Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Diminution's LiveJournal:

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Saturday, November 28th, 2009
4:43 pm	Fee will vs. predestination Some thoughts: We were watching a movie where someone had the opportunity to go back to when they were 21 and marry the one she let get away and not take the job she hated at the beginning of the movie. She tried to convince her friend to get the nerve to ask out the guy she liked because in the future she would pine after him forever. She asks the guy out and everything remains the same and it fails for other reasons. The thoughts: Humans are aware of only one moment at a time. We have the ability to perceive our now. We can guess at or see bits of the future but we are seeing them from the present. We can remember the past but we remember it from the present. If we travel through time we perceive whatever time it may be from our one point of view, our own now. We are not capable, as beings, of comprehending more than one moment at a time. If we go back in time and make a different decision would it change our future or is our future predetermined? There is no way to know. There is no way for us to make a comparison between two possibilities. We cannot comprehend it. It is beyond what we have the senses to perceive. If we change something in the past, it affects today's present. If we leave today's present to change the past, today's present has already been affected by the past so it will seem like predestination or that it was inevitable. Today's present, whether affected by revising the past or not is the only thing we comprehend. Therefore, changing the past affects today's present and since we can have no awareness of any other possible present, the change will always result in today's present seeming unaffected. Being unaffected by all of our efforts in the past, all of the revisions we could possibly think of will always result in today's present seeming like it has always been. So, is change free will? Is change predestination? There is no way for us to comprehend this difference. We cannot see what differences we can make since we are allowed only singular awareness. It will seem as predestination and it will seem like free will. We do not have the ability to differentiate. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, October 7th, 2009
6:20 pm	Accomplishments Today I finished editing the teacher's edition of our training manual. We have a class of two that is going to start next week. Vikki will have a teacher's aid making notes and corrections. He will also be going through the course again in order to be better prepared to teach it in the future. The Practitioner Manual was sent to the printers a couple of weeks ago and should be arriving any day. After we approve it, it will be sent to our trained practitioners. It is the master list of all of the sessions we do. It is a major accomplishment. I am anxious to see it. We have begun a new tangent with the business. Actually, it is a very old tangent. Vikki is an extremely gifted psychic. She used to do readings. She has not for the last two years as she put all of her energy toward building the foundation of this business and revising and testing the manual. Now that a lot of that is done she is getting back into it. We are hosting weekly conference calls and will move to an online radio format once we have too many people to make the conference call fun. Topics may include psychic development, general readings, intuitive counseling, working as a medium, past life information, meeting your guides, animal communication, and more. Last week we discussed guides for a while. This week we touched on them again and did a little past life reading. I say "we" because I help with the setup and the moral support but Vikki is the real talent. Next week we will be hosting a call on Wednesday at Noon MST (7:00PM UK).  We will be doing this every week for the foreseeable future. The conference call numbers are: UK 0844 581 9102 and US (712) 432-1600. You may call either number you like. The access code is 395972#. Let's see. . .There are always a dozen projects underway on any given day. I am just happy to have finished what I have recently. I'll post more as they roll out. (Comment on this)
Sunday, October 4th, 2009
12:58 pm	Colorado Trail Hello, I will be hiking the Colorado trail next year. The dates are official. Every year we have up to 30 of our closest friends stay with us. Almost all of them are from the UK. They come for this event: http://www.karunamayi.org/tour/Tour-Schedule.html We will leave on Wednesday June 9th. Anyone who is interested in this hike is invited to come. Bring your friends. It is an open invitation. It should take about a month and it is about 500 miles. We will walk from Denver to Durango along the continental divide through several mountain ranges. http://www.coloradotrail.org/ If it looks like fun please let me know. If you would like to come stay with us for a few days for the other event that would be amazing, too. We always stay up late and have amazing conversation about the nature of humanity, God, time, human potential, and everything else. We wake up every morning and make fresh juice for 30. It is a lot of fun. Speak to you soon. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 29th, 2009
8:11 pm	Update Dinner with Vikki's semi-estranged but not really family last weekend. Peace was made with some, not with others. Jackie's birthday Saturday. Money is extremely tight. Beginning another approach to business. This is first written mention. Coming into my own in so many ways. Foregoing meditation for a short while. Confusion over nuances of faith & belief and their roles in my past and reorganizing the present. It is coming together. Had a great walk tonight, 6 miles in 2 hours. Bike paths. Great answers to current finances, business direction, my role, Vikki's role, the roles of our practitioners, the role of our marketing person, and more. Personally feeling quite at peace for the first time in a long time with some of the current lessons around money. Some things are comedic, some seem tragic; all are insignificant given a long enough view of it all. Learning to cut personal attachment to outcomes and becoming more open to the best outcomes. Understand Alex and my situation with him and the progression with his biological mother. Have patience. Have insight for new fun projects. (things to write) Everything crosses the borders between work and pleasure anymore. I love what I do so it is fun to do it. I have a new job with my company. I got very good at my old one and it began to bore me. I am moving along. I am still doing all I did but it does not take the time and effort it once did. I am at the struggling beginning where I do not yet know all of my job responsibilities and have little real experience doing what I am doing. I have never been a promoter before. I am now. I will get better. I had forgotten the challenge to this kind of thing. I feel great pride in what we have created over the last two years. Now it is time to begin another tangent. Good luck to me. Love to all of you. Me (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, August 29th, 2009
9:44 pm	Update We recently went to London for the funeral of a dear friend. He was studying to be a practitioner of our methods. He was a kind and caring friend and the kind of person that could bring out what a person wanted to say most. He was a person where you would feel close to him after knowing him for 10 minutes. He was 36 and in great health. He worked out 5 times a week and ate only the healthiest food he could find. He had just finished his ebook and had many other great things in the works. The passion with which he lived his life was inspiring to me and to everyone who knew him. We went to Halifax as quickly as we could once we found out. We got to see his family. He died in Greece while on vacation so it took a while to get him back to England. The funeral was scheduled for after we had to return to Colorado. We were there for five days and five nights. We were around people the entire time. We were surrounded by all sorts of wonderful friends and clients and strangers. The last night we were there we hosted our own informal service. 32 people were crammed into our hosts' English living room. We shared stories of him, we chanted for him, and we cried, and we told more stories. We were reminded of the friendships we had and all of the people that are alive and important to us. It was very healing for everyone in attendance. We also have some things going on with the house. We also have new jobs. I no longer schedule much and the phones are just an old job. The novelty is gone. The kinks have been sorted out and the next expansion has been planned. Now it is time to find funding. We have both promoted ourselves to different forms of sales positions. I am also writing. It is good. There are other things going on as there always are but I am very happy with the direction things are taking. I am learning faith and it has some real implications that I never would have comprehended before this undertaking. Life is funny sometimes. (Comment on this)
Monday, June 8th, 2009
10:33 pm	Hello Friends. Things are the same as they have been for a while. It is nice to be home. It is nice that it is summer. It is nice that I am busy. I am posting this more to post than to say much. It has been 8 weeks after all. I am alive and doing very well. I hope you are, too. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 6th, 2009
8:30 pm	Annual New Year's Post For the last 4 or 5 years I have posted a 1st of the year contemplation. Journaling what I have experienced this past year is a novel in itself. Writing what I have learned would be a work of non-fiction that would be impractical to read because of its length. Writing the contemplations I have had the fortune to contemplate would be more like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance than an LJ post (Not that the quality would be anything like Robert M. Pirsig's). I'll try to note some of the major aspects of my development, mostly for my benefit since this journal is nearly completely unread since I have completely neglected my lj friends over this last year. Growth in the Factual: this has primarily focused on business, writing, raising children, the legal system, a little alternative medicine, and a bit of metaphysics. I'll address the business in a later section. In regards to writing: I have always wanted to write. I never figured my first work would be an uncirculated work of nonfiction. It is a 300-page-long manual summarizing Vikki's life work into a form that a small but exclusive group of people training to be our Practitioners study in order to practice what Vikki does. I have had many lessons in raising children. I have learned a lot from my amazing family. My two step-daughters are more accepting and loving and wonderful than I ever knew a person of that age (or any age, really) could be. They have taken me in as their own and the experience has been amazing. I learn from them on a daily basis when I am paying attention. They are both old beyond their years. I have learned a lot from my son as well. It is difficult to watch his struggle but, I suppose, he has to go through it. It is hard because I know how he is treated when he is now with us here. I know what he is going through because I went through it for so long. At least I was an adult and had different tools to cope. Maybe, instead, I should look at it as though he is learning lessons as a child that it took me the first portion of my adult life to learn. The legal education I have absorbed was all divorce-related. I am pleased to announce that I will not be going through that ever again and it is mostly over this time. Anything she does over the next 13 years cannot be as bad as what she has done already. I have learned a basic foundation of acupressure, chi work, energy work, kenisiology, and a bit of nutrition. Most of these areas of study will continue to be a casual education through exposure. At present, my real study is through introspection. Developmental Growth: This last year I have learned a lot about patience. I am learning what to say and when not to say it. I am learning to quiet my mind even further. I am learning focus. I am learning the power of my words and my thoughts. I am learning about the power each of us have if only we acknowledge it and learn to use it. I am learning how easy everything can be when you let go of trying to control the details. I am learning love and how to express it. I am learning how to feel it for others in whatever capacity I know them. I am learning to balance my life and to have fun. I still have room for improvement on that one. I will now list my resolutions for 2008. Please remember that of my resolutions for 2007, all of them but one came 100% true. It was the same for the year before that. 1. I desire to learn more about intimacy and love than I have ever known. This has happened. I am a different person than I have ever been before. Anything I ever did before was. . .a good start. The biggest part of this is focus. 2. I desire to write and publish at least one book with Vikki. Done. We wrote "The Lotus Seed Process Practitioner's Manual; Master Edition" 3. I desire to grow our business a lot. We have done this very well. More will follow this year. 4. I desire to continue my personal path of spiritual growth. I have been steady in my dedication to this. It is not the kind of thing that can be rushed. It kind of takes as long as it takes. Regular meditation has had wonderful benefits. 5. I desire to make a lot more money. By the standards I have known this one is a success. I'll phrase it better this year because I also have had more expenses this last year than I have ever had and have still struggled to do things like pay phone bills and to do my best with child support. 6. I desire to learn and learn and learn and to apply what I have learned. I do this every single day of my life. 7. I desire to live only in the moment. I am better about this than I have been. I realize this is the core of nearly everything in life and I may still be getting better at this for the next many decades. 8. I desire to appreciate what I have so much that what I do not have does not matter. It is easy to appreciate what you have when you have so much. I suppose this one has also come to fruition. This year I am changing terms from resolutions to wishes. Resolution is a negative word and lends itself easily to failure. Wishes are generally positive and help things to be empowered. 1. To live a balanced life. 2. To be a _______. I'll know what I mean. 3. To have a rewarding and nurturing relationship with my kids. 4. To be open to the best ideas and to be open to taking the best actions. 5. To have genuine friends of great quality in my life. (Trevor, if you read the last one the "in my life" part is the part that encourages your move.) (If anyone else should read this that is interested in developing a distant friendship, I am open.) (Comment on this)
Saturday, December 6th, 2008
8:45 pm	I am still alive: book reviews Hello. I am still alive. I have been too busy to post for a very long time and that is a good kind of busy. Business is growing. My relationship feels great. Life is moving along in a great direction. I suppose the big thing is that I am thinking so much and learning so much that it does not seem to be the kinds of things readers can relate to without a tremendous amount of back story and explanation. The personal discoveries I am making don't translate well to the forum of blogging. They also take too long to type. In the time it will take me to type this I will have passed many, many thoughts. There will be time, at some point, to document the greater learnings of this path but that time is not now. The last two books I recall finishing are: I Am Legend by Richard Matheson. This is a great story that is well written. The movie is loosely based on the book but the book makes even more sense. The details of living alone and surviving with limited urban resources were very well described. There were enough twists that I found nothing predictable. I would suggest this book to anyone who has any interest in the zombie or survival genres. If you buy the book, I Am Legend only takes up the first half. The second half is dedicated to short stories by Richard Matheson. They are curious to read but do not compare to I Am Legend. I am now 90% finished with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles. I am finding it very pleasurable. The language is that of the very early 20th century. I like the cultural references to technology and the way things were then. The characters are not the roundest I have read but there are enough clues to lead an astute reader to conclusions just before they are revealed. Being engaged with the story and the events more than makes up for the lack of depth in the characters. It is a fun read. These do not count the other studying and non-fiction I have been reading for the last while but that seems to be a different side of my life than I casually post about. If anyone is more interested in kenisiology, vedic home design, meditation techniques, the French language, or the nature of God please send me an email as those are my areas of study right now. (Comment on this)
Monday, September 29th, 2008
10:48 am	Updates Three weeks since my last post. Wow, does the time fly. In the last three weeks I have written a business plan, installed a phone board that supports six lines including a London phone number, found free international long distance, finished the manual (12,000 individual statements), and a pile of personal and house things. I am working on creating a business presence on MySpace and Facebook so if anyone has suggestions for doing that well I'd like to know it. We now have business cards and brochures. We are registered in the list of support companies for the Olympics in London in 2012 so we will see what that brings. I got a second-hand laptop for $100! I installed Ubuntu on it and am very happy. I figured out how to network my PC and my Mac so now I have a little office network. Also, I will be hiking the Colorado Trail in summer of 2010 so if you would like to come please let me know. It will take about 28 days and cover about 400 miles between Denver and Durango. Here is more info: http://www.coloradotrail.org/ That is all I have time for today. Best of luck to everyone. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008
6:24 pm	Nine Inch Nails Nine Inch Nails at Redrocks was amazing last night. (Comment on this)
Friday, August 29th, 2008
10:15 pm	Hello All. It has been 12 weeks since my last post. I am alive and happy and busy. I'll post again when time permits. Nate (Comment on this)
Monday, May 12th, 2008
6:31 pm	What is the best way to go about finding like-minded people on the internet without putting forth much effort? I would like a couple more journals to read on occasion but I don't have much interest in searching and I really don't have all that much extra time for this. (Comment on this)
Thursday, May 8th, 2008
6:02 pm	The wedding planning is coming along and things are going well. We have confirmations from most of the Europeans who will be coming and it should be a good vacation for all of them. I must remain vague here just to be safe. If you want to discuss any of this email me. This is mostly just to say it is going on. Things are pretty smooth at "work" now. The systems are streamlined and the procedures are put into place. We are nearly ready to hand the torch of "Personal Business Assistant" to someone else so I can continue to write, seek investment, train people for business-related positions, and grow the business. This next person is one of our friends from the UK and will be coming out mid June. We are not sure how long she will stay but she will be a great help. It is time to take the kids to school for a choir concert, go to the wedding venue for a food tasting, and get back to school for the choir concert. Bye. (Comment on this)
Monday, April 21st, 2008
8:57 pm	End of April Working and working some more. Seeking investors to help us get from where we are to the next step. We would get there on our own but some money would hep us get there a whole lot faster. We have several potential investors. We are discussing the details of what we can offer them and what they want from us in trade for that investment. This is an exciting time. I don't remember if I posted it but Vikki and I will be getting married this summer! We are planning the wedding. It will coincide for the 10 days when we have about 30 of our closest friends and clients over to visit. Most of them stay with us. Some will stay at the hotel. We will be going to Glenwood Springs for a few days of fun. This will be mixed in with a few brief talks about some of the details of our work that many of the clients may find unfamiliar. I suppose all I have written about for the last long time is work. That is for a few reasons. First, I have been working 12 hours a day since November and loving every minute of it. Second, it is not best to discuss divorce on the internet. That should be kind of a common sense thing. Next, when I am feeling particularly sappy and happy about my relationship I tell Vikki about it rather than venting to the web. Last week we started working out! We went three times in the last 8 days. We are going to get in shape and it is great. That is all I have in me tonight. I'll write again in another month or so. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, March 14th, 2008
9:08 pm	It has been 9 weeks since my last update Hello All, I have been so busy that I have not had time to post anything. Here is a tiny short summary of the last two months. Divorce is being dragged out. Not enough words to describe how helpful the x has been in dragging things out and keeping them unreasonable. After this last delay, the hearing will be nearly a year after I filed. There are no assets and nothing to really discuss. It is just getting dragged out for the fight of it. The divorce is one of the reasons I have not posted. It is fairly negative and, honestly, it is not that important. It is draining and ugly but not the kind of thing I want to take the time to dedicate to print. In other news: my grandfather died. It is the first close death I have experienced. Vikki helped my entire family cope with it. She took care of the lot of us. She made sure we had food and she helped with the entire funeral. She was amazing. She was supportive. I am even more appreciative than before. Needless to say, she made a good impression on my family. I had a couple of very touching and important and significant moments with my grandfather as he was passing. I am very fortunate to have had them. The way he looked at me at the foot of the bed. The way he looked at Vikki. The last time I talked to him when I knew he heard me. He died of congestive heart failure. It was many years coming on. We missed a week of work for that. After one week (6 days to make up for lost time) of solid work Vikki's cousin died. I got to go to New Mexico and meet the entire extended family (most of the 291 of them). That part of the family has been a family of ranchers for several generations. They are outside of a tiny town named Clayton. It was another amazing experience. The people were great. The culture was right out of the Old West (without the lawlessness). The people were respectful even though I was from the city. The old Catholic priest was a real hoot, too. It was tragic because her cousin was only 22 but it must still have been his time. There is a ton to write, too, on death but that is for another time. In other news: we have a guest who is training to do what Vikki does. That took a lot of preparation in addition to the regular workload. The job is great. The relationship is great. Life is great, overall. I will talk to all of you again someday. It has been an amazing time and there is more on the horizon than I can even comprehend and I love every bit of it. (Comment on this)
Sunday, January 6th, 2008
10:04 pm	Finding Wii Real life magic: Anyone in the US or who has lived in the US knows how video game fads go just before Xmas. Getting the Nintendo Wii this year was no different. They have been sold out since November with a few units trickling in here and there. My daughter really wanted one for Xmas this year so we decided it was best to get one for her. Vikki started calling around and there were none to be found. We were not concerned, though. We knew things would work out differently. On December 23rd we were out for some last-minute shopping and ended up at K Mart. We looked in the electronics section to look as we often did when we happened to be out. There was a box in the bottom of the game section that was about the same size as one of the boxes of available peripherals I had grown so accustomed to seeing. Vikki looked closer and saw that it was, in fact, a Wii. She stood guard and I walked over to the sales associate. The associate explained that there had not been a truck in several days and that she had no idea where this came from. None had been returned. This one showed up for her to put away less than 30 minutes before we arrived. She could not explain from where it came but she could explain the probability of our find. We bought it there and I went promptly out to put it in the trunk. An hour later we finished the shopping trip by buying flowers for the associate and asking the store manager to deliver them for us. It made the manager's day and it made the associate's as well as ours. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 1st, 2008
12:38 am	12/31/07 - 01/01/08: Resolutions I read my entry from this time a year ago. I was alone in my house with my kids asleep. My alleged significant other had left for the evening to go drinking. I read Hannibal Rising and listened to the fireworks from my bedroom and talked to no one. This year we had a small party. We had several guests and had a fondue dinner and chocolate fondue dessert. We played Pictionary and had a lot of fun doing it. Vikki and I were on a team and our victory was easily won. We drank champagne with Chambourd and I had an absinthe fairly early on. It was an evening of luxury and companionship. We will leave shortly to drive one of our daughter's friends home and then we will probably make love. How is that for night and day? It is also a tradition for me to post my New Year's resolutions. Last year I posted these: 1. I will continue to learn French at a relaxed pace. 2. I will enroll in school and complete 2 semesters of work. 3. I will study the plausibility of practical magic. 4. If time permits and if the thought will not leave me alone like it has not for the last month, I will seek funding to study magic in a scientific way with the ultimate goal of proving its existence in a way that is credible and solid enough to be reviewed by scientific peers. I may start another journal for this one but not any time in the next few months. 5. I will look to myself for guidance. 6. I recognize I may struggle with this one: I will not enter a serious relationship. I have a history of only having serious and long relationships. My average relationship has lasted 2.5 years and that includes the few 6-week ones in high school. I tend to give all or nothing and I need to learn balance. This is intentionally vague as I mean it to refer to Wyndi or someone else. I will have my time this year. I have never been able to be selfish and I need to be a little bit in order to learn balance. 1. Accomplished this. I listened to the rest of the French tapes (except for the second half of French 3). 2. I did enroll in school but then found a more rewarding direction for my life. I was looking to school because the life I had was unfulfilling as was my job and at least with school I could find a better-paying position with a better company. I met those goals without the school so I do not believe I failed at this but, rather, changed directions to better meet the underlying desire. 3. Boy howdy! This one took off and has, more or less, become my life. 4. I do not need the respect of scientific peers. Publicly questioning the prevailing scientific paradigm is not my challenge. Applying what I have learned and continuing to learn is my challenge and that does not involve peer review. 5. I have done this. I have also learned to look to other reliable and less fallible sources. 6. I failed here. I was short sighted. I put too long of a timeline on planning my relationships. Love cannot be planned. Love happens and for me to not be open to it because of a resolution would have been a damnable thing for me to do. I have learned a lot about how to ask for the future and I was not as educated a year ago as I am now. I would phrase this one differently if I had it to do over. Fortunately it does not require a redo. This year's resolutions: 1. I desire to learn more about intimacy and love than I have ever known (this happens on an almost daily basis so it will likely be met by January 7th). 2. I desire to write and publish at least one book with Vikki. 3. I desire to grow our business a lot. 4. I desire to continue my personal path of spiritual growth. 5. I desire to make a lot more money. 6. I desire to learn and learn and learn and to apply what I have learned. 7. I desire to live only in the moment. 8. I desire to appreciate what I have so much that what I do not have does not matter. That should be enough to get me started. I love you all. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, December 28th, 2007
9:22 pm	Further updates: In love I looked at my friends list and realized that there may only be four people that read the friends-only posts and most of those four do not check the lj regularly. This means a couple of things. 1. I am writing primarily to and for myself. 2. It does not matter what I write as I am not concerned about the judgments from these four people. I am as in love as I was the day I realized who Vikki was for me. I am happier than I have ever been. I am new and excited and fun and it is great. I love being around her and working with her and seeing her and knowing her and talking with her and just knowing I have found her (more like she found me). I am in love with Vikki and with my kids and with my life. I know the little bump that is the divorce will pass and that little ugly bit will soon end. I am in such a position to really live and I have been and I intend to really live. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, November 29th, 2007
9:21 pm	update I realize that I have created my ideal life. I work doing something that is important to me and that I feel is making and will make a difference. I work with the woman I love. I have kids in my life and will have Alex more. I eat well. I love my house. I realize now that I am not waiting for anything to change. I have it right now. I am not waiting for money (I still have none and that is just how it will be for a long while but I have everything I desire). I have time to do what I please mostly when I please to do it. I see Vikki all day and night. I make love whenever I want to. I am finding friends and feel plenty social. There is nothing lacking in my life right now. It is a fairly amazing place to be. I may need to start posting more of my personal experiences with this but there is just not time to do it. I am feeling compelled to begin documenting what I am experiencing but I have not decided where the best place to do this is. All I can say is I am in love with my life, with Vikki, my job, my kids, and everything else. This can be for everyone. The real secret to it is that all one has to do is ask with sincerity and it can be made available. It is no harder than that. There are a few more details but that is mostly it. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, November 17th, 2007
3:42 pm	Update: personal 1. I am happier than I have ever been. 2. I am excited to get up every day and spend the day with Vikki. 3. We are planning the wedding for next summer. 4. I am seeing and feeling more than I have ever seen or felt before. 5. I comprehend more than I ever thought there was to comprehend. 6. I understand more about human nature and the nature of the world and the universe than any book could ever have taught me. 7. I am finally beginning to see my value and that means a lot. 8. I finally understand what it is that I offer to other people. I will never have to be in a bad relationship because I am trying so hard to find validation for who it is that I am. I know for myself. I will take nothing less than the respect that I deserve from anyone. 9. I feel like I can fly. (2 Comments |Comment on this)