I’m engaged! + 10 days of silence + Off to India!

I’m engaged! + 10 days of silence + Off to India!       


…

I’m heading to India tomorrow and wanna get caught up before I take off.

Three big things for this (very) (long) post:

1.    Heading to India (!)
2.    Just got out of my first 10-day silent Vipassana course
3.    I got engaged (!!!!)

I’m Engaged!

First, the big news: I got engaged last weekend! I popped the question after our 10 say silent Vipassana meditation course. :)

You can meet my lovely Alexandra here.

The quick story: Alexandra’s friend (thanks, Matt!!!!) told her about Zaadz about a year ago. (He’s a raw foods guru and knew she’d dig the site as she was raw at the time as well.) So, she went to the site, liked it, wound up on my page and said to herself, “I’m going to marry that guy some day.”

☺

Fast forward to about 8 months ago. Alexandra moves out to LA, starts working with some friends on an Eco-Event. They’re looking for sponsors. She tells her friends they should get Zaadz to sponsor the event for two reasons: 1. Zaadz would be a great sponsor; 2. She’s going to marry its CEO and needs an excuse to meet me.

☺

As it turns out, one of the guys working with her was in the Toastmaster group I went to 6 years ago and he gets in touch with me (thanks, Mike!). I pass him on to Siona as she handles all the biz deals like that for us. Long story short, she hears about Alexandra and sends me an IM that goes something like this:

Siona: I have a woman who wants to marry you.

Me: Sweet!

Siona: She’s raw, meditates daily, is an All-American volleyball player, massage therapist and a fitness model.

Me: Um. We can make that work! ☺

Siona: I just got off the phone with her. She’s awesome. You need to go out with her. Call her right now.

Me: I’m heading out for a hike. I’ll call her when I’m back.

Siona: Call her now! I told her you would.

Me: Uh….

Siona: Seriously. Call her: 805-xxx-xxxx. NOW!

Me: hehe. OK!!! I’ll call her.

Fast forward to the first date the following week following about 50 of the funniest text messages I’ve ever read.

We go for a hike at 10am. Then to lunch. Then to CostCo for a blender (who does that on a first date?!?) then to the grocery store (she’s hooking me up with all her favorite foods) then to my place then…it’s 3pm the NEXT DAY and she’s walking to my kitchen and I have this feeling that we’ve been dating for a couple years. Weird!

Fast forward 7 months and lots of growth and discovery and …

I’m committed to the most beautiful person I know to create a life of growth, service, playfulness and fun.

Pinch me.

(Special thanks to my coach, Bert Parlee, who provided incredible wisdom and space as I opened to love; to Gay & Katie Hendricks who showed us what type of love is possible by modeling the most incredible relationship I’ve ever seen and then taught us some of the basics in their amazing courses; and to another new friend David Emerald who taught us how to show up as creators in our relationships. You guys transformed our consciousness over the last several months and without your wisdom and support, I wouldn’t be taking this beautiful step. Thank you.)

(And, of course: I love you, Alexandra. Thank you for inspiring me. I’m giddy to manifest our dreams together.)

Off to India!

And, we’re headed to India for our pre-honeymoon tomorrow. ☺

We have a one-way ticket and the only things that are booked are our first 2 nights in Bombay plus the next 10-day Vipassana course we’re taking on January 2nd in Igatpuri, Maharashtra, India.

I’m bringing 50 books with me and don’t plan to come home until I’ve created “Cliff Notes”-like summaries of all of them that I’ll be using as the cornerstone of the “thinkArete.com Notes” I’m creating. I’ll be capturing the big ideas from my favorite self-development books in a ~5 page PDF and offering that in both PDF and audio + I’m going to interview all the authors and get their take on the big ideas from their books/their hero’s journey/best practices/top advice. Very excited about that. When I get back I’ll bundle those into a monthly “book club” for $10-$20/month and/or $5-$10 per summary.

That’s all part of my bigger picture plan over the next 5 years. I’ve decided to give myself my own Ph.D. In life.

I get a masters when I’ve distilled the wisdom of 100 of my favorite books. Then I work on my dissertation which is a book that distills the perennial wisdom into a highly practical philosophy applicable to our 21st century lives. To develop the ideas in the book, I’ll be leading online and offline workshops. I get the actual Ph.D. when 1 million people have read the book. ☺

Fun.

So back to the trip: we’re probably going to hit northern India first—maybe even sneak up to Nepal before it gets too cold. Can’t wait to see Varanasi (arguably the holiest city in the world). The TajMahal (of course), Sarnath where the Buddha gave his first teaching on the Four Noble Truths, Pune to study at Osho’s ashram and so many other amazing places. Then the meditation course then southern India. And then probably Thailand/Laos/Cambodia/Vietnam (with another 10-day Vipassana in Thailand in February prolly) and maybe China and Bali.

Fun fun.

And this leads us to:

10-Day of Silence in my first Vipassana Course

I think my first 10-Day silent Vipassana meditation course was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

Seriously.

Imagine getting up at 4am every day (I’m an early riser so that actually wasn’t bad) then meditating for 10+ hours from 4:30am to 9:00 am for 10 days. (Um. THAT was much more challenging. ☺ I literally meditated more in 10 days than I had my entire life. ☺)

The first three days I nearly packed my bags and split. And probably would have if I hadn’t left my “Brian is…” message here at Zaadz set to “… in a 10-day Vipassana meditation course.”

D’oh!

Well, that, and I was incredibly inspired to look over (oops! wasn’t supposed to do that ☺) at my love and see her so focused…

And, I’m incredibly glad I made it thru those first few days. I learned SO much. Here are some of the “Big Ideas” I’ll be polishing from the course:

1.    Vipassana: the word literally means seeing things as they really are. The entire practice of Vipassana is to bring the meditator to a deeper and deeper awareness of the constantly changing reality of nature and to free us from suffering.

2.    3 Causes of Suffering: Craving, Aversion, and Ignorance. We suffer when we find ourselves craving, avoiding and failing to see the impermanent nature of reality.

3.    Sila. Sila is the moral conduct required to prepare oneself for Vipassana practice. The 5 precepts: no killing, stealing, lying, intoxicants, or sexual misconduct.

4.    Samadhi. Samadhi is the concentration of the mind—a necessary skill to have in order to penetrate the truth of reality. If we have a monkey-mind constantly jumping from idea to idea and do not have the ability to focus our mind, we can’t advance in our Vipassana practice.

5.    Pañña. Pañña is the wisdom of insight. This is the wisdom of seeing things as they are.

6.    Pañña: faith, intellect, experience. Goenka (the meditation teacher from Burma who leads he class via video and audio presentations throughout the 10 days…with his assistant teachers who are in the meditation hall) teaches that there are three forms of wisdom: faith (which is simply believing what someone told you); intellect (thinking about something and believing it is true) and experience (actually KNOWING something is true not b/c you thought about it but b/c you’ve EXPERIENCED it. Powerful distinctions…

7.    The smaller the area of focus > mind's clarity/power. This is huge. For the first 3 days (!!!!) we simply focused on our breath coming in and out—working to feel the sensations on the triangle encompassing the upper lip to the upper nostrils. His point was very simple: we MUST develop the strength of mind (Samadhi) to be able to focus our attention. And, the smaller the area of focus, the greater the mind’s power. I got a huge flash of insight on this one related to setting goals in one’s life—the more narrow the focus, the more powerful the intention and the more likely you’ll be able to rock it.

8.    Strong determination. This one’s my favorite. During the 10 hours of meditation every day, we worked in roughly 60 minute chunks. We were allowed to move to a comfortable position/rest as necessary. EXCEPT for 3, 60 minute chunks each day (after day 4) when we were to sit in “strong determination”—committed to NOT flinching for the entire hour—we couldn’t open our legs, our hands or our eyes. This is a reasonably big deal b/c, if you’ve ever sat in meditation (and especially if you don’t sit a couple hours a day before the class), your body tends to get a little cranky about 30 minutes into it. But you can’t move. I committed to going 17 for 17 during the course and learned SO much as I honored that commitment. Perhaps THE key to the success in my business life is due to my “strong determination”—when I committed to my two businesses (eteamz and Zaadz), failure wasn’t an option and I went through A LOT of pain and obstacles to make it work. I now see just how powerful it is to bring this practice of strong determination even more powerfully to my professional life and, of course, to the rest of my life (hence, my engagement, for example). I’ll be writing a lot more on this…

9.    Sankaras. Sankaras are basically the negative karmic impressions we make in our lives--they can be like a line drawn in the water that dissolves immediately, like a line drawn in the sand that disappears in a day or like a line etched in stone that stay with us for a long time. Idea: live with awareness and equanimity. create no more sankaras.

10.    Equanimity. One of my favorite words before the course and DEFINITELY one of my favorite words now. This is one of the keys to enlightenment. As we bring awareness to our lives, and wisdom to our experience of the impermanent nature of reality, we can respond with equanimity—not losing our balance of mind as we realize that all things rise and all things pass—therefore there is no need to crave of avoid these impermanent realities.

11.    Elephant: 5 blind peeps; 5 partial truths. You’ve prolly heard this one. 5 blind people who have never seen an elephant each touch a different part and describe what an elephant is. One grabs the leg and says, “An elephant is like a tree trunk.” Another grabs the tail and says, “An elephant is like a broom.” And so on. The point: they all express their limited and partial truth of reality. And so do we all…The trick: to recognize our vantage point is only one of many partial truths and to appreciate the different vantage points from which others see the world.

12.    Gifts not received belong to the giver. Classic story of an individual coming to the Buddha with anger and violent rage. The Buddha did nothing but calmly smile and ask the man, “If someone comes to your house and offers you a gift that you refuse to accept, whose gift is it?” The angry man replied, “Well, the person who intended to give the gift would still own it.” And the Buddha said, “And so it is with your anger.” Refuse to accept unwanted gifts…

13.    “Work diligently...patiently...persistently...” I don’t know how many times Goenka said “Work diligently. Diligently. Work patiently and persistently. Patiently and persistently. You’re bound to be successful. Bound to be Successful.” That’s my new favorite quote. Think about that. If we work DILIGENTLY, PATIENTLY and PERSISTENTLY we are BOUND to be successful. Amazing…

14.    Anicca, anicca, anicca. “Anicca” is pronounced “Anicha” and, in Pali the word means “impermanence.” It describes the reality of nature. Everything that arises passes. You. Me. This emotion. That emotion. EVERYTHING that we experience passes. So why crave? Why avoid? Anicca, anicca, anicca….

15.    Annapanna. This is the form of meditation we practiced the first 3 days—focusing on the breath coming in and out of our nostrils and feeling the sensation on the area above the upper lip and in and around the nostrils. Powerful tool to develop Samadhi.

16.    5 Seeds of Corn. Great story: the woman who heads up the household dies. In Indian culture, the woman controls the family finances so the widower needs to select one of his 4 sons wives to become the new head. He gives each 5 pieces of corn and asks them to watch over them and bring them to him in 4 years for him to decide who will take over. The first daughter says, “Oh! What a waste of time. The crazy old man.” And throws them away. The second thinks they may have magical powers and eats them. The third takes them and puts them on her alter next to her gods and worships them each day with the others. The fourth takes them and plants them in the land behind the house. In four years each tells their story. The fourth says, “We will need help getting all the corn from the hundreds of plants that have grown from the 5 seeds I planted.” She got the job. ☺

(learn more and sign up for your own course here: http://dhamma.org)

Alright. More than enough for now.

I gotta finish my packing and get out of here but wanted to share!

With so much love and appreciation to all of you for sharing in my joy and helping to create it with your inspirational lives and presence here at Zaadz.

In growth and liberation,

-bri


P.S. If I don’t respond to your comments immediately, please forgive me! I’m wandering around India somewhere and will say “hi” at the first available internet café. ☺

And, I leave you with some of my favorite thoughts from the Buddha:

“Your work is to discover your work ad then with all your heart to give yourself to it.”

“Believe nothing. No Matter where you have read it, or who said it, even if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own common sense.”

“Our life is shaped by our mind; we become what we think. Suffering follows an evil thought as the wheels of a cart follow the oxen that draws it. Our life is shaped by our mind; we become what we think. Joy follows a pure thought like a shadow that never leaves.”

“More than those who hate you, more than all your enemies, an undisciplined mind does greater harm.”

“Little by little a person becomes evil, as a water pot is filled by drops of water...Little by little a person becomes good, as a water pot is filled by drops of water.”