E-Squared Book Club: Week 5

This week we discussed Experiments #6 (The Superhero Principle) and #7 (The Jenny Craig Principle). Both principles relate to the ability of our thoughts to impact physical matter in the material world. First we discussed the results of the seed experiment. As you may recall, Tammy gifted us with sunflower seeds from her studio garden, along with a little bag of soil. It was such a beautiful gift! I went home and planted my seeds that night.

As I tossed them into the soil playfully, I said, "Isn't it AMAZING that this one row of seeds is already growing faster than the other row?? I'm AMAZED!". At that point, of course, they were "just" dry seeds going into soil, sitting on my kitchen table. Nothing had happened yet. Except my thought and feeling of ALREADY being amazed at their growth.

Two days later, I was truly amazed to see sprouts beginning to show. I literally thought nothing about these seeds other than the feeling of amazement that they were already growing faster.

I added a few drops of water to the carton every couple of days, and regardless of what I saw with my eyes, I commented, "Isn't it AMAZING that this row of seeds is growing so much faster than the other row! I am AMAZED!". I didn't say, "I can't believe it!", or "I can't explain it!". I just held the amazement.

 

And they continue to grow and amaze me, every single day!

A couple of notes on this experiment for me: I have absolutely NO expectation about me and growing things. I'm not exactly a "green thumb" and haven't had a major draw to grow plants before. I think because of this, I was able to be truly open and playful. I had nothing to prove and everything would be a surprise for me coming from these seeds.

Tammy planted her seeds one day after mine and they had not sprouted at the time of our meeting yesterday. She had placed them with loving care in a special spot at her studio, and every day as she watered them, she waved her hand over them to transmit loving and encouraging energy to the seeds. She talked to them, using the energy of her words to support their growth.

Why were our results different?

We talked about the difference in energy between "wanting" something to happen and "believing" it is already happening. When you send an energy of "want", the result remains in the future. You receive what you asked for, which is continuous wanting. When you believe that something IS, and carry that energy regardless of the "results" you can see with your eyes right now, you support the essence of life that wants to thrive, grow, and come into being.

We demonstrated this with the Push Together-Pull Apart experiment, which I learned from my life coaching mentor, Martha Beck. It goes like this (and is discussed in Martha's latest book, Finding Your Way in a Wild New World):

1. Have a partner stand with their arms bent, hands in front of their body, with palms facing in (as if they are about to clap).

2. Tell them not to let you push their hands together, as you press on the tops of their hands as hard as you can. Fill your thoughts with effort, pushing, and domination as you do this.

3. Now, do the same thing, except this time hold in your mind thoughts of joy and love, or a time in your life when you felt utterly at peace. Don't think about the other person, just hold these thoughts and allow them to spread throughout your entire being. Now just put your palms on the backs of your partner's hands and move your own hands together.

Experiment #7 was about our food being the carrier of our thoughts' energy into our bodies. Since I don't own a scale, I did this experiment by measuring how I feel in my body when I take the time to taste my food completely. If I'm talking while I eat, this is more difficult to practice. This is when I often lose track of what I'm feeling, and just keep putting food in my mouth until the plate is clean.

For those of you who would like to lose a few pounds, I'm curious what your results are after trying Pam's advice. Notice any negative thoughts you have toward your own body. Let them go and replace them with thoughts that praise your body for the way it already is. Take a moment to bring your thoughts into a state of peace, love, and joy, before you eat your food. And see what happens!

At Quarry Park, the sun continued to shine on us, and it was an unseasonably warm day.

Later in the afternoon, we all attended a monthly gathering of Art and Inspiration hosted by Amy Sullivan. Tammy painted a "butterfly brain" image inspired by the E-Squared Book Club.

Shirley made a collage of cats and flowers and castles and circles.

And I played with my new acrylic gel mediums. FUN! I drew the "Joy" card from the Soul Coaching deck. Its message was to remember that my soul's purpose is simple - to experience joy. And to share this and its healing qualities with the world.

It has been my joy to create this book club and to experience the discoveries together in a circle.

Next week, we discuss the last two chapters, Experiments #8 and #9. In our final week, we will design our own experiments for the holiday season and end of year.

To listen to a brief (17-minute) recording from the phone meeting, click here.

As always, please feel free to share your stories in the comments!

Falling Down To Earth...Lessons from "Gravity"

I saw Gravity this weekend. It was date night. Since we normally watch movies on Netflix in the luxury of our own living room, with the sunset and ocean behind our backs and the fire roaring in the fireplace, the trip through traffic and the ordeal of finding a parking space in a shopping mall made me expect a lot from this one.

We decided to splurge on the 3-D version. We got a big bag of popcorn, and settled into the theater, which we had mostly to ourselves.

I was already filled with gratitude for my life on the coast after we set foot inside the neon shopping mall that contained the movie theater. At that moment, seeing the names of the food court vendors – none of which were familiar to me, feeling the fluorescence of everything, squinting at the brightness of the SALE signs in every store window, hearing the echoes and reverberation of the cavernous container of the space, I realized how long it had been since I’d shopped in a mall. When had that shifted? I recalled a time in my childhood when the only place to shop for clothes and shoes was the mall. It was also one of the main “hangouts” for kids who went out after school (of which I was not one).

I won’t talk too much about plot points here, but I want to list several of the “messages from the universe” that I feel are embedded in the movie. I’ll scramble them up so as not to have to give too much of a spoiler alert. But if you must see the movie first, I’ll warn you that I refer to some scenes in the text below.

1. We’re hurtling at light speed toward our destiny at all times.

2. There are two ways to go through our brief moment of time called life – light and floating and free, with laughter, presence, and acceptance, or tethered, struggling, thinking hard, constantly driving somewhere, not knowing where in particular.

3. As unlikely and miraculous as it was for the protagonist to arrive back to earth, her journey is a metaphor for the set of unlikely circumstances that collide to create any individual life on earth, and both are equally miraculous.

4. There are two ways to meet our inevitable demise of death – in awe and wonder, with a light heart, and fully present, or with fear and regret. The way you die is the way you live. Start living.

5. To continue living, you must continuously jettison the parts that no longer serve you. Even though at one time in the past they were essential to your survival, these parts can be exactly what’s holding you back right now. Keep letting go.

6. Sometimes you find yourself on the end of a tether, getting whipped around, believing you’ve been rescued or saved. While you’re technically alive, the ride may feel nauseating, and you’re never permanently protected by what’s on the other end of the tether.

7. Use what you have, do what’s in front of you, remember what you know, and start from where you are.

8. Be grateful for your mind, and remember to use it to serve your heart’s desires, not replace them.

9. Everything can be blown to bits, and you can be one of those bits. You can experience your own rebirth by falling back down from (your head) space into the watery womb of mother earth. You can dive deep, find air, reach land, express gratitude, and then finally find your own legs. This is the story of human evolution…from star stuff to dirt, that’s what we all are: miracles.

10. Sometimes we need to journey far, far away in order to find our way back home.

Be Careful What You Wish For...

Last year I made a vision board for who I am and how I feel when I express my creativity. I had devoted 2010 to my Core of Peace, and I was setting a new intention for 2011. I didn't know exactly HOW my creativity would be expressed. But by making the vision board I connected with images and words that captured how I knew it would FEEL to be in that place of expression.

I let go of the HOW, because I didn't - and couldn't - know at the time what the exact steps would be.

I breathed deeply into the feelings of my own creativity, and allowed images to attract me without needing an explanation or a meaning or a concept. They were just images that I loved, for no "reason" at all.

Here is the vision board I made:

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I have it as the wallpaper image on my laptop, so every time I open my computer, the images enter my consciousness. Most days, I don't sit and deliberately stare at every image on my screen, but I know they are there.

I haven't thought about that vision board in many months. I have gone about the business of living, of staying in my Core of Peace, of letting some things go, and picking up other things, of planting seeds and watching them grow, all the while noticing that I cannot force growth to happen any faster than it already is.

Last night I looked at it again.

It was with a sense of amazement that I noticed how many of the images had actually come into my reality during 2011. In other words, my visions had come true!

While I was holding the intention to express more of my creativity in 2011, I lived by the mantra, "First Feel Free." The actions that resulted from that feeling included walking away from a commercial lease, and six months after that, downsizing my belongings by about eighty percent and moving out of my two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment, and into my boyfriend's two-bedroom, one-bathroom house, with a kitty and a big backyard.

We started a vegetable garden.

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We climbed to the top of Half Dome in Yosemite, after months of training with progressively longer hikes every weekend.

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I fell in love with the outdoors, and discovered a new interest (er, obsession) in backpacking.

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I also fell in love with spoken word, and began accompanying poets with live violin improvisation during their readings.

I accompanied a dear friend on violin while she sang her heart out in a burlesque show, observing the self-empowerment potential for women to love (and even flaunt) their own bodies exactly as they are.

Our band, Chinese Melodrama, stumbled into a new niche combining our love of supporting local businesses and the taste of wine, by providing music at local winery and wine bar events.

I got so busy living that my writing and videoblogging could no longer keep pace with the rate at which I was accumulating experiences. I let go of my need to report on every single learning and observation I had about the world, and began to just fully soak in the experience.

Meanwhile, another dream came true, with the opening of a brand new yoga and healing arts studio just a few blocks away from my new home. It was also another example of letting go of my grief over "not having a yoga studio anymore" and allowing the magic of life to arrive at my doorstep. I now find myself on the roster of musicians for the Sunday evening yoga and healing sound classes (starting in September, I'll be playing the second Sunday of every month), and working with the studio to coordinate events with my community of healing artists, musicians, and poets.

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Looking back at my vision board, I can count the images that have arrived in my reality since that day last year. I have found myself in the woods, on the top of mountains, at the rocky shores of the ocean, standing in awe of a sunset, opening my arms to the expansiveness of the sky, praising the stillness of the forest, celebrating my own beauty, and playfulness, and togetherness with a companion.

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All of this, once just a vision, is now my reality. All of this is who I am and how I feel when I express my creativity, letting go of the HOW and opening to the expansive mysteries of the earth and life.

The old saying goes, "Be careful what you wish for."

I say, "Be bold about what you wish for."

And brace yourself. Because you just may get it.

Solving the Puzzle of the Universe

A few days ago I solved the puzzle of the universe. It came in a box. There were 500 pieces and a neat image of the final product - what the solution was supposed to look like.

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I had a partner while I was doing it. We didn't discuss how we were going to tackle the problem, we just started working on it, each in our own way. There were no words. Things just began when they began, and ended when they ended.

I noticed that I wanted to follow some instructions that were somewhere in the back of my head about "how to" solve a puzzle like this.

"Start with the edges and corners," was one set of instructions.

"Find the colored pieces first," was another.

I tried both of those, but the puzzle was just so big, so complicated, with so many parts, that I quickly got frustrated with each of those approaches. I made a tiny bit of progress, but immediately got stuck following those two paths.

So I just looked at the pile of pieces, sifted them around a little so I could feel them. I began to notice certain things stood out to me - a pattern of white squares. Letters and words. Colored lines and arrows.

Then I turned to look at the final image. I started to notice that the pattern of white squares was specific. The numbers in the squares corresponded to exact positions on the circle that defined the boundary of the universe. Above those squares were the months of the year, spelled out in large, colored letters.

I would start by finding each of the twelve months of the year. As I proceeded this way, I experienced the excitement of completing one word at a time.

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“Aha!” I would exclaim as I saw the letters of "OCTOBER" come together from three different puzzle pieces. I wasn't paying attention to the shapes of the pieces, only the emergence of the word itself.

I attacked the puzzle in this way, building one identifiable word at a time, choosing not to worry about how these twelve words would form a complete circle, or how the center of the circle - which was a detailed map of the constellations - would come together.

I just focused on those words, one "Aha!" at a time.

After about six of these, I looked up to notice my partner working on the puzzle silently, without disturbing me at all, in his own way. I noticed that he wasn't looking up nearly as much as I was. I noticed that he had lined up the pieces in front of him, and was looking more at the pieces themselves than referring to the picture of the final product we were supposed to be building.

I didn't want to take my mind off my own puzzle solving, and what he was doing was not interfering with what I was doing, so I just kept going.

I built the ring first - the pattern of white squares and numbers, representing the calendar days, and the twelve months of the year distributed evenly around the circle.

The rest of the pattern of constellations and their names were still too overwhelming for me to tackle, so I just kept working on the ring, matching what I was creating with what was printed on the box, noticing one tiny detail at a time adjacent to the ring I had put together.

By the time I had about three quarters of the ring assembled, I looked up, to find that my partner had constructed all four corners of the puzzle, which were mostly solid black, with no words at all. He had done this by looking at the shapes of the pieces, and fitting them together based on matching their edges. This was a completely different approach than mine, as I didn't even notice the actual shape of each puzzle piece - I only saw the images formed after they fit together.

A New Model of Team Work

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Miraculously, these two completely different approaches were resulting in a beautiful "team effort" that was getting the puzzle solved! My mind would not wrap around this subject because I was so engrossed in my particular approach, but I remember feeling such relief that we were not arguing or debating about what the best way to solve the puzzle - "as a team" - would be.

We were not weighing the pros and cons of each approach, trying to get each to adopt the best practices of the other. That was always my biggest nightmare about working "on a team" - that I would have to work in some way that was not optimal for me, in order to accommodate someone who was slower, weaker, or less competent than me.

I never considered the possibility that we could each retain our own styles of working, and accomplish things in our own way, while also contributing to a larger group effort. How liberating!

This was easy, peaceful, fun teamwork, that required no negotiation whatsoever. There was just a huge puzzle to be solved, and each of us was sincerely interested in approaching the solution in our own way, at the same time, together. It wasn't a competition. There couldn't be one. There were two many pieces, it was too complex, and no one could have predicted how the solution would finally come together.

It was an example showing that setting each person free to work in their own best way could also be in the best interest of the group effort. Imagine that!

Trying to understand, explain, justify, control, or influence another person's way of working would not have been productive for either us as people or for reaching a faster solution to the puzzle.

Asking the other for help was also futile, since we were arriving at our own answers in such distinctly different ways - it was as if we were decoding the puzzle into our own particular language, which could not be translated in the moment.

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Ultimately the puzzle of the universe took about five hours of work to solve. Not bad for a day's work (with a dinner break!). We kept it out for our own mutual admiration for the next four days.

Taking the Pieces Apart

Today I decided it was time to take a picture, tell the story, and take the puzzle apart again.

I noticed that there was a tinge of that feeling of regret when we adults have to take things apart. Children - ones who are younger than school age - don't seem to see the sadness of knocking over towers of blocks, messing up a stack of cards, or taking apart a train set. They love the destruction as much as the creation, if not more. They laugh and smile as things fall apart, just as when they get built.

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Children are great teachers in the nature of impermanence and non-attachment. When is it, in the course of our "maturation" and "growing up" that we become so attached to the building, and so afraid, so avoidant, of the taking apart? Or the letting things fall apart? When does the story become a tragedy in our minds?

I tried to take the point of view of a child when I took the puzzle apart today. I tried to enjoy the process of crumbling the sheets of cardboard back into their factory-cut pieces, rubbing them between my fingers to encourage them to separate and fall. I took on the task with as much zeal as a child might swing their arm against a tall stack of legos, and watch with glee as they tumble down to the floor.

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The pile of pieces fit neatly back in the box. The pieces - all 500 of them - awaited their next chance at being put into place, reconstructed into the same picture of the universe.

I took a moment to appreciate their alternate form - as just a pile of pieces in a box.

I took a moment to notice that there is as much beauty in chaos, as much opportunity to experience joy in the "falling to pieces" as there is in the building.

We just have to be willing to see it.

Photo credit: Baby with legos by Pink Sherbet Photography, used under a Creative Commons License

All other photos by the author