Connected and Committed

bye, 2008

Since every day is my birthday and xmas and new year's rolled into one, I don't get much hyped about this evening's revelry. I am awaiting some gingerbread to finish baking so I can devour it--my body is craving molasses--after taking care of the mess that pouring enough batter to fill a 9X9 pan into an 8X8 pan will create. Oh well. Being around Little Man for five continuous days does that to me. The next four should be interesting in that regard. I'd love to have a shift or breakthrough around it. Casting director, you listening? I know you are, but just wanted to point out to myself the possibilities.

I've been listening to the latest Abe cd from the Boston session of this year, and there are so many excellent nuggets to be found in it. I almost want to transcribe the whole thing myself just to have the essence of the message sink in that much more deeply. Like this one: "Wasn't the aggravation worth the clarity?" Just cleared that with Little Man, and he says that it is an accurate rendering of the words.

Amen.

doom dimension

federal reserve

In theory, the Fed was established to stabilize the economy, smooth out the business cycle, manage a healthy, sustainable growth rate, and maintain stable prices. In fact, it failed dismally. It contributed to 19 US recessions (including the Great Depression) and significantly to the following equity market declines that accompanied them as measured by the Dow or S & P 500 average - the S &P's inception was 1923; it became the S & P 500 in 1957:

 

-- 40.1% (Dow) from 1916 - 1917;

 

-- 46.6% (Dow) from 1919 - 1921;

 

-- the 1929 (Dow) crash in two stages - 47.9% in 1929 followed by a strong, temporary rebound; then - 86%; an 89% peak to trough total from October 1929 to July 1932;

 

-- 49.1% (Dow) from 1937 - 1938;

 

-- 40.4% (Dow) from 1939 - 1942;

 

-- 25.3% (S & P) from 1946 - 1947;

 

-- 19.8% (S & P) in 1957;

 

-- 26.8% (S & P) from 1961 - 1962;

 

-- 19.3% (S & P) in 1966;

 

-- 32.7% (S & P) from 1968 - 1970;

 

-- 45.1% (S & P) from 1973 - 1974;

 

-- 20.2% (S & P) from 1980 - 1982;

 

-- 32.9% (S & P) in 1987;

 

-- 19.2% (S & P) in 1990;

 

-- 18.8% (S & P) in 1998;

 

-- 49.1% (S & P) from 2000 - 2002; and

 

-- about 50% (S & P) and counting (excluding a bear market rebound) from October 2007.

I think it's interesting that we have such selective memory around the economy, and what really runs us.

the dip

Because when the Dip shows up, you’re know you’re close to a breakthrough, to getting to the other side, to mastery, and to being the best in the world.

--Seth Godin

I had a prior schema around the word "dip" that might need to be tweaked now that I've run into Seth's version. My version is the implementation dip, the awkward stage where you are attempting to implement something new, probably a behavior, and the first few times you try the new behavior, the contrast between the the old and the new is so huge in your perception that no matter how well those attempts might go in the eyes of others observing, the discomfort it produces in you feels like the entire world has been turned upside down. That is the implementation dip: where discomfort might convince you that all is lost, unless you get some objective feedback, a little encouragement, some coaching to keep up the good work and hang in there.

Seth's dip refers to the times when you get stuck, or get caught in a rut. Then what? How do you perceive the situation? And how do you respond? It sounds like an Abraham moment, really. What do you do with that contrast? Invest it, milk it, allow it to bring delicious desires from your depths, or do you let it fester and cloud your vision?

Either dip brings choices, and we all experience versions. It matters more what you do with them than that they exist.

Being the best you in the world rides in the balance.

activities

Snowshoeing.

Watching Into the Wild. Understanding his anger but not being engulfed by it.

Completing the Great Southern Cooking Event and loving all of it. I'm in love with smoked cheddar cheese.

Even wandered around in a mall for awhile. Felt completely exhausted afterwards.

Great conversation over a bottle of Madeira with good friends.

Giving and receiving gifts from my son, who is going to be chomping at the bit to spend his xmas money from grandma and grandpa tomorrow.

It's all good, peeps.

aggravated to clarity

Oh, this is one of the best Abraham discs yet to spin on my cd player. Boston '08. This one is going on my mp3 player to listen to over and over while I'm pulling thoughts together for my e-book. Enough doubting and hedging my bets. I need to show up. Now.

self-fulfilling prophecy

Confidence is often a self-fulfilling prophecy, particularly in marketing or investing. Arrogance, on the other hand, is hard to reward. My favorite combination is the quiet confidence of knowledge, combined with the humility that comes from realizing that you're pretty lucky and that you have no idea at all what's guaranteed to work tomorrow.

--Seth Godin

~*~*~*~

LOVE this. You're pretty lucky and you have no idea at all what's guaranteed to work tomorrow.

Well, I am of the opinion that inspired action will work tomorrow because of the grounding I did in the upper registers of the emotional scale the day before, and the day before that, and the day before that. That's what worked. That's what got us to where we are right now with a potential refocusing on what we really want with marketing and credit and the economy and real estate and banking. Do we want to build all of it on a house of cards, or do we want to construct a different version that lasts and builds on itself and thrives with everyone?

I know which one I want.

home cookin'

Holidays aren't much of a to-do around the blissmonger household, but I got a hankerin' to do some cookin' and pulled out a few trusty cookbooks to have a look-see as to what my taste buds were wanting. Turns out it was Southern food, U.S. Southern food. With a vegetarian twist. No ham in the greens, but some fish that will get breaded. Here's the menu, from the Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant cook book:

Cheese Grits Casserole
Jambalaya
Cornbread
Catfish (freshcaught fish from a local lake will do)
Greens
Hoppin’ John (can you imagine that Whole Foods didn't have frozen black-eyed peas? ;-)
Mocha Pecan Pie

It's like my body is craving this stuff, which I don't normally eat. But I'm more than willing to satisfy the cravings. I can’t wait!

don't try this at home

I have this thing for popcorn. The pans I choose to do that in I use as weapons of mass destruction. They melt things that I don't intend to melt. Like deck material that's really plastic and not wood. And cutting boards.

Don't try this at home, folks.

the gatekeeper

Apparently the issues I was having with my keyboarding showing up backwards a few days ago is just the tip of the iceberg in Typepad land. I've had problems logging in to their newly upgraded system and have resorted to all kinds of tricks attempting to get in. Makes transferring over to Wordpress look like a reasonable thing to do. But then who knows what might happen there if all kinds of people start using up their server space. Decisions, decisions. I'll wait to see what feels the best, and go with that.

whatcha got cookin'

It's been a fervent desire that I start cooking again. The last year or so my culinary skills and inspiration have evaporated to the point that when I walk in the door after my day job is done, I'll make one of a handful of easy-to-pull-together meals that quite frankly are boring me to death. This is not a new phenomenon--everyone gets tired of deciding what's for dinner, no matter what is in your diet or your checkbook.

But the last week and a half, I've actually made three different dishes, more or less from scratch, that I haven't prepared in a very long time. The first was Thai soup, the second was marinara sauce and ziti pasta, and the third was chicken soup, cuz I needed it. Recipes were not necessarily followed either, which was kinda fun, actually. I was proving to myself that taking out the resistance factor of a straight and narrow list of ingredients helped tremendously.

I'm taking this as a very good sign and look forward to more instances of enjoying the effects of the joy puller of hanging out in the kitchen. Baby steps in the right direction.

Permission

Lots of confluences came together today that worked together in my giving myself permission to take things real-l-l-l-l-ly slowly. I got up an hour later than usual, sat down and enjoyed my coffee while it was still very hot, and just took my time. My body is recuperating from processing several stresses: layoffs where I work (not me, but people I know); a sick kid who didn't sleep well at all this weekend and subsequently neither did I; and mistaken assumptions about a relationship that worked out in my favor. Scheduled time off around the corner is lookin' real good. Lots of nothing to do and lots of sleeping in. Mmmmm......    

mint set

The latest of my jewelry creation commissions. Truly, so much fun.

tes tnim

 

F eht tahW .sdrawkcab ni depyt ereh pu gniwohs era sdrow ym ,mU

Translation--"Um, my words are showing up here typed in backwards. WTF?!?" Haven't experienced that keyboard phenomenon before. How bizarre....

I pulled this Osho card last night, first time ever, and it tickled me to no end. Here's what is listed in the companion book:

"Being "in the gap" can be disorienting and even scary. Nothing to hold on to, no sense of direction, not even a hint of what choices and possibilities might lie ahead. But it was just this state of pure potential that existed before the universe was created. All you can do now is to relax into this nothingness...fall into this silence between the words...watch this gap between the outgoing and incoming breath. And treasure each empty moment of the experience. Something sacred is about to be born."

~*~*~

"Buddha has chosen one of the really very potential words - shunyata. The English word, the English equivalent, "nothingness', is not such a beautiful word.

"That's why I would like to make it "no-thingness' -- because the nothing is not just nothing, it is all. It is vibrant with all possibilities. It is potential, absolute potential. It is unmanifest yet, but it contains all. In the beginning is nature, in the end isnature, so why in the middle do you make so much fuss? Why, in the middle, becoming so worried, so anxious, so ambitious--why create such despair?

Nothingness to nothingness is the whole journey."

I htink this is the first time in my life I'm really able to go around the block with that concept. And still know where I'm going with it.

Life of Pi

I read this book recently, and so much has happened in my life in the past month that I can hardly remember turning its pages. Stumbling upon a collection of quotes that I wrote down during one of my flights to Tucson this morning made me smile:

"The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart."

"Why can we throw a question further than we can pull in an answer?"

"Nature can put on a thrilling show. The stage is vast, the lighting is dramatic, the extras are innumerable, and the budget for special effects is absolutely unlimited."

"I'm a Hindu because of sculptured cones of red kum kum powder and baskets of yellow turmeric nuggets..."

"There are always those who take it upon themselves to defend God, as if Ultimate Reality, as if the sustaining frame of existence, were something weak and helpless."

history repeats itself

In another lifetime, long, long ago, I was a teacher in a building that was in the leadership hands of someone who had no business getting paid to do that for a living. Those of us who stuck around for a few years of this regime were able to finally experience the sweet ecstasy of exactly the opposite kind of leader, in the replacement the district gifted us with that spring as they escorted the disgraced one out of the building. The contrast in the two administrations was distinct, palpable, amazing. And even though it's been more than ten years since that transfer of power transpired, I still can picture the scene and remember first the relief and then the anticipation swirling inside as we were introduced to this person who was about to rock our worlds, giving us permission to be our best selves as educators, rather than mere automatons.

This memory has been revisiting lately because I'm living it again in a slightly different way, but the anticipation and the contrast is the same, if not greater. I have the opportunity to apply what I've been teaching myself about authentic engagement with people via various marketing platforms/media, to use it first engage those I'm assigned to work with now that the old guard is gone, and then parlay that introduction into inspired action that spreads like "brains on fire." If you google them, you'll know what I'm talking about, or at least you'll have some idea, maybe even investigate like I did a few years ago and become members of the choir.

The parallels in these two situations in my life are providing me with no end of joy and glee and knowing. My casting director is truly an artist in the craft of arranging all of this, the awe-inspiring array of people and places and things, at just the right moment. I've been selectively touting these ideas for over a year now, but the opportunity wasn't quite there yet. Now the new guard is about to be marshaled; I can feel it in my bones, and it feels really, really good.

smorgasbord

The past week and a half has entailed intense reality checks in personal and work life. Unexpected shifts out of my control have evolved into some of the most amazing results I could imagine. I'm pondering the timing of them, happening so closely to each other. Perhaps it's the whole get-it-over-with-all-at-once theory my casting director came up with. Or not. My observer self has been enjoying watching what I come up with interacting with other people, the conversations that evolve, the unexpected outcomes of all this change that I am effectively managing.

And the changes are miraculous. Nothing short of.

That doesn't mean that my body doesn't still hold stress, though. I recognize it more readily now that that isn't standard operating procedure anymore. Last night I got home, hopped into the bathtub, and crashed. Last week there was a day that I felt like I was in a movie that ran in slow motion all day long. Energetic fall-out, I thought.

Now the bar has been raised. In Abraham terms, I'm functioning in the realm of understanding on another level why people and things and events vibrate in or out of everyone's life. Which means I get even more why it's so imperative to focus on what you want. 'Cuz you get what you think about. Totally.

And I get that there are concurrent realities running where those who don't think this way are existing in their realities, being comforted by the consistency of their experience and their beliefs. So there's something for everyone out there in the personal cosmology smorgasbord, depending on where you are in wanting to know how things work.

That's one honkin' personal chef to the universe.

When you least suspect it

Sometimes when I log in to the Mac computer I have access to at work, the dialog box jiggles if it doesn’t want to recognize me as a valid user. On those days, no matter how many times I attempt to log in, the box just jiggles for a few seconds and then stands stolidly still, until I give in, totally shut down and reboot.

That’s how I felt last night around 4:30–-there was some energetic jiggling going on, and I had to reboot in order to get over it. My son was gearing up for the transition back to his dad’s house on a less than smooth note, my printer suddenly decided not to allow yellow ink to flow through the print head, and I didn’t feel like cooking anything for dinner.

If I had been alone, this mood might have degenerated into ordering take-out Chinese and some more delving into the world of my latest literary joy, Terrence McKenna. But I wasn’t alone, I paid attention and followed where I was led in my body, and the whole experience shifted into another dimension.

First I realized I had a hankering for Thai food, and scoured a couple cookbooks for basic recipes. I needed ingredients no matter the recipe, so I pushed through some resistance about going to the grocery store and purchased the necessary supplies to bring my flavor quencher to life. Several other items that I use on a regular basis were on sale, so the trip was a great investment of time, money and repurposing old perceptions.

While I pulled dinner together, my helper put on some soothing music and pulled out some dvds from which to choose a cinematic diversion for the rest of the evening. Feast of Love was the clear winner and it did not disappoint. The setting, the story line, the actors and the theme all combined to make a soul-satisfying mix of sound and imagery and connection on many levels.

The printer sits waiting patiently for me to come home and attempt to bring the clogged print head to life after 24 hours per the instructions in the manual, I have some awesome leftovers for lunch, and some lines from the movie are pleasantly sticking with me in the back of my mind today. And I’ve had experience breaking out of an old pattern that could shift some behavior around in new and unexpected ways down the road.

I. love. my. life.

universe

The bliss eye meets the spinning universe! Isn't it amazing what you can do with clay...and how different opaque objects show up as oppsed to translucent ones on a white background? Gotta get tha sorted out before I post these on Etsy.

Conspiracy

Excerpted from the Abraham workshop in Dallas, TX on Saturday, March 13th, 1999

Conspiracies?

GUEST: I've heard about the secret government in health conspiracies and very powerful men that want to control resources and create a lot of evil for the human race. I'm a naturopath. I work with health, and I'm frustrated by the health cover-ups that this so-called secret government has caused. And I'm wanting good for my clients. I'm wanting a way for them to have health.

ABRAHAM: You raise a very good question. And we want to give you an answer that will leave you in a place of feeling relief. Let's say, just for the sake of this discussion, that it's not just paranoid people picking up on a stream of thought and magnifying it. Let's pretend that everything you heard is true.

As you project thought, that thought exists eternally, which means that every thought that you've ever thought exists. It also means that every thought that everyone else has ever thought exists -- and by Law of Attraction those thoughts are coalescing. So there are literally rivers of thoughts that you can tap into by focusing upon something long enough that you find vibrational harmony with it.

You cannot protect yourself from something that you do not want because as you addressing this thing that you do not want -- you are finding vibrational harmony with this thing that you do not want. And now that you have found vibrational harmony with it, it comes to you. And then you say, "See, they were right. That terrible reality that they talked about is accurate and I have proof of it." And we say, "All you've proved is that you have the ability to find vibrational harmony with something you don't want."

Every thought that has ever been thought still exists. And so, as an individual, what you are really wanting to do is appreciate that it exists, so that from it you can get a basis of your own desire. And then, as you individually align with your basis of desire -- then that's the life that you live.

This free will, that means so much to you when you are getting your way -- you would like to take away from those who are getting their way if their way does not agree with your way. Fortunately, you can never orchestrate that from your position. Many of you try. You get together and you say, "This is true evil. This absolutely a wrong thing. Let's get enough of us together that we can push against that." And all you do as you get a bunch of you together to push against it is create more of it and make sure that you are more likely to be in vibrational harmony with it. We will put your mind at ease just a little bit by offering you one very clear statement. Your government is not that clever. You are giving them way too much credit.

Every feeling of victim, every feeling of paranoia, every feeling of vulnerability, that has been projected from the beginning of man's experience here on this planet, is running like a river. And every now and again someone will tap into that stream and speak it as truth -- and what they are speaking is their truth. What they are speaking is what they are finding vibrational harmony with. What they are speaking is an option that is certainly available to all of you.

Most of you are not aware of what the vibrations, that you are offering, are attracting back to you." So, if you mean well, if you want well, but you are not getting well, and you don't understand because nobody's explained to you the correlation between what you are thinking and feeling and what you are getting -- that's a breeding ground for paranoia. Because then you say, "Well, I'm certainly not doing it to myself. Somebody else must be doing it to me." And as it shows up everywhere you go, it must be somebody really, really good, somebody who has spies and networks and satellites. "How could I keep having these same negative experiences everywhere I go? I know I'm not doing it to me. So somebody else must be doing it. And if they're this good, they must be really good. It must be government or other galaxies. It's a huge conspiracy."

And we say, It's a self-perpetuated conspiracy. It's you hooking into victimhood or into the vulnerability and holding yourself apart from Well-being, and then blaming somebody else because the Well-being doesn't come to you. Law of Attraction says Well-being can't come to you when you're so aware that you are standing over here where you don't want to be. So you blame your plight on your mother or on the government or on some evil conspiracy, and we say, All you need to do is just relax and lighten up and let your Energy raise, and Well-being will come back to you. And then, who do you give that credit to?

When Well-being happens, why aren't there any "giant conspiracies of Well-being" out there? You never hear it, do you? "The government has secret things that are happening that are making things go well for me. Traffic lights are turning green and friends are calling me and dollars are flowing. There's a conspiracy of health in our neighborhood. I look around and almost everyone I see is up and alive and well. Children are smiling and going to school. The traffic, for the most part, is going very well. Only a fraction of our traffic ever goes wrong. A conspiracy. A conspiracy."

reboot my life

I googled the term "reboot my life' just now, after hearing it for the first time out loud. Go ahead and look it up yourself--there's quite the gamet of input along those lines.

When's the last time you rebooted your life?

it was there all along

FreeWillAstrology.com

+

"The more I examine the universe and the details of its architecture, the
more evidence I find that the universe in some sense must have known we
were coming."

- Freeman Dyson, pioneering physicist

~*~*~*~

I'm not a physicist, and I haven't read this statement in context, but I just know it to be true, in my bones. Yes. yes. Yes.

honey

I had some library books put on hold for pick-up (a valet service for reading material!) at a library near where I work instead of the slightly out of the way facility near home and claimed them yesterday. I was waited on by the most delightful of lady librarian, the kind that exudes well-being and a love for matching reading material with the folks who will love them.

And she uses the word "honey" in her speech in the most natural, soothing way. It's not demeaning, it's not Southern, it's not diminutive. It's just plain smile-inducing. We shared some conversation about the American Chillers heaven I was picking up for Little Man and how her little men were well out of that easy-to-please-without-cash stage. She did her best to make my visit there complete and enjoyable, and she succeeded.

I will be going back, just to experience her again.

Thanks, Honey.

P.S. I just saw a gaggle of geese swoop around the windows on the 5th floor of the building I work in, like eagles or hawks skirting the vertical surface of a mountain. Whooosh.....

5:00 in the morning

Dug out my Litebook from last winter, since it's incredibly dark now for the majority of the day and fired it up around 5:00 this morning. Rising at the hour is an amazing feat for me, and I'm somewhat astonished that I actually did it with relatively little resistance. Of course the incentive to have time to scrape the night's accumulation of snow off my car does help.

So I take this light with me to work and plug it in again for half an hour or so around 4:00, if memory serves. It makes a difference, and that's all it takes for me to use it.

A little while ago I was rummaging around in my mind for opinions or preferences that I might start my day with, and ended up with Me. How about that.