Present or Absent?

Four years ago, I found myself in South India, participating in the foundation of a school in a small, poor community. The school taught English to all who came. The adult students became my friends, and with them I had many lively interchanges, but it was the children who captured my heart. They were so eager to learn. With only occasional lapses, they were devotedly present to the learning process.

Early on, roll call was eagerly anticipated by the children. They proudly stood and announced their presence, grasping the opportunity to voice a new-to-the tongue unfamiliar English word, the word 'present.' And truly present they were.

On one occasion, the youngest of my students popped to his feet to answer. Perhaps because of his youth, he had a tendency to be easily distracted, his attention flagging from time to time. That day he belted out his answer...ABSENT!!! The class erupted in laughter, perhaps only knowing that the wrong response had been delivered. How he came to learn his unknowing response, I could not guess.

Haris did not seem to be embarrassed by his mistake. His grin never faded. But he earned a nickname that day that stuck with him...'absent boy.'

As I have reflected on the scene from time to time, I realize that Haris taught me an

important lesson that day. In the midst of all the fascinating offerings life gives, I have a tendency toward scattered, if not completely shattered focus. Easily I can unconsciously become the absent boy, however well-intentioned I may be.

On the next page is a story I wrote about Haris and his family...

An Attitude Adjustment

The cashier gently suggested that I might consider an attitude adjustment. But she did it so cheerfully that I didn’t even think to defend.


If you just give me the two words ‘attitude adjustment’… a recalcitrant, perhaps nasty child comes to mind, one certainly deserving corrective action. And usually, if someone would suggest that I was the one in need of the adjustment, protest would spring readily to my mind, if not my lips. Today it did not.

I was at the home center, buying shingles for a roof repair, acting on auto-pilot, I suppose. I smiled as I stepped up to check out, and when the cashier asked how I was, I returned a characteristic reply (for me) that included a report on how messy roof repairs can be, how working on a ladder is not my favorite thing, and that it just had to be done…grin and bear it, so to speak. This I shared with her in my inimitable humorous way, of course.


Then she dropped the bomb! She sweetly offered me another way to look at it…an attitude adjustment. And she did it so sweetly that I did not even wince. I even agreed with her that it was only my perspective that made the job unlikeable.


Thank God for cashiers…and for the reminder that I do not have to continue to look at things the same way as I have habitually. I can choose differently. I can change my life.

First Thought

I woke a little before 6 this morning. Immediately on waking, a thought came to me...a word. Awareness. Awareness. As I lay with the thought, another word attached itself. Grateful. Grateful Awareness. Today is a day of grateful awareness.

While sipping my chai, the backside of my awareness came to me in flowing lines.

Blindfolded by Choice

I stumble blindly on

feeling my way

awkwardly

urgency moves me

commands my haphazard steps

but why I do not know

I topple, exhausted

compulsion spent for now

despair lurks

then I finger the blindfold

I wear as habit

protection from unimaginable fates

slip it aside

with hands too weak

to untie the knot

light pierces my knowing

uncomfortable and revealing

I snap my sleep mask back in place

but tantalizing images

have caught my attention

too enticing to abandon

raggedly I resume my movement

peeking from time to time

slowly making friends with light

ahhh...

things go so much easier now

let me ever remember

A Day of Possibilities

Today is a day of possibility...for you...for me. I wrote this earlier, and then found I needed time to ruminate about it.

So often I look at a day in terms of it's insufficiencies, i.e. it's problems...what I don't have right now that I need...when the important business that I'm waiting on will show up.

But what if I presume that all that I envision, all that I desire, all that I hope for is indisputably waiting for me...the travel, the new Mahindra hybrid pickup, the bookshelves full of new books, the many fine meals shared with friends, the great wines drunk, the wildernesses explored.

What if life is like a game show, and I have the opportunity to choose among 3 doors?

But when I choose one door and it does not yield the prize I am hoping for, more doors lie behind it, waiting to be opened...and more...and more...and more...to infinity. There are subtle clues on the doors, pointing me to the desired prize directly, but the solid promise that I will surely win the prize if I keep opening the doors is solid, set in stone.

Well, I might for a while open doors furiously, knowing that it was just a matter of time, but sooner or later I would slow down to pick up the cues/clues. I don't think I would give up, and stop believing the promise set in stone.

Today is a day of possibility for all of us. Doors stand in front of us, waiting to be opened. Clues wait to be examined.

The prize is sure.

Contentment

I don't often read poetry, but American Smooth, by Rita Dove found it's way into my hands. I was struck by four lines in a poem titled The Passage.

I suppose there are lonesome days before me,

but no more so than those that have already passed.

I can make myself contented.

We are having very good weather.

The poem is written in the form of an at-sea journal of a WWI soldier returning home. He reflects on the conflict he endured, his fellow soldiers and his own state of mind, while sharing tight quarters, cooped up on a troop ship that is continually on the lookout for submarine attack.

What struck me was this...though the circumstances of his life were dangerous, unpleasant and uncertain, he acknowledges what is and has been, consciously chooses a better frame of mind than the circumstances seem to indicate, then finds something positive to focus on.

I can make myself contented, he says.

I, too can opt for the gain brought by contentment that I choose. I turn away from pessimism and boredom, look ahead to hope as yet unrealized...and find contentment, sweet contentment.

Shine on, then

This morning I had a small maintenance assignment to do. Simple, I hoped. Nothing happened when the light switch was flipped on in the rest room. First guess? Perhaps the fluorescent tubes were burned out. When I checked the electrical power with my tester, energy was still flowing. So my guess was likely right and I proceeded to buy new tubes and install them. Yep. That was it. Light flooded the room anew.

The energy had been there continuously. It was just the mechanism that translated the energy into light that was faulty...burned out.

That's often the case with me. I know I am connected to a Source of limitless energy. And when I'm working right, I translate that energy into light...for myself, my community and the world. Alas, I too often burn out, working hard. (I've very much come to suspect working hard)

I am renewed by things that feed my soul...books that inspire, friends that warm my heart, stillness that re-connects me. Then, I shine again.

Shine on, then...

P.S. Interestingly, fluorescence is the process that changes energy from one wavelength to another with astounding results, as in fluorescent minerals. (translation, if you will)

Staying in the Flow

I've come to believe that life is good. I didn't always think that way; maybe I thought that sometimes it was good, often difficult. Somewhere along the way, I started thinking it was good, then thought it a little more frequently, thought it more fully. The more I think it, the more I believe it, and the more I see evidence of it in my life.

There is something bigger than my usual thought of myself that surrounds me, envelopes me, moves through me, and carries me. That's an energy that is compassionate, limitless and ever-renewing. When I allow it to carry me, my life illustrates the nature and substance of those qualities.

It is only when I get cross-current to that flow of goodness that I stop feeling good. For me, this usually shows up when I start finding fault with others. An associate I was working with last night really bugged me. She was not doing her share. She was only thinking about herself. She was selfish. And the more I thought about it, the worse I felt. But when I diverted my attention, found other aspects of the work that engaged me, interested me, I began to feel better. So simple.

if mindlessly i float down river
i take what comes
with dim appreciation


unaware,
calamity falls on me
i find someone to blame


mostly unconscious
through nearly shuttered eyes
hints of wholeness drift on by, unseen

When I stay in line with what I know to be so...that life is good, life magically is good. No new thought, but it's staying in the flow that gets me where I want to go.

Thinking with My Heart

Thinking may not be exclusively the domain of the head. I've heard of thinking with other body parts than the head. But I haven't heard much of thinking with the heart. Today, it comes to me.

Heart is the fourth chakra of Hindu Yogic and Tantric traditions. The heart chakra is associated with the ability to make decisions outside of the realm of karma, 'following your heart,' if you will.

I sense my heart as the source of desire, compassion and passion.

So let me think with desire, with passion, and with compassion. If you want to get picky about it, the heart may not really be doing the thinking. But it can certainly set the agenda for thought. It can help me choose what I think...thoughts that align with the very center of me.

Shopping for Attractors

The other day when I was in town, as I drove past the feed store, I noticed an unusual message on the marquee...Get Your Wildlife Attractors Here ! Crooked red-orange letters hanging on a faded sign formed the words that jumped out at me. One word in particular caught my attention...attractor. But the word attractor is not part of my working vocabulary.

Merriam-Webster confirms that it is a real word, the noun form of the verb attract. The definition that I like the best is ' to draw by appeal to natural or excited interest, emotion, or aesthetic sense.'

What the feed store wanted was to sell me some cracked corn, bird seed, or a salt lick, which would attract wildlife to my back yard. The food would appeal to birds and deer...it's a natural interest.

Let me switch gears here, because that is what I did when I saw the sign. If I want to attract certain things into my life, it would be effective to put attractors out there to bring those things to me. Since my attractors would be naturally compatible to my desires, how about consciously placing some of those attractors in the backyard of my life experience?

One of my greatest desires is to live an unlimited life. So, what attracts an unlimited life? The vision of an unlimited life in detail, for one thing...the visualization of financial abundance, extensive travel, time without borders to pursue whatever my little heart desires. Also, the appreciation of the things already in my life that feel like the unlimited life I am choosing...my garden, my puppy, my forays into the National Forest nearby, even attracting deer and bunnies, birds and squirrels to my yard.

The Law of Attraction says: Things of like vibration are drawn to each other. Well, I'm out shopping for attractors today.

The Stories I Tell

One way of looking at the world is that it is a continuous series of stories...stories that I tell and re-tell. I don't mean the kind of stories we tell to children at bedtime, around the campfire or those designed to elicit a specific response, like a scary story looking for screams.

I mean the stories I tell in my head, pretty much non-stop. Stories that grow into bigger stories the more I tell them, even a way of looking at life, and perhaps, eventually, the nature of my life itself.

It's easy for me to tell the story of how life and work are hard. I tell myself that the only way to survive is to work hard, and that nobody is willing to work harder than I. Then I tell the story again...and again. I embellish it, get very good at delivering it, and I begin to tell it aloud, to whomever will listen. It doesn't take long for the story to assume the nature of a complaint. Because it is really not what I want. But it is the story I am telling, the story of my life.

I really want a life of ease, a life of success, a life with plenty of time to sit and read, to walk in the forest, or sail on the open water. However, I have told the story that life and work are hard, and that is what my life has become.

So, what about the idea of telling a different story? Well, it's easy for me to tell the old story again and again. To be truthful, I am a bit lazy about it, (hard worker that I am) so I keep telling the same story, instead of a different one.

But I am focused on what I want enough to tell a better story. (I'm learning here) I re-tell the story, and begin to change some of the details. My edits and embellishments are of my choosing, not just the observation of life as it seems to be. And, strange as it was to me at first, my life mimics my re-telling of the story.

The nice thing? I get to decide what story I tell.

The Art of Allowing

Saturday I wrote about resistance. The flip side of resistance is allowing. With a life-time of training in the art of disallowing, creating a life that allows is my challenge.

Esther and Jerry Hicks (www.abraham-hicks.com) refer to their Law of Attraction workshops as The Art of Allowing. I agree...allowing is an art, hopefully one in which I am gaining skill daily.

I'm learning how connected I am to this grand and glorious world, the souls that touch my life, and the limitless Source that is all. I don't have to be the cause of everything or the power to make it happen, I can simply envision and allow it. It is my greatness, more than my work that is to be my focus.

For me, allowing is getting out of my own way. My habitual thinking often does not align me with the good that would come to me. I get so caught up in activity, trying diligently to achieve what I want. But alas, I am not very successful. I am more successful when I slow down, focus on what I really want, and let my activity flow out from an inside, authentic place.

A few lines from an upcoming book:

alone i am no mighty force of nature

i stand one with her in wonder

all is as it should be

i do not cause events to happen

do not make it so

i just allow and so it is

i need not flex my muscles

fill my lungs

or stamp my feet

it is not mine

to find the way

nor summon energy from my depleted store

i am not a mighty force of nature

yet I stand with her in concert

while mountains move and rocks erode

it is so simple

she but flows

and I do nothing but allow

I Landed here

I began blogging a few days ago, but found this venue a better fit for me. Thus I have re-posted my prior material, all at one time. Thanks for your forbearance.

Neal

A Posture of Resistance

I couldn’t read the fine print from where I sat waiting for the light to turn, but I sure didn’t miss the message. “I RESIST!” shouted at me from the bumper of the car in front of me. It was almost as though whatever was being resisted was of infinitely less importance than the posture of resistance.

I RESIST!

Now, as I ruminate on it, I realize it’s not just the car or the driver in front of me that’s at issue, it’s me, too. My girlfriend tells me that I often resist what is sent my way just for the sake of resisting, because I can’t accept good coming to me. Actually, she more often says it’s just because I’m stubborn, but that’s probably the same thing. I want to do it all by myself, and I decide to resist before the offering presents itself. Could it be that I have a posture of resistance? Heaven forbid!

What you resist persists. So goes the well-worn cliché. My resistance works for me this way: I end up maintaining circumstances and situations that I really don’t want. That’s the underlying rationale for resisting in the first place. I focus on something that I don’t want. I protest, find fault, judge all else as beneath my standards, knowing that my way and only my way is right and best. And those circumstances and situations stick to me like tar.

In the process, I disallow so much good that might come to me, proud s.o.b. that I am. My failure to appreciate the good around me, to allow it to close in on me, while I am focused on having it my way does, in effect, prevent the good that I really want from ever arriving.

Hmm…so this is the way that I block the blessing that would flow to me. I sit tight in my posture of resistance.

Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow?

“Praise God from whom all blessings flow…” So begins the doxology that I sang every Sunday in my father’s church. Lying in the shadows, seeping through the words of the sermon, forming parentheses around the strains of the invitational hymn was the subtext that retribution, punishment and curses also flowed, and if I did not ‘get right with God’ the blessings would dry up, and the consequences of my sin would catch up with me in full measure.

Not my father's church

But, what if all that flows from the Divine, the eternal, the infinite is blessing? Somehow, within me, whatever name I use for this all encompassing Source, (Love, All that is, The Universe, God) I can find nothing but blessing in it. And if that be so, what is keeping me from being the beneficiary of the flow? It makes sense that it has something to do with me.

So, let me today affirm this. God is good! Her blessings are immeasurable, stocked up, waiting to be poured out! And I have a choice to face the windows of heaven, let fall away the barriers I have built around me, and allow the blessing in…first trickling through a crack in my wall, then showering me, now flooding me, until I have no option other than to swim and frolic in it’s endless flow.

Oh, is this what a heavenly choir is?

Praise Source from whom only blessing flows.

Default

Just this morning I changed a default setting on my computer. You see, I have two printers. I originally had an HP and used that exclusively. Then I got an Epson as well, and began to use it more and more. At first I kept the HP as my default printer, but soon found that I was using the Epson more. So, I changed the setting to make the Epson my printer by default.

Make this one my default setting...

All this means that now I don’t make a conscious choice about which printer I will use each time; I made the choice one time, and without any thought process from me, my choice now sends the data to the appropriate printer. (usually)

Apparently, the same thing happens in my life. On a great range of issues, I have thought and re-thought a particular way, and those thoughts eventually became my default thought on the subject. No longer do I consciously think about the issue at hand, I merely reference my prior thought on the matter, and respond or react consistently with that thought.

The hitch comes when I discover that my default thoughts no longer serve me well. Without considering it, those thoughts, and the correlated responses come up when the issue arises. In order to change the thought, I must go through the process of actively choosing another. And until I make that new thought a true setting, the old rises again the next time around.

Choosing a new thought about the issue, and setting it firmly in place is my challenge. I most often remember to choose the new thought only after the horse is out of the barn. So I set myself to the work of impressing that thought on my automatic mind. I think it long. I think it often. I begin to get out of the old groove. As I sustain my choice it moves into my automatic mind, and I no longer have to consciously choose it every time.

Except for the times like today, when my computer setting hopped back to the old default. Those times, I simply choose again.

I Feel Good

“How are you doing?”

“I feel great…how about you?”

Really? Do I truly feel great, or am putting on my game face, not letting anyone else know that inside I am depressed, angry, or at least frustrated?

Well, what about ‘fake it until you make it,’ you ask. If you pretend to feel good, maybe that will help you start to feel good. Nice try, but that has never worked for me. My true feelings seem to override my pretense.

So let me take a step back. What I do know is that I can feel better. Admittedly, it takes some effort. But when I make a break with feeling bad, using anything available to halt the cycle, (like petting my dog, singing off key any song that comes to mind, or just choosing to quiet everything…my situation, my activity, my thoughts) I get a bit of relief. I feel better.

I used to think of myself as a 'big dog' man

Reaching for that ‘better’ feeling does not take me all way to where I want to be. But it does stop my downhill plunge, does lift me out of the depth of the valley, does nudge me up the road from disappointed or bored.

So now if you ask me how I am doing, I may just hesitate a minute, smile and reply, “better.”

About that, I honestly feel good.

Minding My Speak

Never mind about speaking my mind. Somewhere along the way I learned to do that, respectfully, of course. But what about when mind and tongue are disengaged, and the outflow is the froth on top of the surface of the minutiae of my experience? You know… speaking without the benefit of having passed the content through my consciousness. (perhaps like these guys)

Sorry to say, I’ve done that all too much, on the keyboard as well as orally.

So, Minding My Speak is a choice I have made to be alert when I publish something to the world. When I speak of mind, I don’t mean primarily brain or intellect, I include remembrance, emotion and imagination as well.

It seems big, it is incredible, but it isn't everything...

I invite you into my head to listen to the authentic conversation there. If it strikes a chord with you, I hope you will reciprocate. I will attempt to ‘mind my speak always, but if I do not succeed, please bring it to my attention.