Creative Thoughts

Did you ever stop to think about how amazing certain aspects of evolution came to be? Have you thought about how or why it might matter to you right now?

Imagine the early days of history when the first people thought of making holes in a reed to make the first flutes. Or when the first people thought to make a drum. Imagine the progress, or process they went through making the first music with their inventions. From all indications, these instruments first had ritual uses, and making music just for fun came later. Who was the first person to make this transition? No one knows the answer to that, of course, but try and imagine what that process might have been like.

Seems like we might need to reimagine how various aspects of our evolution happened. Why? For one, it is interesting to think that we did not evolve all that slowly from people who could just manage to kill a wild animal with a spear and roast it over a fire to being people who could create complex architecture and understood complex concepts, or at least approached them if they did not understand them.

Consider, for example that Newgrange in Ireland, which was build thousands of years before the pyramids, is made from stones fitted together, and the roof of the inner chamber, which is vaulted, and has no mortar, has never had a roof leak. Can any builder today claim such success? Another feature that was built in was an opening over the front entry that allows the inner chamber to be illuminated by the rising sun only and exactly on the Winter Solstice every year.

Or how about all the various ancient people, all the way back to caveman days, who somehow just knew that when a person dies that the invisible part of them that kept them alive has left the body that the person was going on to some other level of reality, and so they developed rituals to recognize the death and somehow through their symbolic acts help the person transition into whatever is next. Imagine the thought processes of the first people who began to grasp this.

If we can begin to grasp these concepts, among others, it may offer us other ways to see our own evolution. It is often the far out thoughts that can create results close to home.

Right Time, Right Place

Tonight I had a great time listening and dancing to some reggae music in a great theatre in Boulder. What makes it more interesting than just a night out with some good music was the fact that it was customer appreciation night sponsored by a company that sells supplies to indoor gardeners.

Of course there are all kinds of things that people take pleasure in growing indoors, like orchids, tomatoes, herbs, fruits and vegetables, but the real boom in gardening entrepreneurs came with the legalization of medical marijuana in Colorado.

After enjoying the pleasures of smoke illegally most of my life, it feels very interesting to be living here while this happens and watch the cultivation and consumption of smoke become on the one hand, a gourmet experience, and on the other, a sort of every day above ground business.

Growers have advanced their art so far that smoke is no longer referred to simply as smoke. It now has names for the various strains that these geniuses have cultivated.

Other companies may have customer appreciation golf outings or customer appreciation banquets, but how appropriate for the growers to have a customer appreciation night in a theatre with reggae bands.

I am just smiling about the whole thing. How lucky I got to happen to be living in a state just when legalization happened. It's a weird reality. A whole new crop of green entrepreneurs are doing their part to create local businesses to boost the economy. The reality kind of zings again when talking someone in another state where these things are not legal and they are still worried about hiding everything and not getting caught. And when you remind them that it is not that way everywhere any more, they go "oh, that's right. You're in one of the states where it is legal.

Eventually it will happen. Just like beer could not remain illegal forever. Eventually, politicians will wake up and decide that it is smarter to legalize it and make money taxing these new legal businesses instead of spending tons of money trying to prevent people from doing what they want to do and will do, no matter what their status is. One of these days there will not be legal and illegal states, and there will be customer appreciation concerts featuring reggae bands everywhere.

Light, Shadows and Love Without Measure

When you see a face that looks familiar, what do you do? Do familiar faces make you feel like you are getting a "do-over" or a reminder of a past experience that provided a powerful lesson? So if this face belongs to someone else, it stirs feelings in you, but different feelings in them.

It is the play of shadow and light that illuminates our visions. When we see what is on the screen that plays in our mind, how many of these shadows form the movies that we watch?

It is all shadow and light, you know. Movies, they are all shadow and light. Memories. They are all shadow and light. Look at how we look when we think we see something and we are awakened to the possibilities.

Have you noticed that look that sometimes lights up another person's eyes when they think they have recognized you? You know that puzzled look like they are trying to remember where they saw you before?

Then after you speak and you know that you don't know this person, they still have this look in their eyes like they still are remembering who they are remembering even though you are not the one they were thinking of.

It is all shadow and light.

How much of the world we inhabit is shadows and light? Who is remembering what? It is all shadow and light.

Do you ever feel like you are walking through a forest and cannot find your way out? Do the trees look like the ones you passed coming in, yet the more you look, the more you cannot tell? Is there an in and an out?

What frequency is normal? What does it mean that we recognize but do not recognize? Is it that we are finally getting the lessons?

There are names that go with every face. There are faces we associate with all the phases of our life. There are times when we get an opportunity to do it over, and do it right this time.

There are faces of light and shadow, there are sorrows of great depth, and loves without measure. In our waking moments, our aliveness brings us to a new state of awareness, constantly. They speak to us of second chances.

The wheel turns, but not without giving us another look. Karma, coincidence, sorrow, joy, light and shadow. It is your movie. It is my movie. It is our movie.

Yes, there have been sorrows of great depth, and these shadows are the reminders that we are still alive and that there is also love without measure, and with these we can fashion new pictures, new images, new movies. It is all shadow and light. And love without measure is the only balm that lets us start over with a clean slate.

There are no ghosts in our shadow land that do not respond to love. Yes, it takes some of us longer than others to recognize the true faces of the shadows.

Walking Between the Worlds

One of the old expressions that is used for a shaman is one who walks between the worlds.

Picture yourself as one who is completely conversant in one world and learning to navigate others.

The shamanic reference is to the worlds of spirit and matter. We also find ourselves balancing between worlds when we are trying to reorganize aspects of ourselves, whether it is starting a new business, changing careers, beginning new relationships, starting a new workout schedule and eating habits.

Any of these tasks can have us balancing between two worlds as we set our course.

That path between the material and spirit worlds is pretty thin. We get glimpses over the fence when people close to us are dying. And as we periodically peek over the fence on either side, we can also see the other places where there are connections between the two worlds.

Walking that path between the worlds gets easier when you know that it is there, and when you know that you are walking it. How many things change, how many decisions get easier, when you know you are on the road?

Second Wind

How many times have you been nearly exhausted, and then got your second wind? Where does it come from? Can you summon it any time you want?

Maybe it is not a mysterious force. Maybe the second wind comes from our determination to complete the task before us. It's what happen when you press on after your initial burst of energy has been used up. It's what happens when you get tired and then remember all the reasons you want to succeed.

Suddenly that burst of strength and fresh energy fills your body and we resume our task with renewed vigor.

Perhaps that first wind that nearly exhausted us was necessary to test our will. The second wind is the universe sending us what we need to keep going.

After all, if we have decided that our task is important, we find the courage to keep going. Second wind is the breath that courage summons.

Progress

So today, I finally figured out how to do the newsletter. The guy at the help desk was helpful and we got the problem solved. So soon you should be seeing it in your email.

Just as I was wrestling with the curve ball from the mailing list, then came another one. The organizer of the the event I was going to read at this weekend fell and broke his neck, so the show is canceled. Hopefully Charlie will have a successful surgery and the event will be rescheduled.

In the meantime, I got my newsletter out and tonight I dance again.

There are always setbacks. The question is how to bounce back from them. As I book my events for this year, I am taking some off my calendar and replacing them with new ones. Got to keep trying new things. Booking more private parties now, more private sessions, more everything.

This year is already full of surprises and it is only two weeks old.

I have been laid off my day job for a month now, and I am pursuing new options. Perhaps I am done with that forever. This is not how I pictured my transition, but it is what it is.

What a perfect time to invest more energy into making dreams come true.

Curve Balls, Curve Balls

Even for those of us who are comfortable using computers and know some shortcuts and things, there are still times when getting something done seems more cumbersome than it needs to be.

So I am trying to set myself up with one of those companies that will email your newsletters and manage your email list for a reasonable monthly fee. It is a great idea. Some people I know use them and they look very organized and polished.

See, the thing is that once you have more than a couple hundred names on your email list, it becomes difficult to keep in touch with people. Web based email services generally only let you send 200 emails a day, and after that they will block you from sending any more messages for 24 hours because they suspect you are spamming.

Of course, the problem is that just going by the numbers like that, they have no way of knowing that I have more names than that on my list because people gave me their emails so that I could keep in touch.

And here I am trying to upload my address book to this mail manager. Except that they say they cannot just tap into my email account to load the addresses. Facebook was able to do that. But apparently the email management firm can't, so we have to load our address book onto an Excel spreadsheet.

I did that, and the mail manager still wants me to provide it something so that it can do the download. Except that I have no idea what it wants and the help desk is closed for the night.

And here I thought I was going to be more efficient. Maybe I will get lucky and they will have a quick fix for this. One can only hope.

Why do they always ask me the questions I don't have answers for? I know all kinds of stuff they are not asking me.

Even though you keep your eye on the ball, they will still throw you curves.

Resuming Memory

How many times do we find ourselves in the position of doing something that we need to do, and then we remember we used to do this more frequently? How many times have we suddenly remembered to do something that at one time we considered a good regular practice?

How many times have we thought that we have wanted to get into work that was more aligned with our true spirit but we put it off?

How many times have we found ourselves in a job or position that we know we are not happy in, but we have resigned ourselves to it, because it is hard to find any job in this economy, so we settle?

All work is important, but in different ways at different times. When we are doing a job for survival because it was the only one we could find, it is still something we do efficiently so that we make some money. Then there are the jobs that we really want to do because it speaks to us, we feel that we are using our skills for a higher purpose.

So when we get ourselves back on track with what we wanted to do, it is not like we are learning what to do, but rather remembering what we used to know, and do and then resuming it.

Perhaps what we are remembering is how to move back on track toward what we want, even if we are operating in survival mode now.

Of course we can reset our goals. We do it all the time, but it is so much clearer when we do it consciously. All of us have had some experience of thinking that one career path would be what we wanted, but then we changed directions.

We need to take the pressure off ourselves sometimes. Example. If we have been frustrated getting that book we want to write started, then remind our self that our other work is our current source of income, and that writing the book is a hobby for now. That way we may free our self to get started by just loosening up and digging in. Then, when we have something to show, we can go to the next step.

Sometimes we are remembering our dreams and remembering our desires. Sometimes we are jogged awake and reawaken a dream that we forgot a while ago.

Rather than engaging in something new, we are simply resuming a memory and acting on it. There is an energy that is often gained if we reaffirm and earlier dream and pursue it with a renewed energy and more mature approach, the seasoning that comes from experience.

Yes, there will be times when we have let go of a dream because it is no longer inspiring us as it once did. That is when we let go, consciously, and then free our energy to set a new course.

Keeping in Touch

Lately I have been looking for ways to keep in touch with my previous clients and people I have read for at many of the public events, festivals and fairs I have worked over the last four years.

I am about to begin using an email service since my list is so large that it is impractical to do this out of my regular email account.

There are so many choices. I cannot even remember them all. I cannot even remember all the directory listings I have signed up for.

So the email manager will allow me to send out messages to my entire mailing list on a regular basis. I know that every time I do a mail out, I get results, so I will go that way next. This blog will continue.

Those of you who do not wish to get a more frequent email can just opt out. So don't be surprised when you see the new emails. It will be a monthly newsletter.

We just have to keep on trying new things to see what works.

Taking Another Road to Get There

Have you ever experienced a time when you felt that your situation would reach a favorable conclusion, even though you did not know how?

There is a magical, surreal quality to the progress of events. Perhaps the source of that is that we are really connected to the source. Being connected to the source, we know that whatever course of events we find ourselves following, that it will turn out alright.

We can imagine several options, and any of them could be pleasing.

It is exactly when we let go of thinking that there is only one solution that we are free to welcome other solutions.

Going with the flow, we tap into the life energy all around us and take the path of least resistance.

Trusting that there will be a good outcome to our situation eases our struggles. We still have to make efforts in our own behalf, but allow that there are a number of good possible outcomes. When we do that, we find more freedom.

It is not that we do not set goals, rather it is that we trust that there is more than one way to achieve our goal. In so doing, we might find ourselves restating or redefining what the goal is.

The closer we tap into the source of energy, the more we can feel that we are riding the wave instead of pushing against the current.

If our energy is flowing swiftly, and we are making progress, so what if it took a different route than we planned?

It is like driving down a road toward the place we want to go, and we see that an accident or road work has jammed up the flow of traffic ahead, so we detour and find another road that will get us there.

Look at how that same analogy works in other places in your life.

Guidance to Grab a lead and Go for It

When we need to make changes, we frequently alternate between moving as fast as we can and taking time to look everything over.

As we tune into our spirit guides who are intimately connected to our survival instinct, and they serve us well, and that is where we get that inkling that this path would be better for us than that one. Or that spending time on this is better than that.

It is where that voice comes from that says it is time to get back in shape. So even though we might feel like being laid back again, we decide it is time to get up anyway and get a move on.

When once again choosing our next move along the career path, spirit guides are the voices that suggest this or that is our best choice.

A deck of tarot cards can be very useful in these rapid fire situations that we find ourselves in. The cards can react rapidly and point us in the right direction. Once again, of course, it is our choice what direction we want to take.

We see the energies moving in the areas around us. There is that swirling energy that
suggest to us wonderful choices are available if we will just stop and make use of them.As these options get straightened out,

So we find out parth again and settle into a groove,then we tade note and act, and once we have moved in the direction where we seeour greatest opportunity and we start gettig traction with them, we feee more assured, Our instincts will guide ups to our most productive opportunity. This can mean utilizing an approach we had not seriously considered before.

And yes, these new approaches are revealing ssuccess or at lest promise of success.

Now the immediate need is to take it our for a road test. How well does the idea fly. It can get to a point where we don'r recognize it as our own, but still it works, and we carry on with it and it gets better, Once we think it over, take a lead and jump on it. This shifting around and chaos will shift our next success into great.

Right now it is messy. People restless. they are hunting, Soon will come openings staffed by performers who really want it to happen. Necessity is the mother of invention once again.

Yang Energy for the New Year

Now that I have enjoyed some time resting and gathering energy in the yin space, I begin the new year with yang energy reaching out to accelerate the drive to build up my business, crank up the networking and getting the new year off to a start with a vigorous thrust of energy.

Although work has not fully reengaged yet, lots of dates are being put on the calendar and plans are taking shape.

I have culled through my book and music collections and traded in a fair number of things and renewed my focus my attention on what I want to grow this year.

As I was doing a deep cleaning of my living space, it struck me that this would be a good time to review the writings of Carlos Castaneda and Thich Nhat Hanh.

Listening to some of the dance albums I have not heard in a while also reinforced my decision to spend more time dancing every week as well as working out more.

Tarot trading has been fast and furious for me and I have a great new inventory to offer those who are looking for something special.

Exercises like this are always valuable to me, because no matter how many times I have done this, things slip by and I find that there are things laying around that I do not use any more, music I don't listen to or books that I will not get around to reading, and once I strip them away, then there are the ones that it will be good to use more.

Things can pile up and get out of hand when you let them. Clutter hides important things from view and delays decisive action. It takes a motivated effort to prepare for the next stage of action, clarifying thoughts and getting ready to spring into action with a burst of yang energy.

All in all, I am glad that I spent my new year's time this way. I am feeling ready for a new year.