Is Integrity Obsolete?

“Yeah, cash is great.  You don’t have to pay tax on that,” Sally said.

 

I just stared at her, stunned.   “I report all of my income.” 

Now it’s her turn to look at me like I’m an alien lizard from Alpha Centauri, or clinically insane.  “I prefer cash for my international clients because it’s easier, that’s all.”  Now she’s looking at me with pity.  I’m really, really stupid, she’s thinking. Could be.

I admit to disappointment in my friend.  Professors Kohlberg and Gilligan developed frameworks to explain the levels of sophistication of our human moral reasoning, and doing whatever you can get away with is the level typical of a 3^rd grader.  Later in our development, we grow through understanding that general lawfulness makes everyone safer, on up to doing The Right Thing just because it is The Right Thing, from focusing solely on yourself through level after level until you arrive at the place where all living creatures are your siblings and the earth itself is your mother and father, and you devote yourself completely to the alleviation of suffering in the world.  Nobody gets to that summit but some folks get closer than Sally seems to be aiming.

Then there’s another colleague, who changed her email signature to “Amazon Best-Selling Author” a month before she even finished writing the dang thing.  Her reasoning: she had hired someone who guaranteed to make her book a best-seller (it only sold 200 copies), and thus she was just jump-starting what WOULD be true.  Except that she didn’t change it when she saw the sales results.  [Which were totally predictable, for a newbie author tackling a popular topic that had dozens of real bestsellers to compete against.]  I’ll bet that “I’ll make you a star” charlatan suggested it, but it was my colleague who did it, and still refuses to own her lie.

And she’s not alone.  Everyone who releases a print or even an e-book these days claims it as an “Amazon Bestseller” before it’s even on the metaphorical shelves.

I pity the real bestselling authors, who have their hard work and quality product cheapened because everyone (including me) who knows about the “Amazon Bestseller” scam, assumes they are lying also.  Except Ian Brodie, who does such good work, he doesn’t have to lie to impress you.  I’d be willing to believe that his book really IS the best seller in its category of e-mail marketing.

That’s something that my blow-hard pals don’t seem to understand.  If you cheapen the status of an Amazon bestseller because everyone with any level of thrown-together product is claiming it, then when and if you ever do achieve that real pinnacle, no one will believe you.  It’s a short-sighted strategy, based on the belief that the rest of us are too stupid to see the pattern.  We’re not.  So cut it out, already.  Work for your accolades, like your pre-iPad ancestors’ generations did.

My colleague – whose name really isn’t Sally and isn't even a woman – who thinks that integrity is something you turn on and off, is an example of the driving force behind so much cheating, on every  level, these days.  You tell yourself [and there’s always at least a tiny grain of truth in here] that you have been cheated, or the whole system is unfair and corrupt; this belief and the resentment it generates frees you from your moral imperative to being fair and honest yourself.   And then anything is possible.

Many people have a situational-cheater’s response to taxes.  Taxes are, as my anthropology students learn [see my YouTube channel Anthroisfun], the way that complex societies make sure that resources are redistributed.  In small groups of 20-40 individuals, as our ancestors lived for millions of years, until around 7,000 years ago, we shared our good and bad fortune on a daily basis.  No one hoarded; you shared the food you gathered or scavenged (or later, hunted) and no one went hungry.  If you made two knives, you gave one to your sister or cousin-in-law.  Once a money economy emerged, people could contribute coins instead of wheat and barley and goats, and still no one went hungry.  

Modern Western societies have become so complex, and so many of them,  including the USA, are unequal, unfair oligarchies, that the original purpose of taxing – to share food and provide for common goals like roads, medical care, education of the young, and defense against enemies – can be ignored, while you focus on the things you don’t like or approve of.  It’s impossible to have 330 million people agree on anything, including “the sky is blue.”  For example, in Seattle, the sky is actually varying shades of grey.  If we get a tiny patch of blue sky, we all go nuts and stop talking about politics for the duration of the blessed event.  My otherwise-admirable colleague could give you a litany of things that she refuses to contribute to, and thus is morally justified, in her own mind at least – maybe in yours – in pocketing cash that she refuses to share.

But taxes support children and disabled people, and I’ve been both. You have been a child.  If you are blessed to live a long life, you will be too old to earn a salary.  Taxes fix the roads, provide fire protection and libraries, and you need those things.  Taxes provide Sesame Street and Nova, the National Weather Service and Meals on Wheels; I’ve learned from the former and may live long enough to need the latter.  We all may.

 

I know how selective resentment can make nearly anything seem morally acceptable – and I am asking you all to become aware of it, too.  I have a class that brings people into connection with all the components of their ancestry (Meet Your Ancestors, launching on www.soaringdragon.biz/classes) including the noble and heroic.  These heroes are the parts of your DNA that you can tap into when you feel yourself getting up a head of steam around justifications for resentments.  A new class on Freeing Your Soul From the Poison of Resentment is debuting soon to give you tools for this.  

It all starts with awareness of what is really going on inside your thinking, and a commitment to listen to the better angels of your nature.  Deep breath and make a choice.  Pay your taxes, on all your income.  Give generously to those who have less than you do.  Realize what a hero you are for doing both.  YOU, my friend, are protecting seniors and children, and the disabled, and you are the guardian and protector of your community.  Be proud of yourself.  

And remember the Hindu scripture, “Do not despise your neighbors who are poor, for many poor people were once well-off.  And you may someday be poor.”  We’re all in this together, my friends, we truly are.

If we all learn how to call on our inner hero, regardless of the choices that the swamp around us makes, we will have a roadmap to creating a paradise out of this Earth that we have inherited. 

  Take a step on that path today.  Take another step tomorrow.  Repeat until the day you die.

Want the Fast Track to Getting What You Want??

Playing with my cats earlier today….

Orono (a Maine Coon, natch) knows how to play Bat At the Cat Toy. She has lots of fun leaping and pouncing, and she knows that the fun is prolonged when she simply “counts coup” on her enemy, leaving the toy available for an immediate new game. The challenge is in the doing.

Gabriel, alas, finds the subtleties of Orono’s strategy perplexing. For him, the name of the game is catch that bird-substitute, hold onto it with jaws of steel, give it a neck bite and drag it off one’s lair and gloat over your victory. I have seen him shake his head – a feline ploy to help snap the prey’s neck. Sigh. His insistence on refusing to catch and release means that every time he catches the toy I have to wrestle it away from him before any of us can have any more fun. (If I don’t wrestle it away, he shreds it in too-authentic predator style.) He cannot hold on to his gettings lightly. He doesn’t share anything; he treats every treat as though it will be his last. He never lets go. He does not believe that if he lets go that he will ever get another shred of prosperity again. All evidence to the contrary will not shake him.

We all know people like Gabe. They snatch. They hold on to their possessions and the people in their lives with a death grip. That approach, they think, at the deepest, unrational limbic system where humans make most of their decisions, will allow them to be financially, professionally and in all other ways happy.

Funny thing is – exactly the opposite is true. Avoiding extremes of fiscal extravagance and unconsciousness, of course, if you keep a light hand on the reins of your life, you can feel nuances and changing circumstances and have a much better chance of staying on the sunny side of the street. When you are desperately trying to control someone or something, your hands get hard and insensitive; you can’t feel the nuances any more. Batting at your fun (or your sorrows) allows more fun to come in to your life. Desperately grabbing onto every shred of fun and refusing to allow the positive energy to circulate in the world guarantees that less fun will come your way – you are a dead end and energy wants to circulate.    

If that’s too fanciful, here’s the more concrete version: if you touch all the things and people who come your way with a light touch (not grabbing like Gabe), if you are not desperate to get the business or convince someone of something, if you are not convinced that you can manifest any and every outcome your desires can conjure, you invite people to come closer. Open, welcoming arms, open minds and communication without needing a particular outcome is more likely to give you what you really need, in a day/week/month/year/life. If you stop trying to manifest and just go about your work in the world, stopping to say “thank you” for whatever shows up, whether you label it as “Good [I got what I want]” or “Bad [I didn’t get what I want],” then you have the magic formula for a happy life.  Regardless of whether you got the million-dollar income or the wonderful spouse, you will be centered, content, happy, with dozens of friends who just adore you, because you are life-giving sun, pouring joy into everyone else from your own limitless supply.

Another fish will be along in the universe’s own perfect time.  

Go to Soaring Dragon. 

What is the #1 "Pain Point" people come to me to relieve? Go ahead and give it your best guess....

 What is the #1 quest people come to me for?  It’s not fame and entrepreneurial fortune, although many of them do, and I can definitely show people how to get more fortune.  It’s not a better career, although ditto.  It’s not freedom from physical pain and significant health problems, although many of them do.

Nope, the absolute #1 quest is – clarity.  If there were a tagline for this age it might very well be “I’m so confused and I don’t know what to do.”  What they mean is that what they really WANT is buried so deep under layers of “This knowledge is too scary – don’t, whatever I say, let me know this truth” that they couldn’t excavate it with a power-shovel.

Truth is so scary for so many of us because if we knew what we really needed and what we really wanted for ourselves we would have to initiate really, really scary conversations with people about the amount of relative power we have in our lives.  We might need to have conversations that threaten our financial survival or our definition of ourselves. 

When someone comes to me seeking clarity, it is nearly always true that clarity is being deliberately obscured as a self-protection mechanism by the person’s deep unconscious.

I particularly admire the clients who, when they start to realize what clarity would really mean, take a deep breath, strap on their Courage backpack, take their Courage vitamins, and plunge into the depths.  When that happens, the most glorious transformations become possible.  Sometimes, the reality isn’t as scary as the nightmares dreamed up by their (frequently mistreated or emotionally abandoned) child-selves.  Sometimes the reality is about right.  Sometimes the reality is much, much worse.

What is always true is that the courage to dive deep and face truth with deep breathing and slow steps and as many emotions as come up is a rare and glorious commodity.

The people who walk that path to their own and genuine truth, whether they are looking for clarity, more entrepreneurial success, a better career, better health or better something else, are my personal heroes.

God bless you all, every one!  You are the brave souls who bring light to human life.  Bless you all, every one.  

Get a FREE Getting Unstuck session!  Not a sales pitch, a real session.  Contact me at www.soaringdragon.biz or call 253-203-6676

Classes for May - Transform Your Life

The Spiritual Path to Loving Exercise and Veggies [Yes, you will!]

4/30 10 AM;  5/21 2 PM

So many Americans hate exercise and won't do it. Not MY clients! They have learned the spiritual path to genuinely (no gimmicks) loving to feel their bodies move, and loving how they feel with veggies. We never have trouble making time for the things we love to do, and the things we love to eat. No willpower needed for me to spend an hour creating things with crochet, or photographing distant planets and galaxies. I love it! 

You love things, too. And you don't have to use any willpower to get yourself to do these things, do you?

In this one hour class, I will start you on the road to LOVING your body, moving, and loving the taste of really good, healthy food. The spiritual path is unrelated to any religion or faith. Your spirit core is where your deepest desires live. Not the substitutes that you crave, because your life is too stressful and too filled with have-to, and not enough true joy. Not that. Your spirit core will lead you to the vision of yourself, and the decisions about your life that will transform your life - and your surface desires that now are driving your life in unhealthy directions.

You can love exercise as I've learned to love it - because it is a time of loving myself and my family, preparing to do my very best as a healer, and having fun. In a typical week, I joyfully splash and play in water, deep-end in wonderfully creative dreams of crochet and acrylic artwork, and touch the deepest core of my soul. It's a wonderful life! 

No matter how many hats you are currently juggling and how many years it's been since you had anything other than popcorn and TV for yourself, if you take this class, you will be setting forth on the Hero's Journey to Health.

After the class, you'll have the option of discounts on the entire transformation program. www.soaringdragon.biz

https://www.learnitlive.com/class/8844/The-Spiritual-Path-to-LOVING-Exercise-Veggies-Yes-you-will#

Meet Your Biological Ancestors

5/3 6PM;  6/3  10 AM

Within Homo sapiens itself, you have over 10,000 generations of ancestors! Your people domesticated plants and animals, migrated across continents and created gorgeous works of art. Moving back farther in time, there are thousands more - the people who first tamed fire, developed language and created home bases to nurture babies and elders.

Getting in energetic connection to all these generations, connects you to their characters, their struggles, their triumphs and their tragedies. Connecting empathetically to these DNA contributors to who YOU are, allows you to question your own deeply-held beliefs about your life, deepen your empathy for yourself and others, increase your pride in your own courage and virtues.

Clients have reported everything from better sleep to losing unwanted weight after completing the day-long class that includes both biological and past life ancestors. The clients who beta-tested this shorter version reported significant shifts in their inner landscape. You will too! Join us live for interaction and join us via recording if you can't.

Pre-requisites

A sincere desire to understand yourself, and a willingness to be transformed, in mind, body, spirit and soul.

https://www.learnitlive.com/class/8591/Meet-Your-Biological-Ancestors#

The 5 Magic Components of Your Successful Self-Care Program (Starting with Self-Love)5/10 6PM;  5/21 3:30PM

How many times have you tried and failed to launch a permanent self-care program?  The fault is not in you or in your stars.  All you need is the RIGHT tools and the RIGHT incentives.  You are guaranteed success!

This class will introduce you to the 5 must-have components of your successful self-care program, and help you in putting your personalized plan together - something flexible enough to get you through "bad days" and powerful enough to generate serious change in your health and wellbeing.  You CAN transform your life, no matter how many barriers you see on the road to self-care.

You owe it your yourself - and your family and your business/career - to invest an hour in learning these 5 components, so transformative, they feel truly magical!     www.soaringdragon.biz

https://www.learnitlive.com/class/8843/5-Magic-Components-of-Your-Successful-Self-Care-Program-Starting-with-Self-Love

Harness Your Goddess Energy To Stop Self-Sabotage

5/11 5:30PM; 5/12 6PM

Have you been trying to stop your self-sabotage and generate more confidence for your life, your business or your family? Not working, huh? STOP beating yourself up! You are using the wrong tools, that's all.

In this workshop, you will connect with your inner goddess energy (not associated with any religion or faith!), and watch the real barriers to your successful completion of your goals start to crumble before your eyes. Take effective action against the barriers that are holding you back.

Enrollment is limited for the highest-quality experience.

https://www.learnitlive.com/class/8839/Harness-Your-Goddess-Energy-to-Stop-Self-Sabotage

The Secret Ingredient of All Successful Transformations

5/16 6PM

We all have barriers that we would like to blast away.  Why is it that some of us succeed and most don't?  What do those "lucky" winners have that YOU don't?  It's simple!  No matter whether it is a new career or a healthier, slimmer body, a new love life or freedom from addictions and habits, a better handle on adult ADHD or a new freedom from the effects of past trauma, all successful transformations rely on one special ingredient - that coaching can't give you and therapy doesn't want to.  Come explore the Secret Ingredient and discover how to use it to blast through the barriers keeping you from your heart's desire in 2016!

https://www.learnitlive.com/class/7551/The-Secret-Ingredient-of-All-Successful-Transformation

Claim Your Power, Claim Happiness

5/19  6PM

It looks like you have multiple goals, but you don't really. All of them - money, family, business- are about happiness that comes from getting What You Want. So first we will explore how to remove external barriers to happiness.

Then we put power back into your hands. All these years, you thought that power to be happy was "out there." It's not. 

Sure, it makes sense to remove as much of the external barriers to happiness as possible (see Magic Ingredient and other classes that spend an hour on just that). But what do you do about the situations that just stubbornly refuse to change? Do you have to be unhappy because your mate doesn't materialize and wealth doesn't manifest? 

No simplistic "don't worry; be happy" jive here! This is the real road to taking back the power that you always had, Dorothy. You don't even need ruby slippers to wield THIS power. This is the infinite power within you.

All you need to tap all that power is courage to confront what you have been doing to sabotage yourself, to prevent yourself from taking this power. Do you have the courage? 

On the other side of the river is a power no one can take away from you! 

https://www.learnitlive.com/class/8840/Claim-Your-Power-Claim-Happiness

Retrain Your Immune System: Smarter Cells, Healthier Life

5/16  12 noon; 5/21 10 AM

Your immune system is a complex of different cells and messenger molecules that try to identify both external invaders and internal malfunctions (proto-cancer), coordinating with each other for your best health. The stem cells that trained in your babyhood start to malfunction over time, leading to both an upsurge in invaders getting through and also mistakes leading to auto-immune diseases.

The bad news: medications and herbals can only boost or suppress the whole system. To get an auto-immune disease to calm down, you suppress the whole immune response and you get sick more often. What do you do??

You CAN teach your immune cells to be more discerning! Through the power of advanced hypnotherapy and specific imagery, you can calm a cytokine storm without coming down with the flu. You can boost your NK cells in their cancer-killing work without stimulating other T and B cells to the point where they start looking for enemies that don't exist (and make you ill).

Come get a sample of the process before you sign up for a complete program. You CAN have more power over your immune response!

You will have an opportunity for discounts on the complete Retrain Your Immune System (www.soaringdragon.biz) as well as an 18-hour MP3 on How Your Body Really Works, explaining all these immune system components and interactions in detail.

https://www.learnitlive.com/class/8842/Retrain-Your-Immune-System-Smarter-Cells-Healthier-Life

The Spiritual Path to Permanent Weight Control: Blasting Through the Barriers

5/19 6:15 PM

Have you been struggling with your weight? Does it seem impossible to get results that last? Are you TIRED of counting calories and constantly telling yourself NO? Do you feel like a failure? [You're not. Your strategies are ineffective, that's all.]

Trying to change your life with only willpower and "inspiration" is a losing strategy. It will work for a while, but it can't transform your life. The complete Spiritual Path program WILL! The key to success is using the right tools, in the right way, consistently and with intentionality. Once you have your first experience of blasting through the barriers that are keeping you from success, you will never look back - never return to the old, ineffective strategies. 

Spiritual means a connection to the transcendent, which has an infinite number of forms. Religious means adherence to practices, rituals and dogmas. This class harnesses spirituality to unlock the door to PERMANENT weight control.

If you have been able to achieve permanent weight control, great; keep doing what you're doing. If you haven't, it's time to admit that what you're doing isn't working for you, long-term, and commit to a new program that really works.

Join a group of dedicated seekers who are tired of the old shame and blame game and are ready to combine effective action with joy. You can do it! This is the road to success.

https://www.learnitlive.com/class/8440/The-Spiritual-Path-to-Permanent-Weight-Control-Blasting-Through-the-Barriers#

Just had a breakthrough? Know your power? Consider this.....

Have Courage and Be Kind: What do you do if you didn't have a Golden Childhood?

 Have you seen the 2015 version of Cinderella?  Wonderful movie isn’t it?  The theme – Have courage and be kind, and all will be well – stunned me when I saw the movie in the theatre, because it is exactly what my mother taught me.

Think about it.  So much of what “happens” to us is really the result of a lack of courage on our part.  We stay in harmful situations way too long, allowing ourselves to be more deeply hurt, because we are afraid of the unknown that lies outside of the Known But Awful.  We stay in jobs.  We stay in relationships.  We let ourselves stay connected to toxic people of all types.  We stay in toxic places, that suck our souls dry.  Why?  Lack of courage.

We fall into mistakes because we lack the courage to thoroughly examine a proposition before we commit to it.  We tell ourselves that we are following our heart or our intuition, but what we’re really doing is telling the universe that we don’t matter, that looking out for ourselves with a minimal Due Diligence is wrong, because we don’t have the right to stop a slick sales pitch in its tracks and examine it very, very closely.  If we really mattered to ourselves, we wouldn’t care who got pissed off.  We would move toward what is good for us, move away from what isn’t healthy, and smile kindly while we say “No, thank you,” which is a complete sentence. 

Ella exhibited both kinds of courage.  And many kinds of kindness.

And most lovely of all, the movie reminds people like me, who work every day to uncover, clean out and repair the effects of childhood damage in beautiful adult souls, of the importance of what parents and teachers do.  If you are a parent or teacher, don’t ever believe that the hard work you do every day is thankless.  It isn’t.  Adult Ella was able to endure her harsh young adulthood of emotional abuse and neglect because her core belief in her own value and goodness was never breached.  That “golden childhood” of parental love, appreciation and delight inoculated her, for a long time, against the slings and arrows of an outrageous fortune.  The wickedest adults could not make her bitter, angry and resentful, her soul shone in the darkest times, because she had a bone-deep belief in and memory of love.  Her youngest years protected her soul from shriveling under the heaviest hammer blows of adversity.  THAT soul is what the prince/king could not live without, and which gave him the courage to “become his own man.” 

That shining soul is the gift that those of us who’ve had a golden childhood carry with them, the armor that keeps them safe forever after.  The rest of us have to work harder – for years or decades, depending on the damage – to build that same deep, shining soul, that has courage and kindness as its north star.  When we do, we don’t have to battle against resentment, envy and uncertainty any more.  When we know, at the deepest level of our hearts, that we are lovable, then whether others do or don’t doesn’t determine our own behavior.  And then we become the hero/ine of our own glorious story, inspiring everyone around us.  We become the candle that lights up all the dark, scared candles around us. 

If you wonder if you’ll ever have Ella’s kindness and courage, know that there are healers like me in the world, who have the skills and the determination to help you become a person who can light candles all around you, a person with a genuine, rock-solid certainty of their own value, and the deepest humility about themselves.  You can do it.  We all can.  For those of us without a golden childhood, it can be a long, hard trek, but the mountaintop is reachable.  We really can all be Ella.  Blessed be. 

The Best Business Advice Anyone Ever Gave Me

New businesses take time to build and setting an expectation that it will all be effortless and happen immediately just sets you up to drive yourself relentlessly, and always feel like a failure.  Immediate, effortless success does happen occasionally, and the whole world can hear about these outliers thanks to the Internet,  a mental bias that psychology is very familiar with [hearing about crimes constantly convinces you that the crime rate is high, even though stats say that it has actually been dropping].  That constant repetition of outlier after outlier is enough to keep everyone invested in the idea that this outlier of immediate, effortless success is the outcome that they can force, if they just use the right Secret or the right vision board or incantation.  This is the way our brains work.  Rational statistical reasoning doesn’t come naturally.  We are worried about a terrorist attack – not the million times more likely danger of a car wreck, or even an earthquake or a volcanic eruption if you live where I do in the Pacific Northwest of the USA.

So we worry about terrorists and we think we’re failures because dreaming and visioning doesn’t bring us what we want in 3 weeks.  Even hard work plus visioning doesn’t always get us what we want.   We don’t consider market forces or just plain bad luck.  But they are the real reason why one heck of a lot of stuff happens or doesn’t happen.  Analyze your marketing.  See what tweeks you need. 

Spend more time doing Reiki or exercising or taking walks in the park with your dog – all those “not trying to force or control things” actions that lower your stress levels and allow you to look at yourself with eyes of love and appreciation.  It is only Truth that sets us free.  Consider the potential truth that you can’t vision yourself out of what God, your karma, or global business forces want for you.  Consider taking your stress down a notch by letting it all be enough – you are enough, your effort was enough, your faith in yourself was enough – everything that you are is just enough. 

And if what you are so determined to have isn’t happening, maybe you need to give it more time.  Or maybe, if it’s been two years and the business still isn’t giving you a livable income, the truth is that you need to do something else.  Not in a spirit or belief that you are a failure, just in a belief that it’s time to get new guidance.   Take a long, slow deep breath and widen your vision.  [When you want something desperately, you get tunnel-vision with your intensity.  Read Scarcity.]  Ask the universe where it wants you, without the deep emotional agenda of what you want poisoning the quiet voice of the eternal.  Listen.  Quietly. 

And remember – all the world’s spiritual traditions have some version of “Be of good heart.”  Ask yourself why that is.  You might conclude that it’s because being happy and at peace with What Is, is the real road that you are on.  Paradoxically, the more content you are on the What Is road, the more your vision can expand to see other roads that intersect with What Is.  You find it when you’re not looking for it.  [Byron Katie’s books are a big help in making this make sense.]

Come for a free Getting Unstuck session!  www.soaringdragon.biz

6 Tools and Techniques to Make Healthy Self-Love a Reality

For some people, brought up by caring parents who wanted us to be generous and humble adults, the difference between healthy self-love and unhealthy selfishness, arrogance and narcissism, was not made clear to us.

In consequence, we grew to adulthood happily prepared to take care of everyone around us, be a rock of care and concern for all our loved ones, while relying on the attention of others to see to it that our own nurturing - emotional feeding - gets done.

That's not the way things are supposed to roll.  With due respect to our well-intentioned parents, hoping to steer us away from self-absorption, they missed the healthy balance point.

Self-love, so far from being a character flaw, is the foundation upon which every other healthy ediface of adult love and character is built.

Let me explain what healthy self-love is, and give you some specific techniques and tools that you can use to build this capacity within yourself.  It's never too late!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKQe5VFm0gc

Fun Food!

A new recipe!

I decided to try some new things for my new cookbook (following up 101 Healthy Meals in 5 Minutes or Less!) and this one is going to a potluck tomorrow.

I start with a reasonably healthy commercial cornbread mix, add 2 eggs or egg white, some applesauce, lots of cinnamon.

The applesauce adds nice natural sugar and enough water that I can skip the usual milk. It's great, low cal too, well as a dessert, LOL.

What are you thankful for?

If you are like most Americans, you will gather around an over-loaded table of food tomorrow, for the Thanksgiving Day obligatory eat-fest.  If you are fortunate, someone will suggest that you all give short speeches about What You Are Thankful For, before you dig in.

It’s better than just digging in, of course.  But let’s be honest – most of these ThankFests are very superficial.  I’m thankful for my family.  Or my friends.  Whoever is in the room with me and will remember if I DON’T go down that timeworn road.  I’m thankful for my health.  Or my obliviousness, when spoken by people who don’t get tests and checkups from a reputable doctor regularly.  My mother-in-law thanked god for her good health every year, including the Thanksgiving just before she was diagnosed with the colon cancer that she could have completely averted if she hadn’t insisted that having an easy, simple colonoscopy was “claiming” cancer.  So let’s say that you either have or imagine that you have some level of good health.  Most of us grab that old chestnut and quit.  End of introspection until next year.

What most of us really are thankful for is our income, and our place and prestige in the world.  Who has the courage to say that they aren’t really thankful for their economic good fortune, both because it is usually considered unseemly bragging to admit you are doing quite a bit better than just Middle Middle Class, and because we really do believe that our success is 100% attributable to our own cleverness, thank you very much?  We focus so much of our precious life energy in jockeying for position, either in an organization or directly in the marketplace.  If we had what we define as a Good Year, because we got money, power and prestige enough to please us, we aren’t going to be honest and say so.  And if we fell short by society’s estimation, which becomes our estimation at a deep level, then we have yet another reason to put on a fake Happy Face and utter the usual platitude or make a joke of the whole Thankfulness thing.

So, go ahead and get through the social amenities as best you can.  Just don’t forget that gratitude – real gratitude – has been clinically shown to move mountains.  It shields you from flu bugs, cleans out your arteries, lowers your blood sugar and gives you more years of genuine good health, if you practice it regularly.  The only Gotcha is that it has to be real gratitude.  Genuine gratitude differs from the posturing and positioning around the groaning table in that it’s foundation is surrender to the reality that whatever sadness comes to you isn’t 100% caused by your DNA and blatant stupidity.  Some of your sadness is better explained as bad luck, a spiritual process like karma involving thousands of generations, or other processes that you can’t control and don’t need to waste your time trying to be angry about.  Real gratitude also comes from a place where you know that your Good Times are never 100% about you.  They are a gift from the universe, from the luck of the cosmic bouncing dice or from processes that you can’t game and can’t predict.  A stranger or a new acquaintance gives you exactly what you need, a gift that fills you with awe, pleasant shock and, if you’re prepared, with genuine gratitude.  For that moment, you are standing in a spotlight of love, joy and ease, that you didn’t create and can’t control.

When I’m not feeling it, it’s because I am tunnel-visioned on what’s wrong with my world.  Which, at various times in my life, has encompassed every single realm of generally-accepted Life.  Visualize me at a total loss, finally coming up with “I am grateful that I don’t have cancer… that I don’t have diabetes….. that I don’t have a broken leg; I can walk… that I don’t have….”  Imagine me finally realize that I was working as a college prof of human anatomy and had a mental list of about 5,000 health problems I didn’t have (making the few I DID have seem pretty paltry), and laughing at myself.  At which point, real gratitude had a chance.  

If you are stuck with unaware family or friends on The Day, find a way to sneak off with your journal, meditate and let something real happen for you.  [Writing gets you out of your head; it’s magical.]  Perhaps you can Skype or email someone who will understand.  If not, you will have created pockets of time and space in which you can feel and express that which you can’t express publicly.

What a wondrous thing is gratitude.  May it move mountains for you this Thanksgiving weekend, and the rest of the holiday month of December.  

Having Fun with 23andme - the joys and broader vision

Genetic identity products like the 23andme product I purchased recently have been wildly popular.  The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) took the medical portion of the product off the market until concerns about how the info would be used could be addressed.  It’s so easy for someone who doesn’t have a deep background in genetics to misunderstand what a predisposition could refer to. 

As a larger issue, there is a real danger of employers in the US getting access to genetic information, because they WILL refuse to hire, and WILL find excuses to get rid of any person who might (big word there!) have a medical problem in the future – that their health insurance company would have to pay for.  The real villain in that scenario is insurance that is tied to an employer, not a basic right of citizenship, because it gives your employer a powerful motivation to get rid of you based on your potential for expensive health problems.  If your health is an issue for you and the community that pays for all its citizens, your employer is out of the loop.

But back to products that promise to give you insights into your genetic identity.  The 23andme product that I bought for myself and my husband included some basics from the nuclear DNA and from mitchondrial DNA with (for men only) some info from the Y chromosome.  To recap:  Your nuclear DNA comes from your mother and your father, and gets shuffled around in each generation.  Your mitochondrial DNA comes from the egg that started your journey to life, so it is entirely from your mother.  [Your dad’s sperm has nothing but nuclear DNA to make it as light and fast as possible.]  It doesn’t mix and match with every generation, but provides an unbroken, except by mutations, lineage from some very ancient woman.  Men’s Y-chromosomes also provide an unbroken lineage, except for mutations, from a very ancient man. 

Another aside: a group of Jewish South Africans who claimed biological descent as Cohens (a priestly family in ancient Palestine) were never believed because to all outward appearances they were just black South Africans.  But a Y-chromosome study proved them right; that DNA came from ancient Palestine and was similar to other Jewish Cohens who were still living in their ancestral home. 

I will admit that I paid the money ($180 for the two of us) for entertainment purposes, and that’s a good way to approach any consumer product.  We both could see the known outlines of our ancestry popping up in the numbers. 

What everyone except me misinterpreted and what I want to talk about is the small amounts of DNA in which I resemble folks in east and west Africa, Oceania and East Asia.  The immediate assumption is that I have a distant ancestor from those places.  I wouldn’t mind if I did, and it could be.  A more likely explanation is the mundane genetic fact that similarity doesn’t necessarily mean direct ancestry.  It most likely means that I have some very old DNA that hasn’t changed since all of us were encapsulated in 2000 individuals living in East Africa, 60,000 years ago.  A bit of it went west to west Africa, a bit of it took off into the Middle East and from there travelled to East Asia and then to Oceania, and the rest became the Neolithic farmers who moved into Europe, killed off the hunter/gatherers and took their land.  Horticulture and agriculture allowed my ancestors to feed more kids and breed more fighters, it was that simple.   My mitochondrial DNA supports that narrative.  There are a lot of fascinating details, that I am keeping appropriately private.  I’m less Neandertal than the average European. 

And I am re-assessing the “purely entertainment” motive.  Right after I received my genetic info, I researched more about the various identified groups and genes and found myself profoundly moved.  One of my course offerings is a fascinating journey to consult with one’s biological forebears.  It has been inspiring and profoundly healing for many people.  Looking at the geographical distribution of those maternal haplogroups led me to take the journey myself, psychically touching those women who lived so long ago.  [Email me for more information on the course.]

We can get so wound up in our daily to-do lists that we forget to, as my course encourages, visit with our very distant ancestors, to put a larger perspective on our lives.  All 10,000 generations of them changed their culture and their world in all the small ways that a person’s life does.  

We have the opportunity and the privilege to be beacons of love, comfort and inspiration in our own time.  This little glimpse into the past reminded me of my duty to do my very best with the life that all these fascinating ancestors have given me.

3 Steps to Career Success AND Family Joy in Nov/Dec

 So many things culminate in November and December.  At least six major family and religious holidays.  End of year git-er-done deadlines at work.  Everyone’s deepest non-rational needs and craziness being triggered.  Kids enraptured with the magic of lights, desserts and all the decorating at home.  One’s own remembered delights and memories of magic can be ruthlessly tamped down in the service of Reality, but since deep desires can’t really be tamped down, you find them popping up at the most inopportune moment.  Spending more money on gifts and travel than you soberly would choose to allocate from the resources you have. 

Can we really be surprised that so many people, especially parents with full-time jobs, wish they could just fast-forward to January, when they are being honest with themselves?

The good news: there is a way out of the madness!  You need to solve these three problems:

Ø  You’re not paying complete attention to work when you’re at work.

Ø  You’re not paying complete attention to your family and/or your personal needs for joy and magic when you aren’t at work.  Exacerbated by not having enough hours for your non-work life.

Ø  You’re spending too much money.

Let’s take them in turn:

You’re not paying complete attention to work when you’re at work.  Yes, I know that you think you are.  But if you are not giving your children, your spouse and your desire to enjoy this special time of the year its due, those concerns will leak into your work time and you will be constantly fighting distraction.  Or the guilt at your long hours when you know that your family really wants to share this time with you will take up cognitive bandwidth, even when you’re not aware of it.  Or you’re shopping online when you need your cognitive resources 100% focused on the supply-chain problem.  So you can solve this problem by solving problem #2, right?  Let’s do that.

You’re not paying complete attention to your family and/or your personal needs for joy and magic when you aren’t at work.  This is exacerbated by not having enough hours for your non-work life.  Your kids need your undivided attention in order to thrive.  Your spouse needs to know that s/he is undisputed #1 in your life.  Full stop.  If you want to live a long and happy life, have kids who cry buckets at your funeral and a spouse who sustains you for a half century of adult life with his/her unvarnished appreciation and adoration, you need to deserve that.  Full stop.  Kids remember these holidays.  You can’t buy them off with toys and other “stuff,” not in the long run.  They might get all excited about the stuff, but what will keep them away from drugs, early sex and general life stupidity is the strength of their connection to you.  Your spouse needs your help in cutting down the workload, firming placing 90% of the obligations in the No pile.  S/he needs you 100% emotionally present in the evenings, for the joys of decorating the house, making desserts, writing a yearly holiday letter.  S/he needs your 100% emotional presence as you explore a new light show, or visit an ethnic holiday you know nothing about, or do a service project together.  The end of year holidays are about love, about family, about goodness and generosity and caring for others.  They are about joy.  You, my friend, need joy.  You need to sit your kids down and tell them about holidays when you were a child.  You all need a dose of magic, as much as you need to step away from consumerism.

If you are truly present when you’re not working, you can pour it on 100% when you are working., and head home at a reasonable hour.  And by that, I mean no later than 6 PM.  Don’t even think about trying to negotiate this.  If you are 100% focused, you can get a reasonable amount of progress every day toward your organizational goals.  Do it, and then leave, guilt-free.

You’re spending too much money.  There are so many reasons why your spouse deserves your undivided attention during your non-working hours, and one reason is that when your spouse has what s/he needs from the love of their life, they will be more amenable to walking away from the Shoulds that generate too much spending. 

Ø  Gift only children.  Buy them educational toys. No gadgets, unless it’s a group gift from several families.

Ø  Or have a Pick a Name Out of the Hat at Thanksgiving.

Ø  Or create things.  I crochet while I’m relaxing with videos.  You might have talents at baking or crafting or building.  Sometimes I inflict my art on people.  They can throw it out and re-use the frame, I don’t care; having them know that I love them matters.

 

Unless you have more money than the Queen of England, you are probably spending too much.  You need much more money for retirement than you think you do.  Your kids need some seed money for college.  The animal welfare groups need a big donation.  The polar bears are drowning and the planet needs saving.  These things matter.  You can deal with selfish people trying to guilt-trip you into shopping now much more easily than you can deal with an unhappy retired life or kids with crippling education debts. 

Work with your spouse on an announcement to both families about your firm commitment to reserving the holidays for love and service projects.  Write a heartfelt letter about teaching your kids the value of sharing and caring, including creating small and meaningful gifts.  Wrap one or at most two nice educational gifts for your kids under your own tree or other symbolic object.  Whether you are pre-parenting, post-parenting or non-parenting, the same rules apply. 

All the holidays are about Light – the Light of wisdom, the Light of love, and the Light of joy.  They all dispel the darkness.  Focus on wisdom, love and joy, and don’t confuse them with “stuff.” 

So you see the solution!  When you fix the “time-at-home” problem and the spending problem, you automatically resolve the distractions that are keeping you from career success in November and December.  When you fix the “focus on work, then come home” problem, you automatically resolve the deprivation that you are inflicting on yourself, your vulnerable children and your spouse.  Life isn’t linear.  It’s a web, in which the solution to one part of the web relies on progress elsewhere.

You deserve to excel at work this holiday.  And you deserve excellence in your spouse, parent and human being roles as well.  You can do it!  Let the Light shine!

I'll Think of Something

I'm exasperating.  I've been told that, anyway.  A long time ago, when I was running a technical certificate program for the University of California Santa Cruz Extension, I was the most exasperating, frustrating direct-report that my Dean had, according to him.  My crime?  Apparently, my stock response to every impossible dilemma was a deep breath and a determined "I'll think of something."  At the height of his exasperation, he told me that he wanted to live long enough to hear me admit that something was impossible. "Hmm," sez I, my standard non-committal response, whilst thinking "Good luck with that!"  I don't know if he has passed to his eternal rest yet, but I have some bad news for him - I haven't stopped saying it.   

And believing it.

Now, please understand: I am NOT saying that I can change the course of history or the externally-generated circumstances of my own life through sheer force of will.  I have dozens of friends and acquaintances who are beating themselves up because they couldn't manifest wealth in the midst of the biggest depression since 1930, or they can't change the course of hurricanes. [No, I'm not making up that latter.]  

It's not all about you, grasshopper.  Or, as I tell people, "There may be a god - who knows? - but it for sure ain't you."  Being an ordinary caring, loving, striving human being is a fine destiny.  You don't need to be the lord of life and death, heaven and earth, to be happy.  What you need to do is do your darndest to stay on top of the waves, and after you have done your very best, let go of the outcome.  That is easier said than done and not the subject of today's chat.

I just want to focus on the "doing your darndest" part.  My Dean told me that the buildings were underutilized, so I started researching and brainstorming and trying things out.  My new lineup of classes included Sunday, lunchtime, late afternoon and hybrid classes. Revenues soared.  When the main campus wanted X and we needed Y, my let's-negotiate spinal reflex drove him nuts.  No means no, Victoria.  Except that I never actually believe that.  [I have learned to moderate my spinal reflex with family members.  That's a different area of life.  Sometimes, the most loving response to No, is OK. A topic for another day.]  

I found this Viking ship somewhere (Pinterest? Facebook?) and would be happy to attribute it, if I could.  It sits on the wall facing me as I work, to remind me that when one door slams, I just need to find another one. And another one.  And another one.  And if they are all locked, climb to another floor.  Or stay home and wait for the EMT's.  

If the wind dies, take to the oars.  If the wind turns into a hurricane, batten down the hatches, tarp the open deck, set a sea anchor, and breathe.  Pray or invoke reiki.  No hurricane lasts forever.  If you end up on a foreign shore, recon first, before you disembark.  When you know the area is relatively safe, get out, find food, make friends with the natives, stay clear-eyed.  Keep thinking of something until you can't think any more, then ask friends to brainstorm with you.  When all ideas fail, it's batten down and breathe.  Take a nap or a day off, then go back to thinking of something.  Go back to the oars.

For the Love of Reiki Makes a Big Splash on Times Square

My good friend Paula Vail, host of the Voice America show (www.voiceamerica.com) For the Love of Reiki, has been honored in a big way, on the Great White Way.  I've been a guest on her show multiple times, but that isn't really why I am so happy, and want to shout her honors to the wide world.

The reason I am so over the top happy is because she is such a GOOD person and regardless of my lifetime of spiritual teaching and growth, below all the cognitive and intellectual wisdom, I still retain the child's belief that good people should have good luck.  I can look at myself and shake my metaphorical head at my undying belief about how reality should be, and my deep, deep soul's stubborn refusal to give up this belief that is so harmful to my peace of mind.

I call it harmful because it leads me to sadness or even anger when I work hard or I am kind and generous and I have nothing but troubles. I mean, doesn't virtue have a reward, other than the internal psychic one?  No, little one, it doesn't.  

There are so many levels of wisdom above this childish yearning for a different reality, a world with different rules.  Out to at least 3 sigma, I am completely at peace with and in tune with reality as it truly is, that outcomes are not solely the result of hard work or virtue but include societal monkey wrenches like racism, sexism or a culture determined to keep you poor, and also the personal luck variables like whether you get that coveted passage on the Titanic, or you miss your "chance" and stay alive.

Paula has worked hard and been virtuous. She has had a knack for engaging topics and has skill in drawing the best from her guests.  She also hit her stride at the right time, as Voice America was getting started and ramping up.  As Malcolm Gladwell explains in Outlier, timing is a big factor in success. 

And I don't care a bit about any of that.  My inner 5 year old is jumping up and down with delight because one of the Good Guys has hit the big time, a well-deserved success has occurred.  I'm going to let her jump up and down, and keep striving for more wisdom tomorrow.  For today..... listen to her shows.  Enjoy!

Down the Driveway, into a Wonderworld

Last night, I came home at 1 AM after picking up someone at the airport.  It’s a rural property, and as my headlights swept down the long driveway, at the far edge of the property 8 glowing eyes twinkled back at me.  The tapeti lucidi of a group of deer!  Two of them swiveled their heads and half-stood, but the others were unworried.  Although they’d never seen me come or go at that ungodly hour before, they knew that I was not a danger.  As I pulled up and parked as far from them as possible, and then exited as quietly as possible, the two “nervy” ones settled down into their sleep positions again. The doe, young fawn and two teen males, who might have been the mum’s fawns from last year, made my heart sing.  The peaceful energy as they settled back to sleep made me smile, but it was more than just a charming scene.  For just over two years, I’ve been watching the local deer who live in proximity to my healing & retreat center.  Generations have grown up under my fascinated attention.  Yet there was more to experience, a whole world of movement and activity, safety and comfort as well as ambush and death, going on mere feet from my door, that I knew absolutely nothing about, because it was happening during the hours when I wasn’t watching.

It makes sense, of course.  Homo sapiens is a diurnal species, as are deer.  We all sleep at night.  No matter how mindful I may be of my surroundings, there will always be lives being lived, sometimes mere feet away from me, that I know nothing about.  Still, this experience has sparked a new respect for the wonder and excitement to be found in life.  It’s so easy for us to think that we understand “what’s going on,” that reality is a known quantity.  If we discover that we don’t even really know what is happening in our physical environment, how certain should we be – about anything?  No matter how well we may think we are “on top of” our lives, we will continue to turn a corner, head down a driveway and walk straight into delight, and wonder, and beautiful, sweet new worlds.  

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I offer 30 minute Exploration Sessions for new potential clients who want to get from where they are to where they want to be.  For the kinds of barriers that I am most effective in demolishing, the transformation I can drive is absolutely amazing.  People like you have been freed from a lifetime of 50-pound emotional packs they never knew they were lugging.  Trauma is healed.  Habits and addictions like smoking and poor nutrition are overcome.  Lives are transformed.  If you have a problem that I am not certified in or prefer not to work with, I'll tell you, and recommend a good alternative.  I love to show people ways to save money through effective between-visit work.

It all starts with an email or phone call. We can do very powerful healing work in any time zone, via the wonders of videoconferencing!   victoria.leo.reiki@gmail.com   www.soaringdragon.biz   253-203-6676 (Pacific Time, normal working hours M-F, Sat occasionally)

Listening to the Sounds of Autumn (Fall)

One of the great joys of this season is the visual appeal of bright colors - red, yellow, orange - as the leaves change colors and then fall.  The English word "Fall" for this season refer to the falling leaves.  And what a beautiful, joyous vision it is!

So why do I talk about the "sounds" of fall?  Well, in my house, more is falling than just leaves.  Did I mention that I live surrounded by 19 oak trees.  Oaks produce acorns!  Every time we have a wind storm, that wind detaches a lot of acorns, which are thrown against my roof with force, producing quite a clatter and barrage of "bang, bang, bang, bang."

I laugh about the clamor with my neighbors. And I admit that raking and sweeping all the acorns from the driveway every morning isn't the most fun form of exercise I can imagine.  Yet when I allow myself to stop being annoyed about the acorns, I see so much beauty in the "music" of those acorns falling on my roof all day and all night.

And the best part of it all?  When I go out to sweep and rake every morning, right after I meditate and practice Reiki for 40-60 minutes, I enjoy the cool air, the diffuse light of right-after-dawn, and the quiet stillness in which deer come to feed on the acorns.  They remind me of the joys that that fall music brings me.... and I remember to pile up the acorns where the does and fawns can find them, instead of removing all of them.

What sounds of fall do you hear where you live?  Do you take early-morning walks and watch the earth change its colors and sing new songs to you?