Calling all fella carnal spiritualistas! My Owning Pink blog PopSmarts: Adventures in Using Your Power for Good is an ongoing experiment for me and other Pinkies who believe, want to believe or wonder whether they can be busy, crazy-sexy-cool modern women and happy and spiritually integral in our consumer culture, too. I believe in the middle way for balance in all things. I believe in embracing the paradoxes life is constructed of. This is not an egghead course, or a Fix-it program, but rather an exercise to see if we can become more awakened to our unconscious emotions through awareness and behavior choices, towards using our spirituality pragmatically. Daily.

I’m going to talk junk TV, pop cultural missteps, and guilty pleasures and pet peeve annoyances that make up the mundane world we spend most of our time occupying. I fully expect this column, this lab, will morph and evolve as I strive to best serve the needs and interests you express to me in Comments or email.

Seeing Things With New Eyes

Practically, this blog is home to my wry and oh so humble observations on our incessantly noisy pop consumer culture world at large, my guerrilla spirituality practice, and why your modern Everything-You-Know-You-Learned-From-TV-existence makes your ass look big (seeing more critically, isn’t the same as criticizing — which we do far too frequently of ourselves, when we don’t practice the former). I believe our emotional energy directly informs and affects our spiritual energy — and how we walk and function (or not) in the world. Let’s see differently. Let’s be aware to discern media and culture’s thoughts from our own (often undisciplined and/or tamped down) inner voices. Seeing the same old stuff differently helps us de-stress and quiet the chaos and our minds so we can hear our own true voices, align with our soul’s purpose — then act integrally more often, until that is our new mindless habit! When we know ourselves, it’s harder for someone else to fool and divert us from our Truth. In other words, living more mindfully informed can bulletproof our happiness.

Using Our Power for Good - Happy Integrity

I believe you are all energetic, amazing mamacitas, and am committed to helping you practice thinking critically and viewing media at large and pop culture to get, sharpen or stay connected to your own truths, desires and values. It’s a feeling, a way of Being and going through this material life grounded and connected to Source all hot but not bothered. This is your life on your truth and...integrity.

I am constantly amazed and fascinated by social anthropology and pop culture, have an unapologetic abiding affection for TV (TV doesn’t dumb down people), have a degree in Broadcasting (Journalism), many fruitful and lasting personal and business relationships, and am a well-worn credit card-toting member of our consumer culture club. I am endlessly fascinated by people — and what makes them tick — in relationships as well as in the marketing done at them.

A bona fide California kid, I had yoga and meditation as PE electives way back in the day. My hyper, achieving 16-year old mind absolutely loved this class, and I’ve continued meditating over the decades. My #1 goal for my meditation practice was not to make it a sacred ritual requiring special time and incense, but rather to be able to do it pragmatically whenever and wherever (including trains, meetings, bars) I need to tap into my highest source of information, groundedness for relating to others, and centeredness for my willpower to generate much energy and courage to keep on doing the work...happily.

Learning From You

I look forward to working out and chronicling how to be an effective carnal spiritualist. From here on out, I’ll just be noting my daily experiment in using my power for good (happy integrity) and hope and meditate that you will sound off and teach the rest of us (especially me) something new. I humbly request your help via constant interaction and feedback. 

Let’s open our eyes and see differently. There’s a lot of happiness and ease in the light. Time to change the channel, PopSmarts.

Plugged in and awake.

Simone da Rosa