We Pay Good Money for Geodes

Assassin, Fighter Pilot, Engineer, Architect, You

You can't be a mediocre assassin and get away with it. You'll get killed, or blow your cover. if you're job is flying F-15's, you have to be a fighter pilot, or you - or other people - will die. And you have to be great if your job is designing bridges or buildings - people's lives are at stake, and blow it once and you won't get another chance. In these professions you have to be practicing the art of stealth, flying, or designing at the top of your game, or it's game over.

How can I approach my work with the same sense of stakes? In my line of work no one dies if I don't get it right. But within the process itself are endless opportunities to be an artist. Outside work there's endless opportunities as well. How I hand the money to the guy who delivers our lunch can be a totally forgotten moment, or it can be the art of gratitude. How I hold the door for someone at the grocery store can be totally mundane and automatic, or I can imbue it with the art of generosity. How we talk to each other in a meeting, or convey notes about a project, can be rote and dry, or it can be an opportunity to practice the art of human connection and respect.

Not every job or life is about what we call "art" - the stuff hanging on walls or coming through headphones. But within every job and life there's every opportunity to be a work or life artist, to leave an impression for the sake of being human.

So maybe there's no lives at stake, in the sense of people dying- but maybe there's more at stake, in the sense of finding opportunities to be fully alive.

The Soul of Money by Lynne Twist – a review

The Soul of Money: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Life by Lynne Twist


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Lynne Twist talks about money in a way that I've never experienced before. She delves deep into the idea of money as a means of expressing our greatest hopes for ourselves and our communities. The way she talks about money imbues it with a spiritual significance that I've realized is totally appropriate. Lynne's life is now dedicated to putting into the practice that helping people to help themselves - rather than just stopping at "helping people" - is the way to co-create a more compassionate and just world. It's not just filled with philosophy, but also includes practical applications of how you too can connect with the soul of money.

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You are Not You

You are not you. You're not. Sorry. That solid thing you drag around, your body, that's not you. And the mind, the spirit, that's not you either. Point to it, show me what you are, without it changing, without it being influenced by an unfolding web of infinite interconnectedness.

Even your personality isn't you - mediated by childhood, media, culture, hunger, sleep (or not), food choices, medication, season - you're an unceasing present moment output of all these inputs, but so is everything else unfolding and pulsing around you. It's hard to put a finger on what's you and what's not.

Or is it?

Here's what else you're not. You're also not an isolated experience hurtling through a hostile and violent space. Nope, you're not that either.

You are something, incredible, precious, unique, divine even. By definition you are an absolutely 100% essential part of the universe - there's no real or spiritual math you can do that ends up with a different answer than that, because the answer always is "you're here".

Who are you really? There really is a you - you're not you, but you're not me either.

The answer comes slowly if you sit and let all the habit, conditioning, noise, and distraction settle down.  Really slowly. It's not easy sitting still and turning down the volume knob on all the fun stuff so you can hear the real broadcast. Shake the snow globe too hard and you can't see a thing. Let the snow settles and you start to notice the details.

You might start to realize the real thing is actually so much more fun and interesting than all the carny huckster fake pleasure promises you were buying into before.

It's really important to you, and me, and everyone else, that you figure out who you really. Be prepared to be overwhelmed by an outpouring of support from the entire universe once you make the definite commitment to start exploring the truth about yourself.

How Are You Going To Waste Time Today?

There's so many ways to waste time today. Watching too much television, spending time doing "research" on the internet, avoiding the ten minutes it would take to truly make some small advance towards the reason you were put on this planet, whatever that is.

Here's one thing to do that's not wasteful and can give you some perspective. Take 60 seconds to draw a quick map of how you got here. If you're not feeling like drawing, then close your eyes for 60 seconds and think it through. Or just make a list.  All the people connected to your current job, university, high school, home, family, wherever you are - start drawing the web of connections that radiates out from your current spot. It's infinite - there's literally an infinite number of people whose presence on this planet has given you the opportunity to be right here, right now. You are your own internet.

No matter HOW bad (or how GOOD) your current position seems to you - either way, a tremendous amount of physical, mental, and emotional energy trails behind your every moment.  Your current exact circumstance pales in comparison to the magnitude of what has come before you, and that's a great thing because it takes the pressure off needing to be perfect right now.

Airplanes use an enormous amount of energy to move forward and stay aloft. They don't go in a perfectly straight line; any pilot will tell you that a flight is a constant series of mini-corrections responding to the thrust, wind, or pressure conditions that just happened.  The pilot doesn't say - oops, we went a bit off course, may as well just give up and land right here or just turn off the engines. Nope. She implicitly acknowledges all the technology, knowledge, forerunners, weather, fuel, and energy that supports the plane's journey every time she gently corrects the direction or velocity of the airplane.

Think of the web of opportunity that you are always moving in, the fortune of your circumstance.  How much energy are you going to spend today defending the perfectly made bedsheets of your life - because you think YOU got here by yourself, and have to control every tiny aspect of what's around, else it all falls apart - how much opportunity blindness are you going to engage in today? How much energy are you going to spend ignoring and disrespecting the vast web of opportunity that supports you back into infinity, vs. just being present in the endless unfolding moment of right now?

Conversely, who around you could use a hand? How can you become a part of someone's web of opportunity today?

Hint: Sometimes it's as simple as making the guy at the cash register smile instead of just staring at his hand when he gives you your change.

Be a Mirror

Be up front. Tell "them" (friends/family/work buddies/bowling team) what you're doing. They may approve, disapprove, or get angry or excited, or not even notice.

It doesn't matter. Support is great, but not essential. The harder they push you to be (work late) (join the team) (watch TV) (gossip) instead of creating, the more likely it is that there is an unfinished novel or business plan somewere in their frontal lobe. Don't let their resistance become your easy way out.

Sometimes the most compassionate thing you can do for someone is to be a mirror for how great they could be if only they dropped the excuses.

The High Cost of Complaining

Any time you spend tearing down other people has an opportunity cost - it’s time you could have spent building them up instead of knocking them down, or better yet building yourself up to where your self-esteem no longer requires tearing other people down. It’s easy to exercise your own arbitrary judgment and say “this sucks”, “this is great”, “that sucks”, etc. It’s a lot harder, and more fulfilling, to help people feel that any from of expression or positive process is good even if the outcome won’t win any awards or pay the bills.  Constructive criticism is a literal term - it means criticizing with the goal of constructing something fresh, and it's only useful if it's invited.

We drop into other peoples processes and judge them as if they are at some sort of finish line, a finish line which does not and never will exist.  This is a great way to make sure that you continue to stay stuck in your own patterns of frustration and self sabotage while also doing whatever you can to prevent other people from feeling good about their own energetic situation.

Creating takes energy to overcome our reptilian resistance to change. It takes effort, and time. Destroying is easy - the right word, the properly placed match, a wrecking ball - you can rip down art, buildings, ego, confidence in seconds.

Rome wasn’t built in a day but it did burn down that fast.

A Simple Meditation

Thanks to Buddhist teacher Stephen Batchelor for this joltingly simple idea.

This one helps me focus on what’s important in any given moment. It can give you incredible clarity. Cuts through the trivial like a sixty second knife.

Sit quietly breathing for a moment and ponder how you came to be here.  Why you are sitting here, at this exact spot, at this exact moment, in this particular body.

Then reflect on this idea: since death alone is certain, and the time of death uncertain, what should I do?

What, Me Worry? Yes, Me Worry.

Caution - long thoughtful post ahead.

For some reason over the last month nearly every time I start really worrying, or notice some else with a great deal of worry or frustration, I've been struck by the fact that worry has become a lifestyle accessory, no different than an iPhone, a mortgage, the decision to be a Republican or Democrat, or going out to a nice dinner.

Worry equals concern that something you did in the past won't cause your future to be exactly what you want it to be. Or, it is concern that a decision you are making right now will not lead to your life being exactly what you picture it to be. Whether you are worried about if your child will grow up to be a reliable member of society, or if your DVR is taping "Lost", or if you are going to get out of debt, or how you're going to get back at the guy in the office who's being a total a-hole, or how you'll manage to pick up your prescriptions during lunch break, or if your business/relationship/life is going to succeed or fail, you are either looking back or looking forward and creating an imaginary future that you can then be concerned about.

Until a few thousand years ago (invention of agriculture) every single human being on the planet was employed in the same business - finding food and shelter. In that context, worry is a good thing - it's actually a biological function. Having an ego that makes you feel important combined with a healthy sense of concern of the future = finding food and shelter = survival of the species. We hear a lot about how "fight or flight" is a leftover response from our primal past, and how the constant activation of our adrenal systems ("fight or flight") leads to stress and physical breakdown in modern society. But we don't often hear about how worry is also a relic of our past.

Think about this for a minute: Several billion people on the planet are worried about whether they are going to starve to death today. That's something to be worried about. Everything else will work itself out if you make a series of the right decisions. Worry does NOT help you make right decisions. Worry takes energy from being a rational, emotionally grounded human being and redirects it into the complicated business of helping your ego think that the future cannot exist without you in it. We all know that this is simply false - at some point the future will most definitely exist without you in it, so your presence in the lifestream at this exact moment, while glorious, incomprehensible, and golden, does not guarantee you anything beyond this precise shining moment. So without worry, I become free to act based on the reality of now without being encumbered by a dimly imagined future full of problems or triumphs that rarely manifest as I think they will.

So, why worry? Well, for one thing I suspect there truly is a biological component to worry - it may be what compelled us to find food and shelter before these things were woven into the fabric of towns and cities. Worry is also a way for my ego to assert its false sense of immortality. Worry is also a way to avoid responsibility for the present moment. If I'm worried about my past, or I'm worrying about my future, I get to avoid facing the fears, hopes, dreams of the right now, and I get to make arms length decisions about my life based on my deluded ego ramblings. For example, I'm not sure I am making sense in this post, and if I let myself I could easily become concerned that people reading this will think "Who the hell is he to think he has the insight to write this?" I could even imagine people laughing at me or calling me a fake. All that worrying would do is dilute my clarity in the moment of typing each word; it might even keep me from writing altogether. And that is the beginning of the death of the now in favor of the survival of the maybe.

So why do I call worry a luxury? Because anything that we carry around with us that we don't actually need is by definition a luxury. And for nearly everyone reading this, you live a life far removed from the fear of starving or not having a place to sleep. You might be able to convince yourself that you should worry about those things, but you probably aren't really facing going hungry or homeless. And even if you suddenly did become hungry or homeless, the time to worry about that is then, not now. Living in the warm embrace of modern life and then expending your incredible life energy worrying about trivial (and even not so trivial) things is a kind of hoarding. It's a waste of resources, literally. It take so much raw material to keep first-worlders alive (considerably more than it takes to keep alive the people who actually have something to worry about).

Have we gone to all the trouble of wasting and destroying vast tracts of the earth and other human's environments and energy, to provide ourselves with fabulously outfitted environments full of artificial light, thinking machines, food distribution systems, and machines that move us around, just so I can be comfortable enough to concot ever more worrisome fantasies about my future? Has worry ("I'm worried, I'm Stressed, I'm too busy, What if?") become just another lifestyle accessory, a luxury I allow myself without realizing how grotesque it would seem when faced with things I should genuinely be worried about?

I see someone at work with their face screwed into a mask of worry over whether what they've done will be acceptable - I listen to them pre-apologizing for the problem they think might happen that they think they might be blamed for (aka "covering the ass"); I catch myself worrying about if I'll catch up on sleep tonight, or if I've done enough at the office today, or why I can't seem to stay in touch with my family enough, or if I'll ever have exactly the body I want to.

And then I realize, none of these things matter. And that the energy I've take to think about them could have been better spent being present, doing them or not, being here and compassionate and radiant, rather than there and distant and dim.

Get Better By Making Mistakes

Can you separate a photograph from the subject, the photographer, the light, the chemicals that make the photo? You cannot.  The art of photography is bound up with the process of photograhy – the process of taking a picture, developing (or uploading) it, adjusting it, and viewing it.  The entire process of creating is the art, not just the end result.  The end result is not different from or seperate from the process.

The ego, with best of intentions, says the end result is the representation of the process.  “It’s good.”  “It’d bad.”  “It didn’t turn out how I wanted.” The ego says “The end result has to be perfect.”  The ego needs the end result to be perfect because it believes the end result IS the art.

Because the ego has confused itself with you, it thinks “Well gosh this art represents me; it IS me; and if it’s not perfect when it hangs in the imaginary gallery and the imaginary audience comes and looks at it, I’ll lose points on some imaginary cosmic scoreboard.” And since there is no guarantee of or obvious path to perfection, we invent all kinds of reasons to not do the art, to stay hidden.  But you just need to do your art. You MUST make mistakes.

Write a book and don't tell anyone. No one would care.  The idea that anyone cares is an illusion that your ego creates for itself.  The world is NOT waiting for your novel, dance piece, album or painting.  It’s you who creates an imaginary audience that could not and never will exist, an audience that requires perfection of form and content.

Today’s excercise:
1.    First, acknowledge that you are not a creative genius, you are not going to change the world through whatever art you are working on, and admit that the world will keep going even if you don’t paint/sculpt/write whatever masterpiece you are currently avoiding/creating.

2.    Next, make as many mistakes as possible in as short a time as possible. Take five minutes and really try to mess up whatever you are creating - write bad sentences, take awful photos, write cheesy lyrics, draw something awful. Really go for making a horrible mistake and see what happens.

Selfish Selflessness

I recently read a quote from a Buddhist teacher that said something to the effect of:

“You ask why you are unhappy? Because 99.9% of everything you do, and everything you think, is for your self. And there isn’t one.”

There’s two meanings to this delightful statement.

First, trying to please yourself, trying to satisfy your ego’s (self’s) cravings for satisfaction, recognition, wealth, and status, is destined to fail because part of the ego’s job definition is to never be satisfied. If the ego were satisfied, it would stop craving, and if it stopped craving, it would stop chattering in your mind, and if it stopped chattering, you would cease to know it existed, at which point it would in fact for the purposes of this covnversation cease to exist. This is one meaning of selflessness - the recognition that there is in fact no such thing as self. It is one thing to intellectualize this and quite another thing altogether to really get it.  I have not yet, but I have glimpsed it, and it seems quite terrifying, inspiring, and spacious.

Second, I believe this teacher was also pointing us in the direction of another meaning of selflessness, in the sense of being of service to others rather than of service to yourself. The slightest shift in intention behind your actions can have a profound effect on raising the mood and consciousness of the people around you. When you dedicate your actions to the greater good of the world you live in, rather than whatever it is your ego tells you need right at that moment, something subtle and profound occurs. Suddenly your energy radiates outward, rather than inward. And eventually what your ego comes to need is to always think in terms of others rather than self, because you come to realize that others include yourself, while yourself does not include others.  There is a big difference between actually living this, vs. pretending at it.  Getting beyond pretending to be of service to all is the impetus behind contemplative practice, but it is a natural side effect rather than the goal. Like a Magic Eye painting of Jesus, once you glimpse this even for one tiny fraction of a breath, you cannot ever not see it.

This idea can be applied to anything from how you hold the door open for someone behind you, to how you handle telemarketers calling you, to how you do a project at work, to how you cook dinner, to how you deal with employees of a restaurant. Being of service even when being served is an incredible feeling.

One way to try this practice is to remind yourself of the larger purpose behind living. For instance, as you buy a loaf of bread at the store try saying to yourself (in your head) something like “I buy this loaf of bread in the hope that all people can afford nourishment and that no one will know hunger.” Or at work, “I do this project to the best of my ability with the intention that all beings may be able to earn a living so that they may have a comfortable life.” Same actions, different intentions, and your energy shifts in a magical way.  At least it is a start.