What an honor it is to be included in the ranks of the authors Colin Lewis picks to feature in his wonderful gift to humanity, Wisdom Notes. Choosing to Be is part of his newest series, and you can see for yourself the esteemed company we have joined. . .

Wow! The Feline Zen Master joins The Prophet, the Tao Te Ching, Eckhart Tolle, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and other masters, taking his place with his usual dignity and wise reserve. Me, I’m hopping up and down and doing a little happy dance.

See, I know you will find this hard to believe, but some people have a little trouble accepting wisdom from a talking cat. This has been a bit of an impediment in getting people to take Choosing to Be seriously, as you might imagine. I was delighted early in the year when Thom Hartmann said that Choosing to Be was one of the best books on meditation he had ever read. Thom is a long-time meditator and is very knowledgeable about all forms of meditation, so this praise coming from him really meant something.

Still, it remains an uphill climb – and since my goal is to reach millions of people with this simple yet profound story about learning to meditate, I obviously need to find people of considerable wisdom who will help me spread the word that Choosing to Be is not just a cat book. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that! — to quote Jerry Seinfeld. . .)

And then, Colin Lewis got it! And not only did he get it, he decided to tell the world in the best possible way – by putting Choosing to Be in his new Collection and writing a very thoughtful and serious Wisdom Note in which he pulls out the nuggets of wisdom for his readers. And, in a marvelous and brilliant moment of inspiration, he decides not to mention to his readers that my teacher is a cat. How cool is that!

Now maybe those people who cannot seem to get past the cat thing can learn the lessons in Choosing to Be, which are, in fact, very similar to lessons they might learn from Eckhart Tolle, Soygal Rinpoche, Jack Kornfield, Pema Chodron, Thich Nhat Hanh, Sharon Salzberg, and others, including my own very well respected human meditation teacher, Jason Siff.

The wisdom in Choosing to Be has its roots in all these and many other teachings. I just decided to attempt to demystify meditation by writing a story about my own journey, and used my very wise cat Poohbear Degoonacoon and his kitten brother Catzenbear as my teachers. Think Star Wars and Yoda, or Alice in Wonderland and the Cheshire Cat, or Winnie the Pooh and his friends.

And Colin Lewis got it! Maybe because he hangs out with so many wise teachers, he recognized the wisdom of what Poohbear Degoonacoon was teaching, and managed to overlook the fact that he is, after all, only a cat. (I love saying this, because I can imagine all the cat lovers half rising from their seats and saying “Harrumph. Why, my cat knows more about meditation than most so-called masters!)

So now, without further ado, I would like to direct you to read Colin’s Wisdom Note, which he is so generously making available as a free sample from his Collection. As a fan of Choosing to Be, you will be delighted at the way Colin pulls nuggets of wisdom from the book, and enriches the lessons even more by bringing forth his own extensive knowledge of the works of other wise sages to clarify and elaborate some of the points.

I know you will enjoy Colin’s Wisdom Notes on Choosing to Be, and I sincerely hope you will consider subscribing to his wonderful Series. As you may recall, Poohbear Degoonacoon taught that “Wisdom only comes with knowledge and experience.” You will get a new Wisdom Note every week, so within a very short time you will gain an astonishing amount of wisdom. Wisdom Notes are a very clever way to gain much knowledge in a limited time – something we can all surely use in today’s fast paced world.

And if you have met with resistance from your family and friends regarding the wisdom to be learned from a cat, you can now pass along Colin’s Wisdom Notes for Choosing to Be so these humans might more easily respect the wisdom therein as Colin presents it, without pulling away the curtain and revealing the true teacher — Poohbear Degoonacoon, who was in fact named after another very wise philosopher, Winnie the Pooh.

To download the lovely gift from Colin Lewis – a free sample of the Wisdom Notes for Choosing to Be – just click this link:

Choosing to Be Wisdom Notes

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 26th, 2009 at 10:03 pm and is filed under Meditation, Wisdom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.