Archive for September, 2007

To Be List

Seeds IX, 39

Seed: To Be List

Overheard in a public conveyance recently: a pissing contest (there are no other words so apt) between two women over their To Do Lists. Escalating voices. Animated faces. Super-sized gestures. “Well, I have to do this!” “Really? I have to do that!” Are we suffering from To Do List hubris? I think we are. I was glad to get off the bus.

Yes, dear one, too much to do is a part of everyone’s life at different times. Too many things scheduled too close together. Deadlines at work and at home. Promises made and promises we want to keep. Emergencies. Exigencies. Life has a certain amount of stress, I’ll give you that.

My question today is: do you have a To Be List? I read about this idea on beliefnet and the two bus pugilists reminded me of it. A To Be List is very different from a To Do List. What a To Be List does is give you opportunities to practice how you choose to live your life.

My To Be List includes: Peaceful, Loving, Patient, Kind, Joyous, Gentle, Sweet. I almost never cross things off my To Be List. Why? Because each thing on it is about me learning to be a better, wiser, more open person, and I only ever want more of that.

Be serene,

Dr. Susan Corso

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

When you have friends you would like added to the Seeds e-mail list, send their addresses to me at SeedsDrCorso@comcast.net and please visit my blog Ode Magazine.

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Advice

I have been in the advice-giving business for more than a quarter of a century, although I never set out to give advice. Not when I started, and not now.

In my experience, ninety percent of giving advice is listening. Deep listening. That’s what I do when people tell me their stories. I listen—to them, and within myself. More often than not, clients solve their own troubles just because someone is listening to them.

When they don’t, it’s usually because they’ve gotten too far away from what they truly want. Finding this quote from Harry S. Truman made me smile. It’s as true for clients as for children.

I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.

This is why I listen within during a session. To reach the inner truth that someone is perhaps dancing around (or kicking around) or resisting. Sometimes I’m blessed to be able to say: “Do you want me to cut to the chase?” No one has ever refused.

If I’m quiet enough within, I can come up with the bottom line. The solution, the action to take so that change occurs. This is what everyone wants when they seek advice. They want to know what to do in order to change what’s so.

What this means is that my practice is eclectic. People reach out to me, we work intensely for however long it takes­—sometimes one session, sometimes twelve, it all depends—and then that client goes her or his merry way until the next time they want advice.

Try it for yourself sometime when you’re stuck. Tell the story of what’s going on. Then listen within and see what sort of advice comes up. You could get to the bottom line on your own. If you’re still stuck, be in touch by all means. I love nothing more than deep listening.

(Can’t resist.) The Doctor is in. Five cents, please.

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A Lesson in Intention

Marcel Marceau died this week. He was a world-renowned mime who created a melancholy mime-clown named Bip.

Many years ago, when I was a student at National Theatre Institute at the Eugene O’Neill Memorial Theater Center in Waterford, Connecticut, I was privileged to take a class with this master of gesture.

Marcel Marceau’s artistry is where I first encountered the idea of intention.

His class was full of silence. Without ever speaking, he set us each a task, an exercise, to establish the fact of a wall in front of us. He put his expressive hands in the air and felt a wall, and then, through gesture, encouraged us fledglings, wannabes, to do the same.

We felt for the wall in front of us for about an hour. An hour!

Occasionally, the master would come to discover the wall we had created, and we would have a wall dialogue. Eventually, he visited every wall in the room. When he would work with a student, the wall became much more real, more solid, more . . . well, wall. He had been establishing walls in the air for decades by then.

After the silent work, he spoke in his rich French accent.

“There is only a wall if you intend a wall.”

I walked around for a full week with that sentence echoing in my head. I suppose it was a roundabout introduction to the philosophy that would eventually guide my life, metaphysics.

There is only a wall if you intend a wall.

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