• Give It Up

    • July 5, 2010 9:33 am

    Dearest Readers,

    Imagine going into a store to buy something you need and leaving that store with the item you needed and a whole bunch of other stuff you did not need. Imagine then checking out of your hotel and forgetting that first item, the one you actually needed, in the room.

    What is that? Irony? Murphy’s Law? The Forget-It Fairies?

    Regardless of its nature, this minor bummer didn’t, in fact, happen to me but it did happen to my roomie here in San Antonio. She needed a special kind of shampoo so we went into a cosmetics store to buy it and she ended up leaving with a whole skin cleansing system in addition to the shampoo.

    In her own words, “The sales clerk saw me coming.”

    This morning when I got up she had already left. The one item she left behind? Her special shampoo. I checked out myself a few hours later and left her shampoo sitting there on the counter. What I went through before I departed, however, is another story.

    Should I package it up and send it to her? The post office is closed. I could ask the concierge to send it to her. No address and besides, she’s not even going back to her home right away. I could forego the carry-on option and pack it in my luggage. It would cost me $55USD to check the bag.

    Who needs yoga when you’ve got a mind doing mental gymnastics like these?

    Of course, there was one more option to consider: letting it go. But the waste! The money, the shampoo, the packaging!

    Let it go. But… but… but…

    I find it so difficult to throw stuff out and to see useful things unused. I’ve been particularly challenged on this trip what with no recycling in either the Bahamas or New Orleans. So much plastic and glass being thrown in the garbage. So much waste in every corner of our cultural fabric. It can make a person crazy.

    When I feel this powerless I remember the words of a wise monk who once gave me some very practical advice. I had to destroy a wasp’s nest and couldn’t bear it. What should I do? “Offer it to God,” she told me.

    It seemed too simple. But… but… but…

    Offer it to God.

    Can I control the amount of waste in the world? No. I can do my part. That is all. What to do with the rest of it? There’s so much. It’s overwhelming.

    Offer it to God.

    Is this a cop-out? Some might think so. Like a Catholic confession, do what you want and be forgiven. Create all the waste you want and then offer it to God.

    No. This is not the idea. The idea is to offer up that which we cannot control or change. “This is too big for me. Take it.”

    Even if it’s as small as a bottle of shampoo.

    Inspiring Message of the Day: From oil spills to wasted products, there is so much in the world that makes me feel helpless and powerless. I will offer it all, including how I feel about it, to the Highest Power Back of All Things. I will trust that these things are being taken care of by the Unseen.

    Day 25

    • July 1, 2010 10:36 am

    Dearest Readers,

    Wake up in New Orleans and bed down in San Antonio. Now I know how rock stars feel.

    I’m here with a whole bunch of friends and the transition from lone wolf to pack animal is requiring some effort on my part. The temptation is to shut down, retreat, close myself off. This is old behaviour.

    When I was a kid one of the ways I would seek attention was to become sullen and morose. That way everybody would ask me, “What’s wrong?” I didn’t do this deliberately. In fact, I had no idea my behaviour was that calculated. It took quite a lot of Inner Work to see this pattern revealed.

    When that Old BS resurfaced yesterday I was surprised. It constantly astonishes me to discover that when I am feeling insecure or vulnerable the old belief systems can return in a flash.

    So, the solution. I’ve recognized what’s going on, now what? Become willing to change and to let go. Share with someone the truth about how I’m really feeling. Be gentle and loving with myself. Think before I speak so I don’t say something I’ll regret later.

    When I take this kind of Healing Action things begin to shift and I find myself returning to Grace.

    Ah, yes. There is more work to be done. I’m not perfect yet.

    Inspiring Message of the Day: When I am feeling particularly insecure I will take the steps necessary to shift my Energy back to Love. It is not easy to do this work but I am ever willing to change and be changed by Right Thinking and Action.

    Lest We Forget

    • June 29, 2010 8:50 am

    Dearest Readers,

    New Orleans is a great city. I love the balconies, the floor-to-ceiling windows, the flagstone sidewalks. People look you  in the eye and say, “How you doin?'” when passing by. I now understand what is meant by Southern hospitality.

    Yesterday the proverbial wind took me to the WWII Museum. I probably wouldn’t have gone in if it weren’t for GITA but because I’m now doing research for a play about war and peace I found myself sitting in the 3 o’clock showing of Beyond All Boundaries a 4-D multi-media experience narrated by Tom Hanks.

    Did you know that WWII took 65,000,000 lives? Sixty-five million. I still cannot grasp this number. I keep saying it over and over, like an answerable question that begs an answer anyway: “Sixty-five million? Did I hear that right? Did I?”

    One of the pieces of info I didn’t really remember from my school-day lessons was that the US did not, in fact, want to go to war. The President at the time, Franklin D. Roosevelt, said an uneqivocal “no” to joining the war effort. The attack on Pearl Harbour and Germany’s subsequent declaration of war on the US is what forced America to finally join the Allied Forces.

    It was interesting to see the news reels depicting the US as a pacifist country. We think of them now as such war mongers. Perhaps WWII was the true catalyst for this change in their policy. America came out of WWII victorious (the film makes no real mention of the other Allied countries and their aid) and the victory made them an undeniable Super-Power.

    The sidewalks outside the Museum are made of brick and upon each brick is carved the name of one of the Fallen. It felt strange to walk on top of their names, like walking through a graveyard, unsure of whether stepping on the Dead is akin to stepping on their honour. But I realized it was quite the opposite. My footprint on theirs. Mine from the sole of a shoe. Theirs from the Soul of a Life.

    I’m a peacenik. I am. But if the Allies hadn’t fought the Axis what then? Is war sometimes necessary? Is the answer to this unanswerable question as clear as it seems?

    Inspiring Message of the Day: As much as I would like things to be black and white the Truth is much more complex. I will continue to keep an open mind and give space to Life’s unanswerable questions.

    Nassau to New Orleans Not-So-Direct

    • June 28, 2010 11:54 am

    Dearest Readers,

    The City of New Orleans is real. I’m here. It sounds arrogant but I don’t mean it to be. How do you know a place really exists until you’ve been there?

    After leaving the ashram on Paradise Island I flew from Nassau to Miami where I overnighted in a hotel in Coral Gables, The City Beautiful.The hotel was full of immigrant men from South and Southeast Asia waiting to start their jobs as “crew.” I assumed that meant for the cruise ships but I didn’t get a chance to find out.

    Next morning I was on a bus heading here, to the city of Mardi Gras and Katrina, a place that makes me think of movies I loved growing up: Easy Rider, Angel Heart, The Big Easy Along the way we stopped in all kinds of wacky places. Ask me about Tallahassee sometime.

    After arriving in the early dawn to a sun rising on the magnificent Lake Pontchartrain Causeway that traverses Lake Pontchartrain I grabbed a taxi outside the Greyhound Station and headed for this fabulously historic B&B, Terrel House.

    This is the Deep South. What I came here to experience. And I am. The Bush-hatin’ cabbie I flagged told me it never used to be this hot in New Orleans but it was getting hotter all the time because the Bible said it would. A kid serving me in a grocery store called me Ma’am. Much of the architecture in this city recalls days when parasols and fans would have been used to survive the heat. Now air-conditioning is ever-present everywhere.

    I’ve got it turned off. I came to experience the heat, too.

    For two days I will soak up what I can. Everyone has said, “Go to the French Quarter.” I’m more curious about Katrina’s scars and Treme but I’m just going to see where the wind (proverbial — it’s dead still) takes me.

    Thunder is rumbling in close skies and a train is bleating it’s horn in the near distance. The fountain in the courtyard outside this carriage-house room is gurgling away. I’ve got the door wide open. Even if that cabbie was right I’m gonna embrace it.

    Inspiring Message of the Day:     O to be Alive in this Great World!  The Wonders of Humanity and Nature, cruel and kind, bitter and sweet, so rich, so abundant, so jaw-droppingly awesome! Let our hearts sing with thanks.