Blind Runner Runs Marathon Without Guide People or Dogs

 

                                                         Oregon Grape, snip from video*

 

Imagine this—One morning, you and your colleges are called into the conference room and presented with this question.: “Can we give a blind runner the freedom to run without a guide dog or a guide runner?”

 

Wow. What a challenge.

 

This morning I searched for “Happy stories” because I felt what is being thrown at us is fear, conflict, and horror.

 

Yesterday I mentioned to a friend that I wanted a happy story. She said, like kitties and puppies.

 

Yes, I love kitties and puppies. So many happy or at least tender-hearted stories are about animals--a dog sleeping with a deer, an Alaskan Husky romping with a polar bear, an elephant reaching his trunk to a kitty stranding on a rock in the middle of a stream. (You know the kitty was rescued, someone took the picture.)

 

This morning I found one about humans.

 

Blind Thomas Panek believed he was born to run and had raced with the aid of a guide runner, but he felt he was always following someone. For a marathon, he used a three-dog relay. But he dreamed of running independently.

 

The designers came up with an app, phone, headphones, and a stripe painted on the road. The device could tell the runner when he veered right or left. 

 

On a run through a forested road, Thomas broke down and cried for before, he said, he was always dependent upon someone. 

 

This gave him freedom.

 

Human ingenuity. 

 

Project guidelines. https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/blind-thomas-panek-runs-half-marathon-with-google-app/

 

Do you have a happy story to tell?

 

Tell me. 

 

And if you would help me get 100 subscribers on my YouTube channel, I can change the URL to custom. 

 

That way, I can remove my actual name and give it a simple name to share and to find. (I must also include a picture and have a banner. I’ve done that. Now I need subscribers.) So far, I have 87 views. Perhaps you don’t want to listen to me for 9 minutes—but the forest is pretty. The latest video is of a trail in the Cascade Range of Oregon. It’s a short walk down to the McKenzie River. And I am happy I got my audio aligned with the video and a roar of the river at the end. 

 

You know how rushing water can be calming and exciting all at the same time. I wish that for you.

 

Carry on,

Jo

 

“In the fall of 2019, I asked that question to a group of designers and technologists at a Google hackathon. I wasn’t anticipating much more than an interesting conversation, but by the end of the day, they’d built a rough demo that allowed a phone to recognize a line taped to the ground and give audio cues to me while I walked with Blaze. We were excited and hopeful to see if we could develop it into something more.” --Thomas Panek

 

New 

July 27. 2021

Jewell's Happy Trails #3                                                       Jewell's Happy Trails #2

 McKenzie River Trail                                                          Marcola Hills, Oregon

 

                                                

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jewell's happy Trails #1

 

This video is in my channel.  I left 

it raw and uncensored  because 

I liked it being off the cuff. 

Perhaps it needs shortened a bit.

Screech

 “And really, it wasn’t much good having anything exciting like floods, if you couldn’t share them with somebody.”

–Winnie The Pooh

 

This is better: A Sign painted on the outside of the Dutch Bros Kiosk here in Junction City.

 

The Art of Attraction vs. the Law of Resistance

The Law of Resistance–otherwise called procrastination. That’s what I practiced yesterday.

I have a video of a McKenzie River trail. I filmed the walk, but I didn’t talk while walking. I can’t pontificate when someone is with me. (My husband this time.) I figured I would add commentary later. 

Okay, yesterday I was prepared—so I thought. 

The temperature was reasonable after blistery hot days. I bought a mic and a trial editing program that might overwhelm me, but I can talk into it. I settled into the truck with my little dog. Let’s give it a try, I thought—SCREECH!

I felt inadequate for the task. 

All those other smart people who talk about The Law of Attraction, and how they’ve used it, and how successful they are, and how much money they have, plus houses, cars, and what all. I guess they are blissfully happy and healthy as well.

Am I jealous? Not really. I learn from them. However, I felt inadequate to talk about it.

“The Demons hate Fresh air.” wrote Auston Kleon in his book, Keep Going. 

See, I should have talked as I walked, that is, outside where the demons hide lest they melt like the Wicked Witch of the West when water was thrown on her. When the demons are quivering in the shadows, they don’t have time to tell me I’m not the person for the job.

I then go blissfully along like I know what I’m talking about.

I believed I ought to have my mind in a happy place before I begin talking.

Now I realize that an artist doesn’t wait for inspiration—they do the work anyway. As they work through the crap, they often come out victorious. 

I thought, You, the reader, don’t need to see the crap. But then, maybe you do—it’s part of the process. 

When I began filming the trails and talking about The Law of Attraction, I stated upfront that I am not an expert. I am a fellow traveler who likes the idea that my videos were a simple off the cuff work in process, like a house framed in, but with no drywall.  There is such potential with a work in process.

I was stuck somewhere in my studies that while laws govern the physical world, like “Water runs downhill,” or “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction,” the spiritual world also has laws. 

That makes sense. Why wouldn’t they? The trouble is we really don’t know what they are. It’s an area that has been hidden to all but a few.

Oh, we have glimpses of those underpinnings of the spiritual realm–like one of my first noticeable ones was at the dry cleaners—remember, we used to use dry-cleaning. I had a knit dress—yes, I remember when it looked good on me too–those were the days… Oh, I digress. I picked up the dress that was folded and wrapped in brown paper. I KNEW beyond a shadow of a doubt that the belt was not in that package.

Being too embarrassed to blurt out, “The belt is not in the package,” I paid the clerk, went to the car, opened the package, and the belt wasn’t there.

 I went back inside and asked for the belt. They had it.

I’m sure you have had many similar experiences. The trouble is we tend to brush them aside as coincidences or anomalies. You know the one that tickles me the most is the Train Experience that I’ve mentioned before. While my daughter and I sat at Chevy’s Restaurant in Del Mar, California talking about manifesting, I said, “We couldn’t manifest a train here, there are no tracks.”

Not a minute later, a big truck stopped at the stoplight outside our window. Written on the tarp that covered the back of the truck was the word “TRANE.” (You know that’s the name of a company that makes heavy equipment.)

The Universe/Force has a sense of humor. (You notice I don’t use the word, God, here for it means so many things to so many people.)

Sometimes you think the Force that supplies our wants doesn’t have a sense of humor, and it doesn’t seem to. (Maybe this one is a left-brained apprentice to the BIG GUY.) This left-brained apprentice would respond to our asking for more money with, “Oh, you want more money? Here’s a penny.”

A penny is more money. If you ask for patience, he will give you an Opportunity to be patient. No pill there to immediately satisfy your desires.

You see that there is much unknown here. I do believe in the Law of Attraction. I think, however, that we magnetize events, people, and ideas to us unconsciously To do it consciously is another story. It takes Practice and more importantly, A Light Heart

A light heart is what I didn’t have the other day when I failed to record. I was into my inadequacies. 

And turning a negative into a positive is like the Greek God Sisyphus rolling the boulder up a hill. When he got almost to the top of the mountain, the boulder would break loose and roll back down to the bottom. He was cursed to forever roll that damn boulder.

Momentum—that’s when we get something started, and it tends to keep going. (Gravity was working against Sisyphus, but momentum took the boulder to the bottom of the hill.) The more we think or do this thing we do not want, the more resistance it has, and the more momentum it has to go where it has gone before. (Like trying to move the cat.) Stop pushing. Let the stupid boulder roll down the hill and stay there. Take a nap, walk the dog, pet the cat. That will break the mood, and so you can move on.

All these things are rolled into The Law of Attraction, which tells some people that it does not work. And proves it to the rest of us that we have work to do on our belief systems.

Tune in. More to come…

Questions?

I think this better represents The Law of Attraction–Walk up the mountain whistling, while The Law of Attraction pushes the boulder.

You Know What?

 I got this on the trail: The universe doesn’t know the difference between a penny and a million bucks.

I can hear you…don’t go there.

We will explore this concept later on…

For now, the second video is up, and you know what joined us?

Dogwoods. Exquisite blossoms right beside the trail. Who would have thought? I probably will never again find the road I took that day. There is a web of logging roads in that vicinity. I took a wrong turn on the way home and ended up in a blackberry patch.

Poor truck.

But, as I have told my grandson, “I’ve never been permanently lost.”

But I got the video. Jewell’s Happy Trails #2 – YouTube  

Rob Breszny, who writes for The Eugene Weekly under “Free will Astrology,” expressed this week exactly what I am going through. I like him—mainly because most of the time I agree with him. Isn’t that the way it goes?

I got a kick out of this article. 

“Aquarius-born August Strindberg (1849-1912) was a masterful and influential playwright. He also liked to dabble in painting and photography. His approach to the two fields was different.”

While he was a polished writer, he would always be an amateur at the visual arts,” he said, “And I intend to stay that way. I reject all forms of professional cleverness or virtuosity.”

“Just for now, Aquarius,” wrote Breszny, “I recommend you experiment with the latter attitude in your own field.”

I’m doing it.

In walking my trails, videoing them, and placing them on YouTube. I’m exposing myself as a rank amateur.

I need the walks, and I figured many of you need a breather, So, come hang out with me. We’ll explore the trail, and I’ll babble, or turn down your volume and be with nature. It would be nice to have a conversation instead of a monologue, but you weren’t there. 

Hang in with me.

Maybe I’ll get the gist of YouTube videos—like turn my camera sideways, or make shorter ones.

My purpose of these walks was to talk my walk, and put out my take on The Law of Attraction.  The term The Law of Attraction, might annoy the heck out of some, and attract others. Putting out subjects is like sifting through the sand for shells. Some people want to collect shells or use them in their art. Others will use the sand for playing, building castles, or melting it down for glass.

Both are artists.

You see, I believe everyone is an artist. They just express themselves differently.

I have a friend who sews so beautifully that you can’t tell her work from the professionals, but she doesn’t think she is an artist. Pfff.

In Seth Godin’s blog recently–he writes daily, so it’s hard to keep up with him—this time he wrote about the benefit of the doubt.

“The benefit of the doubt is what happens when instead of being skeptical, we’re inclined to believe.”

Godin says, “We grant the benefit of the doubt to the big man on campus, the homecoming queen, the tall person, the celebrity, the person who apparently has amassed a lot of money, the one who fits our cultural mores, the male, the white person, the conventionally pretty one, the conventionally abled one, the popular one. But it also might be the class cut-up, the insurgent or the renegade.”

Yet there are others…

There is so much rabble it is hard to tell fact from fiction. I am encouraging people to follow that still small voice that lives within. It’s our internal guidance system. Unless we have completely put aside our rational mind we know when something rings true.

From my horse-training days, I remember Pat Parelli saying to never call your horse a derogatory name, for it builds barriers instead of bridges. 

Now, wouldn’t that also apply to people?

For a moment, I step out of time. I go to the forest and walk a trail. I smell the sweet fragrance that seeps from the trees and the ground cover, and the brush alongside the trail.

And I come home refreshed.

That’s my wish for you.

Joyce

P.S. I have a novel now on Amazon.com. Kindle and paperback. I’m entering a contest, so I needed both. It’s a big deal for me, for I have spent the last week formatting the paperback. It finally worked. I figure if people buy the book they would want a Kindle version, but rules are rules. If I sell a paperback I would make the whole sum of 89 cents. Cool. All I need is to sell a million copies. Hee hee.

The Girl on the Pier by jewell d

Amazon.com : The Girl on the Pier by jewelld

Joyce’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/JoyceDavis0001/videos

Subscribe to my You tube Channel and I will love you up one side and down the other.

FEATURED

 

I did it. I posted a video on YouTube. I thought maybe a no-frill video talking about The Law of Attraction could be of interest. Jewells HappyTrails#1

And there is nothing like a green forested trail to refresh the spirit, and make you believe anything is possible.

In 2006 Rhonda Byrne published a movie titled The Secret to a rousing 19 million viewers, and $300 million in gross sales. That tells me people want to know how to use the power of the mind to bring about their desires. And they want transformative experiences. I wonder how all those people are doing. You don’t hear much about The Secret anymore.

I wish I had a different name for #The Law of Attraction, but then, people wouldn’t know what I am talking about.

I believe that the transformative journey is like art, to become good at it, you practice every day.

What better way than on a forest trail?

Please subscribe.

When I reach 100 subscribers, I can have a custom URL. (That will make it easier to find.) And when I reach 1,000 subscribers, I can make a little money from the video. (But not from my viewers.)

Please go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4fHxsX6Kcc&t=99s

 

Jewell's Happy Trails

Holy cow, I don't know why I am doing this. I click into YouTube, and what pops up? All those professional speakers. People more knowledgeable than me, more experienced, more, more. So why would anyone listen to my babble? That is a phenomenon every artist must face—putting their work out there, knowing it doesn't match the standards set by people who have practiced for 20 + years.

However, we all have a voice and a gift, and perhaps my saying whatever I have to say will spark something in someone.

 If we wait until we are perfect (ha), we will never do it. And so we begin.

 

I have two forest walks filmed so far where I talk about this mystery we call life. My focus is called The Law of Attraction, although I wish I had another name for it. Guess I feel the title is cliché; however, here's my take on it.

 

Please go to: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3pPWKU7N1VvVAHOClUSreA

 

And then here is the blog post I wrote for this week.

 

Blog May 25 21 Pet Your Reptile

 

In this age, we speak of enlightenment—whatever in the heck that means…

 

Maybe it means we have come to understand that we were born a perfect human and live the life of a human. The cliché is that we are spiritual beings having a human experience. It might be cliché, but I agree with the statement. We learn along the way, and maybe enlightenment is living in peace and fulfillment. It probably comes after we have walked the pot-holed road filled with boulders.

 

All along, we are fighting our evolution.

 

My sister used to get agitated when I used the word evolution, for she thought it negated creationism.

 

I'm not going there. Evolution simply means change over time—big deal. Things change, and we have built into us certain behaviors that were undoubtedly a result of evolution, aka, what worked at the time, aka, driven by natural selection.

 

Fast forward. We still have behaviors built into us that do not work to our benefit. Sorry. Millions of years built us.

 

For example:

 

Fear. It benefited us to run or fight in the face of danger. However, now it is thrown at us regularly. It sells. (An adrenalin rush.)

 

The hunter phenomenon. It was necessary to feed the tribe. Killing for sport or war is counterproductive. (But it is another adrenalin rush.)

 

Some native hunters revered the land and the animals. Sorry, we must kill to eat, but that's the way this earth is set up. (Vegetarians, charge ahead. The cow doesn't kill the grass; she mows it. Most fruits and vegetables would rot if we didn't eat them. (My refrigerator attests to that.)

 

Distain or fear of strangers or people who look different from us. Well, what can I say about that? Used to be you needed to fear marauders. They would come and take your wife, your children, your animals, and your land. Then there was the class system—money and title meant you were better than the common man. And then there were slaves. Not a pretty picture. 

 

Nationalism. Now we are World People. Used to be, we had to protect what was ours for the same reason we feared strangers. However, we still fight over land.

 

Judgment: I've heard more people fault themselves for judging than I can count. Of course, we size up people to determine if they are a friend or foe. It's natural. We pick and choose who we want to hang out with or who we want to marry. Where this goes wrong is when the ego gets involved. Wanting to be better than those others we are judging. We are taught competition, not cooperation. (I've heard that Navaho children gave teachers a hard time because they wanted to help each other on exams. They couldn't understand why they had to keep their eyes on their own paper.)

 

Belief systems. Probably beliefs give us comfort. It provides us with some understanding of the way the world works—even if it's faulty. It allows us to find others who agree, thus giving us bonding and friends.

 

When we look back, we realize we carry baggage from our past, genes, nurturing, propaganda, etc. Yes, we want to look ahead, but not to forget what made us. And we want to take with us lessons learned. We developed a big thinking brain, a brain over a brain over a brain. That reptilian brain is at the base of your spine, is hungry, scared, angry, and horny. The midbrain is responsible for memory, temperature, heart rate, swallowing, sneezing, among many other things. Then we wrapped it up in a pretty package, the Cerebral cortex, the place where miracles happen.

 

We carry quite a package.

 

"Why did the chicken cross the road?"

"Because his reptilian brain told him to."

 

The Reptile Brain also is where repeating patterns such as rituals, automatic responses without conscious thought, predictability, fear of the unknown, fear of losing a job, spouse, home, dying, lack of money, and lack of resources. All are anxiety and trauma responses. It is where racism arises. 

 

"The lizard brain is the reason you're afraid, the reason you don't do all the art you can, the reason you don't ship when you can. The lizard brain is the source of resistance."—Seth Godin.

 

 In The Dragons of Eden, Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence, Carl Sagan wrote:

 

 "Despite occasional welcome exceptions, this seems to me to characterize a great deal of modern human bureaucratic and political behavior."

 

The way to deal with the Reptilian brain is to realize when it has taken over.

 

Reptilian brains often label people as crazy or unstable who willingly take a leap of faith and go for it, like quitting their job and moving to another country.

 

These people acted despite their reptilian brain – allowing them to experience life as it was meant to be, free and boundless.

 

Eckart Tolle has a trick to calm the reptilian brain:

 

Sit quietly, hands in lap, and think of your hands. Notice you know they are there without looking. Focus on them, and soon you will feel them tingle. You will feel energy in them. After that, you can move to other parts of your body. And you can use this at night when you want to go to sleep.

 

You are giving your reptilian brain a pause. 

 

After writing this post, I understood my reason for doing the forested trail walks and talks.

 

Let’s say you are an artist, and I believe everybody is. To perfect your craft, you practice. You show up every day.

 

I view this travel through life the same way. You show up every day—consciously. You find things that uplift. You look for the good. You find ways to still your mind chatter; you pull yourself back into alignment when you stray off the path.

 

I would love to have you join me on Jewell's Happy Trails. The second video will be up before long. It's better. (Try not to listen to my hugging and puffing in this first one.) 

 

You readers are special to me.

 

Love, Jewell, aka Jo, aka Joyce

 

Premiering  today:

 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3pPWKU7N1VvVAHOClUSreA

 P.S. After I get 100 subscribers I can have a personal URL which will be easier to remember.