, the better. Yoga changed my life. After I practice it I feel more rooted, heart centered and mind focused. It is the best body, heart, mind, spiritual practice I have done.

Regarding routine, there are great things about this and some non-great things about this in my opinion. One challenge is when we “HAVE” to stick to the routine and our mind and body are somewhere else or want to be somewhere else. Another challenge is the opposite, when we are anxious or scared and we do not have a routine to anchor ourselves in. Remember creating our environments? A routine in my case is a great anchor. A sequence of events that keep me grounded. This being said, sometimes I just want to fly and not be grounded, like a crow in la Quebrada de los Cuervos in Treinta y Tres, Uruguay.
 

With Elkita, Quebrada de los Cuervos, Treinta y Tres, Uruguay

Quebrada de los Cuervos, Treinta y Tres, Uruguay

 

I have noticed that week days are normally more mechanic, more structured, there is more routine and we go through the motions, hopefully still creating things, and we don’t leave space for many outside events to come in and rattle us. We are in it. The weekends or holidays are different. If I take long holidays I adapt to the non-routine or I even create a new holiday routine, but as I mentioned before when the weekend comes and I have been in a routine and now the routine is broken, I have to get a hold of myself and then fly with it.

In the macro view of my life. Routine grounds me so I can then have non-routine which gives me the freedom to fly, explore and let my mind be creative. I like to live between routine and non-routine. This is in tune with a teaching my friend Beto gave me regarding how the Candombe drums interact with each other and reality. The Candombe is formed by 3 drums, the Chico, Repique y Piano. The Chico screams into the sky or flies, the Piano maintains the wisdom or is the ground and the Repique dances freely between both of them creating the new earth.  I will focus on creating an environment that allows me to live like this.


Prayer for Austin and Chris and Marynes' wedding.

Please Being, slow down the floods in Austin and keep the people safe.
Let the sun shine on Saturday May the 30th so Chris and Marynes can get married under its light.
Thanks

Marynes and Chris

Be ok with your crooked license plate - Day 6

Holiday in the country where your company is set, but working day in the country you live in. This equals a perfect day to run government errands. Dealing with the government and its processes is not the most fun. I just went to get my new license plates for my car. The process was pretty smooth actually but guess what? The license plates' holes do not match the old plates’, so they cannot be easily placed on to the car hehehe! Some things are ridiculous. I am deciding if I should drill a new hole in the license plates or 2 new holes in the car. You let me know. I think I am just going to drill the license plate. It’s not the cars fault.

The week has started busy. It even started before expected when one of our garden faucets exploded in the middle of the night yesterday. Elke and I tried fixing it and eventually found a temporary solution until today. The mystery was that we could not get the water to stop running. We closed the main water supply and the faucet still sprayed water like a bubbly, shaken champagne bottle. We eventually found out that that specific faucet is connected to the neighbor’s water line. Huh???? Obviously the neighbor was already asleep so we could not do anything. Today, it’s already fixed.

Like last night, we never know what is going to happen. I even had gone to bed early to make sure I slept 8 hours before the week started, but no. We spend a lot of time planning and trying to construct the path ahead of time through plans, but always, the path taken is another and is unknown. It is great to set goals since they give us a main direction and something to aim for but trying to plan the specifics is a waste of time in my opinion. Or even harsher, a recipe that creates frustration and un-met expectations. I recently heard somewhere, that it is better to establish our values and then navigate through life using those values as a reference, as our compass, rather than trying to control the outcome of every single event.

As part of God or the Universe or the Being (the Being is what I will call it from now on) we are a piece of the whole, a set of windows where the One Being looks into the world. The Being works through us. Since we have a consciousness and an awareness sometimes we get lost in how we are separate from the rest and we have an identity crisis because we think we are separate but deep down we know we are not. This causes crisis to arise until we start realizing the Oneness. Imagine or know, that every single person is YOU just with a different set of filters and eyes. Wow! The Being will work through us and our values, no need to try and control everything. Another piece of advice I received indirectly from a Chilean Economist talking to the young generation was to keep your antennas up, be alert and focused, and surf the wave of life. I like that.

Sometimes you just have to be ok with a crooked license plate for a while.

Let your Sun shine!

Sunday. Tricky Sunday. A day that has not much structure in my life, a day that provides the opportunity to go with the flow, a day that brings a little anxiety because the illusionary free time is fading away, a day where the mind can go places and also a day to sleep in, slowly enjoy breakfast, listen to the rain fall and just be. It’s what we make of it. Again, we create it all. I guess generations have gone through this process of Sundays being this odd day emotionally and that is still with us today. The only truth I can frame in my mind about this day is, that by its name we can take the opportunity to give thanks to the Sun which provides us with all the necessary energy for us to Live, and as human beings, to Love. Put on your most magical music and come on for the ride. Let creativity flow. It’s Sunday.

Lots of times we ask why are we here, what is this all for. The rabbit hole is endless and trippy. All the beautiful, mysterious and hard times make us, and we give thanks for being here. It is a journey to investigate the “Why?”, but the magic happens when we are just grateful for being here no matter the why.

I was not going to write about this at all when I started the post but now looking at what I wrote I might understand why Sundays and why a lot of us use Sundays to pray, to connect with source, and to give thanks. This just came into me without me even knowing. God or Universe or Spirit or the Source or the Energy have a way of working through us and if we want to be light beings we needs to uncover ourselves and completely trust the Light that shines and works through us to fulfill its mission. Trust yourself.

Blessings to all. Let your Sun shine!

Heading to the Hornocal in Humahuaca,
Provincia de Jujuy, Argentina

And it's the weekend again!

Good morning family! Awake at 5 am with Elkita and Stevo to take the dogs out. Now 9 am and still half a sleep but the mates are making their effect.

The mate is always a great companion. Not only to wake me up but it’s the perfect excuse to go share a while with someone at their house or in a park. The mate connection. Hooray for the Guarani Indians that discovered this tree in the basins of the Parana, Paraguay and Uruguay rivers. Today mate is a cultural icon.

Mate time with the lady

 

Welcome to the weekend. In the recent past years the weekends have been good but strange days for me. Normally, the weeks days have all the structure and the pattern were we do our “work” and then the weekend comes around which gives us two days to do all the rest of the things that we wanted to do throughout the week. When Saturday begins, a wave of ideas regarding personal projects, fun times, rest and other things rush into my head creating an anxious and overwhelming feeling which blocks me from accomplishing anything, plus there is literally not enough time to accomplish everything in my mind and then the weekend finishes and there is a feeling of non-accomplishment, plus I am still tired and plus I have half assed many things. I realize all this is a reality but also a reality coming from my mind and also I am already working on personal projects throughout the week so I think my brain patterns are changing.

It is funny that the weekend arrived and I find myself writing about this because actually this weekend I am not feeling that anxious. Maybe it’s because I am writing everyday so that is my structure rolling into the weekend, or because I was able to do a lot of sports this week so my brain does not have that extra energy to ramble, or maybe it’s the Dumortierit the stone of patience that my mother in law just gave me that she brought from Italy. This stone has metaphysical properties of promoting accomplishments, positive attitude, courage, trust, harmony, and helps us cope with panic and fear, based on the Damali – Jewelry for the Soul website. Hmm interesting synchronicity. Things are moving along. Regarding the mind rambling on I have heard some interesting ideas on calming the mind which comes from Buddhism and also training the mind so the talk inside the head is inspiring instead of expiring. This also ties to the designing our environments to make us strive concept that we talked about last week, This last idea comes from another Unmistakable Creative podcast with Seth Godin. There is infinite knowledge and wisdom in these podcast.

 

Dumortierit stone and it's bag,

I trust the universe is leading all of you through the path of learning and action to fulfill your prophecy this weekend.

Happy weekend to all. We are heading to my mother in laws birthday celebration and then we are celebrating with friends at night. Let’s see what the universe actually has for us. Practice openness and acceptance and set intentions as the first step of you creation. Blessings to all!

 

Designing and Creating our Happy Places

Woohooo! Exciting morning! No new revelations in the past hours but a lot happening in the physical realm. So as I said yesterday, we picked up veggies at the farmers market. I have a full cooler of fresh organic veggies. We also hit the surf. The waves were medium with a really nice shape so it was an epic session with the sun setting behind the clouds creating all the magic effect of dispersion and coloring the entire sky in different tones of red and blue.

These little moments make me happy and keep me sane. This takes me to another teaching I have received through a podcast of the Unmistakable Creative while driving to the beach yesterday. The main teaching is that we can design our environments so we can then feed from them without having to spend insane amount of will power energy to plow through the energies of our surroundings. By designing our environment appropriately the environment feeds us energy that helps us move towards where we want to go. The podcast’s guest that talked about this is Jim Bunch and the title of the podcast is called Designing your environment for optimal performance and creativity.

Nowadays a lot of people are trying to find their way and their purpose through this maze of life. More and more there is cluttering of information and cluttering of material things so it is hard to find the path or to set the vision. People are looking at wisdom leaders to find answers and in a lot of cases when listening to these leaders the guidance seems great but then when going back to their environments their energy gets sucked out of them again. Being an architect of our environments is a skill set we can develop to design and create the environments that help us strive to fulfill our purpose every day. Also, environments are not only our physical environments. Other environments can be our email inbox, our computer in general, our brains, our emotions, the people we hang out with, etc. Check in what state all your environments are and which ones make you strive and which ones suck the energy out of you. If we are creative we can could even design our environments so they interact with each other for extra benefit. If you are interested in this check out the podcast and check out other podcasts from the Unmistakable Creative, they are great and inspiring.

Going back to the things that have happened to me these days, like going to the farmers market, receiving sunshine, surfing and writing, these are all contributors to making my environments healthy which then help me strive in the rest of my life. In my case I need sports to be happy, I need to eat healthy food to be happy, I need to connect with nature to be happy and I need to cuddle with my wife to be happy, so that’s where I am heading tonight! Baby I’m coming home!

Facing Fears, Going for it, Teaching and Learning with Kids - Day 2

Ok, day 2, here we go! This morning I drove from Atenas to Playa Hermosa to Dave’s house. This is part of my Thursdays’ routine. There is an organic farmers market here in Playa Hermosa every Thursday so I make the trip to be able to hit up the market to have veggies for part of next week and I combine it with a visit to Dave and a couple of surfing sessions, so surfing this afternoon! Yohooo! It also looks like the waves are good.

Back to the commitment. The first day of this journey already gave its fruits. I was able to seize the moment and overcome fear and make a volunteering offer and create another purposeful commitment with my community all in one move! I love the universe showing the way and one being able to see it and going for it. Face your fears that’s where the path is, otherwise you just stay in your shelter with no path. My neighbor, a pre-kinder teacher in her home school started chatting with me across the fence and I made the move of offering help with the kids. I have been thinking about working with kids for a while, specifically using healthy eating and planting your own food as the basis for their education. Making a parenthesis, a man and a program that are already doing this pretty successfully and changing kids’ lives are Diego Ruete in Uruguay with his program Petit Gourmet. Check them out. Back to the preschool next door. This school always seemed like a great opportunity to put my foot through the door of education. The moment arose and I jumped in. The teacher and I agreed that I will volunteer once a week helping the kids with their English. Next step is to start preparing the class! Face the fear!

Do any of you have suggestions regarding progressive teaching tools? I was thinking I would use the environment to work on colors and numbers and make some interactive activities. Any ideas you have would be greatly appreciated. I will try to incorporate some of Diego’s ideas.

Numbers and color through food.

This takes me to a second topic that has been in my recent life. Creating systems that do not depend on the monetary system, for example an all-help-all system without money in the middle or learning how the money system works and making it work for you. I will possibly expand on these subjects in other posts but I wanted to let you know that there is a movement starting that uses favors as the exchange between humans. Also, last night I went with my wife Elke to listen and interact with Robert Kyosaki the author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad and he clearly showed how money is worth less and less every day, so working for money is working for something that does not really have value. Let’s work for what we believe in and work on helping others.

Serve our future.

On that note see you tomorrow!

Commitment, Focus and Finding the Passion Within

Hi all! I am back to the cyber world through this writing. This time I am using the cyber world to channel what’s in my brain, to put in writing in front of me all the ideas and projects I am working on so I can then distinguish the relevant, determine my passions and then focus on them like there is no tomorrow. The commitment starts today! I am committing to write for 30 days and I will only skip 5 days of the month. Come with me on this ride of introspection and connection. I will cover new amazing things that come into my life, updates of the projects I am working on, new projects that arise, the rough moments and my evolution. Come with me on this journey!

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