CHRISTOPHER

the summer grind sets in.

ere are campaign funds to be raised, door-to-door knocking to chat with voters and literature drops, candidate platforms to be hammered out and more. By now, most candidates have led their paperwork with the respective city clerks in the various municipalities and their names will be on the ballot. e deadline to le to run is in August. In Westminster, the City Clerk is showing the following candidates have thrown their hats in the ring - Claire Carmelia, Amber Holt, Je Jones, Karen Kalavity, Karl Merida, Timothy Pegg and incumbent Richard Seymour.

A couple of incumbent candidates are missing

You may have noticed that two incumbent city council members’ names are missing from the above list.

Council members Lindsay Emmons (formerly Lindsay Smith) and Bruce Baker are absent. Emmons recently announced that she does not intend to seek re-election while Baker is mum on his intentions to seek another four years on the Westminster City Council.

So, right now, there are seven candidates for three council seats. e mayor’s position is not up until 2025. ose are pretty good odds for the candidates to garner a seat on the council.

Needless to say, there would be at least two new faces on the council after the election on Nov. 7. Even if Council member Baker does decide to run, there will be at least one new person who will be sworn in after the election.

I would say incumbent council member Rich Seymour stands a good chance of being re-elected but I will have more insight on the candidates as we get closer to the election.

In the meantime, I would encourage you to attend events where the various candidates will be “out and about.” It is a good way to engage them in conversation about what they stand for and what they oppose.

Speaking of candidates…

Believe it or not, the list of Republican candidates for president just got longer.

Two-term Miami, Florida Mayor Francis Suarez has entered the race making him the 12th candidate to join the fray. Furthermore, he may be the candidate with the biggest odds to achieve his party’s nomination.

History has shown that no one who is a sitting mayor has won the presidential race. Normally, candidates come as governor, vice-president, senator or cabinet member. As we know, South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg enjoyed some initial success in the 2020 Democrat presidential primary race before dropping out and supporting candidate Joe Biden.

Mail-in voting is now supported by GOP leaders

It somewhat reminds me of the old cliche about “just when I learned the players’ names on the program, they changed all of the players.”

I am referring to a change in position by some GOP leaders - including Donald Trump - on the use of mail-in voting and early voting. Previously a good topic for conspiracy theories, allusions of fraud and Democrats stealing elections, the Republican National Committee has now come out with an endorsement of using both early voting and mail-in ballots. Ronna McDaniel, RNC Chair, stated “to win close elections, we need to close the gap on pre-election day voting.”

A full investigation of Hunter Biden is warranted e Republican House committees want to investigate him on deals he was involved in prior years including time while his father Joe Biden was Vice President. ese include a DOJ probe of Hunter Biden to secure a deal with CEFC China Energy to invest in U.S. energy projects. e deal fell through and the company’s CEO was detained by Chinese authorities.

Don’t be misled by last week’s announcement of Hunter Biden reaching a plea deal on two misdemeanors of not paying income taxes along with resolving a felony gun charge. is deal with the Department of Justice is “small potatoes” in comparison to what lurks below the surface.

Another involvement of the Biden son pertains to when he was the lawyer for the head of an organization backed by CEFC who was later convicted on bribery allegation. irdly, there is a Ukraine-linked lobbying work by Hunter when he was a board member of Burisma, an energy company, which worked with Blue Star Strategies. Hunter served on the Burisma board from 20142019 earning as much as $50,000 per month. Hmmm. e President and his son Hunter should bite the bullet and get all of these questionable relationships out in the open and let the chips fall where they may. it is that we want to go. Maybe we have some head trash that’s getting in our way. Whatever it is, it has us stuck in the neutral zone. How do we get unstuck? We take the first step in the pursuit of our new goals and dreams. We don’t have to go beyond that, we are not going to go from running a 10K to running a marathon, but we are going to take the first step and maybe run an extra half mile, and then each day slowly build to our ultimate goal.

Timing is everything and the sooner Hunter and perhaps his father are viewed under the microscope, the better for them.

Bill Christopher is a former Westminster city manager and RTD board member. His opinions are not necessarily those of Colorado Community Media. You can contact him at bcjayhawk68@gmail.com.

Taking that rst step does something psychologically that gets us moving in the right direction. For some of us, we get caught up in all the rest of the steps and it paralyzes us to the point where we do not take any step at all. A comfort zone surrounded by a neutral zone creates a do-nothing zone. And as it has been said before, if we aren’t moving forward, we are more than likely moving backward. Zig Ziglar said it this way, “People who never take step one, can never possibly take step two.”

How about you, are there a rst step that you need to take? Is there a personal or professional goal or dream that you have had on your heart for a while? If so, have you asked yourself what is holding you back? As always, I would love to hear your story at gotonorton@ gmail.com, and when we can break free from our comfort zone, leave the neutral zone behind, and commit to never entering that comfort zone again, it really will be a better than good life.

Michael Norton is an author, a personal and professional coach, consultant, trainer, encourager and motivator of individuals and businesses, working with organizations and associations across multiple industries.

Goodness

Paul James Goodness

September 18, 1931 - June 8, 2023

Paul passed with family present in Fair Oaks, CA.. Paul will be buried next to his wife, Peggy Sue, at St Isidore’s Catholic Church, Watkins, CO., on 6/28/2023. Paul has resided in Boulder, but was a History teacher at Northglenn HS from 1980-1995. Paul was a Korean War Veteran and will receive military honors at his burial.

BY LUKE ZARZECKI LZARZECKI@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

The brain is overrated, according to Kadam Lucy James at the Kadampa Meditation Center.

“Have you ever felt peaceful in your head?” she asked.

She put her hands over her heart and said that’s where the mind is, adding that while the brain has conceptual reality, the mind exists in the heart, where we feel peace, love, joy and wisdom.

“If we can get into our heart, we automatically start to feel more peaceful,” she said.

James is temporarily living in Arvada and teaches meditation at the Kadampa Meditation Center. She started practicing about 41 years ago after she saw a “very peaceful person” in college.

“He was a student meditating on the end of his bed and I asked him what he was doing, because this was back in 1981, and meditation, no one had heard of back then,” she said.

Ever since, she’s been practicing and has taught all around the world, including England, San Francisco, New York City and now Denver. She hopes to one day achieve enlightenment, or in nite happiness and peace.

It takes a lot of hard work, but she said it’s the only thing where the more she does it, the happier she is.

It’s because, with meditation, the mind becomes naturally peaceful. Each person has a natural source of peace and happiness inside them, she said, and instead of seeking it elsewhere — relationships, ful lling jobs or material things — it’s already inside the body waiting to be found. e evidence lies in the random moments of peace and happiness everyone feels. It could be a torrential downpour and the mind is peaceful, settled and calm. e rst step to unlocking that potential and happiness is to breathe.

“What those moments show is that our mind is ne. And then what unsettles the mind is actually all our uncontrolled thinking,” she said.

Coming from the teachings of the Buddha, she compared the mind to a vast ocean. e waves are turbulent while below them is a vast, in nite, calm place. Waves of anxiety and negative emotions distort the brain but below those waves rests an incredible sanity.

“When our mind is settled, when we can let go of our troubled thoughts, and our turbulent thoughts, uncontrolled thoughts, then we naturally feel good. We naturally feel peaceful and we start to get a sense of our potential and who we really are, which is this person who has limitless potential, limitless happiness,” James said.

Focus on the nostrils

Carol O’Dowd, a Trauma and Transition Psychotherapist and Spiritual Counselor assists her clients by meeting them where they are and o ering them acceptance through breathing.

“If you focus on your breath, you cannot simultaneously focus on all your internal dialogue. It cannot be done. e human brain is not wired that way,” O’Dowd said.

It creates a space between the thoughts. e stress and anxiety stored in the body don’t go away, but the practice of noticing the emotions and putting them on pause to breathe helps calm the body down.

Breathing is a function of the body that automatically happens all the time. Focusing on that breath, O’Dowd compared it to a spectrum. What happens when the body stops breathing — death — is one end and the other is when the body pays attention to the breath — peace.

“It can be as simple as just experiencing that ow of air, and in and out of your nostrils. If you can place your attention there, that’s giving yourself a mini vacation,” she said.

O’Dowd encourages her clients to practice treating uncontrolled thoughts like a salesperson trying to sell them. Instead of buying, make them sit in the corner and return to them in 20 minutes after taking time to check in with the body.

It can also let go of stress. Pain, like what the ngers feel after working at a computer all day, can be a physical manifestation of stress. Holding on to that stress can lead to other health conditions.

“It’s not rocket science,” she said.

Escape to reality

James said achieving enlightenment is extremely di cult, and while the teachings she studied laid out di erent steps and pathways, she simpli ed it down to three. e rst is focusing on the breath to relax. e second is identifying delusions.

A delusion can be jealousy, greed, competitiveness or other unpleasant thoughts. Most of the time, those thoughts aren’t controlled by the mind and enter the brain randomly. It’s the root