Hunger & Hope

My theme today comes from Blog Catalogue’s Bloggers United. They asked bloggers all over the world to write about world hunger. Partnering with Heifer International, the purpose of the event is to draw attention to world hunger. There will be many participants who write about the physically hungry in our world.

I think, however, that the greater hunger worldwide is spiritual hunger. People the world over are starving for spiritual meaning in their everyday lives. I truly believe, with Victor Frankl, that humans suffer the most when they live without meaning.

We’ve been going along, a lot of us, trying to do just that for a long time and now I think the planet itself and its inhabitants are screeching, “Enough!” No more meaningless anything.

In fact, if we just slow down long enough to see it, everything has meaning. Every, little thing. The contribution of each being on Earth changes the rest of the earth, the solar system, the galaxy. Put plainly,

You make a difference.

Whether you can see it or not. Whether you know it or not. Whether it is acknowledged or not. No matter what.

Your existence fills a hunger on this planet.

And here, for me, is where hope arises. Hope, that last gift of the famous Pandora and her infamous Box. Hope is what’s left when she releases all the evils into the world. Interestingly, in none of the versions I read of her story are the “evils” listed. The only named denizen of the box is hope.

The word hope carries with it the expectation of good, an expectation of something desired. Would I love to expect that all beings were fed on Earth? Of course. Even more though, for me, I do expect that through time all beings will be spiritually fed.

This is why I offer all I encounter, whether I like whatever it is or not, peace. Peace is the emotion at the core of satiation, fullness—both physical and spiritual.

Pandora means all gifts. Won’t you pray with me that hunger of all kinds be resolved now through our expectation of true abundance for all in the universe?

Ai Weiwei, Artist & Lightening Rod

Ai Weiwei. Chinese digital dissident, is featured in the May/June issue of Utne Reader. His artwork and his story captivated me. The interview originally appeared in Index on Censorship and was conducted by Simon Kirby.

He participated in creating The Bird’s Nest Stadium we witnessed nightly during the Olympics in Beijing, and then he withdrew his support from the project. He’s outspoken about his government, and the government doesn’t silence him—or it hasn’t yet. In fact, by his own report, his greatest fear is silence.

In speaking about China, he says, “The basic value of contemporary thought has to be established in China. We need to create a sense of right and wrong, to learn to face ourselves and our history, to discuss what kind of nation and what kind of government we should create. These are essential questions and they need to be addressed. Without this, no solution can ever really reach the real root problem.”

I’d say the same is true all over the world, not just in China. It’s also true for every individual everywhere.

Ai goes on, “In fact, it is not only China that is facing these new kinds of difficulties—the whole world is facing them. But the difference here is that the old political structure remains fully intact.”

Sounds like the usual party-line bickering in the U. S. to me.

“I believe that the primary concern and main struggle within that structure is to stay in control and everything done within that structure is related to this mission.”

Dems? Reps? Control issues, anyone?

“The problem is that the whole society is dying through lack of responsibility or involvement.”

Yes, oh yes. The punditry has repeatedly remarked on President Obama’s stance of taking responsibility, and his continued urging of his vast constituency to get involved.

Ai calls it “active responsibility.”

If we continue to refuse to take responsibility for our own world, continue to assign that responsibility to government or politicians or officials of one stripe or another, it should not surprise us when Responsibility itself comes calling and insists we take her in.

The people who, I believe, have taken responsibility for millennia are always and forever the artists. They mirror our experience in a way that no other group even approaches. Ai is a blogger in China. There is no other way to put forward a dissenting opinion. All media are controlled by the state.

As an artist, he is able to see conditions in his own country so clearly that he diagnoses the problem and prescribes a cure for it in one sentence, “We need a very simple solution.”

Don’t we all? Artists in our world show us the problem and the solution every time they sing, dance, write, perform. They are the lightening rods of our time. Thematically, all over the world at this time, they point to the famed wasteland of Arthurian legend, and that fact that if we spot it, we got it. In the next leap, stroke, breath, we are enjoined to take responsibility for our own one small part of it. To bring greening, luxury, abundance and fertility back to our world one artistic outrage at a time.

Five Simple Rules for Happiness II

Seeds XI, 17

Seed: Five Simple Rules for Happiness II

I read the germs for the next five Seeds in a catalogue.

Five Simple Rules for Happiness. The second is . . . Free your mind from worries.

So now, you start this path toward happiness with a free heart. What’s the next obstacle? In my case, and that of many others, it would have to be the mind. I don’t mean Mind, the consciousness that we all share on Earth. I mean my own small monkey mind, the mind that worries.

For some bizarre, heretofore unexplained reason, humans seem to think that worry acts as a sort of prophylaxis. Ever heard anyone say, well, if I worry about it, it might not happen? Ridiculous. Worry is no preventative. Instead it confuses what you want with what you don’t want.

Try this: One of the best cures for worry I know is to ask it a series of questions. Will this (whatever it is) matter in ten years? Ten months? Ten days? Ten hours? Ten minutes? Most of the time, the answers are all no. What happiness when one’s mind is worry-free—think of all the time you’ll have for imagination.

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.

Michael Beckwith's Life Visioning

Rev. Dr. Michael Beckwith is the beautiful spirit who founded The Agape International Spiritual Center, a Science of Mind church in Los Angeles. I recently listened to and heard his CD set on the life visioning process. His clarity took my breath away.

Here, for your contemplation, are my notes …

First, you build the field, a field of unconditional love, an atmosphere in which to create. Unconditional love gives itself totally in every place in the universe with no conditions or withholding. He suggests we feel the love and then multiply it—x 10, x 50, x 100. Talk about a sacred space!

Second, situate yourself into reverent alertness. Give yourself to your own capacity and willingness for deep listening. No mistake that Deep Listening is the name of my podcast series!

Third, ask for vision. What is God’s idea of itself as my life? Read that again! What is God’s idea of itself as my life?! Wow. That one was enough to stop me in my tracks.

It means, sure, I have my own dreams for my life, but what are Deity’s dreams for my life? Here’s another: What is seeking to emerge as my life? You must become an asker.

Fourth, ask about change. Yes, change! Try these questions on for size:

What must I become in order to manifest my vision?

Where must I grow?

What is my growing edge?

What do I need to let go of?

What gifts do I already have that will serve this vision?

You ask all this without knowing the how.

Then he says, “Spiritual growth is not about getting—it’s about letting.” Brilliant!

Fifth, enter your own willingness. He names it the sacred yes. Engage and embrace a commitment to your vision. He also suggests you multiply your yes x10, x 50, x 100. Breathe and receive.

Sixth, as always, return to gratitude, thanksgiving and appreciation. Remember that your vision is already happening. Let the feeling well up inside you.

Your task is to let yourself become the condition that your vision asks for.

He closes with, “Let the God times roll!” Of course.

Susan Boyle: Kissed By An Angel

I have to take issue with Saturday’s The New York Times’ article headline: Unlikely Singer is YouTube Sensation.

Why the hell is she “unlikely?”

Because she doesn’t look like a star. So?

Because she’s 47? So?

Because she’s an unemployed spinster from Scotland? So?

Susan Boyle isn’t an unlikely anything. None of us are.

Instead, she’s a human being who’s been kissed by an angel—of song. And by the grace of divine order, we were privileged to receive her gift poured out for all the world to hear last Saturday night on Britain’s Got Talent.

By her own report, Miss Boyle has been singing since she was 12. If we do the math, that means she’s been holding, thinking of, nurturing and growing her dream for 35 years. She’s also been singing during that time—when she could, where she could, when asked, and probably when not asked as well.

Miss Boyle has sung in her local church for more than three decades, but she didn’t pick a church song for her first worldwide venue. (I can’t wait to hear her knock “Ave Maria” out of the park!) Instead, she chose a song about dead and dying dreams—ALL THE WHILE holding out for her own dream of being a professional singer, in her own words, as good as “Elaine Paige.”

The conventional wisdom from her first Scottish television interview, from the BBC, and various other sources yammered on about how Miss Boyle is so inspiring because …

she’s an underdog …

looks and age don’t matter …

it’s never too late …

she reminds us that we should never give up hope ….

I hold a dissenting opinion.

Susan Boyle is the exact right singer with the exact right song for our exact right time.

Our world is falling apart. Our dreams, if we want to continue in the new world that’s forming, must be different. We can’t keep the same dreams, in the same forms, doing the same things to make them come true, when the environment for their becoming is drastically changed. We can’t. We have to let life kill the dreams we dreamed, and let new dreams surface.

Interestingly, the only other song I found online sung by the angel-kissed Miss Boyle was “Cry Me A River.” Originally written for a film set in the 1920s for Ella Fitzgerald to sing, it was tossed out because, according to the song’s author, Arthur Hamilton, “no one will believe a Negro knows the word ‘plebian.’” I kid you not. I know the song from Streisand’s debut album. Miss Boyle sings this depression-era song as though she was born to it. She, too, is one of the plebian, from Latin roots plebius, of the common people vis-à-vis the patrician people.

The Times says, “Miss Boyle’s apparently complete lack of formal training fits more purely into the archetypal talent-competition narrative: Unknown From Nowhere Reveals Extraordinary Gift and Stuns World.”

Let’s take it apart idea by idea, shall we?

Unknown: to whom? She took care of her mother all her life. Her mother knows her. Her church folk know her. Her brother knows her. Now we know her. Unknown, not so much.

From nowhere: please? She told us where she was from, a small collection of quiet villages in Scotland. No one is from nowhere.

Reveals: nope. She didn’t reveal it. She received it, cared for it, used it as much as she could in as many venues as possible until that 35-year nourishment program sent her into a venue where she could pour it out, and Miss Boyle stinted nothing. She rained, she poured, she blessed us.

Extraordinary Gift: I’ll give you this one. Her gift, and a gift from the angel of song it is, is truly extraordinary.

Stuns World: Well, certainly it stunned the three cynical judges of Britain’s Got Talent. Piers Morgan said he gave her performance “the biggest yes in three seasons of the show.” Amanda Holden said, “Definitely yes.” And the arrogant Simon Cowell took credit for knowing what they were about to see in advance, adding (finally), “three yeses,” and letting a tiny flash of his buried enthusiasm for talent peek through his cynicism before the clouds descended again.

Was the world stunned, really? I don’t think so. I think instead we were awed, delighted, overjoyed, reminded of who we are, blessed by this generous outpouring of song that was, to quote Amanda Holden again, “the biggest wake-up call ever.”

Wake up, rise, let the old dreams die. Keep nourishing the ones that do not go away. We, like Miss Boyle, will live to sing another day.

Five Simple Rules for Happiness I

Seeds XI, 16

Seed: Five Simple Rules for Happiness I

I read the germs for the next five Seeds in a catalogue.

Five Simple Rules for Happiness. The first is . . . Free your heart from hatred.

Hatred is one of the world’s greatest poisons, far more powerful than arsenic or hemlock. The reason is because the other two I mentioned poison the body, but hatred poisons the soul.

Ever thought of your heart being in chains? Consider Old Marley, he who is Dead as a Doornail, rattling and dragging myriad chains from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. He says, “These are the chains I forged in life.”

Hatred forges chains. And what are chains but links to that which one hates? Freeing your heart from hatred releases those chaining bonds setting both you and the other free.

Can you picture an old-fashioned gas tank siphon? Put it into your heart and siphon off any hatred lurking there. What happiness comes from a free heart!

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.

Hot Potato Guidance

I’m pretty uncomfortable about it at this point, and I know too that I’m doing the right thing.

As you know, I function as a Chief Spiritual Officer for several businesses. It’s hard to explain what a CSO does. The basic job is to look at business scenarios of all kinds and listen for guidance at the same time. The implication of my commitment to these concerns is that whatever I get, I share.

Ay, there’s the rub …

In one particular business, I got some guidance this week for the CEO, guidance that is out-of-the-ordinary uncomfortable. He’s making some choices in his new business that are both exhausting him, and causing difficulty within the business. He even asked me how to change his state of exhaustion. So I did what I always do, I tuned in—and voila!—guidance.

There is a second step in dealing with guidance that many of us forget. Most of us, when we get guidance, are so certain of its correctness that we feel the urge to blab it out as soon as we can. Over the many years I’ve lived as an intuitive, I’ve learned this second step the hard way. It’s a question:

Is this mine to keep … or to tell?

Not all guidance, dear one, is for sharing. I know that sounds surprising, especially in this case, because the gentleman asked me directly how to solve a problem. And solve it, I can, but … the solve will not be nearly as effective or permanent if I tell him rather than let him figure it out himself.

I know this because I applied step two: know or tell? In this case, it’s a know situation. I know, and I am not to tell. Does that seem disingenuous to you? It does to me sometimes. Here this client is paying to share what I know, and my further guidance is to say nothing—for now.

Since I got the original guidance, I’ve sat in prayer every morning (for about a week) and asked: Today? I keep getting no.

What do I do in the meantime? I show in consciousness, not tell in form.

In order to function in my own integrity, I hold the guidance and the consciousness of the man who asked me for it in juxtaposition in my heart. Guidance/Person, might be a way to say it. I know that I want him to get this, but I want to cooperate with the Divine and allow him to get it on his own, so I hold them both in my heart, and check in every day, just in case things change.

You’ll notice I wrote above: —for now. This now. And when I get to the next now, the rules and the guidance may change. Sitting with the knowing right this minute feels uncomfortable, but it would feel way more uncomfortable to push my client past his limits at this time.

With hot potato guidance, the scenario can change in an instant. That’s why I have made a habit of asking the know or tell question. When the student is ready, the teacher appears. Sometimes the teacher is ready a little early.

As the teacher shows, the student will tell.

5 Reasons to Love the IRS

It’s tax time. The filing deadline is this week for those who don’t opt for an extension—which is never denied. How many people have you heard cursing the IRS in the past month? I’ve lost count.

So here for your contemplative pleasure are five reasons to love the IRS.

1.     People

The IRS is an organization like any other. If you work in a corporate setting, you work in a place similar to the Internal Revenue Service. The people who work for Internal Revenue are just like you and me. This is their tough time of the year. They merit our blessings.

2.     Life Review

This may not be a reality for everyone, but when I do my taxes, I look at it as a yearly review. Seeing where and how I spend my financial resources is an opportunity to calculate the value I received or gave. Itemizing your taxes means you look at everything you did in the past year on a fiscal level, and thereby on a life review level. Enjoy it!

3.     Moral Check-In

Do you think of yourself as an honest person? Doing your taxes tests your mettle. How honest are you? I think it’s only human nature to want to get away with something in the face of the faceless Internal Revenue Service. Do what you will, but know too that yours is the only face you have to look in the mirror every day.

4.     Order

Filling out your accountant’s prep form or your own tax return requires an orderly mind. You have to pay attention so that you don’t make a mistake. Years ago, I was careless on one form and ended up in a three-year audit. It was my own mistake! Tax time asks for presence and an attention to detail that only helps you.

5.     Completion

When I’m done with my accountant’s form, there are only three more steps: receive the completed tax forms, write the checks and mail them. There are very few processes in life that go from beginning to middle to end in a timely fashion. Completion is good for you. It’s a feeling of accomplishment, a job done, if not well done.

It never fails to amuse me that tax time is scheduled near crucifixion time in the Christian calendar. Instead of viewing tax time as crucifixion itself, why not consider it the prelude to Resurrection—surely the whole point of the Christian story?

Launch Codes

Seeds XI, 15

Seed: Launch Codes

There is no Wikipedia page for these words. I had to laugh. Launch codes have been the two-word threat of my generation. They’re primarily Cold War-based, and hooked to the use of nuclear weaponry. Really, they imply the ability to set off world-altering events with the flick of a switch.

Perhaps the fact that there’s no Wiki page is a good sign though. Maybe we’re less concerned now with nuclear launchings and more focused on what we are launching from within ourselves. I think we ought to be.

It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that one person can truly change things in the world. One. And while our personal contributions don’t always make obviously world-altering events, they do alter the world.

So here are my questions to you:

What do you want to launch from within you?

What’s yours and only yours to launch?

And do you know that only you have the launch codes?

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.

From House to White House

{spoiler alert: if you haven’t seen the 4/6 episode of House, don’t read this!}

I really enjoy the Fox series, House. I think it’s because I came into this life with a mystical sense about the body, and because, like Dr. Greg House himself, I love puzzles. Medicine is nothing if not a puzzle because all bodies are different.

Well, in last night’s episode, Dr. Lawrence Kutner, played admirably by Kal Penn, committed suicide—totally out of the blue. It was disturbing, alarming, intriguing to me and to Dr. House. He couldn’t believe that he’d seen no previous indications of it. In fact, I can go so far as to say that it tormented the core of Dr. House, the answerman. He’s used to supplying answers; it’s the thing he values most about himself. He was caught out in last night’s episode.

So the story of why Kutner committed suicide will be played out during this season of House, but the story of Penn and why he left the show excites me more than the fictional one. Think on it: an actor, gainfully employed (a rarity), happy with his role and his colleagues, decides he wants to do something different. That’s all.

Kal Penn worked on the Obama campaign for the presidency. He was into it. I remember seeing him by the Lincoln Memorial in the arts presentation the week of the inauguration. So Obama offers him a gig.

He goes to his producers and says, basically, that he loves his job, that he loves his role, that he’s totally satisfied, and that it’s time to do something different. Together, the three of them figure out what to do to free Penn to work for his country.

What a magical way to leave something! The best possible way ever. Most of us have to make wrong where we are in order to leave it. Penn did the opposite. This is conscious leave-taking. He’s leaving something, yes, but more, he’s going toward something he wants.

What really happened? I think he listened to his spirit, that Divine Spark within each of us which is whole, unadulterated, pure and crystal clear about our path in life. And, better still, he followed it—gracefully, joyously, clearly.

Kal Penn is going to be the associate director in the White House office of public liaison. They do outreach with the American public and with different organizations. They’re basically the front door of the White House. He’s taken a salary cut but he’s investing in himself in a big way.

Mazel tov, Kal. I’ll miss you on House, and I hope to see you the next time I knock on the front door of the White House.