Costa Women Blogs

The habitual state for a human being is a state of RESISTANCE. We are in a state of protecting our tastes, identity and our set of values most of the time. We use so much energy for these protective actions...

Dark Night, Black Horse is based on a true story told me by a friend who breeds Pura Raza Español horses in Coín. In the first year of the Spanish Civil War, Nationalist troops came to requisition his grandfather Diego’s favourite black stallion. Diego’s son, aged about eight at the time, then goes down to the town square where all the requisitioned horses, mules and donkeys have been gathered and ‘steals’ the horse back for his father. There is more to the story than this but I can’t say more without giving the game away before you read it. Diego Martín was a contrabandista: in those days, duty was paid on basic goods such as flour, oil and chickpeas when they were brought into a pueblo, but Diego had a way of circumventing these taxes. He also ran a side-line in American tobacco. His son (aged 8) was actually put in prison for selling it. After piecing together the various elements of the black horse incident and Diego’s background, I created the story Dark Night, Black Horse. You can read the opening pages on my web page: http://www.jgharlond.name and/or you can find it on Amazon.   Dark Night, Black Horse by J.G. Harlond Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=dark%20night%20black%20horse%20JG%20Harlond Amazon.es (España) http://www.amazon.es/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?__mk_es_ES=%C3%85M%C3%85%C5%BD%C3%95%C3%91&url=search-alias%3Denglish-books&field-keywords=dark%20horse%2C%20black%20night        

So what is meditation? I choose this DEFINITION: Meditation is any activity which you are doing devoting 100% of your attention to it. You are 100% aware of your body and mind being involved in it without any intention of changing, judging or correcting it. Meditation is about being in the here and now. How to do that? Habitually our mind is constantly telling us a story about our past difficulties or successes or about our future worries or achievements. You can’t stop your mind from telling these stories; it is a function of your mind. But you can redirect your attention to another area, to the area which is present. What is always present, always in the here and now? The answer is simple: it is your BODY. Yes, pay attention to your body, to the sensations and feelings in it and you will find yourself in THE PRESENT-meditating.  

What do you want to achieve in August?  As part of Action August we are going to dip into and create a S.MA.R.T. Goal, or Goals to ensure we achieve what we set out to by 31st August.   S.M.A.R.T. stands for:- Specific Measurable Achievable Realistic Timely What does each part of the puzzle mean?  Specific:  A specific goal has a much greater chance of being accomplished than a general goal. To set a specific goal you need to answer four “W” questions: Who:      Who is involved? What:     What do I want to accomplish?  Why:       Specific reasons, purpose or benefits of accomplishing the goal. Where:   Identify a location, or place As an example, a general goal would be “Learn Spanish” But a specific goal would say, “I will sign up to an online course and dedicate 1 hour per day for learning to improve my Spanish” Measurable: How will you know if you have attained the goal and achieved what you set out too?  Next you need to set the criteria for measuring your success. When you set yourself a way of tracking progress, you are more encouraged to reach your target dates, and experience the exhilaration of achievement that pushes you on to continued effort required to reach your goal. To determine if your goal is measurable, ask questions such as…… What will success look and feel like? A goal is tangible when you can experience it with one of the senses (taste, touch, smell, sight or hearing) How much? How many?   Achievable: When you identify what you are trying to achieve, you can then begin to find ways to making them happen.  You develop the attitudes, abilities, skills, and financial capacity to reach them. You begin seeing previously overlooked opportunities to bring yourself closer to the achievement of your goals. You can attain almost any goal you set when you plan your steps wisely and establish a time frame that allows you to carry out those steps. Goals that may have seemed far away and out of reach eventually move closer and become achievable, not because your goals shrink, but because you grow and expand to match them. When you list your goals you build your self-image. You see yourself as worthy of these achievements, and develop the traits and personality that allow you to possess them. Realistic: For a goal to be realistic it must represent an objective toward which you are both willing and able to work. A goal can be bold, audacious and realistic; you are the only one who can decide just how big your goal should be. But be sure that every goal represents substantial progress. Picking something which stretches you is frequently easier to reach than something which is simple. Some of the hardest jobs you ever accomplished actually seem easy simply because they were a labor of love.  Bigger goals and you will achieve bigger and more remarked success. Timely: A goal should be fixed within a time frame. With no time frame tied to it there’s no sense of urgency. If you want to lose 2 kgs, when do you want to lose it by? “Someday” won’t work (because as we know, “Someday” is not a day of the week!).  But if you fix your goal within a timeframe, “by 31st August”, then you’ve set your unconscious mind into motion to begin working on the goal. Your goal is probably realistic if you truly believe that it can be accomplished. Additional ways to know if your goal is realistic is to determine if you have accomplished anything similar in the past or ask yourself what conditions would have to exist to accomplish this goal. I hope that helps and look forward to hearing, seeing and sharing your successes.

“Meditation and BODY”. What does body have to do with meditation? Is not meditation something transcendental, spiritual and beyond the banalities of matter? Actually meditation and physical body are inseparably connected. Your body is always present in the here and now, contrary to your thoughts which are always jumping between the past and the future. If you want to get back to the presence, pay attention to your body-this fabulous organization of trillions of cells. It is your servant, it has been working for you all your life, protecting you, doing all the “boring” stuff you don’t have time to think about. Who is beating your heart, who is growing your hair, who is digesting your food changing hamburgers into brain cells? If you are a woman, who has helped you to give birth to your children? Was it that medical book from the shelf or simply your body knew it by itself? So please start paying attention to your body, start trusting its wisdom, start listening to it. This will take you close to MEDITATION.

Just enjoyed a morning out with my other half and ended up in a cafe, where we had a cup of deliciousness and a slice of lemon drizzle cake. Yum. If I closed my eyes, I could imagine that I was having #TEA AT...