Money might make the world go around, but you shouldn't let it make your individual world go around

We need money to live in the modern world, to pay for food, rent/mortgage, travel, clothing, entertainment, etc.  It is easy for the subconscious to identify the need for money as a core piece of our identity.  Rich people are often given higher social ranking, while poor people often are lower in the ranks, and this segregation of people by how much money they have dismisses the individual value of the particular person.  Is the rich person truly better quality person than the poor person?  The answer is actually quite complex because examples and counter examples are all over the map on these distinctions.  But this and other issues can drive the subconscious of an individual to seek money as the source of stability and self worth.

This may turn into seeking to buy brand name whatevers of prominent brand names, because wearing Gucci shoes (for example) makes ones wealth more obvious.   But buying the prominent brand names means you spend more to buy your things, than if you simply bought the inexpensive generically branded items.  The question is whether that prominently branded item has a real qualitative advantage over the inexpensive generically branded item.

There are a few issues here: 

1. The more money you spend requires you spending more of your life energy earning that money.
2. Quality, well built, useful items, makes better use of your money than if you seek out the cheapest flimsiest item to save a few dollars.
3. Feeling good inside yourself about the stuff you own

That is, what's the proper balance about owning stuff that makes sense to you, the time you spend to earn that money, and efficiently using the money you gather with the time you spend earning money.

It's not the job you perform, but creating and manifesting your vision of the world

What career or work or job or activity do you want to do? How will you occupy your time? How will you earn your living and keep food on the table and a roof over your head?

It occurred to me this morning that many times someone sees a job being done or a skill they can learn in school. They learn the skill and then pursue as their life "I'm going to be a X" where 'X' could be Nurse, Barmaid, Soldier, Lawyer, Barber, etc. What occurred to me is how this misses an interesting option.

What is your goal? What world do you want to live in? What is your vision of the perfect world? In answering the question try to remove from your thinking any concern over how you're going to achieve that vision of the perfect world to live in. We're dreaming here for a moment, so let the dream sink in and become vivid.

With any vision there are many ways to bring that vision into reality. Let me ask, do you know the best way to accomplish your goal of world peace, one where people live in harmony with each other and their environment, where the plants and animals are given sufficient consideration in the planning of the affairs of human kind? Do you know the best way to accomplish this? Most likely not. However there is wisdom held in the jointness of us all, you might call this Divine wisdom, and that wisdom has a path for each and every one of us if we choose to follow that path.

We can choose to follow a path where we see some skill, enjoy using that skill, and then decide we want to earn our living using that skill. Or we can choose to follow a path where we see a vision or goal of a desired outcome, and then learn the skills necessary to achieve that desired outcome, and make connections and communities of people who will together create that desired outcome.

The interesting option we miss by saying "I'm going to be an X" is to ignore the desire which led us to learn X and to be drawn to X. The desires which drive us to specific X's are threads that, if we pay attention to them, represent the tapestry of our personal wants and desires.

A little clue in finding ones calling

For several years I've felt a desire to do more with my life than the job I work in the high tech industry. In the high tech industry I've had the opportunity to participate in producing services and products which have had a large impact in the world, by helping define the World Wide Web as it is today. But it seems these things, these technological marvels, do not change anything about the human behaviors that, for instance, lead to warmongering, mass death, destruction of civility among people, environmental destruction, etc. In other words I'm in the same boat as are many others. My day job seems to not help the world to become a better place, but instead seems to help the world either stay the same as it's always been or perhaps become worse.

It may be hard for most to see this connection, I know it's difficult for me to truly grasp it. It's not like I work in a bomb factory and the direct result of my work is the tools which the military industrial complex uses to sow death around the world.

It just occurred to me the way I choose the work I perform is perhaps just as important as the content of what that work is.

I originally chose this work in technology based on interests in gadgetry. In high school when I found the computer lab (this was 1973 when high school computer labs were very rare) it was really cool working out how to make the machines do things. That fascination is what drove me to learn more, and to pursue the studies in college that eventually led me to Silicon Valley. The choices were from my head being fascinated with the workings of these machines, and from recognizing that working with machines allowed me to retreat from being around humans. My life up until then led me to deep distrust of other people and in my subconscious it seemed far safer to be around machines than around people. In other words I've chosen this career path based on a fear of being around people, and based on mental fascination.

There's a truism that what you pay attention to grows. By choosing a life path based on fear and mental fascination, that's about giving attention to those fears and mentality.

It seems that I'm not alone in making choices this way. What if "we" were to choose what we do in a different way? For example what if "we" were to make our choices from a desire to bring more peace and love to the world. Oh, and I am speaking about myself as much as anybody else.

"How"? The first step is to recognize the problem in the first place. The first step in curing an addiction is to recognize that you're addicted to something. Then once you recognize how this pattern works for you, is the path of breaking out of the mold of habitual thinking. One way is meditation since it is a way of learning to focus ones attention on something. Meditating on love should give you practice in having or being love.

Another method is to consciously partake in activities that offset your habitual patterns. If you habitually get serious, find ways to loosen up and have fun. Such as reading the comics every morning and learning to laugh with them, or to watch silly movies and enjoy the silliness.

What would you do if you didn't have a job telling you what to do?

This is the thought that came to mind as I drove to work this morning: What would you do if you didn't have a job telling you what to do?

Like most of us I have fallen into this pattern where the corporation I work for determines what I do in my life. Working in Silicon Valley means living here, even though it's so expensive to buy a house I've never been able to get past sticker shock. Working in the job I have means performing the set of activities the boss wants me to do. For both there is the threat of being fired if I don't do what they say.

I feel highly motivated to do work that would affect the process of global warming and/or the political awareness of the fiascos brought to us by the Bush Administration. But working for a living in a full time job leaves little free time. And neither of those topics help the corporation I work for and therefore my boss would not appreciate if I spent work hours on those activities.

Then as I stayed with the statement another version formed in my thinking. What actions would you take if you were not in reactive mode?

In other words, I'm probably not alone in this, but the pattern I follow includes looking at the world around me and reacting to what I see. My life taught me to ignore the ideas flickering (or burning) inside me, and instead my life taught me to look at what others say or do, and then make sure that my statements and actions are compatible with my perception of what other people are doing and saying. It's a very subtle thing to notice and requires careful self-observation of the kind that meditators develop.

This, however, is like looking at life through the wrong end of the telescope. Rather than choosing my own destiny I've been letting others determine it for me. I know that I'm not alone in this predicament.

In Light Emerging: The Journey of Personal Healing Barbara Brennan discusses this predicament as one of the five character structures taught in the Reichian-inspired psychological theory she teaches. The Masochist learns in childhood to do anything they can to please other people, because one gets love and attention by doing as others say. The Masochist has poor self boundaries, and generally does not know their own essence. The Masochist also learned to stop the flow of their life.

Clearly as Barbara recommends in her book, the human need is to learn to be free to feel and express the self, and the spiritual need is to recognize ones core essence and to live it. The specific path she recommends is to first recognize those who use the Masochist character structure may well have a very complicated set of ideas to bring out. That it may take quite a while, several years perhaps, of carefully recording ideas and thoughts and piecing it together over time. She suggests writing ideas in a journal and to take ones time, that it might be two years or more.

I have found that idea, to journal and reflect over a long time, very helpful for myself. However I recently have been developing a practice which also helps one gain familiarity with their core essence. Inner Homeopathy is a meditative practice that helps one experience their divine self in an authentic fashion. It is a simple practice of breathing and calling from inside yourself the divine presence within you.

Choosing what direction you take in life

What is your purpose? Where is your life taking you? How do you decide the life you are going to live?

These are universal questions, ones I've been pondering very much lately. I had an interesting inspiration this morning I'd like to share.

Riding my motorcycle on the way to work I was in a curve I regularly take. Halfway through this curve there is an entrance into a parking lot, and today I was behind pair of cars, one took the turn into that parking lot, and the other did not. Which struck me as exemplifying choice. One went one way, the other went the other way.

Life is a series of choices. Where you end up in life is based on the choices you make. Constantly, choices. Every day you choose to go to work, or whether to call your boss and tell him/her what to do with that stinking job. And the choices are far more continual than that, because every step you walk, every breath you take, every word you say, every moment is a choice. Your life is made of those choices.

Riding the motorcycle exemplifies one aspect of life and making choices. When you're taking a curve on a motorcycle, inertia, centripetal forces, gyroscopic forces, the friction of rubber meeting the road, and more, all go together to place you in a delicate maneuver. On a motorcycle in a curve your choices are pretty limited so you had better look ahead and make your choice before entering the curve.

If we choose to fly, what keeps us anchored to the ground? There is more to life than simply the choices you make. The choices you make occur within a context, and the context acts to shape your choices into the results.

A few years ago I had been having these dreams about jumping off a cliff, and flying. Shortly after I found myself on a trip in Arizona, in a national park, standing at the top of a cliff, and thinking about that dream. If I had taken the dream literally I might have chosen to jump off the cliff expecting to fly. But I suppose if I had chosen that course I wouldn't be here typing this message to you, would I?

The context we live our lives in is this material world. It follows laws which the physicists call Inertia and Gravity which go together to say that if I had chosen to jump off that cliff expecting to fly, Gravity would have grabbed ahold of me causing me to plummet to the bottom of the cliff several hundred feet below.

Another context is our bodies. We inhabit human bodies and the nature of our bodies give us a certain perspective whereas if we inhabited the body of a household cat we might have a different perspective. The perspective and nature of the body we inhabit give our choices room to fly (in some cases, if we inhabit a bird) or they also limit us in some ways (for instance, birds do not have hands or arms).