The Direction of Intention

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Several years ago in a crude temple constructed in her house compound, Jero Manchu delivered a message to me from the Bali gods. A few months earlier I’d written a letter to myself about what I was seeking in the world. It was a kind of confessional, a paper priest receiving my self-accusations along with my dreams for the future. I sealed it in an envelope and put it in a place where no one would find it. Knowing that I was going to Bali I was worried that, if I died in a fiery plane crash, my family or friends would find my paper priest. Even though I’d be dead I didn’t want them to find it – embarrassment would reach me even in my grave.

I went to see Jeo on a lark. She was a curiosity to me, a cultural fascination. Jero was a balian (healer) and she worked through trance. Jero Manchu slipped into her trance, opened her eyes, looked at me for a long moment, and then told me what I’d written to myself. There was no way for her to know but she knew. Through a translator she told me almost word for word what I’d written. She knew what I was seeking and I felt naked sitting before her. I was gob-smacked and writhed in my chair. She told me that the Bali gods required an offering from me. The Bali Gods told me to go to the ocean and at sunrise wanted me to give them something. My offer could be anything as long as it wasn’t red. Apparently, red is an offensive color to the Bali gods.

A few days later I drove to the coast on a dive trip. Just before sunrise I went to the beach, lit 3 sticks of incense as I was instructed, and placed my offer in a place where the incoming tides could reach it. Jero had told me to sit quietly and watch the sun rise. I was to do nothing. After sunrise I was to leave and return later when the tide was again low. If my offer was gone, the Bali gods had accepted it and would then support me in my growth.

Later that day, after the dive, I returned to the spot and my offering was gone. I do not understand it. I’m not even sure of the questions I have – other than how she knew – and even that seems inconsequential. She knew my deepest desire. She knew my most vulnerable thoughts. She sent me to the beach to do something that also made no sense to me. Yet, I would have been devastated had my offer still been on the beach after my return- and that makes no sense, either. “The Bali gods are helping you,” she said.

As Doug used to say to me, “Your problem is that you want things to make sense.” He was right. I wanted that. I’m not so sure that matters to me much anymore. Stories are not supposed to make sense, they are supposed to transform. Belief necessitates transcending sense-making; belief and faith dance in the realm of the heart. Standing on that beach, having had someone see my deepest secrets, and knowing that my offer went the way of the tides, I was filled with a sense of peace and hope. It made me laugh to think that the first lesson of the Bali gods was that peace was available if I to stopped trying to make sense of it all.

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Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

There is an oasis in Seattle, a sanctuary for the soul. It is called Eco-Spa. On the surface it’s where I go to get my haircut. Look deeper and it’s the place where people are people, where there is always enough time, the impulse to rush is somehow blocked from entry.

When I was a kid a haircut was done in the backyard. It was akin to a sheep shearing. It was over in minutes and I always left the chair a bit stunned and feeling exposed. Later, haircuts happened in storefronts marked by barber poles. Old guys in white smocks snipped and clipped to the sound of locals playing chess and talking politics. This was a guys place, personal and impersonal all at the same time. The air was heavy with tonic and clipper oil, the combs were plastic and a stipple pen was always at hand for those little accidental ear snips. It was functional, nice, but not nirvana.

The women that opened Eco-Spa wanted to create a place where people are pampered, a place for rejuvenation. They like to help people feel good. They’ve placed the “why” of their business at the center; the “what” comes second. It is intentionally sensual and beautiful. I go there to recharge my battery. What a change from my sheep shearing days! Rachel cuts my hair: she listens like a bartender, intuits like a mystic, massages my head and neck like a pro and knows how to quiet my ranting with hot towels on my face. I confess to whipping up a rant just to receive the towel.

I want to buy the entire IRS a trip to the Eco-Spa. All the rule makers and bureaucracy enforcers need someone to love on them and learn what it is to actually serve another person. They live in the world of the senselessness and sheep shearing – imagine what a good massage and a hot towel treatment could do for their worldview.

The best part is that I’m learning how to carry the Eco-Spa beyond the Eco-Spa. I’m learning that the Eco-Spa is more than a place, it is an intention. I can carry the sense-full, the simple kindness, and the eyes to see beauty wherever I go – and the Eco–Spa is there waiting for me when I forget and need to remember what is important – or get my hair cut.

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338.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Bear and I were talking recently about our admiration for the Bread and Puppet Theatre. I’ve actually seen very little of their work in my life but it is their philosophy that has me applauding. Go to their site and read their Cheap Art Philosophy. Anyone can participate. You don’t need a lot of money, production values, or the expensive paintbrush. The art is in you. Use what’s in the room. It’s not about the technology. It’s about you and your relationship to your world. “Art is food…” says the good people at Bread and Puppet Theatre. Art is not technology; art might use technology. It is all too easy for us to confuse the two in our gadget heavy times. The art comes from within you; the technology is a tool.

Eric Weiner recently wrote a book called Man Seeks God. He chronicles his pursuit of the divine. He visited many faith traditions, from Sufism to Buddhism, Wicca to Shamanism to the Tao. He spent several days in a Franciscan friary; the brothers operated a homeless shelter in New York City. After a few days in the friary, a place with no electric gadgets, no television, cell phones, computers, he took a break from austerity and caught the train into Manhattan. He writes, “Everyone is twitchy,…, their minds are elsewhere. No doubt these hipsters…would think the friars hopelessly out of touch with the ‘real world.’ Yet I wonder: Who are the ones out of touch? The friars, unlike the denizens of Soho, are fully present. They know how to linger. They know how to look someone in the eye without silently calculating their social score.”

This is not a rant against technology. I am as in love with my computer and smartphone as the next person. Easy is good. Instant communication is like a time-sponge. The sword has two edges. At moments like this Lora quotes Sophocles to me: “Nothing vast enters the world of mortals without a curse.” The technological pace of change in our lives is vast. As Marshall McLuhan said, technology doesn’t just impact us, it changes us. Eric Weiner’s question is a great one: what does it mean to be in touch?

There is not a single answer to his question but it does make me cheer for the Bread and Puppet folks and the impulse that drives them. It seems the skill necessary in our times is the ability to discern between substance and glitter, news and opinion, art and propaganda.

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337.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Recently, Will was at a dinner party and told the gathering about an amazing study he’d just read. Apparently, the conscious decision (the thought) to move actually follows an action that the brain has already initiated. In other words, when you think, “I want to lift that flower pot,” you’re brain fired the muscles before the thought was launched. Thought follows action, not the other way around. I will find this research for another post on another day but let’s suppose for a moment that it is the latest brain science. This discovery is on the magnitude of the discovery that the sun does not, in fact, rotate around the earth but the other way around.

What do you think the other dinner guests did? Will said that there were several moments of silence and then they changed the subject. It was as if he’d never spoken. I imagine Copernicus sitting around the table with some friends, having just completed his nightly sky gazing, bouncing up and down with enthusiasm, and whispering to them what he’d just discovered (he had to whisper as the punishment for heresy was painful). They looked at their pal Copernicus for a long moment and then pretended that he hadn’t spoken. “Pass the wine!” calls Vincenzo. “Any more stew?” asks Ghilberti.

When we do not understand it, we ignore it and move on. I’ve seen that look on the faces of many school board members when I’ve said, “Teaching is about relationship” or “Art can save children’s lives.” Stunned silence. “On to other business!” chimes the board president. All breathe a sigh of relief as if one of their pistols accidently fired and no one was hurt.

The hand with the gavel is supposed to keep the conversation safely within the norms and will pound the table if the conversation strays beyond the bounds. There is an inner judge with the same job. The question that Will has introduced is this: does the inner judge pound the gavel because movement has begun or does the judge pound the gavel mightily and movement is the response.

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336.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

The talk in class today was of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle: you can only know the location or the velocity/speed of a particle, but not both. It’s either the location (fixed place) or the velocity (fluid movement).

I have always appreciated the language of this principle. It gives me hope for a world that acknowledges uncertainty with a principle. And, to add paradox to the paradox, I appreciate that the principle of uncertainty is actually an either/or statement! Isn’t this a great description of human consciousness? If I were a Martian and had to describe the human mind, I’d say, “Oh, that’s easy: it’s so complex as to be uncertain but it always reduces itself to black or white thinking.” Heisenberg knew what he was doing! My Martian self would conclude, “Those humans feel better when they have the illusion of certainty. They like to be right! They like to be chosen. They do not like not knowing.”

It shows up in other ways, too. When we judge ourselves or other people we are locating ourselves. Once you brand yourself with a label like Not Good Enough, you’ve defined your location. Once you’ve branded someone else with a label, you’ve fixed them in your mind and the label inhibits any movement or growth. Armed with your measuring stick and score card you will find that movement to another location is impossible until you decide to let go of your current location and step into the relationship (movement). Listen to the political debates and you’ll hear hard fast statements of unwavering belief. There’s lot’s of flag-planting and territory claiming: location, location, location. Once those feet are planted and beliefs are fixed, movement is nearly impossible. Just ask Congress.

Location is not better than movement, movement is not better than location, both are necessary and, in truth, the movement never stops (it is part of that birth to death thing). What stops is our capacity to grow and engage with the world in a meaningful way when we fix our location for too long. That’s why all good stories start with the main character getting knocked off balance, getting kicked out of comfort and spiraling into the adventure.

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