The Rotating Drill Bit - Or, How to Successfully Deal with Drama

“So who brings the drama?” My friend E asked before I left for vacation - excuse me, I mean, our trip. There’s an article making the rounds titled something like, “Trip or Vacation,” whose bottom line is that if you are driving, going with family, taking kids, or staying someplace with a kitchen, then you are not on vacation, you are on a trip. Which means that I have been on only 1 (one) vacation since I got married, and it was last year, for my 50th birthday, our trip - I mean vacation - to Italy.* 

But that distinction doesn’t really matter. While it’s all very amusing, what makes a vacation a trip is probably drama. Can I talk about drama? What do I mean by drama? I don’t mean obvious drama, at least not usually obvious. I’m not talking door-slamming, yelling, face-slapping surface drama. Not in my nuclear family of origin. With the stepmother out of the picture lately, at least, there’s only the quiet ripples of the drowning man who slips away without an obvious struggle. 

In other words, there’s a lot going on under the surface. Although, let me be clear, I’m more like the other branch of my family, the one that never met an emotion unworthy of expression. Immediate expression. Unfortunate, tactless, immediate expression. That’s me. And then there is the rest of the family. Introverts to a one. 

So while the obvious answer to my friend E’s question might be, “I do. I bring the drama.” I’d like to argue, before the court, that I am only one part of a system, a system in which there is a designated OBVIOUS drama-bringer, and then there are the subtle dramas that others bring. 

Readers,  most of my drama is about resenting that we schlepp through traffic jams and mid-Atlantic highways for 7 or more hours to get to the beach, while the rest of the family drives 2.5 or more with traffic but still not nearly as much as we drive with traffic and their route is much more pleasant with back roads and two lane highways for most of it while we have to take the Thruway and the NJ Turnpike or I95 or whatever clogged miserable artery. It is so UNFAIR.

However, we have been making this journey for most of the children’s lives. And we all love to be at the beach. At one time, we lived a lot closer to the beach - although still not as close as the rest of my original family lives. And because we are all creatures of habit and comfort, we like to go to the beach we know, and eat at the places we know are okay not great because nothing is great at the beach but it’s our beach. Even the husband, who is not a big fan of the beach, likes to go there because that is what we do. That Is What We Do. So you would think that I would have made my peace with that. And really, I had. This year, I was really quite calm about the whole thing. Before we left to pick up the 16-year-old. Before my sciatic nerve was ululating down my ham after hours of sitting in the car. Before all that. 

But I was not going to bring drama this year. I was not. Even if that obvious resentment about travel distances is only the tip of the story, I’d been feeling positively zen before we took our three day journey down the eastern seaboard, stopping to pick up the 16 year-old from her summer dance intensive, then stopping in Philadelphia at the Barnes Collection - I highly recommend it. We had to spend two nights on the road because the 16 year-old’s performance was on Friday night, but our beach rental didn’t start until Sunday. That meant two nights sharing a room with the kids in cruddy hotels. My sangfroid began to erode when it took at look at the polyester berber carpeting I had to do my morning sun salutations on at the “Comfort” Inn in Philly. And the pulsing sciatic nerve in my buttock further eroded it. 

Okay, I'm lying. It wasn't just the sciatic nerve. Frankly, the very reason that my friend E asked me about the drama was that BEFORE we left on our long journey down the seaboard, I had been talking about feeling some of the old resentment surfacing. I alluded to potential drama once we got to the beach, and this caused her to ask her interesting question. A question I hadn't really faced square on until she asked it.

Well, to answer E’s question, let me just state right out that I arrived at our beach rental in a state. How to describe that state? Well, let’s say I ripped into that vacation home like a rotating drill bit in an electric drill rips into a piece of soft wood. 

The rotating drill bit is what we call the 13-year-old when she tries to sleep in our bed. This happens infrequently, and has done so for the last 13 years; but it does happen. And usually by the morning, three of us haven’t slept all that well, and two of us feel like we were sharing a bed with a rotating drill bit, not a child. Right down the center. 

So I brought that kind of internal energy to our summer vacation slash trip. By day two, the husband actually said in despair, “I thought you weren’t going to do this this time.” And I saw how my before-trip sangfroid, my equanimity, had been simply tacked on, not really integral.

Fortunately, or inevitably - propelled by the power drill in my brain -  by day two, I injured my foot badly enough that I had to stay off it for the rest of the vacation. At the time, I was walking briskly on the boardwalk and listening to Gil Fronsdal’s Audio Dharma podcasts on doing one thing at time. I was, therefore, doing two things at a time, but I at least I was aware of that. Also, thanks to Audio Dharma, I was reminded of how helpful it can be to simply stop, notice what is happening, and relax about it. This is also known as accepting what is. I soon discovered, by the end of the day, that what was was that my foot hurt like hell and I couldn’t walk on the sand. I had to sit in a deck chair and ice it. 

This led to me reading various things on my Twitter feed - and got me to the idea of intention setting for the day . Or got back around to it again, because I’ve heard it before. This is one of the secrets of successful people. They set intentions. 

The next morning, when I woke up, I set an intention. My intention was to be open-hearted and observe. This is a strategy often recommended by therapists who are sending their clients (patients?) off on family, uh, trips. Instead of reacting like a rotating drill bit, just observe. Observe what others are doing. 

And one thing I observed right away was that I was bristly. I had the energy. I was the rotating drill bit of our week-long vacation bed, internally. We were all in it together, and if I didn’t stop rotating crazily, then no one was going to get any relaxation. 

So I just stopped. I tried to just can it. I practiced my yoga and my 5 Tibetans on the pool deck overlooking the lake, and played in the pool with my kids and my niece and nephew. I relaxed into the house, which was actually quite fine in a very outdated way. “Key West meets Rehoboth” was how my beloved Cousin Ell and Aunt and Uncle Wisdom described it. Yes, they were also at the beach, staying at my beloved Cousin Ell’s new and fabulous beach house, but I insisted they had to see our rental because it really was something. There was the amazing green rattan furniture with plastic covered cushions. There was the teal and pink color scheme. The huge kitchen had two fridges, three sinks, two dishwashers, and an enormous cooktop. The place was set up for entertaining. It had a gorgeous deck, yard, and pool, all full of wonderful plantings and landscaping. There was a caretaker who came by every day and told us a little about the owner - relative of the DuPonts, former owner of a baseball team. It was olde school relaxed luxury. And I observed how very, very easily I accepted the lifestyle of the cared-for by a caretaker.

So, did I answer E’s question? Who brings the drama? Sadly, it might be me. At least I bring sufficient internal drama that it doesn’t even matter what drama anyone else might bring. All I can feel is my own. But when I turned it off - I unplugged the drill - things were a lot simpler. It’s true that the only person you can change is yourself. The only drama I can affect is my own. 

*

I guess it’s fitting that E sent this quote to me, now that I’m returned from the trip. It’s one of those refrigerator magnet type quotations; but it’s a good one. A really good one. 

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find beauty in others; to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social connection; to know that one life has breathed easier because you lived here. This is to have succeeded. 

 --Bessie Stanley , 1904.  Often attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson. 

*Here’s the link, in case you’re bored with me already, Readers: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/m-blazoned/vacation-or-trip-a-helpful-guide-for-parents_b_7789310.html

Hello

I was all set to post a new blog post about this picture, but I woke up yesterday to the Boston lockdown, and frankly, I was riveted. I, along with almost everyone else, was relieved and happy that Dzhokar Tsarnaev was taken alive into custody.

Considering the way the week has gone, with two people being terribly successful at doing bad things, it's ironic that my previous post was about the powerful connection between doing good and being successful. Although last week I poked fun at overachieving Adam Grant for the potentially pathological origins of his urge to help others, I am really very happy to believe that humans tend towards the good, biologically speaking. If scientists confirm the existence of the rumored "altruism gene," I will be delighted. I was one of the zillions of people who shared the Mr. Rogers quotation about looking for the helpers in times of tragedy, because they are always there.

I also recalled listening to the Dalai Lama talking about how the newsworthiness of terrible events like the marathon bombing is proof that humans are inherently good. These horrific events shock and anger us - not to mention, make front page news - because they are rare. They are not the norm. They are extraordinary. Ordinary people aim for the good.

Nevertheless, the mug pretty well sums up how I'm feeling. Despite the capture of the Marathon bombers, the fact remains that overall the news has been bad. Shitty, really. Bombs in Beantown, bums in the Senate. Booms in Texas. And my arms, from those allergy shots: They are swollen, hot, and itchy.

But I didn't just post this picture of Grumpy Cat because I'm grumpy. I posted it because the mug makes me smile. Everything in the picture makes me smile, as a matter of fact, and while it may seem a stretch at times of national strife, one thing I've learned is that if you want to feel better, you have to smile. You don't even have to FEEL the smile. You can just use your smile muscles. The Buddha said so, and so did Daniel Kahneman in his incredible book, Thinking Fast or Slow. Studies show that just holding a pencil between your teeth - which activates your smile muscles - will make you trend optimistic.

I'm not a Grumpy Cat fan. Grumpy Cat is a meme, and I know what a meme is because my children have told me. The mug makes me smile, though, because I won it. When I say I won it, I mean I won it in a random drawing on a funny blog I read, so that makes me smile. And the box next to it, and the vintage pin come from excellent friends who visited from Boston last weekend, so they make me smile, too. The box, by the way, holds a musical egg timer. You refrigerate the timer with your eggs, then put it in the pot when you hard boil them, and the egg, which is painted to look like mini Delft china because it's Dutch, plays the Dutch national anthem when the eggs are done. Supposedly. My eggs weren't as done as I would have liked, but that is probably because they are fat American eggs, not slim, Dutch bicycling eggs. Still, the whole business was very entertaining. Plus, all the instructions are in Dutch, which is funny to try to pronounce, if you're me.

I put all those things together because they remind me that despite the bad news, I notice myself straining to find something good. Straining is the right word, here, because effort is involved. I'm no Pollyanna, but I do want to find a way back to good when something terrible happens. I don't think I've always felt this way. There have been times when I have been overwhelmed by traumatic events and pretty much pummeled by them. Readers, I believe this trend towards optimism in me is a result of my struggle to define success. I've changed. I think it's all the reading I've done about success, motivation, positive thinking, intelligence, and happiness, and meditation. Possible simply due to meditation, if what I've been learning about meditation's effects on the brain is true.

Whatever has caused this change, I'm grateful for it. I feel more resilient. If I didn't have that sense of possibility inside me somewhere, I might not be able to see those helpers. Sure, they're in the paper. But I mean, if I didn't have the little light of optimism, I would probably be overwhelmed by a sense of the helpers' ultimate futility.

So I am grateful, so grateful not to feel that way, not to feel that bad. I'm as grateful for that as I am for the helpers.

Thursday morning, I went to my NIA class, and the teacher, who is a friend, told the group that that day, instead of a particular body focus, she wanted us to have a focus on gratitude. Because of the bombing in Boston, about which she felt so angry and sad, she felt it was important to be grateful for our legs and feet and bodies, for the chance to move them around at will. It made me cry. Then I danced.

Kindness: Annals of Parenting Success

I encourage my daughters to play with sharp tools

I thought I ought to start out the year on a strong positive note. Maybe brag about something great I do, or about a particularly honed parenting skill I have. Something like that. So there’s this.

The other day we were in our friends’ car. Okay, minivan. This is the suburbs, and we did have seven people, so what else you gonna use? (Parenthetically, one wonders if this detail is necessary to the story. Does it matter where we were? It matters that we were two families together. It matters that the space was enclosed. It probably also matters that I was, technically, a guest in this vehicle preferred by suburbanites. Does it also matter that we were two families together, but we weren’t two complete families, since our friends’ older children were not with us? This detail doesn’t matter to you, Readers, but it matters to the picture of my friends’ family, and it might matter to my friends.)

Anyway, we were going somewhere (I’m being intentionally vague here, so as not to bother readers with unnecessary detail, not to appear mysterious.) Oh, hell, we were going to cut our Christmas trees. Yes, we are Jewish. Yes, we celebrate Christmas. Yes. So, we’re tooling along, the kids in the way back, when I hear the 5^th grader say something. I don’t remember what. Then the 9^th grader says to the 5^th grader, “Nobody cares.” Then I hear giggling. Heh-heh, I’m just kidding. Heh-heh, they’re all laughing, maybe. I can’t turn my neck far enough to see everyone back there. I’m not an owl. “Nobody cares.” It’s just a joke, this little sledgehammer phrase pummeling the younger child’s sense of worth. So I say something like, “Hey, I don’t like that kind of comment. It’s unkind and unnecessary.” Maybe I tell the older to apologize to the younger girl. Maybe she does.

This exchange naturally caught the attention of the others in the vehicle (see – enclosed space was the important detail, because otherwise how would readers know I could have heard this comment made by my child and believe that everyone else present could have, too?) and led the adults to comment. My friend, let’s call him Mark – as in, “he’s an easy….” – said something like, “Kids will be kids.” Something genial, to diffuse any tension. Although I’m not saying there was any tension. The whole exchange worked like a reflex. After all the 9^th grader is in, well, 9^th grade, and the 5^th grader has been around almost eleven years, so I’ve had a lot of training in sibling interactions. It was like a call-and-response between me and them. No stress. No tension. Indeed, almost no thought involved in my reaction.

“My brother used to say stuff like that to me all the time,” continued let’s-call-him-Mark. He was driving, and I was a comfortable passenger in his vehicle. “He used to tease me all the time, and I turned out—“

“Bald!” I said. Maybe shouted. “You turned out bald!”

We all laughed heartily, me especially, because, you know, it was kind of funny. And let’s-call-him-Mark isn’t actually bald, not totally; what he has is a receding hairline. So, you know, in the split second before I said what I said, I thought that it would be funny partly because he’s not actually 100% bald. So it would be even more unexpected.

When I say that we all laughed, by the way, I mean that the children didn’t laugh. They were not paying attention to us adults. They were busy playing games on their iPods instead of looking out the window at the lovely scenery. So the four of us laughed. Although, upon closer consideration, I suspect  maybe it was only three of us, because immediately after I caught my breath from having heartily enjoyed my own clever riposte, the husband said, “You know, right after correcting the 9^th grader, you say THIS?”

Of course our friends came to my rescue. The joke was totally different. It wasn’t the same thing at all. When the 9^th grader said, “Nobody cares” to the 5^th grader, it was mean because there’s an inequality in power between them that doesn’t exist between me and let’s-call-him-Mark. Anyway, calling him bald was funny because it was absurd to conflate turning out fine with baldness, when the two have nothing to do with each other, so I wasn’t trying to quash his ego. On the other hand, that was just my train of thought. Maybe let’s-call-him-Mark had private insecurities about his hair that I’d fed through my moment of careless high-spirits.

We continued along our merry way, stopped for a big breakfast, cut down those trees, and generally enjoyed ourselves. Periodically, however, I kept wondering if the husband didn’t have a point. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that periodically, the realization that the husband had a point intruded on my enjoyment. After all, we learn by example, do we not? Which is more effective, the “don’t say that” reflex, or the thing you actually do that requires (a least a moment) of planning and gets a laugh?

So let’s congratulate me for teaching my children how to be kind to one another. I’m saying it aloud, because it’s a new year, and I’m starting on a positive note.  Also, I thought I’d pass along my experience to you, so that you might learn wisdom from me. Because I have a lot of it, apparently. Bursting forth, like uncensored wit, and ready to share. So here it is: you can kill, or you can be kind, but you can’t kill with kindness. In other words, remember to do what I say, and not what I do.

(Parenthetically, I’m hoping I’m right that the kids weren’t listening.)

Boddhisatva or What? S. Covey's Habit #2, Continued

The ham was delicious. And huge. It weighed several pounds more than I was led to believe it would when I ordered it, and for a germaphobe vegetarian-at-heart like myself who has a touch-and-go relationship with meat, it presented a challenge. I did purchase it from a regionally famous butcher pre-cooked, cured, smoked, and shot through with some preservative that kept it looking pink. I probably could have gnawed on it in the back of the car.

Nevertheless, I was nervous about cooking it through. Or heating it through, to be precise. We were feeding a lot of people, including children, who were sleeping over. I didn't want any vomiting. So while everyone seemed to enjoy it, I really only fully appreciated it the morning after Christmas, when I woke up, and said my first words to the husband: "That ham was delicious, because nobody got sick." Happy Boxing Day.

***

Back to Effective slash Successful People's habits.
Still splashing around in Stephen Covey's Habit #2, Start with the End in Mind, I've avoided describing my funeral only to run smack into the instruction to write a mission statement for my life, so that I can direct myself towards those things that are in accord with my deepest principles.

Oy vey. Is that overwhelming or what? I decided to put off the task again.

So I took the dog for a walk, and decided to listen to a Zencast, which I hadn't done in a long time, on my brand new iPhone4S. Zencast was a talk by Jack Kornfield. Jack Kornfield was one of the first Americans to popularize Buddhism in the West starting in the 1970s. He's got a nasal voice, but he tells good stories. I like his talks, although he does repeat himself. Then again, so do I. Lo and behold, Jack started out talking about success. What it isn't: avoiding difficulties and suffering in life. As if experiencing these things is somehow shameful. Which is actually true. We do feel ashamed of our misfortunes, don't we?

And of course, he talked about meditation as a way to understand the nature of the suffering and misfortunes of life, as well as our reactions to them (avoidance), which often increase our suffering. But what he was really talking about was the purpose of meditation. First, to quiet the mind. To allow yourself to understand what's going on, in your own head, and in the world around you. To observe and understand that suffering and bad stuff happens as part of life, and so does plenty of good stuff.

Second, after understanding by observing your own mind, moving out into the world. That is, forming intentions. Am I in a funhouse or what? All these gurus keep telling me the same things. Anyway, he was speaking of intentions both micro and macro. Micro being taking a slight pause and observing your anger at your 4th grader for losing her purse with her cute panda wallet and fifty dollars, and also observing her quivering chin, before deciding how to respond. Macro being, you guessed it, understanding what's most important to you in life, your core values, your principles, so you can act in accordance to them.

Sound familiar?

And as he went along he mentioned that if you're meditating, you are on the path to enlightenment. Even if, I suppose, you're only doing it to lower your blood pressure and keep your stress at bay, you're at least on the path. And somewhere along the path, some people take the Boddhisatva vow, which is to strive for enlightenment for the purpose of helping other sentient beings become enlightened.

Which brings Jack, and me, and you, my tens of readers, right back into the stream of finding the purpose and motivating principles of our lives.  "Wherever you go, there you are," as Buckaroo Bonzai said.

Why does it seem so hard? That I listen to Zencast and read these books and take an interest in these questions of purpose and principles shows me something. A couple of things. One, I know I'm not so unique in these interests. There are lots of people like me who want to consider these deeper questions, at least on some level; but we're just as happy talking to Siri on our new iPhone4s or rushing to the outlets on December 26th with the MIL and the SIL for some major bargains.

Another thing I begin to see is that my reluctance isn't about some hangup in myself about facing my deeper values. It's about a sense I have that this is a shameful or embarrassing activity. That there's something silly or New Age or creepy clammy-handed about being interested in a greater purpose.  And if I think that, lots of other people do, too. So while we all might have this hankering for a deeper understanding, we also have this reluctance to say it out loud.

Why is it more embarrassing to say I'd like to cultivate my understanding, compassion, and wisdom so I can make choices that improve the world, starting with my nearest and dearest relations, through my good intentions, than to say that my iPhone4s makes me happy?  Which it certainly does.

Maybe you can answer that question, my tens of readers.

Navel Gazing to Find Success

Immersing myself in all these books about Success has actually been helpful in some ways. All their talk about wishes and desires and intentions has freed me from a certain amount of guilt.  They’ve allowed me to pursue some things I was already sort-of pursuing in a guilt-ridden because-they’re-not –leading-to-employment-and-money-earning-half-assed-way. 

Like napping.  Just 20 minute catnaps. I’ve always taken those, since college. Even at my library job. My colleagues more than once caught me with keyboard impressions on my cheeks some time in the early afternoon.

Or like meditating, which I’ve mentioned before.

http://blogs.mcgill.ca/iss/files/2011/01/navelGazing1.jpg

But one thing keeps coming up in these books that  I’ve really had a hard time wrapping my mind around. It's this whole asking God or the universe or your subconscious for what you want phenomenon. Whether it’s affirmations or afformations or writing a list of your intentions and desires, I just can’t quite get my mind around it.

First, how specific should this list be? Is this list meant to include new headphones for my iPod? Because I do need those. I can only hear Pink from one speaker, and that’s not cutting it at the gym.

Second, is the list meant to be abstract, in which case it ought to be wholly altruistic? Peaceloveandunderstanding and all that. 

Third, there are complexities to the whole wishing/desiring/intention thing. 

For example, is there a zero-sum calculation at work here where if I wish to publish an article in a major magazine, then one of my children will be hit by a car. Because I DIDN’T wish for my family’s health and happiness? 

What about wishing for something that has ramifications you don’t understand at the time? Think Sibyl of Cumae: she wished for immortality, but forgot to wish to stay young forever; so she shriveled up into an ever more wrinkly and elderly old woman; furthermore, she was doomed to constantly lose her loved ones because she forgot to wish for their immortality, too.

I used to wish for wisdom. Yep. That was me, the practical-minded teenager. I wanted wisdom. I wanted to be one of those old people at whose knee young people sit and ask for advice. Later, I thought, why did I waste time wishing for that? I ought to simply have wished for health and happiness. Those make for a more comfortable life.

So the wishing/desiring/intention-planting becomes this thing. Like a birthday wish.  You know, make a wish and blow out the candles. It seems simple.

But what if you don’t blow out all the candles and you wished for something specific and particular that you really, really want, like David Bowie to kiss you, and then you have to face your disappointment? (Okay, that was a loo—oo-nng time ago.) You don't want to risk that. 

So then you wish anodyne wishes: you wish for world peace, say. Something faultless but also impossible. If your wish comes true, then great, you helped; but if it doesn't, no one will blame you.  Meanwhile, you get brownie points (with whom, you might ask, since I’m pretty much an atheist—but I never claim to be rational) for your benevolence towards humanity. 

Fourth, what do all these lists have to do with success? By now I've forgotten, caught up in this rather self-serving exploration. Luckily, one of my successful old friends hasn't, and he contacted me, and suggested that perhaps my entire line of reasoning here has been misguided.

Okay, he didn't actually say that. What he did suggest is that success is about setting an impossible goal, a goal that has nothing to do with personal enrichment but with doing something or making something that improves the world a little bit. 

Damn idealists. They always make you look up from your navel.  

His is an interesting suggestion, though. To make sure you always have something to strive for, to inspire you, to occupy your time (and to prevent excessive navel-gazing), choose a goal you can never fully achieve. Even though you'll know you’re never going to succeed, you’ll always be able to place stumbles and achievements in perspective. Best of all, you'll always have something to occupy you.

Besides your navel, my tens of reader, as fascinating as it is. 

Deepak Chopra Tells Us How to Succeed

Deepak Chopra's written a lot of books, given a lot of talks, and he tweets a lot, too. He's an active purveyor of the secrets of Abundance (aka, success, wealth, and happiness). Before he became this guru, however, he was a long time student of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, better known as the dude who started Transcendental Meditation. And he was once a doctor, too, although since he's  acquired so much Abundance, I doubt he practices medicine anymore. 

According to his website, Dr. Deepak Chopra has written over 60 books. I've read one,  The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success,  which turned out to be a condensed version of a different book of his, so I feel totally confident that I have a full understanding of his teachings. Which I will pass along to you, my tens of readers.

Why? Well, I actually found his book quite compelling.

I'd have to characterize it as Buddhism Lite--or Hinduism Lite, since he was born in Delhi, or was it New Delhi? Or maybe it's just New Age. Anyway, at the very least it's well-written, even if he does crib from Florence Scovel Shinn.

 In brief, the 7 Laws are:

• Underneath it all, we are pure consciousness or "pure potentiality," 
• so if we get in touch with that universal energy, we can channel it for our purposes. 
• Giving. 
• This is pretty clear. Have to give to get. Give and take keeps abundance circulating. And, the kicker--you have to give what you want to receive. So, you want money? Got to give to get, baby. 
•  Karma, or cause and effect. 
• Your choices affect you and those around you, so make them for their benefit as well as your own and you create good karma. 
• What to do if you've inherited a lot of bad luck (karma)? Well, learn from the bad stuff and try to make good choices as mentioned in previous sentence, so that you nullify the bad effects of previous bad, um, effects.
• Least Effort. 
• Meaning to stop struggling against yourself or the world. When you live "in harmony," your efforts flow and so does good old abundance. 
• Intention and Desire. 
• I've talked about this in a previous post. The idea is you plant your seed of intention in your mind (in your pure consciousness, that is), and let it sprout and bloom. 
• This is right out of Buddhist dharma talks I've read in Thich Nat Han and others: that our minds possess the seeds of all possible emotions, and that the ones we water with our attention are the ones that grow. 
• So if you're all negative and grumpy and water those seeds, you develop your negativity and grumpiness; but if you cultivate happiness and gratitude, then, well then you become an annoying Pollyanna. But I've seen that movie, and really, she was so hard to take, because life really laid the s**t on her. 

Sorry, I digressed.

•  Detachment. 
• This is actually also very fundamental to Buddhism. It means here that you plant your seed of your intent: for success at whatever your endeavor is--and then you let go of trying to control the way it comes about. 
• No micro-managing allowed. You must plant your wish, then allow it to come to fruition at the right time in the right way. Breathe. 

And finally,

• Dharma. Which here means purpose in life. 
• Which here means that once you listen to your true self (how to do that follows) and discover what your unique talent is, you pursue that.
•  And according to Deepak Chopra, we each have a special and unique something. So we find that something, and align it with our deepest wish. And all will be well and abundance will flow.

Wait, I forgot to mention one thing: this dharma has to be used in service to others in order to create real  abundance in your life.

Wow. that's a lot of info there, my tens of readers. And I didn't even get to it all. Like how to implement these laws. Phew. Tune in next time, when I add my three cents to my two cents. And get: Abundcents.

Ouch!

Scofflaws, Karma, and Success

http://students.ou.edu/Y/Jacob.R.Yandell-1/karma.png

I've been reading about karma a lot lately. The mystical-spiritual success folks like Deepak Chopra and Florence Skovel Shinn (more on her later) are big on it.

One aspect they're particularly keen on is choosing your words carefully, so you create good karma. Right speech, in case my tens of readers aren't up on Hinduism and Buddhism, is part of the Eightfold Path to enlightenment. For Chopra this is all about creating an intention that can then grow into the perfect success you crave. He suggests writing a list of your desires, which you look at before meditating, before turning in for the night, and first thing in the morning. Stating what you want plants the seed. Time, and your rapt and focused attention on the present, takes care of the growth and blooming.

Shinn is more about getting the right prayer to Jesus Christ (oy) and having your wish granted out there in the world right now. For example, she talks about a client who was broke at Christmas time and who needed cashish. F. S. Shinn told this woman to act as if she would have the money by buying wrapping paper and ribbon, meanwhile saying a prayer. Dubious, the woman left. She did as she was told, and that very evening, upon returning home, discovered a check in the mail from a distant relative.

Deepak Chopra is a little less definitive about wish-granting. He clearly has a thorough knowledge of karma. In fact, he cautions that once you plant your intention, you have to let go of trying to control how and when your wish will be granted. This is his escape clause to his otherwise pretty astonishing assertions of our personal power to attract "abundance" to ourselves. Karma may cause this abundance to occur in a profoundly different way than we might have intended. Or at a different time.

Say, in another life?

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So how bad is it that I lost my temper on the phone when some poor telemarketing person interrupted me, deep into my list of desires, to ask for the scofflaw who used to have my home phone number? I didn't mean to. It was just that I was so deeply concentrating that the call really got to me. In fact, the number of calls I receive for this debt-ridden, possibly ill and elderly man named Joseph Addario (this is a common name, so I mention it without pointing a finger at a particular scofflaw) has dwindled from several a day, two years ago, to one or two a month, usually.

You may ask why I didn't change my number two years ago. And I considered it, but when I learned that phone numbers become available for reuse after only 30 days, I figured I'd be just as likely to end up with a different scofflaw's former number, so I stuck with the scofflaw I knew.

Yesterday I recognized the number on caller id as one that had been calling for a few days, annoying me. So this time I answered, preparing to give my long-winded explanation and ask them to remove me from their call list; but I just wasn't as nice as I could have been. I asked them to remove my number a little louder than I meant to. As I mentioned, I was deep in thought. I was considering the implication of adding "screened porch" to my list. Should I ask to be able to add it on to my house? Or would it be better to simply ask for a screened porch -- once I relinquish my attachment to the way in which my intention for a screen porch manifests (Chopra word), I will be able to see the good, perhaps, when I am forced to sell my current house and move to a small shack--with a spacious screened porch attached.

I hope Joseph Addario is having a good day.