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?

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.

Who’s Richer Than You? Find out here.

Check out the calculator at Global Rich List to find out how your salary ranks you on the worldwide scale of rich-ness. Be prepared to feel richer than you think you are.

Make Money by Paying Attention

I always have a pen and paper or notecard or computer or something with me to write on. If you tell me something, it goes somewhere. Writing down every action item as it came up, rather than waiting until later or relying on memory, is responsible for much of my success.

My total dedication to the world of lists came to fruition when I was working as an assistant to the producer of a Broadway show called “The Best Little Whorehouse Goes Public” in 1991. The producer, Stevie Phillips, was known to have a mind like a bear trap. The truth was her mind was smart but not unusually good at remembering things. For that she had lists.

The first day on the job Stevie was rattling off a dozent things that needed to get done. I didn’t have a pad in hand. She stopped and said, in her slow gravelly voice, “If you don’t get a piece of paper and a pen right now, you will never be allowed in my office again.”

I ask people to write things down, just like she did, but in the thirteen years that have passed since those lovely days on Broadway the nation has collectively lost just a little bit of its mind and our ability to pay attention has suffered. The nation’s drug companies have invented a bunch of attention deficit disorders with three letter names that require medication - yet humanity existed for hundreds of thousands of years before the advent of the ADD and anxiety drugs, and I’d say we were doing just fine.

The way to get people to pay attention is to teach them how to pay attention, and even more important pay attention to them. When people aren’t writing what I’m saying, a big Red Flag goes off in my head about their level of commitment to actually getting things done. Instead of buying a pill, take some time to reflect, don’t watch so much TV, think about your own priorities, make a list, get it done.