Energies of Creation

Welcome to the Carnival of Creative Growth #27. On this Mother’s Day we have a quality selection of articles for your enjoyment.

Justin Van Kleek wrote an excellent article he did not submit to this carnival. As I did with the post by Desika a couple of carnivals ago, I am including this one because of its value. Please read and enjoy The Worst Pollution; or, A Green with a Heart.

Creative Personal Growth

babs mountjoy presents Making music matter, saying, “How do you make good choices to move creative growth forward?”

gia combs-ramirez presents How to Immediately Eliminate the Effects of Stress, saying, “It’s easy. It’s fun. And it’s immediate. Learn a simple technique to lower your blood pressure, increase your immune system, release pain killing endorphins, and reverse the aging effects of stress.”

Frederic Premji presents 9 Effective Ways To Get Out Of A Rut, saying, “Article about simple methods to get back on track :)”

Chris Edgar presents “Get Emotional” To Get Creative, saying, “In my experience, writer’s block often results from pent-up emotion that creates distracting tension in the body. In this article, I talk about the value of emotional release in helping writers regain their creativity and focus.”

Alex Blackwell presents The Secret to Life in One Sentence or Less.The accumulated wisdom of people who lived life well.

David B. Bohl presents Who Are You? 4 Steps For Getting Back to Your Individuality, saying, “Our lives are defined by our choices. But often, the choices we make don’t appear at the time to be the important crossroads that they later turn out to have been.”

Louise Pool presents island wench: Think Orange! Creativity and the Sacral Chakra. The color orange, creativity, and abundance are discussed in this post.

hkalchemy presents Effortless Abundance | Making your dreams come true. A simple primer on creating your dream.

Creative Projects

Davexplorer presents Five Most Unusual Buildings. These buildings give hope to all architects stuck with client limitations!

Amy L. presents Using Fall Leaves To Fertilize And Protect Your Lawn, saying, “Remarks: Every year, people spend millions of dollars to purchase commercial fertilizers and mulches for their lawns. Yet at the same time, they rake up the fallen leaves from neighboring trees and put them in the trash.”

Harrison presents Summer Wedding Tips:100 Resources to Simplify Your Wedding. A mammoth list of resources for all you brides planning weddings!

Creative Thinking

Lexi Sundell presents The Unvarnished Truth, which examines how we face reality or not in our lives.

Art vs life - Art Appreciation - Helium - by Tali, saying, “Contemplations of art and life and their coexistents.”

Akemi Gaines presents Dodging The Many Forms Of Psychological Manipulation.Ways to deal with manipulative people effectively.

Creative Business Growth

Fred Black presents What Can You Learn from Watching Big Product Launches?. A common sense approach to learning internet marketing.

Brian Terry presents 259+ Great Resources for Great Web Design. This is a list of resources, although I don’t usually include directory posts in this carnival. Looks useful.

Cindy King presents How An Information Product Strategy Develops Lead Generation Beyond Your Current Borders. Avenues for more flexible and creative marketing are discussed here.

Rose Rosetree presents Deeper Perception Made Practical– How You Use Body Language — Reveals WHAT About You?, saying, “Reading body language can be an important part of growing a business.”

Many thanks to the writers who submitted to this edition. Please link back to this page to help promote readership for everyone. Stumbling, Digging, etc. are most welcome as well.

For the next edition submit your blog article using our carnival submission form. Past posts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Technorati tags: carnival of creative growth, blog carnival, creativity, personal growth, group growth, business growth, creative thinking.

We all think that we know the truth and that we act on that knowing all the time. We manage not to notice the myriad unresolved contradictions in our behavior, ideas, opinions, and beliefs, thinking of ourselves as unified and consistent.

Emotions play an enormous role in obscuring our vision in such matters. The more deeply we are emotionally attached to something, the less likely we are to clearly see it.

This is evident all around us. Why does that woman keep taking the abusive spouse back and why does she say he really loves her and has changed? We can see at a glance no such thing is the truth.

Her emotions and needs interfere with her seeing the stark truth. Her illusions are more comforting and do not require her to take action to change her situation. So she sees what she sees until she is ready to take responsibility for what is really happening in her life.

My cousin used to quarrel with kids at school. He would get mad, start to cry, and go sit in his seat, ripping all the buttons off his shirt. Afterwards he would tell his mother the other kids had done it and she would go on the warpath in his defense. She never noticed he was really a bully himself.

Later when he was in high school and I was still in grade school, we had a painfully sad conversation one sunny afternoon. He was slow in school and I was not. So, this particular afternoon, just the two of us stood in my driveway after the bus had gone. He timidly asked me if people ever just wake up knowing everything one morning.

I said I did not think so.

He replied that his mother always told him not to worry about having troubles with his schoolwork because one morning he would wake up and know it all.

I was thunderstruck. I did not want to tell him his mother/my aunt was feeding him bogus lies, but he plainly wanted to know the truth. As diplomatically as I could manage, I said I supposed that might happen in some rare case, but as far as I knew it was highly unlikely.

He sadly said he had begun to realize that was true. Then he thanked me and went home.

For him the recognition of the truth had to be a deeply sorrowful discovery, but it freed him to work with the reality of his situation and start finding what to do with his life. His mother certainly had done him no favors in avoiding the truth.

Truth can sometimes be a bitter pill, but then new doors open to possibilities hidden behind that ignored truth. I myself would rather find new doorways than remain stuck with nowhere to go.

This post is in the Change of Being Series begun on Earth Day. The prior post in the series was Reverence for Life. Photo by Bern Sundell.

Copyright © Lexi Sundell 2008. All Rights Reserved.

We hear all kinds of arguments for preserving the rainforests and at least slowing down the destruction of species we have not even discovered yet. One of the big arguments is that these species might hold secrets that could heal us of some of our difficult diseases.

That sounds stunningly like more exploitation talking instead of any genuine reverence for life itself. If we can wring something useful out of it, go ahead and let it live, at least until we get what we want from it.

It has been awhile since I saw the story and I do not remember all the details, but a woman with a terminal illness was outraged she could not get an experimental drug that might (note I said “might”) prolong her life. The problem was that the source of the drug involved killing an endangered species.

She protested vehemently in the news, “I am a species too!”

I remember that line quite clearly. But she is an individual, not a species. And an individual of what possibly is an overpopulated species at that.

That is typical of human thinking, we as individuals or as a species are all important. We should have whatever we think we need or want, regardless of the cost to other beings and the planet herself.

Property rights are touted as inviolable, entitling owners to plunder the land for whatever gain they can achieve. Mounds of toxic mining wastes are one result of this approach. The loss of half our precious topsoil in the Midwestern USA is another. The list can go on much longer, but I leave it to you to observe all around you.

Where in all this is a sense of stewardship? A concept that other beings might actually have the right to exist for themselves, not just for us?

Without even that idea in place, how do we as a species deal with the living being that is the planet we inhabit? Taken as a whole, the earth herself meets scientific criteria for being considered a living organism.

What does that mean in our daily lives? Not much apparently. The earth as a living organism is mostly a dry academic concept, not a heartfelt reality that shapes our lives or infuses our way of being.

We are asking all the wrong questions. Instead of how we can get what we want (voraciously and endlessly want as consumers) and how we can get it cheaper and faster, what if we asked a different question? What if we asked how we live harmoniously on the earth with the earth?

That question leads to completely different answers. Answers many of us do not want at all. It might cost something to live in balance with other living beings that are not human, that may be smaller or larger than we are. It might require surrendering many of the common distractions in our lives.

And if people want anything at all, it is to hang onto their distractions so they can avoid really seeing that person looking back at them in the mirror. Enough distractions and we can avoid the real questions of life and feel like we are all right, nice people, as we consume more and more and more. We can become a toxic malady of the earth and not even notice we are doing so.

However, the earth will continue, even if she ultimately has to shake off a nasty human plague.

So, how about you personally? Do you think you are part of the malady or part of the healing? How do you see this? What choices do you make every day that reveal your deepest attitudes?

This post is in the Change of Being Series begun on Earth Day. The prior post in the series was Self Responsibility. The next post in the series is The Unvarnished Truth. Photo by Lexi Sundell.

Copyright © Lexi Sundell 2008. All Rights Reserved.

Welcome to the Carnival of Creative Growth #26. I hope you enjoy the wide variety of articles in this edition! Many thanks to the contributers for their efforts!

Creative Thinking

Karen Lynch presents The Parable of the Paradigm (Live The Power). A beautifully clear description of how we can trap ourselves, and how to choose something else instead.

Rhonda Jones presents Should You Become an Independent Author?. She examines the basics of the business.

Creative Personal Growth

Desikachari Nadadur presents Why Understanding Religious Symbology is the Key to Your Spiritual Progress, saying, “Have you ever contemplated the deeper meaning of rituals and ritual offerings in your religious and spiritual traditions? Do you understand how the symbols in your external rituals relate to the inner depths of your spirit? If not, it is time for you to do so. This article, though centered around some of the Hindu Symbology, may provide you the needed impetus to delve into deeper meaning of the external rituals you perform in your own religious and spiritual traditions.”

Lexi Sundell presents Self Responsibility. She examines self responsibility and the results of practicing it in this post in her Change of Being series.

Tali presents Earl Nightingale’s Strangest Secret, saying, “In an innocent time, when the word “strange” had any viable effect on a listener, Earl Nightingale named his inspirational recording The Strangest Secret. Sadly, we can’t say we evolved too much, as the word “secret” still works wonders on us.”

Alex Blackwell presents 24 Weekly Actions for Creating Lasting Success. He gives some useful suggestions here.

Maria Gajewski presents How to Cross the Gap From Knowing to Doing, saying, “Do you have a bad case of self improvement inertia? Learn how to overcome your resistance to change and get moving!”

David B. Bohl presents Overwhelm: How to Break Your Life Down into Manageable Parts, saying, “Do you feel like you’re going non-stop 24/7, from the moment you awaken to the time you eventually place your head on your pillow?”

Linda W. presents How To Talk About Money With Your Partner, saying, “Financial issues often cause stress in relationships. Knowing how to discuss money matters is key to a healthy relationship.”

Amy Dyck presents 3 Lessons from the Life of Vincent Van Gogh. She offers lessons in creativity from Van Gogh.

Scott.Goolsby presents Stepping Toward Compassion, saying, “Developing compassion.”

Chris Edgar presents Is Your Creativity “Arrogant”?, saying, “Many of us often get the sense that, if we tried to make our creative work more available to others, we’d somehow be “bragging” or behaving “arrogantly.” This article aims at dispelling that belief.”

Arin Vahanian presents How to Get Rid of Excuses NOW and Start Living the Kind of Life You’ve Always Wanted. This is not so hard folks, let’s get going!

Creative Business Growth

Robert Phillips presents Stupid Business Owners with a short but funny post that gets right to the point.

Life. Money. Development. presents The 7 Attributes of Leadership, saying, “An excellent presentation of the attributes every leader should have.”

Heather Allen presents The Entrepreneur Challenge, saying, “Get the creative entrepreneur juices flowing with this deceptively simple challenge!”

Cindy King presents Why You Need To Internationalize Your Own Communication First To Avoid Cultural Blunders. She discusses how to approach different cultures for best results.

Creative Projects

Mark Schauss presents Another Con Job by the President On Global Warming. Not exactly in depth, but to the point.

Anna Bright presents A comfort blanket knitted mindfully. She explains her mindfulness experiment.

A.Lee presents Minotauromachy - Picasso’s Master Print, saying, “This article can help you better understand and appreciate one of Picasso’s artwork. As well: I find that exploring other people’s art (of whichever form), helps me in my personal creative growth. May this article in turn, inspire you.”

Many thanks to the writers who submitted to this edition. Please link back to this page to help promote readership for everyone. Stumbling, Digging, etc. are most welcome as well.

For the next edition submit your blog article using our carnival submission form. Past posts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Technorati tags: carnival of creative growth, blog carnival, creativity, personal growth, group growth, business growth, creative thinking.

Self Responsibility is the subject of this post in the Change of Being series. Self responsibility is the cornerstone of beginning effective change.

Anyone can have a sad story. After all, life brings its troubles to everyone one way or another. However, taking a sad story of troubles into a persistent view of being a victim is following the saddest path of all.

Being a victim is easy to justify, easy to prove to yourself. The victim mindset interprets any experience as additional proof of powerless and helpless existence, increasing the victim spiral.

Fortunately, at any time, you can choose to take responsibility now for your own life. This is an empowering stance that is as easy to justify as the victim stance, but far more productive.

I find taking a sharp look at my own contribution to my problems can be extremely revealing, even if quite painful at times. Sometimes the problems may seem out of scale with the error that led me into them, but no matter.

The important thing is to simply take responsibility for what I am doing now about the situation and move forward. I may discover a new understanding about my errors or lack of perception that led me into the situation. I can then alter my behavior, and therefore my results. At the very least I can alter how I am handling the situation in the present, even if I cannot change the past.

This mindset leads to effective problem solving and the awareness one can always change what does not work. If one method fails, try another until you find something that is effective for you.

Contrast this with the victim state of mind, where the pain of recognizing your mistakes and/or taking personal responsibility for handling the problem is completely avoided. This avoidance comes at the cost of forever remaining in the pain of the unresolved situation.

Victims may appear humble but really are often highly arrogant in their avoidance of any personal responsibility. They stubbornly believe they are exactly right in their thoughts and actions, and if things go badly, it can only be everyone else’s fault.

The other common but sometimes more subtle way that humans avoid personal responsibility is in handling our emotions. We project our emotions onto others without recognizing ourselves in the process. We use other people as garbage pails into which we dump our own toxic emotions. We also allow our unrecognized emotions to spill into apparently unrelated actions with distorted and chaotic results.

In short, we human beings often utterly fail at recognizing or understanding our own emotions. As a result we then do everything we can to make others responsible for our own emotions, which is inherently dishonest on a deep internal level.

This lack of energetic integrity makes communications distorted and clean solution of problems impossible. It is vital that we take responsibility for our own emotional and energetic space and learn to handle it effectively.

This may lead to actions we might prefer to avoid, such as recognizing our own incorrect patterns in order to identify the changes we need to make. This can also lead to removing or drastically altering interactions with other individuals, which can certainly upset relationships.

In some cases these are likely to be relationships we would rather not disturb or even see too clearly. There certainly are serious consequences for increased self responsibility.

At the root of this self responsibility is the honesty to look ourselves in the mirror and work with what is really there. Anything else is a sham, a pathway to nowhere.

The practice of self responsibility opens the doorway to authentic being. Authentic being is the only way we can experience our own genuine inner joy, so the prize is well worth the price of admission, at least for those of us who choose that path.

I would like to ask for your comments on how you deal with your own self responsibility and the results you have seen in your own life. I would also like to hear how you handle your interactions with those who remain stuck in a victim mentality.

The next post in this series is Reverence for Life.

Copyright © Lexi Sundell 2008. All Rights Reserved.

Here it is Earth Day again and time to write a post. Am I going to exhort you to recycle your plastic bottles? Wash and recycle your cans? Gather pop bottles and trash along the freeway? Use green products in your homes? Plant a tree? Bicycle instead of driving?

Not really. These are all useful enough behaviors and I am sure plenty will be written today about such matters. The sad truth is I think much of this activity will be nothing more than slapping an eco-friendly veneer on a fundamentally dysfunctional relationship with Gaia, the earth herself.

I would rather see a deep realignment in how we work with our own energies and how we work with the earth. Overall humanity’s approach is flawed and needs a serious overhaul, starting with each person individually and spreading out into the group energies.

The main areas that need immediate change are as follows:

1. Self responsibility. We too often do not take personal responsibility for our own attitudes and the way we use our energies. Victimhood is alive and rampant on the planet. Many of us do not even take the slightest responsibility for our emotional stance in life.
2. Reverence for life in all things. We frequently look at anything outside our own species as stuff to exploit, spiritless raw material to feed our needs. (Actually plenty of us even look at members of our own species as stuff to exploit.) Some make exceptions for animals, perhaps only certain animals. Others make exception for a few plants. But, by and large, the rest of the universe is regarded as inanimate stuff to use however we can manage for our own purposes.
3. Willingness to see and act on the truth. We make many assumptions in order to function in life. This is not a bad thing in and of itself, but becomes a juggernaut for destruction if those assumptions are never examined or challenged. In an ever-changing world we must be prepared ourselves to change when needed.
4. Commitment to higher purpose. I am speaking here of a life-altering surrender to the soul and its purpose in life. I mean a total commitment to honoring the positive path and walking it daily in our physical lives.

If we all individually embraced those four points, we could approach living with the earth in a completely different way. Instead of taking small actions to stem the rising tide of incorrect behaviors and attitudes, a new way of being would naturally arise from within us all.

We would find new ways of relating to the living earth and working with her. Given the surprising creative aptitude of human beings, it would be marvelous to see what might result.

In closing, I ask for your comments on these ideas. I will be writing a series of posts, one about each of these four areas needing change. What are your thoughts about these underlying patterns and how we live on the earth both today and tomorrow?

The image shown above is a detail from a painting titled “Aldebaran Sings” by Lexi Sundell.

Copyright © Lexi Sundell 2008. All Rights Reserved.

Problogger Darren Rowse initiated an unofficial Blogger Appreciation Day and the idea is to email another blogger with words of appreciation and encouragement. Fortunately he said it is also effective to write a post instead. And I have to write a post to express appreciation to the New Zealander Kara Leah Masina, because she has quite vaporized from the blogosphere.

Her blog was insightful, truth seeking, and had a lovely emphasis on art. She participated energetically in commenting on other blogs and was an exceedingly good neighbor in the blogosphere. I was deeply saddened when circumstances in her life led to the decision to take her blog down and withdraw from the online community.

However, she did leave the door open to possibly resuming her blogging at some unknown time in the future. In that hope, I leave these words here, where perhaps she might find them at some random moment when she googles her own name.

Kara Leah, it would be wonderful to have the chance to welcome you back if you come to a time when that is again a practical choice for you!

Copyright © Lexi Sundell 2008. All Rights Reserved.

Welcome to the Carnival of Creative Growth #25. I hope you enjoy the wide variety of articles in this edition! Many thanks to the contributers for their efforts!

Creative Thinking

Lexi Sundell presents Seeking Peace, Spiritual Escapism or Spiritual Responsibility? with thoughts on the overlooked possibilities of how to use inner peace.

Edith presents Creating a Poverty-Free World with a video and description of some exceptional efforts to eradicate poverty.

Creative Personal Growth

Aaron M. Potts presents 6 Speedy Systems to Stop Self Improvement Stagnation with a practical approach from someone who walks his talk.

gia combs-ramirez presents The Five Rules of Inspiration, saying, “Let inspiration charge your life with energy. In this series learn how to foster inspiration by raising your vibration with the three main energies of the body and with the quality of grace.”

Alex Blackwell presents Seven Practical Personal Development Strategies in a worthwhile article, check this one out!

David B. Bohl presents Allowing Personal Responsibility to Lead You to Success, saying, “It is so easy to blame our shortcomings or failures on others. Society today has a tendency to accuse our neighbors, genetics, parents, social status, upbringing, or education as the cause for our lack of success. Taking personal responsibility is viewed as a burden, placing limitations on us.”

George L Smyth presents One Minute How-To - How To Become Socially Responsible, saying, “Brant Christopher explains how one hour a month can make a huge difference.”

Violet Ash presents Unapologetic Genius » Blog Archive » Spring Cleaning, with some thoughtful musings about moving our own energies with the seasons.

GP presents Get Lost, saying, “Learning the value of trust … in our selves from our horses”

hkalchemy presents Money grows on trees with anecdotes and information about abundance.

Cathrene Gehue presents The Yoga Files: From Chakras to Writ Bits, giving her personal experience of exploring energies that made her sceptical and the life changing result.

Elizabeth presents Small steps that ignite the flame of passion!, saying, “This blog discusses how to have success when going after your dreams with passion!”

Carole G. McKay presents Equal Unemployment Opportunity
>, saying, “Learning how to ride the economic roller coaster with a positive perspective.”

CG Walters presents In Gratitude, You Accept Yourself and Are Doubly Blessed, saying, “Gratitude is an act of internal focus, not external. In order to complete the spiritual process of a blessing experienced, it is not someone outside of myself that I need to offer acknowledgement to, but to my own spirit.”

Chris Edgar presents To Feel Inspired, Focus On What You’re Contributing, saying, “Many of us feel restricted in pursuing our goals by the fear that we’d be “taking” from others and being “self-centered” if we followed our true callings. In this article, I talk about harnessing our natural desire to serve others as a source of motivation and focus.”

Robert Phillips presents Do You Have A Convenient Excuse? in an examination of creativity and your potentials.

Creative Projects

Daniel Lafleche presents Three Blind Artists: How The Indie Ethos Can Change Commercial Filmmaking for the Better, saying, “This interview with 3 Blind Artists co-founder Chris Elston looks at some key points in starting your own business and the fine are of balancing filmmaking and commerce, based on his experiences making his first feature film Shelter.”

Raymond presents How To Repair Your Car With Used Junkyard Parts with his discovery of the economy used car parts present.

Creative Business Growth

Woody Maxim presents Don’t buy into the hype with a word of warning about all the questionable information for sale on the internet.

Mark Riffey presents Why should a small business sell gift cards? with a good analysis of the uses of gift cards.

Erica Douglass presents Three Business Ideas That Will Help You Thrive During A Recession , saying, “Tired of hearing doom and gloom articles about how the upcoming recession will cause lost jobs and lower wages? Here are three businesses you can start in your spare time to make MORE money during a recession!”

Cindy King presents Knowing How Your Foreign Prospects Use Their Search Engines Can Get You More International Clients with some useful advice about foreign search engines.

CMOE presents The Next Generation of Leaders - Are You Ready? with advice about how to lead effectively.

Joshua Seth presents The Secret to Time Management and the article describes how to easily distill your efforts to free up your time for better things.

Many thanks to the writers who submitted to this edition. Please link back to this page to help promote readership for everyone. Stumbling, Digging, etc. are most welcome as well.

For the next edition submit your blog article using our carnival submission form. Past posts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Technorati tags: carnival of creative growth, blog carnival, creativity, personal growth, group growth, business growth, creative thinking.

Is peace nothing more than the passive absence of conflict? Is it nothing more than relief and release from the stresses of physical life? If you look externally for peace, that may be the case. However, if you look internally, the reality may be altogether different.

Our physical lives are fraught with ongoing change. Forms come into being, change, and disappear, while new forms arise. This constant flux of destruction and creation is the ever-shifting foundation of our physical lives.

The view from such a strictly physical perspective emphasizes the absurdity of seeking peace. In this context seeking peace looks like nothing more than spiritual escapism. And in actual fact, many who earnestly follow religious or new age pursuits are indeed escapists.

Some people find the density of physical life to be so uncomfortable they want to leave it and pass into airy realms untethered to the messy business of life on earth. Their ideal state is nothing more than the passive absence of conflict, a truly ungrounded desire for release.

In our mentally driven culture, this could end the conversation about seeking peace. Logical slicing and dicing of the facts too often substitutes for the perspective of our integrated heart and mind, inevitably leading to flawed and incomplete conclusions.

I recently read Peace Is Not the Answer by the self styled spiritual teacher and guru Andrew Cohen. While he makes a few statements with which I agree, he entirely misses the deeper potentials of seeking peace.

From the mentally driven point of view, having easy access to all manner of physical consumer goods and relative freedom appears to eliminate any authentic need for seeking peace. Looking externally at the quest for peace in this manner leads away from the truth of the matter.

Ken Wilbur, one of the leading systems thinkers of our time, takes the view that our consciousness has evolved through levels of existence. He traces the resulting pathological development of our societies in an extremely lucid fashion, showing how each pathology has lead to greater pathology at the next level.

Having or not having access to consumer goods is clearly not the point. Distortions in development are far more significant. Humans need to clear as many of their own personal distortions as possible, but sooner or later run into group patterns of distortion that do not yield as readily.

Seeking peace internally is the essence of the quest for undistorted existence. Cohen does concede that peace is intrinsic to the underlying ground of reality, but apparently sees little use for it other than as an experience of freedom in meditation.

He derails into the idea that we are to be egoless and passionately involved with life. I have no problem with passionate involvement with life, but this assumption that the ego must be eliminated is more than a little questionable.

Among others, Eckhart Tolle has been advocating the death of the ego, but if you pay attention, he narrowly defines the ego as the distorted manifestations only. He states there remains a need for boundaries. And I see the ego as the vehicle devised to maintain appropriate boundaries and identity on the physical level.

The ego will serve best if cleared of distortions and then integrated in service to our inner connection with the divine, deeply grounded into our physical life on earth. This integration is not easily achieved.

However, once we start working with the divine core of ourselves, all things transform. This does not mean external peace in the sense of sudden absence of conflict or relief from the stresses of life. Instead it provides an altogether different way of working with physical form.

Without conscious centering in the inner core of peace, life is frequently experienced as chaotic and negatively distorted. Working from the inner core of peace, we can deliberately infuse the ever-changing forms of our physical lives with the qualities of peace, love and joy instead of fear and further distortions.

This is not a small matter. A profound experience of inner peace provides the means to create a higher level of physical existence itself, all in the face of the simultaneous destruction and creation of forms that remains the hallmark of physical existence.

Glory is a painting by Lexi Sundell and has been sold. Prints are available from the fine art gallery, RiverStone Gallery.

Copyright © Lexi Sundell 2008. All Rights Reserved.

Anyone remember Fibber McGee? The radio show that had a pack rat type of person who would open his closet and everything would fall out, noisily, for a very long time on the air?

Never mind, it is ok if you are staring at me with a blank look. I have been getting used to that stare from a few family members and neighbors of late.

I get those odd looks, not because of Fibber McGee, but because of the recent fly tying dvd my husband and I created. To us, it was an interesting and extremely challenging project that required developing some new skills. To us, it was a natural extension of what we already were doing.

Our customers appear to think so too. They like the dvd, which is a great relief after all the time we spent making the darn thing!

However, a few (not all) family members and neighbors have had decidedly odd reactions. They don’t seem to know how to respond to the dvd, and behave as though it fell out of the sky from another planet.

At first I was surprised, although I should have known what to expect. As it continued I began to realize their brains suffer from a form of Fibber McGee’s closet. There is no room for anything else in those tightly packed closets. Just try putting something new in there and you won’t believe the racket that results!

Their brains have a shelf, apparently a small one, where my husband and I are parked. They left no room to add new facets to their perception of us, even something so mild as an instructional fly tying dvd. That was alien to them, something unexpected and unwelcome.

What was a natural expansion for us is simply unimaginable for them. Haven’t we all had that experience at one time or another when we stepped outside the expectations others place on us?

I, for one, have no intention of trying to cramp myself into someone else’s assigned closet space. I shall take the lesson to heart though, and be more aware of my own effort to never shove someone into a little box and slam the lid shut.

People are capable of the most surprising developments and I believe in warmly welcoming them when they happen. Rejecting those developments is a ridiculous choice, but some people actually prefer to keep their constricted little boxes intact.

We had an employee once who went to a high school basketball game. Her daughter played on the team, usually in a rather lackluster fashion. For some reason, that night the girl caught on fire and made one amazing basket after another until the game was won in a spectacular way with the whole town cheering.

Our employee and her husband were quite horrified and embarrassed. They said it was O.K. for that to happen once, but never again! They wanted their ordinary daughter back.

Unfortunately I have never seen a spark ignite in their daughter since that time. How utterly sad. This young woman lives her life in the small space allotted by her misguided parents.

She may be too young to know she can walk away from their brain closet and just let them deal with it. I hope she discovers that fact someday before she has lost too many opportunities.

For myself, I have no trouble letting others deal with their own brain closets. Actually, the funniest part of the situation with our dvd is how innocuous it is compared to some of my other activities.

If these people cannot handle a fly tying dvd, what do you suppose they would think of the nocturnal hikes I used to take in the desert without a flashlight or moonlight? Rattlesnakes, cacti, and all.

That really makes me laugh. None of us are small enough to fit into the preconceived ideas others have about us, so let’s explode those ideas into smithereens and have fun doing it!

Copyright © Lexi Sundell 2008. All Rights Reserved.