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.

Simplicity is good. Right?

Well it is intrinsically good. Unfortunately the essence of our world is covered by impressions. These impressions are false creations of our egos. We see veils of illusion instead of Divine Essence.

We love to watch Indiana Jones overcome impossible odds and battle away to recover The Lost Arc. We buy lots of popcorn and the theater owners are happy.

But what would we do if Jones simply waved his hand and The Ark appeared in the desired destination? We certainly wouldn’t buy much popcorn. And we would probably want our ticket money back.

You might know that I’ve earned my living as a computer consultant. I developed application software for corporations.

The manager bought me a tuna fish sandwich. Admittedly the sandwich was really good. But it didn’t come close to covering the price of my gas to get there and back.

One time I visited the data processing manager of a local school district. He was wondering if it was possible to get a certain project done in three months.

So I drove fifty miles each way to meet with him  and his team of computer professionals. I solved the problem during the initial meeting. The computer pros sheepishly filed out of the room.

So instead of getting a three month computer programming contract, I lost money by presenting a simple solution.

On another occasion I programmed an accounting system for a certain kind of microcomputer. One of the computer manufacturers looked at the printout of my software. He said it couldn’t be worth much because the stack of paper wasn’t thick.

Never mind that the programming was very efficient. The efficient programming was estimated at a low value because there wasn’t a lot of it. Too efficient. Too simple.

Spiritual Entertainment

This same story seems to apply in the self-help / spiritual world. Many of the popular spiritual / self-help solutions are what you might call spiritual entertainment. Usually there is no significant improvement in the life quality of the people being entertained.

A short while ago somebody complained that my blissercises were not worth much because they all shared a common structure. Essentially they were too simple and easy to do.

The sad part is that she probably never did any of the blissercises because they were too simple. She missed out on huge life-changing benefits.

What is my responsibility in all this? Well, if I don’t present my material in a way that people will accept it, value it, and use it, then the fault is in my failure to communicate.

What do you think? Please leave a comment below.

Dr. Wenger is a pioneer in creativity technology and education technology. He wrote a web page where he clearly stated the one thing he’d want to have gotten said before he dies. You can read about it here.

It made me wonder what one main thing I’d like to say before I go. Please watch the video below.

Always recognize the Divine Essence in yourself, everyone, and everything. This will help spark others’ recognition of Divine Essence in themselves and others.

Clarifying my “bucket statement” helps me step back and look at the big picture of my life. It will be a good practice to review it every week or so. Then I can make any needed tweaks in my life or the bucket statement.

You might want to give it a try.

With appreciation,
Jim Kitzmiller

Enjoy!!!

May the bliss be with you.

Your friend,
Jim Kitzmiller

In this video I do some rambling on the subject.

Your feedback is important to me. Please leave a comment below.

May the bliss be with you.

Your friend,
Jim Kitzmiller

How it technology affecting our hearts and our souls?

In this video I do some rambling on the subject.

Your feedback is important to me. Please leave a comment below.

Your friend,
Jim Kitzmiller

The next thing to show up is wonderful without any planning or effort chasing goals. However, it can be fun to make the best feeling choice that presents itself.

As we see perfection more and more, opportunities become more visible. It’s been said that a miracle is seeing what we didn’t see before.

You can practice seeing perfection by doing the exercise in the post The Truth — Imagine That.

It’s that easy.

Why not give it a try. I would really appreciate your feedback.

Thank you,
Jim

If I expect the world to not judge me, then I must not judge the world.

If I follow rules such as these, then life would be a lot simpler. It would make a lot more sense.