bleeping intention

I have somehow come to be the co-founder of a study group for the movie, "What the Do We Know!?" -- really, my friend, Ansur (aka the Lord of Truly Atrocious Puns), is the true founder, as all I've contributed is the name of the group (Bippety-Bobbity-Bleep) and my presence at a handful of meetings. I've been thinking this morning about one of the comments made in our Saturday afternoon meeting, about how so many people move through their days on automatic pilot.

I'm wondering if this stems from a general, comfortable numbness to the mundane affairs of our everyday lives. For too many people, life hasn't turned out to be anything remotely similar to the grand adventures we imagined for ourselves as children, and perhaps we now choose to "tune out" from sheer disappointment, or even pain. Our lives lack excitement, and much of our adult life experience is devoid of conscious investment. We go from day to day, paycheck to paycheck, job to job, focused more on supporting our own existence than encouraging growth and joy. So much of our precious time is wasted in mindless and even escapist activities -- from "getting through" the daily commute to "vegging out" in front of the television -- with so many opportunities for true engagement just passing us by.

Of course, this is hardly news to anyone.

But it got me to thinking about a particular segment in the movie, "What the Do We Know!?", in which Dr. Joe Dispenza talks about how he "creates his day":

I wake up in the morning and I consciously create my day the way I want it to happen. Now sometimes, because my mind is examining all the things that I need to get done, it takes me a little bit to settle down and get to the point of where I'm actually intentionally creating my day. But here's the thing: When I create my day and out of nowhere little things happen that are so unexplainable, I know that they are the process or the result of my creation. And the more I do that, the more I build a neural net in my brain that I accept that that's possible. (This) gives me the power and the incentive to do it the next day.
[source: What the Do We Know!?]

The transcript of this interview is available here.

I first tried a similar exercise back in the early nineties, when I felt trapped in a dead-end, low-paying job in a bad economy, where my true skills and talents weren't even being touched on. I had been given a new age book about angels, and there was a section in there about creating future experience through present gratitude -- in other words, be grateful now for already having what it is that you wish to manifest. The specific exercise involved sitting down each evening and imagining that it is really the end of the next day (e.g., sit down on Sunday night and imagine that it is Monday night). Then go through a mental inventory of the anticipated day, imagining everything going smoothly according to plan, with some nice surprises and serendipitous connections blended in. And very simply be grateful for the beauty and prosperity of that day. The idea is that with practice, you end up creating the day exactly to your own specifications. I didn't stick with it long enough to develop that level of manifestation, but the exercise at least helped me to understand that I had greater power over my own destiny than I'd been allowing myself.

We absolutely create our own realities, and our own experiences of the world. We create our own lives according to our individual beliefs, and our life experiences will be just as open or just as limiting as our personal assumptions. Each one of us creates the universe. That power is awesome, and it is too often unrecognized, taken for granted, or simply thrown away.

I am also reminded of Wayne Dyer's book, The Power of Intention: Learning to Co-Create Your World Your Way, and the accompanying hours-long PBS special that is routinely aired during pledge drives. I first read this book in the winter of 2003-2004, and it was especially helpful as I was preparing my house for sale, and clearing out everything inside of it, in order to relocate from Virginia to Oregon. While most intention-seekers won't find this to be a particularly ground-breaking work, Dyer's efforts to bring intentional living more into the mainstream are heartening.

I am always encouraged to see people taking a more active role in their own lives, effectively creating "real magic in the real world." That's not a bad summation of my own efforts these days, and it's good to have these reminders every now and again to help keep me on-track in the thicker-thinking western paradigm of distraction.

What do you do to create your day and your world? You have, within the confines of your deepest self, true magic. If you could make any change you wanted to in the outside world (because, indeed, you can), what would it be? What is your fairytale?

positioning

You have probably heard about Cindy Sheehan, who has been protesting outside President Bush's Texas home following the death of her son, Casey, who was serving in Iraq. Casey was killed in Sadr City, Iraq, on April 4, 2004. But it wasn't simply the loss of her son that prompted activism from this previously very normal and quiet woman -- her decision to take action sprang from a meeting she had with the President in the months following her son's death.

While she found him to be a "man of faith," she also said later that he seemed "totally disconnected from humanity and reality." And when she later heard him speak of soldiers' deaths as "noble," Sheehan felt she had to do something.
[source: CNN.com: "Protesting mom's normal life ended with son's death," 14 August 2005]

I was particularly frustrated when reading this account of Sheehan's meeting with Bush in June 2004 -- a meeting in which Bush is described as behaving as if "it was a party."

And so Sheehan has been camped outside the Bush home in Crawford, Texas, since Saturday, August 6.

"My whole family would rather I was home more than gone," [Sheehan] said. "Some people have tried to discourage me from doing what I'm doing, but I can't be discouraged, I can't be stopped because I know what I'm doing is so important. It's a matter of life or death."
[ibid]

She couldn't be more right.

Also in the news in the past few days has been the release of material related to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks -- specifically recordings of firefighter's radio communications from September 11 as well as transcriptions of interviews with rescue workers and others that were conducted in the days and weeks following.

Should the timing of this release come as any surprise?

Bush's approval rating for his personal vendetta in Iraq is abysmally low, and he now has people running the gamut from hardcore protesters to more unlikely activists, such as Cinday Sheehan, openly protesting his actions.

Not that I seek to devalue these recordings and transcripts in any way -- nor to underplay the experiences and ordeals they reveal -- but it seems awfully convenient to release these now, as a "reminder to the American people of what we're fighting for" to boost support for the war in Iraq, and to once again play upon the mass-fed, manipulated conclusion that Saddam Hussein was behind those terrorist attacks in September 2001.

Or maybe it's just me.

To support Cindy Sheehan in her continued peaceful protest, please consider attending or hosting a vigil for Cindy on Wednesday, August 17th.

give a man a fish

Somewhere in the late 1990s, I ran a across an age-old maxim that had been updated for the computer age: "Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man how to use the internet, and he won't bother you for weeks."

Ah, I wish that were so.

I have found the internet to be a particularly empowering tool. It enables me to do research on networks and systems that I wouldn't otherwise be able to access, to get answers without having to make a flurry of phone calls, to compare products and services, to network with others in a variety of fields, and to stay in touch with family and friends. At the same time, this 'wired lifestyle' has produced a significant annoyance -- in the form of online family and friends who are fully capable of searching out such resources for themselves, but who instead have decided that it's much more efficient to just instant-message me every three seconds.

It's true that I am a geek-girl, and I might have made a very happy life for myself as a professional researcher, but I seem to have unintentionally become some sort of (unpaid) all-hours Internet librarian and tech support representative.

Perhaps it's my own fault for wanting to help people, and for wanting to share what I've learned -- something I honestly enjoy. Sometimes I need help, too, and I will ask for it, but I try to do this only sparingly so as not to take unfair advantage of anyone. My mistake, of course, has been my assumption that once I show someone how to do something, that he will actually try it out on his own -- that she will learn how to use the skill I've just taught, rather than simply depending upon me to do it for her each time. When did people decide that self-reliance was inconvenient and unnecessary?

I have several friends who are building websites, personal and professional. Some are using very basic WYSIWYG web-building software applications, while others are trying to build slightly more sophisticated websites using online utilities offered by their web hosting services. I am an admitted old-school HTML coder, having learned HTML from scratch beginning back in 1995 when self-coding was the only option, and so I always encourage people to learn even the most basic of HTML commands (which is quite easy to do), but thus far no one has taken this advice.

The problem is that these friends and relations want me to check out their new websites, after each update they've made -- we're talking every content revision, every new comma that is added. These are my friends, and I want to help them.... but too many of them also expect me to tell them exactly what to do to fix this problem or tweak that element, because they don't want to learn HTML themselves and also don't want to call their own tech support.

Still others want me to do their online research for them, from scouting out driving directions to the beach or finding out if a local restaurant serves vegetarian food, to finding complete service option listings for their local wireless phone service, comparing satellite television plans, and scrounging out system requirements for various antiquated computer operating systems. Simply taking a moment to point them in the right direction -- e.g., sending a URL where they can begin their own research -- rarely prompts the petitioner to take up his or her own quest. It's no wonder that I've not had any time to do any real work lately.

I find great satisfaction in being able to rely upon my own 'know-how,' and I am genuinely surprised that others do not similarly value this in themselves. Maybe I should start charging for these services. I would feel like a real heel doing that, but it might help these folks understand how much work I'm actually doing for them and encourage them to develop their own skills -- and would also help me to establish clearer boundaries. I see more and more people expecting 'something for nothing' here in the U.S., and people who are increasingly refusing to think independently or to decide for themselves what is important, but that's another blog entry.