I have said over the years that I’m not a religious person but that I am a spiritual person. I never knew what I really meant by that until recently.

It’s my experience that the word “Spiritual” conjures up ideas of mysticism in peoples’ minds and many equate spiritual with being “Holy.”

I find spiritual to be a lot more straight forward than those definitions.

To me, being spiritual is simply stepping out of the realm of thought. That means when my thinking calms down, I’m more in touch with my spirit. When we identify with the thoughts in our head about who we are and how things ought to be, we are removed from the realm of spirituality.

There is a calmness associated with stepping out of the realm of thought and this calmness of mind gives us access to options that are absent when incessant thinking is present. Our thinking prevents us from noticing options because we are so laser focused on the limited range of our thinking apparatus.

There are so many ways to calm your mind. It’s just a case of finding a method that works for you: mediation, yoga, present moment awareness, self-hypnosis, tai-chi, chi kung, or just putting your feet up and letting the world go away for a few minutes are just a few methods. All will help you step out of the realm of thought and step into your spirituality.

Think of spirituality as your center for finding options, rather than some mystical place. It’s like a visit to the Home Depot to see all the different ways you can redecorate your bathroom – options you wouldn’t see if you didn’t visit.

Find a way to step out of your thinking on a regular basis. It will present you with options you would never find otherwise. Stepping out of your thinking is a very practical and spiritual thing to do.

All the best,

John

Did you ever notice that your good luck charm only works when you’re lucky?

I’ve never seen statistics of car accidents where St. Christopher Medals were present, although I’m sure police reports are full of them.

What is it with the talismans? I stepped on a million cracks in my lifetime and I never broke my mother’s back.

Lucky socks, superstitious routines, the eye of one newt – seems we all have some bizarre notion on how to garner luck or ward off evil that has an exponentially smaller probability of winning than the game of Roulette.

What’s the harm, you ask? Nothing if you use them just to affect your mood or give yourself a lift. The real harm is that fertilizing these myths keeps us from seeking a solution that has a better chance of winning than waiting for blind luck to waltz in and change our life.

I have John 3:16 inscribed on a golf tee given out by a Christian friend. I will tell you that I have made shots with it that both landed on the green and went smack dab in the middle of the water.

It’s the same mentality that many people have about horoscopes. They cite the seer quality of them the one day that it was spot on, and ignore the other 364 days of inaccurate drivel.

I’m all for having a lucky mindset. That just means that you’re optimistic and optimism causes us to see possibilities when they arise verses pessimism that keeps the blinders on and potential possibility out of view.

I find it difficult to be around people who are waiting for good luck to strike because most of their life is spent waiting and not doing. Lack of doing what’s necessary to be successful is rampant in our culture and it maddens me.

Here’s one of life’s secrets: You have to participate in your own success. You can’t do that if you spend your time waiting for a rabbit’s foot to find its way up your ass.

All the best,

John

This blog isn’t about politics, but it could be.

I have had this Winston Churchill quote rolling around in my head for the past week: “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”

Basically what Churchill was saying is the average voter is stupid. The less inflammatory word would be “uninformed.”

This “stupid” situation goes well past voters and stupid cannot be blamed on the person; ignorance can.

The problem as I see it is that people who choose to remain ignorant of the facts and treat their opinion as holy scripture, don’t think they are average. Yet, when we examine the average American IQ, it falls between 90 and 100. Most of us are average but that doesn’t mean we have to remain automatically uninformed.

It’s my experience that when you think of yourself on a higher intellectual rung than you actually are, you are apt to conflate your opinions and prejudices with facts, a deadly and dumb combination.

If you’ve ever conducted or listened to a radio talk show, you will get a daily dose of callers with passionate, uninformed opinions on every known topic. The average caller to a radio talk show is uninformed but they think they know what they’re talking about. They mirror society as a whole. They refused to get informed past their opinion and prejudices and believe they’re smart enough to run whatever they’re offering up the flagpole without evidence. That’s stupid!

Jesus didn’t say it but he could have: “The stupid will always be with us.” But that doesn’t mean they have to remain uninformed.

This writing is just an effort to encourage those who are putting forth arguments to have something besides an opinion and prejudice to back them up, otherwise you’ll keep Churchill turning in his grave.

All the best,

John

Years ago I called the concept of “willingness” a soft piece of magic.

That meant that it wasn’t in your face, abracadabra, presto magic, but just as effective in its subtlety.

“Willingness” does create magic by creating options – options before unseen because we were unwilling to look for them. Attribute our unwillingness to look as “set in our ways” or “stupid.” Either description works.

When you insist you have the way and the way isn’t working, has never worked and, by all accounts, will never work, you are stuck and stupid.

Willingness is the glue remover.

As I wrote many moons ago:

“Willingness is not an agreement to do anything other than to entertain options.

Options open the barn doors wider giving you a clearer vision of the entire landscape. If we can only see what’s right in front of us, we corral ourselves into the barren land of one option.

Willingness opens our eyes. And all we need to do is be willing to be willing.

What makes willingness such an attractive option is knowing that you don’t have to choose any alternative that surfaces during this process. You create a safe haven for your limiting belief, knowing you can go back to it at any time.

It’s like wearing your comfortable, worn out, old slippers to the shoe store. No one is asking you to trade them in for a new pair, only inviting you to look around and try things on if you like. No pressure, just options.

When you determine that it can only be one way, you have demonstrated the limitation of obstinacy and hubris rolled into one. You have decided that your un-compared selection is more applicable than infinite choices. That’s a major case of what Dr. Dave Dobson diagnosed as RCV (Rectal Canal Vision).”

Want to remove some of life’s hard edges? Start by entertaining the notion that there is another way besides yours and be willing to try on some new shoes that have the option of walking you softly in the direction of magic.

All the best,

John

I rarely do this but I’m reposting a Grasshopper Note from 5 years ago. I had occasion to reread it this morning and it felt “right as rain” and cried out to be posted again.

Addiction Is Fed By Emotional Cowardice – Grasshopper

There are all sorts of addictions – too many to name, but suffice it to say, they ain’t going away until we’re brave enough to feel our emotions.

It’s often been stated that heroin addicts begin with marijuana. You don’t hear as often that heroin addicts began with milk.

That’s an obtuse way of pointing out that the addictive person has been conditioned well before their addiction surfaces. Addictive personalities, which include all of us to some degree, are weaned on the one thing that keeps our addiction alive – the refusal to feel.

The addictions that sit at the top of the list are drugs and alcohol followed quickly by smoking and overeating, all the way down to serial spelunking.

The standard treatment of these addictions sorely misses the glaringly obvious – that we are afraid of our emotions.

Are we really afraid of ghosts or are we more afraid of how we will feel if we see one?

Feeling is the connection to a solution.

The metaphor of “drowning his/her sorrows” has stood the test of time for ample reason – it’s true.

Take the person who regularly drinks themselves to a level of below consciousness. They are scared stiff of the feelings that continually sit there waiting to be felt. The way they deal with these feelings is to numb them with a stiff drink.

When you say to this person, “You have a problem,” their problem isn’t alcohol. That’s just the means to drive away their real demon – stark terror. Sorry, terror doesn’t scare easily.

A question that opens the door to feeling is: “Who would I be without (addiction)?”

This will show you your real demons. This is your golden opportunity to face your self-imposed bully – your conditioned feelings of being “less than.”

Human beings are engineered to feel. Anytime we push our feelings away, they get stronger and come back again another day. The solution is to make time for our feelings and fully feel them. They are a part of us that we treat like an evil step-sister. As long as she is an outsider, she will continually come back with poisoned apples.

Embracing your feelings metabolizes them. That means they don’t remain as a hulking force that causes you to cower, but rather dissipate with the attention you give them.

“Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf?” You are. And when you shut down your senses, you have no chance for escape.

Facing your addiction is only the first step. There are plenty of people helpers who will help steady you as you take it. These folks are to be loudly applauded for their tireless work.

The real success comes when you come to grips with your feelings of fear. You finally find out that “less than” is only one angle of view among hundreds. When you allow yourself to feel that feeling fully, your vantage point automatically shifts causing you to see a brave new world.

All the best,

John

“You’re not the person you’re disappointed with.“ So said The Grasshopper very early this morning.

How many times have you mentally beaten yourself up for not being the kind of person you want to be? I’d ask you how effective that strategy was in getting you on track, but we all know the answer. It never works.

That doesn’t stop us from doing it. The escape from this mess is the simple recognition that you’re not the person you’ve made up in your head. You are confusing you with your patterns.

Yes, we all have habit patterns that don’t serve us well, but we are not our patterns. They are routines that we’ve become conditioned to run, but they are not us.

Who we are at our core cannot be defined. Our core self is like infinity; we know it exists but we can’t specifically describe it. So as a substitute we describe ourselves as our habit patterns.

We are responsible for the outcomes our patterns cause but we are not them. You are not disappointed with you; you’re disappointed by the actions you’ve taken, mainly caused by your patterned way of reacting to the world.

The part of you that breathes and beats your heart and moves your body around is not the part of you that you’re disappointed with. You’re disappointed by the image of yourself that you carry in your head. Again, this is something you’ve made up and gotten comfortable with over the years. “Comfortable” can be translated in this context as being in a rut.

You are not your patterns, you are not your image. You’re as far reaching as infinity and are not limited by a label.

Here’s a homework assignment for us all: Start removing labels from yourself one-by-one until there are none left. That’s when you’ll find the real you – someone you’ll never be disappointed with.

All the best,

John

I was exploring the hurt locker yesterday when The Grasshopper offered this: “Hurt is your reaction, not someone else’s intent.”

The guy who flipped you off in traffic recently had no intent of hurting your feelings when he woke up that morning, but there you are attempting to assign your hurt away, to a stranger who’s driven away.

It’s OK that we hurt; it proves we’re human. It’s the next step that keeps hurt in place: making our hurt feelings someone else’s fault or intent.

Seriously, did your high school sweetheart break up with you just to hurt your feelings? They moved on for some other reason other than to spite you, but we may hang on to the notion that they purposely hurt us.

Hurt needs your permission to linger, and one of the biggest permissions we give it is to make it someone else’s fault. We rarely take the time to own our hurt. It is ours but we attempt to convince ourselves that someone else holds the deed.

Assigning scapegoats can go on for a lifetime, if we let it. Better to notice that you’re hurting and feel that hurt without ascribing a reason for it. Reasoning takes you out of your body and into your head where we can concoct more stories about why we’re hurting and keep the cycle alive.

Stories are our attempt to go around the pain of hurt. There is only one way past hurt: to go through it. That means feeling it fully which leads to metabolization and helps it fade away.

Time doesn’t heal all wounds if you don’t accept ownership of them.

A stimulus may always exist: a date on the calendar, a photograph, a smell, a memory that just pops into mind, or any number of reminders. Our hurt reaction will diminish over time if we take the time to recognize our internal upset and give it the time of day. That means to feel it fully rather than attempt to chase it or ascribe it away.

Two questions worth exploring: What is your intent? Are you going to react to hurt and assign it away or will you own it and feel it and alleviate its sway?

All the best,

John

Here’s the New Year’s message I got from The Grasshopper: “What you don’t want happens in the absence of what you do want.”

I gave up making resolutions years ago but didn’t stop noticing how progress towards something is made.

Seems many of us are pretty fuzzy when it comes to what we “do want” and totally clear on what we don’t. It’s most productive to reverse that practice.

I remember hearing the following from the good Franciscan Nuns growing up: “Idleness is the devil’s work.” I’ve come to view that adage as “what we don’t want” filling the void left by the absence of what we do want.

It’s my experience that making a list of what we do want is exponentially more valuable than a list of resolutions. Resolutions have negativity bound to them; what you do want is more like an attractive enticement dangling in front of you spurring you on.

You can set all the goals you want and formulate your step-by-step plans but if they lack the juice of “do want,” you’ll wind up in the land of “don’t want” better known in some circles as “Up Shit’s Creek.” (Sorry, sisters).

I am becoming a fan of picture boards. Pinterest is the online version of this practice. Make a picture board of your “do wants.” Don’t put peripheral desires on there, only the juicy stuff. Make sure you get to see it multiple times a day and imbue your consciousness with your “DOs.”

This will have more of an effect on you than a tedious, 7-step plan that you’ll abandon before you get to step 3.

Prioritize your list of DOs so that you only have the Top 3 saturating your awareness on a daily basis. Once a DO has been accomplished, move another into the Top 3.

What you become more aware of, you become. Become more aware of what you do want and watch your resolve kick in without a resolution.

All the best,

John