Adding Meaning

Not gonna lie, but this started out as a filler entry because I haven’t blogged in about two months. That’s fitting, for reasons that you’re about to find out about.

This was one of my more successful “Artist Way” page exercises, starting off with a question, and then just writing automatically and seeing where it goes, even if completely contradicts things I’ve said before.

Then again, maybe what comes automatically is what I actually think to be true than a hundred conscious deliberations I can conjure at will.

Why do people assign great meaning to things in life? Why do some people and not others do that? I think it comes with making a habit of looking at the big picture, because when you really do see the BIG picture, you find yourself looking at precisely….nothing.

That’s it. Nothing. There’s nothing significant or meaningful in the big picture. At the widest possible scope of life that human eyes and human minds and human hearts can detect, there’s absolutely no evidence that life’s anything but a blank canvas onto which randomness smears itself from corner to corner.

But there’s a quality about human identity that cannot process that meaninglessness, can’t take it. For some, it feels like a life threat, as imminent as a knifepoint at the throat, as existential as a predator lurking beyond the camplight in the dark. The big picture awareness can suck, because it takes you away from the now, makes whatever task or ritual or relationship or exercise seem pointless because from that place of awareness, it is. All of it is.

A few people can press through life with that awareness, can accept the meaninglessness, that dull ache in the middle of you, yearning for more, knowing there isn’t anything left in the buffet. You grow up, you fall in love, you make money, you travel, you have kids of your own, do a few amazing things in life, gain people, lose people, enjoy the socially-approved achievements of economy and religion and advertising and intellectualism…. all the while never satisfying that ache, and never bothering to. You just live and die in the harbor without ever pressing the horizon again, accepting whatever the tide brings in.

There’s a difference, though, between acceptance of the big picture and integrating it into your life, because the grand scheme exists in the smallest work task, the most invisible pixel of a wordslinger’s prose in progress, the tiniest drop of coffee, the littlest glint of sweat on sunkissed skin, the dull ache for the mere promise of someone miles away.

None of it has any meaning, but for some of us, that’s unacceptable at a cellular level. It feels like a life threat, and we have to eliminate it. And we do that by assigning meaning to everything around us, inside us, even the things beyond the horizon that are impossible for us to see on our own terms.

Creating meaning where there is none may be the only way we survive at all. But once the meaning’s there, it’s there. And we can go about our days doing more than just surviving.

(Written to Lana Del Rey’s “Young and Beautiful“).

The Bittersweet Beauty of Human Imperfection

It’s Good Friday, or, as we former Christians like to call it up here in Greater Toronto, the long weekend. 

My uncle Andy, fellow McMaster alumnus in the Engineering program and de facto spiritual guru who basically knows everything about the groovy dimension, introduced me to Gnostic mysticism.  Now, my memory’s hazy and I’m too lazy to Google, but I remember one interesting takeaway from my own sniffing around, and it was this: part of Gnostic belief was that Jesus’ example was that ordinary people could also learn to perform the miracles that Christ himself accomplished, that Jesus’ real intent was not to create a “following”, but to show that we were all divine creatures with equal potential power.  Because of this aspect of empowering the masses, the argument goes, the early Catholic elders suppressed this knowledge and executed anyone preaching Gnostic philosophy.

Something else on my mind lately: this idea of what Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert called “ruin [as] a gift”,  as “the road to transformation”.  Seems that many, though not all, of the most extraordinary people on Earth have had something bad happen to them, incidents and setbacks that have killed others facing the same circumstances. 

In one of my favourite sci-fi shows, Babylon 5, it’s revealed that some of the first sentient races in the galaxy spent a lot of their time going to the younger worlds to start wars and spread destruction for the sole purpose of seeing if the younger race would come back from disaster stronger.  The sheer resilience of life to survive isn’t necessarily a given: sometimes it needs the stimulation of deliberate destruction.

More recently, Whitley Strieber’s non-fiction book “The Key” about a conversation he had with a man possessed of hidden knowledge yielded the following (taken out of context to underline my point):

“Until you take your place, you will remain trapped.  The threats that have been delivered…are a test.  To pass it, you must defy them. Your place will not be given you. You must be strong enough to take it.”.

Religious holidays, though beautiful and fulfilling for those who do believe, remind me of many of the reasons I stopped believing in the first place. One of them is this idea of absolute purity and perfection, the attainment of a state of grace in which there is no longer darkness, or scars, or sin, or imperfections at all. That used to appeal to me once upon a time, mostly during childhood, but not now for one simple reason: it seems as uninteresting as fuck.

Moreover, getting to that state of grace seems to involve sacrificing way too many enjoyable experiences out of life: don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t sleep around, don’t take chances, don’t get bruised, or at the extreme, don’t listen to music, don’t make engraved images, don’t dance (don’t dance?).

As common as it is in organized religion, I’m seeing it more and more in personal development, and that’s turning me off to a large degree.  I won’t repeat the theme of my last few entries here, but I’ll say this much: I didn’t sign up to be bland, or to be told that my ability to “succeed” and self-actualize involved me giving up much of my physical and emotional experience of life.  I didn’t leave one system of thought that invalidated my humanity just to replace it with another.

In the past three months, I’ve had a lot of ups and downs, largely involving certain individuals who have taught me more about my more visceral strengths and limitations than even my “official” coaches and mentors.  I’ve been broken wide open and devastated, challenged and forced to explore my dark side. I’ve fallen into Hell and had to fight my way back. I’ve experienced great moments of ecstasy in the dark, and tasted of the bittersweet beauty of human imperfection. 

I’ve been a witness to and participant in the exposure of the underlying rot of some of the most treasured values and images that our society aspires to, says is the way to go.  I’ve seen the other side of sin, and regret nothing.  In fact, I now believe that we need to re-examine our definition of what true “sin” really is, because the one we have now, lends itself to non-functionality and too much suffering.  And I’ve been able to do it all without losing myself in the process.

All of the spiritual teachings that have inspired me to figure myself out speak about not being able to truly appreciate the Light without the existence of the Dark, and yet precious few of the spiritual teachers I know are willing to train us how to successfully descend into Hell and come back stronger. I suppose the reason for that is that there are enough people experiencing hardship and darkness and that the only work most coaches and spiritual teachers do is in getting them to move upwards.

But Christ, wouldn’t that be a kickass advanced level personal development course?  The conscious and deliberate exploration of sin, of vice, of the things that are too salty or too fatty or too sweet, dropping into Hell for the sake of making allies out of your demons?  Not so much Defence Against the Dark Arts as endurance training for the soul?  Battle scars on the heart, because we can take it.

The Gnostics say that Christ’s example was that we could all learn to feed hundreds from one basket, that we could all turn water into wine, walk on the sea, and rise after physical death.  Was it required of us to attain that state of grace in their construction?  Most likely, and that’s where they might be wrong. I no longer see this idea of personal growth as an either-or dialectic between eliminating all one’s vices and restraining oneself from negativity and succeeding versus indulging them and staying put.

As the cliché goes, the way I see it, we’re all going to die anyway, and when that happens, we’re headed straight back into Light anyway.

I don’t actually believe in Hell as a separate place so much as a state of feeling: I’ve seen people in the worst physical situations in near total joy; recently, I’ve seen people in the white picket fence idyll contemplating suicide just to stop the suffering they’re feeling.  Don’t let the nicely mowed lawns and air conditioning fool you. 

We’re here to experience the Light, and that requires an understanding of the Dark, not its daily suppression and censorship to satisfy someone else’s moral code established thousands of years ago or ten years ago on the motivational circuit. What is suppressed will surface, because it is part of you, too. 

Because we’re all worthy.  All of us.  Another bumper sticker: every saint has a past, every sinner has a future. Human imperfection gives us character, gives us stories and adventures, gives us the unstoppable crimson of righteous anger and the rusty flavour of wounded hearts, the blazing flame of bodily climax, and the cold blue of sadness in the night. 

In “The Key”, Strieber’s Master defines sin as “the denial to thrive”.  Maybe that’s the new definition we need to embrace, we creatures of light and dark.  Maybe teasing the Darkness is precisely the resistance exercise we need to have to train to our goodness, our inner Light. 

Then again, maybe that’s just me. 

Values and Stuff…

Been giving a lot of thought to values, lately.  Most people just give lip service to the idea, if even, and most of the time they define their “values” strictly by other people’s definitions (their religion, their parents, their culture, etc..).

Lately I’m growing a little sick of aspiring to goals and ambitions without really understanding what I’m doing it all for, and that means really looking at what I value in my life. So I took out a journal today an hour before my shift at the store and scratched out answers to the question WHAT DO YOU REALLY VALUE IN LIFE?  Here’s what I came up with:

Authentic Expression: Still working on a firm definition of this, but it’s mostly self-evident.

The Ascension of Imperfection:  I’ve said this before: I’m tired of aspiring to some ideal vision of a perfect diet, perfect body, perfect attitude, perfect home in order to be a success.  Imperfection is what creates character, and I don’t think it’s a choice between successful bland conformity and being an interesting failure on two legs, as personal growth teachings seem to indicate. Some of the most successful people have the most tremendous vices and character flaws.  Everyone’s a sinner to some degree.  I say, own it, do what you love, make it functional, and do the best you can on a daily basis to not piss on someone else’s rug.  You’ll be fine.

Simple Creature Comforts: I’m through with daydreaming about mansions and condos: the truth is I think I aped those “wants” as an effort to fit in with the self-help crowd.  Give me a safe, clean, bug-free bachelor apartment that faces the sunrise, stays warm in the winter, and some nice furniture, I’ll be content, and retain the option to upgrade to a palace later on if I change my mind.

  Ambiversion: My social time is fun and energetic 90% of the time, but when I drop off the planet to scribble or just veg, you may as well pretend I don’t exist on those kinds of days.  I want to retain that freedom.

Distinction: Whatever I need to do to keep my distinctiveness while remaining awesome, I’ll do.  The danger in personal development is that you start resembling every other person doing personal development: you shout the same bumper sticker wisdoms, you eat the same foods, you just end up turning to vanilla, if you’re not careful.  Again, I don’t see why I can’t be myself, warts and all, and still be someone who can mentor others.

Positive Freedoms:  I want to be free to express myself in writing, to have time, to travel, to indulge in food and drink, to enjoy art and music, to see my friends and family, to move around or not move around, to believe what I want, to be able to buy what I want when I want.

Negative Freedoms: I want to be free from orthodox thinking, be it intellectual, religious, or political, from being someone else’s lackey for life, from debt, from persecution for my views…you get the
idea.

Service: Not necessarily just giving money to charities, but I feel my calling is in helping individuals.  I had this crazy idea that I could sustain a prosperous income from doing the other things I love, but then do one on one coaching with particular clients for absolutely free, maybe even barter (especially if they can cook….I have a weakness for pecan pies and Vietnamese food).  That would be my way of giving back.  I dunno, I’ll come back to that.

Love, Sex, Romance, Passion: Do I really need to spell this one out?  All right, maybe a little.  For starters, I’m not interested in getting “married” anymore.  That’s not to say I’m not game for a long term relationship, but I don’t see the need for the ceremony and the expense.  I’ve had that experience and it was fun.  Next time around, the girl and I never have to have the ritual in order to stay together.  And that’s even if long-term is still my game: I’ve had a lot of changes in the past few months, so we’ll see where it goes, but I’m definitely ruling out this particular state/religious sanctioned expectation in my life once again.

Friends:  Friendships are the most resilient human relationships you can have.  You don’t choose what families you’re born into and when those interactions are destructive, you can end up walking through life damaged.  Romantic relationships can last a lifetime, but often they also end, and the people you once let into your heart (and bed) suddenly go back to being strangers one day.

Friends, at least the closest ones that I define as being in my soul group, endure: you can fight and forgive and reconcile, you can share deep secrets, and you can have great times, challenge each other, console each other, and support each other as family.  Friendships are flexible and strong enough to last a lifetime.  Friends outlast family feuds.  Friends outlast romances.  Friends, true friends, are there for each other for the long haul.

Family.  That’s as decent a segue as I’m gonna get to the next part….

Kids and Stuff
Honestly, when it comes to material things, I don’t need much to be happy. Most of my money would go towards creating great experiences, like travelling the world or hosting great parties like the one my Wordslingers did in February, rather than buying stuff.  Chuck Palahniuk said it best: “the things that you own start owning you”, and I value my freedom.  I know too many people killing themselves at jobs they hate to pay for houses that they barely live in, yet call themselves “successful”.  Nuh-uh, not for me.

That being said….if I ever did have a family of my own, of course I’d want to bring in more income to support my kid or kids, but even then, I wouldn’t want to raise them according to that suburban, white picket fences ideal.  There has to be a model of parenting that’s good for the child that also reflects my own positive values, as well as giving enough space for the kids to come into their own over time.  I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Aspiring to the money goals is meaningless on its own.  Aspiring to any definition of “success” that isn’t true to your own values is also doomed to failure because that little “something” that holds you back may just be the thing or bundle of things that you really do care about, even if you don’t really know it.

And as I find out what really is important to me, what I really do want out of life, it turns out that I’m way more of a Bohemian than I ever thought I would be at 32 and a half years old.  I think I’m okay with that.

“The Mystery of Sex Transmutation”: Some Excerpts from Napoleon Hill

So, I found out that Napoleon Hill’s book “Think and Grow Rich”, basically the Mitochondrial Eve of all self-help books, is public domain, and I felt inspired to re-post some of these excerpts on his chapter on what he calls “sex transmutation”: that is, the transference of our sexual desires and impulses into actions that, rather than simply getting us laid or wedded, also bring us great wealth doing what we love. Check it out:

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Because of ignorance on the subject, this state of mind is generally associated with the physical, and because of improper influences, to which most people have been subjected, in acquiring knowledge of sex, things essentially physical have highly biased the mind.

The emotion of sex has back of it the possibility of three constructive potentialities, they are:–

1.	The perpetuation of mankind.
2.	The maintenance of health, (as a therapeutic agency, it has no equal).
3.	The transformation of mediocrity into genius through transmutation.

Sex transmutation is simple and easily explained. It means the switching of the mind from thoughts of physical expression, to thoughts of some other nature.

Sex desire is the most powerful of human desires. When driven by this desire, men develop keenness of imagination, courage, will-power, persistence, and creative ability unknown to them at other times. So strong and impelling is the desire for sexual contact that men freely run the risk of life and reputation to indulge it. When harnessed, and redirected along other lines, this motivating force maintains all of its attributes of keenness of imagination, courage, etc., which may be used as powerful creative forces in literature, art, or in any other profession or calling, including, of course, the accumulation of riches.

The transmutation of sex energy calls for the exercise of will-power, to be sure, but the reward is worth the effort. The desire for sexual expression is inborn and natural. The desire cannot, and should not be submerged or eliminated. But it should be given an outlet through forms of expression which enrich the body, mind, and spirit of man. If not given this form of outlet, through transmutation, it will seek outlets through purely physical channels.

A river may be dammed, and its water controlled for a time, but eventually, it will force an outlet. The same is true of the emotion of sex. It may be submerged and controlled for a time, but its very nature causes it to be ever seeking means of expression. If it is not transmuted into some creative effort it will find a less worthy outlet.

The human mind responds to stimuli, through which it may be “keyed up” to high rates of vibration, known as enthusiasm, creative imagination, intense desire, etc. The stimuli to which the mind responds most freely are:–

1.	The desire for sex expression
2.	Love
3.	A burning desire for fame, power, or financial gain, MONEY
4.	Music
5.	Friendship between either those of the same sex, or those of the opposite sex.
6.	A Master Mind alliance based upon the harmony of two or more people who ally themselves for spiritual or temporal advancement.
7.	Mutual suffering, such as that experienced by people who are persecuted.
8.	Auto-suggestion
9.	Fear
10.	Narcotics and alcohol.

The desire for sex expression comes at the head of the list of stimuli, which most effectively “step-up” the vibrations of the mind and start the “wheels” of physical action. Eight of these stimuli are natural and constructive. Two are destructive.

The creative imagination functions best when the mind is vibrating (due to some form of mind stimulation) at an exceedingly high rate. That is, when the mind is functioning at a rate of vibration higher than that of ordinary, normal thought.

When brain action has been stimulated, through one or more of the ten mind stimulants, it has the effect of lifting the individual far above the horizon of ordinary thought, and permits him to envision distance, scope, and quality of THOUGHTS not available on the lower plane, such as that occupied while one is engaged in the solution of the problems of business and professional routine.

When lifted to this higher level of thought, through any form of mind stimulation, an individual occupies, relatively, the same position as one who has ascended in an airplane to a height from which he may see over and beyond the horizon line which limits his vision, while on the ground. Moreover, while on this higher level of thought, the individual is not hampered or bound by any of the stimuli which circumscribe and limit his vision while wrestling with the problems of gaining the three basic necessities of food, clothing, and shelter. He is in a world of thought in which the ORDINARY, work-a-day thoughts have been as effectively removed as are the hills and valleys and other limitations of physical vision, when he rises in an airplane.

While on this exalted plane of THOUGHT, the creative faculty of the mind is given freedom for action. The way has been cleared for the sixth sense to function, it becomes receptive to ideas which could not reach the individual under any other circumstances. The “sixth sense” is the faculty which marks the difference between a genius and an ordinary individual.

The creative faculty becomes more alert and receptive to vibrations, originating outside the individual’s subconscious mind, the more this faculty is used, and the more the individual relies upon it, and makes demands upon it for thought impulses. This faculty can be cultivated and developed only through use.

That which is known as one’s “conscience” operates entirely through the faculty of the sixth sense.

The great artists, writers, musicians, and poets become great, because they acquire the habit of relying upon the “still small voice” which speaks from within, through the faculty of creative imagination. It is a fact well known to people who have “keen” imaginations that their best ideas come through so-called “hunches.”

Lincoln was a notable example of a great leader who achieved greatness, through the discovery, and use of his faculty of creative imagination. He discovered, and began to use this faculty as the result of the stimulation of love which he experienced after he met Anne Rutledge, a statement of the highest significance, in connection with the study of the source of genius.

The pages of history are filled with the records of great leaders whose achievements may be traced directly to the influence of women who aroused the creative faculties of their minds, through the stimulation of sex desire. Napoleon Bonaparte was one of these. When inspired by his first wife, Josephine, he was irresistible and invincible. When his “better judgment” or reasoning faculty prompted him to put Josephine aside, he began to decline. His defeat and St. Helena were not far distant.

If good taste would permit, we might easily mention scores of men, well known to the American people, who climbed to great heights of achievement under the stimulating influence of their wives, only to drop back to destruction AFTER money and power went to their heads, and they put aside the old wife for a new one. Napoleon was not the only man to discover that sex influence, from the right source, is more powerful than any substitute of expediency, which may be created by mere reason.

The human mind responds to stimulation!

Among the greatest, and most powerful of these stimuli is the urge of sex. When harnessed and transmuted, this driving force is capable of lifting men into that higher sphere of thought which enables them to master the sources of worry and petty annoyance which beset their pathway on the lower plane.

History is not lacking in examples of men who attained to the status of genii, as the result of the use of artificial mind stimulants in the form of alcohol and narcotics. Edgar Allen Poe wrote the “Raven” while under the influence of liquor, “dreaming dreams that mortal never dared to dream before.” James Whitcomb Riley did his best writing while under the influence of alcohol. Perhaps it was thus he saw “the ordered intermingling of the real and the dream, the mill above the river, and the mist above the stream.” Robert Burns wrote best when intoxicated, “For Auld Lang Syne, my dear, we’ll take a cup of kindness yet, for Auld Lang Syne.”

But let it be remembered that many such men have destroyed themselves in the end. Nature has prepared her own potions with which men may safely stimulate their minds so they vibrate on a plane that enables them to tune in to fine and rare thoughts which come from–no man knows where! No satisfactory substitute for Nature’s stimulants has ever been found.

The emotion of love brings out, and develops, the artistic and the aesthetic nature of man. It leaves its impress upon one’s very soul, even after the fire has been subdued by time and circumstance.

Memories of love never pass. They linger, guide, and influence long after the source of stimulation has faded. There is nothing new in this. Every person, who has been moved by GENUINE LOVE, knows that it leaves enduring traces upon the human heart. The effect of love endures, because love is spiritual in nature. The man who cannot be stimulated to great heights of achievement by love, is hopeless–he is dead, though he may seem to live.

Go back into your yesterdays, at times, and bathe your mind in the beautiful memories of past love. It will soften the influence of the present worries and annoyances. It will give you a source of escape from the unpleasant realities of life, and maybe–who knows?–your mind will yield to you, during this temporary retreat into the world of fantasy, ideas, or plans which may change the entire financial or spiritual status of your life.

If you believe yourself unfortunate, because you have “loved and lost,” perish the thought. One who has loved truly, can never lose entirely. Love is whimsical and temperamental. Its nature is ephemeral, and transitory. It comes when it pleases, and goes away without warning. Accept and enjoy it while it remains, but spend no time worrying about its departure. Worry will never bring it back.

Dismiss, also, the thought that love never comes but once. Love may come and go, times without number, but there are no two love experiences which affect one in just the same way. There may be, and there usually is, one love experience which leaves a deeper imprint on the heart than all the others, but all love experiences are beneficial, except to the person who becomes resentful and cynical when love makes its departure.

It is a very old saying that “a man’s wife may either make him or break him,” but the reason is not always understood. The “making” and “breaking” is the result of the wife’s understanding, or lack of understanding of the emotions of love, sex, and romance.

Despite the fact that men are polygamous, by the very nature of their biological inheritance, it is true that no woman has as great an influence on a man as his wife, unless he is married to a woman totally unsuited to his nature. If a woman permits her husband to lose interest in her, and become more interested in other women, it is usually because of her ignorance, or indifference toward the subjects of sex, love, and romance. This statement presupposes, of course, that genuine love once existed between a man and his wife. The facts are equally applicable to a man who permits his wife’s interest in him to die.

Man’s greatest motivating force is his desire to please woman! The hunter who excelled during prehistoric days, before the dawn of civilization, did so, because of his desire to appear great in the eyes of woman. Man’s nature has not changed in this respect. The “hunter” of today brings home no skins of wild animals, but he indicates his desire for her favor by supplying fine clothes, motor cars, and wealth. Man has the same desire to please woman that he had before the dawn of civilization. The only thing that has changed, is his method of pleasing. Men who accumulate large fortunes, and attain to great heights of power and fame, do so, mainly, to satisfy their desire to please women.

Take women out of their lives, and great wealth would be useless to most men. It is this inherent desire of man to please woman, which gives woman the power to make or break a man.

Some men know that they are being influenced by the women of their choice–their wives, sweethearts, mothers or sisters–but they tactfully refrain from rebelling against the influence because they are intelligent enough to know that NO MAN IS HAPPY OR COMPLETE WITHOUT THE MODIFYING INFLUENCE OF THE RIGHT WOMAN.

The man who does not recognize this important truth deprives himself of the power which has done more to help men achieve success than all other forces combined.

Stop Ignoring Your Shadow

I watched enough of “The X Files” back in the day to know that when you see a guy with no shadow approaching, you don’t walk, you RUN the other way.

If you’re looking to better yourself, either through a coaching program or personal development, I want to caution you: don’t suppress your dark side. It will surface.

This is heretical thinking to be sure.  After all, self-help is all about affirming the positive, or so they say.

This is the thing, really: most people don’t need a coach.  Most people are content with what they’ve got.  Most people have the ability to get the things that they desire the most and they can settle into a routine. And a lot of the time, they laugh at guys like me, thinking we’re all about fire-walking and pep rallies and big barn-burner speeches that have really nothing else of substance other than “YOU CAN DO IT!”.

I really wish I was one of these people who would have been happy with a 9 to 5 office job.  If I had, I’d still be married and probably a homeowner by now.  Two weeks vacay and health benefits, the whole nine.  There is nothing wrong with those things, and if that is what you’re looking for, if you know how to get it, and if it makes you happy, then what the hell would you need me for anyway?  Go for it.

As it happened, though, I wanted more, and while entering mentoring relationships with teachers who know how to get to that level of “more” is good, the goal should not and should never be to eliminate the shadow while affirming the light.

Last I checked, homo sapiens sapiens was a species that existed in three dimensions of space, one of time.  Though the more esoteric aspects of coaching suggest that we’re greater than physicality, the day to day reality is that we are creatures of length, width, and height who cast shadows when standing in light.  If you somehow find a way to remove your shadow, it can only happen at the price of becoming a two dimensional being.

Elizabeth Gilbert wrote in “Committed” about her own “shadow work” with her fiancé Felipe:

“There is hardly a more gracious gift that we can offer somebody than to accept them fully, to love them almost despite themselves. I say this because listing our flaws so openly to each other was not some cutesy gimmick, but a real effort to reveal the points of darkness contained in our characters. They are no laughing matter, these faults. They can harm. They can undo…If we are at all self-aware, we work hard to keep those more dicey aspects of our natures under control, but they do not go away.”

Those are my emphases on that last part. I have been through three coaching programs now. I can say with certainty that there is a difference between mastery of the dark and eliminating it.  Too often, we confuse the two, and we do at the peril of our own well being and our relationships with others. We can never eliminate the dark.  It’s like trying to eliminate “up” or “down”. Our dark side has half of what gives us character, otherwise we’d just be vanilla.

When women say that they like to date a guy “with an edge”, they don’t necessarily mean that he’s an actual gangster, but he’s got “gangsta” qualities.  For all you know, a guy with edge visits his grandmother for tea every Sunday without fail, or devotes his time to soup kitchens, or taking his kids to the museum. But that edge, that suggestion that he might be a little bit deviant, a little crazy or bad…that’s from his shadow.  That’s a small bit of contrast that gives him his character, and it’s his character that’s attractive. Take away that quality, and the guy becomes boring.

(Strike that and reverse it for women where applicable.)

Accepting the dark doesn’t mean that we go around fucking everything up all the time, but it does mean that we have periods in our lives when we’re not at our best. It’s important to recover and get back on track, and if you’re working towards these bigger, more ambitious goals, yes, your emotional state needs to be re-centered.  But – and this is an important but – you cannot betray how you really feel in the process.

What I used to do and stopped doing, which I need to start doing again, is viewing myself as a small nation state, with my conscious mind being the executive, legislative, and judicial branches all rolled into one. (Yeah, I know. If you can find a geekier metaphor, let me know: I’ll buy you some cheese and Pepsi).

The shadow is that part of our one person republic that we neglect or ignore because it appears to conflict with our dominant values, the introspective equivalents of counterculture.

Unlike real life, however, where the countercultures choose not to participate in the greater body politic, our inner countercultures are always active, always crying out for representation, and frequently being disenfranchised by the dominant viewpoints.

And as with all countercultures that routinely get shut out of the national discourse, when you ignore or suppress them long enough, they will rise up and sabotage your national efforts.  They will fuck you up until you listen. And listen you should.

That recently happened to me. I ignored what was really going on in my darker side and it got the better of my judgment. The result, without going into details, is that I damaged some key relationships in my life as well as my own sense of self-confidence that I have everything under control in my life.  Part of that was feeling that I could not admit to my lack of control because I’d be compromising the positive thinking aspect of my coaching work.  I didn’t want to disappoint my coaches, or the people who admire me.  Not surprisingly, the thing I feared the most came to pass.

So, here goes the absolute truth: I do not have it all under control.

In the past year, I’ve been dealing with a lot of  situations, feelings, and challenges that are absolutely new to my experience.  I want to believe that I can maintain my control and calm when I’m in them, emphasis on the “want”, but if I’m truly honest with myself, there is absolutely no prior frame of reference to support my assertion that I will be okay with them, so I can’t say for sure how I’ll react.

I didn’t want to believe this myself, out of pride, and in those key relationships I mentioned earlier, my lying to myself about my true ability to keep control transformed into me lying to them about it, and now they feel betrayed and angry.

Worse yet, this affected my ability to ‘fess up and admit my truth because they weren’t in a position to hear it, like giving flowers to someone to make amends for knocking over their garbage can with the car yesterday, but only after you’ve just pissed on their shoes thirty seconds ago.

Again, despite knowing better, my ego ended up compromising my apology and made everything worse.  Now I’m totally disempowered because the ball is in their court to forgive me or not forgive me because through my own actions, I have lost all credibility as a friend.  I can forgive myself at some point, but if I did it now, it would be inauthentic because I don’t believe I deserve it yet. To get to that point, I need to process for a while.

But I’m also sick of blaming myself all the time.  I’m sick of my coaching philosophies always stigmatizing “blame”.  I know it’s not the most productive mindset to be in, but sometimes it’s necessary to discharge negativity elsewhere: that’s why it’s called ex-pression.  Get it out of your system so it stops eating you up from the inside, and then do your learning from your mistakes.  Then forgive yourself when you really can forgive yourself.  You’ll know when that time comes because you won’t feel like a total fraud doing it.

If getting to that place of forgiveness means that you blame external circumstances, situations, and people for a while, then go ahead, blame, blame blame. Anywhere but yourself. You have my permission. You don’t need it, but God knows someone has to give it to you.

I can’t take responsibility all the time.  I don’t want the world always on my shoulders alone, but my coaching work seems to suggest that’s what I do, all the time.  It’s not fair.  Let me do my blaming when it serves me. Only after you’ve discharged the blame do you start looking at responsibility.  That’s where the learning is, and you do that without further stigma, without punishing yourself multiple times for a single sin.

I’ll repeat this call to all people who would be life coaches: create room in your courses and teaching strategies for the safe, guilt-free discharge of darkness.  Don’t make your clients, either indirectly through the material or directly in session, feel guilty for feeling bad, even a little.

I know many of us got into this business because of the images of people running through pretty grassfields waving their arms and laughing, of living in the Pacific Palisades sipping wine with your gorgeous sun-tanned soulmate with the beach bod, or nights spent in placid meditation and what-not, but that’s the end result.

I’m talking about the process by which you get there, and it’s not always pretty. I understand and accept that indulging the negative is not the best thing to do all the time, but I’m not going to change my mindset if it feels like I’m being forced to be happy.

Bob Proctor says “people don’t resist change, they resist being changed”: this how I feel when I’m told in endless teachings on the subject of self improvement that feeling bad is bad, and I should think positively. I call bullshit on positive thinking all the time.  That’s a surefire way to damage your clients. I will think positively after I’ve made room in myself to be positive, and that involves feeling bad for a while.

Authenticity trumps positivity wherever the two are in conflict, because if you choose positivity without authenticity, neither one shows up in your life. Trust me: I just lived that.

Make no mistake, I am angry about this.  I think I have a right to be.

Shaman vs. Priest: A New Primer on Jodyism for 2013

“Although in many primitive cultures there is a recognized division of function between priests and shamans, in the more highly developed cultures in which cults have become strongly organized churches, the priesthood fights an unrelenting war against shamans. . . . 

“Priests work in a rigorously structured hierarchy fixed in a firm set of traditions. Their power comes from and is vested in the organization itself. They constitute a religious bureaucracy.

“Shamans, on the other hand, are arrant individualists. Each is on his own, undisciplined by bureaucratic control,- hence a shaman is always a threat to the order of the organized church. In the view of the priests they are presumptive pretenders.

“Joan of Arc was a shaman for she communed directly with the angels of God. She steadfastly refused to recant and admit delusion and her martyrdom was ordained by the functionaries of the Church.

“The struggle between shaman and priest may well be a death struggle.”

  – E.A. Hoebel, anthropologist (as cited in Robert Pirsig’s “Lila”)

 There’s a word I use frequently to describe the attitude I encounter whenever I talk about my belief system: institutionalism.

Whether it’s from the side of organized religion followers who think my beliefs to be blasphemous, or from the side of scientific empiricists who think me irrational for believing in things that cannot be verified by instrumentation or the five senses, it seems that some days that I can’t catch a break, or that I must justify myself to one or the other.

This gets complicated, because when you’re not an institutionalist, when you do follow your own path, your beliefs tend to be constantly evolving from one year, one month, even one day to the next, based on whatever new experiences or ideas you run into.

That’s why I love the quote above from E.A. Hoebel.  I no longer consider myself bound to one system of thought and spirit over all others.  Instead, I’m finding things out for myself.

When I really sit down to plot this out on paper, these are the basic principles behind my beliefs:

1. Personal Growth and Happiness.  We’re either growing or dying, like all forms of life. The past two years, and 2012 in particular since I started coaching with mentors, have been the greatest I’ve seen yet because I’ve been aspiring to bigger and better things. I’m at my best when I’m working towards something: even on days when I take some downtime, I wake up and take a small delight knowing that I’ve got something big on the horizon that I’m building.

I believe in growing as an individual and filling myself up with as much happiness as possible, then sharing that happiness with those around me.

Adding joy is neither a platitude nor merely a mission statement of certain corporations: it’s really one thing that we are here to do in life.  It’s easy to do, it’s fun, and everyone wins: why not do it when you’re able to?

2. Eliminate false dichotomies.  You can earn lots of money in the arts and still have integrity. You can be famous and still be humble at heart.  You can indulge yourself and still be generous with others.  You can live in the real world of the five senses and still believe in forces that science has not yet verified.  You can be intelligent and take joy in simplicity. You can earn a living doing what you love.  You have a right to thrive even when others aren’t doing so well.  You can indulge in what many institutions consider heretical behaviour and still be considered a being with integrity, since today’s heresies tend to turn into tomorrow’s conventional wisdom.

3. You’re only ever responsible for your half of every interaction with another person.  You cannot change people against their will: they will or won’t change themselves as they require.  Your rights end at the point when they start infringing on the rights of someone else. That point is never the same for everyone.

4.  Take what works for you, ignore the rest: I am free to sample from whatever schools of thought I feel resonate with me.  This includes cherry-picking elements of physics, Western and Eastern philosophies, biology and health, psychology, religion, and mysticism. And it includes a crapton of non-intellectual labels of just being, what we’d call meditation and creativity.

5.  Mind, Body, and Spirit are a three-in-one deal in the human experience. Though ideal balance is usually not reality, it is always something to aspire to, because it means we’re living fully.  Where either mind or body or spirit dominates, it is almost always at the expense of the other two, and we  experience the imbalance in our daily living, even if we can’t always identify it as such.

In particular, I’ve had to learn to silence my mind because overthinking caused me unhappiness: I could never just be with an idea or experience it, I always had to be picking it apart.  My overall experience of life drastically improved when I learned to muzzle that left brain voice whenever it started making me unhappy.

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” – Arthur C. Clarke

6.  Everything is, or will eventually be proven to be, scientific in nature.  I believe in what is real: it’s just that my definition of “real” is more expansive than most.  At every point along the evolution of scientific inquiry, everything we now accept to be self-evident was once subject to scrutiny, even ridicule.  Methodologies do not currently exist to demonstrate the mechanisms behind certain phenomena like the Law of Attraction, but just as the sun didn’t wait for us to understand nuclear fusion to shine, it is not unreasonable to say that forces may yet exist, outside our current scientific understanding, that we may yet eventually come to accept as real with empirical evidence.

Western history has shown that for every person willing to take the leap of faith in something unseen that turned out later to be real, there were a hundred people ready to ridicule and criticize the believer at the time.  I believe that my belief in some of the things currently considered “pseudoscience” will be vindicated as the technology emerges that can detect what current instruments cannot. That may not be in my lifetime, and so I’m not waiting around for someone else to validate what I’ve already experienced to be true for myself.

I choose possibility over skepticism, because I’m the only one who has to live with the consequences of the manifest truth or falsehood of my faith in the unseen.

These are my basic principles for my own belief system, the backbone of Jodyism as it exists effective January 21st, 2013.

If you’re interested in seeing how I apply it to particular topics or situations, leave a comment below and I’ll address it in a future blog entry.

Be It Resolved: 364 Pages, 39 Images, 1 New Year.

Bright sunny morning here in Brampton on this January 1st, 2013 as I write this first sentence.  Still in my socks and jammies, sipping my second cup of coffee, still a little dry from last night’s epic famjam with my cousins, aunts, and uncles just down the road.  And, as always, my vision board sits over my computer.

New Year’s Resolutions become a little redundant when you spend the other 364 days working on greater ambitions.  This little corkboard has thirty-nine images and words stuck to it.  These images all represent C type goals.  I’ve talked about this before, but here they are again in brief:

TYPE A GOALS:  The things you know how to do already.  For instance: you decide to buy a new car, something you’ve done at least twice before in your history.  Nothing new here, no challenge.  You can do it, but you don’t grow from it, and it becomes the safe place that keeps you from taking risks.  Your comfort zone, in other words.

TYPE B GOALS:  The things you think you could do if you took numerous steps to get there.  For instance, you could conceivably lose ten pounds of fat if you changed your diet, went to the gym this or that many times a week, did this or that exercise, etc..  It’s definitely exciting at first, but requires continuous willpower to actually accomplish it, and willpower is fickle and tends to fail with most people.  Why?  There’s no inspiration behind a goal that constantly requires you to push.

TYPE C GOALS:  Your wildest dreams.  The things you really desire on a deep level to have out of life, but that your outside circumstances (i.e. parents, teachers, peers, lovers, etc..) tell you are impossible for you to achieve.  These are the dreams that most people shy away for fear of tremendous disappointment, even though they represent the fondest wishes you have in your life.

C Type goals are simple, often consisting of a single sentence.  It’s their simplicity that often draws the ridicule of our peers: we’re biased in Western culture to think that nothing that beneficial can be uncomplicated.

Consider that when President Kennedy asked rocket scientist Werner von Braun what it would take to get to the moon in ten years, von Braun could have taken the time to explore any number of technical and scientific details before answering.  Instead, when JFK asked him “What would it take to go to the moon?” von Braun answered simply “The will to do it.”

The will to do it. That’s it.  That’s all it takes to start making great things happen. That’s all it’s ever taken.  It’s not rocket science.

Make one choice to do something great, and the means, however complicated, show up.

The trick with accomplishing Type C goals is constant reinforcement of the idea that gets you emotionally invested in making them happen.  You soon find yourself taking inspired and effective actions that cause you to grow.  Type C goals require you to become the next best version of yourself that you need to be to accomplish them.

That last one alone scares most people.  Just look at surveys that say that 95% of all New Year’s Resolutions among the people who still make them fail by January 15th.  That’s when most people throw in the towel.

Still, C Type goals are supposed to scare you even as they inspire you.  They’re supposed to pull you rather than requiring you to push to get them: you wake up in the morning exciting to be moving towards something that you really desire on a deep emotional level.

  Most people can’t handle the emotional rollercoaster of setting the big goals, and we’re trained from an early age to not rock the boat, to not believe that it is good or worthy to have such goals met, and so we fall back to the Type B And A goals: safe, but never satisfying.

Then, we grow up into peer groups who are trained the same way and who consider such people to be “sell outs” if they move onto the greater things.  We don’t want to look like jerks or get laughed at by the people we care about the most, so we stay put.

We live our whole lives that way, most of us, in the kind of quiet desperation that inspired Thoreau’s lamentations a few hundred years ago.

Yeah, that’s not going to work for me.

All of the goals on my Vision Board are Type C goals, and I’ve been working on them for a while.  My target is to have accomplished all of them by May 1st, giving me five more months.  If 2012 was any indicator, a lot will happen in that time.

Yesterday I sat down with my notepad and asked myself: in addition to what I’m already working on, what are some other C Type goals I can set for myself just for the sake of the New Year?

Here’s what I came up with:

Recreate a loving, functional, and natural relationship with each of my immediate and distant family members.

Earn $500,000 for my writing, acting, and coaching by December 31st, 2013.

Get “Convergence” on the New York Times Bestseller List by December 31st, 2013.

Finish, edit, and publish “Overlife”.

Host four book launch parties.

Appear in three national and international television commercials.

Circumnavigate the Northern Hemisphere in a single trip.

Buy a condo in Toronto.

Sign five clients for coaching once I am certified.

Sponsor one child in need on every continent.

Achieve my ideal body image (as expressed on the vision board)

Buy the new fully-loaded Elantra, the same kind I rented and drove during my author’s retreat to California two years ago.

Finish a screenplay

Walk into love. By that, I mean consciously pursue my ideal romantic relationship by actively defining and searching for the woman of my dreams, exploring the dating circuit as thoroughly as possible, then find her before December 31st.

“Go big or go home” is a cliché, but c’mon, we like to post all these big “New Year, New Beginnings” status updates and Tweets.  Why not do it right?  Why not dream the biggest that you can dream?

The page just turned on a new year.  That’s one year closer to the end of your life.  New Year’s Day is a time to think about the big picture of your time here on Earth, so do it right.

What do you really want to experience in your life, in one sentence?  What’s a dream you’ve been putting aside for the sake of pleasing a disapproving spouse, mother, or group of friends?  What do you really want?

Go big, or go home.  It’s that simple.  The first page of 2013 is about to turn.  What are you going to do with the other 364?

  

2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 3,300 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 6 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.

Sorting Out My Christmas Blueprint

Admittedly, I’ve watched too many Christmas specials in my life, to the point that I feel I become That Guy.

You know, the protagonist, often the one who has something happen to him early on in the hour that causes him to lose faith in the holiday, only to have the Forces of Good restore that faith by some miraculous series of events.  Derivative, to be sure, but if you watch the same special over and over again enough, it gets into your head nonetheless.

This year, I am That Guy.  Nothing really bad has really happened in my life – on the contrary, things have never been more awesome – but I’m not feeling Christmas this year, and I’m down about more than a few things thanks in large part to the holiday. I’m not waiting for some miracle to change my mind, though.  I’m going to do my best in these last five days to shift my own mindset and walk my own talk.

There’s a blueprint that exists for how every holiday *should* look like.  That blueprint varies from person to person, but there are common trends.  And for me, my blueprint very closely resembles my old expectations of how my life overall *should* have looked by now.

According to that blueprint, first drawn up when I was like seven or eight years old, I was supposed to be like at least four or five of my closest friends: with a house, a spouse, new cars, and kids.  As it happens, in 2012, I’m spouseless/girlfriend-less, living with the ‘rents, driving a used Toyota made the same year I started high school, and childless (which I don’t mind so much, but, again, part of the blueprint).  I spent most of the year dealing with that old life blueprint and crafting a new vision for myself and I’m much, much stronger this Christmas than I was last time.  I’ve dealt with this before, but it unexpectedly came back, so now I know.  I’ll acknowledge that and move on.

To paraphrase Gary Vaynerchuk, everything that I’m working towards is coming, including someday a house, a new spouse, a new car, and, assuming the miraculous, a little munchkin or two: I should stop crying and keep hustling.

The next thing is the religious/spiritual part of the holiday.  The materialism crunch sucks in and of itself, but for most people, they’re able to fall back on the “Christ” portion of “Christmas”.  Not being a Christian, I can’t do that, but I find myself being really mean to actual Christians and religious people for their beliefs lately, and I shouldn’t.  I have my own set of crazy beliefs about the Universe (Law of Attraction, vision boards, etc..) that work for me the same way that a belief in the Gospels, or the Koran, or Buddhist mindfulness, Hindu or Jewish ritualism, etc.. does for those followers.

Well…no, actually, I don’t think they work in the same way. I view the Law of Attraction as an underexplored science, the same way that the sun didn’t wait until scientists understood the principles of nuclear fusion before it decided to shine.  I see real results regardless of whether or not I understand the ways and means by which the results show up. And I  understand others don’t see what I see.

So why do I feel this need to go after someone else’s faith at this time of year?

It’s obvious I’m going to have to sort through and re-articulate my own beliefs in a way that I’m secure enough not to default to attack mode when challenged. There’s a difference between engaging differing beliefs in dialogue and just plain smacking them, so that something I’ll have to work on.  Jesus is the historical reason for the season, and though I can’t fall back on that when the crowds of shoppers tear into each other for the sake of celebrating a day of peace and togetherness, that doesn’t mean I should disrespect others who find their meaning in Christ, and that one day.

Last thing is my own family.  I’ve had a lot of people call me “arrogant” in the past while.  It hurts because I really do feel good and happy and confident, better than I’ve felt since my divorce, and even before that.  This confidence is new in my life and almost completely self-generated and self-sustaining, except for a few bad days, but even then, I lift myself back up.  Yet for expressing this confidence, I found out recently that my two sisters in particular think me arrogant, mean, a bully, all because I walk around with more swagger than I ever have.  They never say this to my face, but always behind my back to my Mom and Dad.  That’s their perception of me – for two people who are perpetually depressed and angry, it’s understandable to want to tear down people who are actually doing well – and outside of my control, but the sad part for me is that I really don’t know what else to do.

Mom and Dad raised three very different kids whose only ties are bloodlines, history, and TV shows, movies, and video games that we all shared until I turned 20 and moved out. Now we’re very different adults who, in all likelihood, will only stay connected as long as Mom and Dad are alive.  It’s what it is, and I have to make up my mind about whether or not I want to change that, because I’m not censoring my joy to make unhappy people feel less unhappy about themselves.  Still, these are relationships I should strengthen: they’re my sisters, after all.  I’ll do my best not to trigger their own emotions while still being true to my own expression. It’s a difficult challenge, but it’s one I should look after.

Anyway, I think that’s it.

I’ve read in many places that, for North Americans in particular, Christmas enhances both existing connections between people and the sense of disconnection for those who are more sensitive.  Much of that is that blueprint of how we think the holidays *should* look, should end up.

On an episode of HBO’s “The Newsroom”, one character describes Valentine’s Day as “the bully of holidays”, forcing people who aren’t in love to act like they are, because they’ll “ruin” the holiday if they don’t.  You can say much the same for every holiday to some degree, though, especially Christmas.

Sometimes families really do function better with distance than being together even for a few days.  Often, your beliefs really are incompatible with what everyone else believes.  Many times, you feel your life isn’t where it’s supposed to be because of a blueprint that applies to a world that no longer exists for you.

But most of the time, you get through it all okay.

This is a season for wishes.  My Christmas Wish, as best as I can muster, is that you do more than get through this holiday okay.  My wish is that you create your own measure of joy for yourself and those you love, and do your best to spread that joy, spirit, and love as authentically as you possibly can to everyone around you.  You can’t give what you don’t have, but you may surprise yourself and everyone around you.

It’s my wish this Christmas that you stop being That Guy and become This One,

Happy holidays!

My Writers Guild’s First Ever Book Launch!

My Writers Guild’s First Ever Book Launch!

An Evening of Sex and Romance

Celebrating the release of Jody Aberdeen’s time travel romance novel, “Convergence” and Lucianna LiSacchi’s debut erotica novel, “Mommy’s Little Playgroup”.

Taking place at the beautiful Arta Gallery in Toronto’s Distillery District on Friday, February 1st, 2013, 8pm, the night will feature signings, cocktails, tattoos, and a little light bondage.

Advance tickets are $50 per person and include two signed copies of our two novels, though right now, we are offering a “Reservations for Two” package exclusively on our Indiegogo site: two tickets, signed books, and a signed advance copy of my next novel “Overlife” when it is released this spring….all for $80.

Check out our Indiegogo page today for more details!