The Gap

 

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“What you think you become. 

“What you feel you attract. 

“What you imagine you create.” --Buddha

 

Well, well.

The Gap is the space between where we want to be and where we are. 

You’ve probably heard a lot about The Law of Attraction—that we draw to ourselves what we resonate with. The above quote of The Buddha pretty much describes it. 

Some days my resonating stinks, so it’s a good thing the Great Spirit is forgiving, or I’d be in deep doo-doo. 

Elon Musk is in the Gap with Starship Rocket prototype. That rocket takes off, a glistening silver sliver aiming for the sky, nose up, a blazing trail behind it. The rocket goes to its designated height, beautiful. It lays on its side and slowly descends back to earth, like a little flying squirrel with its side flaps extended. Right before touching down on the launching pad, Starship pulls itself together, turns its nose up again, and slowly descends. Unless it lands squarely on its feet, BAM! It explodes.

Four have exploded. One sat on the launching pad for about ten minutes after flying, with a slow burn happening around its perimeter, then Bam!

You see, each time a rocket doesn’t work, the scientists learn about what isn’t working.

Thomas Edison said he found 1,000 ways not to make a light bulb.

I’m in the gap with a little notebook I wanted to print. My thought was to Print a blank book, people like those little books with pretty covers. 

I do. I use bound booklets for my computer data. And they can be journals, or whatever you want to record, an address book, press plants between the pages, whatever you can think of. Add a few quotes, and they are more fun. 

I wanted lined pages, ha-ha. Trying to get lined pages formatted for a physical book is another story. I’m learning 1,000 ways not to make a booklet. Either the lines are screwed up, or something is wrong with a page, and the launcher shows that I have a blank page. 

Fix it.

I’ll get it. I’m determined.

I’m in the Gap.

On www.bestdamnwritersblog.com, I spoke to writers. If you’re a writer, you know what I am talking about. You have good taste. You recognize exquisite writing when you see it, but then you look at your own work, “Uh oh. Rats!”

You’re in The Gap. 

Keep on. Keep practicing. It isn’t all talent, and what in the heck is talent anyway? Einstein said it’s 90% hard work.

Apparently, people are interested in this old principle now called The Law of Attraction. The Buddha tried to tell us. Ancient scriptures said, “Ask, and you shall receive. Seek, and you shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” The Secret tried to tell us. Justin Perry regularly talks about The Law of Attraction on YouTube, and he has over a million followers. 

I used to hate it if things were going badly when someone would ask me, “What did you do to create that?” 

“Well, if I could create my current situation, I certainly could create you not being in my face.”

That question was rubbing salt in the wound.

If The Law of Attraction was as simple as some make it out to be, we’d all be rich, beautiful, and abundantly happy. My twelve-year-old grandson scoffs if he hears us talk about it, for I think he has the idea that we mean just ask, and it will show up at your door. Maybe it will, perhaps it won’t. It is not as simple as that.

We’ve thought or asked or prayed for many things that didn’t happen, and a good thing too, sometimes we change our mind. And then we thank the great powers that be that that asked for something didn’t happen. 

Gaps help sometimes.

Contradicting thoughts, exist in the gap chasing away your desired outcome.

In the gap are subtle, unconscious, emotional components. That’s the reason attracting what you want is so tricky.

The Buddha said, “What you think you become. 

“What you feel you attract. 

“What you imagine you create.”

He said that about 500 years before Jesus, before Mohamad, before Krishna. Before, the new thought gave us the idea that thoughts create.

 

We know, stories become exaggerated over time, but perhaps there is still a kernel of truth. It is said that Prince Gautama, who become the Buddha, had a favorite white horse named Kanthaka, who it was said to be 18 cubits in height. (Eighteen hands in measurement is a tall horse—18 cubits would be outrageous.) No matter. Kanthaka and the Prince proved to be a formattable team in contests such as horse-rider ability, archery, and sword fighting—a prince had to prove his metal. Kanthaka pulled the chariot Guatama, and his servant Channa used to ride through the city while Channa showed the Prince the ways of the world.,

 The Prince had been sequestered in the Palace for 29 years, hidden from all misery, age, or ugliness. It had been prophesized that the Child Guatama would either become the most powerful of all leaders or leave the ways of the world and seek his enlightenment. His father wanted to keep him to be a leader and so imprisoned him. 

Who helped him escape?

Kanthaka.

Kanthaka leapt the gates and fled with The Prince from the imprisonment of the Palace. 

Further embellishment said that the gods held their hands under Kanthaka’s feet so the clatter of his hooves against the stone pavement would not awaken the guards.  

In this story, the role of Kanthaka illustrates the reverence, respect, and dependence between horse and human that has endured for centuries. 

(Hee hee, I got a white horse in here.) 

Although I ascribe to the idea of the Law of Attraction, I know we are still in a physical world. We still have a pandemic; we still have situations, not of our choosing.

We’re in the Gap.

All I can say is, “Be a person worth saving.”

 Astronauts made it home safely in a recycled rocket.

P.S. I have 17 blank pages in my booklet, augh!

*The  picture at the top is of Gautama riding Kanthaka with Channa running beside them.

The Law of Attraction

Have you ever had the experience of finding something, let’s say a movie or a book, that you liked so much you wanted to keep it to yourself? You weren’t being fair, you knew that. You wanted the person who conceived it to be successful, and if the message could help humankind, it ought to be out there, but still, it was your find, your treasure.

I felt similar after finding The Law of Attraction. However, it was like the excellent book title by Gloria Steinem, “The Truth will Set You Free, but first it Will Piss You Off.”

I didn’t like the term, The Law of Attraction. I didn’t understand it. I didn’t like the hype associated with it, and most of the messages regarding it weren’t clear anyway. People raved that they were in “vibrational harmony” with it, and that was annoying. People were giving classes on it, but I thought most of them didn’t have a clue about what they were talking about. Some were so pedantic it was annoying.

The movie The Secret gave us an appetizer, but not a whole meal.

I stayed away from talking about it. I didn’t know what I was talking about anyway. I couldn’t explain it, except, sneaky little thing that it is, it leaked into my writing every once in a while.

On top of that, I didn’t want to be known as airy-fairy. I don’t know why. I guess I didn’t want to be lumped in with many other people who are proclaiming that they understand The Law of Attraction. I’m not saying that they are kooks, but some are. You know how hard it is to separate the wheat from the chaff.

So, there I was, talking about how life works, yet ignoring the one thing that might explain it all.

Except if you try to explain it, chances are you will end up in a puddle of confusion.

It’s simple, you say, “You attract what you are.”

Yeah, sure, but “I’m attracting many things not wanted,” you might say. “I don’t want them there. I didn’t ask for them. I want them to go away.”

How can people in Somalia attract their way of life? Why would a baby be born to starve to death?

You can find many reasons why creating your reality isn’t true.

Some people think it interferes with their religion. Still, if you read critically, you will find references to The Law of Attraction all over the place—like in the Christian Bible. “Ask, and you shall receive, Seek, and you shall find, Knock and it shall be opened unto you.”

What if, out there is a message—maybe a rule book on how to live, and we’re ignoring it?

We weren’t put here to be sniveling little brats. We are placed here to be strong creators.

“Create your own reality?” You say. “What have you been smoking?” “That’s a bunch of hooey.”  But, look at it this way, you can grumble and complain about your lot in life, and being a naysayer is so much fun, isn’t it? Yeah, right. How does it make you feel?

It feels crummy, doesn’t it?

It’s rather like taking the high road or the low road. People like to grumble and complain while traveling the low road, all the while proclaiming that they want to be happy.

It doesn’t work, does it?

Most of the time, the high road aspects and the low road aspects don’t speak to each other. Do they have different “vibrational frequencies”?

Maybe.

People talk about one’s “vibration, and that is another cliche’. Someone decided that vibration was a good way of explaining a phenomenon that has no words. It sounds odd, really, saying we are all walking around vibrating. 

Yet, I know what they are talking about, and for want of a better word, they say we vibrate at a certain level. It makes sense, doesn’t it, for you have known people who seem to skate through life on a high road, and you have known people who muck up regularly, with each day bringing a new crisis. Most of them complain a lot too.

We do speak of “vibes.” We say, “This building has poor vibes. This person gives off bad vibes.” And we know when there is a light heart.  

We could say our intuition told us, but we don’t know what that is either. I think the term “vibration” came from Quantum Physics, where we could say that all matter “vibrates.” The earth, too, has a vibration, like a tuning fork, and it is measurable.

People have struggled to explain the unseen for millennia, and now people are trying. They know the brain is powerful. They know we have electric, magnetic, chemical, and spiritual aspects to our bodies. They know that consciousness is the ruling master of the body, and many people believe it survives death. Now they are endeavoring to put it in understandable terms. We need to be patient with them.

Dip from the Source whenever you can. In other words, call upon your internal knowing, and ask if something feels right. (Including what I am writing about.) The more you rely on your intuition, the stronger it will become. It will say, Yea! You found me! Whoopi do da!”

I’m not a newbie to The Law of Attraction. I’ve read about it, I’ve attended seminars, and I’ve listened to talks.  I’ve been annoyed at it, riled against it, was a believer, and a practicer. Now I’m talking about it. Maybe I’ll get it eventually.

Now I have found a person who is the best at explaining it. He is an ordinary guy who found that this system--and he calls it The Law of Attraction—works. He sets up a video camera and simply talks.

His name is Justin Perry, and here is a link.

 

https://www.youtube.com/c/YouAreCreators/videos?disable_polymer=true&itct=CBIQ8JMBGAEiEwjsgu_8uPXtAhVRrcQKHWlDDEw%3D&disable_polymer=true&rootVe=3611&disable_polymer=true&rootVe=3611&disable_polymer=true&rootVe=3611&disable_polymer=true&rootVe=3611&disable_polymer=true&rootVe=3611&disable_polymer=true&rootVe=3611&disable_polymer=true&rootVe=3611

 

Thanks, Justin

 

The Christmas Star

 

 

We’re stirred up, disquieted, on edge, and uncertain about the future. Everything seems political when it doesn’t have to be. We can’t agree to disagree. We have to begin a campaign saying that Black Lives Matter when it should have been a given. We’re worried that we might catch some dreaded virus. We’re concerned that the cure might be worse than the disease. We worry that inoculations might be mandated. We argue over whether the world is getting warmer when the winter zooms past us so fast it makes our heads spin. There is little we can trust. We believe we have honest elections, and then someone wants to overturn them. We want to know the “truth,” but truth depends on the ones saying it. We can’t rely on the media to separate “news” from propaganda. Censorship is running rampant. We realize now that a foreign country might not have directly interfered with a past election, but they interfered with our psyches, about the same as now—they kept us stirred up.

 

Keep the people in a state of frenzy, and you can get them to do just about anything.

 

Daughter dear told me a Media student said, “That’s what they taught us in school.” 

 

A former KGB agent said that one way to brainwash a country is to keep them from coming to a logical conclusion. 

 

That’s the bad news. 

 

Now for the good news:

 

 “The beauty of the present moment is a powerful tool in any uncertainty.”-- Dezmein Bluray

 

What if we took our attention off the bad news and decided that we are the ones to make a brighter day?

 

Bullies crumble when you ignore them. 

 

Our founding fathers set up a system that is working.

 

Be grateful.

 

If water, rice, and plants respond kindly to love over anger, think about what kind thoughts and positive belief in a grand future would do for people. 

 

Don’t believe that plants, water, and rice respond? Check it out. (Daughter and grandson are setting up an experiment. I’ll let you know how it turns out.)

 

The Anthropologist Margaret Mead said, 

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” 

 

I’m counting on you guys.

 

There is a phenomenon among people that they get bored and want an Adrenalin rush to get them stirred up. 

 

We remember mountain top experiences, our first crush, first kiss, weddings, births, deaths. Most everyone old enough to know John F. Kennedy remembers the day he was shot. Mothers remember evens according to their kid’s ages—“When Johnny was 6, we went to Yellowstone Park, and so on.”

 

Why do we need a marker in time to change how we look at the world with a new set of eyes?

 

Is that what this lock-down is, a marker? We will remember the year 2020. I’ll remember the fashion statement of the time was, “Oh, darling, I love your mask.”

 

I have never put much stock in Astrology—I like to read Rob Brezsny  

for he is so clever,and gives good advice. But do the planets and stars affect our bodies? I don’t know. [At this point, my computer froze, and I had to close down and reboot. Was it trying to tell me something?]

 

Okay, I’ve done the rebooting, and now I’m back (with the question of, “Can my emotions affect my computer?”) As I was about to say: 

 

On December 21, the winter solstice, there will be a Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn that hasn’t been seen for 800 years.  At exactly 05:00 PM - 05:45 PM Pacific Time. they will be at their closest, only 0.1 degrees.

 

And the wonder is, WE WILL HAVE A CHRISTMAS STAR!

 

That is from our perspective as the two planets become close they will appear to us as one gigantic star. Some think this was the star of Bethlehem.

 

I don’t know if the conjunction will affect our body. It could have some magnetic, electrical affect. I don’t know. We’ve evolved on a planet that is a magnet; perhaps slight changes do affect us.

 

Daughter dear and I decided to do something special on December 21. I don’t know what it will be, light a menorah maybe, although we are not Jewish, we want to honor those courageous souls. Smoke a peace pipe—that would be honoring other souls. (What shall we put in the pipe?)

 

We need rituals to mark days and to keep us from wandering off track.

 

Suppose you are a believer in the Law of Attraction. In that case, you know that being lazy with our thoughts, observing what’s happening out there, will bring more of what’s happening out there. Play the ain’t it awful game and we get more of Ain’t it Awful. And that pushing against something only causes something to push back. (Our cat is an excellent example of that. Try to move him, and he becomes cement. 

 

The real work is changing our thoughts. 

 

“Wayne Dryer said, “You’ll see it when you believe it.”

 

Here’s to enjoying winter’s great high holidays.

Love,
Jo

 

“We are the children, we are the ones to make a brighter day, so let’s start livin’.”

 

To view the Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn on December 21, look to the Southwest sky one hour after sunset. If you have a small telescope so much the better. Don't expect it to be as large as the picture above unless you take a rocket ship out of the atmosphere, or looking through a telescope on Mt. Palomar.