Apples & Oranges

Seeds XI, 9

Seed: Apples and Oranges

Did you know that in the Genesis story of Adam, Eve and the Serpent, the kind of fruit is never named? It has traditionally become an apple. Why is that? Because apples are indivisible as themselves. Perfect fruit to symbolize the metaphysical “division” of humankind from its Creator. Even more perfect because Eve held in her hand the solution to the segmentation—wholeness.

Spencer Beebe, president of Ecotrust in Portland, writing in Spirituality & Health May/June 2008 says, “We are an “orange” society (segmented); we need to be an “apple” society (whole again.)”

Oranges and apples, apples and oranges, are images used primarily to illustrate how things don’t go together. How perfect that Mr. Beebe harnesses them to explain how societies are interacting at the moment.

I’d like to take this image to a more microcosmic level than he did. We are orange individuals seeking to become apples again. Segmentation within is rampant, and we, made in the image and likeness of the Original Wholeness, naturally seek wholeness.

Have an apple!

Be joy,

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, God’s Dictionary,

Ode Magazine, and The Huffington Post.

That Virtue of Virtues: Patience

My dear videographer friend called me last night to say that he’d completed a first draft of the EPK (electronic press kit) we’d dreamed up last summer. I finished my exercises and eagerly rebooted my computer to see what he’d created, and it’s marvelous!

Bless his heart, he had been consistently giving himself a hard time about being “seven months late.” And, admittedly, he had taken that amount of time to get it done, but . . . I didn’t consider it late. I considered it right on time.

It got me to thinking about patience, as in, you know, patience is a virtue.

I remember in seminary our prayer professor told us never, but never, to pray for patience because we’d be given opportunities to practice it. Do you consider yourself a patient person? I don’t know many who do.

So why was it so easy for me to stay patient with my friend?

Well, first off, he’d agreed to do the project because of his belief in my work, and as an opportunity to practice his budding video skills. The fee was zero in terms of dollars, and yet, one can’t really get anything for free in this life. Either things cost or they contribute.

I asked myself what purpose would have been served if I’d gotten impatient. I’d have made him feel ever worse than he already did. I’d be suffering from the anger that’s often under impatience. It would have been a lose/lose situation. But even that isn’t why I was able to remain patient.

Why is because I had my priorities clear.

Did I want the EPK? Sure.

Did I need the EPK? At some point, probably. My press agent will surely use it.

Did I value my friendship with this precious man over any EPK ever? You bet.

And that’s why it was easy to remain patient. Loving my friend and my friend loving me won out over artificial timelines my friend and I had chosen.

The next time you’re feeling impatient, stop. Ask yourself a question: what is most important here?

My friend, Steve Lishansky, an amazing strategic alignment wizard, calls it WIMI.

What is most important? WIMI?

When you give yourself the gift of a pause to ask WIMI, I’m willing to bet that nine out of ten times, your impatience disappears.

I also know that had I said to my friend, “Oprah’s team is waiting for it,” he’d have had it done ASAP.

WIMI, dear one? And kiss your impatience a sweet, permanent good-bye.

Afformations: Asking the Right Questions

As a rule, I do not review books that I haven’t completed, but this post just goes to show you that rules are meant to be broken. This week Noah St. John answered a lifelong question for me. Why don’t affirmations work all the time?
 

If you live a life of spiritual practice, you’ll be familiar with affirmations. My definition is: a positive statement that produces a desired result. Affirmations are present-tense statements. I am wise. I am rich. I am married to my right and perfect partner. I am losing weight.

The classic one is Emile Coue’s Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better. I’ve used affirmations for years and they don’t always work.

Why? Enter Noah St. John, author of The Secret Code of Success. Dear Noah, bless him, has turned affirmations and their practice on its head.

Affirmations don’t always work because the mind is ninety percent unconscious. The conscious mind decides which statements we want to be true of ourselves, and in repeating those statements, the subconscious calls us a liar. Simply put, we don’t believe the statements, ergo, they aren’t true. Further, because we don’t believe, they can’t manifest.

The age-old response by spiritual practitioners has been to encourage the affirmer to believe more. Easy to say; not always so easy to do. Truth is, not one of us has any real idea of what lurks in our subconscious minds!

Noah St. John, however, has discovered a method that flushes out the subconscious mind. It’s plain. It’s simple. It’s elegant. Don’t do statements, he says.

Do questions.

Take what you want, say, I want to lose weight.

Afform: Why is it so easy for me to lose weight?

Another: I am rich.

Afform: Why do I always live in financial surplus?

Another: I am married to my right and perfect partner.

Afform: Why is my marriage to my right and perfect partner so joyous?

The idea behind affirmations is to make firm what we want in our lives.

The brilliant idea behind St. John’s afformations is to make form what we want in our lives.

Big difference!

His premise is delightful. The human mind is like Google. It is designed to answer questions. In fact, lots of us have had the experience of trying to find or remember something before bed, and awakening in the morning with the answer. That’s the googleness of the human brain. It’s made for questions!

Better still, St. John says we don’t even have to answer our Afformation questions. What we get to do instead is, like Rainer Maria Rilke, live the questions, or, as he says, give ourselves to the questions, and let our brains do the work.

The effect of his remarkable tool is that we end up focusing on what we want rather than what we don’t want. And that’s the most powerful tool in creation!

I’ve thought for a long time that asking the right questions is the key to a life of fulfillment. The work of Noah St. John is a quantum leap toward the art of spiritual living.

Holy Home

Seeds XI, 8

Seed: Holy Home

Is your home a place of holiness? I mean it. Your kitchen sink. The dish drainer. The sponge, soap, scrubber. How about the loo? Toothbrushes holy? Dental floss? Loo paper. The hall closet? Old galoshes. Pilled scarves.

Neuroscientist Patty La Cerra, writing in Spirituality & Health, recommends that we make where we are holy. I recommend that we start with our own homes simply because that’s where we have the most control. I don’t have to hang a picture because the boss’ brother-in-law painted it; I get to choose my own surroundings.

Look at your home environment with new eyes. Is it a holy place for you? Are you safe? Nurtured? Buoyed up? Are there changes you could make to make your home holy? Usually, they’ll be easy things. Give yourself a morning to do them.

You deserve to live in holiness. In fact, we all do live in holiness, wholeness. A Universe. It means one turn literally, but I like to think of it as one song. Are you singing the holiness song today?

Be joy,

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,

God’s Dictionary, Ode Magazine, and The Huffington Post.

A Complaint-Free World

If you read my Seeds*, you already know that I consider complaining a form of pollution. It’s amazing how much of it we do! In fact, I might even go so far as to say that complaint has become a form of ordinary social intercourse. Ouch.

Enter Will Bowen, and his Unity Church in Kansas City, Missouri. He got an idea to do what his assistant called a “doodad” Sunday. Purple bracelets, like the yellow ones of Lance Armstrong’s Live Strong campaign. She ordered them, and then the fun began.

Here’s how they work. Put your bracelet on. When you catch yourself complaining, criticizing, or gossiping switch it to your other wrist. The goal is to go 21 days complaint-free.

It takes the average person 4-8 months to get it done! Even the average, positive person like me.

How do you know when you’re complaining, criticizing or gossiping? There’s energy behind what you’re saying, emotional push or emotional pull.

Rev. Will started this a while ago. He’s now complaint-free, and he’s also a man with a vision! He wants 1% of the world to become a complaint-free zone. That’s 600,000,000—in English: six hundred million people.

Visit his website to find out how to get your own bracelet(s) and how to become a part of that vital 1%.

His book is terrific. This man is sowing consciousness. He’s showing us how to focus on what we want rather than what we don’t want, and it’s huge. Nearly six million people have taken up his challenge.

Go ahead, I double dare you.

*If you want to subscribe to my free weekly spiritual email Seeds, send me your email address to susan@susancorso.com. Put Subscription in the subject field.

Marriage Demonstration(s)

Top Story

• Marriage demonstrations held around the nation
  Couples nationwide on Thursday participated in a series of Freedom to Marry Day protests, in which they visited marriage license offices to seek applications to wed. The annual protest has taken on special import this year, following the November passage of California’s Proposition 8 constitutional marriage ban. “A lot of people feel a sense of determination and regret over having been too complacent or quiet before, so there is a commitment to ‘never again; we have to take action,’ ” said Evan Wolfson, who started Freedom to Marry Day.

This is the headline that graced my computer screen on the morning of Valentine’s Day, and it made me laugh out loud. Not the actual events—those touched my heart. What made me laugh is how my brain processed those two words:

Marriage demonstrations.

 I’m married to a woman, legally, because I am blessed to live in Massachusetts. I witness myself and my spouse in marriage demonstrations every single day.

 If you are a person in private practice of any kind, you know that certain themes arise at certain times of the year. At Valentine’s Day, you guessed it—Love, with a Capital L. And this year, for some reason, marriage.
 

This week I’ve heard stories from people in the goo-goo-ga-ga phase of relationship. “Everything we do is delightful.”
 

I have heard a story about being unevenly yoked. “She’s not as spiritual as I am.”
 

I have heard a story about an ex-wife in whom there is no longer any interest, Oh! Except that they share three children. “I’m done. She’s done. We’re done.”

I have also heard about a third-time really messy break-up. “He doesn’t see me. He lied to me. He’s an addict.”

Believe it or not, all of these are marriage demonstrations, so it made me think about my marriage, of course.

I ended up telling all these folks the same thing.

Marriage, I said, isn’t perfect by a long-shot. As a structure, it doesn’t handle our ambivalence, our boredom, our impatience, our criticism, our doubts, our worry.

They, to a person, came back with variations on: So how do you make a relationship work long-term?
 

First, you don’t make it work. Not no how, not ever. You allow it to become whatever it wants to become.

Second, you are not your marriage and neither is your spouse.

Third, your marriage is made of the parts of yourselves that you choose to share in the space in between you. It is a third entity, and has its own identity.

Fourth, the only way I know to maintain the health and wellbeing of a long-term relationship is to remain interested in it.

Fifth, think on this. When you put money into a CD, what does it earn? Interest. Another phrase for that same event is: it appreciates.

Sixth, when I am appreciative of something or someone, no matter what, I am interested. What I’m interested in grows, and that’s how I stay committed to my Beloved.

In my book, a marriage demonstration is an investment in the connection between me and an other. Investments, by their nature, create interest, and I totally appreciate that!

St. Valentine’s Day

May your Loving Essence

burn bright

on this

Valentine’s Day!

Be joy,

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,

God’s Dictinary,
Ode Magazine, and The Huffington Post.

Coin Toss

Seeds XI, 7

Seed: Coin Toss

The November/December 2008 Winning Ways inspired this Seed as well. Barbara Winter asks:

How can you tell if you really want to do something? Toss a coin. Literally. It works—not because it settles the question for you, but, as the Danish poet and mathematician Piet Hein said, “While the coin is in the air, you suddenly know what you’re hoping for.”

We’ve all been in this situation before. Shall I do this? Or that? Backing and forthing, wondering what is the best choice for us, or our families, or even all sentient beings. I think there’s an important lesson in Mr. Hein’s coin toss. It’s the principle of need-to-know.

You have two job offers. Both would change your life. One requires one set of commitments, the other, another set. Each would have their costs; each would make their contributions. Put a need-to-know timeline on the decision. Two days, three days. Then wrestle. Tell yourself all the stories you want, ask your friends, family, mentors. Then go into stillness with your coin.

What you’re really asking is: what’s the highest good here—for everyone? You’re seeking the deepest truth of your being. Toss that coin. While it’s in the air, because you’ve put the universe on notice that you need to know, you’ll know.

Be joy,

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 to add 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, God’s Dictionary,

Ode Magazine, and The Huffington Post.

“Moving” Forward

Well, full moon and lunar eclipse day really got me going on Monday! A wise astrologer once explained to me that lunar cycles are about 28 days, during which we each visit each sign of the zodiac, but that when an eclipse comes, we have a whole month in one day. Did I ever.

On the way to an appointment with a magical bodyworker, Nancy Web at Visions Medical Center in Wellesley, I was going down the back stairs of our condo as I often do, when . . .

I went ass over teakettle down the eight steps, leaving plenty of skin cells on the carpet and banging my face down three steps at the bottom.

I had just finished a book on Hawaiian healing techniques that really stood me in good stead. I lay still at the bottom of the stairs, and tapped my face gently against the door threshold, speaking words of power, “I am well. I am well. I am well. This has not hurt me. I am well. I am well. I am well.”

After a few minutes, I got up, a little shaky, and we got in the car to go to our healing appointments. I was alright, fine, even. The bodywork went well. If one has to go flying down a staircase, the day to do it is the day one is seeing a healer.

But there’s a bigger thing to note here. I believe that everything happens for a reason. Everything, without exception. What did I need to know from the incident? The whole left side of my body is scraped. I’m pretty sore today (Tuesday), most especially my quadriceps, the muscles on the tops of one’s thighs.

In meditation, I got that the eclipse had something to do with it. I needed a jump forward, to move forward, quickly, to allow a whole month of emotional cycle to happen in one day. So where was I that I created this fall?

Telling myself I was surrendering, but instead becoming resigned. I was surrendering my deepest desire, or so I thought, and instead, I was really giving up. Aha. And what I needed was to integrate more feminine energy with regard to my goal. More allowing, more yielding, more receiving.

I created the fall so that I would become more aware of my feminine self, who is needed more in the forefront, to allow my fondest dream to come true. I had to move her forward, and balance out the doing with the being.

It was interesting to me that I visualized that sky from The Wizard of Oz. Surrender, Dorothy. Dorothy means Gift of God, and that’s what I got when I fell down the stairs.

The National Prayer Breakfast

President Obama spoke eloquently at the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday, February 6^th.

It has been a tradition in Washington since 1953.

There is a word often bandied about in religion circles: ecumenical. I went to the OED to see if it applied here. It means belonging to the whole world. That suits me just fine.

Obama is correct. Until we learn to apply the Golden Rule to all people, even those with whom we bitterly disagree, peace will be impossible because peace demands cooperation.

The place to start is at home, wherever you are. Give others what you yourself want, and be on the lookout for miracles and peace on earth.