Encore Career

Seeds X, 22

Seed: Encore Career

I loved this expression the first time I encountered it which, I think, was in an article in the AARP Magazine. It refers to those baby boomers who are retiring, and beginning anew. Most of them are retiring from the corporate rat race, and becoming entrepreneurs.
The most intriguing thing to me is that many of these Encore Careerists are looking at sustainability issues and giving-back-to-the-planet businesses. The people who were quoted talked about making a difference.

Whether you’re in the corporate rat race right now or not, take a moment to consider what you might do with your time if money were no object. What issues would draw your attention? Where would you want to make a difference? How would you proceed?

There’s nothing to stop you from having a second career right now, even if it’s only in your mind. The best dreams are the ones we dream over and over again, improving their details until we wake up and make those dreams come true.

Be content,

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.

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 ar Ode Magazine.

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So Many Books, So Little Time

The phrase in my title was on a button my mother gave me. It’s how I feel about books. There are so, so many of them and not enough time to read all I want to read.

Over the years, I’ve come up with a way to decide whether I’ll order a book or not. Unless a book is on a subject of my current research interests which range far and wide, I wait for three recommendations from people I know. Three, at least.

This weeds out the eccentricities of varied reading tastes. For example, I’m not a wild fan of science fiction so if a science fiction book is recommended to me three times, I definitely investigate it.

If the book is a spiritual book, I ask all of the three recommenders to tell me why. Spiritual books work best for me when they address right where I am in my own spiritual process at the time. I read the Abraham-Hicks books because they helped me take a huge leap forward when I read them.

If the book is fiction, I ask the recommenders to tell me what they think I’d like about the book. I read the Ken Follett masterpieces The Pillars of the Earth and World Without End because of recommendations.

I know people who are so busy these days that reading is a thing of the past for them. I can’t imagine living that way. I’m never without a book to read, never. There are too many wonderful things to be found in books for me not to be reading something all the time.

So yes, there are so many books. And yes, there is too little time. So what? Keep reading. I am.

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Robin Tyler on Huffington Post

Dear Ones,

Read Robin Tyler on The Huffington Post!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robin-tyler/let-them-eat-cake_b_102937.html

Join me please in a prayer for her and her partner (and all those who wish to marry in California) and post this on your blogs please.

Susan Corso

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Making A Loving

No, that’s not a typo.

Reading Boze Hadleigh’s Broadway Babylon, a dishy take on the Imaginary Invalid known as the professional theatre, I came upon this quote by theatrical producer Richard Barr (1917-1989), “I have to be loving what I do for a living.” Of course, the proximity of the two words loving and living grabbed my heart.

Mr. Barr was a tall, stoop-shouldered man who shared the office next door to the one where I worked for Cameron Mackintosh long before he was Sir. He was quiet, gentlemanly, always had a kind word for me in those hectic days of transatlantic calls and theatrical crises.

His words gave me a full out stop.

Of course, we have to be loving what we do for a living! But how many of us do? As far as I’m concerned if even one person doesn’t, something’s out of whack on earth. One!

Suggestion: let’s give up making a living. It’s a fraudulent phrase anyway. No one is making a living. In fact, we who are here are already alive, and we don’t have to make anything to have that be the case.

So let’s switch, instead, to making a loving.

Think on it! Every person on earth, doing what they truly love, and are, therefore, good at, to serve themselves and the rest of us. It sounds like a miracle to me.

Try making a loving, and see what happens.

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Snowflake

Seeds X, 21

Seed: Snowflake

Do you remember folding white construction paper in the early years of school and cutting a pattern into it in order to make a snowflake? It’s one of my most tactile memories from childhood.

The message my elementary school teacher taught with our cut-out snowflakes was that no two are alike. Or, each snowflake is unique.

The same is true of humans, dear one. Each one is unique. That’s a word that takes no modifiers. It means one-of-a-kind.

I know you’ve heard this before, but have you realized what it means? There is no other like you, even if you’re an identical twin, in creation. No other. Take a moment to appreciate your snowflake qualities.

Be content,

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.

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 peace blog Ode Magazine.

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The Booby Prize

I’ve always liked one of Werner Erhardt’s aphorisms, “Understanding is the booby prize.” I have spent much of my life working toward understanding. I like understanding things. I’m a lifelong learner, partly in the service of understanding. A lot of my counseling practice is geared toward understanding.

And yet . . . and yet . . . understanding isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be.

Here’s why: I’m smart. I can understand anything if it’s explained to me properly, but understanding something as valuable as that is doesn’t always help me change it. As I’ve gotten older, the emphasis of my life has changed from a need to understand to a much clearer need to change what I don’t like.

Now don’t misunderstand me. Understanding is helpful, important, and necessary in a lot of arenas, but when I’m dealing with a pattern in my own behavior that I don’t like I probably already understand it. This is why Werner Erhardt called it the booby prize.

I know why I’m doing what I’m doing.
What I want to know instead is how to change what I’m doing.

Understanding something doesn’t mean I can change it.

If you’re caught in a pattern you recognize and don’t like, try this. Speak aloud to the pattern, “As an act of my will, I break this pattern.” Every time you behave according to your learned pattern, consciously, deliberately declare your intention to break it.

You’ll find yourself living into the change you want to see. Another of my favorite aphorisms, this one by Mahatma Gandhi, “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

Change, my dear one, starts at home.

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The Baal Shem Tov on Mirrors

Someone sent this to me via email. It’s so striking that I post it here in its entirety. Wow.

You Spot It, You Got It

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Depression

Seeds X, 20

Seed: Depression

Depression is rampant in North America. Well, not exactly . . . instead the diagnosis of depression is common. Is there really more depression? I don’t think so. What I think is that we’re talking about it more, and that it’s a catch-all diagnosis.

If you feel depressed, the psychology experts say that either you’re genuinely sad, or that you’re angry and have turned it in on yourself, or that you’re feeling guilty or worried. It’s best to be specific about feelings instead of using catch-all phrases. Knowing where you are allows you to change it a lot of the time.

And for the times you are genuinely depressed, consider these words. Amy Weintraub says, “Its ‘empty pockets’ weren’t a curse, but a blessing. I had more room for the Divine inside me.”

That’s a take on depression that makes sense to me.

Be content,

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.

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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Amnesty for All, and to All a Good Night

Irena Sendler's Legacy

I wrote about Irena Sendler in a blog post dated March 31, 2008. In yesterday morning’s New York Times, her obituary startled me into tears.

She was a genuine heroine who rescued 2,500 children from the Warsaw ghetto during World War II. The kicker is that she didn’t consider herself a heroine. She often said, “I did what anyone would have done.”

Mrs. Sendler was one of the first of the so-called righteous gentiles honored by the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem in 1965. Her government at the time did not allow her to travel to accept the award. She finally did in 1983.

Toward the end of her obituary, it says, “She is survived by her daughter, Janka, and a granddaughter.” But is she?

Isn’t she also survived by me, and you, and the children and grandchildren of those she saved? Inspiration is an amazing thing. There’s no telling what will cause a human spirit to be inspired. I wish I could assure you that I would have done what Irena did, but, truthfully, I don’t know what I would have done.

What I do know is that Irena Sendler’s long-ago actions have inspired me now. Her legacy to all of us is a legacy of willful blindness—the very best kind of blindness! What her Catholic self saw when she looked at the faces of Jewish children and their parents, were not Jews, but children and parents.

These are the faces we need to practice seeing everywhere in the world today. The children and parents where Hurricane Katrina happened. Children and parents amidst the Chinese earthquake and the Myanmar tornado. Children and parents at the grocery store and the pharmacy and in traffic and in the park.

Irena Sendler was ethnically and spiritually blind, and she leaves us an invitation to see human beings wherever we go, human beings that are more alike than different, human beings all seeking the same things in life, human beings who deserve respect for their dignity.

Irena Sendler lived what the best of any of us would do.

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