Screech

 “And really, it wasn’t much good having anything exciting like floods, if you couldn’t share them with somebody.”

–Winnie The Pooh

 

This is better: A Sign painted on the outside of the Dutch Bros Kiosk here in Junction City.

 

The Art of Attraction vs. the Law of Resistance

The Law of Resistance–otherwise called procrastination. That’s what I practiced yesterday.

I have a video of a McKenzie River trail. I filmed the walk, but I didn’t talk while walking. I can’t pontificate when someone is with me. (My husband this time.) I figured I would add commentary later. 

Okay, yesterday I was prepared—so I thought. 

The temperature was reasonable after blistery hot days. I bought a mic and a trial editing program that might overwhelm me, but I can talk into it. I settled into the truck with my little dog. Let’s give it a try, I thought—SCREECH!

I felt inadequate for the task. 

All those other smart people who talk about The Law of Attraction, and how they’ve used it, and how successful they are, and how much money they have, plus houses, cars, and what all. I guess they are blissfully happy and healthy as well.

Am I jealous? Not really. I learn from them. However, I felt inadequate to talk about it.

“The Demons hate Fresh air.” wrote Auston Kleon in his book, Keep Going. 

See, I should have talked as I walked, that is, outside where the demons hide lest they melt like the Wicked Witch of the West when water was thrown on her. When the demons are quivering in the shadows, they don’t have time to tell me I’m not the person for the job.

I then go blissfully along like I know what I’m talking about.

I believed I ought to have my mind in a happy place before I begin talking.

Now I realize that an artist doesn’t wait for inspiration—they do the work anyway. As they work through the crap, they often come out victorious. 

I thought, You, the reader, don’t need to see the crap. But then, maybe you do—it’s part of the process. 

When I began filming the trails and talking about The Law of Attraction, I stated upfront that I am not an expert. I am a fellow traveler who likes the idea that my videos were a simple off the cuff work in process, like a house framed in, but with no drywall.  There is such potential with a work in process.

I was stuck somewhere in my studies that while laws govern the physical world, like “Water runs downhill,” or “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction,” the spiritual world also has laws. 

That makes sense. Why wouldn’t they? The trouble is we really don’t know what they are. It’s an area that has been hidden to all but a few.

Oh, we have glimpses of those underpinnings of the spiritual realm–like one of my first noticeable ones was at the dry cleaners—remember, we used to use dry-cleaning. I had a knit dress—yes, I remember when it looked good on me too–those were the days… Oh, I digress. I picked up the dress that was folded and wrapped in brown paper. I KNEW beyond a shadow of a doubt that the belt was not in that package.

Being too embarrassed to blurt out, “The belt is not in the package,” I paid the clerk, went to the car, opened the package, and the belt wasn’t there.

 I went back inside and asked for the belt. They had it.

I’m sure you have had many similar experiences. The trouble is we tend to brush them aside as coincidences or anomalies. You know the one that tickles me the most is the Train Experience that I’ve mentioned before. While my daughter and I sat at Chevy’s Restaurant in Del Mar, California talking about manifesting, I said, “We couldn’t manifest a train here, there are no tracks.”

Not a minute later, a big truck stopped at the stoplight outside our window. Written on the tarp that covered the back of the truck was the word “TRANE.” (You know that’s the name of a company that makes heavy equipment.)

The Universe/Force has a sense of humor. (You notice I don’t use the word, God, here for it means so many things to so many people.)

Sometimes you think the Force that supplies our wants doesn’t have a sense of humor, and it doesn’t seem to. (Maybe this one is a left-brained apprentice to the BIG GUY.) This left-brained apprentice would respond to our asking for more money with, “Oh, you want more money? Here’s a penny.”

A penny is more money. If you ask for patience, he will give you an Opportunity to be patient. No pill there to immediately satisfy your desires.

You see that there is much unknown here. I do believe in the Law of Attraction. I think, however, that we magnetize events, people, and ideas to us unconsciously To do it consciously is another story. It takes Practice and more importantly, A Light Heart

A light heart is what I didn’t have the other day when I failed to record. I was into my inadequacies. 

And turning a negative into a positive is like the Greek God Sisyphus rolling the boulder up a hill. When he got almost to the top of the mountain, the boulder would break loose and roll back down to the bottom. He was cursed to forever roll that damn boulder.

Momentum—that’s when we get something started, and it tends to keep going. (Gravity was working against Sisyphus, but momentum took the boulder to the bottom of the hill.) The more we think or do this thing we do not want, the more resistance it has, and the more momentum it has to go where it has gone before. (Like trying to move the cat.) Stop pushing. Let the stupid boulder roll down the hill and stay there. Take a nap, walk the dog, pet the cat. That will break the mood, and so you can move on.

All these things are rolled into The Law of Attraction, which tells some people that it does not work. And proves it to the rest of us that we have work to do on our belief systems.

Tune in. More to come…

Questions?

I think this better represents The Law of Attraction–Walk up the mountain whistling, while The Law of Attraction pushes the boulder.

Well, It’s Been an Exciting Week in Junction City

Sign at the local Coastal Farm Store: “Stay one horse length away.”

I loved that sign and the sense of humor that went with it, although a horse length is usually considered to be 8 feet, not our social distancing of 6. Consider this, the racehorse Secretariat in 1973 won the Triple crown (All three races, the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, and the Belmont) by an amazing 31 lengths. A feat unsurpassed.

Secretariat

I know, this has nothing to do with my blog, it just struck me. And I like horses and Champions, and being thrilled when some animal or person steps out of the commonality of life.

Okay, my week:

On my way to create a blank book, I found it was more trouble than writing one. I wanted a journal/notebook with lined pages, but I refused to sign up for another subscription to allow me to have them. “I’ll do it myself,” I said. “Hee hee,” said the Universe. “I will jerk you around first.” (Just to see if I was serious, I guess.) 

It’s easy to do a Kindle book, but formatting for a hold-in-your-hand’s-paperback book is another story. My first try of putting lines on every page of a 250- page booklet failed to comply with Amazon’s formatting specifications.

Okay, try putting in a table and erasing unwanted lines—that worked until I added quotes. And Amazon requires a page break between every page. I kept losing page breaks, losing lines…

It’s like a game you want to win and refuse to give up. I’ll get this. 

Sorry, this story is longer than you want to hear… 

I found it fascinating, however, reading quotes.

Don’t you love little notebooks with pithy quotes?

I do. I like a motivation a day, although I have not placed a quote on every page. I just broadcast them throughout the booklet like seeds. It will be an Easter-egg hunt. 

Oh, the fascinating thing I found with quotes is that some work, some don’t. Now, Mark Twain was a master. His quotes are simple, poignant, and to the point. No wonder Hall Holbrook received raves dressed and speaking as Mark Twain.

“When angry count to four, when very angry, swear.” Mark Twain 

“Give every day the chance to become the most beautiful of your life.” Mark Twain

Other motivational people or teachers run on too long…their words lose their punch.

Zig Zigler is another great speaker who creates pithy quotes. His motivations are top-notch “Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude.”

You might have to read that a couple of times.

And, you know my favorite Zig quote: “They say that motivation doesn’t last. Neither does bathing, that’s why we do it daily.”

Other than the booklet I was formatting for Amazon paperback, life was going beautifully. Suddenly, Wham! The manufacturing company whose items I was selling shut down advertising on Amazon. “Company policy,” they said. You cannot sell their product on Amazon or eBay. Well, darn, and I had a good thing going. 

Time to make that timeline switch.

This is something I have praised about people during our recent shut-down. For many, when one avenue closed, they tried another. When businesses needed to social distance, they sent their workers home to do remote work. When restaurants were required to cut back and social distance, they set tents outside and started carry-outs and curb service.

One thing daughter and I are contemplating: It’s her invention. What if someone created a computer game with no rules. The people were on some remote place like Mars, where a big mistake would blow a hole in their dome or some such thing. The people needed to work together or perish. Where would that go?

Would we pull together or argue ourselves into obviation?

Last night we watched the newest remake of the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still. Basically, the moral was that there is more to people than first meets the eye. The grand moral was that people change only when they reach a crisis point. 

Let’s imagine this: Momentum says that an object tends to travel in the direction it is headed, and with speed behind it, it is next to impossible to stop. (That’s not exactly the law of Physics, but my interpretation.) One would think that the world would continue in the way it is headed. And that people are predictable. But what if—and this has happened repeatedly—along comes an individual who causes a shift in the timeline. Didn’t Martin Luther King Jr do that? Didn’t Jesus? Didn’t the Buddha? Didn’t John F. Kennedy? 

Well, they got killed, but they changed the world.

Oh heck. Let’s have a happy ending.

To Infinity and Beyond

 

Have you noticed that some days pert along, things are working, and you’re on a roll, and then there are other days… 

 

The odd thing is, on up days, you keep rolling along like a bike on a slight incline. On a down day, you roll like a marble in one of those funnels where it spirals down until it disappears into a hole at the bottom of the funnel.

 

The Law of Momentum.

 

We have another “Law,” The Law of Attraction, which is a term I hesitate to use. You know how you find something, and you get excited like you’re the first person to notice. Then another person sees it, and you’re happy to have company. Yet, sometimes it becomes so well-known that it gets shot at, diluted, misunderstood, or ridiculed.

 

And then you feel like someone told you your baby is ugly.

 

Ronda Byrne shared what she had found regarding this Law of Attraction with her movie, The Secret.  Many people have benefitted from applying what they learned from the film, but I believe while it was a wonderful hors d’oeuve, it was not not the entire meal. 

 

However, it introduced to the world an old concept that successful people through the ages have used, and that sages tried to tell us about.

 

The ingredients have been whispered to us since the beginning of time. “In the beginning was the word, and the word was made flesh and dwelt among us…” Think about it. (Whoever wrote Genesis didn’t know about a man named Jesus.)

 

All along, philosophers, writers, sages, and mystics had a piece of this mystery of space, time, brain, magnetism, and chemistry. “Ask, and you shall receive. Seek, and you shall find.” “Think and Grow Rich.” “As a man thinkith.” “He who has ears let him hear.” “If you can see it in your mind, you can hold it in your hand.” And Albert Einstein chimed in with, “Imagination is a preview of coming attractions.”

 

The principles are all over the place when you become attuned to them. It’s like the drawing, “Find 100 hidden birds.” You look and find one, and then, low and behold, there is one drawn in the clouds, one in the limbs of the tree, another in the roof shingles. Pretty soon, you find all 100 birds. Ta-Da!

 

“It’s what I ask for,” says one. “It’s my attitude,” says another. “My emotional state creates,” someone contributes. “It’s my subconscious giving me what I want.” some say. “It’s a bad hair day,” someone else says. “Life happens.”

 

Don’t you feel your energy spiraling down?

 

Sort of like now with this damn Corona19 virus thing. Sometimes the world gets thrown into chaos, and we must dig our way out. 

 

Yet, we wonder, “Are we magnets walking around in a sea of other magnets, attracting this, repelling that, wondering what in the heck is happening?” And don’t you hate it when someone says, “What did you do to attract that?” Well, if I was in control of my Attracting, I wouldn’t attract you to ask me that.”

 

Yet you hear the whisper, don’t you? You feel it reverberate in your bones. There is something to it. You know something exists but you don’t know how to implement it.

 

The interviewees in The Secret introduced the concept to the masses—or tried to.

 

What if the Secret works all the time? What if we are always attracting, repelling, asking, for, and railing against. We create without effort or thinking, That’s the reason we get crap sometimes.

 

 “I want a new Alexis,” you say. “Ha, says another part of your conscious, you can’t afford an Alexis.” Bam, there goes your Alexis.

 

One fellow who is into this Law of Attraction says to keep all negativity out of your house. And to be careful with your speech. Speech is even more potent than thought.

 

I better stop swearing.

 

“Create your own Universe as you go along.” said Winston Churchill.

 

Some people think this Law of Attraction is magic. You ask, you receive, that’s it. If you don’t get what you want, you think it’s not working. Sometimes it does work like magic. Other times it comes in little spirits. You have a thought about something you would like to fix or manifest. Then another creative idea joins it, and another, until Viola! You get it.

 

I need to take some action.

.  

Notice that the last part of Attraction is action. Musicians know this, they practice, then aim for the gig.

 

How do you describe a state of mind? What are the thoughts rattling around in our brain? Sunshine and light? Being positive all the time?  “That’s not being realistic,” say some.   

 

That’s the reason it doesn’t work.

 

I think the attraction genie loves exuberance and happy thoughts, and decides to jump in and contribute. You know how we are attracted to the group having fun.

 

Here’s to happy thoughts,

Jo

 

Hey, maybe it’s ok to swear sometimes. It clears the pipes.

 

 

 

In Our Back Yard:

Some critter is stacking in the winter groceries—my chickens. I lost two. I loved having them free-range, and we had a nice strip of grass behind the Wayback, our auxiliary building. However, the fence there is chain-link and not secure for climbing or burrowing chicken-eating critters. At night the chickens liked to roost on the fence. I guess they looked like sitting ducks, uh, luscious hens. Two of my hens became dinner.

Husband dear and I spent this evening shoring up the chicken yard for the remaining three hens. One is of my original three I’ve had since babies. The other two are my adoptees Blackie, and Red, who showed up and stayed. Last night before I locked them in their little chicken house, Blackie jumped up on the top rail of the eight-foot chicken yard fence and made it through an opening in the bird netting.

From the 2 x 4 boarded top of the yard, she jumped onto the Wayback’s roof and over to the Tiny house. She spent the night roosting on the roof’s ridge.

 

That girl has self-preservation.

 

Tonight, all three are locked in their house.