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Notes from a Crusty Seeker

The Wisdom to Know the Difference

“So how do you know the difference between going with the flow and letting yourself drown?” writes author Eileen Flanagan in her new book, The Wisdom to Know the Difference (Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, Sept. 2009). “One answer is to see if what is flowing within you matches the direction of the current around you. You have to pay attention to the cards you are being dealt.”

There are so many good things in this book that I almost don’t know where to begin. But perhaps the best thing is the topic.

Last year, after about 25 years of researching self-change modalities, as both a seeker and a journalist, I wrote an article about the necessity of interrupting the embedded neuronal patterns behind our self-sabotaging behaviors and beliefs. In the introduction to the article, I referred to the power of the Zen master’s thwack, and the editor of the magazine that published the piece decided to use “Thwack” as the title, along with an illustration of a therapist about to throttle an unsuspecting man with a rolling pin. Although it made a snappy and commercial cover line, this title inadvertently portrayed as acceptable what I believe is most dangerous about the new confrontational methods of change and many of the groups that practice them. The trouble with thwacking is that if it’s done by anyone who is not a Zen master or an experienced healer, and if it is delivered without a sense of nuance, devoid of love and compassion, and if the thwack is dealt to a person who is not ready to receive it, it is brutality. And it can even re-traumatize a person rather than help.  Read More 
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Science and Good Intentions


I suddenly realized that my unemployed lulls are a great time to read the “I’m-gonna-read-that-someday” pile. Here are a couple of interesting facts from two sources in that pile: Read More 
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Inspiration Stew: The Recipe

There is a new trend in business. It’s a sometimes-desperate scramble to pinpoint the latest trends in order to be on the forefront, the cutting edge, the winning team … in order to make lots and lots of money. But there may be a problem with this. There may be a problem because what appears to be one of the newest and most widespread trends (harnessed with awe-inspiring efficiency by the Obama campaign) is for individuals and small groups of passionate people to do good deeds with no concern for financial returns.

“We set up tables with cookies and candy in the park and give out Smile cards,” explained Shephali Patel, a 30-year-old volunteer with the Smile Card project. She is one of 20,000 volunteers who have been playing a form of global altruistic tag: You do a selfless “Radical Act of Kindness,” then leave a card encouraging the recipient to do something nice for someone else and pass the card along.

And this was just one of the examples of easy-to-do selfless service actions discussed at last night’s second meeting of an organization called Stay Inspired (see March 30th blog) held at Gallery 138 in New York City, where about 40 people gathered to eat good food and share ideas about how to remain inspired during hard times. Read More 
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Why I Sleep with Toys

A provocative title, huh? I’m trying to get attention. Did I succeed? Are you still reading?  Read More 
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Thoughts on Tomatoes, Lousy Posture, and the Alexander Technique

It’s another soggy day in New York City, so it seems appropriate to talk about my posture. I have lousy posture. I slump with my chin out and up like a turtle and, since I’m very flexible, I have a tendency to sit with pretzel legs. I also have a big, ugly lump on the back of my neck which has alternately been explained as a sign that my spiritual center is connected or that I have an energy block. I believe it’s due to my lousy posture.

Because it is raining today and I’m having such a difficult time remembering to sit upright, it seems appropriate to also complain about my allergies. I recently discovered that I am allergic to my tomato plants. Not the tomatoes, but the Deadly Nightshade leaves that smell so good but make my eyelids swell like over-sized shrimp. My tomato plants live on my neighbor, Nurse Mia’s, terrace because my building superintendent kicked them off our roof. Nurse Mia is the one who diagnosed my tomato plant allergy, so the last time I pruned, I suited up with swimming goggles, a surgical mask, and latex gloves. Read More 
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Rants & Raves: Staples, Oxford, Garnier Nutritioniste, Obama

I’m living on unemployment at the moment, so I’m consuming a lot less than I used to. And that means I think a whole lot about what I’m choosing to consume. Below, for my own gratitude and ventilation, are some Rants & Raves. Feel free to add your own in comments:

RAVE: Staples Stores
I got a whole ream of recycled paper today, free with the coupon I received for recyling ink cartridges. I was worried I’d only be able to buy more ink, but no — you can do the right thing and actually get something you need with the recycle benefit.
Not only that, I thought Staples only recycled ink cartridges and batteries. Did you know they also take electronics? I’ve got a busted computer adapter and cable that Hewlett-Packard was going to charge to me return for recycle. I can just drop it off at Staples. Not only that, but the Staples employees look you in the eye when they talk to you and treat you like a human being. Read More 
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Class Notes We Would Like to See

From the bowels of this recession, I read my most recent college alumni news, and I found myself wondering if I was the only one with a less than stellar career. Were all of these perpetually successful alumni telling the whole truth?

So here, from the Spring 2009 Alumni News of the imaginary prestigious Almost Ivy League University, is some imagined truth-telling. (Humor is healing. Feel free to add your own notices in the comments section.)

Beatrice Ellenville (’06), who graduated cum laude after plagiarizing her thesis, was laid off from her job at AIG just before the bailout. She will never publish a book, star on Broadway, or climb Mount Everest — per her yearbook “future goals.” She is a sorry excuse for a human being with no prospects whatsoever.

Joanna Praddle (’86), who had an early success with her first novel and then refused to share contacts with her struggling classmates, has never amounted to anything. She survived three abusive marriages to the same man and she is currently working as a night staff cleaning woman in the law offices of her ex-brother-in-law.

After a successful and lucrative career as president of the N.O. Scruples PR Firm, known for catapulting adulterers and embezzlers into movie superstardom, Norman Owen Scruples (’73) has retired to become a full-time grandfather and alcoholic. Friends and well-wishers can contact him at the renowned Smith & Welly’s Saloon where he is passed out on the floor.

Lowell Renard (’68), known for his prowess on the Almost Ivy League Olympic Lacrosse Team as well as his seduction of most of the Almost Ivy League co-eds and every woman he ever did business with, which led to his 25-year run as the face of the International Subprime Mortgage Insurance Agency, LLP, despite never coming in to the office, has gotten fat and bald. Read More 
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The Unbearable Sweetness of Being Human

I’ve been kind of blue this week. Actually, that’s inaccurate. I’ve been red — beet red with eyelids that look like obese shellfish — but blue is more descriptive of my mood. A red mood sounds angry. I haven’t felt angry. I just enjoy vision. Apparently swelling up like a prizefighter after a really bad night plus a nasty rash is my new reaction to tree pollen. Although I could barely open my eyes, I decided it was a good time for reading, and my friend Liz from the greenhouse had recommended Alexander McCall Smith’s The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. Read More 
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Where on Earth Is Humanity Going?

I’ve been thinking a lot about who we are as a species this week. Endless days of rain and unemployment have that effect on me. The last time it rained this way, I went to the American Museum of Natural History where I stared for a long time at this lovely 3.6 million-year old Tanzanian couple out for a stroll and frozen in time in the Anne and Bernard Spitzer Hall of Human Origins. At the end of the exhibit, there’s a plaque on the wall that says:

ARE HUMANS STILL EVOLVING?
In this era of global travel and interconnected societies, we no longer have small, isolated populations evolving in different directions, as was the case earlier in human evolution, helping to drive the emergence of new species. The human genome continues to change in minor ways, but under present conditions a new human species more than likely will not emerge. Read More 
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Tulips and a Request for a Slight Alteration

“Here’s the thing,” I seem to be saying. “I really like flowers, but my eyes no longer open enough to fully enjoy their colorful fluorescence because of my gravity-challenged brows. And I think, doctor, I sincerely believe that I should be given an eye job for medicinal purposes — fully paid for by insurance, of course. Don’t you agree? Read More 
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Rx for Unemployment Blues: Seeking Peace by Mary Pipher

It may seem paradoxical that reading about panic attacks due to overwhelming professional success and an abundance of work is calming to a person who’s been unemployed for months and battered by the recession, but that was my experience reading Mary Pipher’s new book Seeking Peace: Chronicles of the Worst Buddhist in the World. It may seem counterintuitive that reading about a big, warm circle of supportive family could make a person whose family is mostly dead feel hugged, but, again, that is the case with this simultaneously comforting and entertaining book about a bestselling writer’s meltdown and recovery. Read More 
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Staying Inspired

Last Wednesday night, storyteller extraordinaire Laura Simms described the moment during an international phone call when she made the split second decision to adopt her son, Ishmael Beah, a former child soldier in Sierra Leone who would go on to become a bestselling writer and an advocate for children trapped in wars. “If I can get out of here, can I live with you?” he asked. “The phone may cut off and I need you to tell me the truth.” “Yes,” she screamed. “Yes!” and the phone went dead.

She described that moment as one of electrocution — the instant and complete realignment of every cell in her body. It was a moment when Spirit demanded something sudden and life-changing — what the oracle Viking Runes refer to as “an empty-handed leap into the void” — and she said, “Yes!”

She told the story at a “Friend Raising Party” at Tibet House in New York City given by a two-year old organization called Stay Inspired, the brainchild of a very unusual guy named Charlie Hess. Read More 
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Church in a Greenhouse


I eat a lot of lettuce. I just love the stuff. And even before the recession and getting laid off, I had a lust for homegrown salad. Since I live in an indoor jungle, it seems natural to extend it into my fifth-floor apartment window boxes, and to learn the art of lettuce growing from seeds, I recently joined my local community garden. An unexpected benefit was that the garden’s greenhouse is located behind the world famous Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine. The Cathedral is not only a breathtaking work of architecture, but it has a long history of supporting progressive causes and a mission to be “a house of prayer for all people and a unifying center of intellectual light and leadership.” Technically what’s happening in the greenhouse is not one of the Cathedral’s many service programs, but, for me, it has become church in a greenhouse — a weekly dose of horticultural therapy. Read More 
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A Bedtime Story for the Recession


I was born and I’m still alive.

That’s the short version. The longer version that I tell myself when I’m lying in bed wide awake at 2 a.m. thinking about never finding another job, or finding one that I hate and feeling stuck, or dying penniless and who will take care of my dog, or winning the lottery and — oh my God — how will I set up a foundation and how much do I realistically need to live and what if I’m so besieged by desperate people I give it all away, and then I’m without funds again?!? When I’m lying there worrying about all that, I tell the long version of the story:

I was born. I grew up. I went from one job and career to the next. I went through hard times and was really afraid, but eventually I landed somewhere that was better than where I started. And by the time I get through my whole resumé and history, I fall asleep from boredom.

I little while ago, I interviewed the author/psychologist/radio talk show host Daniel Gottlieb for a magazine article. (By the way, his newest book, Learning from the Heart: Lessons on Living, Loving, and Listening, just won the prestigious Books for a Better Life Award for the best self-improvement title in the Motivational category.)

One of things I love most about Dan is his business card. In the place where you put your profession, his card says “Human Being.” He’s earned the title. Since a catastrophic car accident in 1979, he has been a quadriplegic with limited use of his arms and hands, and his humanity has been tested. It’s not that he’s perfect — far from it, he told me. But he has a basic faith in his — and everybody’s — ability to survive just about anything.

“We get used to stuff,” he told me. “All of us do. And underpinning that is faith: When I sit across from a patient, I have faith in the human spirit that they’ll heal. Whatever form it takes, they’ll heal. I can sit with fear because I have faith — not in some external, divine power, but faith that I can bear fear. And I can bear sadness. And I can bear despair. I know I can because I have, over and over and over again. And you have, over and over and over again. And everybody has, but we don’t notice that we get through it.” Read More 
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Really Bad Hair Day

Ring the bells that still can ring,

Forget your perfect offering.

There is a crack, a crack in everything—

That’s how the light gets in …

Leonard Cohen, “Anthem” Read More 

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