Eternal Genesis and Eggrolls

In yesterday's post I mentioned two books by Sharon Salzberg I've read this month. In addition, a couple more Deepak Chopra titles have found their way to my bookshelves recently.

The Book of Secrets by Deepak Chopra

I know I've already mentioned The Book of Secrets, but upon completing it I noticed I've created the most dog-eared book on my shelf, proof of a dozen plus "ah ha!" and "wow!" moments. This book is like biting into a dense piece of chocolate torte, each sentence rich.

The passage below, about making the most of every experience, brought to mind my creative friends, especially fellow bloggers:

"Consider the way three people might observe the same sunset. The first person is obsessing over a business deal and doesn't even see the sunset, even though his eyes are registering the photos that fall on their retinas. The second person thinks, "Nice sunset. We haven't had one in a while." The third person is an artist who immediately begins a sketch of the scene. The differences among the three are that the first person sent nothing out and received nothing back; the second allowed his awareness to receive the sunset but had no awareness to give back to it — his response was rote; the third person was the only one to complete the circle: He took in the sunset and turned it into a creative response that sent his awareness back out into the world with something to give. If you want to fully experience life, you must close the circle."

So many of you close the circle— lots of circles, in fact!

And statements like the following are both dog-ear and and underline worthy...

"At any given moment, the bubbling subatomic activity that keeps the universe going is in flux; every particle winks in and out of existence thousands of times per second. In that interval, I also wink in and out, traveling from existence to annihilation and back again billions of times a day. The universe came up with this lighting-fast rhythm so that it could pause in between and decide what to create next. The same is true of me. Even though my mind works too slowly to see the difference, I'm not the same person after I return from my billion journeys into the void. Every single proceas happens by infinitesimal degress, and the overall result is eternal genesis."

The Chopra Center Cookbook by Deepak Chopra, David Simon and Leanne Backer

This book just arrived and there are already 5 scraps of paper marking some very wholesome-sounding recipes I'd like to try soon, specifically a Simple Marinade for Tofu or Tempeh, low fat Blueberry Muffins, and Szechwan Baked Egg Rolls. Mmmm...Egg Rolls! I may gather the ingredients for these tomorrow. Hopefully they'll turn out better than last week's chai cheesecake.

It's good to feel some enthusiasm for cooking again.