"...I walked out onto a dock in the Gulf of Mexico. I ceased to exist. I experienced being a part of the sea breeze, the movement of the water and the fish, the light rays cast by the sun, the colors of the palms and tropical flowers. I had no sense of past or future. It was not a particularly blissful experience: it was terrifying. It was the kind of ecstatic experience I'd invested a lot of energy in avoiding.
I did not experience myself as the same as the water, the wind, and the light, but as participating with them in the same system of movement. We were all dancing together..."
Just as Don has elegantly stated, WE are all connected to the great wonders of the world. To the earth, to the cosmos, to people, to everything. Dance With the Elephant looks to give an outlook into how you, as an individual, have the ability to take your creative self through it's destined journey. We found this quote to be inspiriational and devotely a part of what "dancing" with the elephant is all about. Connections with the world and its people is a magical happening. We hope you enjoyed this quote as much as we have.
To discover the book that we found this quote from, Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer - An Approach to Life in Fullness check it out at Amazon!
To learn more about what we are doing and recieve 20 free videos please visit our website at:
"...I walked out onto a dock in the Gulf of Mexico. I ceased to exist. I experienced being a part of the sea breeze, the movement of the water and the fish, the light rays cast by the sun, the colors of the palms and tropical flowers. I had no sense of past or future. It was not a particularly blissful experience: it was terrifying. It was the kind of ecstatic experience I'd invested a lot of energy in avoiding.
I did not experience myself as the same as the water, the wind, and the light, but as participating with them in the same system of movement. We were all dancing together..."
Just as Don has elegantly stated, WE are all connected to the great wonders of the world. To the earth, to the cosmos, to people, to everything. Dance With the Elephant looks to give an outlook into how you, as an individual, have the ability to take your creative self through it's destined journey. We found this quote to be inspiriational and devotely a part of what "dancing" with the elephant is all about. Connections with the world and its people is a magical happening. We hope you enjoyed this quote as much as we have.
To discover the book that we found this quote from, Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer - An Approach to Life in Fullness check it out at Amazon!
To learn more about what we are doing and recieve 20 free videos please visit our website at:
On a personal level, Creative Power is the AWESOME energy source within you.
When it is completely understood, utilized and acted upon, it will provide innite
capacity to fully realize your dreams and reach your destiny!
So what is the source of this Creative Power and from where did it come?
To find the answer to this question, all you have to do is look into the sky on a clear
night. Did you know that on any given night, a star is being born at that very
moment? Since the beginning of time, there has been a creative force in the
universe that changes simple things into more complex. This force is
demonstrated on the cosmic level when clouds of hydrogen and helium gas fuse
together to form stars.
The birth, life and death of a star can provide great insights into better
understanding the role of Creative Power in the universe. From the moment of
birth, a star has a cosmic creative energy and purpose manifested within it. Every
star and its solar system is exclusive and totally unique unto itself. It was born with
a given size, a certain brightness, a given life span and most importantly, a
relationshipwiththeotherobjectsthatorbitit. These
These objects include: asteroids, comets, planets and sometimes even other stars.
No two stellar systems are alike.
A star lives to shine bright providing energy and gravity to its solar system. During
its life-time, important creative work is going on in the nuclear belly of the star. The
simple elements of hydrogen and helium are being converted into more complex
elements like nitrogen, oxygen and carbon. It is during the nal moments that
precede the death of a star that most of the simple to complex element conversion
takes place. In the grand nale, a star leaves its own cosmic legacy when it
explodes in a Supernova and hurls its heavier elements and precious metals back
into the galaxy providing the seeds for new stars to be born and the opportunity for
the entire cycle to begin again.
Do you know what your Creative Power is?
Unfortunately, most people have never thought of even asking the question. Look
around you. How many people do you know that have allowed the social and
cultural inuences of family, friends and society to control their beliefs and
direction in life. They are blind to the inborn Creative Power of the universe and the
joyful purpose it can bring to life. Most people have turned away from the Creative
Power they felt sometime during their youth or maybe never really got acquainted
with it to begin with.
JOIN US ON THIS JOURNEY TO FINDING YOUR CREATIVE POWER BY:
Everybody wants and loves a hero. The creation of héros has been a part of human culture since we roamed the desserts of Africa thousands of years ago. Who we choose as our heroes is a part of how and what we define ourselves to be. They can inspire us to be better people and they can lead us down the path of evil and destruction.
"People say they're looking for the meaning of life... but I think what they're really looking for an experience of being alive. So that we actually feel the rapture of being alive." Joseph Campbell
Don Calhoun and Duane Kuss combine to write the ground breaking book "How To Dance With The Elephant", filled with life-changing stories and exercises. View 20 videos that feature major book topics.
The cosmic hero is a part of your Receptive Choice power in life. (Creative Power + Receptive Choice + Faith) * Time = Your Cosmic Legacy .
Don's greatest hero in life was his mother. Don loved his mother and she gave him what he believes are all the good traits he carries with him today. His mother was faced with a myriad of life challenges but through it all never complained or felt sorry for herself. She was dealt a horrible set of life cards but never chose the path of hanging her head or verbally bitching about her situation. Some of these included loosing her parents and her brother when she was still a teenager. She contacted brain cancer and became legally blind while her own kids were still in elementary school. She died before her youngest child finished college.
Because of this, Don has very little tolerance for people who complain or yap their gums about other people or how bad things are in their life. Although Don admits his mother wasn't a saint, she still played the cosmic hero role in his life that has strongly controlled how he looks at life and the path he follows on a daily basis.
Joseph Campbell was a renowned scholar who studied the concept of cultural heroes throughout the world. Heros are a part of every human culture whether it's the Buddhist monks in the mountains of Tibet or the eskimos on the tundra in northern Canada. Many of us want to be recognized as heroes and all of us naturally identify with heroes.
The challenge and potential negative in life comes when your hero identification involves something called transference. When your hero, be it an individual, group or country, is given control over who you are and your destiny in life, it has the potential of being destructive to your true life legacy and purpose. Each of us has the capacity to step back and reflect on our receptive choices in life. Who are your heroes and who are we a hero to?
"If there is any science man really needs it is the one I teach, of how to occupy properly that place in creation that is assigned to man, ad how to learn from it what one must be in order to be a man." Immanuel Kant
How to be happy, happy to be me and we! Excerpt from the book: Dance With The Elephant: Life's Cosmic Equation
Creative Power is the AWESOME energy source within you. When it is completely understood, utilized and acted upon, it will provide innite capacity to fully realize your dreams and reach your destiny!
So what is the source of this Creative Power and from where did it come?
To nd the answer to this question, all you have to do is look into the sky on a clear night. Did you know that on any given night, a star is being born at that very moment? Since the beginning of time, there has been a creative force in the universe that changes simple things into more complex. This force is demonstrated on the cosmic level when clouds of hydrogen and helium gas fuse together to form stars.
The birth, life and death of a star can provide great insights into better understanding the role of Creative Power in the universe. From the moment of birth, a star has a cosmic creative energy and purpose manifested within it. Every star and its solar system is exclusive and totally unique unto itself. It was born with a given size, a certain brightness, a given life span and most importantly, a relationship with the other objects that orbit it.
A star lives to shine bright providing energy and gravity to its solar system. During its life-time, important creative work is going on in the nuclear belly of the star. The simple elements of hydrogen and helium are being converted into more complex elements like nitrogen, oxygen and carbon. It is during the nal moments that precede the death of a star that most of the simple to complex element conversion takes place. In the grand nale, a star leaves its own cosmic legacy when it explodes in a Supernova and hurls its heavier elements and precious metals back into the galaxy providing the seeds for new stars to be born and the opportunity for the entire cycle to begin again.
You are unique, different and special. In fact, like each of the lone stars in the sky, there is no one exactly like you in the entire universe. You alone bring to this world the perfect combination of gifts, talents, knowledge, body and spirit. Your Creative Power is your personal treasure chest waiting to be opened, explored and discovered. It is your purpose and destiny to apply your Creative Power in this world to make an extraordinary contribution for yourself, your family, your community, your country, your world and your universe. It is the people you touch during the journey in life that makes the difference in what will be your legacy.
Discovering your Creative Power is your link and connection to everyone and everything around you. It's the spark that lights the re within you every day to meet life's challenges and opportunities. No one can truly tell you what your Creative Power is. It's something that only you can discover and nurture within yourself. It can be as simple as truly enjoying the smell of owers in a garden or as complex as the pursuit of some new theory of relativity in the universe. You personally have a role to play and a story to contribute that will make a difference. There is a self-manifestation, a purpose, a driving force that burns within you. You are meant to tap into your Creative Power and let it guide you to reaching your destiny. Call it what you like: life's purpose; its destiny; your personal passions; or life's precious gifts. All of these are describing the same universal source, your Creative Power.
Your Cosmic Legacy, in its simplest form, is your ability to combine your Creative Power, Receptive Choice and Faith together, in the amount of Time you're given in life, to plant your apple seed and see it grow into the tree it was meant to be, and to bear great fruit. But of equal importance, is the fact that in order for your legacy to live on beyond your death, someone else has to carry your story forward. Your Comic Legacy is more about the relationships and the people you touched in life, than it is about the accomplishments or achievements you made. It's less about the "me" of life, and more about the "we" of life.
To truly understand Life's Cosmic Equation (WE), we must first revisit the primary equation that precedes it, or Life's Quantum Equation (ME). In the Quantum Equation you add energy, focus and commitment together and then multiply the three by action. The quantum result is equal to your life's destiny. With the Cosmic Equation, we are combining the energy, focus, commitment and action of two or more people into a unified effort that results in a cosmic legacy. We need our connection to others to help us grow, and we grow most through the experience of helping others grow.
The key to fully manifesting the Cosmic Legacy concept of “we”, is to remember that life is not all about you. The greatest impact of your legacy will come from the interactions with the people that you touched and influenced during your life. It does not matter if you are the President of the United States, or a homeless person living under a bridge, the people you touch during your journey in life, your legacy, has equal value and merit. Your story is a part of a constantly evolving story of the universe. In the space time continuum of the universe, there is no such thing as good and bad, virtue and wickedness, right and wrong or purposeful and aimless. The universe has a creative destiny that will include your contribution, regardless of the cosmic legacy you choose to leave behind. Each of us has an apple seed to plant or our Thomas Edison blueprint to fulfill. What will be your light bulb? How will your energy shine? What electric connections will you bring to the world around you? And through the connections you make with people throughout your life, how will your light shine even brighter? And finally, upon your death, will your cosmic legacy give rise to even greater connections and energy, leaving a brighter future for the universe?
You and everyone else in this world exists in unity with someone else. There is a connection of energy between all things that is a reality, a constant, an omnipresent link between past, present and future. We are all connected, not just as fellow human beings, but to the 13.7 billion years of cosmic interaction. Since the beginning of time, what has been created is an infinite, boundless web of connections that tie all things in the universe together. We cannot escape the fact that we are all connected in a cosmic and heavenly way. The question here is not one of creation but one of identification. No one has to create connections to one another, all you have to do is identify the reality that the connections already exist. Together this energy fuses into creative power that inspires new discoveries and gives meaning to life.
Time is the fourth and final part of Life’s Cosmic Equation. It is the great multiplier that gives action, motion and movement to the cosmic trinity (Creative Power, Receptive Choice, Faith). Time is the horse your cosmic trinity rides on in pursuit of your cosmic destiny in the universe. It is the one variable in the equation that you have absolutely no control over. Use it wisely and your greatest dreams can be realized. Take it for granted and loose all direction and purpose in life.
Time is the dimension by which historical events are given order, past through the present, and on into the future. It gives the measure of duration that takes place in a single event and the description of the intervals between multiple events. In Western culture, we have a tendency to take time for granted and always look to the future, a future that is rarely reached. We’re often surprised when the cradle of life, called death, gets in the way of our goals and dreams. Time has purpose and meaning, as it relates to the past and the action that takes place in the here and now.
Time, as it relates to the human condition, is what you have between birth and death. The only certainty you can rely on is the fact the end of life will come, by accident or by body failure. Your time is what it is, you have very little control over it. Accepting death as a part of the package is critical to understanding time's role in Life's Cosmic Equation. If your time is limited, you have a greater motivation to unify your cosmic trinity and develop a greater sense of direction in your life. Life is about taking action and not waiting for it to happen.
In Life's Cosmic Equation, time isn't just about you (the "Me"), it's about you and your interaction with the world around you (the"We"). How well you apply your cosmic trinity in the present moment will directly impact your ability to connect with others who can compliment your actions. When the creative power, reflective choice and faith of two or more people is unified, there exists the capacity to produce exponential results in your lives together and throughout the universe itself.
It doesn’t matter whether you live twenty years or a hundred years. Your Cosmic Legacy will be fulfilled. The results of that legacy may vary, but the legacy will exist, never the less. Time has the power to provide a sense of urgency and direction in your life. Time is like a compass that always points in the right direction. Time moves on as a constant, we cannot slow it down, nor can we can speed it up. Time, like a river, just continues to flow. We cannot determine the length of our life, but we can control our focus, perception, direction and action.
Faith is the third part of Life’s Cosmic Equation. When added to Creative Power and Receptive Choice it makes up what is called the cosmic trinity. The cosmic trinity makes up the unifying creative force that joins together all things in the universe. Faith allows you to cope with the constant unknown part of daily life. No one knows what tomorrow will bring, yet through faith, we can survive and even thrive in the uncertainty. You can be fully connected to your passionate creative purpose and your reason for existing, but it is faith that bridges the who you are today, with the uncertain destiny of what you will become tomorrow.
One of the biggest reasons why you need faith in your life was best described by Ernest Becker in his Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Denial Of Death. Becker describes in great detail how culture has evolved in man's consciousness as the direct result of two predominant driving forces:
The human need to avoid death.
The human need to pursue immortality.
The terrifying reality that you and every person must face every day includes:
Yes, the cradle of life is death and your life will culminate with this inevitable reality.
Not only will you die, but your death can come at any moment by accident or happenstance.
The meaning of your death will be no different than the road-kill you see along the highway.
Now, before your mind starts running for the hills in neurotic desperation, let's reference one of Becker's mentors, Soren Kierkegaard, frequently quoted in his book. Kierkegaard attempts to explain how man can deal with this overwhelming dilemma in human cultural evolution. He has his own formula for what he believes it means to be a human. He describes what he calls, "the knight of faith."
This figure (the knight of faith) is the man who lives in faith, who has given over the meaning of life to his Creator, and who lives centered on the energies of his Maker. He accepts whatever happens in this visible dimension without complaint, lives his life as a duty, faces his death without qualm. No pettiness is so petty that it threatens his meanings; no task is too frightening to be beyond his courage. He is fully in the world on its terms and wholly beyond the world in his trust in the invisible dimension. He continues: As the knight of faith has no fear-of-life-and-death trip to lay onto others, he does not cause them to shrink back upon themselves, he does not coerce or manipulate them. The knight of faith, then, represents what we might call an ideal of mental health, the continuing openness of life out of the death throes of dread.
Cultivating an awareness and knowledge of your death can lead you to having faith and trust in the sacred vitality of the universe. You can have faith in being a part of a big story, one that brings meaning and purpose to your life and one that will lead to your cosmic legacy in the form of power and wisdom, passed along to future generations. There will be more to explore on this topic in the final chapter of this book, "Your Cosmic Legacy."
Faith is the belief, deep within your being, a gut feeling, that you have the power to achieve a goal, deepen a relationship, or explain something that is not immediately provable. Faith is the reservoir of harnessed creative power and energy that provides meaning and purpose to our existence. Without faith in yourself, in others or in a higher power, you will not fully achieve your Cosmic Legacy.”
A paradox is defined as a seemingly absurd or self-contradictory statement or proposition that when investigated or explained may prove to be well founded or true. In the journey of life, we all yearn for human connection. We strive to connect with our loved ones, our friends and our neighbors. Our relationship bonds to people bring warmth, love and joy to our lives.
The first universal paradox in human relationships is the fact we all share a cosmic connection to one another that goes back to the beginning of time. The paradox lies in the fact most of us don't recognize or realize the inherent connection we have to each other and go about spending most of our energy and time in life actually sabotaging these connections. Just take a moment and think about the emotional elements of shame, blame and guilt in your life. What role have they played in your life to challenge and sever the connections with the people in your life?
Take the example of the loss of a loved one and the process that follows. Early on, everyone surrounds you with love and concern. Yet, one month later, how many of those same people would try to avoid you at the super market, not knowing what to say given the time that has passed. In reality all you needed was your friend to be present and willing to listen. Instead you find them running for the aisles. To Dance With The Elephant, we need to face these uncomfortable moments and reach out to one another in loving kindness and presence. Be present with presents.
In life all of us use various methods to cope with the ups and downs, the yin and yang, the good and bad we face each day. One technique we commonly use is to transfer (transference) our responsibility onto someone or something else. From an argument with your spouse, to a problem you faced at work, how often do you find yourself throwing blame and guilt onto somebody or something else other than you.
Another form of transference occurs when you look at the reasons couples use for choosing their partners.
Think back on the moment when you first fell in love. What were the things that attracted you to your partner? Many times a quiet, more controlled individual will choose a more outgoing, gregarious type of person. Although people are not consciously aware of it, but they made their choice to help balance their short comings. People essentially transfer their responsibility for growing and expanding in life over to their partner.
The problem we run into with transference is it can become a road block to reaching your personal destiny and to truly follow your passion in life. Step back for a moment and think about the things in life you have transferred your power over to. The most common sources of transference are found in careers, relationships and religions. Have you transferred your destiny and receptive choice to other things in your world? Is it time to regain control and start steering your ship based on your creative power and passion for life?
So imagine you're boarding a 747 airplane that will soon be taking off for nowhere. Once you're in the air, the pilot will follow the wind wherever it takes him. Eventually, you will land because there's no fuel left to power the jet engines. Hopefully there will be an airport somewhere to land and not crash.
Could this be a metaphor for your life? Have you ever taken the time to really separate the things in life you have control over and those things that are beyond your control? Is there a way to take control of life that could offer you more options and direction in how you want to continue life's journey?
STOP what you're doing. LOOK in the mirror and see yourself for who you truly are. CHOOSE where you want to be in the future. ACT upon the choices you make toward your chosen destiny.
In Life's Cosmic Equation to happiness, we're talking about the first two parts of the equation. Using your Creative Power and your Receptive Choice to move through life in concert with your natural talents and personal gifts.
It requires a four step process. Stop, Look, Choose and Act. You first have to STOP what you're doing long enough to step back from the patterns of your past. Take some time to LOOK in the mirror and see yourself for who you truly are at this moment in time. How does what you see identify, support and further develop your Creative Power in life? CHOOSE if what you see and where you are is where you want to be in the future. Finally, ACT upon the choices you make to better match a path that will guide you to life's destiny and your chosen cosmic legacy.
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