The Dandelion Seed: Mostly Fluff?

Hello Zaadzy-Friend ROb! 'Tis the natural ebb and flow of the Universe… I've also had the quite times “away” or “disconnected” … but it's here when you need it… and even here when you don't … nice how that works… loving energy is always there!

{{Big Hugs}}
~K

Yeh, well… I also had quite the slump the past while. I feel like the bigger Zaadz gets, the less contact I have with my Zaadz friends. 

I always look forward to your blogs and comments, though. Makes me feel good to know there are some real people out there. Have been thinking so much about how your 'big change' is going (even when driving… thinking of singing in the car… heehee).  

This is the paragraph that really seals it for me.

“Y'know, though?  I see that I'm not the only one, and maybe that  has a compounding effect…  Only months ago, I felt that I was part of a little crowd.  We were all gung-ho, giving it our all, blogging on the important things, each one of my friends offering amazingly powerful writings!  We've all seemed to fade Zaadz into the background, and I wonder if we're not still connected; if not in the community of Zaadz, at least in the lack of contribution?”

I've been having the same feelings Rob, but I just haven't been able to put my finger on it the way you have here. I've been chalking it up to the disctractions of Summer, the overwhelming amount of stuff to do here at Zaadz (oh, for the days of just blogging and commenting back & forth on blogs!), and yes, the sameness of what I read here. I'm to blame as well. I haven't felt “moved” to blog much, at least not about personal stuff.  

Jodi nails it too: “The bigger Zaadz gets, the less contact I have with my Zaadz friends.”  Bingo. Maybe Kelly's right… just the eb and flow. Time will tell.

Diane 

[That reminds me of a little joke. When my son, Eben, was a preschooler, my father-in-law once said, “I hope he meets a nice girl named Florence someday.”
“FLORENCE,” I asked?!
“Why, yes,” he said. “Then we can call them 'Eb and Flo.'” <Drum riff.> ]

The great thing about zaadz is that it too, like us, is constantly changing. we're adding new features and improving on old ones the whole time, but what you are experiencing is a symptom of a 'living, evolving' community. 

We've all changed a lot since joining zaadz and connecting with each other, but the rate of personal change has slowed down for a lot of us and we perceive this to be a 'flaw' in the community. what i believe is happening, is that we have come such a far way already in these past few months, individually, but we have become dulled towards realizing the change. we are remembering the early days and the thrill of all the new information and consepts and world views, and we think that there is less of that happening now.

Yet Zaadz is growing at an incredible speed at the moment and there are more than 100 new members each day to whom this community is totally new, and as cool as you remember it. 

If you take the trouble to meet one new member every week - you'll be surprized by realizing how far you have already developed in your short time here on zaadz - just by interacting with other members and reading some blogs.

when you start meeting other members at local zaanghas, you could start cool new friendships with positive people aimed at making themselves, and the world, better. 

 Those of us that have been here a while are spoiled by all the great content we have consumed already. Rob your blogs, that ring so true, has already inspired me and many others so much.

what i'm getting at is this 'slump' you are experiencing is just the novelty wearing off and is a personal confirmation of the amount of change you have already internalized through zaadz.

from here on out it will take effort. We'll have to make the effort to meet new people, have discussions, blog, encourage each other, make a difference. why? -because we are already better people just because of the couple of months we have been participating and one of the most straight forward ways of changing the world is to help others here on zaadz experience this cleansing, communal sanctity which we have become accustomed to.

I will continue to build tools to make it easier for us all to stay involved, and i will make an effort to go beyond the established group of friends i've formed here on zaadz, and read other people's blogs, comment, encourage and befriend.

Frack man! zaadz rocks! 

it doesn't sound as if i'm selling something does it? seriously, i think after a couple of months the question becomes 'is the positive results you have gained here important enough for you to do the effort to keep on evolving yourself and the community?'

i know i'm here for the long haul, i'm only getting started! 

first of, amen to what :franc just said. being a Wizard myself, we have an opportunity to look at this from a broader perspective because we get to deal with new members everyday. so the boredom never sets in :) 

as for the blogging perspective… here are my take…. 

“Here's where there's the trap: If the reader doesn't actually make the changes in their life that these books are suggesting, it's only a matter of time before the words lose meaning, and it all just seems like fluff.  The Self Help Trap:  Too caught up in reading the ideas to practice them, The momentum drops right out.”

hey Rob,

trust me. i do have some understanding of what you're going through. it's the initial rush then plateau syndrome. the trick is to just keep doing it until you reach the next higher plateau.

but here's the obvious news: blogging doesn't change anything. blogging changes us then we enact the changes in the real world, in our personal lives, in our social lives.

and like everything else, blogging goes through levels and stages. longtime bloggers goes through this. and so will you. it's up to you if you choose to swallow your blog or be swallowed by it. there's no short cut. but you can speed it up. 

and here's a tip to counter the monotonous nature of echo chambers: you can actually use your blogging powers for good. but beware of because “weblogs are too often enclosed in echo-chambers of their own making.”  and here's another good quote from the Kosmic Blogging Goddess:

“In the twenty-first century, the world demands that we broaden our view, not narrow it further. We have in the weblog an unprecedented tool with which to share ideas and understand other worldviews, but this opportunity is squandered when we deliberately shield ourselves from differing points of view…. The insightful weblogger has an opportunity to elucidate and navigate the unknown for his readers instead of pulling the gate shut behind them. The webloggers have always been Web travelers. Let us bring home thoughtful stories of little-understood cultures, especially when that culture belongs to the man next door.”

so my suggestion is to keep reading blogs that differs from your perspectives. read all possible angles from an issue whenever you have the time. do your best to blog with DEPTH and SPAN. 

the lovey-duvey stuff has its place. it's our solace from the chaos all around us, from the chaos inside us. it's our resting place. from that perspective, we can then treat Zaadz as our “shrine” where we can recharge our optimism, intelligence, passion, compassion, and all the cheesy stuff that comes with it, including love.

but understand the change is constant.  and it's normal to feel down when we've reached a certain plateau. i have no solution for you except to suggest that you read the books Mastery and Writing Down the Bones. then apply the principles to your blogging or whatever interests you have.

yes, dandelions seeds are mostly fluff. but they endure. the fluffy seeds go to long distances. and they repeat this cycle season after season after season….

~C (for Can't get enough of fluffy stuffy)

Hi ROb.  Thanks for bringing forward such an honest and heartfelt conversation.  I've definitely gone through periods of connection and non-connection with Zaadz. 

At one point, I found myself using words like “should” or “have to” in relation to Zaadz - which for me personally was more about where I was in life vs. the Zaadz experience itself.  I was needing to be very quiet and focus on “being”, and ANYTHING that called me to “doing” began feeling like a “have to”.  With that as the backdrop, I was less and less inspired by my Zaadz experience.

What I found to work is to simply give myself permission to take a break until my “have to's” turned into “get to's”.  I love Zaadz, after all.  The connection with people like you is priceless in my life.  I knew that to be the truth.  So, by allowing myself to let it be ok to feed myself through quietness, I trusted that I would come back to Zaadz more fully loaded and enthused than before.   And I have!

I also found it to be like any new relationship - when it first begins, you just can't seem to get enough of it.  It feels more like a drug than true, grounded love.  After a time, the drug wears off and we're left with the opportunity to make a lasting, authentic connection.  In that, we explore the role the relationship plays in our life - where does it best fit?  At what level?  Intensity is impossible to sustain 100% of the time.  And the sad thing is, intensity-junkies (I've met a few in my days!) never really find true love.

So, I'm going for the long-term relationship with Zaadz and all of my Zaadz friends.  You have touched my heart in a palpable way, and my hope is that together we'll travel all the ebs and flows of this wild & wacky place together. 

~C mentioned reading the book “Mastery”  - I wholeheartedly agree.  It was required reading in my Spiritual Psychology Masters program, and has made a huge impact on my life.

Take care, my friend, and know that I'm sending tons of love!

Chiming in on this a little late Rob!  As I am almost finished with The Celestine Prophecy.  I thought it would be cool to use the new search feature and so I searched the blogs on the book.

“but here's the obvious news: blogging doesn't change anything. blogging changes us then we enact the changes in the real world, in our personal lives, in our social lives.”  C4

I too have detached a bit from Zaadz and a few other things lately.  I was recently laid off after the business I worked for closed.  I have been feeling for a while now that I just plain need a break from all the NOISE.  I've backed off on being Sooooooo helpful with family.  I love helping them, but I've learned the difference in helping and enabling I guess.  And the latter helps no one …….especially not the one you are trying to help…..in fact when I really understood enabling for the first time ( I was like shitttttttttttttttt…….eh I am not doing anyone a favor ;-)  Why did I bring that up….probly becuz it drains ya too.  I decided that I need to hibernate a bit, tend to myself and 2 very needy children………my own!!!

They need extra special care right now!  3 teenagers o my!  18, 16, 14………whew

My 18 yr old lives far away, but I need to plan a trip soon I think.

I mention all this I guess because “something” has been leading me too The Celestine Prophecy.  I had heard about it quite a while ago here on Zaadz, but did not delve too far.  Like you said so many of those self help books floating around here ;-)

and the rest of the comment…eek:

But then some odd occurrences starting happening……..

http://earthpulsenaturephotography.zaadz.com/blog/2007/1/listening_to_signs_and_going_with_the_flow

I think I will always carry a lil “skeptic” with me wherever I go ….just to cut off the fat!  But I don’t know…..ya’ll got me trippin on all this “sychronicity” stuff I think ;-)

At any rate it is quite hard for me get a whole book read through anymore.  You know the same prob……….lose interest and have a bunch of half read books lying around.  However the Celestine Prophecy has just been calling to me I guess you could say…..weird. (you would have to check out the above blog for details on that…..ouch fingers)

Maybe it is synchronicity?  Maybe I needed to here just these few words from the book right now in my life? :