Getting There On Time--At Last!

Turns out that when I really want to go someplace--not just thinking this is what I want (or should want, or should do out of some fear of what will happen, or, especially, some fear of what someone will think about me, etc.), but a true path of joy for me, I find that I feel a downhill/downstream pull that gets me there with a lot less energy than usual...almost as if the way were lubricated with new snow and my sled just speeds over those old patches that used to typically hang me up and "make me late"....

If, additionally, the decision to go is itself a triumph (such as knowing my life is now set up so that I can go do a half-day meditation retreat on a Wednesday morning, after having spent Monday at the beach, having been able to stay up late the night before, and knowing I'll spend Friday out playing...whilst still paying all my bills...and whilst in different stages of exploring two different job opportunities [both of which I'll probably turn down because they're not fun enough])......

or a stretch in a positive direction (such as deciding to sort of "come out of the closet" by attending a public class on how to apply one's meditation and cognitive coaching/counseling skills toward depression...when I used to be ashamed [yes, ashamed!] to even let close friends know that I'm depressed or that I struggle with depression)......

then, I find that the triumph and stretch both generate excitement for me......

which generates additional energy and an almost kid-like, "Is it time to open presents yet?!?" anticipation to get there...and, next thing I know, I'm going, "Wow, I'm early. This is new territory: How do I act?!?" ;-)

So, in short, following the path of joy and excitement seems to dissolve my lateness pattern. Which sort of makes logical sense...since (like, "duh!") if I'm drawn to go to whatever it is because I'm feeling genuine joy and excitement about it, then it's really no surprise to find myself counting the minutes until I can leave, and in that "can't wait to get there" state of mind.... Ironically, if I'm in that state of mind, then it barely bothers me if I happen to be late anyway...which might just be the true power of all this....

Wondrously Blank

I received the following 7 paragraphs via a mailing list I'm on (see http://www.savebiogems.org/), and was compelled to comment....

WONDROUSLY BLANK: A PLEA FOR THE ARCTIC NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE by T. A. Barron

The world would be far poorer, Aldo Leopold famously observed, "without a blank spot on the map." Yet it wasn't long ago that U.S. Senator Frank Murkowski from Alaska stood in the Senate chamber and declared indignantly that the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was no more remarkable than a blank piece of paper.

What, really, is a blank spot on the map? What is its value? These questions are difficult to answer -- especially for a money-driven, mechanized society such as ours.

A blank spot, despite its lack of attention from mapmakers, is not empty. While it is devoid of cities, villages, roads, and monuments (as well as drill rigs, trash heaps, billboards, and wrecked vehicles) -- it may be full of other attractions. Such as scenic wonder. Or silence. Or wildlife in grand abundance.

And something else, as well. A blank spot on the map often contains precious opportunities for people to explore their outer world -- and their inner selves. For a blank spot implies no limits. It is a place of endless reach -- for the sunlit horizon, as well as for the human spirit.

No place on our planet is more richly, wondrously blank than the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Within its nearly twenty million acres of terrain lies the last stretch of protected coastline in Alaska, as well as the coastal plain -- the fragile tundra wetland that is America's premier birthing ground for arctic wildlife. Caribou migrate over 1,000 miles round trip every year to reach this place; migratory birds from every corner of the country seek refuge here.

This is the place that George Bush, Dick Cheney, and their supporters in the energy industry want to invade and cover with roads, drilling pads, and heavy machinery. To fill in the map. To darken one of the most pristine spots on Earth.

If they do succeed -- on the spurious claim that our nation absolutely must suck out whatever oil lurks beneath this land (even though the most inflated estimates show the Refuge providing only a tiny fraction of America's needs, and only delivering that a decade from now) -- they will, indeed, darken this spot. With the inevitable oil spills on the tundra. With the bodies of dead caribou calves. And, worst of all, with the shadows of a lost opportunity to protect a place that is truly sacred -- and wondrously blank.

My experience is that everything in the natural world is in a perfect state of equilibrium: You can learn to actually feel this as self evident reality if you spend enough time out in nature. Even if you're not yet able to tune in consciously to the balanced harmony of the natural world, I've observed (in the many people I've taken out into nature with me), that the bioelectrical system that is your human body actually adjusts to this, entering a deeper state of equilibrium itself while out in nature (even with physical and emotional healing effects), whether you're consciously aware of it or not.

Our artificial/developed/humanized world is generally very out of balance. The man-made world is also, relatively speaking, very ugly. I definitely do *feel* the difference, and do my best to spend at least one day a week out in the true beauty and balance of nature. Why devote 1/7 of my life to this...?

Otherwise, the "out of balance" state of the artificial/ developed/humanized world of steel and concrete and machines and noise and stress and ugliness and power plants and pollution and traffic and human dysfunction and paved-over Earth and pipes and poles and wires and billboards and commercials and human waste and garbage and all the different chemicals and electromagnetic fields and radiation from lights, electricity, cell phones, radio waves, microwaves, TV's, computers, etc. that stream through our bodies every second of every day become "the norm"...and I forget what *true* balance really feels like...and what *true* beauty is...and how each of us needs to be *truly* healthy in body, mind and soul.

Without undisturbed nature areas, I lose my reference point for "natural" and "normal" and "good" and "balanced" and "beautiful" and "healthy"....

It's been said that nature is "food for the soul." So, as we develop more and more of the few remaining blank spots on the map, drill or mine or pave over more and more of our pristine nature/wilderness areas, are we actually starving our own souls...? What happens when the mind of a species starves its own soul...? If we can't put a dollar sign or monetary price on the human soul, how do we know what it's worth or true value is...?

Furthermore, if there are no blank spots on the map, and we all become calibrated to the "out of balance" ugliness of the artificial/developed/humanized world, how will we even be able to even know/remember what true balance and true beauty feels like...? What happens when the knowledge of what true balance/beauty actually is is finally eradicated from all our maps and, thus, disappears from human existence and becomes extinct from human experience forever...? If we have neither a map nor reference point for genuine, unadulterated, harmonious beauty and balance, how will we ever be able to bring our artificial/developed/humanized world more into a state of harmonious balance and beauty...?

So, by developing the blank areas on the map are we actually starving our souls and exterminating true beauty and balance from our world forever?

There's one way to know for sure. I'd encourage every human being, as an utmost life priority, to GO TO a blank place on a map as a destination, while they still exist. Spend at least 3 or 4 days there, preferably in a wilderness area, and see how you feel, how it changes you.... See if it doesn't "reset" you back to your _natural_ state after "the city wears off"....

If you never do this, you may never know what your natural state really is...ie, what it feels like to be in the natural human state, what it feels like to be YOU in your natural, human state.... I assert that when you know and experience this for yourself, you will KNOW the truth of it, without a doubt. No "proof" will be required for you, as it will be so unavoidably and undeniably obvious to you.

In my experience, it usually takes 3-4 days for "the city to wear off." Yet, after it does, and your system is rebalanced--or "balanced" for perhaps the first time--there's a whole different experience of reality, a pristine clarity that emerges.... As all your artificial stress and worry slowly melts away, and all the incessant mental chatter begins to quiet, a dormant yet essential part of you awakens...and the world "comes alive" in new ways: Colors, smells, sounds, and tastes are more vibrant.... The infinite shapes, depths, and textures tweak your consciousness out of the mundane and relatively boring norm of the "straight lines, flat surfaces and mostly boxy shapes of Dead Things"...as everything around you begins to pulsate with Aliveness and three- (sometimes four-) dimensional beauty....

You remember "who you really are" (as opposed to "who you think you are" or "who society tells you you are"). Finally liberated from all the stress and worry and rushing around and non-stop distractions of "modern life in the developed world"...finally free of all the ubiquitous external messages about who you are and what you should hold as important (designed to keep you buying and surrendering your life energy to keep others in luxury and power)...you . . s l o w d o w n . . and reconnect with what's truly important in life...and with what's truly important to YOU....

A clear perspective on your life and the world that is both broader and higher than the perspectives that you were capable of accessing from within "civilization" emerges almost effortlessly. You begin to notice new ideas. Powerful, ingenious ways of seeing things that you somehow never thought of before. Untapped creativity and higher wisdom starts to become available to you...providing you with new and better solutions to the challenges and problems of the mundane and out-of-balance city life. (Einstein said, "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.")

Please do NOT believe me on this: Try this out for yourself and see if this (or something even better) is true for you....

(But, if you do, please leave your TV, radio, cell phone, video games, magazines, and gadgets behind. Leave at home any thing which will distract your attention from the present moment...and from the symphony of rich and pristine stimuli reaching your senses...and from the even more beautiful--yet so easily missed--SILENCE which provides the context for the symphony...and from connecting with the natural majesty, balance and wisdom before you.... Otherwise, you'll miss the opportunity to experience something truly new, refreshingly different and vitally important out there...and inside yourself....)

After spending several days in a genuine wilderness area, you may also experience a deeper calm, a brighter bliss, a more perspicacious wisdom and a higher high than you've ever experienced. I believe this to be the natural human state (high, calm, blissful, brilliant, in perfect balance/harmony) that gets occluded (without our even being aware of it) by the developed, mechanized, populated, artificial and "civilized" world in which most of us have lived nearly every day of our lives.

Reminds me of the science experiment with the frogs and boiling water. Throw a frog into boiling water and it will, of course, jump out immediately...and survive. The drastic change from a healthy environment to a hostile one is so obvious, and the frog reacts instinctively to liberate itself from the harmful environment.

Put a frog in water at room temperature, however, and slowly turn up the heat one degree at a time...and the frog eventually dies in the boiling water. The slower, subtle changes go unnoticed, as the frog continually recalibrates "normal" to equal the current state of the "only slightly more unhealthy that before" environment. In this process, the natural, internal, instinctual alarm which would tell the frog to jump out when the temperature starts getting critical, is repeatedly silenced, repeatedly repressed.

You are the frog, and the ever developing world is raising the temperature slowly, but steadily.... Are you aware, or have you silenced your inner alarm? How will you know for sure...?

If we have repressed our instinctual inner alarms, can we wake up to how we are re-calibrating "normal" to match our increasingly unhealthy artificial/mechanized/developed world, or will we die in the boiling water? What if we have no more reference points (blank spots on the map) of what non-boiling water even feels like? If we could get the frog to wake up to the slowly rising temperature, yet the whole ocean were boiling (no blank spots on the map), where would the frog jump to...?

Or, what if just a small minority of the frogs were more sensitive, and realized (in scalding pain and terror) both that the metaphorical temperature was critically high, and that the actions of other blissfully less sensitive frogs were rapidly removing the last few non-boiling places for any of them to jump to...?

How would the aware frogs awaken their brothers and sisters from their dreams of "more, bigger, faster" before it was too late for any of them...?

To quote Einstein again, "Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex and more violent. It takes a touch of genius--and a lot of courage--to move in the opposite direction."

But, how do millions (billions?) of intelligent fools awaken to a touch a genius (and a lot of courage)...?

Two of the most powerful ways I know are though Silence and time spent in the few Wondrously Blank and Silent places left on our maps.

How things play out on this planet may not be within your ultimate control (although it might!) Who You are amidst all of it definitely is, however....


Thought for Today: "Environment is stronger than willpower." How is yours shaping you?


FYI: Here's the latest on the fight to keep the Arctic Refuge Wondrously Blank:
http://www.nrdcactionfund.org/

Loneliness and The Metaphor for My Current Life

The metaphor I've been playing with for myself recently is "a finger on the hand of God/Spirit." (I'm not even sure just what I believe about "God" or "Spirit", by the way, but this metaphor has been an interesting vantage point from which to view the current circumstances of my life and ponder the true nature of reality.) If one finger is flailing around in its constant efforts to control and push its one finger agenda, how can he possibly be aware of, let alone in sync with, what the hand of God is doing...? (let alone the arm or body!)

If I can let go and truly surrender my will and trust--ie, "be still" or "just be" long enough--won't that enable me to truly feel/sense/see what the divine hand is doing and be "in the harmonious flow" with the divine plan as it's unfolded? Better yet, won't that also allow me to relax, stop efforting and struggling at life, and just sit back and enJoy the divine ride downstream, with the current (rather than trying endlessly to "get there" via pushing the river or trying to swim upstream against the current)....

...and when I see the tip of my finger has been brought in contact with something or someone in the world that's "itching," I'll then exert effort to kindly flex and wiggle my metaphorical fingernails (my gifts/skills/love/compassion) until the itch is suitably scratched. Or, perhaps there's no itch at all, but I merely respond to what life has brought me today by being as authentically "mySelf" as I can in relation to this person or situation I find before me.

Carolyn Myss says that, "Becoming conscious is the capacity to enter into and live with the mystery full time." So, how far can I go...how much can I "take my hands off the wheel" of my life...and let go into the mystery as it unfolds...before I freak out and need to go running back to (the illusion of) being in control of my life again...?

Buddha/Jesus, weren't they highly conscious souls...both with "magical powers" and living in the flow and spirit of the divine mystery, rather than trying to exert their own will upon it? If God/Spirit/My Higher Self were to provide me a divine signpost to light the way to my path/purpose within the higher scheme of the divine agenda, what would that signpost be...? Well, if I were to ask the Damselfly, it would say to me, "What would you like it to be, Rich?" To which, I'd reply, "Joy and Magic and Passion and Excitement."

Talk about Simplicity! Living in this way, there's only ever one question, one most ask in any situation, "What words/actions in this moment *feel* most joyful/exciting/magical to me?" Then, life reduces, simply, to following the magical path of my joy/excitement...and summoning the courage to say "No" to all other decisions/actions...while, of course, trusting that "the fate of one is the fate of all".... Ie, by each of us following our own highest path, we will become our perfect "shape" to fit beautifully in with all the other "puzzle pieces" of the "divine collage" as it unfolds....

(Now, I'm not saying that my answer has to be anyone else's answer...nor theirs mine. But, if we truly are free to create our own reality, this is the one I'm about inviting/creating now: Joy, Magic, Passion, Excitement. Quite frankly, I've really become painfully _bored_ living the fear-based life of control and effort and struggle and worry and perceived lack...which is the other reason I've really become disinterested in "general life coaching"...since I think I've finally defined my niche as a coach: Working with people who really no kidding want to make their lives about awakening the magic of co-creating the absolute highest reality they can possibly imagine...co-creating with the Divine Intelligence, that is...with me serving as a sort of mid-wife or facilitator.)

Do you think it's magical to have such an atrocious set of challenging and disheartening circumstances go down for my recent Puerto Rico trip, yet to be largely "untouched" and even somewhat grateful, as if I were protected/blessed by the belief that this is *exactly* the experience I was meant to have? Not only did the Divine Intelligence very clearly say, "Rich, I don't want you in Puerto Rico and I don't want you with Carmen"...but in the process, She also taught me that I don't need to dive in so far, that I could accomplish the same by just dipping my toe in a bit (saving time/energy and moving me faster toward wherever that open door awaits me)...to see if that path is an closed door...or an open one as evidenced by the magical synchronistic flow with the emotional backdrop of joyful excitement.

Another gift of my Puerto Rican ordeal: I also managed to practice stepping "back into myself" to try to find the receiver/experiencer of what was happening (as John Astin suggested to me when I asked him about depression at the "Gift of Silence" gathering at his house last month), saying to myself, "Wow, look at this that "the awareness" or "my spirit" gets to experience...how does it feel, smell, taste, sound...?

I've already declared my intention with the name of my website/business...and how else am I going to awaken unseen magic but by truly listening to a higher will/intelligence and making space in my life/mind/energy for that divine magic to work through me? How far can I let go and trust and surrender my free will to God/Spirit's higher will...ie, how fully conscious of the divine magic can I become by entering into and living with the mystery full time?

I really don't know. But, I think that the only real limiting factor is my fear (and the limiting beliefs/assumptions that come out of that fear). And, aren't almost all fears just "fear of death" in the end?

The Abraham teachers of Abraham-Hicks say, "The Basis of Your Life is Freedom; the Purpose of Your Life is Joy." And what if the only thing that really needs to change to experience that are my fear-based/limiting beliefs? (So much easier than trying to change the external world, circumstances and other people!)

In my heart, I REALLY long to feel and be one with Spirit/God/Higher Intelligence...I really, more than anything else right now, want to experience the divine light/presence.... And, how can that inner knowing be wrong?

(Interesting to notice that I'm definitely changing: I used to long for respect/approval, success/prestige, money/toys, women/sex, love/relationship, etc. And, with years of effort and sacrifice, I experienced all those things! Yet over and over, like glass after glass of salt water in a spiritual desert, each failed to quench my existential thirst for more than a relatively brief bit of time...and just left me thirstier and thirstier after each hard-earned glass.)

So, I'm trying to align the priorities of my actions/choices with the magnitude of my heart's desire for "something truly magical". I've been asking myself my entire life, "What is my life really worth? What would I be willing to trade it for it? For what would I give my life, even die for?" Well, I think having my life infused by magic via a conscious, genuine, continuing experience of connecting with a Truly Higher Intelligence is one thing I'd be willing to put my life on the line for.

Who knows, maybe death is just a portal to inconceivably higher dimensions of being, cleverly cloaked by our mortal fears? Yet, each time I've let go and truly faced death there was some divine intervention (sometimes truly magical as in the case with Jenn astro-projecting into my car from a dream thousands of miles away to help me get home safely that night I blacked out behind the wheel years ago driving from San Francisco to Palo Alto). This also felt like I got to see the hand of God at work. It said, pretty clearly, "No, Rich, I still want you there in the Earthly dimension."

It seems, now, that what Spirit/God seems to be wanting is for me to experience loneliness. Or, is the equation I'm learning really that "loneliness" = "freedom" + "fear" ? With some basic math, that becomes "freedom" = "loneliness" - "fear"? (Finally, a practical use for all that algebra I studied! ;-) And does "union with God/Spirit" = "freedom" + "consciousness"?

Mother Theresa said, "I know God would never give me anything I couldn't handle. I just wish He didn't trust me so much." Love that.

If there's one thing I learned from sitting in silence for 10 days at the Vipassana retreat last year, it's that every experience (which is just a set of sensations) is temporary...like bubbles arising in a glass of soda which float to the surface of consciousness, stay there for awhile, and then pass away, making space for next bubble to arise....

So, I know this lonely period of "letting go" is temporary...and that I can make it through it. Then, for what higher purpose could it be that I'm meant to be experiencing such a profound amplification of aloneness, both personally and otherwise (coaching, teaching yoga/meditation in the juvenile halls, both bands I'm in, technical contracts, several close friendships, etc. all fading away simultaneously)?

If I were to look up the hand to see the movement of God's arm, would I find the arm is moving the hand/finger away from these other things/people since it's the shortest path to Him from where I am now (perhaps, even, in direct response to the desire in my heart)? Or that it's the best path to some other divine experience that I can't even conceive of now--one which my Higher Self, aware of the whole picture, already gladly paid the price of loneliness for...?!?