book recos

I'm in an input phase. Came home from the library yesterday with an armful of books and did not get up from the recliner until many hours later. Sometimes I love to just disappear inside the covers of a book and not come out again until it's over. Luckily, my kids are old enough to get their own meals, and I read pretty quickly.

Devoured Julia Cameron's autobiography, Floor Samples. I never got around to reading The Artist's Way, although I've heard wonderful things about it. But I trust those book spines that call so clearly to me from their shelves, so I brought home the biography of a woman I knew nothing about. Whew, what a whirlwind of a life!

Even though I don't feel even remotely creatively blocked, I feel inspired to try The Morning Pages - three pages written every morning stream-of-consciousness style. Still haven't decided whether I want to write with a keyboard or pen. If you haven't heard about this technique, you can read the scoop at www.theartistsway.com in the Tools tab.

Also read The God Theory by Bernard Haisch. My mind is still reeling from the implications of this book. Much of it I'd heard before from a metaphysical rather than scientific perspective. One concept in particular really packs a whallop for me. I'll probably botch this explanation up, so if you are at all interested, make sure to read the book.

You know how a slide projector with no slide in it just projects white light, which actually contains every possible color? Then you put the slide in, and it filters out various colors in the spectrum so that all that remains for us to see on the screen is the blue of the sky or the red of the tablecloth.

Haisch hypothesizes that our brains create our experiences by filtering out various bits of information from the white light that contains absolute potential (God). This concept of the brain as filter or reducer rather than a creator blows me away.

It supports our current model of the 'use it or lose it' biology of the brain. It explains why newborns are able to recognize every sound in every human language, but within months can no longer recognize sounds that are not part of the language that is spoken around them. Maybe what we call socialization is simply the cultural training of our offsprings' filters!

This also explains how autistic savants might have such stunning abilities - their filters are "damaged", and the crack allows them access to more potential than our "normal" filters do. Okay, I think I better go get the book here:

If you think of the white light as a metaphor of infinite, formless potential, the colors on a slide or frame of film become a structured reality grounded in the polarity that comes about through intelligent subtraction from that absolute formless potential. It results from the limitation of the unlimited. I contend that this metaphor provides a comprehensible theory for the creation of a manifest reality (our universe) from the selective limitation of infinite potential (God).
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I also argue that the individual consciousness comes about through this same process. Our minds are filtered from the mind of God. Our thoughts are filtered from the thoughts of God.

I resonate deeply with his idea that we are all little bits of God, wearing masks that make us forget who we really are so we can have physical experiences for the fun of it. I think the Hindus call this Lila -- the play of God.

'Cause when you think about it, what else does an Omnipresent, Omnipotent, and Omniscient have on its ToDo list? Why not mix things up a little? And how fun would the games be if we could remember that it was all just pretend? It's so much more interesting if we think it's real. When kids are playing pretend and their character dies, it's not that big of a deal. They just create a new character and come back into the game. Even the bad guys just make the game more fun by adding drama and contrast.

Yeah, of course there's probably much more to the story of Life than that, but I figure I'll have plenty of time to get all that worked out later. Probably MUCH later. For now, I like this. It makes sense to me -- it feels light and playful, and makes me happy to be alive.

I was never big on traditional religion because it just didn't make sense to my heart that some people could be so very right and others so completely wrong about something as important as ETERNITY.

I couldn't get behind a God that actually cared if I ate meat on a Friday. Does he really not have better things to do?

But this -- the idea that we are all Godbits playing in the physical realm just for the fun of it, just for the experience of exanding our Self in new ways -- this, I can get behind. This God does not care who ate meat and who took his name in vain, it's all just part of the fun of experiencing Itself in myriad forms and combinations and permutations. This God has no need to judge. This God, well .... this God kinda sounds like pure Love.

elevator speech

During a walk with my friend Patrick yesterday, the conversation turned to elevator speeches. Those are the marketing tool that you prepare to describe and promote your business in 30 seconds or less - approximately the amount of time you'd have to interact with a stranger in an elevator.

During coach training, we were advised to come up with a quick and pithy description of our coaching services. Even though there are lots of good formulas to help with this, I never had much luck with it. I'd create nice little scripts, but could never remember them later. Patrick suggested something I like so much better:

Just show up in the present moment, pay full attention to the person you are talking to, and trust that if they ask you what you do, the answer that arises naturally will be good enough.

Part of my resistance to the elevator speech concept was that retrieving my prepared script from of my memory banks took a lot of effort, and diverted my attention from the other person. I also hated feeling like I was reciting something that was out of context ... static, rather than dynamic ... dead, rather than alive and growing.

Skilled marketers would probably say that my blurb must have needed some fine-tuning, and that's certainly true! But maybe it's even truer that I'm just not a pre-scripted person.

It's nice to have faith that the fresh content springing from mind to mouth in the moment is adequate enough. Being spontaneously authentic might even be a better way to help folks who are looking for what we have to offer to recognize us when they find us.

techniques for being in the moment

this page is amazing. it teaches simple, quick and powerful techniques that change your inner experience immediately. I'm especially intrigued at their contention that projecting any energy, even love, toward someone is manipulative and draining for the sender. It's a fascinating read.
http://www.kenpage.com/healingtechniques/moment.html