The girl is back!

After a couple of years of hibernation, I am back! What a roller coaster it's been... and finally I feel like I am sailing smoothly. Needless to say, I am not a roller coaster girl. I do not like adventure rides. At all. Give me a boat in a calm river, and I'm happy! But life sometimes just happens. So we learn to breathe, smile, and just give in. Or not. And everything is fine...

The last two years have definitely seen me in coming closer to turning off the chatter in my mind. That is the best form of freedom. To be free to live, laugh, create, love, eat, discover, hike, play... such a gift! And it's the sort of gift money cannot buy.

So with a lot of joy, I announce my newest venture. Soul Kitchen. To help others how to turn off the chatter in their minds. And to help them tap into their source and be who they already are. Because that is Nirvana.

Love,
Jhilmil

Receiving is hard!

All my life, I have given love. To my parents, to puppies, to my husband, to my kids, to friends and to random strangers. I am trying to condition myself to receive, and you have to really break a lot of ego boundaries to receive...

Struggling to understand how to receive graciously, humbly, lovingly...

Would love your advice!

Love,
Jhilmil

Yogi Tea Recipe!

At Yoga Yoga in Austin, Texas, students are served a delicious yogi tea (also called chai) after each class. The recipe they use comes from Yogi Bhajan, who introduced Kundalini to the west in the late 1960s. Yogi Bhajan is also the founder of the "Yogi Tea" brand, which is easy to find in health food stores. It's very simple to make this tea at home and it fills your house with its wonderful aroma.

Prep Time: 00:05 Cook Time: 03:00

Ingredients:
2 quarts water
15 whole cloves
20 black peppercorns
3 sticks of cinnamon
20 whole cardmon pods (split the pods first)
8 fresh ginger slices (1/4" thick, no need to peel)
1/2 teaspoon regular or decaf black tea leaves (approximately 1 tea bag)
Dairy or soy milk and honey or maple syrup to taste

Preparation:
Bring two quarts of water to a boil. Add cloves and boil one minute. Add cardamom, peppercorns, cinnamon, and ginger. Cover and boil for 30 minutes. Reduce heat and simmer for two to three hours. Remove from heat, add black tea, and let cool. Strain and store in the refrigerator. Reheat when you want a cup and add milk and honey to taste.

Recipe courtesy of Yoga Yoga.

Excessive Force... from the about.com blog

I was forcibly locked up for 46 days in New Delhi, India, by my parents and husband for being a little abusive in a stressful situation. 10 policemen came and dragged me to a mental facility. It was the single most traumatic and devastating period of my life and I live now in fear of being locked up again. To be locked up, abused, violated and punished by people you love and trust is the biggest form of betrayal. I don't care what they were thought, and what advice they were given by the medical fraternity. I still have nightmares and fears of being locked up again, and I have to live with that in my bipolar head...

I hope this makes some families consider their actions when they feel they are acting in the best interest of their bipolar disordered loved ones. What we need most is love and understanding. Lack of that makes us go more crazy...

Love,
Jhilmil

Read what is on the Bipolar Disorder blog today from about.com

Excessive Force?
Tuesday November 24, 2009
That's what the family of Michael J. Gibson is saying after a San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) officer shoved him into a window of a train station, breaking the glass and injuring both. According to The Raw Story, Gibson has been charge with "felony battery of a police officer, obstructing and resisting an officer, disorderly conduct and public intoxication." Gibson's sister, however, says the officer was way out of line, and that her brother suffers from "bipolar disorder and schizophrenia."
The incident was caught by a passenger with a cell phone and the video posted on YouTube, where it gained widespread attention. (Warning: there is a lot of foul language in the video.)

It is plain from the video that Gibson was out of line, and that the officer could not have determined the man was mentally ill. Regardless, it appears to me that there was absolutely no reason for the officer to slam Gibson into the glass. And would the officer have treated Gibson differently if he had known about the man's mental illness? What do you think?
~Marcia

Dear Diary...

So, as I decide I feel like writing today, there are no burning issues to discuss. It's just a simple peace, a happy existence, and a feeling of pure love... is this why comedians and writers stay angry and full of angst so they can create?? Maybe. But I feel, at this time of peace, I am the most productive I have ever been. Just like what Goenka ji of Vipassana or Master Choa Kok Sui say... if you meditate, you become much more productive and people are just left gaping...

So, fellow lovers, meditators, yogis, and friends, what do you think? Are you truly living, laughing, loving? If not, why do you wait? Start living in the moment, meditate, look inward, become a witness, and live in bliss! And that is The Secret.

Love,
Jhilmil

An amazing letter to me from the author of the DaVinci Method

Dear Jhilmil,

You are amazing. Many do not understand your bipolar nature; but
you can rest assured ...

The bipolar experience is no more than this:
A heroic soul born inhumanely sensitive,
desperately in need of true connection.

To you ... a touch is a blow, a misfortune is a tragedy,
a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a daydream is a
premonition, strictness is suffocation, and completion is death.

Add to your brutally sensitive soul the overwhelming need to
heal, create, and transform -- so that without the outpouring
of honesty, the creating of music or poetry or something of
meaning your very breath is cut off ...

You must create, must pour out your entire being in each and
every encounter. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency you do
not feel truly alive unless you are risking everything through
your divine expression.

Thank you for having the courage to create ... to transform ...
to be ... in a way other souls don't.

For without your courage and your light
the world would grow listless and dull
and the rest of us who are like you
would not have your courageous acts
to inspire our own.

Rock on,
Garret LoPorto
Author of The DaVinci Method
www.DaVinciMethod.com
Twitter: twitter.com/garretloporto

The above message by Garret LoPorto was inspired by Pearl
Buck 's poetry.


Media for your Mind, Inc.
199 Sudbury Road
Suite 2B
Concord, MA 01742

Intimacy, marriages and expectations

Is it right to stay in a marriage just for the kids when all intimacy is gone?? This is the question I grapple with tonight as I have had a fun day with my stuff, done healing for a small child with a disability, and then been Mommy to my kids. At 8 pm, my husband walks in, much later than normal, with not a single call or explanation. He serves himself dinner and then takes it to the TV room. I ask him to sit with me but he wants to "relax'... I keep doing my work then...

What does all this mean? No intimacy, no sex, no cuddles, no talking... Is this what I have in store for me for the next 40 years? Looks pretty bleak to me.

Maybe this is what Kahlil Gibran meant when he talks of marriage?

Help me to figure this one out!

Love,
Jhilmil

On Marriage
Kahlil Gibran

You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.
You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days.
Ay, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.


Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.


Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.

Chronotherapy to Entrepreneurialism – Coping Strategies for Living with Bipolar Disorder

For those with life-long illnesses such as bipolar disorder, coping strategies are vital for achieving and maintaining stability. However, Dr. Charles Raison, a Psychiatrist at Emory University Medical School, hits the nail on the head when he comments that "bipolar disorder is too difficult to succumb to any single type of 'magic bullet.'" And this is why we see coping strategies as varied and different as the individuals who have this disorder.
Dr. Raison discusses the pros and difficulties of keeping a routine to help control bipolar symptoms. "I have personally had great luck with using routines (or more formally chronotherapy) to help people with bipolar disorder. One of the sickest patients I ever cared for was able to completely turn her life around by committing deeply to establishing very strict routines that helped stabilize her sleep."

Margaux Salcedo, with Sunday Inquirer Magazine, reports that Jetro, owner of the Van Gogh is Bipolar restaurant in Quezon City in the Philippines, has found his solution in food. "Diagnosed as being bipolar since he was young and having experienced medication that made him feel worse, he began experimenting with his diet, cooking with ingredients that made him happy and avoiding food that would lead him to spiral into depression." He has taken his coping strategy and turned it into his business.

His menu is comprised of cuisine named after celebrities who have bipolar disorder. There is an Axl Rose Egg Shot, a Sting Hot Cherry Potato and Larry Flynt's Cabbage Experience. And of course, Van Gogh rice.

Do you have any solid or unique coping strategies for living with bipolar disorder? ~Kimberly
(from the about.com newsletter)

Like Water For Chocolate

Many years ago, I read this book. It is a love story of a life long love between Pedro and Tita, set in Mexico. Each chapter begins with a recipe and as Tita cooks it, the food takes on her mood. Like if she is weeping when cooking because her heart is breaking for Pedro, when the guests eat the food, they all start crying inconsolably too!! I loved that book when I read it and am going to go and buy 5 copies tomorrow to give to the ladies who are coming to the Karma Pies Chocolate Lovers Morning!


So, today, at 2:30 am, while I was making Karma Pies first batch of chocolates, dark chocolate, some plain and some with walnut centers, I was weeping. Just weeping for possibilities, choices, and also for gratitude for the abundance in my life.

I wonder if the people who eat them tomorrow will also weep like the people who ate Tita's desserts?!!

Love,
Jhilmil

Editorial Reviews (from Amazon)

From Publishers Weekly
Each chapter of screenwriter Esquivel's utterly charming interpretation of life in turn-of-the-century Mexico begins with a recipe--not surprisingly, since so much of the action of this exquisite first novel (a bestseller in Mexico) centers around the kitchen, the heart and soul of a traditional Mexican family. The youngest daughter of a well-born rancher, Tita has always known her destiny: to remain single and care for her aging mother. When she falls in love, her mother quickly scotches the liaison and tyrannically dictates that Tita's sister Rosaura must marry the luckless suitor, Pedro, in her place. But Tita has one weapon left--her cooking. Esquivel mischievously appropriates the techniques of magical realism to make Tita's contact with food sensual, instinctual and often explosive. Forced to make the cake for her sister's wedding, Tita pours her emotions into the task; each guest who samples a piece bursts into tears. Esquivel does a splendid job of describing the frustration, love and hope expressed through the most domestic and feminine of arts, family cooking, suggesting by implication the limited options available to Mexican women of this period. Tita's unrequited love for Pedro survives the Mexican Revolution the births of Rosaura and Pedro's children, even a proposal of marriage from an eligible doctor. In a poignant conclusion, Tita manages to break the bonds of tradition, if not for herself, then for future generations.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Positive People and Money...

I know this person, Ms. X. She has come into my life recently. And though she calls herself a yogini, she is so money minded and petty... What is that all about I wonder? How can you be so mean, so negative, and so obsessed with money and on the other hand, talk about empowerment, the power of positive thought and transformation?

I don't get it. But maybe that is just me. Maybe that is her work persona, what she would like people to believe and she is actually petty, insecure, and mean within.


Oh well, blogged it out, and got it off my chest! I'll write something more interesting in a bit.

Love,
Jhilmil