The Direction of Intention

175.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

I continue to sift through old journals and notes and today between a filing cabinet and the wall I found a small black and red notebook – small enough to fit in a pocket. I like finding these little notebooks because my handwriting is atrocious; it is difficult to decipher when I have full sized paper and nearly impossible in small notebooks. The gift is in the decryption: if I can actually figure out what I wrote it is like having the thought all over again!

I opened the black and red to a page with diagrams and words in circles; notes from a conversation with Joe. This is what I deciphered: circled in the center of the page is the phrase, “Feeling is the arbiter of reality (definitely a Joe phrase – I am not nearly so elegant).” Running vertically up the right side of the page I wrote, “Is the reference inside of you or outside of you?” And then, at the bottom of the page, “The word as reference point versus feeling as the reference point.” Finally, beneath this phrase in impossible-to-read scribbles I wrote either “Two deadly wars” or “Two deadly ways” with an arrow pointing to, “Attachment to outcome” and “Response to circumstances.”

String it all together and this is what you have:

Feeling is the arbiter of reality. Is your reference point inside or outside (are you seeking someone else’s answer or your own, trusting someone else’s feelings/opinions or your own?)? Words are abstractions, feelings are direct: which do you reference or which takes precedence when you locate yourself within your experience? Attachment to outcome and response to circumstance (as your identifiers) are both externally referenced and “deadly” as they start internal “wars” or lead to chaotic “ways.”

Scribbles to make Newton vomit and Siddhartha smile!

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174.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

It is 1982 and I am in Santa Fe. I’m touring the enchanted state with my college’s touring theatre company, leaving the campus for 2-3 day performance runs before returning for a day to rest and repair the truck. We perform our plays from the back of an ancient farm truck that breaks down on every leg of the tour. The bed of the truck opens to create a stage so you might say that our stage regularly falls apart, scattering parts and props across the highways of New Mexico. So goes the show! Two rudimentary light trees stand at the downstage corners when the bed is open and we open it often to wait for the tow trucks and mechanics that come to our rescue; we cut an odd picture for passing tourists.

It is the night before we are to leave again and the cast is exhausted and doesn’t want to go. The last breakdown took its toll and the upcoming performance is far away – which means we have no faith that the truck will make it to the performance.

Albert listens to our complaints, rolls his eyes, says something about namby-pamby actors and motions me to follow him. We walk through the high-desert summer night to the maintenance yard. The gate is locked so we hop the fence. We are suddenly laughing ninjas – trying not to attract attention but laughing too hard for stealth. Albert tells me to get into the truck and pop the hood. I hear him tinkering with something and then he closes the hood, smiling. “Tour’s cancelled tomorrow,” he says as we climb out of the maintenance yard.

Safely away from the yard he stops and says, “No one is making you guys go. Damn! Either do it – go and be grateful – or stop complaining and do something about it. At the very least, act on what you want.” Albert was always good for dope slaps. And then he said, “That was fun, wasn’t it.”

Sage advice from my laughing ninja friend: Either do it and be grateful or stop complaining. At the very least, act on what you want.”

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171.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

A few years ago Charlie was listening to the radio during his commute home. He heard a news report that the Supreme Court had just removed financial and reporting restrictions on political advertising.
When he got home he went straight to his television, unplugged the converter box (he had an old analog set and needed the box to read a digital signal), and took the box to the garage. In the garage, he took his hammer from the wall and smashed the converter box into bits.

He laughs when he tells this story (and his wife laughs, too – now). Charlie is a father. He said that day in the car he realized what kind of bile was about to pour into his house through the television and that if the Supreme Court was no longer interested in protecting him and his family from vicious untruth that he must do it. He said, “It was an election year. Do you know what kind of trash that ruling unleashed? I didn’t want that to be part of my home.” He told me that it was his responsibility to select what he let into his and his family’s consciousness.

Imagine what might happen if we took responsibility for what we let into our consciousness! What if, like Charlie, we took responsibility for keeping our space (inner and outer space) clean of propaganda, violent accusation, and baseless judgment? Who might we become if we smashed the converter box (literal and metaphoric) and refused to give misinformation any space in our lives?

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