If people can use, “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” as an excuse to burn people at the stake, people can ruin anything. “Love thy neighbor as thyself” seems fairly unambiguous to me. It does not come with an asterisk. This command from Jesus does not say, “Love people who are easy to love, people just like you, but go ahead and hate people who are different. Go ahead and blow them up, cover them with stones and let them be crushed to death.”

So if we can ruin something so simple and so clear, we flawed human beings can ruin anything.

For example, one would think people who do yoga regularly, would be living in the flow. Yet I have known yoga teachers who were anxiety ridden, perfectionistic, full of self-hate, and yoga bullies. Doing yoga regularly does not inoculate us against life.

Let me be clear: I love doing yoga. Yoga loves me. I even wrote a song about yoga: “Yoga makes me feel alive. Yoga improves my muscle tone. When I’m breathing doing yoga, I am in my body and completely at home.”

I have recently discovered EFT, Emotional Freedom Technique. Jack Canfield calls it psychological acupuncture. I’ve been a therapist for over 20 years, and EFT is one of the best techniques I have ever used. Brad Yates, whose EFT videos I watch regularly, says that EFT is like taking an emotional shower every morning. We brush our teeth, we wash our hair, but we don’t regularly clear out our emotions. EFT is great for keeping our emotions soft and flowing. I’ve been comparing EFT to rust-removing spray. Using EFT regularly keeps our emotions soft and easy to wash off. Otherwise, we get rusty and it is more difficult to get to our shiny greatness underneath. (Okay, I was a literature major. I love metaphors.)

But just as with anything else, we can ruin the EFT. If people are afraid to feel their emotions, they can use EFT as an escape from the messiness of grieving and loss. Instead of using EFT as a tool we can use to help ourselves free ourselves from emotional patterns that keep us trapped, people can ruin the EFT by seeing it as a way to avoid dealing with the ephemeral nature of our lives, the fragility of our lives, and the big truth we want to avoid: we are all going to die.

And lastly, people can even ruin the Law of Attraction. Just as religion is corrupted into a form of control, using fear to manipulate people to vote for who they want, the Law of Attraction can be corrupted into a way of controlling our future and everyone around us. Nothing is impossible according to the Law of Attraction. But have you seen anyone regenerating any arms lately? Have you seen anyone flying around the world without a plane? Of course not.

The Law of Attraction can be misused as a way to try to be perfect, to try to avoid the messy work of grieving and loss, a way to control everything. Just as when we use religion to bargain our way to safety, getting mad at God when we lose the game, or when we get cancer, we are disappointed when we cannot manipulate the world with the Law of Attraction.

Let me be clear: I believe the Law of Attraction works. I just believe that surrendering is better than trying to control everything. I believe that Divine Right Action is at work. I believe that my having a rare genetic disease, a disease which they can trace back to the family in Ireland that first mutated the gene, a disease for which the genetic marker was discovered from research on my family — I don’t believe my getting this disease was any kind of mistake.

I don’t believe I am being punished because I do not want to see the truth in my life. I believe glib formulas of “Oh, you broke your foot, then I know that means you are afraid to step out into the world,” are ways for the speaker to feel he or she has a control that does not exist for human beings. It might be true that you broke your foot because you are afraid to step out into the world. But let’s have a little more humility and a little less arrogance around this phenomenon, shall we?

Joseph Campbell said that life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived. I much prefer the surprise and delight and struggle of learning to live the mystery of my life. I much prefer to believe that when the challenge comes my way it is a gift ready for me to unwrap and discover. It is not a punishment.

I am not saying that people who talk about the Law of Attraction are corrupt. I am not saying that the Law of Attraction is corrupt. I am saying we can ruin anything. Our need to be perfect, which is really our need to be safe and loved, corrupts everything it touches.

Wow! What now? So if we could ruin anything, what are we to do now? That’s easy: laugh at ourselves. We are very funny, we human beings. Aren’t we just hilarious in the way we try to control everything and then give it a spiritual face? We are hysterically funny! Let’s forgive ourselves immediately. Let’s forgive each other immediately. Let’s not take ourselves so seriously.

I, for example, am committed to finding where the rubber chicken meets the road.

Blessings,

Vicki

We all find activities that make a big difference in our lives. If we write gratitude lists every day, we notice an increase in our enjoyment of life. Or if we walk on a regular basis we notice we have more energy and our mood is uplifted.

Then, for unknown reasons, we quit doing what we know improves our lives. It doesn’t cost much, doesn’t take much time, and greatly increases our ability to appreciate our gifts and deal with our challenges, AND YET WE STOP DOING IT.

What is this about? Most of us know this phenomenon. “Yes, I was doing those things and was feeling better. It was easy, but then I stopped. I don’t know why. Huh. That’s interesting.”

I think we stop doing what serves us because these insidious thoughts creep into our minds and take over: “This is too easy. This is too little. Such a small behavior can’t make a profound effect on my life. I don’t need to do this anymore. I need to find something newer, sexier, harder, more complicated.”

So we stop doing what supports our emotional, spiritual, and physical health. Then we wonder why we find ourselves right back where we were when we started doing those things that had been improving our lives.

Here is what interests me: We brush our teeth everyday, twice a day, even though we don’t have a huge effect from one brushing. We brush our teeth because we know it benefits us in the long term. We don’t debate every day whether or not we are going to brush our teeth; we just do it.

People who grow up in the Culture of Poverty do not take care of their teeth and they lose them. A deep belief in the Culture of Poverty is that what we do doesn’t matter. It’s all about luck anyway – so why bother with boring little things such as brushing our teeth?

I think most of us have a bit of this Culture of Poverty in our brains. This is what stops us from writing, walking, tapping, singing, dancing, stating our appreciation and gratitude, and all those behaviors that take so little time and produce such great results.

How Do We Help Ourselves Keep Doing What Works?

Here are two ideas:

1. Connect a new behavior to something you know you will do, such as brushing your teeth. For example, always tap before you brush your teeth. Putting the new behavior in front of the already established behavior ensures you won’t forget. You get to feel very proud of yourself every time you do this. Your self esteem skyrockets.

2. Install ringtones on your phone that remind you of what you are committed to doing regularly. Every time your phone rings, you get a fun reminder of who you want to be.  Impress your friends. Contact me and I will make one just for you: (“Suzie, wake up! Suzie, wake up!”)

You have to commit to staying in the game. Set up a system to support you because you know your tendency will be to stop doing what works. Then plan for regular evaluation times to catch anything that has fallen off your “I Do This Reality List.”

It is not, as they say, rocket science, but it does take persistence and means we need to stay awake. I’m working on my version of a parody of “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do.” Maybe this song will help us all keeping doing what is working for us.

Waking Up is Hard to Do

Don’t take this pain away from me.

My comfort zone is my misery.

It’s too scary. You know it’s true.

Waking up is hard to do.

I remember when I felt so fine.

Walking, writing – I had plenty of time.

Then I “forgot.” You’ve done it too.

“Cuz waking up is hard to do.

They say that waking up is hard to do.

Now I know. I know that it’s true.

Don’t say I don’t get to pretend.

It’s too hard. I give up. I don’t want to wake up again.

My energy feeds my fear.

I get better at this every year.

The Law of Attraction turns out to be true.

Waking up is hard to do.

Chorus

Leave me alone. I don’t want to try.

I have plenty of good reasons to cry.

Mind your own business. If you don’t I’ll sue.

Waking up’s too hard to do.

Blessings,

Vicki

How a Drenched Rat Came to Climb the Banks of the Nile

From my trip to Uganda in 2006

I am slowly finding my way up the red, muddy bank of the Nile, about twelve miles down river from the source as this giant river empties out of Lake Victoria.  I am barefoot and my feet are tender as I step over rocks and pebbles. I especially do not enjoy the pebbles pushing into my soft feet.

It is raining, pouring down rain, and I think I am as wet as I can get. I do not know that in a few minutes it will pour so hard, the sound of the rain will compete with the crashing of the rapids of the river, as the visible world shrinks around me. A downpour on the Equator is really something.

I have just left the safe raft, the one with the gorgeous African man rowing, rowing with his gorgeous muscled arms. Sigh.

I’m holding the hand of a woman from Spain who does not speak much English. I could not understand the guide’s instructions and I could not see the path up the bank  he was pointing to. I am trusting this woman, this woman’s hand to guide me. She doesn’t speak English and I am legally blind. We make a great pair.

The mud is red and feels comforting. I see cows around me and Marta, my new best friend, pulls me around a cow pattie. Something cakes to the bottom of my feet and I hope it is mud, not cow manure. Whatever it is, it will not be on my feet for long, so I choose to think that it is mud.

The river is wild here, too wild to go down safely. (I suppose “safe” is relative at this point, but a class six rapid, as this one is, will probably kill anyone who tries to run it.) I’m not sure where the other paddle raft has gone. My friend Caroline, a principal from the school I am working with, is in the paddle boat, the one that flipped three times. We are all making our way up the bank to the take out truck, and we hope shelter, from this pounding rain.

Marta leaves me as others join us and Mandwa, our guide, takes my hand to help me up the hill. I feel my hand in his and I’m filled with a joy and awe I cannot adequately describe. How did I get to be here, climbing up the bank of the Nile in Uganda, being drenched in the pouring rain, with red mud and manure caked to my feet? How is it that this man has rowed down the river through twelve class five rapids, and done it with such grace that we did not flip as the paddle boat did three times? Who is he that he comes to this place in time to put his hand in mine and guide me up the bank? What a delicious, magical moment this is.

We see more cows grazing on the bank, some of them wandering through the rocks and mud, weaving among the rafters as we climb up to the truck.

The Spanish woman and I arrive first and stand as if under a downspout. “Drenched rat” comes to mind and I think I have never understood the phrase as I do at this moment. We are waiting for the helpers to put a tarp over the truck so we can scramble in and get out of the worst of the rain. I smile, even as I shiver, for I know I will describe this moment to my friends and we will all laugh. I know that it is perfect in some way I can’t explain. Marta touches my goosebumps and giggles.

I climb into the truck, happier now that I am out of the rain, but still as wet as if I’d gone swimming in my clothes. Caroline, my principal friend, comes to fetch me from the truck because we have a jeep waiting to take us back to our car, a large SUV Caroline has bought to make it safer for her to muscle through the crazy traffic. “No one would take me seriously in a Honda Civic,” she tells me. We will be missing the barbeque the rest of the rafters will be enjoying as part of this excursion because we must get back to Kampala before dark. It is a difficult and dangerous thirty mile trip. Bandits are not uncommon.

The jeep is blissfully dry, I am very happy for a moment, and then I think, “The next thing that will make me happy is dry clothes. The next thing after that will be food in my stomach. The next thing after that will be a gin and tonic.” They make great G and T’s here, a residual benefit of British rule.

There is always a next thing, I think, the next thing we need to have to get closer to happiness. Learning to be happy in the moment we are in is The Secret, I think. Learning to enjoy being barefoot and blind, with my feet covered in red Nile mud and perhaps cow manure – this has got to be one of the habits of mind to actually live a happy life instead of chasing after one.

I can look forward to being dry, clean and fed, but if I do not know how to enjoy the drenched rat parts of my life, I will miss most of it.

I don’t want to miss anything.

Kick a fall leaf today,

Vicki