The Power Of Attention

I had a lesson last month in my personal experience about the power of attention.

I had felt, upon returning from my first sojourn to Boston, badly for only one thing. In those moment when my mother had become fixated on some wrong, or some hurtfulness for which I had no answer I had, in a way I had never experienced before, sort of "blanked out". I'd just zone out, and find myself feeling disconnected from the scene, a bit out of focus and feeling less than attentive to the moment, or her needs within it.

When I had been home for about a week, I explored in journey, no t specifically to even ask about this question, and in my journey I was shown how the failure to "pay attention" was a power of its own.

The lack of attention upon something which offers no good or connection to anyone or anything, has more power than any idea in opposition to.

By failing to acknowledge or give attention, the "whatever it is" ceases to exist in the reality of the one giving or withholding attention.

To fail to acknowledge is a powerful tool in the realm of creation.

In our alignment we move naturally to this place, as my experience demonstrates.

For, even though I "felt badly" for leaving mom in these moments in a sort of dead zone (it felt something like watching braindead television) I just sort of failed to be present for the repetition or re-enactment of the whatever historical moment had offered her self condemnation or pain or whatever it was. I didn't play and it wasn't that I intentionally didn't play, it was simply that I could not, for whatever reason, pay attention. I stress this because it was not an intentional act on my part. I did not presume not to want to know or participate, I simply failed to be able to do so.

The revelation later that my failure to do so had in fact been the ultimate act of creation and freedom, was completely unexpected.

I know that there is a part of me which says, without hesitation that this is not possible. That all expectation creates experience and that all experience follows thought and expectation.

But as I move through it myself it continually surprises me.

I have not managed to release all resistance, not by a long shot.

But then, I was raised in the resistance movement, so who can blame me?!

To finally come to understand the power of our individual experience is sometimes more than any of us can comprehend. To be intimately involved in another person's understanding of this as personal relationships cause us to do, especially those relationships which shaped our own primary foundation, is tp encounter all and sum what is ours to inherit or to let go.

There is no middle road in our direct experience. It is what it is.

I didn't have the heart of understanding in that first sojourn. I was worn and wearied by the journey. It wasn't until the second trip was completed that I could see what we had brought into being.

The one powerful gift I had given myself for this process was to allow myself to be as I was and to be at peace with whatever that was as I went through it.

In the end, I found myself pleased, proud and grateful for all it allowed.

Papa's moles

Mom was wearing her favorite brown Scottish wool sweater. "Papa Saul's sweater" she tells me. "It's my favorite."

"But thee has Papa's moles." she says
"that's a more favored gift."

I am falling back in time.
I can remember this so clearly. I am 3 or 4.
He is sitting in his big leather square backed chair.
I am in his lap.
I press the moles on his face. One just over the inside
of an eyebrow the other on his chin, under his lip.

Each press elicits a different response.
His tongue comes out.
He says "Whir whir whir beep beep beep"
or
his eyelids flutter very fast up and down.

It is very funny.
I cannot stop laughing.

Now I am back. Sitting with mom in the hospital room
the snow falls outside the window.

All my life (since they appeared in my teens and twenties)
I've hated these two lumps on my face. Colorless, not like Papa's
big brown ones, but there.

I smile to thing that I am finally, after all these years
making peace with my own face.

I smile, thinking of Papa and those
gleeful moments
in his lap
in his chair
in his world.

And I am glad.

A face is not
what we think it is.

Everybody's Doin' It - Reaching for More

It may seem obvious to say it but the internal desire of all persons is to "have a better life". To improve, to make more money, to have a good time, to have good friends. All of these are uniquely personal and subjective and yet, this is a system of operation which is observable and functional within each of us.

We all have longings and wishes and fears. We all have internal drives, just spinning us along and creating the friction of our lives. We can get pretty tangled up when we get focused on and encounter opposing points of view to our own.

Our confusion comes when we attempt to resolve our internal conflicts and questions with information and guidance from outside of us. Which, as a point of fact, we have now made into an amazing and expanding national past time! Reality TV, strange dating shows, personal coaches, seminars, new books, everyone is giving and getting advice these days. We all do this. We all read, explore, ask, seek, experiences outside of us to validate our "position" in the world. Or, put another way, to validate the "inside" of us. WE use this informaton to help us feel better. Or to beat ourselves up.

Which, of course means we are all experts at minding each other's business. Oh, we LOVE to give advice! We love to tell each other what to do, what happened to us when we did that.. Ask a woman what childbirth was like and you're likely to be listening for a while!

We are busy forming opinions and decisions and conclusions all day every day on a myriad of subjects. Yet we forget that we have the power within us to choose for the one thing that will make any difference in our experience. We get to choose how we will feel.

It never goes away. We always have it. We often pretend we don't have it. We say "oh it was just so devastating." or "I had no choice but to..." Action choices can and do come upon us as we move through this physical life which once set in motion cannot be avoided. But within us, in the one thing in our world that we have utter and complete control of, it seems to many of us we are helpless.

It seems as if we cannot "help" but feel the ways in which we do.

This is not to say that we do not encounter circumstances and events which cause us to have to make choices we would rather not make. It is to say, however, that we can begin to reverse the trend by learning to choose for those thoughts, feelings and emotions which allow us to feel good within ourselves about ourselves as we think and feel them. It means choosing for ourselves and our sense of feeling good first..

Charity begins at home. Finding the inner place where it is safe to be who you are without judgment or self condemnation is the only possible way toward that innately instinctively and viscerally known "better life" which calls each of us.

We cannot get there by arguing. We cannot get there by making ourselves or others wrong about anything. We cannot get there by finding things to push against any more than we can get there by snapping our fingers.

The only way out is through. In order to know that new world, we have to travel the emotional intuitive empowered road to that new world.

So what does it mean to have goals to be a better person if you spend all of your time in a funk because you're mad at your boss? It means you get to have more time to feel lousy and forget what mattered to you. Not because your boss is a good guy. Maybe he's a real pinhead. But because your focus and your time and your emotional energy and experience are your LIFE and when you spend you life energy this way you create more patterns of life energy that will feel like that.

Just another habit. Only this one's a habit of mind and everybody's doing it.

How many times a day do people complain to you? How often do you complain yourself? Or, even better, complain about yourself to yourself!?

Clever little game, that.

The only thing between each of us and what we really want is how we feel about it.

Everything else is a done deal.

So don't get too caught up in doing all that work in the world of action to make it all happen if you still haven't found a way to feel good about whatever it is you're doing. It's wasted energy.

Once we line up the internal game, everything else plays like clockwork.

Why? Because we've given up trying to make it work and we're finally letting the infinite intelligence that is life orchestrate it for us, as it did our birth and our life, when we stop to think about it... Amazing, isn't it? Do you remember the thoughts you had to have to make THAT happen? No? Well, then I guess you get the point.

what good is all the effort towards a "good outcome" which is pointed in the wrong direction? Our focus will build and expand upon whatever we decide to feed it.

What are you feeding your focus today?

Whatever you feed it will grow and expand. The more you focus on whatever you focus on the bigger it gets. Soon it has substance. Then it begins to happen to people you know... Then it happens to you... This is how focus works.

Watch people around you. It's easy to see it. How many women do you know who still have that same type of husband three husbands later? Or men and vice versa?

How many businesses have used these ideas of focus and desire and need to create huge profits for themselves in a world hungry to be "satisfied" from without?

There isn't any part that doesn't match. There isn't anything "out of the ordinary" because that isn't possible. It's all exactly what it is as it is and every part of it is exactly matched up to every other part. If it's not in your world, it isn't a match to you. If it is, it is.

Not because you are bad or evil or wrong headed or judged. Only because you, for whatever reason, have come to be focused and vibrationally matched with the essence of whatever that is.

Fear is a powerful thing. When we use it as a culture to terrorize ourselves, literally and everyone is talking about the danger and pain and horror of it all we all end up paralyzed.

The price we pay for giving up our own well being is that we are now vibrationally and emotionally and energetically aligned with something less than what is good for us.

The good news is, we all have a way out if we ever decide to use it. We can decide, for ourselves, within our own thoughts that it is okay for us to be okay. That we are going to feel okay and always work to do our best to feel okay no matter what. When we do that we become our own uplifter.

When we do that, we "tip the scales" in our own favor. We train ourselves to have a tendency to look for and see the best we can find in any situation. Our focus is softened and sweetened by new joyful experiences as we go. We step into the "flow".

We cannot rely on others to carry us through life and into our best adventures. We cannot wait to be told what to do and how to do it.

Our children are extremely clear in this area where we are so vague. They are a new breed of human who has complied thus far with a huge amount of social pressure and conditioning. Who, by virtue of their exposure to so much external noise have learned to see right past it. Our children are ADD and ADHD as a means to an end. They can drown our the noise of our "media" and "news" and "fear and loathing" with a speed of communication that is beyond our own.

It's a slip knot.

We get the chance to find our own way no matter what else goes on around us, but if we fall for the trap of responding only to what we observe instead of choosing how we will feel first and observing second, we are doomed to follow the pack, live the nightmare instead of the dream and wonder what went wrong.

Focus is a powerful thing.

We have all the power. Some of us know it. Most of us would rather look anywhere than to ourselves for the answers we seek. Yet it is within each of us that all the answers reside.

Which is why, when you learn this art, you can observe people in all sorts of interactions without feeling a need to jump in and "fix" things. It's all working itself out, that they too, are following their best call to action they can find in the moment.

It's the evil twin of trusting yourself to know what to do and to answer your own questions: you must therefore assume that everyone else is capable of, and busy doing, the same thing.

From that point of view there really isn't much left to push against. So you might as well go find something that feels like that "better life" to focus on...

Take a stroll into your imagination, off into the future with your best vision of your life and soak it all in. Now that's a good use of focus!

Divided We Fall

It's an interesting thing, this being human.

We think of ourselves in so many varied ways. Most often according to our roles and relationships: mother, child, husband, wife, engineer, firefighter...

Our self definitions are, for the most part, not self definitions nearly so much as they are the external labels of others internalized.

But the self is a powerful thing. Each of us has complete dominion within the emotional-mental-physical realm of experience we call "self". No one has the power within us to determine our perspective, let alone our perceptions, expectations, intentions, likes or dislikes or any of the myriad other facets of life which are all internally processed and evaluated.

All of it's an inside job, when we finally come to recognize the operational principles of what makes our lives work, not work, thrive or flounder. Oh, we can blame circumstance, and most often we do, however, circumstance is really only secondary in the greater scheme of things. We know this because we can see multiple people endure similar circumstances and have completely different outcomes. Ghetto kids can grow up to be millionaires and vice versa.

While it is true that for most of us the line is drawn at physical conditions (in terms of unmitigated odds in the realm of circumstance) it's also true that people have been miraculously healed, had "spontaneous recoveries" and a host of other not quite explainable responses to even this most direct circumstance.

So what makes the difference? How is it that one person thrive and another fails to thrive? How could it be possible that in this world of such diverse realities as there exist between different humans there could be one operational principle or system in effect?

It comes down to division or lack of it, really. Division at the level of the individual, or self. Each of us is, to whatever degree, divided within, or not. Most of us are divided at least in some areas, and some of us are divided in the critical area of self perspective or self observation: that is, we do not agree with who we are or what we do, or we feel less than excellent about ourselves as people. We pay more attention to those things we do not like about ourselves than to those we do.

This may seem trivial, or simply a natural response to a culture where rules and ways of behaving are becoming more and more stringently imposed. Where polarity of view point has become rampant and condemnation of whole groups of people commonplace.

In a world so divided it is not surprising that many of the inhabitants of that world are similarly divided.

The price for division within the self, however, is extremely high for the individual engaged in the practice. For when we divide ourselves we literally become engaged in a process which leads to our own defeat.

Our inability to reunite our vision or to see ourselves as whole, correct, acceptable and worthy has the direct consequence of bringing us evidence of our self judgment in every conceivable form.

It isn't hard to understand how we end up this way. In a world which fails to recognize or understand the innate internal guidance of the self, we are bombarded with external judgments virtually from the moment we arrive. We are assumed to be ignorant and in need of outside guidance, training and "a proper upbringing" in order to flourish and thrive as a human being who is properly socially adjusted.

Certainly, having some system of order which everyone can recognize and adapt to is worthwhile. Our human development through various civilizations has shown this to us in many ways. We are not inclined to relish chaos. We like order. We like things to be as we expect them to be. We like to know who is in charge and what the game plan is. We like knowing what we know. We like being right. We like the feeling that we are in control.

But when that control comes at the price of the unified self then we have lost the baby in the bath water. We've become so conditioned to the external sounds and noises and demands that we have lost our own connection to what pleases us, what uplifts us, what gives us energy, inspiration and connection in our own world.

Remembering that this world is creative and interactive with us, with our thoughts, feelings and expectations means stepping back and taking an honest look at how we treat ourselves. When we treat ourselves badly it is as if we have invited the worst possible companion along for a ride with us, only they never leave.

When we divide ourselves by judging, condemning, belittling or ridiculing ourselves, even in our own minds, we have accomplished what none of the rest of the world can accomplish: we have taken complete control of our power as humans and destroyed it. We have made ourselves completely and utterly ineffective and useless, not only to ourselves but to anyone else, in the process.

In our rush to comply with the external rules of this world we live in it is easy to lose sight of our internal barometer. We forget the power to choose. We forget that we have any power to choose anything in the face of all the things we seem to "have" to do to "comply" with the external world.

when we lose sight of our choice to feel whole and good and right with ourselves, we have lost the only real power we have.

Our lives are not shaped by the events or moves of others. They are shaped internally by our expectations, our desires and our willingness to do that which pleases us or that which opposes us. We all know this intrinsically: we admire someone who stands up for their own beliefs in the face of obstacles or ridicule: we have no respect for those who give up their own moral beliefs, or internal guidance for the purposes of another or under any sort of duress. We applaud the freedom fighters and hate those who join the enemy out of economic expedience.

Yet we fail, for the most part, to understand or uphold our own internal order and well being by being willing to divide ourselves over issues of remarkably small importance in the larger scheme of things. We call ourselves names, beat up ourselves for being failures, or worse. Rather than recognizing how powerful our internal opinion of ourselves are and how our internal dialogue or monologue feels to us, we simply accept the self inflicted pain until it becomes normal to us.

Once that happens, we are divided. Our experiences will reflect the division in a vast array of negative interactions, losses, missed opportunities and other misfortunes. All of which will have at their core the mis-creating power of a divided self.

No one can visit horror upon us that we cannot imagine. No one can take from us that which we are not willing to take from ourselves. When we finally understand and recognize that all condemnation, all judgment and all suffering are the result of our internal relationship with the self, we will then, perhaps, have the courage to choose what uplifts us rather than what condemns us. Until we recognize this order of being and how it operates, our lack of understanding prevents us from appreciating the price of our condemnations, criticisms and judgments.

When we begin to appreciate the operational principles of inclusion and of awareness then we bring the benefit not only of our own liberation but of the liberation of all others we interact with.

Until we discover for ourselves the power and importance of healing our own divisions we are powerless to alter our experience. Once we grasp that our own condemnation condemns us, we are on the new road to our own true freedom.

In many ways these last months dealing with my siblings and my mother as we attempt to navigate the landscape of illnesses, personal losses and long held emotional griefs have been nothing if not about this one central theme. To the degree we are divided within, our experiences of our own lives are also divided.

Finding solace and peace and a clean road of emotional healing to walk in this terrain is difficult at best. Learning to find the internal relief and strength to be willing to hold on to that road and not slip back into the old "familiar" habits of self abuse takes time and patience. But it is possible.

The reward for the work is an internal well being and sense of peace that has sustaining power in the face of all difficulties. And, ultimately, a life that begins to relect that internal wholeness and self acceptance in as many joyous and fulfilling ways as can be imagined.

Higher Level Multi Tasking

Returning again from Boston and recognizing that the unfolding of this last act has moved in ways so perfectly orchestrated that a higher order is emerging.

By using the powerful tool of intention, taking time set apart to become still and focus on the undertaking before me I create a new possibility, or multiple new probabilities. The power of focus is that it allows the shifting of outcome when it is applied without conditions.

It takes time to learn. To feel your way along to the place where you can simply shift your expectation into a place of happy expectancy. It is not defined by the actions which will occur but by the feelings which will accompany those actions.

When I first tested this years ago in Hawaii, while it certainly worked, I seemed (now looking back on it) unable to go beyond "solving the current problem" into new levels of living my creation. While I could apply it to specific small but critical to me needs, I was not confident yet to take on whole areas of my life with this tool.

Perhaps it simply didn't occur to me that I could do so. Whatever the case, this past journey week in Boston was certainly evidence that a more highly refined level of order has been established.

By simply applying what is in essence a similar technique to battle release work, the situation is infused with new potentiality.

Intention is about commitment and allowing. It is about releasing the desire and the hope into the potentiality of unconditional love without reservation. If you cannot trust it, it cannot trust you and you will not achieve your highest vision. When we fail to uphold our own visions, they collapse by the weight of outside influence and lack of attention. It is only by APPLYING our focus that we manage to create our new reality.

I simply set a date with myself before I head out, preferably the day of departure, and take the hour or hour and a half to envision the trip, to see all the things that will happen as happening without trying to know how or where or why and without worrying about any of it. I become still and centered and connect my energetic body with the receiving/sending flow of that source energy and I simply fill the whole vision with that energy. I don't care what it does or how or with whom. All I know is that it is doing what it does: bring perfect love and upliftment into everything it encounters. Highest and best for each and all.

It is a place of pure trust. Which is why, all those years ago in Hawaii, I could manifest registration tags for my car, but not the larger dream of a life where car registration tags simply were not an issue.

Pure trust takes time to develop. It starts with slowly flexing the trusting muscle in small ways. Stretching expectancy a little bit beyond what you know.

Here is a funny story about expectancy. I had a chance to speak with my brother after this trip was done. I was relating the last morning's events to him. As I got to the part where I met the neighbor and got a lift, he jumped ahead of me and guessed "thee stepped outside and the door locked and thee had no keys."

I laughed so hard! "No!" I replied. "The neighbor came out his door and offered to take me and all this stuff wherever we needed to go!"

My brother is consistently losing things. He is forever chasing after cell phones, glasses. His expectation is for keys to be locked inside the building!

I have practiced setting my expectation, off and on, from small things to large, for well over 20 years now. Clearly, I have enjoyed a good deal of happy circumstance as a part of my experience. Up until now, however, I have never actually applied the focus and release work so deliberately and on such large events.

I come to see through my own experience that I could in fact achieve this way of living with all areas of my life. But I'm not in a hurry.

Sometimes it's worked exactly as I've hoped and often much more perfectly than I could have imagined. It only "doesn't work" when my true expectation is not able to be shifted to that highest and best for each and all place.

In fact, what this shows is that the rule is consistent. You cannot outsmart it. You get what you expect. Not what you wish you expected, or what you want to expect, but what you truly expect.

By relaxing the grip on the outcome and allowing the feelings of trust that the infinite intelligence that is life has much vaster resources than any of us to fulfill all our visions and desires, it is possible to achieve the vibrational signal of peace with any desire. In that peace is the possibility of its manifestation. Without that peace, the manifestation is elusive and you feel angst, or frustration or irritability around that desire or vision.



okay now back to the trip to Boston!


I sat for over an hour in the sunshine on the back hill that afternoon. I soaked up the green and the warmth and did my energy work. When I was done, I had no idea of what would happen, or how it would all come together, but I felt relaxed and at ease with the upcoming trip.

Inspiration was everywhere on this journey. Our departure was smooth and the flight was shorter than expected. We arrived in Boston at 4:30 am Wednesday morning.

By 6 we had taken the train and walked up from Green Street station to the condo and I sent Tom and Dan out for breakfast while I took an hour with my eyes closed.

By 7:30 we were headed over to find out what was up with the move, stopping along the walk to pick up ginger ale for mom.

The first thing we discover is that the planned new apartment is not going to happen. We have a back up possibility, and so we get the directions to go see it and by 9:30 we are touring a building at the top of a hill overlooking the parks and city below. There are two nice units, and we are discussing possibilities of a fast (within five days) move into either of them.

Next it's time to get over to mom and bring her up to have lunch and see the place herself, so we know if it's a fit. By noon, we've managed that and she is lunching with us and the manager of the new building. We sit in the sun, by a window looking out on the large central garden area of the property.

Incredibly, by the end of this first day, the apartment would be chosen, and we would be preparing to make the move.

We had accomplished the most important first step on the first day, and on no sleep and we fell into bed and slept hard by early that first evening.

We had already arranged a deposit, found the funds necessary to make it, arranged to have all that handled the next morning. Once we'd accomplished that on Thursday morning, we reserved a moving truck and began sorting and packing boxes.

Dan and Tom set off on foot to get the truck while I packed. Then we met for a visit with mom, delivering more little presents... Candied ginger (her favorite) with a twist: covered in dark chocolate. It was a hit!

By Friday morning it was getting seriously colder and windy. Where we'd had rain the first night today it was well below freezing and gusting winds were making it even colder. We moved fast and froze anyway. Couch, bureau, desk, chairs, tables and bookcases, paintings and boxes. We had the first load ready to go before 9:30 and had only the rocker and a lot of boxes still to come back for.

As we made our way through the actions each little part was in place. Nothing went wrong. In some way we had begun to function more efficiently. Delegating and deciding what had to be done next in each moment simply flowed along. One piece after another came into place: the new phone line, the furniture fitting in the new place just right, the morning light in the windows...

By the end of this day we would have the truck returned, traveled across Boston by foot and train and truck several times, delivered all the items large enough to require a truck to move, gotten both boys to the airport one bound for home the other heading on to Virginia and managed to be able to spend two hours just visiting and talking with mom.

It was quite a feat. We also accomplished the most influential and important part of the task: we had fun doing it.

A few of the happy circumstances of the journey:

1. The newly discovered "fall back" potential turned out to be a better place than the original choice we'd already made weeks ago. It has a median age of 64 rather than closer to 80. It has an accessible outdoor garden space within the property. It has internet access and private phone, cable TV, decent food, a beautiful dining room...

2. The new apartment is twice the size of the original one and costs 500 dollars less. It is high up and has a wonderful view and plenty of sunny morning light.

3. It did not snow or rain the day we had to actually do the heavy moving, taking that steep hill to the top! It was cold and windy but it was clear.

4. The new apartment is in an assisted living facility rather than simply a "retirement community" which means there is a lot more staff and more care and help available.

5. We managed to remember everything: from the little French press coffee pot to the fresh supply of coarse ground coffee to fill it. Favorite books, lotions and flashlights and we found all those things she was asking for. Even the one purple glove whose mate was at her friend Sheila's house.

6. My last trip out from the old place I made alone on Monday morning. I had another six bags of linens, groceries, favorite lamp and cushions and was going to call a cab after I put all this huge pile of things out on the landing to go downstairs.

As I went through the door with a note for the neighbor and two library books I was asking him to return for mom as I would not have time to do it, his front door opened and after he took the books and the note, he asked if he could give me a lift somewhere with all these things. He was already carrying them out to his car before I could answer.

7. Mom was only very worried and upset in the early days of our visit. By mid way through it she was beginning to show signs of feeling more secure about the whole move. By the time it was accomplished she was actually grateful, seemed to be feeling much better and was truly feeling good about her new home.

8. My brother and mom got along and found their way after at first neither of them wishing even to see the other even if he did come up to help, which he did over the weekend.

9. Since he drove up we now had a car to finish all the small stuff, and got it all done by Sunday night, including the computer from her room at the nursing recovery center, and all set up too.

10. We actually accomplished the entire move from start to finish within the six day time frame I had set for my trip and she was moved and in her new home before I left town to come home.

Pretty good alright.