No time to meditate?

Are you one of those people who says, “I used to meditate” or “I meditate sometimes” but “I can’t keep it up because I don’t have time”? Meditation comes in many forms — and it may be something you do without noticing.

Last week I had lunch with a friend, Tim, who, with only a little prompting, began to rhapsodize about fly fishing. You know, standing hip-deep in a stream, casting and waiting and reeling them in, only to let them go, because after all, this is about the experience, not about eating the fish. It had always seemed kind of silly to me, but not when Tim got done telling me about it. He told me about the wonders of being still, connected to all of nature, hearing the rush of water over rapids and the breeze ruffling the trees, feeling the sun on his face, seeing the glint of sunlight on tree leaves, the beauty of myriad colors in a freshly caught rainbow trout, the smell of the stream and the fish. He described the sensitivity he felt in his hands because of the lightweight equipment, and the connection to, no, the dance with the fish as he reeled it in. He’s been doing it for over 20 years, and it’s always a thrill.

That reminded me of figure skating in my childhood. It was different back then, because people actually skated figures — the famed figure eights, as well as three lobed figures, called serpentines, and circles within circles, in many variations — forwards, backwards, turning once or twice in the middle of each circle, and on and on. This required intense concentration on very slow, fluid movements, because if you lost your concentration, even for a moment, a part of your body would bobble; you could see the result of that on the ice as an imperfection from the ideal. (Today, the emphasis is on freeskating, the jumps and spins skated to music, because that is what sells on TV, and sadly, most of the “figure” skating is lost). You skated the same figures over and over and over again, for years sometimes, till you got them right in front of a mostly impartial audience.

And then, today, I found this article in the NY Times, “Your Brain on Baseball”, included below (emphasis mine). David Brooks talks about training the unconscious mind to do things well through repetition and about how some things are done better without thinking about them.

Does this all sound like meditation to you? It sure does to me. In all these cases, your focus solely on what you’re doing chases out random, or even pointed, conscious thoughts, and allows for a wider, occasionally mystical, experience. Maybe you can get that fly fishing, or doing baseball drills, or shooting basketball freethrows. or golfing, or cycling, or running. I do it when I walk, either focusing completely on my surroundings, or on an affirmation (a kind of mantra) as I walk. I have a friend who goes there just by vacuuming — she gets so absorbed in the motion and the look of the carpet!

So if you “don’t have time to meditate”, maybe you can meditate just by focusing on your senses and performance in sports or even mundane tasks. How can you incorporate meditation into every day life?



Your Brain on Baseball


By DAVID BROOKS
It’s spring training fielding practice, and Jeff Kent, the Dodgers second baseman, is covering first. A coach rolls the ball out toward the mound. The pitcher scrambles to pick up the ball. The catcher yells out which base he should throw to. Kent runs over and catches the ball at first.

Jeff Kent is 39 years old and has been playing professionally for 17 years. He’s probably been doing this same drill since he was 10 years old, because the practice drills the Little Leaguers do are basically the same drills the major leaguers do. Why is Jeff Kent, after all these years, still learning to cover first?

Because the institution of baseball understands how to make the most of the human brain.

One of the core messages of brain research is that most mental activity happens in the automatic or unconscious region of the brain. The unconscious mind is not a swamp of repressed memories and childhood traumas, the way Freud imagined. It’s a set of mental activities that the brain has relegated beyond awareness for efficiency’s sake, so the conscious mind can focus on other things. In his book, “Strangers to Ourselves,” Timothy Wilson of the University of Virginia notes that the brain can absorb about 11 million pieces of information a second, of which it can process about 40 consciously. The unconscious brain handles the rest.

The automatic mind generally takes care of things like muscle control. But it also does more ethereal things. It recognizes patterns and construes situations, searching for danger, opportunities or the unexpected. It also shoves certain memories, thoughts, anxieties and emotions up into consciousness.

Baseball is one of those activities that are performed mostly by the automatic mind. Professional baseball players have phenomenal automatic brains.

As Jeff Hawkins points out in his book “On Intelligence,” it is nearly impossible to design a computer with a robotic arm that can catch a ball. The calculations the computer has to make are too complicated to accomplish in time. Baseball players not only can do that with ease, they can hit a split-finger fastball besides.

Over the decades, the institution of baseball has figured out how to instruct the unconscious mind, to make it better at what it does. As we know the automatic brain only by the behavior it produces, so we can instruct it only by forcing it to repeat certain actions. Jeff Kent is practicing covering first after all these years because the patterns of the automatic brain have to be constantly and repetitively reinforced.

But baseball has accomplished another, more important feat. It has developed a series of habits and standards of behavior to keep the conscious mind from interfering with the automatic mind.

Baseball is one of those activities in which the harder you try, the worse you do. The more a pitcher aims the ball, the wilder he becomes. The more a batter tenses, the slower and more tentative his muscles become.

Over the generations, baseball people have developed an infinity of tics and habits to distract and sedate the conscious mind. Managers encourage a preternaturally calm way of being — especially after failure. In the game I happened to see here on Tuesday, Detroit Tigers pitcher Nate Robertson threw poorly, but strutted off the mound as if he’d just slain Achilles. Second baseman Kevin Hooper waved pathetically at a third struck fastball, but walked back to the dugout wearing an expression of utter nonchalance.

This sort of body language helps players remain steady amid humiliation, so they’ll do better next time.

Believe me, the people involved in the sport have no theory of the human mind, but under the pressure of competition, they’ve come up with a set of practices that embody a few key truths.

First, habits and etiquette shape the brain. Or as Timothy Wilson puts it, “One of the most enduring lessons of social psychology is that behavior change often precedes changes in attitudes and feelings.”

And second, there is a certain kind of practical wisdom that is not taught but is imparted through experience. It consists of a sensitivity to the contours of how a situation may evolve, which cannot be put into words.

Baseball players are like storm-tossed sailors falling and rising with the slumps and hot streaks that emanate from inaccessible parts of themselves. The rest of us rationalists use statistics to try to understand the patterns of what they do.

The Dirty Little Secret of "The Secret"

Are you practicing the Law of Attraction, and not having the best of results?

Are there barriers you just can’t seem to break through? Things you can’t get yourself to do, or things that just never seem to turn out right? Maybe you always attract the wrong guy – or the wrong woman. Or maybe your talents and hard work are never recognized, no matter where you work. Or you always get a horror of a boss. Or money regularly slips through your fingers. Or maybe you just can’t get yourself do what you need to do to succeed.

The reason the Law of Attraction seems not to work for you is that there’s a dirty little secret to The Secret.

Here’s what no one is telling you:

You create your reality through your beliefs. The problem with that is, most of our beliefs are unconscious! The Law of Attraction is working -- you are attracting what you want at a very deep, that is, unconscious, level. And maybe you don’t like what you are attracting. How do you change something you’re not even aware of?

And no two people’s beliefs are alike, so no mass market product – tape, CD, DVD, mass training – will ever find YOUR beliefs!

But I can help you find and shift your unconscious beliefs! In 20 years of counseling people, using my clairvoyance as well as hypnotherapy and neurolinguistic techniques, I’ve come up with a unique process that not only identifies the unconscious beliefs blocking what you consciously want, it changes them -- permanently – often in under an hour. Then you will automatically and easily take the right action -- and attract what you want! Call me now at 888-4-hollis (888-446-5547) or check out my website, www.hollispolk.com to learn more.

Maybe you’re like Lacey -- just about to succeed as an actor -- making contacts in the industry, people who can get her seen by the right casting directors, and get her parts. (She’s been training for 10 years, and has rave reviews from the few jobs she’s had.) All she has to do is send out her resume to her new contacts – and she can’t get herself to do it! What’s going on? She makes up excuse after excuse – it’s too hard to get it off the old floppy disk (she could just type it again), she has to end some legal issues, she has to clean the kitchen. What’s really going on?

What’s really going on for Lacey, as I discovered in under 10 minutes, is that she equates success with being a horrible person – an alcoholic and an abuser of other people, because her successful father was not only a workaholic, but also an alcoholic who abused her and her mother. So unconsciously, success is a massive double bind. She can either struggle and be a good person, or succeed professionally and be a monster! Is she going to succeed? Not without changing her unconscious programming!

The good news is, she can change that programming. And so can you!

Over 20 years of working with clients, I have seen so many people facing obstacles that could be overcome easily with the right tools, that I incorporated additional skills into my original clairvoyant practice. I mastered these skills in my “rational” education (a Harvard MBA and an engineering Bachelor’s degree from Princeton, where I specialized in decision science), 20+ years of business experience, and specialized training, including hypnotherapy and neuro-linguistics. My practice now specializes in coaching based on psychic information.

It will work for you!

It's convenient: We do sessions by phone, so you're in the safety and comfort of your own home (or office, or even car!), without the hassle, time, or expense of driving somewhere.

It's cost effective: I charge by the minute, so you only pay for the time you actually use.

Satisfaction is guaranteed: If you don’t feel like you got something useful out of the session, it’s free!

Call me now at 888-4-holllis (888-446-5547) or check out my website at www.hollispolk.com to learn more!

And what did YOU do this week?

When I was a kid, every night at dinner, my Dad used to ask each of us, “What did you accomplish today?” I guess I had an answer. Must have, because the programming is so deep that I don’t even remember it. And no trauma there, either. My Mom tells me that one summer day, I answered my Dad, “I had FUN!” so defiantly that he stopped asking the question for a while.

The funny thing is, I can’t answer the question, “what did you accomplish?”, any more. Not for today, not for this week. And I don’t mean I sat on my butt and did nothing, either. I didn’t, though I was moving a bit slowly because I’m still recuperating from that nasty flu. I could write a list a mile long of stuff I did — but what does it really amount to? I mean, I did last week’s radio show, which I think made a difference for at least one person, and some client sessions that did, too. But that was what, a relatively few hours? In the course of a whole week? And all the other activity, the marketing, the sales calls, the emails, the cooking, the laundry, the paperwork, all that, what does it amount to? The truth is, most of it fades into one big blur. Does that happen to you, too? A few things stand out — a celebratory dinner with a friend, who just landed a terrific new job, an amazing client session or two, seeing my initial designs up on the web on CafePress for the first time (check them out at www.cafepress.com/flowersnquilts).

Here’s an even funnier thing — someone advised me to write down 5 things I’d accomplished each day, and said, if you can’t find five, you’re not looking low enough. Some days, I had to look pretty darn low, and that didn’t make me feel any better.

So part of me wants to be frustrated. Another week, and despite lots of effort, I seem no closer to my goals. It seems like nothing’s happening.

But another, wiser part of me knows that this is life on the plateau, one of those long stretches of life where you are just working steadily for what you want. Nothing big happens. Nothing bad happens. That part of me knows that life isn’t all highs, or lows (which I’m grateful for avoiding for another week). I do believe that what you put out comes back to you, so I have to believe all this effort will pay off somewhere, someday, somehow.

In Mastery, George Leonard says (and I’m paraphrasing here) you have to learn to love the plateau, because that’s what most of life is, and because those long stretches on the plateau are necessary preparation for the big breakthroughs.

Maybe this isn’t the most direct path to my goals, but maybe it’s the easiest. I did say I wanted ease and flow! And you have to be very careful what you ask for, because you will get it — the Law of Unintended Consequences is a corollary to the Law of Attraction. Maybe my path on the plateau is longer because of that.

I am learning, somewhat grudgingly, to love the plateau, and to love not only what I choose to create, but how I choose to create it.

I hope you are, too!

How do you know you're doing the right thing?

If you’ve watched or read “The Secret”, you know that part of the secret to creating what you want is taking action. But how do you know if that action is taking you down the right road, or on a detour, or worse, down a dead end?

I’m really asking this seriously. I have a few ideas, which I’ll list below, but I really want to hear from you how you know you’re doing the right thing. Please post your ideas here on my blog.

Here are a few ways I know I’m on the right track (jn no particular order):

people’s eyes light up when they see me, or something I’ve done
someone says, “I never thought of it that way”
I feel a kind of glow around my heart
people laugh — or they cry — in recognition of truth
my guides tell me I did a good thing
someone says, “thank you”, in a tone that conveys a huge sense of relief

Please take a moment and post how you know you did the right thing as a comment to this blog.

The upside of flu

Okay, I pushed it too much, including not being able to protect myself adequately from the energy of 1500 people releasing negativity (long story), and ended up with the worst bug I’ve had since I came down with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome in my twenties. I spent an entire week in bed, for most of it unable to do more than lie there. No reading, no computer graphics, which I can usually do even when I can’t read, no eating — I pretty much just lay there, in varying degrees of pain. I watched way too much TV, but then, it was the only thing I could do to distract myself from the body aches, which could be really uncomfortable. So I am grateful to the television, and all the people who put on all those shows.

After a day or two, it began to rain, so I opened the bedroom window wide to let in the sound of the rain, and maybe some healing negative ions which would come off the moving water. And I learned a few things:

1. Do less, be more - We live, I mean, I live, but I think I’m pretty normal in this way, a very, very frenetic lifestyle here in the US. Lying there for a week, I could see how much of what I do is really... superfluous. It’s probably more important for me to lie there a bit every day, enjoying the quiet and the trees outside my window than it is to read one more news item. And what did I miss in a week? Not all that much. I’m sure no one noticed that I never sent an email last Thursday. My husband fended for himself just fine in the kitchen. My body seemed to enjoy not having to digest food. The list of what I didn’t do is endless, and it really didn’t matter.

2. Appreciate the health you have – if it’s mostly good, we tend to ignore it. What you focus on, expands, so be grateful for it every day. I know I am, especially now.

3. Nature is healing – As I lay there in front of a large, open window (no, it wasn’t too cold, it’s always warmish when it rains), I had the sense that this enormous cedar behind the house was trying to heal me. I could almost feel it reaching in through the window, sweeping its branches across me energetically. Okay, maybe it was the delusion of a fever, but what if it wasn’t? What if there is more to our earth relationships than meets the everyday eye?

3. It’s blessed to receive – I know I’m a lot better at giving than receiving; maybe you are, too, since we’re all taught that “”it’s more blessed to give than to receive”. But really, if every gift needs a giver and a recipient, how can that be? A time of illness is a great time to practice receiving with grace. When we’re sick, we need help, whether it’s actual medical attention, energy healing, or something very prosaic, like someone to pick up the kids. Our only choice is whether or not to accept with grace. I choose grace.

They say that every cloud has a silver lining. For me, being reminded of these things, was that silver lining, the upside of flu.

Hearts and Flowers for Valentine's Day

Joys of Age

As I was thinking back over the last year, what was positive or fun, what I learned from, what succeeded, what failed, what the jury is still out on, what seems to want to expand in the coming year, who I enjoyed being with and feel honored to have in my life, I realized that there is a true joy in coming of age.

You can come of age at any age, though it’s often in response to some life changing event: having a baby, running your own business, death of someone you love, the serious dis-ease of you or someone you love, the end of an important relationship, financial hardship.

It’s a never ending process, and we can choose to grow and learn through awareness and joy rather than pain.

That said, here are a few joys of age:

You know who you are.
- You know what your strengths are (speaking, I hope, writing).
- You know what you're bad at (proofreading, typing) -- and have other people or systems to do that for you. -
- You know what you love to do (readings), what you hate to do (clean bathrooms), and what you will no longer tolerate (washing dishes).
- You don’t define yourself by that great shirt, or the cool watch or cool car or even right neighborhood. You define yourself by the content of your character, the size of your heart, you compassion.

You are good at things you enjoy.
- If you like to eat, maybe by now you’re a good cook. And if, because you like to eat, you discovered you like to cook, you’re definitely a good cook.
- If you like to run, you’ve learned where the edge is, between not pushing hard enough, so it’s not really a workout, and pushing too hard so you hurt yourself. You know the edge is a little different every day. And you stay on that edge.

You know who other people are.
- You know who you can count on, and who you can’t.
- You know that when someone is always late, they’re always late, no matter how much they say they’re going to be on time next time, and that it’s about her/him, not you.
- You know that Mom gets anxious when anyone else drives — it’s her control issue, not your driving.
- You know that Jane runs off at the mouth — she needs to be heard really badly, and you can either be around her or not, but you can’t shut her up.
- You know that when two people get on each other’s nerves — it’s them, not you, and you don’t have to be in the middle of it.

You know who your friends are -- and you know you have them around you.
- You know who shows up to help you move and who is conveniently busy.
- You know who to call when you are heart-broken at 2AM.
- You know who will bring you groceries when you’re sick, and who just can’t be around sick people.
- You know that these are 3 separate people, and you don’t expect the one who helps you move to be the one you can call at 2AM.

You can see patterns.
- You know that when Joe calls his Dad, Joe’s going to be in a bad mood for a few hours.
- Or you’ve learned that your husband is most cooperative when he needs sex, so that’s when you ask for something big (this is truly what a very smart woman I met told me about how her marriage worked).
- You know that when George Bush says he’s not doing something, like planning to attack Iraq, or Iran, or spying on the American people, he really means the opposite.
- You know that anything the government is hiding, it isn’t hiding for your good.

You are doing something about the things you can change.
- If you don’t like where you’re living, you figure out how to make it a place you like -- or how to move.
- If you don’t like your financial situation, you figure out what field you might like that could make you more money. Or how to save, or how to invest.
- If you don’t like how your body looks, you join a gym and go. And you eat less and stick to it. And if that doesn’t work, you eventually figure out what in your body isn’t working right, and do something to get it to work right.

You are gracious in accepting what you can't change.
- You can’t change the weather, you just deal with it the best you can.
- You can’t change other people, you either deal with them the best you can, or you don’t deal with them.
- You can’t change the past, but you can change your memories of it, and how you deal with it — that’s the grace part.

You are smart enough to tell which is which.
- A friend of mine, a single woman, adopted a 3 year old Russian orphan a few years back. When the girl got to be school age, she began to have projects about her family, like drawing a family tree. Since she was able to remember the orphanage, it was clear she had no idea about her family tree. Of course, they used my friend’s family, but it never felt right. When it came to stuff about the family pet, though, they went and got a cat. As my friend said at the time, “this one I can do something about”.
- And if this is beginning to sound like the Serenity Prayer, perhaps this is why those of us who are “awake” grow more peaceful with age.

You have let go of a lot of the baggage that led to stupid choices.
- You’ve learned that some of what you learned at your parents’ possibly dysfunctional knees may or may not have worked for them, but it definitely doesn’t work for you, and you’ve learned to act or be different.
- You’ve learned that you don’t need your peers’ approval, or your parents’ approval, for your life to work.
- You’ve learned that your need for security is often a trap, and that giving up what seems like security, in service of something you truly want is actually the smartest, safest choice in the long run.

You have learned from all the bad choices.
- Choices always have consequences, and you have learned from the consequences of your actions. So you’re making different choices now.

You have your own spirituality.
- You’ve read enough, and talked enough, and prayed or meditated enough to know what you believe, and what rings true for you in other people’s writings or speaking.
- You’ve developed your own relationship with (pick your word here) God, a higher power, Goddess, All that Is, the Universe, your guides or angels, your higher wisdom. And you rely on that relationship to get you through hard times. And if you’re really together, you remember to say “thank you” in good times.

Please write me with any ideas you have for additions to this list — I’d love to hear them!

Affirmations 101

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about how daydreaming was good for you. If you did some daydreaming, you now are very aware of what it is you wish to create. Here is one of my favorite tools to use that awareness to actually make it happen!

The tool is an affirmation. An affirmation is basically a self-hypnotic suggestion, which is a suggestion to your unconscious mind. The unconscious mind is very literal. To see what I mean by that, right now, don’t think of a purple elephant.

What happened? If you are like most people, you immediately thought of a purple elephant. The unconscious mind doesn’t hear the word “not”, and so it immediately makes a picture of a purple elephant. That means a few things about how to structure an affirmation:

State it in the positive — Again, the unconscious mind does not hear “not”. And more subtly, it focuses where you focus it. So if you focus on getting away from a bad situation, you will perpetuate the bad situation, because you are reminding yourself of the bad situation. It’s important to focus on what you wish to create instead.
State it in the present tense — If you tell yourself something will happen, it will forever remain in the future. If you tell yourself it is becoming true, it is.
State it in a way that is believable to you — First, you must believe the desired state is possible, and that it is possible for you. Then, it must be believable to you as a statement. If you tell yourself that you are thin when you are 100 pounds overweight, your unconscious mind won’t believe you and will dismiss the suggestion. However, if you tell yourself that you are daily approaching your natural, slim weight, your unconscious mind can’t automatically reject that, so it may believe that and will be attracted to doing whatever is needed for it to happen.
State it in a way that is qualitative, not quantitative — the unconscious mind doesn’t understand numbers over two, or possibly three. Quick — think of a stick. Now think of two sticks. Now think of three sticks. Now think of four sticks. Getting a little fuzzy? Now think of 100,000 sticks. You can use numbers in goals, but not in affirmations.
The affirmation must be controlled by you. You have no more control over another person, and how they treat you, than you do over the weather. You do, however, have control over how you react, and over how proactive you are in any situation.

Affirmations are best used at times when you are naturally going into a light hypnotic trance. Contrary to popular belief, all people go in and out of these light trances all the time. If you’ve ever driven for a while and realized you don’t remember the last few miles or few minutes (or more!), you were in a trance state. When you do things like washing dishes or brushing your teeth or running a few miles on “automatic pilot”, you are in a trance state. You can use these states to your advantage by doing affirmations when you’re in them. Plan to do this in advance of the state and see how easily the affirmations manifest.

As you are doing your affirmations, all your internal objections to them will pop up to be dealt with. Those objections must be handled in ways that are satisfying to your unconscious mind. There are many, many ways to handle them, and I may suggest some in future articles.

Daydreaming is good for you!

As the year begins, this week is a really good time to think about what you want for the coming year. And the place to start that is with daydreaming — you only daydream about what you want, right? And knowing what you want is the first step in getting it.

Know that this daydreaming is possibly the best use of your time this week. Even if you’re hanging out with your family and friends, save a little time for you.

Here are a few questions to get you started:

What do I want for my work?
relationships?
home/surroundings (I include workplace and cars here)?
health/personal growth/spirituality?
finances?
fun/rest/re-creation?

If I could create anything (and you can!), what would that be? This is not a time for practicality or “being realistic” or limits. Go wild!

In the best of all possible worlds, how might it happen? You are not envisioning this to limit the universe but to see how easily it might come about.

Make each of these things as real as possible for yourself — see it, hear it, touch it, smell it and/or taste it, either in your mind or in reality.

So if you want a new car, and you know what you want, go see one! Touch it, get inside it if possible, and enjoy the feeling of that — breathe deeply and notice the scent. If you don’t have time for that, then do this in your mind. If you don’t know what you want, maybe go look at cars. If you don’t yet have time for that, at least get the feeling you’ll have inside the car, see as much as you can in your mind, maybe write down criteria for that ideal car.

Have fun with this — your enjoyment of the creation process actually helps you create!

If you have a chance, it’s good to write down as much as you can of what you daydream. Treasure maps (collages of pictures of what you want) are fun, and work well for lots of people.

And rather than do the usual New Year’s resolutions, which don’t work anyway, next week, I suggest you write affirmations — I’ll send out some info on that then.

Patience, impatience and present(s)

‘Tis the season... For impatience! Children are impatient, eagerly anticipating Christmas morning. You might be impatient in those long check out lines, or the lines snaking through airports, or the getaway traffic jams. But what is impatience, and what can you do about it?

Merriam-Webster defines impatience as “the quality or state of being impatient”. Lots of help, huh? (I’m impatient with these self-referential definitions!) So how does it define impatient? Here’s how:

Impatient:
1 a : not patient : restless or short of temper especially under irritation, delay, or opposition
b : Intolerant 1
2 : prompted or marked by impatience
3 : eagerly desirous : Anxious

But what I see as the true nature of impatience is preferring to be in the (imagined) future, rather than in the present. So the antidote for impatience is internal peace and a willingness to stay in and enjoy the present.

How do you stay peaceful, stay in the present, and enjoy it?

Here are a few ideas:

“Be here now” in Ram Dass’ words. Just neutrally observe the situation.
Look around you and notice what is good about the situation. Perhaps you can enjoy the department store displays while you’re in that checkout line, or chatting with people in the airport lines, or noticing bumper stickers you appreciate.
Remember a time and place you felt very peaceful, and call that to mind.
Set up a self-anchor for “peace” and use it when you are tempted to be impatient. You set up the self-anchor by doing a little preparation in advance:

First, pick a physical position that you will use for the self-anchor (I like hand positions, because you can do them any time, any where, without anyone else noticing).
Next, remember a time when you were very peaceful. Really get into it by stepping into that time and place, and when you feel it powerfully, put your hand in the position you’ve chosen. Hold that for a few seconds, and let it go.
Do this a few times.
Now test it by just doing the hand position and seeing if it creates the feeling. If it does, you’re done. If not, repeat the process of getting into the emotional state very powerfully and then doing the hand position. Eventually, the hand position will be so linked to the emotional state that you can call up the state at will by doing the hand position.

Distract yourself with a book or magazine or video or radio or ipod or journal. Distract the kids by singing Christmas carols or telling stories or doing crafts. No, it doesn’t really foster internal peace, but it does bring you into the present and get you out of any negative thought patterns or feelings associated with impatience.

Enjoy the season!

(image courtesy of its designer, Marcia Wood)

Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men -- Do you see "shopping" in there anywhere?

Christmas is theoretically a time of peace, generosity and goodwill to our fellow humans. The American way of Christmas, however, paradoxically creates Scrooges. We are programmed by retailers and the media to shop at the sound of the bell which signals the end of Thanksgiving dinner, and to continue doing so for about a month. (In fact, retailers know that after the weekend after Thanksgiving, not much holiday shopping happens till around Dec. 15.) But shopping and spending may actually create stress, stinginess, reduced cooperation and distance instead of peace on earth and goodwill to our fellow humans. Consider the following:

Money issues cause the most stress during the holiday season, according to a recent poll by the American Psychological Association (APA).

The survey of over 1000 people found that 61% of Americans listed lack of money as the top cause of holiday stress followed by the pressures of gift giving, lack of time, and credit card debt. Survey results also show that younger Americans are more worried about lack of money and gift giving compared to people over the age of 35.

One in five Americans are worried that holiday stress could affect their physical health and 36% say they either eat or drink alcohol to cope with holiday stress.

So holiday gift-giving creates holiday stress, especially through lack of money. Then there is this research:

Psychologists from several universities found that subconscious reminders of money prompted people to become more independent in their work, less likely to seek help from others, taking 70% longer to do so. They became reluctant to volunteer their time, twice as slow to offer help, and twice as cheap when asked to donate to a worthy cause.

Having money on the mind even caused the students who were their subjects to put more distance — literally — between themselves and others. Instructed to place two chairs together to meet another student, they put the chairs about 47 inches apart, compared with 31 inches for the students who had not been prompted subconsciously to think about money.

(For the whole story, see http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/21/health/psychology/21doug.html?ex=1164949200&en=15eaddded84ffaed&ei=5070)

So shopping makes us think of money, which makes us stingier, less likely to help others, more likely to put distance between ourselves and others. Doesn’t sound to me like it’s creating peace, generosity, harmony or goodwill. This year, consider nixing the shopping, and giving of yourself and your time instead. If it doesn’t give you joy to do it or give it, don’t!

Follow your heart?

Just a few nights ago, I listened to a friend bare her soul about how hard it is for her to follow her heart professionally. She knows, on a very deep level, that she has a major contribution to make to society, by reshaping how people think about spirituality. (This is not grandiosity on her part, because she’s done it before.) The problem is that in following her deepest truth about the world and herself, she would be stepping away from the majority of others, and offending many of her closest friends, who believe passionately what she used to believe. This causes her great pain, partly because she really does feel for them empathically, and partly because she’s afraid of being outcast, of losing her friends.

I’ve heard this story, this song, before, many times before. Perhaps it’s a woman who is afraid of what opening up psychically is going to do to her relationship. Or a man who worries how his personal changes will affect his job. The details change, the words change, but the song remains the same. In every case, the singer needs to remember a few things:

- If your “friends” cast you out because you have changed your beliefs, ignoring all that they supposedly love about you, and all the history you have, then they aren’t truly your friends, and they never were. That may be a hard thing to find out, but wouldn’t you rather find it out now than later? True friends stand by you while you change; they love you even if you’re making a mistake, and they love you if you teach then a better way, rather than being in their egos, offended by your change.

- If they cast you out because you have changed your beliefs, it is generally more about them than about you. Maybe they are heavily invested, at a personality level, in being right, or in being seen to be right. Do you really want to spend more time with someone who is more interested in being right, or being respected, than in learning the truth?

- There are other people out there who will accept the “new” you. That’s the point of change — you are changing others by changing yourself. This is authentic leadership, from the inside out.

- How will you feel if you sacrifice your highest knowing, your true path, your calling in life, for the feelings of other people? It may feel safe and comfortable now, but in the long run, you will know that you cheated yourself and the world. Letting go of your own truth to satisfy others never serves you, and because we are all one, it never serves anyone else, either.

So for my friend, as well as everyone else, the question remains — what’s more important, your truth or your short term comfort?

Vote for change... your own

Have you voted yet (if you live in a state that allows that)? Are you planning on it? If so, have you kept up with the races, and read any propositions on the ballot? Have you made your choices yet (if you haven’t already voted)? Do you know how you’re getting to the polls? What will you do if you have to wait in a long line to vote? What will you do if your vote gets recorded wrong? Are you bringing a camera?

(Quick aside for non-Californians: We in CA are blessed by a statewide proposition system that puts many items directly to the voters, and a state government which prints and mails to every registered voter a hefty pamphlet with each candidate’s statement, and a very complete and balanced discussion of each proposition, including their text. Even better than that, in my county we are allowed to be “permanent absentee voters” (and over 30% of us are), so that we can vote in the comfort of our own homes, surrounded by all the information we could possibly want, for several weeks before election day, and then mail in the ballot, or deliver it to a polling place.)

I suspect that your attitude toward voting is related to how you make choices in other areas of your life. If you are someone who thinks carefully about each option, and then picks one, I’ll bet you’ve followed all the races, maybe even voted already. If you normally just “go with your gut”, you’ve probably paid some attention to the upcoming elections, but haven’t really planned how to vote, either electorally or logistically. If you tend to say, “If it’s mean to be, it’s meant to be...”, then you’re probably registered, but haven’t given the election a lot of thought. If you typically put off making a decision, and put it off and keep putting it off, until there’s no more decision to make, you probably aren’t even registered yet, and if you are, you probably don’t vote regularly.

You can change yourself from the inside out (using NLP, hypnotherapy and countless other techniques) or from the outside in (behavior modification, etc.). Change from the inside out works by changing you at a very deep level, usually beliefs or identity, after which you automatically begin to act differently. Change from the outside in works by changing your actions first, so that you have some new neural paths, and so you see yourself differently, and then change your beliefs and/or identity.

Here’s a thought. Use the election to change the way you make decisions, from the outside in. If you typically don’t vote, or don’t think much about it, pay attention to this election, and GO VOTE! You’ll thank yourself later, on a lot of levels. And remember, if you don’t vote, you don’t get to complain for the next two years.

What's YOUR story?

We all tell ourselves stories of our lives, all the time, and we live out those stories. When I think back over all the people I've talked to over the years, each one of them has a story. One woman had an abusive mom, and struggles daily to avoid becoming an abuser. Another woman was molested as a child, and has never had a truly satisfying relationship with a man. The story generally comes down to this:

* Somebody done me wrong
* I'm bad/defective/incapable/hopeless
* I feel afraid/angry/sad (and it's stopping me?)
* I want to feel better
* I don't know what to do

The characters in the story generally are:

* Victim
* Victimizer/villain
* Rescuer/hero

And often the speaker sees him- or herself as the victim, that is, (s)he is telling the story from the victim’s point of view.

Are you telling your story from the victim’s point of view? What if you rewrote your story? What if you were the hero instead of the victim? (Because no one wants to see him or herself as the villain in his or her own story.)

A hero isn't someone whose life is perfect. Think of Raiders of the Lost Ark... Indiana Jones just got out ALIVE after he stole the bag of jewels from its cave hiding place, with that enormous boulder crashing towards him. It wasn’t easy; it wasn’t fun (for him). And there wasn’t any glory, at least not at that point. The hero is someone who, like Indy, gets through the tough stuff -- that’s all — gets through it, gets out alive. What if all those "someone done me wrong" items weren't the actions of villains, but obstacles on your hero's journey?

So instead your story would be

* I faced an obstacle -- because my soul set up a challenge/learning situation
* I am capable/whole/learning
* I feel how I feel -- and am carrying on despite that
* I choose to feel better, and am learning the tools for that
* Somewhere inside me, I do/did know what to do -- because I'm still here

Now the former abused child lets go of her identity as a victim, and instead sees that perhaps she came into this incarnation wanting to learn compassion. She see that she is learning this, however slowly, that she often feels angry and hurt, but that she is working every day to treat people kindly. She is learning to meditate and let go of her justified anger at what happened in her childhood. And that the simple fact that she continues to do this every day is her hero’s journey, that she does know what to do, maybe not in every instance, but in more and more situations every day. And as she lives out that more empowering story, every day she has more choices.

What happens when you rewrite your story?

Not so foggy...

I’m honestly not feeling very profound this week, so I thought I’d just share an insight, or perhaps it’s more of a reminder of something we all know, from an experience I had this weekend.

First, a little background: I live in the Bay Area, which is famous for its microclimates. That is, the weather can be very different just a few miles away than it is where you are. Thus the concept of the “sunny neighborhood”, as opposed to a cloudy or foggy or windy one, which completely blew my mind when I first moved here. The fog, when it’s in, tends to leave by noon and come in again in the late afternoon. But this is early October, when fog is rare, and the weather tends to be more alike around the Bay Area than not, except for the temperature which can vary depending on how close you are to water.

Sunday was a magnificent day in our neighborhood — cloudless blue sky, 70ish weather, no wind (and wind is generally a precursor of fog/cold weather, as well as an indicator that it’s foggy to the north and/or west). It was much too nice to stay inside, so I worked for a while in the yard, and then by mid afternoon just wanted to be out in nature. One of the closest big swaths of nature, perhaps 5 miles north, on the other side of a north-south ridge between my home and the beach, is San Francisco’s 7 mile long Ocean Beach, which makes for great hiking. I chose to go there. As I headed north along the ridge, it got gloomier and gloomier, and windier and windier, as the fog moved in for the evening. It was not looking like a lot of fun. So I turned around.

Not one to give up easily, I thought that perhaps the beach in Pacifica, due west from my home, would be better. As I headed back south along the ridge, I could see that the marine fog layer seemed to extend to the beach, but it was a little hard to tell because the view was obstructed by natural and man-made structures. So I thought I’d go down the winding road from the ridge to the beach, just to see better. As I got lower and lower, it became more apparent that the fog did indeed extend to the beach, but by now I was so far down the winding road that I’d have to go to the end to turn around. And oddly, there was no wind. By now I’d been in the car so long that I needed to stretch my legs, and it didn’t seem too cold, so I got out and walked along the mile long curve of Linda Mar beach. As I reached the cliffs at the far end from where I’d parked, I realized that the fog had lifted and it was a beautiful, warm, sunny day! (And remember, fog normally comes IN in the afternoon!)

The lesson is this: be clear about what you want ( a pleasant hike), not attached to how it shows up (Ocean Beach vs. Linda Mar beach), keep plugging away toward it, and be willing to change course if it looks like what you want isn’t exactly in the direction you expected. The universe may just line up to give you what you want.

Waaay cool thing happened...

Last night, well, really early this morning, probably around 4AM, i had to get up to let the cat out. (I've learned the smelly and expensive way that i must heed this particular yowl/scratching.) The way i fall back asleep in the middle of the night is to do my standard trance/meditation induction, but in a sleeping position. This includes asking my guides to be here with me. Immediately after i did this, it occurred to me that they might want to hear the rain, which i find a lovely sound when it is steady and not wind-driven.

Flashback #1: About 10 years ago, I was at a wedding reception in a restaurant on top of a high-rise in SF. Hardly knew anyone, and I'm actually kind of shy, so i went to the windows looking west to watch the panoramic sunset. i asked my guides what they thought, and they said thank you to me, because they don't have physical eyes, and can only see the earth's beauty through ours. So now, when i see something beautiful, i invite them to have a look.

Flashback #2: A few weeks ago, when my husband was up in Mt. Shasta with a group calling ETs, i seem to have gotten some new guides, who prefer to be called "high beings" rather than ETs. My husband and some others, who were out in an unlit field, miles from anything, at night, took flashlit digital photos of each other. There are 2 of him. in the first, he's just standing there. then he asked the photographer to wait a moment while he called the ETs. He sent them love and asked them to show up. the next photo is of him surrounded by translucent white/gold globes, so many that it is as if you are looking through a bubble bath at him.

Back to this morning: When i invited my "friends" in, i could psychically see myself surrounded by bubbles, and there was a marvelous peaceful, loving feeling around me. Ahhhh...

Podcasts!

Today, I am thrilled to have Michael Murphy, co-founder of Esalen Institute, one of the fathers of the human potential movement, author of many books, brilliant thinker, great story teller and intrepid explorer into unseen worlds, as my on-air guest. We’ll be discussing new research into life after “death”. This promises to be a lively and informative discussion!

You may want to hear my weekly radio show, but can’t because you’re working, or just away from the computer. Now I have begun to podcast the shows (2 are up so far). It’s not perfect yet (I have to upload them in pieces, for example), but it does work, and the sound quality is pretty good. To listen to the podcasts, go to my website, http://www.888-4-hollis.com and click on PODCAST in the menu bar at the top. This will take you to a sign in page (which you only have to do once for any and all podcasts), and then you’ll be emailed the link to the podcasts.

How YOU can help end the "War on Terror"

It isn’t what you think.

First, we have to look at the meaning of the phrase “war on terror”. This has been widely derided as absurd, because “you can’t make war on a tactic”. This is true, but misses the mark. The tactic is terrorism, and so if one were making war on a tactic, this would be the “War on Terrorism”, but it wasn’t named that. Let’s go deeper.

“Terror” is, of course, an emotion, an exaggerated fear. So the “War on Terror” is actually a war on an emotion. Absurd, right? Well, perhaps not absurd, but fiendishly clever.

War is the man-made mass event that is most feared in the world. And so war creates fear — war creates terror. Aha! This is self-reinforcing. The war creates the very thing it is supposedly made to stop. So the “War on Terror” is designed to be never-ending. You might think of it, instead, as the “Love of Terror”.

Then you have to ask the age old question, “Who benefits?” I’ll leave the answer to that one up to your imagination and investigation, because this isn’t meant to be a political article.

So how do you help end the “War on Terror”? It’s simple.

Refuse to be afraid. If you’re not afraid, those who would manipulate you, can’t. This is true at every level from the boyfriend or girlfriend who threatens to leave you if you don’t do a certain thing, or act a certain way, all the way up to a group or a nation threatening another group or nation with bombs if they don’t behave in the way the first group wants.

But, you say, fear is natural. Yes, that’s true. Fear is an evolutionary mechanism related to “fight or flight”. Humans evolved so that when confronted by a large, hungry animal, their instincts helped protect them so they’d live and procreate another day. But much of what we fear today is artificial — we fear ridicule, or we fear losing a loved one, or we fear losing a job. In fact, none of those things is in your face, life or death, and so none of them requires “fight or flight”.

In over 20 years of counseling people, I’ve learned that almost all fears, when you push them, are masks for the fear of death. Think about that. When you’re afraid of losing a job, the subconscious train of thought goes like this: if I lose my job, I’ll never find another one, and then I’ll lose my home and my family and won’t be able to feed myself and I’ll die. If you’re able to read this message, then that’s probably pretty unlikely, because you live in a society where there are resources. Yes, life might get harder, maybe a lot harder, but it might get better too (by, say, finding work you like more), and the chances of you dying because of a job loss are pretty small.

So how do you stop being afraid? Learn about “death”! There’s nothing to fear. At this point, massive evidence exists that one lives on afterwards. Check out

1) World ITC – The new technology of spiritual contact: http://www.worlditc.org,
2) the work of Dr. Ian Stevenson’s group at the University of VA: http://www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/internet/personalitystudies/, and
3) Near Death Experience and the Afterlife: http://www.near-death.com/.

If you know you are going to live on after “death”, and so are not afraid of it, then what in the world is there to be afraid of?

In addition, here are two other things you can do:

1) Forward this widely (with attribution), so that others will refuse to be afraid.
2) If you are so moved (and because today is the International Day of Peace), you may choose to actively work for peace. One way to do that is to support the Peace Alliance in its efforts to create a Dept. of Peace — check out http://www.thepeacealliance.org/.

The web of creation, part 2

I have recently had a vision of the physical world as a (probably) 5 dimensional matrix, populated by intention. Here’s what I mean:

Imagine that you are looking through a window screen at a tree. At first, you notice the screen, because it is right in front of you, and then, as you pay attention to the tree, its leaves, bark, the way its branches sway in the breeze, you stop noticing the screen.

Now imagine that the screen is three dimensional, or rather four dimensional, because it exists through time. Now imagine that there’s at least another dimension to this. This is the matrix that turns the non-physical into the physical, the basic stuff of the physical universe. Now imagine that the tree exists inside this matrix (because it does). The tree is actually created by intention, from the pure potential held in the spaces between the matrix.

The matrix can be likened to female energy, the intention to male energy. Together, they make the world. Neither alone is enough to create physical reality. You need the female to hold and give form to the male intention.

Now imagine that each thing in the physical world, from the tree to the window screen, to you, all exist as intentions outside of the physical world. These intentions are vibrational fields, auras, which interpenetrate each other. When you can feel yourself as a field of intention, and everything around you as fields of intention, then they all interpenetrate each other.

This interpenetration is the visual or felt equivalent of a band playing music. You can concentrate on just one instrument, and hear that. Or you can hear the whole piece. Or maybe you can hear the interplay of two or three instruments.

The web of creation

Last Friday I was privileged to be a participant in the first beta test of a new workshop, designed around the Clarity Process, offered by Lee Glickstein of Speaking Circles. The process itself consists of dyads, one person sitting in an open-eyed meditative state, that is, listening with an open heart, not judging, not commenting, for 5 minutes while the other talks about his/her experience in that moment, or perhaps explores a personal issue.

I had an amazing experience! It occurred to me that I am generally doing one of two things. I may be having my own experience, that is, focusing my attention inside myself, on what I am feeling or thinking. Or I may be focusing my attention completely on the other person to whom I am relating, trying to understand what is going on for my partner, to support him or her, to “read” or help or offer my skills in service.

All of a sudden, I realized that our relationship is an entity in and of itself, and thus has its own heart center. In some sense, that heart is something about which we both revolve, like binary stars revolving around their mutual center of gravity. I can both see and feel this “heart of our relationship” psychically. It looks like a little thickening of the energy field, like the heat waves rising off a candle, but spherical because there is no candle. It feels a bit thick too, like static electricity or like the edge of an aura, when felt from outside.

If I connected my heart to the heart of our relationship, magic happened! Both of our auras got bigger and brighter, and something opened up from that place, a connection to the universe itself. I realized that that place is the place where creation, manifestation happens.

At the end of the day, I committed to exploring this phenomenon further in the next few days, which I am doing. I have learned that

- Attending to the heart of my relationship with anything brings on a nearly ecstatic state, which I can experience in the world, and still be walking around. I can access this state on demand, simply by asking, “where is the heart of my relationship with this [fill in the blank]?“, noticing where it is and connecting to it. The state is instantaneous and lasts as long as I am attentive to the heart connection.

- The center of my relationship to anything may or may not be half way in between us. Trees seem to rush out to meet me. One book, “Limitless Mind” by Russell Targ, did the same thing when I opened it, noticing where the heart of our relationship was. So far, no magazines have done this.

- I have a relationship with every thing, every animal, every plant, every person on earth, whether I know it or not, whether I like it or not, whether I come in contact with the physical thing/plant/animal/person or not. If I average where the centers of all these relationships are, it is in my heart. This is why the heart is our connection to the center of the universe, to God (if you like that word). This is why the heart is the center of creation.

- All of us have these connections going on all the time, whether we know it or not, whether we like it or not, whether we come in physical contact with our partners (things/plants/animals/people) or not. This is the web of life, of all of creation.

If you want to try this for yourself, there are 3 steps in awareness:

1) Feel your heart center and place your attention there. (This may take some practice.)

2) Ask the question, “Where is the heart of my connection to [fill in the blank]?” Again, practice with things, plants, animals and people you see. Practice with big things, little things, natural things, hand made things, machine made things, simple things, complex things, small plants, huge trees, fruit, cut flowers, small animals, big animals, pets, insects, people you’re emotionally connected to, acquaintances, complete strangers. Practice, practice, practice.

3) Connect from your heart to the heart of this relationship. Notice what you feel, what you see or hear psychically, what you seem to know about your partner in the relationship, or about the relationship itself.