Fixated Attention

3 Monks

“One thing you probably remember well is anytime you forgive and forget. -F.P. Jones

I got my feelings hurt from a letter, and a non-letter. My attention got stuck somewhere between the land of "poor me", and "what did I do to deserve this"?

A garden variety upset.

With my stuck attention, my mind looping around a wrong committed or a right negated, is a chance to reconcile the humanness of an error, being blamed, stinking thinking or just feeling neglected.

I hope I am the only one who gave free service and never hears a word from the person again. Where a note, e-mail, or call was never returned. The term now is being “ghosted.”

What happened? What did I do?

Where am I not returning communication?

Who haven’t I thanked?

Here I am with my attention trapped, wondering what the other person is doing with the metaphorical ball I tossed at them.

There’s a story of two monks who had taken vows of chastity on a pilgrimage. They came to a stream where a prostitute sat, wanting to cross the stream. One of the monks obliged, picked up the woman and carried her across the stream. He placed her down and the two monks continued the pilgrimage. That evening as they prepared their meal, one monk spoke.

“Brother I cannot believe you carried that wanton woman across the stream.”

The other monk replied, “Are you still carrying her?”

Well I was still carrying.

There is a process I learned from a weekend seminar called ReSurfacing that oils one’s attention so it can slip off any fixation and return to the land of freedom. It requires a sincere effort, and it works every time.

I worked on the exercise and got my freedom back. But what about that lost relationship?

This time I got creative and hopefully humorous. I decided to write a story. Or find a metaphor, a cartoon, a fable, or a legend, while owning 100% of the experience and really, really wanting the other person to be free of any guilt, shame, upset, and once again become a friend. Here is a little of what I wrote.

Dear Friend,

Please forgive me, I took part in ‘second party gossip’, I thought I was saying what the as is, is. But I was wrong. I went to one of the new gods of cyberspace, Google, and found an article on gossip so I am clearer on the gossip process. Please do not take this as a lesson from me to you, merely an observation to a

friend, and a wish to clean our slate with some humor.

There were three pastors who were sharing stories together.

The first one said "I have a serious problem with lust."

The second one said "I hear you brother. I have a terrible

problem with greed and stealing.

The third one said "I have a problem with gossip, and I can't wait to get out of here and tell someone about you two!"

Your Friend Gary C.

The Calling

I believe each one of us has a calling, a purpose divined before birth.

However we are born diamonds in the rough.

Our calling did not come from your mother, father, church, or school. Not given by a friend or seen on TV. Those are the people and events that have clouded this memory, this re-collection of your call..

Plato’s Acorn theory holds that each person has uniqueness that asks to be lived, present before birth. We bear the seed of the mighty Oak before we were even conceived.

How can that be?

To Plato the soul of each is given a daimon, a guiding angel before birth. The soul has selected an image or pattern to live on earth. The soul’s companion, the daimon, guides the process of arrival. However, we forget all that took place once the soul arrives on earth, we believe we come empty into the world. The daimon remembers and carries our destiny. Choosing the body, the parents, the place, and circumstances that suit the soul. This we have forgotten.

How can we know this?

One way is in reading our life backwards. We see the tree we have become and look back past the growing, to the seeds, the gifts given at birth.

These ideas are contained in myths that imply we must attend to our childhood in order to catch early glimpses of the daimon in action. We move to recognize the call as a prime fact of human existence aligning one’s life with the call and finding the now uncommon sense to realize that all we do has lead toward the patterns outlined by the soul and the daimon.

Everything leads up to this day.

There are no accidents.

All the pain, suffering, illnesses, disease, work, heartaches, loves, successes, magic, mystery, boredom, and comedies are reminders of the call. No matter if we forget, postpone, ignore, or

run, the call will keep ringing.

The call may resonate sounding like, “I just always knew it was the right thing to do.”

It may be Homer Simpson asking, “Barney, the call is from heroism, will you accept the charges?”

Your calling is shadowed by fate and fortune. It does not teach morals and is not to be confused with the “still small voice” of your conscience. It is invisible and obvious, like sunshine and farts.

Myths and fairy tales say, “Once upon a time what took such good care of me was a guardian spirit. I damm well knew how to pay it appropriate attention.”

How have we fallen so far?

Our lives are less determined by our childhood than by how we have learned to imagine our childhood to be. Were we victims of abuse and neglect, of control and addictions? The victim is the flip side of the hero. It is our hero who answers the call.

A child’s specific calling has to do with finding their place in the world. They are trying to live two lives at once, the one they were born with, and the one among the people they were born into.

What does your picture of yourself have to do with the peculiarity you feel being you?

Does a childhood vision show something different from your mirrored image?

Plato’s Acorn theory, champions children, those young and old. The theory affirms the foundation for an understanding of who you are. It draws from myths, philosophy, religion, psychology, from other cultures and imaginations to make sense of children’s dysfunctions before committing them to a life of therapy and drugs.

What is my calling?

To ask good questions.

To write about things that matter.

To get mad as hell and not accept the victimization of children.

To speak out and ask, who are you?

My calling channels energies to make meaning, add kindness, create beauty, inspire, and achieve.

No matter what we do, to thine own self be true and follow that calling.

Listen, it is ringing now. It is your genius. Pick it up.

What you got in the tank?

Ketchup, the condiment, called by radio personality Garrison (born Gary) Keillor, a mellowing agent. I like metaphors and ketchup is my new metaphor for reconnecting.

A few years back I went on the road with Practical Resources, the real estate training specialists. Our objective is to educate Realtors so they can attain Real Estate Owned (REO) properties as listing agents. We provide information and skills in the seminar and sell our back of room (BOR) material.

I am the emcee and learned a valuable lesson in delivering a humorous story, the wisdom of the Meaningful Pause. A pause that lasts long enough to allow everyone to laugh, catch the lingering laughers, and even an extra wave of laughter. It was a new type of attention to me.

We finished Thursday night. Friday I raced from Fresno to Dublin, California where I met my wife, switched cars, suitcases and identities continuing the race to the airport and flew to Portland, Oregon. There I was to vault the ceiling of my son’s new ranch style home. With my carpenter tools, and old clothes I changed into Grandpa Gary, carpenter-engineer.

We cut away trusses, doubled up all the rafters and transformed a flat 8’ ceiling into a 14’ high vault. I worked with my son Zane and oldest friend Jack. We completed a 36’ x 36’ living, dining, and kitchen.

I left 10 pounds of Grandpa Gary there and don’t want them to send them back.

Upon returning home, I happened upon a story of Isaac Perlman, the great violinist, who had polio. It was a struggle for him to come on to stage, remove his leg braces, much less play.

As he began to play, one of the four violin strings broke. The conductor stopped the piece; Perlman examined the string, placed the violin back under his chin, nodded to the conductor and began to play. And play he did, more magnificent than usual.

Upon finishing the concert when the applause died down, he said to the audience -“Sometimes you must find out how much you can make with what you have left.” In the vaulting the ceiling I saw and felt how much I have left as Grandpa Gary, carpenter. It was a lot.

What do you have left?

Take a meaningful pause and ask yourself what you have done, or could do, that would make a difference in your life and those around you?

I hope you find you have got a lot left, and some right too.

Ah Summertime

I had a chance to jump in a lake, and I did. It’s part of my childhood and who I still am. I am the kid who dives off the rocks, runs the rapids and with Tom Sawyer energy, plays with the other kids. I still have my enthusiasm, and I am going to do whatever Ican to keep it alive and thriving.

Ancient Wisdom says to become as the small child has not been lost on me. I shan’t be the one who wishes I spent more time at the office, or wishes I spent more time in the lake. If Earth is a resort as I believe, I am one of its most appreciative tourists.

This is the discipline of freedom, more time in the lake!

The discipline of fun and playing the fool.

This is the free attention to seize the day and build the castle in the sand.

The time to see how many skips that stone will fly.

To hug a tree cause it asked to be hugged.

To toss the stick for the dogs to chase into the lake.

To sing any and all those great SUMMERTIME tunes.

To be a little disciplined to not eat too much watermelon so you can have an ice cream cone on the way back from the lake.

I write to Cure Seriousitis™ to share the wisdoms of life and the thrills of getting your feet wet and being grateful for what you did.

Don’t miss Summer, school starts soon for all Life Long Learners. I write to Cure Seriousitis™ because life is a party when you participate.

Stinking Thinking

Many years ago, there was a comic strip, the Katzenjammer Kids. They were eternal brats, who on occasion offered wisdom to us readers. They had an obnoxious Uncle with a whisk broom of a mustache, who they loved to pull pranks on. The Uncle had punished the kids, so to get even they took some particularly ripe Limburger Cheese and while he slept, they rubbed the cheese in his mustache. The next morning, he awoke to such a stench that he leaped up and threw open the window, stuck out his head and took a big breath. The stench was still strong. On the next comic pane, a visual of a light bulb appeared above his head, and he screamed out the window, “Zee whole world stinks.”

Well, he had it partially right, only it wasn’t the world, it was inside his head. It was STINKING THINKING.

There is a consommé, a soup, that began as children and for many it has consumed us. I have met elders who have fallen into this kettle of soup, called by the French P Ti Pot, and translated as PITY POT.  It is the odiferous mix from our own PRIVATE SPEAKING, the ingredients of our mind. It is a meal of STINKING THINKING.

Most people have it.

Few recognize it.

Fewer have yet begun the process of DEODORIZATION.

These are not the words TV censors listen for or that George Carlin has celebrated in his rants.

These are not words of war, although they have instituted many battles.

These are generalization, nonsense, over used words that over time destroy our intentions, limit our creativity, annihilate relations, and keep us in the same patterns of doing the same thing and expecting different results, IN-SAME-ITY.

Words that control us more than, sex, power, money, security, sensations, governments, religion, or family.

Words that are the building blocks to depression, discouragement, disease, and defeat. 

Words are egos live by.

Words we want to believe are true, but are the gardens of our excuses, justifications’, agendas, and our ultimate demise.

Here is a list of the words and phrases:

Should- If you should, then do it. Get on with it. Telling yourself you should acts is an excuse for procrastination, guilt, or the consommé of the PITY POT. Should can be enthused with intention, but when used as YOU SHOULD it is the stinking thinking of upset and blame. No one should, BUT everyone can if they choose too.

Ought- A little less forceful and more formal than should, and since it is usually coupled with YOU OUGHT it’s on the road to the dump.

Must- A disempowering word that implies a lack of choice, that someone or something else is in control.

Have to- A more forceful version of must. The more at affect, the more without a choice. 

Never- Never ever use never. As close to never as never ever gets. Never, not even once?

Always- Every time. Always can be a strong affirmation, but too often it is a generalization of blame. As in, you always say that!

Doubt- Doubt is an excuse not to act, not to affirm a belief, a way to escape responsibility. 

Worry- Worry is useless. Have concerns and be specific. Worry is nonsense handled by such as MAD Magazines’ “What me Worry?” and sung- ♫Don’t worry, be happy, by Bobbi McFerrin.

Can’t- Can’t never got anything done. Can’t stopped all progress, limiting choices and results.

Blame- Blame is giving up ownership of the moment. Blame is a tricky word that takes responsibility out of your hands and gives our power away. 

Try- Just try and do something-anything. Another nonsense word, you are either doing it or not. Make an effort to eliminate try.

Excuses- One of the most selfish of words, only the excuser cares. 

Hate- A word that should and ought to be flushed. We must, have to, should and ought to rid our head of hate. Start early with children, let them prefer not to eat their smushed peas rather than begin the self-indoctrination of STINKING THINKING with “I hate peas.” The most odiferous word of all!

These words come together to form our three ego beliefs:

1.     I HAVE TO BE RIGHT.

2.     I CAN’T MAKE A MISTAKE. 

3.     I ALREADY KNOW THAT. 

 The deodorant for STINKIN-THINKIN comes from a very wise Bear, Winnie the Pooh

How can you get very far if you don’t know who you are?

How can you get what you want if you don’t know what you got?

And if you don’t know which to do of all the things in front of you,

then what you’ll have when you are through is just a mess without a clue.

Of all the best that can come true if you know what and which and who.

 Pay attention to what goes into the consommé of your mind. By knowing the ingredients’ of STINKING-THNKING you can deodorize your mind by keeping you off the PITY POT, and PERCULATING to what you do want. 

What is the Deodorant of Stinking Thinking?

Winnie the Pooh says the deodorant is to know who we are. A noble ambition, akin to Socrates credo Know Thy Self, but what and how does that process work?

Deodorizing begins with investigation and gathering tools. Tools are keys to a successful project.  

The first tool is a mirror, an object that allows an honest feed-forward look at yourself.  Take a lot of good long looks. Look from another angle, and another. Catch your points of view. Keep an eye open for a flash of insight.  This is not vanity, it is honesty.  

Then we need a judgment eraser that lets what is, be what it is, like a fair witness. Let today be your day of The Last Judgment. 

Then add the Questioners -Who, What, Where, When, Why and How.

These are tools to deodorize your mind.   

It’s all about asking good questions. 

You can control your mind by the questions you ask.

The game of Twenty Questions can change your life and the life of all you encounter.

Here are my questions:

1. What do I want?

2. How will I know when I get it?

3. What do I expect?

4. What am I avoiding?

5. How can I make this a great day?

6. How can I make this fun?

7. What do I believe?

8. What do I want to believe?

9. What am I thankful for?

10. What gets me excited?

11. What do I love to do?

12. What’s another way to look at this?

13. What’s important about this?

14. What’s the most important thing right now?

15. What’s my purpose in life?

16. Who or what do I need to forgive?

17. Where’s my attention?

18. How can I be stress free?

19. What is my compelling future?

20. What’s a good question about this?

21. What’s a possible solution?

22. How can I feel better?

And the best tool of all, a Buddy, someone to share the investigation. A Buddy to keep you on track, to help deodorize the future by a multiple of two.  A Buddi to help you create your own personal twenty questions.  A Buddy to enjoy the sweet smells of success.  

Stinking Thinking has been the depository of generations of humanities lack of paying attention to the importance of what goes into, on and out of our minds. Join with others to begin the investigation, use the questions to uncover and deodorize Stinking Thinking. 

Don't Make It A Habit.

This may be the most profound statement I’ve written.  It is a key tenet in Curing Seriousitis™ . 

I am challenged by the statement’s negative aspect, the ‘don’t’. How can I not? Many teachers’ state that affirmations, goals, and intentions need be framed in the positive because our conscious mind doesn’t hear the ‘not’. 

Are our minds so crazy that when I state I am not going to eat after 8pm, my mind default to eating after 8pm? Are we that incongruent and contradictory? 

Wise friends have cajoled me with; “That’s what you don’t want, what do you want?”

“I don’t want to make it a habit.”

“That’s what you don’t want. What do you want?”

“I want to consciously, deliberately, and by design, choose, my reality, my life.”

When and how do my positive intentions become a conscious habit? 

What is a habit? 

Is it a fall from grace into a rut doing the devils work; sleep walking, becoming robotic? 

Is habit letting our evil inner siblings loose? 

Is it doing the same thing and expecting different results? 

Is the habit of indulging in mechanical reactions, routine patterns and addictions that allow others to indoctrinate me?

Don’t make it a habit really means creating life how I want it. In the practice of physical exercise and dance ‘the don’t make it’ a habit‘ there is no should, an ought, or have to,’ but a decision to enjoy and appreciate, my intention.

How do I stop from making ‘it’ a habit? 

Using an exercise metaphor, my body will find the easiest way to do an exercise. It cheats. Doing crunches, if I don’t pay attention to form, instruction, and my intention, the legs take over and I cheat myself of the benefits of the exercise.

I have a habit of watching my fingers as I type. This was a tough paragraph to type without watching, I kept cheating and looking. I get disturbed if I make a mistake. I feel very uncomfortable ungluing my eyes from the keyboard. It’s a battle to not watch my fingers. My habits trapped me until I recall the gradient approach to learning. Then I practice and I gradually free my attention, stop looking  and stop judging myself.

A habit can free me to split my attention. Like multi-tasking and in aerobics I can keep the structure of the movement but add a new way of doing the arms for increased cardio or change the rhythm and create new more graceful movements. It’s a way of finding more moments in life, more time to be present. Finding the magic of the space behind a musical note, a beat, allows more freedom of expression, to exercise more fully.

Be aware of what’s a habit and what’s not. Use the feedback to support goals. Don’t make anything a habit unless it’s your intent. 

Potlatch and Cornucopia

The Northwest Indians lived in the land of abundance. The salmon seemed to leap into the pan, sans lemon, fileted upon a cedar plank, rich in good cholesterol, served with an abundance of berries sauces,   Black, Blue, Boysen, Goose , Marion,  Straw or Raspberry. Elk often came into the lodges and offered themselves up like the genetically engineered cows at The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, to be feasted on. This was a time and a people who had such abundance that when they partied, they gave away all their material possessions. This was not a potluck, this was a conscious choice of giving all they had, the best and all the rest to all. It was called Potlatch.

These people so loved and appreciated each other they often had no words for you. It was always we, us, and ours. 

There was no word for yesterday or tomorrow.

No one spoke of another, unless that person was present, and when someone died, they were not spoken of again.

They were present time only, appreciative of each moment and giving everything to that now.

They told stories of adventures, of those miracles that happened on the edge of their way of being. They inspired and revered the moment.  

They appreciated the ease of how the cedar trees gave planks for shelter.

They appreciated the soft feel and fragrant smell of pine and cedar needles as floors and beds.

They honored gods of the clear rivers and were cleansed and freshened in the many waterfalls.

The things they labeled with names were words and phrases that sung with appreciation. 

We cannot venture back to that time with anything but our imagination. Most of our salmon are in restaurants or markets; the elk have stopped the custom of volunteering for dinner, but the Northwest Indians themes of appreciation are one of my tenets of Curing Seriousitis™.

Our times are rich in choices and often challenging to appreciate. Given a present moment, our imagination can free our attention of judgments, and become curious as to how, where, when, and why our attention wanders into judgments. 

With a new viewpoint, perhaps initiated from a point of origin or even a vanishing point, we can see and feel from a new place the appreciation of everything.

Nothing and everything is changing in the world. We only have control of our view point of how and why we are blessed with life. 

Thank you for this moment. Share and enjoy.

Movement

I recently attended a seminar on body mind integration.  I had to apply and be chosen in order to attend. I was unsure of the intention of the seminar, but I wanted to meet the leader, an innovator in conscious dance. The application questions were fascinating. 

• Have you had experiences with awareness-based movement?

• What were your experiences with those body-based approaches?

• Do you have a regular movement practice?

• Assess your level of being “in your body.”

• What does it mean to be “in the body” to you?

• What feelings are you most uncomfortable with?

• What feelings are hardest for you to access?

• Have you experienced significant loss recently?

The theme was experiencing emotions, with an emphasis on loss. We used a poem and deep spiritual music to experience grief and used our bodies to recreate grief in a dance. We then created a drawing expressing our feelings. 

This was an exploration in how the body fixes attention on loss or grief.

Was there a specific place where the grief resided?

What happens in your body as you recreate or re-experience the grief?

We were encouraged to dance, to move, to use our voices to express ourselves. All day we were in silent meditation toward each other, no side talking. 

I have lost close friends, some of whom have died. Both of my parents are dead. I have lost my favorite pets, money (a type of security)  but my attention turned toward what I have lost of me. 

I like my emotions. When asked how I feel about emotions I said to the group, “I love emotions.” Well after we re-experienced Fear, the step after Grief, I recanted at the final sharing “I accept emotions.” It was here that I recognized that my losses were  all of others, but loss of youth by aging. The gradual hearing and hair losses. The need for reading glasses. The sports I can no longer compete in, and loss of friends I wish I could share our processes of aging. 

I know it’s all where I place my attention, not where the attention is fixed.  

It’s all in appreciating the changes.

It was a learning experience to find where grief and fear reside, because beside them resides joy and love.

We may lose youth on the exterior, but I hope none of us lose our youth on the inside. 

Gumption, Get Up and Go

Gumption is a word that acts like Captain James T. Kirk is often quoted saying, “…boldly go where no one has gone before.”

Gumption:

1 .Boldness of enterprise; initiative or aggressiveness.

2. Guts; spunk.

3. Common sense.

What a story Gumption creates. It has a place in my Word Hall of Fame. The mixture of initiative, risk and common sense is a recipe for a hero. This word is a noun, a person, place, or thing, but it feels more like a verb, an action, a way of being. 
I look for power words. Words to take on a quest, inspire an audience, and  save me on a rainy day when the SADS, the seasonally afflicted disorders, drizzle forth ‘stinking thinking’.

Who’s Got Gumption and where does it come from? 

How did they get it? 

How can I get some?

It comes from the same store that serves other Hall of Fame Words, like Attention, Belief, Conscience, Discipline, Effort, Feedback, down the G aisle along with Grace and Gratitude. A place where words are tools to build skills, balance our karma and transform words into action. 

All our heroes have Gumption. Parenting requires Gumption: the whole concept of birthing, caring, teaching, and patience of parenting require Gumption.

We build Gumption from taking risks. Risks are very individual. There are physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and business risks. One person risks a six-figure income to start his or her own business. Another takes a risk and leaves their comfort zone to teach others to take risks. Some risk their ‘likeability’ by knocking on a door, making cold calls, risking rejection. Some have risked physical safety by walking on fire, parachuting for fun and thrills. Taking on  challenges builds Gumption.

Life changes are risky business, and appreciating changes builds Gumption. 

Expressing yourself is a form of risk. This message, expressing my beliefs, is a form of risk. Each time I write I build my Gumption account.

Gumption is a power word, full of spunk and common sense that keeps attention free, creating heroes of us all. 

There may be a business teaching Gumption and passing out Free Risk cards. 

“Excuse me, I have something for you. This is a Free Risk card. The bearer of this card has all the Free Attention they need to handle any counter-productive behavior and unintentional  beliefs that may tell you that your risk is impossible. This is your Gumption card.”

On the back of the card is written:

            Risking Builds Gumption. Be Safe and Go for it!

Help (Attention/Insight)

Help ♪ I need somebody…something, some way out of here. 

Is, can you help me, the hardest question to ask?

Is this another reason to believe that The Beatles were divinely inspired because their first movie was called HELP?

One way I write Curing Seriousitis™ is to use the alphabet, searching out meaning, and words with a charge. My criteria are what motivates me toward a word like G for gumption, or  words I move away from, like H for help. “I mean I don’t need any HELP; I can do it myself.” There is a charge in asking for help, so H is in my New ABC’s.

I have some counterproductive beliefs around asking for help. Beliefs I don’t want my grandchildren to catch. If they do maybe they will catch them and use the opportunity, as my wise fisherman son practices, to HELP with “Catch and Release.”

Here are my questionable beliefs about HELP:

The ego believes it has to be right, so there is no space to ask for HELP. 

Only weaklings ask for HELP. The Fonz or John Wayne never asked for HELP.

If you ask someone for HELP you have to listen and do what they tell you. I don’t want anyone to tell me what to do!

If I ask for HELP, then people will know I am not invincible.

HELP is humbling, a more graceful H word. I could have chosen humbling to let me off this helpless treadmill and not explore my own helpless beliefs.

Think of all the excuses and blame I’d have to give up if I asked for HELP.

Being an adult, especially an elder, means never having to ask for HELP.

That’s a bunch of indoctrinated self-defeating beliefs that keeps my attention stuck, outcomes limited, leaving me to continue to create from trial and error. Lots of errors or worse, lots of giving up, and not getting what I want. 

I want your HELP. Business is going well. It’s important to know I have time for you, your friends, and family members, to HELP those with public speaking fear, handle their fear. To HELP create entertaining content, connect with their audience creating clients and sales.

For the grandchildren of the world, learn and remember to ask for HELP. It is as easy as pushing the F1 key on a PC. You deserve to ask and be helped.

How not to repeat Mistakes

Paying Attention is our Best Investment in the Future is a major tenet of Curing Seriousitis™ for a multitude of reasons.

Paying Attention allows you to repeat strategies that work and delete strategies that don’t work.

For example: How Not to Repeat Mistakes Strategy.

 First define a mistake. From our cinema careers let us remember the director saying, “Cut. That’s a miss take.”

A mistake is an ‘Unintended Outcome’ that I can take responsibility for.

Here is a current example: While I am painting the house requires a lot of ladder work. The house is over 100 years old and there is dry rot that has broken from leaning a ladder against it. Not a mistake. But not leveling the ground on which to set the ladder, and having the too full can of paint fall, along with the painter, is a mistake. Painful and expensive.

 Step two is How Did I Do it?

I am 100% responsible for what I do. I have a pattern of rushing, going too fast. My rationale is to hurry to get the project over so I can have fun. I can rationalize, justify, excuse rushing, but not with danger, and a can of paint in tow. What else could I have done? I need to see my alternatives, different outcomes. To realize it is faster to level the ground beforehand than clean the spilt paint and heal my bruises from my mistake. I can do it differently and still be fast. I can remember how I have seen others handle the situation using their experiences as a guide.

Step two identifies the cause and how I created the mistake.

 Step three Decide I can do it differently.

Deciding is crucial! Next time my criteria are to be safe and save money, while also to decide I can be quick. Deciding to do it differently saves me from my self-directed anger, and the pain I feel upon hitting the ground. Saves me from my self-abasement and believing the stinking thinking belief that is the way I always am. I can decide I have choices; it is not preordained that I make mistakes. The decision is better than cursing, blaming, and getting hurt.

 Step four It is not enough to know what I do not want to do, but what I want to do.

This is where there is a difference between an ‘insight’ and change. If I do not change, I can repeat the mistake, hope I never have to use a ladder again, endure more trial and error. My new decision allows me to gain control and create consistent improvement. This is the positive ‘doing’ step.

 Step five to ensure I do not make the mistake I must now go into the future, using all my senses, see myself using the ladder, leveling the base, hear myself

internally repeating my positive decision for speed, safety, and economy. Most importantly I see and feel the job going smoothly, finishing quickly, without self-

incrimination of ladder-stupidity. I have created a COMPELLING FUTURE.

This is my future test to stop repeating mistakes.

 Paying Attention is our best tool for creating the future we want.

Recovery Time

As purveyors of attention, we humans float the continuum from passive observers to active creators.

 Today I create as a writer, and as a house painter, while I create my emotional experience. On occasions I get caught, trapped,  in my creations. My attention becomes fixed. I loop over, under, and around, being magnetized to my creation.

 In the Gurdjieff work we called it identification. In Buddhism it is called attachment. From the Avatar seminar it is labelled fixed attention.

 My mind won’t let go of the experience, and my judgements of the experience.

 How long can it take to get out of a creation?

 Discreation can seem an event of epic portions. Novels often follow the format of being trapped in one’s creation. If there is a lie involved, it becomes a drama. If its life, it can escalate to war.

 How long will the Jews and Palestinians stay in their animosity creation?

 How long will the USA stay in its police creation?

 How long can I stay attached, upset, confused, undecided?

 As long as us creators decide too!

 In the 1980’s Ron Smoothermans’ book, Winning Through Enlightenment, the major message was that forgiveness was choosing to make your life work.

 In the movie Garden State, brilliant writer, director, actor Zach struggles thru anti-depressants fogging his being.  His love interest, the former mother of Luke and Lela Skywalker, Galactic Queen Amidala (Natalie Portman), catches Zach in a creation.

 “You’re in it aren’t you?” She asks a checked-out Zach.

 From the flat look of Zach’s face, he checked out of presence into a memory.

 It is a tender moment when consciousness reveals itself. As one human being Natalie helps him become whole again, not that we are EVER ANYTHING but whole, but there was an incomplete memory trapping Zach. A memory in need of being experienced to its completion.  Natalie acknowledges where he is (or isn’t-present) and cajoles him with the truth. He responds, awakens, recovering his presence. His face relaxes, becoming a mask of joy.

 Though time is an illusion, being trapped in a creation can seem like an eternity.

 The recovery time of our attention is sped by both the freedom to decide to recover, helping and being helped by another. 

 May each day, each hour be full of the quick recovery of all our attention.

What If...

Enjoy The Little Things

You said yes, with little or no doubt, first thing out of your mouth when asked, “Can You…Will You…Can We????

  It’s all about participation, the verb that can transform life into a party.

 Yes, to those things I am uncertain I can do.

 Yes, to those things I have never done before.

 Yes, to the Wisdom of aging and the Ages. 

 I ponder the concept of the Pursuit of Happiness and the insights of Thomas Jefferson. In Jefferson’s time “Pursuit of Happiness, “written in the Declaration of Independence, meant PRACTICE. One of the premises of the Declaration of Independence meant to practice happiness, not pursue, or chase anything!

 Life, Liberty, and the Practice of happiness.

 In our times I expand the concept to include:

 Follow your Bliss.

 Do what you love, and the money will come.

 Be Happy for No Reason.

 The Dali Lama says, “Our business is to be Happy.”

 Master Thomas Jefferson starts his famous statement with Life.

 I was at a seminar and the trainer asked the participants  “Who wants to represent life?” My right arm headed for the sky. Every chance I get, I say yes. In this group it was obvious that I was the oldest personification of Life.

 The trainer placed a chair on the front of the stage, I was asked to stand on the chair and represent Life. I respectfully obeyed and looked out on those seated on the floor below me. I took deep relaxing breaths, inhaling and exhaling as much Life as I could. I felt my hands filled with energy as gratitude seemed to flow into the room. I enjoyed the attention, importance, and the challenge of being present.

 The trainer said, “When we are small children, and we reach out to the ‘bigs’(adults) in our Life to lift us, and if we are continuously ignored, we imprint that Life is unable or unwilling to give. We decide that I am not good enough to have what I want. The child begins to imprint thru their Life not to bother to ask for what they want.”

 At that moment in me, the persona as Life stopped being a mystery and became an entity, a field of abundance. I felt a profusion of energy residing in me.

 I am Life, its representative with incredible power and permission to give, to connect and affirm: Ask me, I am here to deliver, was Life’s message.

 The trainer said, “Reach to life,” the group did, and I, as Life reached back. We merged Life, Liberty, and the Practice of Happiness by happily asking for what we want.

Outlaw Attention

“To live outside the law, one must be honest” Bob Dylan

 This is Attention on the edge, where the action is. Think merry-go-round, the operator stands in the middle in a slow spin with a bit of boredom, while the riders swirl with excitement on beautiful horses, their minds a whirl of sensations and imagination.

 Outlaw Attention, partnered with self-honesty, is about eluding the posse of habit police, those who serve and protect what has always been.  The habit posse enforce the unconscious traps of sleep walking, the drills of negativity, the collars of having to be right, the shackles of not making mistakes, and the handcuffs of already knowing.  

 Children flirt as outlaws. Whenever freedom offers a painted pony of presence and where self-expression shows up creating a rodeo, children want to ride the bronc!

 Outlaw Attention rides that trail beyond ‘get along little doggie.’ The ride is down into the Forbidden Canyon, toward the echo’s mystery. With magic the child creates maps to return to where Attention comes from. They find Attention from searching the high mountains and Great Plains.

 Pay Attention to children. Lasso those who want to keep the children jailed by the habit posse corralling them into the land of the in-SAME.

 Lead the habit police down a false trail. Let yourself follow the free attention trail to gratitude, enthusiasm, and joy in bringing the little cowpokes along.

Different Types Of Attention

Step into, or out of, the land of the Imagined Resistance. A scary place, believed to be real yet hidden in a fog of unknown fears.

Let us see what is in the Imagined Resistance.

Fear of something unknown? How can there be fear of the unknown when by definition I don’t know?

Is it fear of nothing?

 Is it a garden-variety fear? Fear that is just floating, caught from a toilet seat, rubbed off from a doorknob type fear?

 Is Imagined Resistance more important than a goal, a project, happiness, compassion, or fear of success?

 Is it fear of being stupid and wrong or fear of embarrassment?

This is the un-slayable Dragon of Imagined Resistance.

 This is the I can never win, never change, Never, Neverland of Captain Hook entrapping Peter Pan’s friends in a fear that does not exist.

It is an enduring my useless suffering fear!

 For God’s sake USE your imagination!

 It is Don Quixote waving at windmills, while Poncho is TOO BUSY to help his partner.

 It’s the great obsessive-compulsive, bi-polar continuum of the 21st century. 

 The fear takes control and manifests as I tell my selves “I’m stuck.” Then I may feel a great release, the slingshot epiphany, of “I’m saved, it’s just my imagination, a negative mental attitude(NMA). I may mentally run the gamut  of “I’m not perfect, I’m a sinner, it ain’t me-‘isms’ of excuses and fears, and finally releasing my Imagined Resistance and being present-NOW.

 Here’s a recipe for concocting Imagined Resistance. You’ll need the following ingredients: a mishmash of beliefs about time, usually a lack of time and energy. Add some laziness. A large vat of ‘whatever’s’. Season with blame, excuses, and because. Lots of ‘I can’t.’ Add your favorite addictions, TV, drugs, alcohol, sex, sports, politics, and, or drama. Add more of our ever-present ego’s need to have to be right. Find a very large oven with a  heavy door and climb in, like Hansel and Gretel, close your eyes,  imagine the worst, then resist the cooking of your own creation. This is negative imagination, creator of Imagined Resistance.  

One antidote to Imagined Resistance is to handle real resistance. Show up, step up, make the call, knock, ask, just do it! Tell your selves you can do it. It is most likely not gonna kill you. After all what is the worst that can happen? Say yes to life, to choices and risks, getting on with your real resistances.

 Another antidote is not believing in resistance. If you must believe, and I love it when my attention is so FREE, I don’t need to create beliefs!

  What about the belief in no resistance, only feedback, mere bumps on the freeways of life?

  What about not believing everything that I think?

  What about upgrading imagination, without the resistance, into a useful tool toward the goal.

 I can imagine that everyone is on my side.

 I can imagine I have the patience to participate and complete  my goals.

 I can imagine I have all the tools and skill I need to succeed.

 I can imagine miracles, a great place to pay attention.

 Visit The Checking Inn, get a room with a view, and see what’s outside your window, and For God’s sake USE your imagination, and trust your selves.