how do you know ...?

I wish I had thought to take a picture of the storytellers stick I was given after my first week of camp being a storyteller. My storyteller stick stands about 4 feet tall and is woven so the gathered sticks, which are light and flexible, swirl upward. During the second week of being the storyteller for the camp of nine to twelve year old children, since I now had a stick, I explained that when the story-stick was held in the upward position it signaled 'listening time' and so it would be best if they closed their mouths and opened their ears so the magic within the story could be revealed.

What the children didn't know was that each morning when I entered the hall where the children would gather, I pictured the stick as full of the power of the Spirit and called upon this Spirit to be with me as I told the story. Good thing I had the power of the Spirit with me because early last week as I told the story of Jesus' baptism and then told the children that just as Jesus had the experience of being told he was 'the beloved son in whom God was very pleased'; that this experience was also true for each of them: Each of us is the beloved child of God. And since each of us is living, then each of us have been chosen and God is pleased that we are alive.

As I finished telling the story and sharing my conviction of being the beloved child of God, a small hand raised in the air: "how do you know God exists?"

This is exactly what I love about working with young children; they go directly to the heart of the matter. Children have an inherent reverence for story and therefore are able to simply walking right into the middle of the plot: how do you {meaning me} know that God exists? In other words, if you can't tell me how you know God exists, then I think I'll forget the whole thing right now.

Working with young people requires not only conviction {understanding, knowledge and knowing} of what you believe but the ability to think fast on one's feet. The reason I put conviction as the first requirement is that to be trusted as a teacher of small children, you must speak only truth. Children have a finely tuned sense of smell for lies and they will dismiss you as inconsequential to their life if you lie to them. If truth is required for being effective then it is essential that you know what you believe. Also, without conviction of what you believe, it is really hard to be fast on your feet!

So there I am as storyteller with a dozen little faces looking to me ready to hear what I believe and out of my mouth come the words "have you ever experienced love?"

"Yes," his head nods.

"Was the love big and really good?"

A moment passes and I see him thinking about this question, and then he nods and says, "yes, it was."

"That is how I know God exists." I answer. "God is only love - that is all God is, love - and when I experience love, I know that love, the ability to love and experience love, comes from God. When I experience love, I am experiencing God."

I watched him take in my words, and then he seemed to swallow them as if to say, 'well that is worth considering.'

If you have ever worked with children then you are aware that after this exchange which maybe took two minutes, we just moved forward with the story and the experience of the story as if we hadn't been asked one of the most profound questions in existence. This is another great thing about working with children, they keep you rooted in the reality that life is about taking in an experience and then just moving forward: life is about living.

In some ways I was fortunate in being asked the question as the concept of knowing God's existence by experiencing love as well as being an experience of love for other people had been the basis of the class I had taught in church school this past year for the same age group. It was because of teaching that church school class that I used the word experience rather than the word feel when referring to love.

Experience means to have a practical acquaintance with; involvement and participation in. Generally then, experience indicates actions and behaviors that we are engaged by. When love is seen from this perspective of behavior then the words of Jesus, "love one another as I have loved you" not only make sense but the instruction has clarity.

Making sense out of this instruction was the basis of the teaching I did last year and what I came to understand was that the word love expressed in this context indicates goodness as an experience of living. When I experience 'goodness' in life then I am experiencing love. As I explored how this goodness revealed itself, I realized that goodness is not at all abstract. Goodness is quite concrete for we know what goodness is: goodness as love is kindness toward, consideration of, generosity of and toward, patience with , merciful with and the word I love; benevolent toward - the attitude of a warm-heart. These are the behaviors which allow for the experience of love.

I added the italicized words after each descriptive word for goodness to indicate each is an action word. I once read a book titled God is a Verb and it made the deep impression that God as the activity of creative goodness, always expands outward into life.

Therefore if each of us has been created to be an expression of God, then it follows that we also are called to be actively engaged in the behaviors expressing love which move outward and expand life. After all, there might be some child or maybe even a more grown-up person who is wrestling with the question of the existence of God and is asked to consider, have you ever experienced love? I firmly believe that God counts on - is dependent upon each of us - to be the answer to that question.

Just a note for you

I was able to edit the posting Drink Beauty and re-post it, however, I noticed when I went to the email where I receive postings that apparently when an edit to an existing post is done, the edited posting is not sent out. Or, at least I did not receive one in my email. So, if anyone would like to read a completed version of Drink Beauty, just clink on thankyoumagic.blogspot.com and it should be there beneath this post and the oops post. Blessings to each and all ...

Oooops !!!!

I just received my email version of the 'Drink beauty' blog and reading it I discovered that the ending has somehow been lost. I had problems when I went to post it and when I finally found the draft version I was so relieved and thrilled, I simply hit post without checking it ... where the ending has gone is one of those cyber mysteries.

Please accept the my apologies for this goof ... hopefully the intended message is still comprehensible since I will not have the opportunity or time to correct the post until tomorrow. Blessings to you.

Drink beauty - Redone

As I mentioned in the 'oops' posting, part of the original post for Drink Beauty became lost in cyber space. After reading it today and then mulling on what a friend said, I simply edited a few things and rearranged and edited the last couple paragraphs. Hope you enjoy.

Many, many years ago I was in the midst of an emotionally difficult time and so my morning patio time prayers seemed to be composed primarily of 'Please show me a way to feel better God. What should I do God?" Morning after morning I pleaded to be shown some action I could take that would lead me to a different place emotionally.

I suppose sooner or later I ran out of breath and began listening rather than just pleading, for an answer arrived with simple clarity, in the voice I recognized as coming from deep within my being: drink beauty. Two words ridiculously simple in their intention and yet containing an action that was not on my personal radar at the time: drink beauty.

At times I can be ridiculously concrete in responding to directions and so my response to the injunction drink beauty was to head to the library and root around in the art section where I found books full of glorious pictures of beauty. I checked out some selections and spent part of my patio time each day simply leafing through the books drinking the colors and forms of beauty artists had created.

Yesterday on my way down from camp I was sitting outside a restaurant where the view of Thumb Butte was glorious. As I starred at the outcropping of rock rising into the sky: drinking in the beauty of creation, I remembered an incident at a parish family camp held at Chapel Rock when the boys were quite young. Possibly this was the first time we were attending family camp because after lunch people talked about going to 'the tubs' and I decided to go there with the boys too, but for whatever reason we weren't organized in time to leave with the group and so I was given directions.

Now, giving me, one of the most directionally challenged people I know,directions to a place hidden in the rocks and trees of a camp in a forest area I was completely unfamiliar with falls into the category of foolishness. Within a ridiculously short period of time I, and my three young sons, were completely and utterly lost. Despite the fact that I knew I was lost, I was determined to keep going and so I kept moving and becoming more and more lost. Soon everything around me seemed totally unfamiliar. To say I was panicky is an understatement: a thoroughly urban mother lost in woods with three small urban boys, I was actually terrorized. Finally I simply stopped and told the boys I needed to think for a bit and figure out what to do next. Luke, who at the time was maybe four years old, pointed to Thumb Butte sitting solidly against a gloriously blue sky framed in tree tops and said, "look at the beauty Mom and you'll find the way."

Sure enough, silly as his 'direction' seemed at the time, by taking a few moments to see that the area I was standing in was full of nature's beauty, the panicky feeling was replaced with the sensible thought that since the camp was actually situated in a populated area, we therefore were not lost in a wilderness {which is how I had been feeling}. As this awareness of reality settled into my mind, I saw the telephone wires strung from their poles and realized that if we headed in their direction we would most likely come to a road close to camp. We did head in the direction of the wires and soon came to a road with houses where a nice person let me use their phone and we were soon rescued by amused old-timers of the camp.

Yesterday afternoon after unpacking the piles of bags and boxes from two weeks away from home, I was clearing a bookshelf to create a place for a gift the camp's program director had given me. moving the books I saw one that intrigued me and so I flipped through it's pages: "There is a sense of being taken out of ourselves when we see beauty." The words leaped off the page and, as happens so many times, I was astonished at how a truth I had been reminiscing about just that morning - the sensation of having panic removed as I took a few moments to experience the beauty all around me - was confirmed a new way.

Drink beauty and Look at the beauty and you'll find the way: both of these phrases reflect a truth about the how of living that seems essential if we humans are to not become lost during times of emotional chaos. I tend to think of emotional chaos as an experience of live wires tangled in my belly, glowing neon color and pulsating with energy that seems in conflict with the energy of the nest of wires it lays in. When I have this experience of emotional chaos, as these conflicting, pulsating energies boil within my self, a part of me always begins to panic as a sense of powerless over these tangled energies grows into the fear that there is no way out of what I am feeling. In the experience of emotional chaos I always become caught in the confines of my single self: a self that is tangled in an emotional reactions which feel overwhelmingly lonely in their confusion.

Being caught in the confines of emotional chaos causes an anguish in the human heart that often feels all encompassing. Ask any woman who has experienced the labor necessary for birthing new life and she will tell you that while she is caught in the grip of the contractions needed to move new life through the birth canal, there is nothing else happening in her experience of living at the moment. Because of this truth about birthing: (birthing any major piece of life for that matter, not just babies) when we attend classes about how to do labor, we are taught breathing techniques. When I myself went through this process, it wasn't until I was in my umpteenth hour of labor that I realized that the 'breathing' doesn't actually lessen the experience of the contraction, rather it is the focusing away from the pain and into the structured ritual of breathing that makes the process more bearable. By deliberately choosing to begin to breathe as I was taught when another contraction began, I was able to focus away from the 'complete' experience of being in pain and add another element to my experience, an element that I actually had some control over , and by this act of will, I could keep myself from panicking which is the what often happens in pain: the fear that the pain will never end.

As I heard within myself so many years ago while sitting on the patio in early morning light and pleading to be given a way out of my lonely self, the answer is to drink beauty for as my then quite young son said pointing to the mountain, look at the beauty and you'll find the way. Experiencing beauty deeply, that is paying close enough attention so that you are drinking in what your eyes see or your ears hear, takes us beyond our self. Beyond; a lovely word indicating past or outside of: past the pain, outside of the self in pain, beyond the confines of loneliness.

What never ceases to amaze me about this truth contained in the choice to engage beauty is that we are not being asked to do anything difficult: to change the feeling of the moment, all we need do is to lift our eyes away from the view that full of trouble and find a piece of beauty {which is everywhere - how clever was the Creator in that particular design!} and simply gaze at the beauty long enough to swallow the experience. Swallowing is essential to the act of drinking.

Drink beauty and let it fill you: do this act with deliberate intent several times a day and I will guarantee that you will be shown a new way - a new experience of - living.

our choice for engaging

This is a quick posting as I must still pack my suitcase and finish tidying the kitchen before I head back up the mountain but I wanted to share an awareness I had while on my patio this morning: I am able to learn patience toward living because I experience the unfailing patience of God with me!

Thirty some years ago when I first began living a program of recovery I was told a story about how to cope with confusion and chaos. One day a traveler came upon an ancient Bedouin living in the desert. The desert was large and as is the nature of deserts, dry and dusty and therefore around where the traveler and Bedouin sat, swirling 'devils' of dust rose from the floor of the desert scattering their energy and dust. As the traveler shielded his face from the blowing dust he asked the Bedouin, 'how do you live with these swirling dust devils?' The Bedouin peered into the distance as though seeing the swirling dust for the first time, shrugged and said, 'well, I just let them whirl.'

Oh, I thought hearing the story thirty some years ago, I suppose that makes sense; just let the dust whirl. In a lot of ways, I immediately intuited the point of the fable: dust tends to swirl so let it do what it does. I was however missing a rather vital piece needed in order to live as the old Bedouin did in the midst of whirling dust, and so although my intuiting was correct, my knowing: that is,understanding having seeped through my Being, so I could live from my intuiting, had yet to be acquired. The piece that needed to be acquired was the understanding that allowing dust devils to swirl as is their nature and yet not be exhausted by their swirling required that I choose to not engage their swirling - their whirling - their chaos and their confusion.

Not choosing to engage chaos and confusion has taken/is taking/does take learning how to be awake and aware of what is happening in the moment: a deliberate commitment to mindfulness. Acquisition of mindfulness is essential to allowing dust devils to be over there rather than jumping into their whirl because it is only by being mindful of the moment that I am able to be deliberate in the choosing of my thinking attached to the moment. Without knowing what my thoughts actually are attached to in the moment, my human tendency is rather to become fascinated by any kind of energetic activity and if we are not deliberate in creating our own energy our tendency is to jump into or onto the energy created by a separate situation. Often when we do this we engage turmoil.

Turmoil is simply confusion and agitation. The picture at the top of this posting is called turbulent waters and wonderfully illustrates the power of roiling energy continually thrust into a mass of boiling energy. When we engage turmoil we also then boil with the energies of confusion, agitation, anxiety, hostility, fear, nastiness, self righteousness and resentment. Whenever I am experiencing any of those feelings what I know is that I have somehow jumped into the dust devil and am whirling with it's energy. I have chosen - for whatever reason - to engage turmoil.

The reason I said at the beginning of this posting that I am learning patience as I become aware of God's infinitely kind patience with me is that although I had been given the story of dust devils thirty plus years ago and I have been trying to learn how to live it's meaning, it was only a couple weeks ago that the 'ah-ha' light bulb gleamed with understanding.

The light bulb lit up when I read a morning meditation with the rather simple {not to mention obvious} injunction do not choose to engage turmoil. I responded to those words with 'you mean experiencing turmoil is a choice I make?' Fortunately the meditations are good ones and it went on to answer my question by explaining that emotional turmoil always involves people and I always have the choice both in how I choose to see people as well as my choice of how {i.e., the manner in which} I involve myself with people. Duh!!! that is kind of obvious!!! Except .....

You see I was one of those annoying kids in class who heard something the teacher said and then raised my hand with a 'yeah, but, in this situation ....' That part of my self has mellowed a bit but my mind still tends to go 'well, that may be true a lot of the time but what about .....' I mean if you are river rafting through the rapids and the water is boiling all around you in turmoil it would be foolish to say 'oh whatever' and ignore the rather obvious fact that turmoil is occurring!

What about that situation?!?

I told you I have learned a bit of patience by experiencing God's patience and I swear to you as I 'thought' that scenario into consciousness I could hear/feel God's Spirit sigh and then patiently answer with: 'first of all, 'whatever' as a response to anything is not acceptance, it is the cop out of refusing to care about the well being of other people. Secondly if you are running the rapids in a river then most likely you made a choice to engage the sport of river rafting. Thirdly, you are not in a river running the rapids as a naked body bobbing about in the boiling water. That would be a truly dumb choice. If you have chosen to enjoy white water rafting as a sport then you are equipped with knowledge of how to engage the sport and you are in a 'boat' of some sort: control the boat and don't dip your oars into turbulent water!

Control the boat and don't dip my oars into turbulent water. When I 'heard' that phrase as I was picturing my dramatic scene in the white water rapids, I felt the light bulb shine, for in that moment I realized that choosing to engage turmoil was as foolish as thinking that one could control the direction of a boat running the rapids of a river, by digging into the water with their oar: a sure and proven way to become capsized as the boiling energy of the water will always be stronger than an oar. The only use for oars in that situation is to lay across the water and thus become a boundary for the water to push against thus allowing a bit of direction in the chaos.

As I 'watched' this picture in my mind, I began to understand that my 'boat' was NOT my 'self' - hello Mary! the self is in the boat! So what is the boat? What are the oars? The boat is created from my beliefs: the truths that are the foundation of how I choose to live. This being true, I can only control my boat if I have clarity about what I believe, what truth is contained in those beliefs and how I go about engaging those truths. My oars are the activity; the energy of engaging life with my choices: my perceptions, the thoughts arising from how I perceive and then the how of using my perceptions and thoughts as behaviors.

So, what I finally realized thirty years after hearing the story of the traveler, the Bedouin and the dust devils is that how and what I experience as I go about living depends completely on my choice of engagement. What I engage i.e., involve myself in, within any situation is what I will experience: engage love; experience love: engage delight; experience delight: engage learning; experience growth: engage the unknown with curiosity; experience adventure: engage adventure; experience creativity .... and on and on and on. Actually, what I am now learning is that the longer my personal list of engage - therefore becomes, the more options I have when I see the whirling dust of turbulence on the horizon.

So, here's the upshot of the whole thing: never give up on learning because the Source of all Knowledge never ever gives up on us - all we are asked to do is to remain an open and willing student. {I know, I'm tiresome on this, however, the best way to be an open and willing student is to set aside time each morning to actively engage the energy you want to be part of. Your discipline of practice is what creates your ability to learn and grow} If willingness is indeed evoked, I can guarantee that understanding does in fact arrive .... which actually is kind of fun as I learn that in fact an old dog CAN indeed learn new tricks!

Note: I am now off to pack my suitcase and head up the mountain to be a teacher and storyteller at church camp where I have no personal access to the internet and thus, no ability to post. Blessings to each of you and I will visit again when I return in a week.

Sixteen months ago I was reading one day when a series of words flashed like they were neon lights blinking insistently and telling me: "this message is for you. Take it in: embrace the these words; engage them, chew on them: know their meaning."

This experience of direct message to my Spirit {from The Spirit, I believe} is not a frequent happening and yet, the above occurrence was not a new one either and so I paid attention and grabbed an index card from the packet I keep handy for notes, ideas, reminders and words that blink as neon lights.

The words blinking at me belong to Ralph Waldo Emerson: "I am (he said) an organ through which the Spirit executes it's will and creative power." I have now lived with Emerson's words for over a year, speaking them aloud several times a day, honoring them with their own candle as I whisper the words and light a flame knowing that with this ritual, I open the door of my Spirit so the energy of the words may burn within me.

When I am given a gift such as Emerson's words I know that in order to make the words mine - to know them - requires more than just reading and thinking. Knowing requires that I engage them and to this end, I wrote them; I wrote about them, I drew an image of what 'engagement' means for me, and the words themselves are taped to the side of my end table where I see them as I sit in my chair for I have discovered that seeing the same words at different times of the day is like a horizon seen from different viewpoints.

The most important act of engagement was that I took the words with me each morning onto my patio where I sit in the silence of a newly born day thanking the Spirit of Life for a new day and for the guidance I receive as I move out into and through the day. Emerson's words became my words as they moved into the ritual of my meditation and prayer.

Committed to engaging the words that were given to me (engage indicates being involved with and becoming entangled in) I took time to reflect on how I was experiencing the truth of the words in my life. I reflected on the concept of the word execute: to carry out; fulfill; accomplish. Execute is a very powerful word and Emerson was brilliant in his understanding of words and so I knew it was the correctly chosen word and therefore the power of the word was not to be dismissed. I chewed on the idea of allowing myself to be 'used' in this manner. I sat with the idea of being an organ - a Being - through which a plan: a 'willing through' is carried out. Was I okay with this? Was I willing to agree to these words? We are self-choosing individuals and so the Power of the Spirit would wait for my agreement - my personal yes before 'using' me as it's personal 'organ'.

Yes is also a powerful word. Actually yes is possibly the most powerful word in the world for yes opens doors and windows of the self to experiences that remain closed until our personal yes is said. What I was also aware of however is that the older we become, the more difficult it is to say a big yes; an unequivocal yes (you know, the kind of yes that is said without addendum's) because the older and more experienced we become the more aware we are of the truth of saying yes. The truth of saying yes is that we have no guarantee of what the yes is attached to - we do not actually know all the doors and windows the Spirit will open when we say our yes. Our own past experiences of taking 'vows' of saying 'yes' has a tendency to make us wary and cautious - whether we admit to this truth or not! I know very few 'adults' who are not wary with their yeses. Actually I admire people who are least honest about their wariness in saying 'yes' for I know immediately that they understand the power of yes. Better to wait and chew on our willingness than to say a mediocre yes!

Sooner or later however, if we say our yes and willingly engage the message we are given (hard to miss flashing neon lights) and we then follow the guidance guaranteed in the idea of actually 'being' an organ through which Spirit executes will and creative power, understanding of the meaning - meaning as I personally experience the words - begins to dawn. And so it was this morning as I sat on the patio engaged in my morning time of prayer, meditation, study & reflection, and then BAM!! it hit me: I am a coffee maker of the Spirits will and creative power!

First of all, please know I love coffee so I'm actually pleased at the idea of being a coffee maker used by the Universe. I am in fact a connoisseur of coffee: I blend my beans, I grind them fresh for each pot of robust, bold, delicious and delightful coffee. Daily I engage this ritual of coffee creation and so I am familiar with the process of pouring in water, grinding beans, putting the grounds in the basket, flipping on the switch and KNOWING the end result will be a pot of glorious coffee. Which, I realized today is exactly the same process I engage each day on my patio: I sit in my chair and offer thanks to the Spirit of Life for this day of pouring through me - the water has been poured into the pot of me. I offer myself: the seeds - the beans - of the unique individual named Mary whom God placed on earth here and now with my quite human personality traits, gifts, abilities and quirks: the 'grounds' of my being are now sitting in the basket. I flip the on switch of yes by engaging the ritual that begins each day of my life: sitting on the patio and being intimately engaged with the Creator of all and each: I pray, read, write, color mandalas, study {any combination of those}: these are my actions speaking my yes and from my commitment to their practice I KNOW that the power of the Spirit of Life is now pouring through my Being in the exact manner of the the water dripping into the basket and creating coffee. Voila!! I am the organ through which the Spirit of Life now executes It's will and creative power.

Does the fact that I know myself to be an organ of the Spirit mean I think I am now perfect? Not at all perfect - which is not unusual as nothing human is perfect - for the Spirit must be content to use my quite human self to pour through. What I do know however is that every day that I am willing to engage the practices; the actions and rituals of availability, I am enlarged. The more I am enlarged the bigger the space within me for carrying the Spirit of life becomes and in this way, my Being becomes bold, robust and delicious with flavor - despite it's human imperfection.

Each of us carries this potential Emerson spoke of so poetically for {I believe} this is the design of Creation: we are the carriers of the Spirit of Life into the world. However, just as a process must be engaged in order to drink of this glorious beverage called coffee, so too must we engage in a process in order to be effectively used as an organ through which the Spirit executes It's will and creative power.

We are self choosing individuals and so we have many options for how completely we are willing to be used by the Power of Life just as we have options for the quality of coffee we drink: we can choose to run into a coffee place and accept what is being served and made by them; we can make instant {personally I don't see the point} or we can learn how to make the coffee that fits our taste buds most perfectly and therefore provides the greatest pleasure.

Here's the other thing to consider: how frequently do you wish to enjoy a cup of coffee that is perfect for your taste buds? Personally, I want wonderful coffee daily and so too do I want to be a coffee maker of the Spirit daily. To get the best coffee possible I engage my coffee preparation and making ritual daily and to be the best possible coffee maker of the Spirit I engage my ritual and practices for that daily also.

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Just a note: this is a crazy summer for me of going in and out of town and so I apologize for not being consistent with my Postings. I leave again tomorrow for another wonderful week of teaching at church camp and since I have not yet 'received' instructions on how to obtain a laptop with WiFi capability, unless I get really organized and post one tomorrow before I leave again, this is the last one until I return a week from today. Blessings to all.

Creative What-ifs

Last week my sister-in-law told me about a shop that might consign my bracelets and so yesterday I went to the store. It is a wonderful store that sells a combination of flowers and art: Arcadia Flower and Art Market in the strip mall at 40th Street and Indian School. Newly opened and overflowing with the joy and vision of people who have jumped head first into living their dream, I was enchanted by the store and the people. I was even more enchanted when they took my entire inventory which means that I can concentrate on my writing and enjoy making the bracelets without the stress of figuring out how to sell them.

While I was showing my bracelets one of the employees looked at them and said "you actually have the patience to do that?" "Do what ?" "Sort those buttons and then sew them into bracelets." "Oh, yes" I said, "I love buttons and I love being able to create with them."

Actually, when he asked me the question I was reminded that a friend I had not seen in at least a decade came to one of my shows and she looked at the bracelets and then looked at me and said "I just can't picture the Mary I knew years ago as being someone who would make these. I just never pictured you doing something like this."

Actually, the Mary from years ago would not have been able to create the bracelets I now make. What I am aware of is that the Mary of fifteen years ago contained the creativity and ability to make the bracelets but she had not yet learned how to expand her boundaries of self to include a much larger idea of the unknown. I believe most of us spend so much time worrying about the unknowns of living that we keep the 'unknowns' of self firmly tamped down; I mean who wants to be blindsided by their own self when it requires so much psychic energy to be alert to the unknowns of living! As I wrote about in The Unexploded Shell, much of our life we keep our true self tightly clutched deeply inside against the 'what ifs' of living. Unfortunately, although this unconscious behavior may allow us to feel safe, it also keeps us from truly living. But there is a way to use what-ifs to expand our living and make new and wonderful discoveries. You can actually 'trick' your mind into creatively using what-if.

First of all, your mind likes 'what-ifs' because your mind insists upon organizing reality. This ability of the mind to organize elements of reality, that is to 'sort' possibilities of what is or could happen, is a mental function that allows us to participate in living as it directs our behavior. And here's the trick of this natural function: you can either take control of it or just let it organize your life according to it's very limited view. If you let your 'mind' just do what it wants while you remain a bystander to your own life {i.e., unconscious} then your 'mind', understanding that survival is the base-line or first goal of living, will simply sort the possibilities of life into 'safe' and 'not safe' which is how it views life when left to it's own devices. But it doesn't stop there! Since most of us live lives that the great majority of the time have very limited true {that is based in the reality of right now} survival needs and since just surviving is kind of boring, a mind that is unconsciously operating on a 'survival' setting, then orients itself to pleasure.

If a person is unconsciously simply going through the mechanics of living: engaging tasks, responsibilities and chores of living because they have to, then the mind operates from the perspective that it is simply 'surviving' and as an antidote to this kind of boredom points in the direction of survival's polar opposite: pleasure. When pleasure is desired as the antidote to surviving then the achievement or experience of pleasure is not terribly satisfying. Pleasure indicates something 'pleasant' so why wouldn't the experience of pleasure in this instance to satisfying? Because pleasure that is simply the other side of surviving the day, is based only my own needs: I want to feel good; I want approval; I want to be cared for; I want someone to pay attention to me; I want, I want, I want .....

When we find ourselves bouncing between the boredom of survival and then gratifying ourselves with fleeting pleasures: drinking, shopping, gambling, eating, emotionally disconnected sex, or vegetating without purpose in front of the TV or game or movie videos or the computer we have, without realizing it, oriented ourselves to a 'fixed point' of self-centered loneliness. This 'fixed point' is actually the vision we have unconsciously created about the purpose of living.

Remember how I said that the mind instinctively organizes reality? Well, even though we may be unconscious of the hows and whys of sorting methods, the mind is not doing all this sorting in a completely random manner, nor is it operating without your input. We actually give it hints all the time of how it is to organize reality. The hints of how the mind should sort elements of living into piles comes from our thoughts. Our thoughts crystallize into attitudes: this is the nature of thinking, to become a form or structure to operate from and that structure with regard to our self, is called an attitude.

Our thoughts are not like a bunch of gnats that just fly around and annoy us, they are actually much more like honeybees that fly with purpose and function from highly organized hives. If our mind did not organize thoughts into attitudes then we would be overwhelmed by the sheer chaotic magnitude of what our mind, left to it's own devices, does: all day long it buzzes along churning out thoughts. And so, if we get stuck in thoughts of an 'I want ... I want ... I want' self, then our thoughts tend to be mostly about me and how people, places and things are treating me and the resulting attitude that frames our vision of living tends to be one of self pity. Self pity, then depending upon our personality, then either emits an attitude of either self pity or resentment (hostility) both of which just generate more thoughts of I want .... I want ... I want ... and the focusing attitude gets stuck.

It is the job of attitudes to frame life so we have a reference point which is what I called earlier, our fixed point or our 'vision' of what living is all about. This vision is what is called our perception of reality. Perception simply refers to the 'lens' that we see life through. We create our lens for viewing life by what we tell ourselves, in other words, by our thoughts. You see, it's all just a big circle: thoughts become attitudes; attitudes create the frame or structure of the perception of reality; perception creates the lens we see life through.

If it is your thoughts that create your vision of life, why not manage your thoughts so the framework that is created is one that establishes a sense of 'I am' that is creative? Because that 'fixed point' or vision that I referred to is actually your sense of 'I am' and the creation of 'I am' is the big, really BIG choice we are able to make in life. And, if you do not consciously make a choice of the vision you want for your 'I am', then your survival mind will make it for you. And one way to consciously create your own vision is with the creative use of 'what if'.

Creatively using what your mind wants to mess around with anyway, the what-ifs of life, is a short-cut in many ways to managing your thoughts and simultaneously expanding the boundaries of the idea of your self. I call this the 'what if I believed ...' tactic and if I'm having a problem, instead of focusing on the problem, I look for the other side of the problem and focus on the solution by asking myself what if I believed .... and insert, the answer to the problem.

This tactic of creatively using 'what if' in my life was actually first put into play thirty some years ago without my understanding what was happening. When I entered a recovery program based on living one day at a time, the creative 'what if' was: if I admit that I am alcoholic and powerless over alcohol THEN what if I believe a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity one day at a time. The program doesn't use the phrase 'what if' but that is exactly what is occurring: a change of perception of myself from someone who is completely out of control with regard to drinking to a person who could not drink just for today because a power greater than myself is restoring me.

The concept of just for today works very powerfully with using what-if in a creative manner because it expands the boundaries of the self safely. The issue of 'safety' is always going to be primary with our survival-ego-self and life is much, much simpler if we are able to just accept that and deal with it's reality. The problem that most of us run into when we wish to change a habit that we have come to understand is causing us pain in life is that we want to jump from the realization to recovery in about 24 hours. Won't work. The word 'habit' indicates a way of behaving or thinking that we are really, really good at: we're habituated.

Our mind has no 'morals' about being habituated in that it does not care if our thoughts or attitudes are good for us or not: if we keep doing them then that's 'who we are' as far as our mind is concerned. And to be honest, as long as we remain unconscious, that's as far as the concern of our mind will go. This is a common mistake of perception that virtually all of us have which is that if we have habituated a thought or action then it must be good because it is mine. When put that attitude on paper in words it's easy to see the fallacy of the belief but when we're feeling them, our eight-year-old is in charge and the attitude of the eight-year-old is 'my way or the highway.'

[Actually where I learned to 'see' what I believe or more accurately, what that eight-year-old inside me believes, was by journaling. The 'magic' of putting our thoughts on paper is that we actually 'see' with some objectivity rather than just 'feeling' what is occurring in our lives. When journaling is done regularly it is possible to begin to see the structure or vision of living that our thoughts create.]

So, you might be asking about now, what does all of this have to do with buttons becoming bracelets? The creation of the bracelets came about because I had lived using creative what-ifs for long enough so that is how I tend to orient myself to life. First of all, I deliberately choose each day the "I am' I intend to live from. For over a year now I have lit a candle each morning with the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson: "I am the organ through which the Spirit executes it's will and creative power."

I made a deliberate decision a little more than a year ago that those words would be my 'fixed point' - the vision of belief for my life. By choosing a deliberate "I am" I'm giving my thoughts and mind an intention to focus it's sorting of the elements of reality: I am choosing the 'what if' that I will sort from. I deliberately 'yield' to the goodness when I light the candle. I believe that the purpose of each person's life is creative power: the creation of new life through a being that has never existed before: you and I. I light the candle and go into the day with the focus 'what if' the creative power of Life is moving through me, then what do I see - what is my 'lens' for life today? My intention is that my life is one of creative living - which is what I am if I am the organ through which the Creative Power of Life is executed - and that is a sharing of the best of myself with life. Creativity is the giving of your best self to life. And as long as one day at a time, I deliberately focus my 'lens' on this intention then my thoughts revolve around this idea.

When my fixed point, my vision of self is as an organ of creative power then all the elements of life are simply the 'what ifs' of creativity: what happens if I combine this with that? What happens if I choose this thought? What happens if I consider using my grandmother's buttons to make bracelets for my sisters? What happens if instead of brushing that thought away with the habituated attitude: I don't sew, I stay with it and add that idea to the belief that the creative power of the Spirit if flowing through me. Maybe I'll just add those two ideas together and let them sit. And so I let them sit and the next idea comes: 'you could use that bracelet as a template, just get some ribbon and thread.' And so creatively I say, what-if I sew the buttons onto ribbon? What happens is that my concept of self expanded past it's self imposed boundaries of "can't, do not have, never have, tried once before & didn't work."

And I did sew the buttons onto ribbon, and I figured out how to back it and create clasps and in the last eight months I have gotten better and better at creating button bracelets and people actually pay money for them! But even more importantly by saying yes to a creative what-if, I discovered a whole part of myself that had been sleeping for about fifty years. All it took to wake that part of self up was to change a habituated thought 'I'm not creative in that way' with the deliberate choice to say each day {actually several times a day} "I am the organ through which the Spirit executes its will and creative power." And by golly, one day at a time, I am in fact the organ through which the Spirit executes its will and creative power!

An unexploded shell

A couple years ago I was leafing through one of my favorite gift buying catalogs and I saw a paperweight with the engraving What would you do if you knew you could not fail? What would I do with my life if I knew there was no failure involved, I thought.

Possibly many of you have had the experience of reading something and a little grouping of words; maybe a sentence or maybe just a phrase, seems to suddenly be lit in neon and flashing at your eyes saying pay attention! This message is for you! So it happened to me with the words on that paperweight - I didn't even need to purchase it to remember the message for it was etched in the back of my mind. The 'back of my mind' however is where the words had landed and so it wasn't as though I was thinking about the words all the time however, on a regular basis I would be reminded of the message I had received and would ponder what it meant to me.

I think one reason the words caught my attention was because the idea of 'what would you do if ....?' is rarely attached to a personal restriction that we ourselves have complete control over changing. Often the question we play around with regarding unmet dreams is 'what would you do if you were suddenly gifted with a million dollars?" Attaching a large sum of money to the question does two things to our thinking when we play with the answer. First of all, very few of us have much chance of suddenly being gifted with a million dollars and so right away, we know as we play with spending the money that this is a fantasy diversion and we will never actually have to follow through with any action. The second aspect of the question when attached to some outlandish amount of money is the idea that we will spend the money by buying or purchasing stuff: new house, new car, vacation house, trip to where ever or we will buy ourselves security by carefully investing the bulk of our play money. The closest we usually get in answering the 'what would you do if ..." question and perhaps exploring unmet dreams is sort of attached to the idea that if I had a million dollars then I would have freedom to ..... - again, fill in the blank.

However the question on the paperweight wasn't attached to a sum of money that would enable me to do what I dreamed of having or owning, instead, the words asked me to explore my fear of failing. The truth of life is that it is absolutely, 100 percent impossible to follow a dream without some aspect of failing. How can I make such an assertion with a '100 percent' value attached to being correct? Because a 'dream' or a 'vision' of what might be possible with your life is a very, very big concept when preceded by a question posing 'doing' that is taking action and the 'doings' of following a vision will always involve lots and lots of new learning.

New learning always involves doing and thinking in ways that are not yet known and so the great majority of us, personally I think that majority is 'all', are going to have some failures while we learn. This is also why the great majority of people I run into in my life really haven't tried learning something big enough to fail at in a very, very long time but rather just keep adding 'bits' of vaguely new onto what they are already familiar with doing.

This fear of doing something so big that I might fail is why I chose the the image for today: a tight, as yet unfurled, bloom. When I saw the picture it reminded me of the day I was working with the dictionary and looked up the word 'live' as in 'to exist' and came across another definition of the word that applies when the 'i' in the word is pronounced differently and that word means an unexploded shell. Since what I had in mind when I was reading the definition of live was how we persons go about living, when I read 'an unexploded shell' I thought: so many of our lives are just unexploded shells.

By 'unexploded shells' I mean that our personal dreams are generally tight like the bud on the tree: we clutch ourselves, holding deeply inside the 'dream' of what our life might be if only we had been willing to risk failure. By the time I looked up the definition of live, I had been living a life that risked failure on about 19 different levels and in many ways I give that picture of the paperweight in the catalog credit for shaking loose some of my own fear because the message I read had me mulling not only what I might 'do' but also what failure was for me.

Being afraid of failing when the definition is limited to non-risky activities is not really a bid deal because all of us (yes, a full 100 percent) have made mistakes and failed at trying to do something. Oddly, what always pops into my mind when I am on that topic is failing my driving test 3 times because I absolutely could not get the hang of parallel parking which I found immensely frustrating and embarrassing and to my mind was a 'big' failure because it took 3 separate tries to succeed. Clearly I was as yet young to think that was a big failure for what I discovered as I got older was the real trick to succeeding after failing to learn something new was knowing that what I really needed to change was my perception of what I was doing: new learning almost always requires new perceptions and new thinking. Both new perception and new thinking is often difficult as we get older because of the real definition of failure.

There are two definitions of failure and the first is one we are all familiar with not succeeding in what was attempted, it is the second definition that I learned as I mulled on the message what would you do if you knew you would not fail? because I realized it was what kept me clutched tightly in a bud. The second definition of failure is to be shown as lacking. If emotionally we respond to 'being shown as lacking' as simply what it means: we lack an ability or skill or information, then failing at what we are trying is not a big deal because we receive the message that we need to go and get something else: knowledge, skill or ability in order to succeed.

However, 'being shown as lacking' when attached to our ego needs: our social status, our career image, our life role image as partner, spouse or parent and/or our social successfulness; what we own and who we associate with, involves true risk. A great many of us are unwilling to risk the possibility of loosing, that is failing - being shown as lacking - in any arenas of living that involve deliberately sacrificing our ego needs. And yet, there is almost no way possible in life to live a dream or follow a vision without having to sacrifice something the ego values.

The very idea of sacrificing a value held in esteem by our ego generally clutches at our gut. In fact our 'gut reaction' to the idea of sacrificing an ego-value is generally so swift and sure that our whole being contracts against the very notion with a very emphatic 'no' and then we usually follow up our no with a whole bunch of rationalizations. This 'gut reaction' is so swift and sure when responding to the possibility of giving up an ego-value because we have practiced this response endlessly, or from childhood anyway, and so we are awfully dog-gone good at our gut reaction of 'no way Jose' - no way will I look silly, foolish, ignorant or ...'

We have this well practiced gut-response to the notion of 'being shown as lacking' because our gut is attached to the ego whose job it has been to rigorously defend us against being 'wrong' or more accurately, 'appearing' wrong since we became aware of the world's reaction to 'being or appearing wrong.' The phrase 'the world's reaction' actually just refers to the authority figures of our life and so our ego that defends us against appearing to be deficit or lacking in any way responds anytime our personal criteria for appearing to lack what is needed is awakened. For the great majority of us who formed our ego defenses during childhood this generally applies to situations where 'being wrong' meant 'losing face' and experiencing shame with an authority figure.

Shame is an awesomely powerful feeling. I use the word awesomely because generally shame works so well that it needs to only be applied once to a situation to keep us from repeating the actions of that situation. Shame is guilt on steroids: guilt tells us that we made a mistake and did something wrong but shame takes guilt to the nth degree and tells us that 'our being' is wrong.

Shame therefore always touches into pure survival instinct since our 'being' involves our right to exist and so our sense of "I" is emotionally at risk. I'm going to make a broad generalization in the next statement yet the words are based in my own experience of living as well as years of working with people and their fears: most people will not deliberately put their sense of "I am" at risk.

Most people will not put their sense of I am at risk: I am competent, I am caring, I am successful, I am unselfish, I am intelligent, I am hard-working, I am 'the best', simply because most people are only vaguely aware that those "I ams" are not the true you. But they are very, very powerful 'faces' we present to the world and since my 'face' is me, the 'faces' you see in how I interact, must also be me. Well, not exactly. Not unless you have managed to come to grips with the interactions of your ego's survival needs and how those impact the 'faces' you wear and as a result, how true your faces are with your essential self. The tasks I just described is one I talked about in Nesting Selves and Two Kinds of Ego personally, I began round 3 or 4 of those tasks as I mulled on the question on the paperweight: what would I do if I knew I would not fail.

The answer I came up with after mulling on the paperweight question was: I would write my book. The longer I mulled on this I realized that the true answer was: I would write a book and have it published. The reason I knew the second answer was the correct answer was 'published' revealed my fear of showing I was 'lacking' in some way because writing a book to be published meant not only risking the possibility of being rejected and not published, (rejected = lacking) it also meant that the fear of 'what if' it were published and didn't sell (not selling = lacking.) That fear, led directly to the next fear which was 'what if the book were published and people thought it was dumb? (ridicule=rejection) Which led to the next fear; 'what if I published my book and people didn't like me anymore because of what I said in the book? (personal rejection=lacking)

Now I knew exactly what I would do if there was no fear of failure - being SEEN very publicly as lacking.

After exploring those ideas I asked myself another question: so having looked at these fears, what would true failure be for you? The answer was: to not write and be published. Which then led to the next question: WHY would that be a failure for you? And the answer to that question was: because now that I have awareness of what I believe I am supposed to do and I am aware that the biggest problem is my ego-fears, not doing it would be cowardly.

Truthfully, I'm willing to be all kinds of things but cowardly is not on the list. I have learned by living a few decades that overcoming cowardly simply requires a willingness to move forward one little, but deliberately brave little step, at a time. Fortunately, thirty some years ago I was gifted with a Program for Living that taught me that the first and only step needed to move out of fear was a 'willingness to be willing.' See those lovely two words 'to be': I didn't even need to be willing I only needed to be willing to be willing. Which is actually a wonderful mind-game because being willing to be willing only happens if you are willing each day and so being willing to be willing, if done deliberately, creates an attitude and habit of willingness. Sounds convoluted but absolutely works if you hold an specific intention before you and say that you ARE willing to be willing and ask only for the strength and courage needed for that day. That's all you have to do to change the fear that is clutching the tree bud so tightly.

The Spirit of Life is really quite gracious in my experience for rarely do we need to do anything more than by taking one step at a time. I'll admit there was quite a bit of time between the initial reading of the question on the paperweight and my first book that was sent back as 'not meeting their needs at the moment.' I took many, many baby steps to get to the place of sending my children's book out into the world, but guess what? When it was returned, I did not feel 'lacking' and I did not feel rejected. Know why? I did not feel like a failure because by the time it was returned, the Universe had blessed me so graciously and magnificently with manifestations of support for what I was doing, my response was gratitude for the opportunity to try again. Doesn't mean that I don't get scared doing what could mean failure of some sort; ego's do not ever completely give up, but a lot of the old fears are gone.

The biggest change is that I have discovered while living a life that 'risks' losing face quite regularly is that 'losing face' is not terminal. Besides, writing something new several times a week means facing the fear of the blank computer screen and that's scary. But I do it anyway. I've also discovered that that old wives tale about the Universe being supportive of our dreams when we are willing to risk our ego in order to follow them is true and Goethe was right: whatever you can do or dream you can do, begin. For there is genius, power and magic in beginning.

Enough

Amidst the rock and mortar there just happened to be enough soil to catch a seed. And, within that bit of soil there just happened to be enough nutrients to nourish the seedling when its tendril snaked out of the cracked seed. And, apparently on that tiny ledge of rock just enough sunlight and rain were bestowed so the seedling grew and thrived.

I love this image for it reminds me that truly, despite how I might feel in a given moment,there is enough of what I need to grow and thrive. How do I know there is enough of what I need to grow and thrive? Well, it has taken a lot of living to be able to answer that question simply enough to be able to live from the answer but what I live from is the knowing that I was chosen to come to earth with gifts and abilities to offer the world. I believe that living from these gifts and abilities is the purpose for my life. I then believe that if I am here to live from my gifts and abilities, then it seems to follow naturally that if my intention each day is to offer these gifts to the world, then what I need in order to thrive will be given to me.

Given the above paragraph what I believe is that there is enough today for me to thrive in living. This was not an easy belief to come to live out of. My head understood the concept but my emotions;those feeling reactions to thoughts my ego throws at me, told me I should be concerned about a long list of what ifs: what if there is no money next month, what if you should break your hand and not be able to write or type, what if something happens that you weren't prepared for, what if your car dies, what if .....

See how I ended the sentence above with 3 dots? That's because the thing about 'what ifs' is that there is no stopping place because 'what ifs' are always about the future and the future stretches into infinity. Once my emotions engage: become involved with or entangled with concern over unknown possibilities in the future there can never be enough of anything: not enough money, not enough food, not enough stuff and certainly not enough love. How can there be 'enough' when worrying about possibilities occurring in the future requires that I try to fill myself and my life with what cannot yet exist?

Before I go any further, let me say that I understand both the concepts of responsible living: being productive enough to cover basic living costs and the concept of planning for future events. I spent all day yesterday in the final planning meeting of the committee responsible for planning the summer camp program at Chapel Rock. I've been working with this committee since February and the first camp will take place in late June so clearly, the planning and preparation occurred 'in the future' as far as camp was concerned. The planning and preparation projects included writing the program, working on the activities of the program, planning the daily schedule, assigning responsibilities for the scheduled activities and buying a ridiculous amount of stuff to make all of it work. Lots and lots of time, energy, gifts and abilities of many people were devoted to planning for the future. Despite all we have planned and prepared to make a great camp experience for the kids, what will actually happen during the camps is a huge 'unknown'.

Now, I could fill up the 'unknown' possibilities with all kinds of worry and hand-wringing: what if one of the counselors backs out; what if an adult staff member can't make their commitment; what if I get sick and can't do the weeks I committed? If I put any emotional energy whatsoever into those questions I would make myself crazy because there is not a darn thing I can do today to deal with those problems. And yet, many people do make themselves at least feel crazy because they invest energy in engaging the worry of unknown possibilities.

Notice how the worries I listed above were all about a possible crises? Concerns about the future almost always entail the fear of losing or not getting. Concerns about the future virtually never center in 'having' because you can only 'have' in the present. But in order to enjoy what you 'have' and understand that for the majority of us, it is most likely 'enough' you have to actually be present to the present.

If that little seed in the image at the top of this page were like the average human being, it never would have thrived and bloomed by nestling into the bit of soil in the crevice of a rock that it landed in because it would have fussed about not having been blown into a garden. If that little seed were a person it could have whined about not having a garden with lots and lots of soil and a drip system of guaranteed water and maybe even a gardener who cooed and praised it for growing and gently pulled out any weeds that were rude enough to try and share its space! And IF that little seed had fussed and whined about where it had landed guess what would have happened? Nothing. That's right; no seedling snaking it's way between the cracks of the stone because if the seed was unwilling to crack open where it was it could not have thrived and become a plant.

Seeds must crack open in order for the tendrils of the future plant to snake out into the soil and then work their way into the light. As persons we also must be willing to 'crack open' in order to thrive in living. What I have learned about this 'cracking open' process of living is that I cannot be clinging to worries that make me fearful about the future and simultaneously be open to what is here in the present. Trust me, if it were possible to do both I would have learned how because I spent a ridiculous amount of my life trying to live in that manner and truthfully, all that happens is a lot of frustration. What I have slowly learned as I struggled with this concept of 'enough' was that by deliberately yielding: softening and therefore neither resisting nor struggling but instead simply being where I was, life became calm enough to live in. When I yielded to the present then the bit of soil I discovered myself to be inhabiting was enough to thrive in.

I like the word thrive as a description of the process of living because thrive means to flourish, advance and develop. To thrive indicates vigorous growth, progress in development and the idea of becoming fuller so the image that is developing becomes visible. And the great thing about that definition of living is that a woman who watched her babies grow into young adults and seeds grow into flowers and strawberries, I know that when life is looked at as a progress of development it can only happen one day at a time. Each day lived with intention creates the energy of flourishing.

When I mothered my boys I knew exactly what I wanted for them in the long term: for each to find their Spirit and honor it. And so what I knew was that if this was my goal then it was my job as a mother to each day look and see each of their spirits and honor it so they could thrive. And day by day through difficult phases and easy phases, through confusion and delight, through tough times and flourishing times and times that scary in what I did not know, I discovered that if I focused on my goal: honoring their spirit so they could fly into the world with an inkling of who they were created to be, then somehow there was always 'enough' present in the day to meet that one goal. There was not always enough money, nor time, nor energy for me to do everything I wanted but there was always enough one day at a time to meet that primary goal of my life as a mother. And that was enough apparently for they are each rather wonderful in their uniqueness and what they offer life - I realize I am not at all objective and they have much - very much - living to do yet, but I know they thrived enough to fly from the tree.

Actually it was by almost losing my sanity trying to be a 'good' mother when the boys were very young that I learned about the concept of enough. I am not a normal 'over achiever' by cultural definitions in that once I figured out that I could not get all A's in school, I really wasn't all that interested in what grade I got (unless I loved the subject or the teacher.) That one statement lets you know that what I am by nature is an 'all or nothing' person: if I am committed or I love I dive head first as deeply as a straight body and pointed toes will take me! Maybe it was the severe sleep deprivation or maybe it was the simple reality that that is a crazy idea to take into mothering, most especially if you have three so closely together. At any rate I was losing my mind which in my lexicon of life means that I felt like a complete and utter failure: my children for one thing did not sleep and they apparently had never read Dr. Spock because they did not behave as 'perfect children' (perfect children slept) so clearly I was not a perfect mother. In my despair - I have always found reading my first line of defense against despair - I picked up a great book by Judith Viorst titled Necessary Losses. I reread this book about five years ago and it is one of my most highly recommended books about all that stuff you need to know about living and no one ever tells you. Anyway Judith talked about the 'good enough mother' and what this idea meant and how if a mother was 'good enough' not only did she have a decent chance of attaining that goal but the kids were also free to be 'good enough.' Her point was that 'good enough' was a win-win situation that benefited everyone.

To me however, the idea of being 'good enough' was appalling: it sounded not good but like a failure! All my life I had been directed my doing toward being 'the best at.' The problem with being the 'best at' is that it is incredibly limiting: I can only be the best at a few things. It's that word 'at' which indicates that if I try or do something I can only succeed if I do the best which in the world of growing up meant 'bettering' everyone else. This attitude will either create a narcissist, an ego-maniac or leave you with a grand inferiority complex. Like most people with the injunction to be 'better than' I was a curious mixture of all three complexes with the inferiority complex having the capacity to fill me with anxiety and hostility which is not a pleasant antidote to either ego mania or narcissism. The combination of those three complexes led to some major problems and in a recovery program I finally learned that I had to give up the idea of 'bettering' everyone in my activities.

What I discovered from working with the concept of being 'good enough' was that it means to simply give my best. That's it just give your best. This is not always an easy attitude to adopt because being human our pride tends to get in the way, and so it is often difficult to give our very best and not need to be better than. But as I learned from working with the concept of 'good enough', when I am willing to begin with the attitude of 'giving my best' then I am am to yield to the present and I am not filled with the anxiety of what everyone else thinks or feels about what I do: I gave my best and that is good enough.

When I am able to truly give my best to a task or intention I naturally yield to living because by giving, the actions I take stop being just about me and my emotional needs and becomes about who, what, or where I am giving best to. When I read about being a 'good enough mother' what was suggested was that I boil the whole 'mothering' thing down to my intention in mothering and give my best to that. Give my best to the motivating intention and let all the other pieces fall into their own order.

I worked with that concept until I knew that what I wanted as a goal of being a mother was to see and honor the spirit within each of my boys so they knew they were loved for the individual they were. And to that single intention I gave my best for that day and all the other pieces came after that intention. It was not always easy to live out of that intention because like most people I would have preferred to 'look' perfect rather than 'good enough' and yet, life was okay because as long as I remembered my intention and gave my best to it that day, no matter how above or below average I was at any of the other tasks and responsibilities, actually I was 'good enough.'

Enough is actually plenty. In our culture of super-sizing, advertising that induces discontent with what is and an entertainment based media telling us that there is always something better waiting for us, enough sounds puny and perhaps lazy. But if you look up the word enough it means sufficient to satisfy and the synonyms are ample, plenty and adequate. So, the attitude of enough for today would simply indicate that I have ample and plenty for what I need and the words 'ample, plenty and adequate' would seem to indicate that I could even thrive on enough. It is possible to thrive, flourish, prosper and grow on enough if you know your intention for living this day.

I can only live today. If knowing this truth, I make the decision to deliberately give the best of my self to living today, then there is enough. If I live with the intention of directing my actions and attitude of this day toward giving my best in order for my gifts and abilities to thrive and be given to the world then eventually my intention will develop and 'become visible' in the world.

At this point in my life, my purpose; what I am giving the best of me to, is writing this book. When I first conceived this intention I was tied up in knots worrying about how I would get it done and if it would get published and how would I live while doing it and would I succeed or fail and should I ... and what if and ...... and finally I just made it my intention and yielded to my decision. Yielding meant giving my life over to my intention. Yielding to my decision meant rearranging my priorities and my expenses and my desires; yielding meant learning a whole bunch of new skills and a new ways of thinking in order to begin; yielding meant opening myself as widely as I was able to each day to the energy of willingness; yielding meant surrendering to love without any idea of what would happen. Yielding meant learning to ask rather than always being the one who did.

Yielding meant believing that there was enough in this day if I gave my best to it. Yielding meant knowing that if I gave my best I would flourish and thrive one day at a time. And you know what? One day at a time: some days really, really, well and some days not nearly as well, I am now close to being finished and however it turns out it will be good enough because I gave my best to what I believe is the intention of my life, one day at a time. Which is all life ever asks of any one of us.