Second Thoughts
Topic: Freeflow
Saturday 5Aug06 10:40am

There's a reason to take your time.
Those small annoyances that creep up unexpectedly:
his tone of voice, a shortness that pinches your feelings, a smile that veils possible outbursts.
He’s not the person you thought he was.
His true colors vibrant with emotion, a negative attitude.
A new uneasy air hangs between you. Yesterday your heart fluttered, today your mind seeks escape.
Time to rethink that fantasy of possibilities in his eyes.

EY

Slo Mo
Mood:  lazy
Topic: WC - Daily Practice
Saturday 10:08am 5Aug06

I'm moving in slow motion this morning, coloured people time? It is jump up after all. Went to bed late with my last ditch effort to reorganize my apartment. It looks great. My writing area has become a lovely cozy nook. At the opposite end of the room I've got a little reading corner to get me away from the desks, once in awhile. I now have floor space to work out once again. Now I just need to take care of the kitchen and the bathroom and, and...

In keeping with my newfound floor space, I hooked up my VCR to my television in order to play my work out tapes and what did I discover? My television doesn't need a converter, ha ha! So the Dead Television Report will have to be renamed the Not So Dead Television Report. I've enjoyed all that I've been accomplishing without the television so I'm going to need to keep that up. I don't really need to watch re-runs do I?

I still have a stack of tapes of the shows from last season. Almost caught up on Prison Break. Don't know if I'll watch it this season, but who knows it starts in a couple weeks.

I'm going to rollerblade to the parade, packing a frozen bottle of water, a smoothie and some cherries. Prep my stomach for all the West Indian food I can stuff in. Just because.

It's so important for me to have a good writing space. An area that testifies that what I love to do is a priority. A space that insists on a writing frame of mind. And clearly off limits to people who come to my apartment to visit. My space was so wide open before that people just assumed that they could sit in it and peek at what was on my desk.

Okay... jump up jump up!

EY

Write One Page at a Time
Topic: Newsletters
Your Limitations Are All in Your Head

An excerpt from
Count Your Blessings: The Healing Power of Gratitude and Love
by John F. Demartini

Do the thing, and you will have the power.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Dear Friends and Students,

Are you in your own way?

Many people have a long list of reasons to explain why they’re not doing what they love, but few of them objectively examine their reasons and look for underlying fears. The reality is that there’s a hidden fear behind every imagined limitation, including sickness. As much as we may be tempted to blame other people or outside circumstances for our current condition in life, sooner or later we realize that we attract and create our own limitations. And while that may be a humbling reality, it’s also an inspiring one.

Since we attract or create our own limitations, we can also break through them. Not by repressing, ignoring, or denying them, but by learning to love them. Yes! Love them. Because anything we don’t love runs us and inhibits our inspired actions with fear. Our limitations represent all the aspects of ourselves and others that we haven’t learned to love and appreciate yet. So each time we take an honest look at a limit or a block, we give ourselves an opportunity to love and to reach a higher level of awareness.

Every one of us has the creativity and ability necessary to rise above our own limitations. But sometimes the limitations feel comfortable and the idea of achieving our dreams frightens us, and that’s when we’re most tempted to sabotage our own efforts. That’s the frame of mind in which I found a young man named Jeremy when we met on an airplane. I was working on my laptop computer when Jeremy sat down beside me and introduced himself. When he asked what I was working on, I told him I was writing a book about the mind, body, heart, and soul connection, and the healing properties of inspiration and unconditional love. He nodded his head, but his eyes glazed over, and for the next half hour he was silent. It wasn’t until the flight attendant brought our meals that he said, “You know, I can’t believe I’m sitting here next to someone who’s writing a book. Do you know how long I’ve been wanting to write a book? How can I get from wanting to write a book, and talking about writing a book, to writing one actually?” he asked.

I explained to Jeremy that the only difference between wanting to write a book and actually writing one required taking action steps. “When I begin a book,” I said, “I know that it’s a process, and I know that the book will change as the process continues.”

Jeremy’s eyes widened. “So you just do it. You just write one page at a time and you like some stuff and you don’t like other stuff and you change things, but you just keep writing until you have the book that you want!”

“Yes,” I said, “that about sums it up.”

Jeremy shook his head, smiling. “You have no idea how much what you just said means to me! For years I’ve been afraid to type a single word on my computer as if it’s somehow getting chipped into stone or something. Writing a book is like doing anything else! It doesn’t have to be perfect from the start, nothing is. Everything I do is a process ... Wow.”

I haven’t run into Jeremy again since that conversation, but I’m sure that he’s much closer to writing his book than he was before he realized that he was creating his own limitations.

Feel the fear, but don’t let it stop you.
-Anonymous

Whatever you feel uncomfortable about – and don’t love – is stopping you.

Gratitude and Wisdom,
Dr. John F. Demartini.
DeMartini Newsletters

Steel Drums - Jump up
Mood:  celebratory
Topic: WC - Daily Practice
Friday 4Aug06 5:42am

It's Caribana weekend. Time to jump up. Weather wise they are promising cooler days without the stifling fry an egg on pavement heat.

All I know is that I need to hear some steel drums. I love the steel drums. Since my first Caribana in Montreal, there is something about the steel drums that cause my uninhibited ass shaking. When I hear the steel drums I feel the call of my ancestors. If I could just get into that zone, that trance, I could make contact and receive the stories, I could be transported to another time, the beginning perhaps. I could sit at the feet of a griot and learn my true history. I could sit at the feet of a griot learning the stories of many yesterdays and continue with the stories of today. I am a storyteller. In my history, storytellers have value. They chronicle our history through memory.

Drums, so primal, the beat of our hearts, our power, sends messages from one village to the next, my deep century spanning memory.

EY

Progress Log
Mood:  lazy
Now Playing: 112
Topic: WC - Progress Log
Thursday 3Aug06 5:33pm

Nulla dies sine linea - Pliny
"Never a day without a line."

As I did the dishes this morning I was thinking about how balanced my morning had been. I did my daily piece for this blog albeit a rather short piece. I worked on my novel White Wishes. I got all the things on my to do list done. I thought about starting a journal of my progress specifically what I do when things work out the way I want to. A bible, if you will, of what to replicate when things aren't exactly going to plan.

Which brought me back to Henriette Anne Klauser, Writing on Both Sides of the Brain (Breakthrough techniques for people who write).

Exercise 3 - Your Own Progress Log. Page 23
- Date your entries (include the time).
- Record information
- use rapid writing (write fast without thinking about it too much) to record what is happening to you so far. Where do you see yourself in your writing, and where would you like to be?
- Other things to include - stories that will come to you about how you learned to write - the good stories and the more painful ones about, how your writing was received, how it was rewarded, or what happened when it did not please the person in authority.

My story that came to me this morning was that my mother used to post my brother's drawings all over the house. As soon as you came up the stairs into our house you were assaulted by the beauty of his drawings. He was a superior artist, that's why I gave up on drawing.

As soon as anyone came to our house the comments went on and on about how talented my brother was. Then the looks in my direction that I felt said, "Too bad you didn't get any talent."

My poems couldn't be posted around the house like art work. My mother didn't think to mention, "Shelley writes poetry."
I was undiscovered, unrecognized, invisible. It used to bug the shit out of me. The value in what I did wasn't as translatable or as in your face as that beautiful art work.
I haven't thought about that in such a long time.

Sometimes I feel that I hold myself back with my writing. I don't do enough work. I haven't done enough work. It's like I need to unearth all those subliminal messages that made me feel like I was wasting my time. Find the genesis of that inner critic and kill it dead once and for all. If I can't kill it work through it. One of the blogs I read has writer interviews and in them the question is always asked about a writer's self doubts. I don't think I've ever read an interview where the writer didn't have self doubts.

I almost have to be the delusional American Idol contestant that causes the judges ears to bleed with the caterwauling he or she tries to pass for singing. The contestant will inevitably say, "I can sing. You don't know what you're talking about," when Simon Cowell says something like, "That is the worst noise I've ever heard in all 18 seasons."

"You don't know what you're talking about Simon!"

Perhaps I need to name my inner critic Simon and make that my new mantra, "You don't know what you're talking about Simon."

EY