Connected and Committed

JOT Day 26 - Clarity

Some people don't want to ask the question, "OK, but what about that?" and really figure out the answer.

I get that, and that's OK.

But I thrive on that question.

"OK, but what about that? What about that is causing such-and-such? What's going on underneath that's making this so difficult?"

I enjoy engaging in those kinds of questions and their answers because the world is ready to be done with waiting for us to catch up to them.

We actually already know the answers, collectively, but some of us aren't quite ready to grapple with them head on, out in the open.

And that's OK.

I'll keep asking, and sharing what shows up.

Because that's what I do.

 

 

JOT Day 23, 24 - Shifts of seizmic proportions

Continuing along the shift terrain, I'm inhaling material from Suzanne Evans about marketing from the knowing of who you really are, and that is providing some tangible movement into new areas of branding and laser clarity around what-it-is-that-I-do. I'm chaperoning my thoughts and creating new neuropathways with new beliefs, and it's magical, this ride.

This isn't necessarily new information, but because of the particular combination of what I'm thinking about and reading and doing right this minute, I am different, and I'm hearing it differently, and it's changing me.

There are pieces of what I've done up to now in my writing and my website that have been placeholders for this work to arrive, and I know where to take them to the next level. This is powerful and daunting and fun all at once. This year-long JOT project is exactly what's going to help me pull all of these separate entities into alignment.

So, the realizations of the past few days:

1) Don't EVER pull down the radar for those things, people, authors, ideas, events, interests, activities that speak to you. They are out there, waiting to be discovered and integrated into the total package that is you. Expect fallow times to be art of the process and flow of your creative, vibrant life--they are necessary, but the energy and passion will return big time when you allow the contrast.

 2) EVERYTHING counts as potential fodder for joy pullers and resistance toys, no matter how befuddling it might be to you as to why this thing interests you at this point in time. Just sit back and wait for the moment when the uhniverse knocks you out with the reveal.

 

JOT - Day 17 Thought Chaperone Meetup

I tried this last year, wanting to set-up a Meetup group of some kind, and didn't have enough of a focus in order to launch it.

But all that's different now.

Today I created the Thought Chaperone group, intended for those who want to discuss and practice law of attraction skills. Details and more verbiage to come to flesh it out. I have March 8th as the first meeting scheduled on the group's calendar, probably at the local library meeting room. Can't wait to see what casting directors line up with that!

Ergo I am also going to be adding back the Chaperone part of my name to my biz presence on my website and on social media spots, adding a tagline about what that means for those folks who need a little more to go on. 

I also got my receipts and tax info back in line and am ready for the official documents that will start arriving in the mail that will allow me to finish my return.

Now for some joy puller time. There is supposed to be an excellent bead store near me, and I'm going to explore the possibilities.

What joy puller are you engaging in today?

Just One Thing (from here on out affectionately referred to as JOT) Day 1

So this is it.

My enthusiasm and decisiveness have reached critical mass at the same time, and so I'm launching a project that I'm fascinated by and a little leary of all at the same time.

Which is good. Perfect, in fact.

One should not begin a process of change that one feels totally relaxed about. Safety brings complacency and boredom to the table, eventually leading to premature retirement syndrome: it just doesn't go anywhere.

It takes some good old fashioned resistance and occasional jolts of fear to make an effort like this recognizable to the ego, and then the real challenge commences.

And just to round out the personas accounted for, this endeavor has momentum and energy behind it that has been building for quite some time, unbeknownst to my conscious awareness until last week.

The timing of it all is a bit puzzling though, since I normally do not indulge in the whole resolution setting debacle at year's end, or beginning for that matter, so I'm not waiting until January 1 to start.

I'm starting today with the Just One Thing initiative.   

Just One Thing, as in pick something and let yourself surrender to the process of moving towards it and enjoying the feeling of the adventure along the way.

Just one thing, and then do just one thing every day that puts you one infinitesimal step closer towards attaining it.

Not 43.

Not a handful.

Just one.

And allow the babystep accumulation to sweep you over the top of your goal, which might very well morph and molt and be something totally different by the time you come up for air.

The goal is really beside the point.

Doesn't matter what it is.

Losing weight.

Dropping the smoking habit.

Exercising.

Eating better.

Cooking more meals at home, and more often with all the members of your family present.

Finding something else to do besides watching television.

Cleaning out the garage/closets/spare bedroom/hallways because we can't walk in them anymore.

Finding a different job.

Deciding to like the one you have.

Finding the love of your life.

Falling in love again with the one you've got.

Putting some time in to learning a new hobby.

Picking one up again that you enjoyed in the past.

Feel better about life in general.

Doing what it takes to officially/governmentally/on-the-grid start your own business.

Practice public speaking/performance art/stand-up at a level you've only dared to sort of think about, sometimes.

I could go on.

There is something about which you might be hovering at the edge of crossing a line in your head about doing/being/having.

And at the moment you choose to follow where it wants to take you, then you're in this thing.

That's where I am, and I'm going to apply this babystep accumulation process to the last two items on the list I rambled on and on about.

And then I want to document that process, here on this blog (Unless I do it somewhere else. Because I fully expect that this ride will take some twists and turns and produce some fabulous, here-to-fore unknowable results that might have it look different than when it started. Hoping so).

To demonstrate what that looks like. That it's doable. That I get what my thought chaperone coaching clients go through because I do it myself, on purpose. That there are levels of blissmongering, and I'm diving in to find out what some of them are.

I plan to label my posts on this topic with "Day 7 - JOT", or something similar, so you can tag along with me and keep pace with where I am in the journey.

I don't plan to comment so much on what I'm doing, which I'm sure I'll do some of, but more about what new way of being this practice is creating for me. What new thoughts I'll have access to, what new experiences I'll savor, what new people I'll meet, what old stereotypes I'll put to rest, what new layers of feeling good about being alive show up.

So here I go--exposed, accountable, vulnerable, and rarin' to go.

Care to join me?

364 days from now there will be roughly at least 1200 hours with which you can look back on from a place of engagement and discovery, or the same ol'-same ol'.

I know what vantage point I'd rather be lookin' from.

 

 

 

ours isn't noise

 

 

 

I was talking to a colleague about all the noise out there in the world, all the messages, ads, announcements, pitches and friend requests. "And you're sending even more every day into that maelstrom."

"No we're not," she said. "Ours isn't noise."

Yes it is.

~Seth Godin, blog post 11/27/2010

 

~*~*~

First, I love that Seth can say this about himself. Because he doesn't take this stuff personally, he can do that. He's part of the solution of awareness, not the problem of obfuscation.

Second, this is part of what's kept me from posting here for awhile.

I've felt like there isn't anything worth saying again that I haven't already said. Let's just go out and live it, shall we?

But there is a tad of resistance in that reasoning. And it doesn't feel good. Sort of what is going on in the photo above.

And of course I know that as humans, we need constant reminders about what it is we've consciously chosen to surround ourselves with, including our thoughts.

Because we forget what it was that was so important. We forget, and lapse into our old habits.

It's what we do.

Until we don't.

So I post today with renewed bemusement about being part of the noise out there, wanting to be part of the silience and knowing that day is coming.

The day when we revert to silince for recharging rather than the noise.

Awareness rather than obfuscation.

Getting quiet instead of acting out.

For some, that is where the relief is right now.

And that's OK.

We are all one. We are eternal. We are fine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That's me, in blaze orange, trying out a deer hunting event.

I didn't hold a gun; my camera's viewfinder sufficed.

But I tried something new.

It was a bit like being at a meditation retreat, sitting still in a deer stand and not talking for extended periods.

Excruciating at the time but interesting afterwards.

The retreat lasted for 9 days. This one-afternoon-for-a-few-hours deal was a piece of cake.

And now I can say I've tried it.

Just like with food that we attempt to get down the throats of our loved ones.

"If you haven't tried it, how can you say you don't like it?"

Trying something, and discovering that the world isn't going to end, it seems so threatening to humans.

Many of us realize that our thoughts could be different if we practiced them, but we forget, and then think that we are done with that project.

All it takes is a simple post-it note to become a resistance toy.

All it takes is a minute to write it and stick it somewhere you'll see it.

All it takes is a baby step to get you where you want to be.

All it takes is compassion rather than self-loathing.

All it takes is not giving in to our egos that say it can't be done.

Oh yeah? Watch this.

It all depends on your point of view

Looking out at life through this window changed my perspective.

I felt alive and invigorated.

There are colors, line and texture here that make my heart sing, not to mention the mountains in the background and the handmade olive oil soap inside the store from which this photo was taken.

Some new joy pullers for me. French decorating accents haven't done it for me in the past, but at this juncture and on this day, they did.

I'm changing.

The place I wake up in, the thoughts I think, the body I currently inhabit, the people I encounter, the food I eat, the music I listen to, it's all changing, right now.

Endless unfamiliarity, and I've never been happier in my life.

Going through this much modification to one's daily round could drive a person batty, but I am reveling in the effects and the results.

I've experienced change from two ends of the spectrum.

One end contained big new bold steps that just didn't feel like they belonged to me.

And the other end contains big new bold steps that feel like my name is engraved on them.

When it's a maybe, or a no, the feel is off, and you might as well pack up and start over or hunker down until things shift.

When it's a Yes!, grab the gusto with everything you've got.

It all depends on your point of view. 

The chocolate caper

A few nights ago, I completely forgot about what happens when I ingest some of my favorite Trader Joe's dark chocolate after, say, 3:00 PM.

Without a shred of misgiving, I put those two squares of heaven in my mouth and enjoyed the heck out of them--at 9:00 PM.

And seven hours later, I was still awake.

A simple case of cause and effect, one that I've proven to myself enough times to know that it just isn't worth the pleasure to endure the accompanying pain and thus established the accompanying guideline.

Granted, the following 18 hours or so weren't the greatest I've ever experienced, but they weren't the worst, either.

That, and my total lack of recall on this particular subject, are what's fascinating to me.

I didn't thrash and bemoan my situation, once I realized what had happened--I just rested in my bed, and thought of a few things that were interesting enough to occupy my brain but not enough to trigger an obsession that made me more alert.

I didn't attempt to do anything other than what was required of me the next day.

I have recently begun a new set of living arrangements under which the guideline had not been previously applied, so perhaps that might explain my temporary memory lapse.

Being human is probably the ultimate culprit.

Apparently, in comparison to all the other endless minutae rolling around in my brain lately, it wasn't as important, and I just forgot.

And now I have yet another experience on which to scaffold a remembering.

No beating myself up for a minor transgression into stupidland.

It simply was, I surrendered as much as I could in the situation, which, now that I'm thinking about it, was remarkable and perhaps the reason behind all of this happening the way it did--and now I move on.

Resistance, thy strategy is futile.

I have to want it, and believe it?

Your desire is strong enough, even amidst all that chronic resistance, you still squeak a dream out now and then. While you're asleep you're not resistant. So what you really want and what you really know can often come about in your dreamscape because you're not in there cutting it off at the knees...You've got desires that you're canceling, desires that you're canceling, desires that you're canceling, and when you stop doing that thing that you do as you've learned about pessimism, then you don't let your dream flourish in the way that it would if you'd just stop doing that thing you do.

You claim you are, but you're not exploring every avenue to make it happen because you're still willing to harbor negative thoughts that keep shooting it in the foot. You want it, but it feels like too big of a price to pay--"I have to get happy too? I have to be optimistic, too? I have to have positive expectation, too? Isn't it enough to just want it? I have to want it, and believe it?"

Yes.

When you argue for your limitations, you get out "there" where the solutions aren't. When you argue for your alignment you get in "here", where the solutions and paths are.

Every big thing that's ever happened was dreamed by someone, and the ones that allowed themselves to dream it even in the absence of "evidence" were the ones who found it.

~Abraham, May 2009

~*~*~

Still willing to harbor negative thoughts.

Still willing to buy into the appropriateness of hip cynicism.

Still willing to jump to conclusions whose validity you haven't examined for decades.

Still willing to give more credence to the past than the present.

Still willing to accept that life is supposed to suck.

Still willing to trust in the effectiveness of doubt.

Still stuck in the life that you really don't want.

Do you see the pattern here, the one with you as the commonality?

I'm a thought chaperone. I can help you with that.

Free delivery. And pick-up of the old stuff.

It's raining cats and dogs and all manner of invertebrates out there at the moment.

A particularly splendid ambiance from which to post here, seeing as it's been awhile.

I've been sorta busy.

I moved.

Across several states.

To be with the love of my life.

The third time around.

We affectionately call it 3.x.

It's only been a few weeks, and it feels like we've been doing this forever.

In a good way.

So there is hope for everyone out there who believes that love has
passed them by.

I am discovering it at age 50, and it rocks.

Prime ingredient for it to show up: being cool with it not showing up.

Loving your life the way it is. Enjoying your friends and how you orchestrate your free time, if not your waking hours in general.

Genuinely appreciating the heck out of as much as possible.

And not focusing on the topic whatsoever. When They say it will show up when you're not looking, They know what They are talking about.

Of course, this advice applies in most areas of desired change in one's life. Get busy being a happy person, and the waves of vibes around you will amass in the upper registers of the emotional scale to such proportions that the universe can't help but start drop-shipping the good stuff to you.

Because you let it in.

It's been hanging out, waiting for the crucial tipping point to be reached.

And viola!

Free delivery. And pick-up of the old stuff. It gets carted away, never to be pondered again.

Well, there might be a few rogue musings bandied about, but once you get a handle on this process, you won't worry about it any more.

And wouldn't that be just about the most amazing thing you can imagine?

I'm a thought chaperone. I can help you with that.

Opt out of the conspiracy

I've had occasion to tell my tale of adventure to a few people of late.

It's a fun story to tell, and I've been told to get the book and movie options started.

When I watch the person's face to whom I'm telling the story, I am inevitably struck by the salivating that goes on.

They can feel the genuineness of the adventure and the draw of that energy is amazing.

I wish everyone an adventure in their lives that makes them as happy as this one does me.

But there's a reason for that contentment.

I did the work to conjure what I wanted, and I'm doing the work now to let it in.

Because of this culture's messed up interpretation of dream attainment, each of those steps requires, at times, incredible amounts of discipline to not give in to group-think and keep either one of them from happening.

If I weren't so hyper aware of what is going on, I could easily resort to elements of self-sabotage that would prevent it all from evolving and expanding.

Dream big.

Receive.

Such a simple recipe, and such a convoluted process we've conspired to distort it into.

Opt out of the conspiracy.

shake that snowglobe

I'm recuperating from my high school reunion.

Lots of fun and a very late flight back home made for a very dull girl the last few days.

Small price to pay for bliss, however.

And I'm out of hiding now.

Today I handed in my resignation letter, so I can speak freely about moving to Minneapolis next month, the start of a new adventure.

I haven't been this excited since I left The States for a job in Italy way back in another lifetime.

When I compare the two situations, there are many similarities, and some differences.

Both situations came about because of a dream I tenaciously would not let go of. It played in the background of every moment of contrast that reinforced the awareness of what I didn't want, and only became more and more entrenched with every rocket of desire I set off while thinking about the having of it.

There was much moving around in the upper registers of the emotional scale both times that assisted in entrenching the good vibes and pulling the experiences to me sooner rather than later.

And of course, in each circumstance the universe knocked itself out with details and wonderful sernedipity while fulfilling my order. There is no way I could have conjured on my own with my puny imagination what transpired to get me where I went or where I'm going.

I hear my money will be accepted at most retail establishments in the Twin Cities.

My passport won't need a visa that requires sitting in an office every year to get a special stamp for me to live and work there.

And I won't be wondering “Is that all there is?” this time around. At 24 I seriously wondered if life had any more dazzle, any more surprises, and more inspiration left for me once I had attained what I said I had dreamed of for years.

At 50, the prognosis for the future is stellar.

I know there's enough, and there's always more.

Here's to new adventures.

How is yours coming along?

resistance is futile. and not very smart.

 

I'm finding that my body wants me to slow down.

It has some integrating to do.

Major life changes require a different pace, a softening of the demand we put on ourselves.

More naps, a lessening of activities that require attention so our minds can wander and process their end of the deal.

So I sit and meander and process and stare out into space with a mandate to do so.

Like this little guy on the plane in the seat in front of me.

It was probably past his bedtime when he got to his seat, but he made do with what he had.

We played dueling headphone jacks, and lots of peek-a-boo.

He had fun, and so did I.

Resistance is futile. And not very smart.

So let in the allowing. Let in the slow. Let in the fallow for a time.

Soon enough all kinds of new things will be creating themselves and inviting you up for the show. All those desires you've had over the years, they'll be manifesting in ways that your puny human imagination could never dream up on its own.

Thank goodness the how isn't our job. Handle the what, and the universe takes care of the details when we get out of the way.

I'm off to eat some fabulous zucchini chocolate cake.

Resistance is futile.

you gotta wanna

"This mental attitude is our personality and is composed of the thoughts which we have been creating in our own mind; therefore, if we wish a change in conditions all that is necessary is to change our thought; this will in turn change our mental attitude, which will in turn change our personality, which will in turn change the persons, things and conditions, or the experiences with which we meet in life.

It is however no easy matter to change the mental attitude, but by persistent effort may it be accomplished; the mental attitude is patterned after the mental pictures which have been photographed on the brain; if you do not like the pictures, destroy the negatives and create new pictures; this is the art of visualization." ~ Charles Haanel, The Master Key

"Sweeping, definite, gentle, persistent." ~ John Randolph Price

~*~*~

It is no easy matter to change our mental attitude.

Charles knew it way back in 1912.

John knew it in the 80s.

You know it, right this minute.

This minute that likely has some vague, or perhaps very distinct, nagging thought rolling around in the bowling alley of your mind, this thought that keeps showing up and that you keep giving credence to.

You think this thought, even though you might have done some other thinking that arrived at the conclusion that it really didn't serve you to think that thought any more.

You get what your contribution is, on some level, to the undesirable relationships and circumstances in your life, and you genuinely want to do something about that.

You wish that nagging thought would just go away, and it doesn't just go away.

Well, it can't, because you've thought about it and activated it enough that it's going to be around for awhile, just like the cigarette smoke on your clothes and in your hair after you leave the bowling alley.

That's where John's advice comes in.

"Sweeping, definite, gentle, persistent."

That other thinking, the one where you realize that the first thought doesn't serve you and that you want it to leave--it's got to be sweeping, definite, gentle and persistent.

That other thinking has to be of similar weight and proportion and size to what you are training it to take the place of.

Ponder for a moment how many times you have thought the nagging thought.

Given that we think upwards of 60,000 thoughts a day, the actual number of times could be quite staggering.

That's the precedence you're working with here.

You gotta wanna enjoy the freedom from that nagging thought so much that you are willing to put at least as much effort into that other thinking as you have the nagging thought.

It's only fair.

Sweeping, definite, gentle, persistent.

Of course that nagging thought didn't start out to be the gargantuan bugger it is today.

It started out small, very small, and accumulated power a little bit every day.

It relied on the measly influence of negativity to make its way to the top, too.

And you've got a much more effective tool this time around, if you choose to use it.

Positive thought.

Choosing to go this route will give you palpable, tangible evidence that you are making headway, every time you feel the relief that will come when you make the effort.

Relief equals power. Moving up the emotional scale one rung at a time gives you your power back.

And the amount of time necessary to reroute your thinking won't take as long as you've been mired in that nagging thought.

Could be decades we're dealing with there, right?

It will take as long as you decide it will take.

You just have to listen to that small voice in your head that constantly reminds you that there's supposed to be more to life than THIS.

You've just gotta wanna destroy those negatives, rearrange those pixels, regrind the holes in the bowling ball.

You gotta wanna feel the relief, feel good more of the time, feel in charge of your life.

You gotta wanna.

I knew it wasn't only me

Still, I knew, because of my own feelings, there was something wrong with me, and I knew it wasn't only me. I knew it was everybody. It was like a bacteria or a cancer or a trance. It wasn't on the skin; it was in the soul. It showed itself in loneliness, lust, anger, jealousy, and depression. It had people screwed up bad everywhere you went--at the store, at home, at church; it was ugly and deep. Lots of singers on the radio were singing about it, and cops had jobs because of it. It was as if we were broken, I thought, as if we were never supposed to feel these sticky emotions. It was as if we were cracked, couldn't love right, couldn't feel good things for very long without screwing it all up. We were like gasoline engines running on diesel.I was just a kid so I couldn't put words to it, but every kid feels it...From a very early age our souls are taught there is a comfort, and a discomfort in the world, a good and a bad if you will, a lovely and a frightening. There seemed to me to be too much frightening, and I didn't know why it existed.

~from Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller

Indeed.

Our souls are taught these dark places.

Or rather, our minds are conditioned to believe that these dark places are truths worthy of being attended to, deserving of investment of our time and energy.

Our souls, however, never buy into this crap.

They do not buy into the "truth" of dark places.

They merely continue to hold vigil for other truths becoming more self-evident as time goes by and we get tired of maintaining this charade that's been handed down to us.

This weekend, if you are going to be around people from your past who helped validate those dark places, try something new. When the thoughts you learned to practice and turn into your beliefs start churning around in the ruts of your neuropathways, try this new thought instead:

"It's not my truth in this moment, anymore."

Because it's not.

Give it a try.

It's exactly how the dark "truths" got a foothold in your mind in the first place.

Pick another truth to focus on.

The one your soul knows.

bliss and a ton of crap

This personal transformation business is fascinating stuff.

Popular culture tends to characterize the process with images of sublime serenity and blissful contemplation.

Anyone who actually engages the process however knows that before, during and after that blissful state arrives, there is a ton of crap to continuously dismantle and unlearn.

Some of that skewed perspective we attribute to ourselves initially came from others, and then we constructed more elaborate endless-loop thinking on top of that fine start.

Reorienting to what is actually true about who we are is much like the painstaking scraping layers of paint from the side of a building or the surface of a piece of furniture.

It's hard work, to the extent to which we buy into it needing to be that way, but makes for a much more hospitable foundation on which to apply the new colors and textures we consciously want.

It means learning new behavior and taking responsibility for it, which humans tend not to do gracefully or willingly, generally putting it off until circumstances are such that we see we have no other choice.

It means no longer being able to stop the blame buck anywhere else but right here for what is showing up in our lives over and over again.

It means sitting with really uncomfortable stuff and realizing that we aren't going to die because of it.

This personal transformation business is fascinating stuff.

Vibrational marketing

Vibrational marketing ala Abraham.

lizard brain, required high and collapse

When the lizard brain kicks in and the resistance slows you down, the only correct response is to push back again and again and again with one failure after another. Sooner or later, the lizard will get bored and give up.

~Seth Godin

Phase Three You've gone through two of the three phases of excitement and now it pays off. You hit pay dirt. Phase Three is where you lay out a plan and roll up your sleeves -- without the high, without the crash, but with the clarity and steady energy that makes things happen.

You won't have that energy unless you collapsed when you were supposed to.

-Barbara Sher

~*~*~

What I absolutely adore about the universe is that there are enough techniques and practices that get invented and floated around over the centuries that can apply to wherever you are in your spiritual/self-help evolution. Someone else has been there before and has scattered the bread crumb wisdom you can glean from their experience.

Seth, I love you to death, I really do, but when you describe pushing back with failure as "the only correct response" to make things happen, I agree to a point, but something is missing.

Same for you, Barb. Your work has made a huge difference in my life as well, but a high automatically followed by a collapse as required meandering to bringing ideas to life? There's something missing there too.

What I've come to count on in my process of emerging from merely permission existing to full out permission living is that there are always rogue, errant and woefully inaccurate beliefs underlying my inability to shift my thinking, which is what keeps doubts and fears in place and new ideas from being allowed their due quicker than they usually get access at Chez Today.

I would surmise that Seth has supreme unshakable confidence in his ideas and in his ability to navigate the world with them successfully, hence his technique works for him. He processed and discarded the pesky beliefs early in the game that might have kept him caught up in the permission existing that he so eloquently bashes and tweaks and prods every day. The education, publishing and marketing worlds are rampant with those beliefs, and we need his shining light of other-options-are-available.

Barbara engages resistance with everything she has, and her techniques embody the powerful tools that humor and accepting what is can be. But the repertoire of effective mechanisms to move away from existing and into living is much broader than to simply wait out the resistance that will definitely come up because the beliefs that trigger them haven't been examined and approved with a #5 sticker.

When we opt in to permission (ours) living, we choose not to be limited by beliefs that no longer serve us. We say yes to living and loving and playing and working in the manner that is right for us, criteria that have nothing to do with meeting anyone else's approval.

This is not anarchy. This is not blatant disregard of other people's feelings.

This is maintaining healthy boundaries, something this culture does a pretty good job of ignoring in its knowledge transmission to its populace through education, religion and other institutionalized thinking.

The folks who require us to get their approval don't know what healthy boundaries are because of this conditioning, and operate from the totally selfish perspective that they might accuse us of should we dare to live the way that makes sense to us.

And round and round it goes.

Resistance thrives on that churning, have you noticed?

Lizard brain too. Fight or flight kicks in, and away we go.

Boredom and collapse might indeed be what the doctor ordered: boredom with belief transmission that serves a select few, and the subsequent collapse of that belief system upon recognition of it by everyone else.

While that revolution takes place and builds momentum, we can be discovering our tribes, supporting our linchpins, and humoring at our resistance.

Like Seth and Barb said.

But get that #5 sticker from yourself.

my god, she found it

Depression is not only a result of inner punishment we inflict on ourselves for daring to think of inner freedom. It is also the result of despair, born of the inner knowledge of disloyalty to self, and waste of one's self and one's real assets over a lifetime of capitulation to inner tyranny. Fortunately as I shall explain when I discuss compassion, if the battle is engaged and sustained, spontaneity often wins out, because the great proclivity of most human beings is toward healthy growth, in the service of taking ourselves, our needs, our assets and our real hopes and desires seriously.

Unfortunately, this is often not evident because we suffer from the pressures of an impossible cultural value system of which both we and our parents are victims.

The combination of inner and outer pressures makes extrication from this vice extremely painful and difficult and requires considerable motivation.

...The struggle for a compassionate life includes nonjudgmental acceptance of all aspects of self, regardless of, and usually as a stand against, familiar and cultural value systems that are designed to obliterate pieces of ourselves. Unless we know and fight for our sacred right to be human, we invariably find that at least in some measure we live in a state of inner terror. Unfortunately, many of us have been terrorized for so long and so effectively that we no longer know what constitutes being human.

Compassion and Self-Hate: Am Alternative to Despair by Theodore Rubin

I found these quotes the other day in an old notebook from 2001.

It was one of the first references I had seen made by someone in a culturally sanctioned healing profession that described exactly what it felt like inside my body to be feeling what I was feeling, and why I was feeling that way, and what I could do about it, that made sense.

There's also a journal entry near this excerpt:

"So an ongoing plan to beat this bogus self-loathing and get on with why I am on this earth. I was talking to K. and couldn't quite articulate what keeps me from this. What came up was not giving myself permission which is a round about way of getting to the point. Anyway. Bombarding my psyche with affirmations I guess would be good to continue. Although that doesn't seem to have been very effective thus far. Why don't I think that I am worthy of good things? Is my upbringing devoid of approval so encompassing that I am unable to rise above it? It doesn't make any sense. I am capable, I have things to contribute to the world, so what's the hold up?

Don't know."

~*~*~

And another:

"Lots of old patterns reigniting, lots of learning, I hope. One, that I am ambivalent about wanting to be wanted or wanting to be loved; I'd prefer the latter but the former is so ingrained, it's amazing how automatic the reflexes are, immediate: "Why doesn't he want me?" and "Why aren't I good enough?" instead of "What kind of man is he," and "Would he be good for me?"

But I am learning. I have no idea what I'm replacing old patterns with, but I didn't know what I was doing when they were first created either...

This time I could step outside myself at times to catch a glimpse of what I was doing, what I was choosing to make happen. At one point I remember thinking, I am choosing to be this blissed out, why couldn't I choose that all the time, and not based on the opinion of someone else? What would that be like? What positions would I need to get off of? Or not? What negative energy zappers could I let go of?"

~*~*~

This version of me from nine years ago, I so appreciate her hanging in there and not giving up on figuring out the why and how to change what I was living in my head.

She made this amazing life that I'm living now, outside of my head, possible.

She kept looking for clues, for people, for techniques, for bodies of thought, for practices, for something that made sense of the inner tyranny, and the equally tenacious knowing that there was more to life than waking up in the clutches of it every day.

The knowing wouldn't allow her to give up.

And she found what she was looking for.

My god, she found it.

Peace of mind. Contentment. Knowing, on a cellular level.

The keys to that kingdom are different for everyone, but they all hang from the same ring.

Have you claimed yours yet?

permission living. yours. opt in.

Four years ago this week, I embarked upon a potentially pivotal phase of my life in a relationship that I thought at the time was the be-all and end-all of relationships.

Not so much.

The person that I was back then learned quite a bit from that experience and has moved on to morph through probably, I don't know, at least seven or eight personal transformations since then.

If I had stayed in that relationship, I would have been fully engaged in permission existing.

Other people's permission.

And merely existing. 

I opted out, because I knew that wasn't possible anymore, even back then.

Instead, I was heading for permission living.

Mine.

I opted in, finally.

I crossed that line in my head, the one that holds us back from being who we really are.

I said, "Yes," instead of "Maybe".

Epiphanies erupted.

Shackles fell away.

It was quite the revelation, really.

Scary, yes. Angst-ridden, yes. We humans love to torture ourselves with shift remorse as well as buyer's remorse.

This permission to be who we are, in our skins, that we dream about doing someday, we regain it in every moment, until it builds up to critical mass and becomes a platform from which to operate rather than the tenuous scaffolding it must start out as.

I celebrate my scaffolding and the angst, because it got me to the glorious knowing place I'm in right now.

No way around that process.

Opting out of permission existing.

Theirs.

And opting in to permission living.

Yours.

Click that button.

crack me open 1.1

So rockin' this mantra thing has been quite a ride lately.

In case you missed the 1.0 original post, here's a recap on the mantra: "Crack me open, universe. I'm making room for what doesn't serve me to be washed away; take over that vacated space with what does, please."

It's been humbling and ecstatic and rough and sublime, all at the same time.

Sort of like life is anyway, but with a purpose, a direction, an intention, a reason for the commotion, and a framework in which that commotion makes sense.

Which is more than I can say for the first four decades of my life.

Lots of commotion, not much purpose.

Well, that's not true.

If it weren't for all that previous commotion and the preferences it triggered in me, then this stretch of the journey wouldn't be the satisfying culmination that it is.

It's never too late. Ever.

For anything.

It's hard to believe that though, in the throes of seemingly directionless commotion.

I didn't either, at the time.

But part of me did, and never gave in to the confusion.

I didn't buy that it was supposed to define my life.

Nope, didn't ever totally buy into that concept.

And now here I am, veritably basking in a harvest of peace of mind that just won't quit.

That's not to say that there aren't periods of time in my days where frustration, irritation, clenching and gnashing take up residence on occasion.

But when they do, I know they are temporary placeholders.

On a cellular level, I know this.

Just like I knew back then that there had to be something more to life than a daily slog through hell.

Now, within a relatively short length of time of liberally dosing an apparently negative situation with a perspective borne from sporting new lenses from which to see, I'm free to choose differently.

Didn't have that option available before. I knew it was there, but my old lenses didn't make it available.

Choosing differently, thousands of times, instead of choosing the same, thousands of times.

Eventually it leads to basking.

I am a thought chaperone. I teach people why and how to get better at owning which pathways their 60,000 thoughts a day travel.  

Which beats the hell out of the daily slog.

zero grams of high fructose corn syrup

About this time 24 years ago, I was a convalescent, flat on my back.

I was recuperating from plastic surgery following a motorcycle accident in which it appeared a ghost melon ball utensil had scooped about that much flesh out of my lower left leg, just above the ankle.

The surgery was not cosmetic. It would allow me to continue walking on the planet, since the tissue wasn't growing back on its own from said melon ball scoop.

All of this occurred in Italian, on the boot-shaped peninsula where I was living a few lifetimes ago. The surgery was beautifully performed by a medical professional trained in the U.S., and my convalescing was beautifully orchestrated by several nuns from various places around the world, most of whom spoke no English but cooked up some awesome grub and changed bed linens like nobody's business.

One in particular fairly bubbled over with enthusiasm for the service she had been given the opportunity to offer; I think she was from Poland, and I remember looking forward to her whistling, her very wrinkled face and her focused intention on my healing. I always felt better when her shift came around, even though we couldn't communicate with the spoken word.

During that time I was at a crossroads in my young life, figuring out what might come next.

I knew that it would entail going back to The States, but where, and doing what? I had no idea.

One evening in the middle of recuperating from the surgery, I started making lists of what needed to get done in order for me to fly back across the pond when my ticket said I was, and what it might look like when I got to where I was going. A sugar high of desire took over and I couldn't sleep, I was so jazzed about the process. List after list after list was compiled and fawned over. That state lasted for several days, and while it probably helped propel me from my hospital bed back into real life a little sooner than I might have otherwise, it didn't really serve me.

That memory popped into my head last night as I was pondering yet another crossroads in my life, nigh these 24 years later. And it occurred to me that the kind of desire that I've come to label as the sugar high kind just wasn't a part of the picture this time.

You might be asking yourself, what exactly is a sugar high desire?

It's something or someone that feels like a dream come true, but really can't be yet because you haven't lined up with believing you can have it. And you don't want to see that because the sugar running in your system feels so much better than the numbness that was probably there before, which is a prerequisite to the sugar high happening in the first place.

It feels like rocket fuel in your veins. At some point the sugar inevitably burns off and the ungroundedness of the situation becomes woefully apparent, because you couldn't see it until that moment, since you were busy enjoying the sugar high.

A sugar high is a great improvement from numbness, and is part of the process of recovering how to feel, for those of us who grew up stuffing our emotions until we didn't know how we felt about anything. But some of us get stuck there, experiencing safety in faux emotion, and we don't move on to life with the real thing.

We don't move on to the knowing-I-deserve-those-dreams part.

Somehow I've learned to recognize the sugar high for what it is, and I continue to practice saying, "No, thanks," to circumstances that feel that way and pursue situations that still feel authentic after meeting the no-sugar-high criteria.

After a lot of hard work and believing I deserve my dreams, I now know that I do. This place I'm in now, several decades later, feels authentic.

Grounded.

Real.

There is no corn syrup on the label.

Not only do I know that I deserve what I want, I know that not allowing myself to have that--playing small--serves no one, least of all myself.

Everyone around me benefits from my knowing what I deserve, and my acting from that place. The ripple effect across however many degrees of separation there are between you and me is astounding.

You prove this to yourself every time someone on the street or in a store simply smiles at you, perhaps for no reason.

Feels pretty darn good, doesn't it?

Imagine a world where maybe even thirty percent of us have remembered how to allow ourselves to live the kinds of lives that make our hearts sing.

The ripple effect from that tsunami of bliss would feel pretty darn good, too.

Government-sanctioned policies would topple from their own overweight.

Citizens would create effective, empowering communities and services to take their place.

People might not ever learn what a sugar high feels like, because they wouldn't learn to stuff their pain.

Can you imagine a world like that?

Can you imagine your world like that?

I can.

Zero grams of high fructose corn syrup.

Tuesday afternoons make a big difference

I turned 50 recently.

More frequent AARP mailings are testimony to that fact.

What genuinely marks the occasion for me however is the profoundly pervasive feeling of anticipation and wonder and awe at just how incredible being alive on the planet can be.

When I turned forty, I felt like my life had really begun, finally. I started making choices that reflected who I wanted to be and where I wanted to go. Ushering in this newest decade, the bar has been raised and the possibilities fully engaged. The dreams that I dreamed for myself and kept alive, experienced as hopes and wishes, are part of my reality now. I'm proving to myself on yet another level what focus and intention bring about when we allow them to.

The subterranean work that went into that effort was sizable. Fists were pounded on table tops, and groans of frustration were set free into the atmosphere plenty of times. There is no way around the investment of time and energy and committing to a process that in the beginning seems nebulous and inchoate at best, unfathomable on the worst days.

But really, what else have you got goin' on a Tuesday afternoon that's worthy of your attention?

Sometimes that's what it all comes down to.

Crossing that line in your head, moment by occasionally endless moment, til you've got thirty or forty or fifty candles lit up in front of you.

Tuesday afternoons make a big difference.

I'll leave the bread crumbs out for you

Thank you, Irreverand Diva Carla for supplying me with this most excellent resource--an interview from NPR with Rick Hanson, the co-author of Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom. I've only been listening to the download for 20 minutes or so and am already pleased as punch about the work this man and his colleague have been doing to explain the link between the bread crumbs that wisdom traditions have been leaving for us for millennia, and what happens in our physical bodies when we follow those bread crumbs.

Evidence. It's not necessary for everyone. Some people arrive at this kind of information without fanfare and without angst. It just is.

Some people need to hear what qualifies as "proof" many, many times over before it sounds "real".

Maybe this material will serve that function for you.

And when you're ready to do something about it, when you've crossed that line in your head and heart, contact your neighborhood Thought Chaperone for some expert guidance on how to finally pull it off.

I'll leave the bread crumbs out for you.

outrageously blissmongered recipient

My friend Cris over at The Benefits of Positive Thinking.com is a fan of my Resistance Toys concept and has posted a review of the book at her site.

Thank you, Cris!!

You can see how she rolled with the ideas and incorporated the power of humor and human will into her day-to-day through her art. Photos included. Amazing stuff.

She also thought it would be fun to give away a copy of the Resistance Toys e-book. So that's what we're doing! Someone will be the outrageously blissmongered recipient, who has the best answer to this question:

"What outmoded beliefs could you begin to retire from your repertoire if you knew how?"

I can think of a few.

Check out Cris's site and fill in the form with your answer. We'd love to be sending YOU the book.

Promotion ends March 21st.

No restrictions apply that I am aware of.

Just bring really juicy answers.

The ones that make you a little queasy to think about.

Like that one.

it's getting realer and realer

Just sayin'--Seth Godin gets the whole mongering thing

Just sayin'--Seth Godin gets the whole mongering thing:

"Not just fear of terror (which is another word for fear). Fear of failure. Reminding people that an idea will never work, that the market is in failure, that all hope is lost--does that work very often? [emphasis mine]

"Fear mongering is a lousy profession, one that ought to be regulated, if not banned. I'm more in favor of hope mongering."

~*~*~

Just sayin'.

Busting Loose from the Belief Game

Creating beliefs, judging them, adding consequences, then applying tremendous power to make the now-enhanced pattern pop into your hologram and appear unquestionably real is the creative cycle that locks you into limitation and restriction in Phase 1 of the Human Game--and it applies to absolutely everything you see and experience in your business and throughout your hologram. The other interesting thing to note is that once an enhanced pattern is created in this way, and the experience recurs in your hologram, each successive time you look at it you say to yourself, "You see, that is how it works; it is real!" and the apparent evidence of its reality locks it even more deeply into your hologram.

Busting Loose from The Business Game - Robert Scheinfeld

~*~*~

Keep this is mind for the swing into a new year. Setting resolutions has very little staying power compared to the beliefs you have about those resolutions. Resistance Toys can help with that, and so can a Thought Chaperone.

May the bliss be with you, and it always is. All the best in TwentyTen!

Looking for shadow-work partner in crime

Most people recognize three kinds of marriage: the legal marriage, which describes the partners' standing under the law; the social marriage, which describes their partnership in the context of family and community; and the nuptials, which describes their spiritual intent. But we propose a fourth: the shadow marriage, in which the partners vow to accept and honor the full entourage of the Beloved's shadow characters. And with this internal commitment, they acknowledge that they are engaged in uncovering their own shadows and taking responsibility for their own projections, judgments, fears.

Romancing the Shadow--Zweig and Wolf

~*~*~

I'm thinking about adding this excerpt to my dating profile. It's the ultimate extreme sport, really. Ready to meet yourself and love it into existence? Me too. Let's above all support each other's intent to remain conscious and humor-laden. There is nothing to defend, and everything to gain.

And bring dark chocolate.

The price of admission is emotional vulnerability; the payoff is the wisdom that comes with it.

"We will examine romance, the divine madness of finding an erotic partner, which may be choreographed by the personal shadow in its quest to re-create the familiar feelings embedded in the way we were raised as children. For this reason, in adulthood, people abused as children often find abusive partners; children of alcoholics often are attracted to drinkers; children who suffered parental neglect may find themselves with neglectful lovers. When the shadow arranges a marriage, it puts us face-to-face with our unresolved childhood issues...We define this inner process of dating as the shadow's search for shelter in a projection that fits early childhood patterns. By re-creating the past, the shadow tries to help us feel safe, cared for, and loved. It attempts to achieve these ends by re-creating with a lover the primordial unity we felt in early life with a parent. Then we unconsciously transfer responsibility for our survival from our parents to our partners. And we imagine that our partners will love us the way our parents never did, nurturing our deepest needs and fulfilling our deepest desires.

"At the same time that the shadow is pulling us into the past, re-creating imaginary early bonds that we had with our parents, the force of the authentic Self is pushing us toward development, toward more consciousness and freedom. We propose that, with shadow-work, dating can become a conscious, meaningful process, rather than an unconscious, seemingly meaningless series of failures. Dating as shadow-work requires a willingness to look within and identify early childhood patterns and characters at the table, those sources of family shadow that influence our attractions and responses to potential partners. In addition, it requires a willingness to identify the wounds of previous relationships so that we don't unconsciously repeat the same patterns, becoming wounded again and again in the same ways.

"Instead of blaming others for not making the grade...or blaming ourselves for a fatal flaw...we can learn to identify when a particular character takes over and re-creates the same old patterns of pain. We can ...learn to honor the needs of the shadow without surrendering to them, and follow the call of the Self by risking greater authenticity. With this practice, we can become more authentic in a mutual exploration rather than showing a false front to achieve a preconceived outcome. As we become less defended and more vulnerable, we can learn at the same time to honor our own limits and protect our own boundaries. Finally, if we can trust the magic of the process, rather than strive with ego to make it happen in a particular way, it may rise to another octave--romance. And we may find a relationship that nurtures soul...

"For us, success at the dating stage is not primarily about whether a particular relationship will work out; if "work out" means marriage, it probably won't. Rather, it's about learning how to experience vulnerability and intimacy with another human being--and to gain awareness that comes with it. In our view, a relationship at an early stage is a process, not a product; it's a verb, not a noun. In these days of serial monogamy, the faces of people involved may change, but the process goes on...

"If one does not understand shadow-work and the notion of process, serial monogamy can seem meaningless and feel futile. But with the understanding that each of these seemingly unrelated relationships is part of an ongoing developmental process, providing grist for the mill in the next relationship, one can gain real meaning and value, as well as have more fun. The price of admission is emotional vulnerability; the payoff is the wisdom that comes with it. In this way, even a short relationship can enrich your life, in spite of not fulfilling your romantic dreams. And each experience can better prepare you for the next romance with the shadow."

~Romancing the Shadow - Zweig and Wolf

~*~*~

Doing shadow-work is all about embracing the freedom to be ourselves that was there all along, and that is a wonderful thing.

Let's take that to the next level however. I can envision a time when adults on their healing paths will be sharing this material with children on a global scale. We don't have to hand down that ancestral trunk of unprocessed gunk to the next generation, and require them to process it like we do (or don't). As we become comfortable with vulnerability (a word that carries a huge cultural shadow) and realize that's where our power lies, we are better able to teach through our example. Verbalizing choices and thought processes that awareness makes possible will help sever the ties that bind us to our legacies of pain.

I remember talking a class as a senior in high school that had "Marriage and" something in the title. I appreciate that there was even that surface level of awareness on the part of the school board for allowing a course like that to even be offered. But the content that would have better served those of us sitting at the round table could have arrived earlier, say in preschool, with appropriate developmental language and practice at every grade, if we can agree that organized schooling is in itself a good idea, but that's a whole nuther Pandora's Box.

The Tiger Phenomenon--Chasing the Illusion--Dr. Elsbeth Meuth

"What can we learn about our cultural conditioning regarding marriage, love, intimacy, fulfillment, and happiness... that is not unique to Tiger and his relationships., but rather plays out as an archetypal structure of the human evolution?...

"Fulfillment in sex, intimacy, love, relationship or marriage is not available through another or a circumstance. Fulfillment resides within - and that's the re-discovery for us as human beings. This re-discovery of an original state of being will open the possibility for bliss. And this bliss can then be shared with another versus longed for to be sourced by another.

"The Tiger phenomenon is a reminder for where we are in our human evolution and a call to examine the illusions each of us might live in. We choose to what extent we are ready and willing to evolve. Frequently the reaching of a critical point of pain is the wake-up call overriding the long held need for secrecy or pretense."

The Tiger Phenomenon--Chasing the Illusion--Dr. Elsbeth Meuth

~*~*~

Personal shadow, family shadow, cultural shadow--many layers leading to a simple conclusion: fulfillment resides within.

unpacking that trunk of unprocessed ancestral gunk

Instead of blaming others, some single people may blame themselves for their fate, feeling inadequate, unlovable, even hopeless. In this case, they themselves are not enough--thin enough, successful enough, smart enough, sexy enough. For some, this shame leads to endless routines of diets, workouts, therapy, singles events, and self-help books. All of this compulsive activity may cover up a deeper self-loathing and a desire to fix some secret flaw, which feels as if it's been there forever. This feeling--it's been this way forever--signals the legacy of a family shadow, a self-hatred that is absorbed from one or both parents, whether spoken or unspoken, and passed down from generation to generation.

~Romancing the Shadow--Zweig and Wolf

~*~*~

Our parents, god bless 'em, were delivery pipelines of family shadow. I like to call it that trunk of unprocessed ancestral gunk that gets pass down from generation to generation, until someone down the familial line declares, "Hey--the gunk stops here. I am going to face this vague, gloomy monster that appears to be controlling the show, and set myself and my progeny free."

The self-loathing that sabotages so many good intentions, so many projects, so many relationships makes up a big part of that unpacked trunk. And it's so hard for us to see that quality in ourselves. Other people can spot it a mile away, which may be a projection of their own shadow, depending on how their own trunk is organized.

Somewhere back in great, great, great-grandparent land were people who knew their awesomeness but were persuaded otherwise. This inaccurate perception was reinforced and bequeathed to the collective unconscious of the lineage, manifesting in each generation's unique quirks and permutations.

I picture it as a sort of permeable sleeve that fits over our DNA helix, allowing us to breathe but taking in tainted air. We tag that air as feeling like "home", since it's the only air we've known. By then we've forgotten who we really are.  

But that's why we're all here--to help each other remember, to see, to heal. We're all one, individualized globs of awareness and preferences that make for a very interesting world. You dispel my shadow, I'll dispel yours, and let's have some fun with this, shall we?

Because underneath that self-loathing is a fabulous, amazing, magnificent being just waiting to shine, free from reactivity and injected meaning to rock on in their particular fashion.

Think about that unpacked trunk this holiday. See if you can spot some of its contents in your relatives, in yourself, and take comfort in the compassion that might follow that awareness.     

You dispel my shadow, I'll dispel yours.

the slow, daily tasks of shadow-work

I came upon this phrase several times while savoring Romancing the Shadow (which appears to have gone through a metamorphosis of its own since its original publication--isn't that fascinating?), only further cementing my respect for Zweig's and Wolf's work, and their writing style:

"Doing the slow, daily tasks of shadow-work."

Whatever form of personal transformation you are drawn to explore, the essence of your success ultimately rides on whether you allow for its slow, steady I.V. drip of change to seep into your soul, or not.

The thought patterns you have now were acquired at that same pace, over decades of moments strung together that is your life. Those patterns can only be replaced at the same rate of adoption, overachiever persona be damned.

What is so amusing is that we already own a set of these daily tasks; it's just that they've taken up residence in shadow land. The thoughts that begin to leap into our minds in the morning, the onslaught of which doesn't diminish until we give in to sleep in the evening, their positive dopplegangers happen to hang out in the light.

There are coffeeshops in each kind of neighborhood. Which one do you drive up to for your daily fix?

a richer ambivalence

Despite our assumptions that betrayal is evil, despite our deepest wish to live life without being wounded, betrayal has the hidden potential to open us to something larger. Thus it involves more than personal psychology: It's a gateway to an archetypal, perhaps fateful reality. In our betrayers we recognize our own capacity to betray. In this way, betrayer and betrayed are tied together in an alliance of opposites. The Other who carries the shadow then becomes a vehicle of the gods, requiring from us a richer ambivalence, a capacity to love and hate.

from Romancing the Shadow: Illuminating the Dark Side of the Soul by Connie Zweig and Steve Wolf

~*~*~

I've pondered this ability to achieve "richer ambivalence" since I watched a friend of mine react to being accused of things that clearly weren't true by an acquaintance whose emotional stability was in question from the beginning. Rather than standing back in his knowing that there was nothing that needed defending, he basted in some pretty awful feelings for awhile about himself and about the accuser, that pushing-against that keeps what we don't want firmly in place.

I came up with the term "dupability" that encapsulated the experience for me. When we believe that other people's words have power over us, even people we hardly know, we buy into the concept of being "duped" or taken advantage of in some way. The fear of being taken advantage of is most active in those who grew up believing there is something that needs to be defended. When we stop investing energy in that belief, we can relax in the knowing that even though others will do what they do, we aren't "dupable".

Of course getting to that place may require some major league suffering before we're willing to try believing something new. 

The Other brings that gift in relationship after relationship, until we are able to receive it that way and do the work on ourselves that unlocks that "dupable" dynamic. If what Zweig and Wolf say is true, it's not personal, it's collective unconscious processing through us, filling our shadow dance cards by our simply being human.

We've seen "the enemy", and they are us.

Which is good news, because we're all we have control over anyway.

Blissmonger of the highest order

It's interesting to read the comments on this video at YouTube. Such a fascinating microcosm of humanity's range of expectation, possibility, projection, shadow. I see amazing talent, poise, joy, discipline. Some see imperfection, lack, us vs. them, threat, shame, guilt.

If there ever were a perfect response to why I be this blissmongering thing, this would be it.

honoring negative emotion

Booth: I wish you would say more about how one can honor those negative emotions, including anger.

Bly: Three honorings come to mind...Secondly, Marie Louise suggests that we regard our anger as a person and talk to it. Rather than acting as a conduit for our own anger, and focusing it on another person, one turns one's face and body to the anger itself, and asks: "What do you want from me? What do you want of me?" That is honoring the anger, just as we honor everyone whom we turn to face.

...There is the question of the anger itself being angry at us. The anger is angry with us for not honoring it, for treating it shabbily, for getting out of it what we want without ever bringing it in and introducing it to our friends, saying, "This is my friend Anger here. He's a lowly-paid assistant of mine."

...Another quality that comes to mind in when a person absorbs his shadow is a certain kind of humor. Lincoln had it. Someone asked Lincoln if he would find him a good government job, and Lincoln said, "I have very little influence in this administration." When a woman he met on a train told him he was one of the ugliest men she'd seen in her entire life, he didn't become offended. "What should be done about that?" he asked the woman. "Well," she shad, "you could stay home." Lincoln told that story on himself--he liked her answer.

Robert Bly--A Little Book on the Human Shadow

~*~*~

I laughed out loud when I read that story about Lincoln and the woman on the train. What a delightfully aware man he was, to be able to reach inside and come up with that question for the woman, and to embrace her answer as the healing humor it was for him. If this shadow stuff works the way I think it does, this woman was projecting something of herself in her comments, and Lincoln's centeredness was having none of it. No Velcro loops to catch on her hooks. He healed a little bit of her shadow right then and there with embracing his own.

What people say to us has nothing to do with us. It's a comment on where they are in their process, and it's a comment on ours in how we choose to react. Our reaction has everything to do with us, a reflection of how we've trained others to treat us, based on how good we've gotten at giving our power away. Unlearning that skill, and detaching from the reactivity that comes with it, is the most important work we can do, for ourselves, for our children, for the world.

Abe, you rock.

the students know the teacher has his crow with him

Marie Louise von Franz says somewhere that a human being who has done work with the shadow or absorbed the shadow gives a sense of being condensed. Other people willingly give him or her some authority in moral matters. If a teacher has worked with his own shadow, she says that students, no matter how young they are, sense it, and discipline in that room will not be difficult, because the students know the teacher has his crow with him. Other teachers, she says, who have not worked on their shadow, can talk about discipline all day and never get it. I like the idea that the work a person does on his or her shadow results in a condensation, a thickening or a densening, of the psyche which is immediately apparent, and which results in a feeling of natural authority without the authority being demanded.

Robert Bly--A Little Book on the Human Shadow

~*~*~

I can feel into this cream of mushroom soup, this condensing, or the absence of it, in any classroom, any conference room, any tweet. People who have done the work and taken their shadow power back are palpably strong without needing to spit orders or throw things, steal words or art, passively live. They glow from the inside and are forever curious, vigilant even, about cooking up that shadow and eating it.

how to keep despots, dictators and other tyrants out of office

Using language consciously seems to be the most fruitful method of retrieving shadow substance scattered out on the world. Energy we have sent out is floating around beyond the psyche; and one way to pull it back into the psyche is by the rope of language. Certain kinds of language are nets, and we need to use the net actively, throwing it out. If we want our witch back we write about her; if we want our spiritual guide back we write about the spiritual guide rather than passively experience the guide in another person.

Language contains retrieved shadow substance of all our ancestors, as Isaac Bashevis Singer or Shakespeare makes clear. If language doesn't seem right at the moment, painting or sculpture may be right, or making images with watercolors. When we paint the witch with conscious intention, we soon find out whose house she's in. So the fifth stage involves activity, imagination, hunting, asking. "Always cry for what you want."

People who are passive toward their projected material contribute to the danger of nuclear war, because every bit of energy that we don't actively engage with language or art is floating somewhere in the air above the United States, and Reagan can use it. He has a big energy sweeper that pulls it in. N one should make you feel guilty for not keeping a journal, or creating art, but such activity helps the whole world. What did Blake say?--"No person who is not an artist can be a Christian." He means that a person who refuses to approach his own life actively, using language, music, sculpture, painting, or drawing is a caterpillar dressed in Christian clothes, not a human being. Blake himself engaged in his shadow substance with three disciplines: painting, music, and language. He illuminated his own poems, and set them to music. There was no energy around him that politicians could use to project onto another country. One of the things we need to do as Americans is to work hard individually at eating our shadows, and so make sure that we are not releasing energy which can then be picked up by the politicians, who can use it against Russia, China, or the South American countries.

Robert Bly--A Little Book on the Human Shadow

~*~*~

We elect officials with our psyches, not our spent chads.

to project, or not to project, that is the question

The issue is not so much that we do project but how long we keep the projections out there. Projection without personal contact is dangerous. Thousands, even millions of American men projected their internal feminine onto Marilyn Monroe. If a million men do that, and leave it there, it's likely she will die. She died. Projections without personal contact can damage the person receiving them.

We have to say also that Marilyn Monroe called for these projections as a part of her power longing, and her disturbance must have gone back to victimization in childhood. But the process of projection and recall, done so delicately in tribal culture, face to face, goes out of whack when the mass media arrives. In the economy of the psyche her death was inevitable and even right. No single human being can carry so many projections--that is, so much unconsciousness--and survive. So it's infinitely important that each person bring back his or her own.

Robert Bly - A Little Book on the Human Shadow

And then there are lies to the soul

Lie Number Seventeen:

We are helpless

There are lies that make news: lies told by public figures and celebrities. There are also simple everyday lies, lies told by everyday people to avoid embarrassment.

And then there are lies to the soul.

A lie to the soul runs deeper than any other kind of lie. It is like a river. Like a river designed to chill something deep down inside us.

It's a lie whose unconscious mission is to kill the spirit. To remove the passion, and to deny our uniquely human power.

The lie is created to convince us that we have no power. That we are helpless.

But it is not true that we have no power. The truth is, we have so much power, it sometimes scares us...

iMindShift blog - Steve Chandler

~*~*~

So true, so true.

Good thing our souls don't buy it.

We feel so awful in these moments because the part of us that knows better refuses to go there with us. The part of us that learned to tell these lies so well thinks it's a vindication of its inaccurate perceptions.

But it's not.

It's yet another opportunity to choose again.

And what do you choose?

that do-hickey in the shower

My hair is longer than it's been in a long time.

I noticed the water lapping ever higher around my feet in the shower from my now longer hair catching in the drain, so I looked around for a slotted drain cover to nip that situation in the bud.

It works, and works perfectly.

When I remember to use it.

Which can be an on-again, off-again thing, given that I clean it out every time and put it somewhere other than the drain to dry out.

It's oh-so-easy to forget to use it when I hop back in and fall back into habit, unless I consciously put it somewhere I will see it and practice using it again.

Ah ha! I thought this morning. Just like Resistance Toys.

Those reminders I created for myself to help me stop practicing the thoughts and behaviors I didn't want anymore, and install the ones I did.

One works for clogged rains, another works for clogged thinking.

Either way, I'm setting myself up for satisfaction.

Do you have a system like that in place? What does it look like?

And more importantly, what does it feel like?

pretty fanschabulous

An Unnumbered Grouping of Days of Resistance Toys - A

This is a stack of Jenga blocks.

You may notice that it's slightly out of alignment.

On more than one plane.

If we could photograph how our beliefs line up with our dreams and desires, this is how that arrangement would look.

Sort of a curvature to document how we bend over backwards to accommodate others.

Jabs and pokes whenever we judge, criticize, blame and fear something in others.

Jabs and pokes whenever we judge, criticize, blame and fear something in ourselves.

Our inner being knows that neither state is accurate, and doesn't go there with us.

Which makes those emotions feel as uncomfortable as they do.

Our inner being's alignment is like a perfectly cut two-by-four.

And it holds the place for us to slowly line those blocks up when we wake up to the game.

And that feels really good.

An Unnumbered Grouping of Days of Resistance Toys

If you aren't yet familiar (gasp!) with what Resistance Toys are, enlightenment awaits.

Go ahead, we'll wait until you get back.

~*~*~

Given my dislike of even a vague directive to conform to a list of objectives, I am launching the 'An Unnumbered Grouping of Days of Resistance Toys" campaign.

When I feel like it and when I am inspired with an idea, which is happening fast and furiously these days--hence the campaign--I will be posting a new Resistance Toy that has been created by me and perhaps road tested by other blissmongering types who like that sort of thing.

To celebrate creativity.

To have a ton of fun.

To crack myself up.

And to inspire you to create your own. Once you get the hang of it, Resistance Toys are everywhere, just waiting to lend their transformative talents to your life-enhancement efforts.

I'd love to post images of what you create too, if you are so inspired to send them, or add a link to their existence on the web to a comment below (this does NOT mean you, scum-sucking spam bottom-dwellers).

To get things started, here is a reprise of the one that jump-started this whole wacked thing in the first place:

Intrigued by what resistance toys can do for you? Check out the e-book here.

And if you are drawn to work/play on those pesky beliefs that dredge up the efficacy of Resistance Toys on a 'go-deep" level, contact me.