And how it’s taboo to like it.

Or how people think that people with money are dicks. Or unscrupulous. Or ridiculously lucky. Or taking money from people who need it.

Sigh.

I find it interesting that we don’t have these conversations about love or health, the two other resources that support us.

We never say, People who are loved are dicks. or It’s not spiritual to be loved.

No, we don’t say that.

I’m not saying Money is love. Money is way more neutral than love is.

I’m just saying that money has very little to do with personal value. It’s got something to do with safety, but more than anything, it’s got everything to do with what you do with it.

when I have money…

I find it very easy to buy a friend a beer. I buy art. I buy food. I buy books. I buy yarn. I give money to people with dreams to be fulfilled. I buy stuff that either informs me or makes me happy.

I spend money, probably like you spend money. I invest in the people and ideas that give me joy.

What’s wrong with that? Nothing.

When I have money, I have more opportunities to be generous.

And to spend it on stuff I like. And to spend it on people I love.

So why the flag in the sand?

Because I want you to know that you have my permission to like money too. You are not a bad person for it.

You have my permission to ask for a raise, to raise your rates, to buy that book, or piece of jewelry or new running shoes. You have my permission if you need my permission.

You have my permission to take 5 minutes to think about how you feel about money.

You can stop hating on rich people. Because they aren’t having a more fabulous life just because they can spend money in ways you can’t. Good lord. That’s a ridiculous reason to hate somebody.

You can stop feeling bad for not having money. Or for having money. Because money has nothing to do with your worth. Really. REALLY.

What you feel about money has something to do with what you feel about you.

Profound, huh?

It’s taken me a long time to get to the point where I like money. A LONG TIME.

And a long time to get to the point where I like me.

Really. REALLY.

And I don’t want it to be so hard for you.

Let’s just sit with the whole how you feel about money has something to do with how you feel about you for a minute. Or a day. Let’s sit with that for a day.

Tell me.

Tell me about money. And your feelings about it. And your hang-ups. And your awesome.

Ah! I’m back from Chicago!

My new friend, Yoshiko, shared with me the meaning of the Japanese suffix,-Chan.
It means little or dear one.

So now I want to say that to everyone. I want to say Hello! Caz-Chan, Lilly-Chan and Ming-Chan and Amna-Chan and Karen-Chan, and Meroko-chan and all the other friend-chans who read this blog, and of course, those who attended my Chicago seminar- Welcome! Welcome Lisa-Chan and Jill-Chan and Joanna-Chan and Yoshiko-Chan and Heather-Chan and Shannon-Chan and Sue-Chan and Ruth-Chan and all the rest of yous-Chan!

Dear ones,

Today I am feeling blessed by my fortune to know so many kind people. I feel like my life is surrounded by good loving people who care about the world we live in.

I feel so blessed.

And I’m thinking right now of all the other people in the world who feel blessed too.

I’m thinking of those who are in the pool of blessed-feeling, and then I am connecting to that pool, and realizing that we are in this together.

Which brings me, of course, to another way to reprogram the small-t truth.

(Aside: A small-t truth is the truth we tell ourselves that isn’t true at all (like I’m unworthy or I will always be poor or I was meant to suffer.) We all have small-t truths rattling around in our heads, and making us act in ways that aren’t part of our true nature).

Tonglen

Tonglen is a wonderful way to reprogram the small-t truth, though it feels like the antithesis of reprogramming.

This method is a Tibetan Buddhist contemplation meditation. In Tibetan, Tonglen means “sending and receiving”. In the wonderful world of Voila (A.K.A. this blog), we talk about sending and receiving energy all of the time. We talk about how we are in a constant flow, in a constant ebbing and flowing and pooling of each other’s energy.

A Tonglen Basketball Story

Each morning at 8:54 am, I hear the tang-tang-tang of a basketball being dribbled down my street. There is a teenager who goes to the neighborhood junior high who is obsessed with basketball, and he uses his walk to and back from school to practice.

When I hear that sound, I send him my best hopes for his day. Junior high is hard, and I’m assuming that every Junior High Student that I meet could use some good energy.

I am reminded by the sound of his basketball every morning to do so.

This is a form of Tonglen. It is a reminder to me that we are all going forth into the world and doing our best to achieve the numinous purpose of our lives.

A small-t truth may be that the teenagers who walk past my house are only good for the candy wrappers and pop bottles that drift into my yard with perpetual frequency. They exist in my world only to steal the flowers from my front garden.

I may resent their noise and presence.

But, if I am reminded each morning, by the same sound, to send out my highest energy to this young stranger, I start seeing the humanity in all teenagers, and when I pick up their garbage, I don’t resent them. I remember being a teenager myself, and all of the feelings that come with that time.

And I see that I am not so different now.

This is Tonglen.

The meditative practice of Tonglen does three things:

1. We experience, fully, the suffering associated with whatever we’re working through.

2. We recognize and relate to others who are experiencing the same thing.

3. We observe the suffering of ourselves and others dissolving, ebbing away, transforming into a greater truth. A Big-T truth.

An example:

Perhaps, like me, you have moments when you worry about your cash flow.

Will you have enough to do what you want to do?

Will you have enough to survive?

Do you have enough now?

You find yourself freaking out over someone over-charging you a dollar at the store.

You cross the street to save a penny per gallon on gasoline.

You wake up at four in the morning and desperately try to figure out how to increase your cash flow.

You sell your services/products for much less than what they are worth.

Yes? Are you there right now?

Okay. Try this:

1. Take a deep breath.
2. Bring your attention to your heart.
3. Imagine it as an empty room.
4. Now imagine sitting in this room.
5. Feel the entirety of your lack and desperation. Don’t hold back.
6. What is the texture of this? What is the physical pain of this? Where do you feel it in your body? Does it engulf you?
7. Now, take a deep breath and imagine all of the people right now who are feeling what you are feeling. You are not alone in this suffering. There are others who feel what you feel.
8. Reach out to them in your mind and heart. Reach out and say, “I bless you on your journey. I wish the very best for you.”
9. Hear them say the same back.
10. And then, watch the pain turn to peace. Invite the peace to dissolve and transform the pain of this small-t truth (“I will never have enough.”).
11. With the anxiety and pain gone, ask for a big-t truth to come forward.
12. The big-t truth might be “I have what I need. It is enough for today.”

Don’t be afraid that the pain won’t go away. Remember, everything is temporary.

I used Tonglen every day when I was going through a very difficult time in my life. It opened me up to the suffering around me. It helped me see the humanity in those who crossed my path. It deepened my understanding of the world and my place in it. It brought me peace and Big-T Truth!

Try it. And if you get stuck, please let me know. If you get overwhelmed, stick with it, because Tonglen always has a very peaceful ending.

P.S.- a traditional Tonglen chant is “breathe in pain, breathe out light”- I’m not such a big fan of breathing in pain or darkness. I understand what they are getting at, but I think it’s too easy to invite in negative energy, and then you have a whole ‘nother problem.

What Say You?

How does Tonglen help you? How do you see and relate to the suffering of others around you?

But if your day-to-day experience is like mine, organized acts of compassion are difficult.  Constant day-to-day compassion is hard.

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed.  It’s easy to start to think that we are the only ones that can make the changes the world needs to see.   We may also start to feel that people don’t understand the importance of our urge to help.

We take on  the role of the martyr.

You know about martyrs right?

They help so much that they break down. They are in distress. They are giving everything they can to others, way more than they can possibly sustain.

I’m not a big fan of the martyrdom. Too many arrows.

What causes martyrdom?

Compassionate martyrdom is caused by several internal feelings and thoughts : an overwhelmed feeling of too much need, and a misguided idea that nobody else is helping and/or only you can do it.

The world doesn’t work that way.  If you died tomorrow, the world would not fall apart without you. It wouldn’t be the same, don’t get me wrong,  but the whole world is not making or breaking depending on what you do.

Shocking, isn’t it?  Keep recycling.

The world needs you though. It needs your unique self.  But it doesn’t need you to the point of consuming you.

It’s easy to get mired in these feelings of overwhelm and self-importance.

Compassion Supply and Demand

How awesome would it be if we could buy the world a Coke™?

There’s roughly six billion people in the world. Even if you got it on sale (say for 33 cents a can), you’d need two Oprah fortunes to buy the world a Coke™.

(and you know, a certain part of the population would ask for tea or coffee or Pepsi™ or a glass of water. I would be so annoyed if I showed up at somebody’s house in Sweden, hand-delivering a can of coca-cola from the US, and they said, I’ll just have a glass of water.  )

I digress.

See, so, you can’t buy the world a coke. Don’t be overwhelmed by the needs of compassion you might find yourself feeling in this world. It’s not your job to fix the whole damn thing.

Here’s a song from Dar Williams about the world not falling apart because of us.

Let us  explore compassion lightly, with open, unbleeding hearts.

What say you?

Becca brought up compassion fatigue earlier this week. How are you compassionate? How do you find it easy? How do you find it hard? How do you find balance?

I was on my way to a meeting with my ex, which seemed like the perfect time to try these out.

This is not to say that I don’t look people in the eyes or hold compassionate spaces. I just don’t think about it consciously as much as I’d like. Like everyone else, I am in and out of consciousness in my actions.

So here’s my report on yesterday’s compassionate acts of “making a space for the words of others and looking people in the eyes”.

Eye Contact

I was at Tiny’s on Grand (quirky little pdx coffee shop) to meet my ex to talk about our 6th grader.

The barista had the most beautiful eyes. Her eyes were brown flecked with green. 

Our interaction changed with the look in the eye.

How do I describe this?

It was a deeper exchange of appreciation and value.  My words had more meaning, perhaps. She saw in my eyes how much I valued her opinion on the lemon muffin (LEMON MUFFIN!).  I saw that she was really actually happy to serve me (how often does that happen? I must pay more attention).  She even asked me how I wanted my cappuccino!

She was positively giddy when I thanked her for my coffee. I walked away thinking, How cool and weird is this?  and I need to do this more often. Why don’t I do this more often? Why do I have to try to do this?

Looking people in the eye with compassion is paying conscious loving attention to them.  It’s surreal, the difference it makes.

(Now here’s the thing. You can’t fake it. You can’t bug your eyes out without feeling the compassion in your heart or you’ll just come off as creepy.)

Holding a Space

Then I sat down at the table with my ex, with whom I often feel adversarial tendencies (great name for a band).

He’s a lawyer. He’s very organized.

He’s structure. I’m flow.

I freaked him out a little with the looking in the eye with compassion. But then, a minute later, he got used to it, and then he talked very frankly and with compassion about our son.

We had A GREAT CONVERSATION.  We had a WIN-WIN conversation, where both of us walked away feeling listened to, and where we have a great plan for helping our kid move forward at his school.

When I wanted to interrupt him, I just held a space for him to get his words out. Sometimes it took a awhile for him to get there. The funny thing:  I noticed he was doing the same for me, as I convoluted around the subject of teachers and technology.

There’s a phrase for these two acts: conversational presence.

I admire the people who hold spaces and look people in the eyes with compassion without consciously practicing it; the same way I admire people who dance when they walk.

What say you?

Wow- A whole week of luck making!

We’re in the final stretch. Can you feel it?

Have you seen the movie Run Fatboy Run?

Run Fatboy Run!

There’s this part where they talk about The Wall, that point in running where you just feel like you cannot take another step and you want your bed and that’s about it.

ugh. Horrible. Ugh.  The Wall Sucks.

And in the development of an abundant life, walls exist.

Pay Attention When Things Hurt

I am NOT saying push through the pain.  Because pain exists for a reason. Pain is something to avoid, unless you are very clear about what it will get you.

Discern the Difference

Pain hurts. Pain says ‘Stop’.

Effort says, “Really? Really? You want me to lift this? Really?”

When you listen and discern the difference, you can make an informed, in-synch decision about how to move forward towards your goal.

Timing is….wait for it….everything!

With effort, there comes a point of diminishing returns. If you pay attention and know where you are within the experience (yes, I know, this is difficult), then you can find the place in your effort where the momentum of your project can carry you along.  That’s called timing.

Try It

Take a look at something you’re doing. Find the resting spot, the place where you can rest while your project does the work.  Take a look at your projects and see which hurt and which just have effort in them.  If they hurt, measure the worthiness of it.

Where is this resonating today?

I’d love to hear about your experience.

Today, a very simple measuring tool.

There is Joy in Daily Success.

Notice I didn’t say “You must make a milestone every day. EVERY DAY.”

Because milestone is a painful word and joy is a joyful one.

The success doesn’t have to be big. It might be that today you just move a little tiny bit forward, where if you weren’t watching, you might have missed that incremental change.

The Point

Do you remember, in the bible, that part in the beginning where God looked at his work and said, “It is Good.”

Didn’t that strike you as odd?  If this guy is so perfect, why did he need to announce that? And who was there to hear it anyway?

When we look at our work and can find something in it that spurs us forward, we gain momentum.  And a little bit of progress can be a very big deal.

The world turns on tiny details (and a big axis).  Find your axis and be spurred on by the little details and you will find yourself in the midst of an abundant experience.

Tomorrow- Pain and Effort aren’t the same thing…and other obvious comments….

But now…what was your daily success? Tell me?

What does abundance mean?

And why do you want it?

Abundance to me means- love, touch, laughter, kids, dogs, cats, warmth and peace of mind.  It means a roof over my  head. It means quiet time. It means the means to throw a party. It means the means to be generous. It means books. And the occasional pretty thing.

When I have these things, I feel abundant.  I feel like I have enough.

Abundance is Sustenance

I’ve had other kinds of abundance. I once owned 33 brooks brothers t-shirts. They were all black.

I once traveled all over the world on somebody else’s dime .

It was fabulous.

But it didn’t sustain me.  It was not abundant.

Define it

When  you define what abundance means to you, you can more easily attain it.  It’s like focusing the eye of a binocular or microscope.

Otherwise you’re striving after a goal that may or may not be worth striving for.

Abundance is not money.

It could be. But money is just another form of energy. That’s why they call it currency.

Steady on the What

So, maybe make a list on what sustains you. What gives you a full heart and tummy. See what you’ve already got.  You are probably more abundant than you thought.

Make a list of what you want.  Then ask, “How would this sustain me?”

Once you know what sustains you,  the aspects of how you get it are not as important.

Creative on The How

You are not your job.  The world is in a different place than it was even two years ago.

It is such a rare occurrence now to hear the dreaded “What do you do?”

When I hear people wax on about how freaking awesome it is to push widgets, trying to convince themselves along with me that widget pushing is the most awesome thing ever,  well, I feel bad for them.

A little story

For Valentine’s Day, four years ago, my sweetheart took me to St. Lucia (I am the luckiest woman in the world sometimes.  I know).

We chartered a sailboat for a few days.  The sailboat came with a captain named Sheldon. Sheldon was 20, a St Lucian who had finished high school and now worked sailing people up and down the coast of this small Caribbean island.

Sheldon was funny.  He noticed that I don’t use sunscreen, and he told me that Brian must like his woman ‘extra-crispy’.

So, we got to talking one afternoon as he was teaching me how to tack.

He said, “You know, you people go home to the snow and the rain and work 50 weeks out of the year, and then you come down here for two weeks and soak up the sun. And people call you rich.  I work 50 weeks out of the year on this boat and when I’m on vacation, I’m down here too. And people call me poor.”

Abundance to Sheldon is sunny skies and a sailboat. He’s saving his money to buy his own charter and be his own boss.

The How Does Not Matter, as Long as It’s Honorable

You can be creative on the how.

If somebody had told me 10 years ago that I would be talking to pets and giving guidance to humans for a living, I would have laughed them out of the room.

Me?

I was destined to be a Vice President of Marketing.  I was going to set the world on fire with my hot strategic marketing skills.

Pffffft!

You are Not Stuck.

You are not stuck at whatever you are doing.

You make a list of your what, and you check it for things that really bring you joy and peace of mind, and then you keep  your options open for getting there.

Because the answer may not be the soul-sucking solution that is currently presenting itself as THE ONLY OPTION.  There is rarely ever just one option.

Okay- Leave one comment from your list- what provides you with a sense of abundance?

Tomorrow- There is Joy in Daily Success..

Yesterday, we talked about how life happens for us, not to us.  Now we’re going to talk about the building blocks of creation.

The second tenet is this:  Chaos is unformed creation.

Everything in this physical plane is in flux.  Things are either in creation or decay.  We are born with a desire to create: to create babies, art, a home, a career. We’re born with a desire to create ourselves in this world.

Enter Chaos

So what do we have to work with? Simply this: Chaos.  We have just what we have around us.  And life is messy. Seriously, I’m writing this at 10:30 at night, with two dogs begging for my popcorn, and a full day of work tomorrow.

I thought today that I’d clean the clutter that’s plaguing my sweeheart’s side of the bed. I didn’t even get close to it.

That’s okay, I’ll get there.

Chaos is Unformed Creation

Everybody wants abundance to be clean and easy.  A well-lit path. They want a balanced, clear experience.

When things fall apart,  the common response is to see it as a barrier, a sign that this wasn’t meant to be.

Chaotic experiences on your path can mean a myriad of things.

Let’s Explore a Little Further

Chaos is unformed creation. Power is directed energy.  When you have power over a situation, you have enough energy to direct at the issue to make everything work.

So, when you’re reaching for a new thing, increasing your abundance, there’s going to be a place where you don’t have quite enough energy to direct at your old thing and your new thing, and thus, chaos is formed.

What You Need

Here’s where you borrow a little power.  Maybe you talk your sister into cleaning your house.  You hire a babysitter for a week. You shut the door to your office and work in your dining room. Whatever it takes to change the equation long enough to reach a goal.

Don’t forget…

You can’t trade off forever. You can incrementally make your way up the mountain, but don’t forget to make a base camp and pack extra energy bars. Take naps.

Creation formed from Chaos- Timing is Everything

I know how you feel. You’re midway through a project. You feel the momentum building and then your kid comes home and says that he needs to make 100 flyers by tomorrow.

Ugh. You feel your creation spin down. Your project is at risk.  You are in a balancing act.

How do you make this happen? How do you keep things going?

First remember that the right time will come around again.

Leave your project in a good spot, with your next tasks jotted down.

Then put it out of your mind and go work on those flyers.  Then wait for things to come around again.

Tomorrow- Steady on The What, Creative on The How.

It’s my flag in the sand on the continent of abundance.

It’s a path to abundance  (as you define it).

It’s not a surefire gimmick. It is not the Shamwow! of Abundance.

Also, Billy Mays will not yell at you as you use the Good Luck Manifesto to blot out stains.

It Is This:

This is not the Law of Attraction.

The only Law of Attraction I know is gravity.

The Good Luck Manifesto is a common sense path to Good Luck.

Yep. Good Luck.  Good things happening. Feeling really lucky. Feeling blessed.

The First Tenet-Life Happens for Us, Not to Us

We’re on this rock for a reason.

We’ve got to be.

We aren’t just here to exist and die.

We’re here to explore, learn and love.

I don’t have a lot of scientific proof for this, but so far, it’s worked for me.

And we can see some interesting examples in the deep sea, so let’s go there.

The Warty Angler Fish

Consider, for a moment, the bioluminescence of the Warty Angler Fish, who uses a light at the end of a warty appendenge  on his head to attract prey.

(*snick* I said Warty Appendage)

The bioluminescence  is actually created from a symbiotic relationship with bacteria.

This fish turned bacteria and a weird warty appendage into a food source.

That’s abundance.

If you believe that Life happens for you, not to you, then you will find that the things within your reach are ways to abundance.  Things that may look like they were put there on accident, are things to explore.

And it’s way easier than Macgyver.

You don’t need a stick of gum and a match in your pocket.

Explore this.

What do you have? What are you? What unique things were you born with? What have you acquired in your backpack?  What do you have to share with your fellow travelers?

Tomorrow-

Chaos is Unformed Creation (and power is directed energy).  Let’s have a Matilda moment together, and create out of the chaos.

And I pep-talked myself all the way out of bed, into my swimsuit and over to the pool.

Come on, Come on, Come on. It’s all right. Come on. We’re going to get started. Come on.

It was the prayer of the half-dead battery, when you haven’t had enough sleep and there’s a little too much to do.

And then came the lecture.

This swimming thing is not going to be like running or biking or yoga, where you do it for a week and then you get bored. You always do that and you’re not going to do that this time. Geez, can’t you stick with anything?

I felt like I was pulling myself by the ear into the locker room. I was being a little ugly with me.

But I got there. I got to the pool. And I walked out in my flip flops and the pool was full of dudes.

I usually go very early. Today was a little later and it was one big man-fest of dudes in goggles slicing the water.

And the last thing I wanted was a man-fest.   I wanted to putter through my lane in a peaceful and strong way.

So I got in the hot tub. And I thought about the inner me. And Inner Me said, Hey, I bet there’s some aspect of this man-fest that is useful to us.

And I said, Shut up, Inner Me.

And Inner Me said, That’s just the tired talking. Let’s hang tight.

So I reached out to the divine source, and I thought about contracting and expanding. I thought about how the weight of life can hold you down and give you structure. I thought about the suffering of the world.

And then I realized that I was the tuna in a soul sandwich. I had the inner me soothing on the inside, my sweet divine spark. I had God on the outside going,  It’s okay just to sit here and appreciate the warm water.

Nobody was judging me. Nobody. And that included me.

Nobody was assessing the burdens of life at that moment. I was just sitting there in a soul sandwich and that felt good.  And Peaceful.

So, I prayed for the suffering people and I got out of the hot tub and Inner Me said Just 10 minutes of lap time. And I said, I’ll come back this afternoon.

We are never alone. We are really never alone. And we can put our burdens away for a minute or two.  I hope you have a moment in your soul sandwich today.

Read on to the next installment of the Inner Me Series: The purpose of the Inner Me.