Crazy Busy? (Shampoo Method – Zooming in on Peace)

Why is it that whenever I try to schedule tea with my New-Agey friends, they all say the same thing?

“I’m just crazy busy.”  or “I can’t schedule that far in advance.”

Now, barring any halitosis or offensive personal attributes on my part, surely these people, all of whom claim to be “on a spiritual path,” can manage their time and schedules?

I think they are really feeling that overwhelmed.

Why?

For a while, I used the signature quote, “When God created time He made enough of it” which is apparently a Celtic saying.

Maybe they were too busy to notice or comment on it.

After they tell me they don’t have time to relax and get together, they start telling me how they’re taking new vitamins and scheduling hypnosis sessions and starting a new exercise regime to handle their stress. In other words, they’re busy trying to “fix” themselves.

I don’t get it. Aren’t we meditating? Didn’t we do our “Yoga for Relaxation?” Or chant our mantra today?

Okay, maybe all those things don’t deliver the “peace that passesth understanding,” as promised. Oopsie! And none of them have any effect at all if we stash the CD’s in a corner and never use them.

Maybe we are NOT BROKEN!!! What could we do with all the free time we would have (not to mention money) if we weren’t so busy trying to “fix” ourselves?

I realized as I was writing this that if I am not careful, this will turn into another one of my posts promoting “The Shampoo Methods”  (see the sidebar on the right) and the “IAM Meditations” http://www.advancedmeditation.com/cmd.php?af=570391

Look at those, if you wish, but whatever you do, stop a minute. Yes, right now.

Check inside.

Are you feeling peaceful?

I don’t care if you run around at a faster pace than others around you. That’s just Pacing (see Compatibility Factors on the right).  I’m just asking if you’re feeling peaceful or stressed out?

Do you have time for the things you want to do?

Or are you running around like a head with your chicken cut off just like all those “corporate America” types we like to bash for “not being spiritual?”

Check.

“Zooming in on Peace” might be an interesting thing to do.

Can you find one place in your body that is peaceful right now?

Just one – a small place will do. Could be your little toe or the back of your hand or your ear.

Now, “zoom in” on that peaceful place, as if you were looking at it through a microscope. Magnify it.

You might end up a little blissed-out sometimes when you do this.

Zoom in on it some more. Keep repeating this for a while.

Shampoo Method – Lather, rinse, repeat!

Keep doing that until . . . well, until you’re done.

And when you finish that, if you feel like it, call me and we’ll make a date for tea!

Love, Ann

“Peace in our minds and in our lives is a cause-effect relationship.”

 

 

“And Crawling on the Planet’s Face . . .”

” . . .  some insects, called the human race, lost in time, lost in space…and meaning.”

Do you recognize this quote?

It’s from Rocky Horror Picture Show, circa 1975.

Why would I open an Earth Day blog with that quote?

Because I wonder about things like Earth Day and environmentalism.

My Mother taught me to question things, even things she told me and things she believes. And believe me, my Mother is an environmentalist type who believes in “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!” She started a recycling program at her church when she discovered they had none. I was writing letters to the editor of our city newspaper when I was a child, pointing out green goo in the river and wondering when they were going to clean that up. They did, too, and it gave me quite a sense of my ability to help and improve things.

But now I’m asking, “What if?” again.

What if the temperature fluctuations of the planet that we’ve only been recording for a few decades are normal?

What if cars and industrial pollution have nothing to do with the disappearance of the ozone layer? Or the melting of the polar ice caps?

What if all of this stress is only that – something else to stress about and beat ourselves up with?

I sent my mother a note about the piles of paper documentation generated in an office my friend, Angela, is working in. Angela said they would stack up as high as a tree. Mother replied, “Idiots!”

Instead of nodding my head in automatic agreement, I tilted my head and wondered, “Is that true?”

I mean, isn’t it a given that planets have a finite life, just like human beings? They don’t last forever. Nor do I think they should, necessarily. After doing the IAM Meditation, “Zooming in on Death,” you may see why I question this fear and avoidance of death.

Is there maybe a reason to suspect that we are simply, as Steven Sashen once put it, “An ant farm with thoughts?”

I mean, what do we do?

Katie says, “We sit, stand or lie horizontal.” That’s about it.

Steven, in a similar vein, says something along the lines of:  once we have a place to sleep, something to eat and someone to sleep with, that’s pretty much it.

Haven’t you noticed?

The rest is stories.

Maybe we have an exaggerated sense of our own importance on the planet?

I’m not saying we are not important, but isn’t it this sense of self-importance, “crown of creation,” latest-and-greatest in the evolutionary lineage that has something to do with the arrogance with which we make choices about our resources in the first place?

Could it be that supposing we are the cause of all the environmental shifts and changes in the world is part of the problem? Not part of the solution?

What would it take for us to have a little humility? Where could that lead us?

For Earth Day, I suggest we all take out a sheet of paper, perhaps a “Judge Your Neighbor” Worksheet (see the right-hand column or www.thework.com.) On that sheet of paper, make a list of all of your thoughts both “good” and “bad” about the environment, the Earth, your place on it, your responsibility for the environment, etc. and ask the Four Questions, then write the Turn Arounds.

1.  Is it true?

2.  Can I absolutely know it is true?

3.  How do I live or react when I believe this thought?

4.  Who would I be without this thought?

Turn it Around. (To self, other or an opposite)

Try it.  See what happens.

When you get to Question #3 about reactions and how you live, stop to wonder: is this thought peaceful or stressful? And be sure it is really peaceful before you say so.

Could it be that it’s really excitment or an adrenaline rush that you are calling peace? Peace is a calm thing, not a rush to go out and save the planet. I don’t know what you’re feeling. Just check.

I’d love to read your comments when you’re done.

So . . . in honor of my Mother, that’s my Earth Day blog.

Will you ask those 4 questions with me?

Love, Ann

 

It’s All Good

I got the oddest message from my ex-husband, Marvin, on that last post about “Every Time I Turn Around Something Goes.” (And Marvin, it would be a joy if you would post such things here on the blog as Comments.)

I say “odd” but I guess I should have expected it. It’s the same stuff he’s been telling me since we met in about 1985. Marvin lives in Florida with his new wife, Paula.

Here’s the note:

Healthiest mindset ever on the blog!
Can you implement & stick to it?
Or will we be reading about some terrible thing next month?
 
You are right about a game; one with specific rules to master.
I recommend Brian Tracy CDs.
I’m also sure you will find his process foreign, boring, etc. & that is exactly why you need them.
He can teach you business culture & language.
 
Love & blessings, Marvin”

Let’s look at this.

That first sentence is sweet. I know it is intended as a compliment. Just for fun, I went back and read one of my blogs about being homeless, jobless and carless, just to see if that one came across in some way that would trigger this idea that the current blog is “healthier.”

I don’t get it. Sounds really healthy to me. I am pretty sure he reads most of these.

And, on the other side, how do we know that it is quote “unhealthy” unquote to cry and sob and pound our fists on the floor? Or to have “unhappy” times? It is certainly built in to the system. Show me a single human being who doesn’t and hasn’t had these times!

I realize some people make some kind of constant joy or some imagined better future into their dreamworld gotta have it, can’t have a negative thought, oooh watch out!  There went another negative thought, gotta stop having those! Can’t get enlightened with those hanging around!

What absolute crap!

These are what we call “Statistically Impossible Goals.”

That is to say, that if anyone anywhere ever managed to achieve this imagined future bliss bunny state, they would be the first (and only) human ever to do so. Something like what?  200 BILLION humans have walked the planet and we have never read an account of a single one of them who didn’t have “negative” thoughts.

Let me just counter the Jesus Freaks and Buddhist Bunnies first.

Remember when Jesus got so pissed off he ran through the temple yelling at the moneylenders and knocking vendors wares off the table?

And Buddha – everything he did was based on the idea that he had to make up some imagined better future. Don’t tell me he sat down under the Bodhi tree and got up without his “negative” thoughts. No. It’s more that he finally stopped arguing with the reality that he was going to have those times – just like everybody else!

Okay, all of that and I’ve only covered his first sentence. Let me breeze through the others. Marvin, Beloved that he is, next wrote:

“Can you implement & stick to it?
Or will we be reading about some terrible thing next month?”

I had to reply. I mentioned the “Homeless, Jobless, Carless” post, which was mostly about gratitude and bliss. I said that if he read that and thought these things were “terrible” he missed the point.

But let’s go back to “implement and stick to it.”

Implement what, first of all? I find nothing in my blog “Every Time I Turn Around Something Goes” to indicate there is anything to “implement.” It’s rather the opposite. Thinking there is something I need to “implement” is READ MY LIPS:  STRESSFUL!!!

Steven helped me with this when we were talking about “purpose” the other day. While it is intuitively obvious to me now that any idea of a “purpose” is inherently stressful, I was a little confused about how some people try to tell me it’s peaceful. I don’t know what their experience is, so I didn’t argue, but I had to wonder.

He pointed out that many people confuse “peaceful” with the adrenaline rush of excitement.

OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

God, that was a revelation. No wonder! And no wonder so many of us are so fucking confused!

I’ve done that! That’s how so many people sold me so many seminars and tapes and books before I knew the difference between peace and adrenaline! I used to get so pumped up thinking this one was going to “fix” me, the problem, my husband, etc., that I literally could not think straight. Sure, there is a temporary high at first, but nothing changes. Well, things are always changing, but it’s not a reliable method. There is no reliable method. It’s FAR more peaceful to … hmm, A Course in Miracles quote works here, “Seek not to change the world. Seek to change your mind about the world.”

I’m doing a little questioning on ACIM, too, as I noted in the last blog. It is peppered with some ideas I still think are true and am checking, but the whole thing about how bad the ego is and how we aren’t “there” yet and stuff – well, that has obviously got to go. If I get industrious, I will sit down with the Workbook and question each of the 365 lessons sometime.

Marvin was married to me back when I thought Rebirthing BreathWork and NLP (Neurolinguistic Programming) were going to not only fix me, but fix the whole rest of the world, too – just as soon as I explained it to them! His new wife was in my class. They may still believe that junk.

I’ll bet Marvin still says, “cancel, cancel” when he hears or says a quote “negative” unquote thought whatever that is. That comes from elsewhere, but along with the lie that it takes 21 days to make or break a habit (about which there is NO supporting evidence or research, NONE – see http://sashen.com/blog/59/you-give-me-21-days-and-ill-give-you-three-weeks/)  This one of the ideas I got from my NLP teacher – while all pumped up thinking she could fix me, show me how to fix myself and how to make a million dollars fixing others.

Thank God in Heaven I got over that. (Who? In where?  I don’t know that there is any such thing. It’s just an expression.)

I can’t begin to tell you how much time and energy was freed up when I started realizing, by simply questioning, that there was absolutely no truth to any of that!

Now certainly I had release and bliss and stuff happening when I did all those workshops, but it was unpredictable and unreliable – and what do intermittent rewards do?

That’s right!  They keep you coming back for more! And paying for it!

If what they are teaching was predictable, constant and reliable, people would learn it and GO AWAY AND GET ON WITH THEIR LIVES!  Oh, unless they happened to end up friends with the teacher or something, I guess.

Check into the real lives of these “teachers.”  I have had the good fortune of hanging out with someone who knows many of them personally and by extension knows people who know the story-behind-the-story on a lot of these best-selling bullshitters. Among the things I have heard there are men and women who work 80 hour weeks, never see their children, take drugs, have ex-wives or ex-husbands with very different stories about how “enlightened” they really are. And, just like everyone else, they all have money problems, relationship problems and health problems.

The health problems are a fun one. One of my favorite questions in The Work, which Steven asks sometimes is: “What if (fill in health/relationship/money problem here) was required for you to be enlightened or happy? How would you see it then?”

The funny thing is:  it seems to BE REQUIRED!

How do I know?

Show me one, just one, person who hasn’t had money/relationship/health problems. You won’t find them. I could offer to give a million dollars if you find one, and rest secure in the knowledge that it is Statisticaly Improbable (read: IMPOSSIBLE) that such a one exists.

Oh sure, we make up stories about all the gurus. But check. Really check. Really do the homework. And you will find they had just as much “misery” and just as many “terrible” things in their lives as anyone else.

Alright, where was I?

Oh yes:

“You are right about a game; one with specific rules to master.
I recommend Brian Tracey CDs.
I’m also sure you will find his process foreign, boring, etc. & that is exactly why you need them.
He can teach you business culture & language.”

First, let me tell you that while my ex-husband was never bad with money, he was constantly stressed about it and still is, as best I can tell. He was always telling me how I should and shouldn’t handle money. In fact, I happen to know that one of the most stressful things in his life last time I checked was how his current wife, who is quite well-off by any standard, how she spends money. If he could only RELAX! She’s fine. She has money to spend. HE could relax about it and . . . well, that’s his business.

I went and looked for this “Brian Tracy” web site. I had heard of him. His photo alone was enough to get me to click off that site, and fast, but I looked around. I’ve never seen such density of clickable stuff to make the site owner money in one place before. Nothing wrong with that. But clearly he has Marvin sending him money for things, too. I wrote Marvin this morning that I’d listen to one BT CD if he wanted to send one, on the condition that I could keep a barf bucket at the ready, just in case I could contain myself no longer.

So, briefly:

“specific rules to master”    STRESSFUL

“foreign, boring, etc. & that is exactly why you need them.” 

Is that how he sold them to you?  Thanks, but no thanks.

Alright. *sigh* I told Steven I wanted to read the blog about one paragraph in his blog http://sashen.com/blog/62/you-can-have-anything-you-want-not/

“I can only hope that in the end you can enjoy the truly magical thing about the universe, that it’s WAY beyond our ability to comprehend, let alone control.”

I saw the look on his face, and immediately said, “Well, I guess I could write it,” he grinned and pointed back at me in that “you got it” kind of way.

Well, this isn’t that blog. But maybe next time.

Love, Ann

Every Time I Turn Around, Something Goes . . .

Right!

This is Me-Who-Does-Not-Write-at-Night doing it yet again!  That’s all Nat’lie’s fault! I swear that woman could get words out of a turnip. Speaking of words, did you know she said she doesn’t use the word, “spiritual?”  Interesting, isn’t it?

Well, the writing at night is partly to Nat’lie’s credit, but the lion’s share of the thanks for how I notice that Every Time I Turn Around Something Goes Right goes to the Anti-Guru, Steven Sashen, www.sashen.com/blog, for teaching me some really stupid obvious questions and thought-experiments and IAM Meditations, and stuff I call “The Shampoo Method – Lather, Rinse, Repeat.”

A lot of things have been changing for me this past month. I don’t remember ever being quite this clear or asking myself quite this many questions in quite the same way.

I’m asking questions about things I thought I’d never.

So far, I have questioned the following and found big whopping lies:

• Feng Shui
• Astrology
• Something can be “meant to be.”
• I/we/people are here to “grow” or “learn.”
• I/we/people should have a “purpose.”
• I/we/people can “do it wrong.”
• I/we/people have “blocks” we need to “overcome.”
• Anything Eckhart Tolle wrote.
• In fact, most spiritual books I ever read are full of lies just like the ones above.
• Even . . .  drum roll here . . . A Course in Miracles

Now, the books all brush past the truth in one way or another, but in order to sell, they seem to all include so many ideas that just don’t hold water.

In a slightly more personal vein, I’ve discovered that, contrary to prior (sometimes very loud and insistent) advertisment to the contrary . . . I am someone who . . .

• Writes at night.
• Has money in the bank.
• Knows how to “make” money.
• Can create a business.
• Can market herself and her services.
• Can wisely choose when to spend and when not to spend.
• Doesn’t need a “support group” or a “teacher” to know what to do.
• Doesn’t need to “talk before I know what I’m thinking.”
• CAN think in spatial terms and doesn’t always have to convert pictures to words. (That was a huge . . . something . . . I started to say “shock,” then I tried to say “surprise,” then I realized that it had been obvious all along and I’d been totally missing the obvious.)

In fact, let me take that out of parenthesis.

IT HAS ALL BEEN VERY, VERY OBVIOUS!!!

In addition, I . . .

• Moved out of a home I wasn’t comfortable in.
• Moved into a home I am far more comfortable in.
• Sold a car that was difficult and uncomfortable.
• Am in the process of buying a car that is easy and comfortable.
• Not in a relationship right now, which is far better than being in one I don’t want!

Now please don’t imagine there was anything “wrong” with my prior home, car or relationships. Paradoxically, there’s not. I loved that old 83 Toyota Corolla – green astroturf dashboard and all!  I loved the old roommate, the house, the cats, the times I had there. And I most certainly have loved all my relationships prior to now.

I cannot explain what this feels like. It’s a You’d Have to Have Been There. But that’s why I’m writing this. Piggy back on my experience, get a taste of this reality, try the Shampoo Methods. Read the Page on “Shampoo Method Instructions.”

Some of you reading this, whether you know me or not, are thinking, “Yeah, so?”

Well, that’s true. At the same time, it has changed everything.

I’ve been RePairing Opposites left and right. Err . . .   (If you don’t know why that is hilarious, read the technique in any of the blogs or over in the sidebar under “Shampoo Method Instructions.”

Seriously. For example, I RePaired “going after things” vs. “things coming to me.” And now, nearly every time I think “I can’t  . . . blah blah blah” I have to check the other side of it, “I can. . . . blah blah blah.”

I’ve noticed that the following Turn Arounds are TRUER than my original lies (which I leave to the reader’s astute guesses):

• I’m a person who can start a business.
• I don’t get paid any more for being stressed while I’m working.
• I can do math in my head.
• I can tell what to spend my money on (This doesn’t mean that it always has a predictable outcome. It just means I can make a choice in places I was very, very unconscious.)
• Astrology disconnects me from my intuition.
• I don’t know how much money I’ll make this year, starting today. . . it hasn’t happened yet!

As far as money (and a lot of things) goes, I noticed that it really is a game!  God, how many years have I been reading this and thinking I understood?  That is not the same as understanding! For me, it’s like I haven’t been making straight A’s in something when all I have to do is go to do the homework. It’s not hard!  It’s easy!

I feel like I’m Teflon to lies and misperceptions, and I’m kinda blissed out on it.

Try it. You’ll like it. Or maybe not. 

Love, Ann

“Success is a side-effect of clarity.”

                     – Steven Sashen, The Anti-Guru, www.sashen.com/blog

PS – Check this one out:  http://sashen.com/blog/44/we-are-in-the-matrix/  or any of the others!

 

 

The Toilet Paper Roll

Me:  “I put the toilet paper roll over there in the kindling box.”

Aubrey: “Oh my God!  I’ve lived here 8 years and you are the first person to know where the used toilet paper rolls go!

You see, I once lived at 9000 feet on a beautiful ridge in a two-story cabin with a wood stove for heat. Yes, I had propane, too, but it’s expensive. That, and I just love fire.

I like building fires. I like watching fires. And I like replenishing fires.

I like warming myself by the fire, sitting in front of the fire, or just knowing that there is a fire.

It only took me 3 nights at 18 degrees to figure out how to build a fire in the wood stove that would last all night and provide coals for starting it again the next morning. In the meantime, my boyfriend sent me a nice warm long-sleeved microfleece shirt and hat, which I keep to this day for just such occasions. I bought a down comforter. I learned the differences between how pine burns and how hard woods burn. Yesterday, I learned that a couple of logs of juniper will burn all night, too.

I love fire.

Love, Ann