Yesterday we were discussing beginnings. Starting at the beginning. Yesterday is just that. Today is now. How are you going to start today? Like yesterday?

In The Man of Destiny, George Bernard Shaw shows us the twenty seven year old Napoleon attacking all the courses of his meal simultaneously with his left hand while marking military positions on a map with his other hand. He calls for some red ink. The landlord of the inn says “Alas! Excellency, there is none.”

Napoleon answers, “Then kill something and bring me its blood.” Grinning, the host replies that there is nothing save the general’s own horse, the sentinel, the lady upstairs and his wife. Napoleon says, “Kill your wife.”

“Willingly, your Excellency,” replies the man, “but unhappily I am not strong enough. She would kill me.”

“That will do equally well,” says Napoleon.

A great playwright like Shaw knows how to grab attention from the time the curtain goes up. He doesn’t have to grab the audience by the lapels. In Act I, at the beginning, the playwright already has the audience’s attention.

What’s your own hook? How are you going to start this act? Who speaks first? How early was the outcome determined?

If that damn voice in your head is telling you things you don’t want to hear, don’t feed it.

What started me on this path, after initially searching to reunite with who I am, was in learning the voice in my head is really my ego. It’s subconscious thought, and even though it’s mainly negative, there were “rewards” the ego took from it. Negativity made it stronger, by feeding into the things that reinforced it. Intellectually, I already knew that. Day to day, however, I had forgotten that.

It’s a daily battle. I keep catching myself listening to that madding construct of ego-drivel. Except now I am conscious it’s my subconscious ego talking. And its starting to lose control over my emotions.

Yesterday, for the first time in so very long, I felt joy. There was no event that precipitated this feeling. I found myself tapping my fingers to Yael Naim’s New Soul while driving around doing errands. I smiled. It struck me, how expansive I felt. How in tune I was. I became aware I was joyful, and just then, how long it had been, and then, how I wanted more joy in my life. And then the voice in my head said, ‘Thank you for this simple reminder of the joy of Being.’

p.s. Yael Naim’s only other English language song is a remake of Toxic.

When I was a little boy, I used to jump out of bed in the very early morning, and race into the day. I’d beat everyone up, and so had to entertain myself for an hour or two before pestering others. I remember summers, heading down to the river out back, some mornings observing the mist rising off of the current, others I’d watch the black water bugs dart hither and to, and in the shallows, where the little fish would congregate, I’d watch first them and then their shadows multiply.

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How is it little kids fight like the dickens to stay up at night, then jump out of bed in the morning? Whatever happened to never wanting to miss a thing?

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Robert Frost said, ‘Happiness makes up in height what it lacks in length.’

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Recreating this feeling as adults is a chore at times. Yet, is it really all that taxing? Isn’t it simply a matter of creating fun? For me, adopting a life changing goal, and then implementing it with enthusiasm, and with a small step in the right direction each day, has brought the enthusiast back to the forefront.

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“Action is the foundational key to success.” (Pablo Picasso)

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If even the thought of a life changing goal has you constipated, consider: it doesn’t have to be something to die for. Instead, make it simply something you want to live for.

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“Happy people plan actions, they don’t plan results.” (Dennis Wholey)

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Action and intention are the two sides of this coin. Thinking you’ll get to it tomorrow or next Tuesday isn’t effective. Never will be. And you will be forever frustrated, and negative, toward yourself in the process. Which is then what you will bring into your life. A vicious circle. Yet that same circle can work in reverse. Take positive action, use intention, bring into your life what you know is out there for you. Happiness? Joy? Love? The source is boundless. Outflow determines inflow. It’s just that simple.

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Pascal said, “Nature is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.”

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A good place to start, if still deciding what’s the goal, is simply to breath. Meditate on it. Quiet yourself. Become connected to that inner stillness. Your conscious self. Tip: try diaphragmatic breathing.

The ego asks how to make a situation fulfill its needs. The sorcerer asks how to respond to the needs of the moment.

Instead of reacting against a situation, merge with it. A solution will arise out of the situation itself. Not out of your mind; out of your alert stillness.

Of course, if along your journey you hear the snorting of a grizzly, become one with the tree! Quickly!!

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A Zen Master was walking along in silence with one of his disciples. When they came to a gnarled tree, they sat down for a simple meal and a rest. After eating their rice and vegetables, the young disciple broke the silence by asking, “Master, how do I enter Zen?”

The Master remained silent. Minutes passed. The disciple was so anxious he was just about to ask another question when the Master suddenly spoke. “Do you hear the mountain stream?”

The disciple had not been aware of any mountain stream. He had been too occupied thinking about the meaning of Zen. Now, as he concentrated, the disciple began to listen, and thus hear that which was around him. His noisy mind subsided. His alertness heightened. Suddenly he did hear the just perceptible murmur of a small stream running off of the side of the mountain.

“Yes, I can hear it now,” he said.

The Master raised his eyes, pointed his finger, and said, “Enter Zen from there.”

The disciple was taken aback. It was his first satori. A flash of enlightenment. He knew what Zen was without knowing what it was that he knew.

The pair continued on their journey. Nothing was spoken. The disciple was amazed at the sounds he was now hearing. The humming aliveness he now felt. He experienced everything as if for the first time. He started thinking again. His alertness became covered up by mental noise. “Master, I have been thinking. What would you have said if I hadn’t been able to hear that mountain stream?”

The Master stopped, looked up and pointed his finger. “Enter Zen from there.”

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“Nature is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.” (Pascal)

I’ve been reminiscing today. Normally I don’t spend any time at all thinking about the past, my childhood, things like that. I’m living in the present, after all. Its overcast again, a bit gloomy, I’d been writing for a while and graciously allowed myself a breather.

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Why is there such a difference between an event we can never forget and an event we will always remember?

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I leaned back and my mind sallied forth into my remembered yesterdays. I used to love driving, when my mother first allowed me to borrow her VW Bug. She was christened Hermionie, by my mother, but I didn’t ever tell my friends her official name. Driving was freedom, then. Still is when I can cruise down highways doing 75 to Door County, or on spring break to Washington D.C., or on any trip away from routine and toward an adventure.

Then I remembered driving my cousin’s rebuilt Ford Model T, about that same time in my life. My uncle in Iowa City had wisely purchased one well past it’s prime, and along with a mechanic or two and his sons, they’d got that big, boxy beast running, even learning how to fix minor mechanical malfunctions and to change the oil all on their own. That wasn’t why my uncle bought it, though. His sons were as likely to get into trouble as not, and the T’s top speed wasn’t much above 40, downhill. It was built with a whole lot of steel, too. Not like cars today.

I remembered one weekend in college, when I borrowed a friend’s MG, my brother borrowed a friend’s Triumph, and off the two of us went for a drive across and over country roads, neither knowing what that strip of blacktop was called or where we were going to spend the night, just driving those old sportsters for the sheer fun of it. God, what a romp through the north woods we had!

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Where once the car was sex symbol, and virility was at stake, what I drove and my enjoyment in the act were one.

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Somewhere between then and now driving has become a chore. I’ve come to think of this place where I live as Faraway, since everything where I live is a hike. Grocery store: 10 minutes. High school: 10 minutes. Book store: 15 and 20 minutes, respectively. Gas station: 7 minutes. Sporting events: anywhere between 10 and 40 minutes (amateur or professional).

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I’ve spent the last month driving in and out of potholes the like of which you can scarcely imagine. Both my car and I are overdue for an alignment.

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We own three cars now, one for the teenagers, and teenagers by themselves are expensive, let alone the cost of maintaining three vehicles. This year so far I’ve had the rotors replaced ($900), a tie-rod fixed ($85), and two oil changes ($27 each). My daughter is also talented at getting her dad to spring for gas. Just this morning I woke to find a note she’d left requesting a full tank before she had to leave for school at 6:45 a.m. Seven minutes each way. (Last weekend she and her mom returned from shopping with a very pretty prom dress at a very reasonable price ($175), and in a fit of gratitude I’d offered a tank of gas ($47). Now, if only some boy works up the nerve to ask, it’ll all work out.)

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That same daughter caused her mother and I some brittle moments this past winter, learning to drive while also learning to navigate through snow and ice. I noted with some surety that as often as not it was the inexperienced teenager who managed to put their car into the ditch beside the road, and often then on a straightaway with no reason to be steering in any direction but straight on. I’m becoming convinced the state allows 16 year olds the rights to drive simply because, in its infinite wisdom, it knows the younger they are the softer their bones.

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I just got a call from the Dentist’s office. I’d missed my 10:30 appointment (20 minutes). I was focused on writing, in the now as it were (after my detour down memory lane), and I’d completely let matters lapse. Time ceased. Of course time is important, and I’ve got to remember, when I lapse into the now (or time past if its on hand) that planting one foot in the here and now might help this body I inhabit get itself there when (Crown: $1200).

From Inspiration To Serendipity

The source is generative. It is pure generation, the life of all things. And of all creatures, man is endowed with imagination; man is therefore also endowed with an ability to tap into the source for generative inspiration. Creativity lurks deep within us. Within our soul.

“Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.”
Albert Einstein

Among the Celts, “Imagination” means soul. Celtic scholar John O’Donohue points out that in the Celtic way of seeing the world, the “soul” is the place where the imagination lives. It operates where light and dark, visible and invisible, possibility and fact come together. “The linear, controlling, external mind will never even glimpse the gift that imagination is . What expands the soul, those revelations, comes from the cosmos, and not the thoughtful thinking.”

“Nature is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.”
Blaise Pascal

Imagination wakes us up from our slumber. Imagination is always bigger than reality, as a closed box always holds more than an open one. Imagination is liberation; liberating us from the here and now. Imagination is so vast, so large, so free that it allows us to contemplate grandeur. It transports us outside the immediate world to a world of infinity, to what if, a place of what-is-not-yet. It takes us to the realm of elsewhere.

“It is the pen which dreams.”
French Philosopher Gaston Bachelard

The sorcerer knows that by being in the Now, letting Flow course through him, all things are possible. He is an opening through which energy flows from the unmanifested source to the here and now for the benefit of all. The essence of source is within him, is him, it’s the fuel that fires his imagination, it energizes thought and enables him to connect with the invisible energy in all things. Imagination is the workshop in which his intentions are first visualized.

It isn’t a thought but a feeling. It is akin to experiencing the birth of light from the inside. It is the feeling experience of a sun rising within one’s deepest core.

We must be before we can do, we can do only to the extent that we are, what we are depends on what we think and feel. What we think, what we focus our attention on, and how strongly we feel, our desire, is what ultimately unleashes inspiration. It is through silence that we can hear. It is through intention that we control our attention. It is what we focus our attention on that grows within us. We cannot manifest what we want; we can only manifest what we already have. What is already within us is source. If we become conscious of the source within us, understand that we can tap into it, allow it to pave the walk ahead of us, serendipity follows.

Meditation Exercise: Vow to yourself to take one or more everyday activities and use them to bring empowerment and creative expansion into your life. When commuting or washing the dishes or whatever, let it be a time for alertness. Be absolutely present in that activity and note the alive stillness within you. You will then be noticing how the inner dimension of consciousness flows into what you are doing. This is the joy of Being