Have you ever felt that time is speeding up? Well, you’re not alone.

It certainly is getting faster for me. Perhaps some of that is related to my getting older. When I was a kid, a year seemed to be an eternity. The school year was really long. The upcoming summer was but a glimmer of hope in the distant future.

The second graders were so much older than the first graders. Adults were ancient people from some other world.

But something is going on in addition to physical and mental aging. Something far more pronounced.

For a point of reference, let’s look at an example from my own life.

Throughout a good part of my life I made a living as a software developer contractor. When I was programming the Alpha Micro computer back around 1980, the programming documentation was about ten or twenty pages long. And it was clear and quite complete.

These days programmer documentation for a specialty might be a stack of books a foot or two high.

A computer programmer’s livelihood depends on his / her skill set. What set of programming tools does the programmer know? How many years of experience does the programmer have with that particular set of tools? This is especially important for a freelancer.

If the skill set is in demand, the programmer lives the good life. If the skill set is not in demand, the consultant does physical labor in exchange for a place to live. I’m writing this from my own experience.

This situation gets even more complicated with the rapid evolution of computer technology.

The same situation is true for many professions. We seem to be living in a high tech world. And the evolution of technology is accelerating at a breakneck pace.

People can graduate college in some specialty only to find that there is inadequate demand for that specialty.

Embarking on a career path seems like spinning a roulette wheel.

Our current “trickle down economy” complicates life to astronomical proportions. But ranting about that won’t help our personal, immediate situations.

In addition to making a living, there are many other areas of potential overwhelm.

There are more social opportunities than ever before.

Families scatter in different directions.

Our hobbies can get more complicated and costly.

It seems like a challenge prepare healthy meals. That seems to take so much time and money. It’s quicker to drive through Taco Bell.

Then we’re tired because of poor diet and lack of exercise.

Many of us are exhausted working in jobs we don’t prefer. And we have to keep learning more boring stuff in an effort to keep up.

All this stuff can be overwhelming. So what can we do in our own personal lives?

What do we do?

Well for one thing we can look at the well known analogy of the calm presence in the eye of the storm. Ok. How do we do that?

There are a few general approaches.

1. We can do consciousness work.
2. We can step back from the overwhelming confusion. Essentially we can get rid of clutter. This includes physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, commitment, social, and entrepreneurial clutter.
3. We can adopt simple, dependable points of reference in our lives.

Consciousness Work

This website is filled with resources that help your consciousness work. So we don’t have to expand on that here.

Handling MultiDimensional Clutter

We all know about handling physical clutter. Many of us, including me, wait until the clutter get’s overwhelming. Then we roll up our sleeves and handle it until we have a reasonable amount of peace. I’m repeatedly amazed by how uplifting this can be.

There are many ways to reduce mental clutter. We can do various forms of releasing such as the short not-trying meditation. Releasing other types of clutter will also reduce mental clutter.

We can do an inventory of our lives and identify what people or situations drag us down emotionally. We can then reduce them, or eliminate them, to scale down our emotional clutter.

And yes, there can be spiritual clutter. The majority of spiritual paths are not all that empowering. They can be a way of making ourselves right and others wrong. And they could simply be spiritual entertainment. If you know someone who is good at muscle testing, you can determine if a spiritual path is empowering or not. You can choose spiritual paths that are empowering.

Modern society seems to present an endless parade of situations that need fixing. We need to save the food supply. We need to save the seals. We need to handle pollution. We need to … The challenges can be totally overwhelming. In other words, we can have commitment clutter. We can narrow this down to one or two causes that resonate with us. And we can volunteer a reasonable amount of time and energy to those causes. Or we can shift energy by seeing everything as perfect the way it is. You’ve probably heard that what you resist persists.

It seems that we have to say yes to every social invitation. Maybe all of them are good. Maybe not. If our lives are swamped, we can limit out social activity to that which is the most uplifting for ourselves and our friends. In other words, we can reduce social clutter.

Today, more than ever, there are invitations to get desperate about making money. So we want to start new business ventures. One of my repeated mistakes is to jump in and create some product without any real assurance that anyone will pay for it. Yet marketing basics include testing market acceptance first before pouring huge resources into a business venture. I’ve wasted many thousands of hours of my life by creating entrepreneurial clutter for myself. The idea is to do market testing before embarking heavily into a business venture.

Adopting simple, dependable points of reference in our lives

In our accelerating world, we need to master ways of being and doing that are reasonably timeless. We need to master skills that will be useful now as well as ten or more years from now.

Mindfulness is quite basic. There are always opportunities. We just have to notice them.

Personal presence is vital in all economic and social situations. You can actually increase the magnitude and quality of your personal presence. This doesn’t mean that you have a strong energetic suit of armor and overpowering energetic output. A soft loving presence can be quite welcome in almost any situation. An inspiring or commanding presence can be vital when action is appropriate. A strong ethics presence is sometimes necessary in the face of unethical behavior. There are many ways to enhance your presence. Some of them could be fun. Acting classes anyone?

Sales and marketing beingness, knowledge, and skills are one of the best guarantees of success in any endeavor. We need to let go of any resistances we have in the area. Got great ideas? Want more friends? Better relationships? Sales and marketing expertise helps.

Communication skills play a major part in any situation. They are vital to sales and marketing. This includes subtle body language communication, verbal communication, written communication, and multi media communication. And it wouldn’t hurt to have your own blog.

Creativity can be learned. It’s fun. It’s extremely empowering. And it can be a complete spiritual path. It applies to all areas of life in all economies.

Self-Education has technologies similar to creativity technologies. We can multiply our abilities to learn well and quickly.

Leadership requires all the above abilities and characteristics. It also requires the ability to make good choices, the ability to create and hold a vision in the face of obstacles, and the ability to get others to hold that vision.

The calm in the eye of the storm

In our accelerating world we need to get into the eye of the storm and learn to stay there.

It involves letting go and raising our consciousness.

It involves cutting down multidimensional clutter.

It involves adopting simple, dependable points of reference in our lives.

How do you feel about all this? What do you think? Any more ideas?

Please write a comment below.

I can promote and book your retreats there for you. And I can conduct my own retreats on a schedule that works for you.

This is a great opportunity for creative win-win thinking. Tell me what you would like.

The ideal location would be the San Diego area. But the possibilities are limitless.

My email address is below.

May the bliss be with you.

Your friend,
Jim Kitzmiller

P.S. I’m planning to offer self-reboot retreats where participants step back, energize themselves, and prepare to enter life at a whole new level.

Our email system is in transition. If you’ve enjoyed the Conscious Tweets emails, you’ll be happy to know that these will start again soon. Depending on how you look at it, more good news is that the series of tweets will start again from the beginning.

This blog has new features that will make it possible to deliver online courses to you.

The upcoming courses include:

• From Stress to Inner Peace: This five month course has weekly lessons and simple exercises that you can use immediately to bring relief and inner peace.
• Personal Evolution: This is a series of seven courses that help the student evolve from pawn to high level spiritual being.

This blog has a new look. The same great content is still here. And much more is on the way. However, the blog in the process of reorganizing – the info is more readily accessible to you.

May the bliss be with you.

Your friend,
Jim Kitzmiller

We can see each other’s profiles and connect with each other using the widget in the right column on every page of this blog.

The quality of your life has a lot to do with the consciousness of your friends. And it has a lot to do with your communication with these friends.

It takes just a few minutes to join. This could make a great positive impact on your life. By joining you open new friendships and new opportunities.

May the bliss be with you.

Namaste,
Jim Kitzmiller

So I’m gradually merging several of my websites into this blog, JimKitzmiller.net.

These websites include:

• MeditationVacations.com
• SystemsMystic.com
• My old website that rates movies according how good they make you feel.

There are no current plans to move my book website or my geeky services website.

Please let me know if you find this plan to be helpful.

Thank you,
Jim Kitzmiller

The look of a blog depends on what’s called a theme. And the choice of theme also has some impact on the functions that the blog can perform.

After a lot of scouting around, I found a blog theme that’s highly popular with my fellow geeks. It offers tremendous flexibility with the choices of how I can present information to you. And it doesn’t waste a lot of screen space.

As the blog grows, it will still be easy for you to find what you want.

How is the blog going to grow?

Glad you asked. Here are a few things that are coming in the near future.

1. A video on Self Esteem, Self Confidence, and Self Image. It will explain what they are, how they differ, and what you can do about it.
2. The ability to subscribe to blog posts by email. (Yes this is usually a no-brainer. However, I have to work around some bugs in the usual system for blogs to deliver email subscriptions.)
3. Movie reviews based on how good they make you feel – not on box office or artistic presentation. Two years ago I created a website devoted to this. Those reviews will be brought into this blog.
4. Some of my other websites will be merging into this blog. This will probably include the Meditation Vacations website and the Systems Mystic website. My geeky services website may also merge into this blog.

What about the beard?

My housemate attached barber shop coupons to my refrigerator door. Another friend made sure I knew the coupons were there. And I wasn’t sure why someone was giving me food. So it was time for a new look.

Farewell to the Father Time look, at least for now. However, Christmas is coming.

Your friend,
Jim

Can I also help you with a blog?

If you like, I’ll create one or two articles or videos each week to help you experience life in a happier and more loving way.

You can get

1. guided meditations
2. spiritual tutorial articles
3. spiritual tutorial videos
4. tools to help yourself
5. tools to help others

Yes, this can be done through the regular Meditation Vacations website. But a blog is more convenient for finding what’s new since your last visit.

And a blog allows you to enter replies about the articles and meditations. This would really help me find out more about what you’d like.

Please let me know what you think. You can reply below.

Thank you,
Jim