Hard Work or Effort?

“If you work hard,” my Daddy said...well, I can't really remember what went on the end of the sentence, except maybe it had to do with glorifying God. But I do remember the 'work hard' part. In word and action, I was schooled in the art of working hard. But all I remember as a result of that schooling is disheartened exhaustion.



And then there is effort. I seem to remember the phrase, “give it your best effort.” And the picture that remains around that saying is one of excitement and joy sometimes, but satisfaction almost always.



Hard work and effort are two different things. Hard work is initiated by the subconscious mind, mired in a pardigm that isn't very effective and executed by the body, whether or not adequate respite from the prior exhausting task is complete.



Effort is the activity of the creative conscious mind, a focus on the desire or goal that has given inspiration. A holding of that goal securely, protecting it from diluting influence. It is choosing, and choosing firmly and fully, sometimes over and over again. It may not seem easy, but it is not hard in the way of 'hard work.'



I used to be proud that nobody could work harder than I. Now, as I turn my attention to the effort of my mind, which gives birth to positive emotion and inspired action, I believe that my pride was misplaced.

A Different Form

I love words. Frequently they press themselves on me, demanding my attention. So it was no surprise when the word anew came leaping to my mind repeatedly this past week, clamoring for consideration.

It shouldn't have been a surprise to me. Even the physical world around me spoke the word. Yesterday, I woke to find a thin blanket of snow covering all but the warmest spots, and everything looked new. Untidiness was covered and clutter was blurred. Dead leaves and hibernating grass, which had been none too attractive, were hidden. It looked beautiful. It looked new.

Even the season is proclaiming newness. The solstice has opened us to light and vitality, the holiday season has turned our activities festive, and the New Year is only days away.

But while things may seem different on the surface, a nagging suspicion remains, that all the problems that have accrued, all the lacks that remain, all the unfulfilled hopes that languish...none of them have been transformed by the season.

We are taught that change is a constant. If it is always with us, what are our options with regard to it? We can fear it or embrace it, direct it or fall victim to it's whims, find the treasure in it or bemoan it's arrival, aching for what is familiar (even if not very satisfying) to return.

Here's where my word 'anew' come in. Anew means in a new or different form. Evidently the stuff of which my experience is made is the same stuff, however it works out for me. But that same stuff can take a different form. It can make my life anew...or not.

From where I sit, I have come to know that I am co-creator of my experience of life. The thoughts that I disallow, the emotions that I refuse to entertain, the company that I avoid, these are probably old forms for me, and ones that haven't produced what I have wanted to create in my life.

But those thoughts that I enthusiastically and repeatedly choose, those emotions that feel really good to me, that I seek and bask in, and the company of like minded people, whose dreams run parallel to mine, these create a new life for me, obliterating the untidiness, and making an opening for the clutter to be removed.

Here are cues to life anew for me, life in a new and different (and exhilarating) form.

Sharing Awareness

The thought came to me several years ago. It enveloped me like the warmth of a never-to-be-extinguished fire that lights and warms without end. I suddenly knew what my purpose was. I was meant to share the world as it was given me to see.

Since that time, the world has opened to me greatly. And I have taken steps to share that world, freely, and as clearly as I am able. As I become aware, I share.. This is somewhat new for me. My personal history was one of holding back, not sharing, perhaps because that gave me some advantage, perhaps because I thought that in my reservation I was conserving something for myself that I might not otherwise have.

Last night I set my alarm and got up to watch the total lunar eclipse. It was really quite a spectacular sight. Better than anything on TV. And because the eclipse proceeded at quite a modest pace, I intermittently sat at the computer and researched lunar eclipses. There I ran into an interesting story.

It seems that our American hero, Christopher Columbus, knew a thing or two about lunar eclipses, and it either got him out of trouble or into a bigger cosmic quagmire...you decide. On one of his later voyages, he and his crew were stranded in Jamaica. Not a bad place to be stranded if you can enjoy the comfort of a luxury hotel, but that was not the case for Chris.

He and his band were without provisions, in danger of starvation without some assistance. Happily, the indigenous people were hospitable, and provided them with food, which, of course the natives knew how to grow and gather. After some time, a few of Chris's crew spoiled things by stealing from the natives, who after the affront withdrew their hospitality. Can't blame them.

In dire straights, Chris turned to the reading of his almanac, probably one of the few books he had, and discovered that a total lunar eclipse was immanent. So he used that awareness to his benefit. He counseled the then inhospitable natives that their move to withhold food from him and his crew had angered the gods. So much so, that the very heavens were about to show their displeasure. The moon would turn red, the prelude to a pouring out of the wrath of the gods. The community would be destroyed.

Well, the moon did turn red, and the natives repented of their decision to starve Chris and company. They pledged to resume their support. And Chris subsequently reported that they would be forgiven. The rage of the heavens subsided and the moon again lighted the night sky as it always had. Smart Chris. Or was he?

Chris was aware of celestial events and he hoarded that awareness, using it to his own advantage. In the end, his exile ended and he became our hero. Let us not detail the genocide that he perpetrated on indigenous Carribean people.

But what do you think the story might read like if he had shared the awareness that he had? Would he have been believed or disbelieved? Would he have found an ongoing cooperative way of living with those whose island he shared? Might he have learned something from them? We will never know, but the story would surely have been different.

I don't like the way the story ended at all. I choose not to emulate the example of Christopher Columbus. I think I will just share the world as it is given me to see and know, trusting that a path will open, and that a new and greater experience of being will show up.

Expecting...

Do you remember when the socially correct way to talk about pregnancy was to say... “she's expecting?” Well, that may have been an attempt to sanitize for children (and other impressionable people) an event that was awkward to talk about. But I think that the language carried something very positive along with it.

Mary of Nazareth was 'expecting' as she traveled to Bethlehem, and as the story goes, soon along side her appeared a supportive husband as well as expectant shepherds, wise men, oxes and asses.

I remember the Christmases of my childhood as being times of great expectancy. There were the letters to Santa, of course, and the Christmas caroling where we carried painstakingly decorated Christmas cookies nested in cupcake papers and packed in tops from emptied greeting card boxes to shut ins and others whose anticipation of the season might have been slightly less than ours. There was skating on the long placid, compliantly frozen river from one town to the next, and sledding down the steep hill at the edge of town until we shushed out onto a vacant Main Street and coasted forever.

Even if the stockings on Christmas morning were meagerly filled, or the presents were modest; even if they got lost in the snow storm of wrapping paper, my expectancy, wrapped in that of family and friends around me prevailed, and made each Christmas better than the one before.

In all of this there was one consistent theme. I approached every facet of the holiday with great anticipation. And!!! All of those around me did the same. We coaxed the season into brilliance, stoked the excitement whenever it might seem to lag, and we did it together. In all of that, I never remember a disappointing Christmas.

Makes me wonder what life would be like if we did that all the time. What if we really expected that our life would measure up to our dreams? What if we were willing to dream at length and in detail, contravening the appearance in our life of situations that didn't live up to the dream? What if we surrounded ourselves with those who were willing to dream with us? What if expectancy saturated us?

Why...maybe we would get what we were expecting...

What is Truth?

I'm not sure who asked the question first, but it must have been asked a trillion times, from the beginning of time. What is truth? There might have been a time that I would have gone to the bookshelf in search of philosophical tomes or theological treatises to find the answer. Often I have looked far and wide for answers, thinking that one exploration or another special experience might be what I was looking for. But, no...none of these have worked for me.

Many years ago, the glib conversational response, “this is true,” was heard over and over again, popping up frequently in inconsequential conversation. Yes, it was a clique, usually offered when no more articulate response might be found. But I believe it pointed to something important. Truth is not outside of me, to be found as the prize result of a far ranging quest, it is here, it is now, it is with me, and often more readily recognizable than I think.

In short, I uncover truth when I become aware of what resonates with the genuine me, the open me, the the conscious me.

This does not mean that I am making it up on the fly. For sure, my truth is informed by Universal Law, by truth principle, by beliefs that I have chosen. These are critical, for they give me a framework on which to hang my truth. But as well built as that framework may be, by itself it is not my truth. It evidences my truth. It is home for my truth. My truth emerges from me in resonance with that framework.

Wow! This means that everybody else's truth is not the same as mine. It means that today's truth and tomorrow's may look a bit different. It indicates that truth flexes to meet the world. All this is resonance with me.

Makes me feel a bit more important. A bit more knowing. And quite a bit more responsible. I guess you could say it causes me to be aware.

Your Trial Has Expired - Part I

I jabbed my computer to 'on' just shortly after my feet hit the floor this morning...then off to the bathroom, and on to the kitchen to put water on for chai. When I returned to my desk, the monitor displayed a familiar message. “Your trial has expired,' it whispered to me insistently. And so began a morning rumination on those four words.

My first thoughts featured me as the one on trial. I saw my dalliances with existence as trials...not the hard-to-bear kind, but the let's-see-how-this-works kind. And those dalliances have gone on for what seems like forever; I have been living a series of experiments with being. They have been just that...experiments. I have tried this, attempted that, tinkered with other things. My approach has been sometimes interesting, often frustrating, and sometimes just boring.

So, my trial has expired, huh? Well, I guess I could expire as well...or...I might just get down to the real thing. I might really live, truly know, actually be.

I think it is time to be. My trial has expired.

Creating Heaven

the alarm clock rings

sleep opens

simultaneously

the journey bends

side-tracking, no

instead a full fleshed trip

inspired by friends of faith

their soul arms hanging low

with gifts

time is right

though it was never wrong

nor was

angels, clouds and sun

conspire, collaborate

to make heaven

together with my

willing, non-resistant

yes

Vision Expansion

I sat in the small group anticipating a life-giving discussion. Little did I know...

The leader of the group steered us into a time of quiet and urged us to hold in mind something that we desire...to hold it...to hold it...to see it clearly. My desire came to me easily, and it pleasantly filled my view. Then she asked us to expand that desire, to let it get as huge as it could get...AND IT DID!

My desire was something I have been envisioning for a long time and am eager to see show up in my life. You see, I have a dental challenge, and what I really want is to have complete dental implants, no small thing, but something I have been seeing for quite some time. I have the dentist picked out...the best dentist I have ever had. Only one small hitch...his practice is in South India.

So, as I gave my attention to my desire, and then allowed it to expand...it exploded! Suddenly my quest for dental treatment turned into a trip with 20 friends, an experience of spirit and wellness. I clearly saw our group visiting India, being renewed by a 2 week ayurvedic rejuvenation, tapping into the spiritual energy of the ages, imbued with the peace of watching the sun set over the Arabian Sea, and getting a bit of dental work done on the side. Wow!

And almost immediately, the components to make it possible began lining up, and they continue to do so.

Amazing what can happen when vision is clear, and expansion is allowed.

Reclaiming Integrity

Never saw a baby that wasn't full of integrity. Come to think of it, it must have been so for me as well. We all burst onto the planet 100% true to ourselves. We knew our purpose - to be deliriously happy in the special way that pleased us.

In due course, we set about the inevitable task of growing up. And here our clear purpose comes into question. Happy babies are just fine, but they have to adapt to a cruel world, so parents and other adults teach them the skills they need.

The foremost skill is the skill of getting along. There are all those other separate bodies and personalities to get along with, and older ones, who have absorbed the counsel of generations and know how to use the system for getting along, will help to teach a baby that system. If only babies will comply.

So babies do learn to comply, (or suffer the consequences) and in learning how to comply they offer up bits of their integrity. Bit by bit they set aside pieces of their authentic selves in order to get along. Innocence is lost early, replaced by judgment of self and others. Creativity is cut back, cooperation is traded in for competition, and play is diminished.

Though it didn't start out that way, by the time a child goes to school, she or he has betrayed much of themselves, probably thinking that every other child fits in the system, and it is only they who do not, who cannot not have their deepest desires and still get along. So it was with me. I sacrificed the parts of me that family and community asked and I was left with a hollow place in me.

You know the rest of the story, the search for identity, the quest for purpose in life, the great sadnesses and the self destructive choices. This is true for all of us.

What you may not know so clearly is that the child remains within us, and even though our real life parenting may not have always served us well, now that we are parents or of parenting age, we can redo the faulty parenting. We can reclaim the integrity that we began with.

All is not lost. The sacrifices we made in our first years on the planet have merely been set aside. They wait for us and are begging to be ransomed. Our mission in life, our fantastic aptitude for cooperation, our predilection for forgiveness, our unbounded creativity and even our sense of play await.

Time to reclaim our integrity!

Time to Shine

I suppose I just shined naturally when I was very young. It's pretty hard for a young child not to do that. I don't remember it though. I do remember learning not to shine, however. I learned not to shine so that I would not eclipse things more important than I.

I became good at compliance, ready to stand in the wings while the stars of the show recited their lines over and over to measured applause. I learned to know my place in the scheme of things, to be just a child, to let experienced adults take the lead.

And with that posture, a certain sadness set in for me. A sadness that who I really was, what I really loved, how I wanted to be in the world was deemed inappropriate at least, but worse for me, wrong after due consideration.

All that was and is hogwash!

We are meant to shine! We are best when we know and show ourselves completely. We do not eclipse anyone or anything. We only add glorious detail to the picture of life as it is created to be. And our shining allows others to shine as well.

So, why not shine with all my brightness? Imagine the world where we all do that.

Time to shine, friends!

In Praise of Praise

Praise is somewhat of an old-fashioned word, and an even more old-fashioned practice. And for me, I grew up thinking that it mostly referred to a God quite significantly removed from insignificant me. It was a Sunday sort of thing.

But I am not thinking about that kind of praise today. Today I am engaged with a praise that gives merit, value, even esteem to aspects of my life, and to the qualities that seek to flower.

Praise is the act of making positive statements about a person, an object, or an idea. It contrasts to criticism and banishes blame. And I am focusing on making positive statements about my mind, my emotions, my intuition, and my body.

I praise my mind as the perfect creation of the divine. I praise my emotions as my perfect guidance mechanism. I praise my intuition as my never failing source of knowing, and my body as the incomparably beautiful and infinitely capable vehicle of my vitality.

I praise my every increasing wisdom, my power to communicate, my ability to care, my skill in sharing what is given me, and the growing energy that empowers me; that energy is zeal stirred up by words of praise.

I am unapologetic, and unconcerned about what others think of me. Today I lift my hands in total praise to the divine in me.

Getting into the Gush

Life gushes. The sea's waves gush shoreward. The droplet of rain joins with others and gushes to the sea. (or directly into the earth) New life gushes out everywhere, in predictable cycles and in spontaneous events. Energy bundles and builds and spews itself out in demonstrations sometimes welcome, but often feared. But life does gush, without seeming limit.

I'm afraid that I have often put myself outside of the gush of life. I have not expected it, I have sat in a stupor, undeserving of its benefit, or I have feared it for I knew I could not control it. In effect, I have kept in place the resistance that keeps it from spilling over me.

But life still wants to gush. I look at others who have accepted the limitlessness of life, and I reason that they are lucky, or that they don't have the hindrances that I do, and my glance into their experience carries a hint of jealousy. I see all that is beautiful and bountiful, but it has only momentary benefit for me, for I soon sink back into the quagmire of my muddles and my troubles.

By my way of thinking about it, I have taken myself out of the flow of life, and have often actively resisted it when I could not get out of it's way.

No more. Today I surrender. Today I flip all the switches that serve to hold back the energy of heaven, the gushing life of great good that flows to and over me if only I allow it. Today I'm risking all and getting into the gush.

Love You Are...

Love you are...and to love you shall return. Just imagine those words, and how great and all encompassing and uniting they are. Maybe we have gotten it all wrong focusing on dust. Maybe we've been looking at it in a backward way.

For me, being has become so much more than what my religious schooling taught me. Oh, I was given a framework to contain my trials and my struggles, somewhat of a place for properly scaled down hopes and dreams. I was pointed to my physical body, composed of elements from the periodic table, told how exquisite yet finite it was, and left with that very ship to sail the sea of life.

Oh, yes...I was also given the hope that when my body finally deteriorated, I might have put an escape clause into effect, and an other worldly force might pull me up to heaven, where I really could live happily ever after, that is my soul, or some other non-physical component of me. The message that I got most strongly, however, was the one that was reinforced each Ash Wednesday...that my essence to begin with was ashes, or dust, and after a life in which I got to make a few moves, I returned to dust.

Rebel that I am...I have come to know otherwise. I did not begin my existence when I was born, nor will it I end it when someone intones 'ashes to ashes...and dust to dust.' I am so many billions of times more than that. I am as big as it gets, unbounded by time and space as we experience it on this planet. The me that I experience in this body is only a tiny bit of the me that is unlimited, the me that is Love. And that me, the Grand I Am is right up there with the God that is, one with Him/Her and all the others that Are, including you. You might call that unthinkably large idea Love.

Love I am...and to Love I shall return.

Everyday Evidences of Synchronicity

(Reposted from Soul Hang Out)

Synchronicity has been on my brain lately. I had some idea of it, but I wasn't sure exactly what it meant, so I went to Merriam to check it out. (I like to think of her as my own personal librarian) Well, on this question, she was not clear. I couldn't put it all together.

My favorite psychology pioneer, Dr. C. G. Jung wrote a book titled Synchronicity, and he tells this story about it. "A young woman I was treating had, at a critical moment, a dream in which she was given a golden scarab. While she was telling me this dream, I sat with my back to the closed window. Suddenly I heard a noise behind me, like a gentle tapping. I turned round and saw a flying insect knocking against the window-pane from the outside. I opened the window and caught the creature in the air as it flew in. It was the nearest analogy to a golden scarab one finds in our latitudes, a scarabaeid beetle, the common rose-chafer , which, contrary to its usual habits had evidently felt the urge to get into a dark room at this particular moment. I must admit that nothing like it ever happened to me before or since."

My connection with the synchronistic has been nowhere near as dramatic as that account, but it is evidencing itself nonetheless...in everyday ways. I've settled for a very simple definition of the word: 'a relationship between ideas or events that is not logical.'

That relationship has shown up in my life recently around the topic of healing. The impressive thing is how many times, and from how many disparate places it has shown up...in the chaplain training course I signed up for...in the book a friend sent me out of nowhere...in an off-the-cuff comment about stream of consciousness writing in a letter from someone I knew only slightly...in the writing project I was invited to participate in...and more...and more. Healing. Healing. Healing!

Alright, I get the hint. Healing is on the table. And it got there through a series of commonplace pointers that were not logical. So my journey has taken a bit of a turn, and I am excited about it! As well, I am especially delighted with my new traveling companions.

I have not yet experienced anything quite like Jung's dramatic event. But I am finding everyday evidences of synchronicity.

Multitasking Examined

Many years ago, when my youngest daughter finished her first year of high school, she brought home a report card full of barely passing grades. She was bright and inventive, but she had always had difficulty in school. We spent entire evenings working on simple homework. Her brain seemed to be wired differently than most. “I can't do it anymore,” she declared, report card in hand, and her words impacted me like a dead end sign suddenly materializing through the mist on a dark night.

We tried an alternative school, and that did not work for her. Researching other options, I threw my hopes in the direction of an online high school, with me homeschooling my tenth grader, but I was far from confident of success in helping her complete her high school education.

We chose Biology as her first course...and plunged in. It was difficult for me, God's sake...how could I expect her to complete it? But she excelled...and in the process became my teacher. When she focused on one thing, she got it! And got it well enough to receive an 'A' for her effort. I began then to hear the lesson, and she teaches me still.

When I give my attention to one thing, when I corral my thoughts, and point them in a single direction, I learn...I really live...and I love with new intensity. I can, after all, only think one thought at a time, or do one thing at a time. And if I stick to that, I have a chance at doing it really well.

Makes me suspicious of multitasking!

Putting the Heart before the Course

“You've got the cart before the horse!” I've been given that counsel more than a few times in my life, and the words were almost always warranted. Somehow things had gotten out of whack, out of sequence – my progress derailed, my goal pushed out of reach because I forgot to put first things first. I had put the power to pull behind what was being pulled.

I've discovered a corollary to that axiom. It arises from the stew I sometimes get myself in when I launch myself into fervent action on behalf of my goals. I make lists of the things I must do, drink another cup of coffee and plunge in.

More often than not, the results of my efforts are unsatisfactory.

I am learning that when I take time to listen to my heart, care to nurture and follow my intuition, and rest in humility enough to delegate and defer to a power higher than I alone, that I discover a course that is always much more effective than my action binge. For when I do touch with my inner knowing, I couple that with my outer know-how in a most powerful way.

The result? I draw that which I desire to me quickly. My goals are honed to meet the genius of my whole self. And I meet so many cooperative characters along the way.

So my new wisdom aphorism is this: Put the Heart before the Course!