A Not To Do List

When I read this sentence from Swami Beyondananda, I laughed out loud all alone in my office.

“Make a Not To Do list; then don’t do the items on your list.”

If I were going to make a Not To Do list, what would go on it? Try these.

Don’t …

Make war

Lose your temper

Snap at others

Despair

Whine or complain or criticize

Judge

Hit anyone

Discount the good

Neglect God/dess

And those are just off the top of my head!

I most especially appreciate the Swami’s actionable suggestion. Don’t do them!

And, because I, like you, know that humans don’t not do things very well, I have to add that every single one of these items would be easy to check off if we all just made a commitment to inner peace. Try www.tomepeaceis.com

Safety, Security or Both?

I’ve been playing phone tag with the locksmith lately. He just rang up to tell me when he can come to do the work we need. Here’s the scoop:

On one side of our building, there was an attempted break-in. On the other, an actual break-in. Our co-residents on the third floor had a hissy fit, and without permission, installed dead bolts on their front and back doors.

The key system in our building is a master key system. Now I, who am a keeper of one of the master keys, have an additional key for each of those units. One key makes things easier and safer during an emergency. Hence, the locksmith.

The whole mishegas made me think about safety … and security.

Do dead bolts make us safe? Not really. But the folks on the third floor were alarmed, and so one unit put a dead bolt on their unit. The other person on the floor felt she had little choice. If someone is going to break in, aren’t they going to choose the unit without the deadbolt? She had a point.

But dead bolts don’t make us safe, dear one. Not now, not ever. They only let us have the illusion that we are safe. In addition, safety doesn’t really create security either. And we want that illusion, too. Yikes.

Truthfully, the only real safety and the only real security come from within out, and not the other way round.

Do you want to be safe? Decide you’re safe.

Do you want to feel secure? Decide you’re secure.

The definitions of those terms are up to each of us as individuals. Scary? Maybe, but I think the alternative is scarier—letting someone else decide when I am safe and secure.

Give a serious thought to this, dear one. What makes you feel safe? What makes you feel secure? Do you like your definitions? If so, excellent. If not, change them.

Calamity

Seeds XII, 10

Seed: Calamity

I’m deep in the study of the Tao Te Ching, the classic, if brief, tome of Taoism. Reading all sorts of translations, this line from Chapter 58 hit me upside the head:

Calamities are what blessings depend on.

So, of course, my crazy brain leapt to Calamity Jane, that Wild West woman, known for her scouting and her shooting abilities.

The OED defines calamity as the state or condition of grievous affliction or adversity; deep distress, trouble, or misery, arising from some adverse circumstance or event. Apparently, she created the name for herself! She wanted it known through the territories that she was a calamity waiting to happen.

How is it possible for calamities to be what blessings depend on? I think the purpose of calamity is contrast. Think of a calamity from your own life, not a recent one, but one from the past. Can you see how blessings arose from it? Think on it for a bit.

Be passion,

Susan Corso

Dr. Susan Corso

Seeds are remarkable gifts. Sown in consciousness, they bring you to the most important part of your being—your Divine Spark.

Check out the Seeds Archive for past messages of inspiration.

When you have friends you would like added to the Seeds e-mail list, send their addresses to me at susan@susancorso.com.

For spiritual nourishment, please visit my website www.susancorso.com

and my blogs Seeds for Sanctuary, Ode Magazine, and The Huffington Post

and

join me on Facebook and follow me on Twitter: @PeaceCorso.

Making Friends with Yourself

Do you read Parabola? It’s a lovely quarterly which characterizes itself as “where spiritual traditions meet.” Beautifully produced, thoughtful, deep, it’s not a throw-away rag but a journal of deep listening, deep thinking and deep writing.

In the Spring 2010 issue, there is an interview with Buddhist David Rome. Rome studied with Chongyam Trungpa Rinpoche for many years. He describes the master’s definition of meditation as “making friends with yourself, welcoming whatever arises.” What a great idea!

So many folks struggle with meditation. They tell me …

I can’t sit still.

I have no time.

My family interrupts me.

I can’t stop thinking.

There are a million, squillion reasons not to meditate. And just as many, plus one, to meditate. We live in a wildly whirling whirlwind of busy-ness most of the time. We’re overtired. We’re out-of-sorts. We’re pressed, stressed, depressed, a mess.

Meditation, regular, quiet stillness, solves all these problems and more. It gives you clarity about yourself, your life, your work, your relationships, your mission. All sorts of good things come from meditation. IF we’ll do it.

Whenever people tell me they have no time to meditate, I always ask (it’s a little graphic, sorry), “Do you pee?” (They all do.) Use that as your meditation time.

When they tell me they can’t sit still, I say, “Don’t. Walk.” (That’s two for the price of one! Meditation and exercise.)

When they tell me their thoughts won’t stop, I say, “Don’t try to make them. Drop down into yourself and let your thoughts be the tickertape above your head.”

When they say that people interrupt them, I say, “Meditating is a habit. Yours, and that of your family. Make new agreements.” (If you have small ones, teach them to meditate with you!)

The point is that meditation happens when you make time for it. And now you have the Rinpoche’s best reason for it!

When someone asks you why you meditate, you can say, “I’m making friends with myself.”

Second Sight by Dr. Judith Orloff

Dr. Judith Orloff has the heart of a lioness.

The reissue of her memoir, Second Sight: An Intuitive Psychiatrist tells her Extraordinary Story and whos you How to Tap Your Own Inner Wisdom, tells the story of how she has come to be one of the, if not the foremost intuitive psychiatrist, words that for most would seem oxymoronic, but in Dr. Orloff, tell the tale of an intrepid soul, bent on being true to herself.

All intuitive children have their own versions of her story. As one of those children, I could not put her book down. Born intuitive, she was bombarded with negative images and information which left her alienated from herself and others. Her mother didn’t want to know—period. She spent her teen years trying to fit in and found that most illicit drugs kept her intuition at bay.

Fortuitously, Dr. Orloff was raised in the Los Angeles area, and a therapist she reluctantly agreed to see validated her experiences. He sent her to a lab working on intuition. Her abilities woke up and started her on the path that has put her in the forefront of pioneering work combining intuition and psychiatry.

I was captivated by the adventures that her soul pushed her toward: finding buried ships in the Bahamas as part of a scientific/intuitive team, learning remote viewing, working with Kirlian photography and plants in a lab, getting guidance to go to medical school when she wanted to be an artist, facing the cold neutrality of medical education and turning off her intuition entirely.

But intuition is a patient teacher; it waited for her. Fortunately for me, and even more fortuitously for us. This book was a reclamation of her true self—or rather, both of her true selves—the doctor/scientist and the intuitive.

For years, Dr. Orloff struggled with these two active aspects of herself. She put intuition on hold indefinitely. She saw no way to reconcile the two ways of thinking, of working, of being until a patient made a suicide attempt that blindsided the good doctor. Can you say: wake-up call?

Eventually, she began to use the remote viewing techniques she’d learned to help her patients. She also began to teach them how to remotely view. As she integrated intuition into psychiatry, a huge split in her own soul began to heal. Lifelong fears disappeared. Wholeness was on her horizon.

The thing I most appreciate about Dr. Orloff’s approach is that she strongly suggests that those who are drawn to intuition begin to explore it within a spiritual context. She maintains that this helps with the ethical issues that come along with use of intuition. I completely agree with her. A spiritual basis for intuition, surprisingly, grounds its use in good intentions.

At one point, Dr. Orloff realizes that she’s a healer, that she can intend love and send love through her hands. She uses this ability to help her mother die. The account is moving and eerie. Just before her mother dies, she reveals that Dr. Orloff has come from a long lineage of women healers and intuitive. I have the same experience, and the realization that I wasn’t crazy was just as wonderful for me as for Dr. Orloff.

In Part 2, Dr. Orloff writes a beginner’s guide to intuion. Using the stories of her patients’ successes and failures, she walks the reader through meditaion, dreamwork, synchronicities, meanings, déjà vu experiences. Her explanation of what it is to be an empathy is worth its weight in gold.

I thoroughly respect Dr. Orloff and am grateful that she’s chosen to reveal how she’s gotten where’s she’s gotten. Toward the end of her book, she writes, “…the more peaceful we are, the better chance we have of bringing out the peace is those around us.” This is the true purpose of intuition.

To intuitive and the intuitive-curious worldwide, I heartily recommend this book.

Jugular Prayer with Father Edward Hays

I’m wallowing in the wonder of the prayer consciousness of Father Ed Hays this Lenten season. Spirituality & Practice, the website created and flourishing under the direction of Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, is offering this 40-day course via email. Each day an excerpt from Father Hays’ work appears in my inbox. His work is so rich that an email bite is about all I can take in.

Here is an excerpt from Day 4:

Day 4: Use Your Fingers in Prayer

The Koran says that God is closer than the vein in your neck. What a beautiful invitation to pray. In fact, it suggests a new way to pray. Begin by placing your first and second fingers on your throat’s jugular vein. Linger there as you feel the vigorous throbbing of life within you. Praying with your fingers on your jugular vein can be a sensual affirmation that God is not distant or remote but is pulsating within you. I personally have found this prayer gesture to be extraordinarily affirming of my core spiritual and intellectual belief, and so I present this practice for your consideration.

God is life. What better way to be mindful of the nearness of the Presence than to actually feel it vibrating on your fingertips? To gain the attention of God, your intimate Beloved, does not require bellowing prayers, clanging bells or thunderous pipe organ preludes. A silent sensual touch can profoundly awaken you to God’s perpetual attention to you and your needs.

Besides being an excellent preface to any prayer, this tactile throat prayer gesture is useful whenever you are in need of God’s presence. Use your Jugular Prayer whenever you feel yourself sinking deeper and deeper in the quicksand of an argument or trapped in a no-win discussion — or in any difficult encounter. . . .

A Jugular Prayer expresses a fidelity to the Master of Hidden Holiness. You can use it in the crowded shopping mall, at your desk, and driving home from work. Prayer rituals and postures have great value since they influence the mind and heart. Yet as one of God’s secret agents, you need not drop to your knees or piously fold your hands to pray. By innocently placing your two fingers on your jugular vein, you can silently pray to your God throbbing at your fingertips.

— Edward Hays in Prayer Notes to a Friend

To Practice This Today: Several times during the day in different locations, try the Jugular Prayer. Report on your experience of it in the Practice Circle.

I have been a fan of Father Edward Hays for many years. His books on prayer have opened my eyes for years. He’s a deep practice kind of guy. The Brusatts say:

Edward Hays has been a Catholic priest since 1958. After thirteen years in the parish ministry, including seven years as pastor to Native Americans, he made an extended prayer pilgrimage to the Near East, Israel, and India. He served as director of Shantivanam, a contemplative center in the Midwest, and as the priest chaplain at the Kansas State Penitentiary in Lansing. A co-founder and moving spirit of Forest of Peace Publishing, he is the author of more than 30 bestselling books on contemporary spirituality.

Over his long and illustrious career, Hays has been a pioneer manifesting a daring mystical sensibility and an unbridled imagination that makes his vision consistently fresh and invigorating. He creatively uses parables and stories to discern God’s presence within the precincts of everyday life. He often presents startling images for believers; tears are “prayer beads,” a question mark is a “holy symbol,” sleep is “a sacrament as God’s Good Night News,” and a smile is “an outward sign of a laughing soul.” His prayers, original psalms, and daily rituals provide a framework a fresh and wide-ranging devotional life.

Edward Hays is above all a master of everyday spirituality. This is a tradition that goes back to Celtic Christians who sought the presence of God in household duties, and even farther back to Jesus, who framed his teachings around common activities. Hays encourages us to read and interpret what shows up in our lives, to find places of meditation and silence where we live and work, to keep an open house in our heart for all things, to sustain the art of long looking, and to cultivate a sense of wonder.

Consider visiting Spirituality & Practice to sign up and catch up with Lent and Father Edward Hays. You’ll be glad you did.

The Red Clock

As we all know, humans are creatures of habit. Witness our experience when the red kitchen clock I’ve owned for more than 30 years died last week. We keep looking at the nail in the wall for the time.

Admittedly, I had a certain nostalgia for that clock. It was the first thing I ever charged on a credit card right after I got out of college. I remember going to The Cellar in Macy’s in New York City and feeling oh, so grown up. I’ve schlepped that clock all over the country. It’s lived in my homes in New York City, Bridgeport, Kansas City, southeastern Washington state, and Boston. That red clock has witnessed a lot.

When I brought it home the first time, I hung it low on a kitchen wall-space. I told my then housemate that the red reminded me that time was valuable, and low on the wall meant it was also unimportant. Over the years, I’ve babied my clock. The thingies that held the battery oxidized over and over again. I fixed it. A fix-it friend fixed it. The top had a chip from when it fell off the wall once and bounced. It kept great time.

My red clock has been a metaphor for my relationship with time over the years. Time is a funny thing for humans. We have a love/hate relationship with time.

But the thing is: time is the great equalizer. We all have the same amount of time. 24 precious hours in any given day. And it doesn’t matter if you’re the Sheik of Araby or Little Miss Thang. Every one of us has the same 525,600 minutes in a year.

The issue is not time itself, but how we choose to spend our time. The amazing thing is that time, as we “spend” it, is a great illusion. The only real time there is happens to be Now. This now, and then the next now. That red clock reminded me of Now.

Fortunately for the Universe in its whirl, Amazon had a slew of red kitchen clocks to choose from and a new one is winging its red way to me right now. It will go on the kitchen wall, and if it lasts as long as the former one, I’ll be 81 when I need a new one.

There’s no time like the present, and there’s no present like the time.

Fear of Death

Seeds XII, 8

Seed: Fear of Death

It is said that the greatest fear of humankind is the fear of death. It could very well be, but I wonder.

What can be said truly is that we no longer have customs which sustain us when we face death. Just think of this one: wearing mourning clothes. Mourning clothes told everyone the mourner encountered that mourning was going on—without a word. Furthermore, mourning clothes were worn for designated periods of time depending upon the closeness of the mourner to the one who died.

My elderly mother-in-law died this year. I loved her; she was a pistol. I do not mourn her the way my spouse, her daughter, does. To look at my sweetie, you wouldn’t know she was in mourning. Should we reinstitute mourning clothes? Probably not, but it’s not a bad idea to wear a reminder of mourning for ourselves.

In this life, we all face death, dear one. Small deaths in disappointments, and factual death in the cessation of life in those we love. There are as many kinds of mourning as there are souls. If you are one who mourns right now, bring your fear of death with you into the process and let that be healed as well.

Be passion,

Susan Corso

Dr. Susan Corso

Seeds are remarkable gifts. Sown in consciousness, they bring you to the most important part of your being—your Divine Spark.

Check out the Seeds Archive for past messages of inspiration.

When you have friends you would like added to the Seeds e-mail list, send their addresses to me at susan@susancorso.com.

For spiritual nourishment, please visit my website www.susancorso.com

and my blogs Seeds for Sanctuary, Ode Magazine, and The Huffington Post

and

join me on Facebook and follow me on Twitter: @PeaceCorso.

The Real Thing

I just finished a session with a really nice guy, a really nice guy, and it’s not working for him any more. It’s not that nice guys finish last. No, not at all. It’s that being a nice guy is a false stance. Does that shock you?

There’s nothing wrong with being a nice guy, but the tip-off for me in the session was that he kept saying, “I keep trying to be a nice guy.” Keyword: trying. To whom was it trying? To my client.

Now, don’t misunderstand me. Being a nice guy is a nice thing. Better that than being a mean guy to be sure. The issue is why. Why was he trying to be such a nice guy? And why did he have to try at all? Why wasn’t he simply a nice guy because he was simply a nice guy? There’s, to coin a phrase, the rub.

If you have to try to be nice, something’s not right, something’s off. And what is off? In a word: authenticity. It’s not that he was lying about who he is. It’s that he’s trying to be something he’s not. Who is hurt by this? The guy, and every relationship he has.

Whoa!

What’s to do?

Change your priorities—pronto. Instead of being a nice guy or trying to be, the far wiser goal is to be a real guy, an authentic person. When you are authentic, you interface with others out of your own authority. When you are inauthentic, you trade away your authority to others and are weakened in the bargain. Ouch.

Being real—no matter how ugly it gets, and humans can get ugly—is far preferable to being nice. I know that sounds like it flies in the face of the Golden Rule, but it really doesn’t. Being real, like the Velveteen Rabbit, is a worthy goal.

Being real means being honest, knowing yourself, feeling your feelings, telling the truth about them. Being real means being in the moment, not trying, just being. Yes, being. For my money, the real thing is far preferable to trying to meet an idealized self-image that isn’t who you really are.

And if it turns out that you can be nice in the bargain, go for it.

Redemption

A dear friend just performed in a dreadful play and I, friend that I am, went and saw the show. Not wanting to upset him during the run, I sent him a thanks and we’ll talk email pointing out the couple of things I really enjoyed about the performance.

When we finally talked, I was able to say to him that I really thought the play was awful. He didn’t agreed with me, but he did see how I could have seen it that way. What I told him was that there was no redemption at the end. I don’t like plays that lack redemption. In fact, that’s what I think the theatre is for.

The word redemption comes from Latin roots meaning to redeem which means to buy back. There was nothing to take away from the show that I saw that had any flavor of redemption whatsoever. It was gory and dark and angry at the beginning and gory, dark, angry and heartless at the end.

We’re on what I’ve dubbed “HEDDA lockdown” this weekend. My sweetie is directing HEDDA GABLER at Tufts University and this is tech weekend. Two days of 12-hour rehearsals to get all the lights, costumes, sets, props, and sound in order so that they can open on the 18^th.

HEDDA is not about redemption either. Oh maybe it is. Maybe the act of taking her own life in the penultimate moment of the play is a twisted form of redemption, definitely twisted. Her production is terrific and I think it’s going to be a good evening in the theatre, but it’s not redemption as I like it.

I like the redemption of musicals. The leads get one another in the end (boy/girl, girl/boy, boy-/boy, girl/girl) and all’s well that ends well. The world is unredeemed enough that I think the theatre ought to take its redemptive role seriously.

Musicals are ordered to provide redemption, and I think we need it. In Billy Elliott on Broadway a coal miner’s son wants to be a ballet dancer. By following his heart, he gets what he desires. The theatre, for me, functions as a mirror of the best way to live. We needn’t wallow in other than the best ways to live—all we have to do is turn on a computer or a television for that.

So the next time you go see a show, ask yourself what you’d like to “buy back,” (another way to put this is “take away”) from the production. I’m only buying back the best ways to live as shown to me by the gracious Imaginary Invalid.

P. S. If you’re in Boston, come see HEDDA. Feb 18^th to 20^th and Feb 25^th to 32^th. The box office number is 617-627-3493.