Knowledge Is Power

I've really been wanting to love my new iPhone, but strange happenings are many and my patience, as of late, is none.

So this morning, on my day off, I made an appointment at the Apple Store at the Mall of America (god help me) and went to consult the geniuses at the Genius Bar. I was initially annoyed that I had to make an appointment. But that was yesterday when we fought the afternoon mall traffic to find a place to park and then did the stop-start walk all the way around the mall behind hoards of aimless wanderers only to be told there was a two hour wait ahead of us.

Ugh!

Needless to say, we left.

Today, however, I was smart enough to make the earliest appointment I could get, which was before most stores opened and all the walkers are professionals and actually know how to walk.

Hooray!

To my pleasant surprise, the geniuses at Apple deserve their name. Do they know everything? No. I stumped my guy a couple of times. But he knew to keep looking for the answers. And for that, I am grateful. None of this I-don't-know brand of customer service. Give me a bona fide problem solver and I'm a fan for life.

My iPhone and I are now on speaking terms -- although I continue to have trouble with accidently dropping calls, answering calls when I'm trying to silence them, making phone calls I have no idea I've made (sorry Laura!).

The patience I need, I've realized, is less for my new electronic device and more for myself. Shocker, I know. Seems that when I don't understand something, I don't just get frustrated, I get a.n.g.r.y.

And what is anger, but fear.

When did I get so afraid of not knowing? When did not knowing translate directly into not only feeling stupid, but being stupid? Maybe it's been there my whole life, but is more exacerbated now that technology is no longer my profession. I'm behind the times. I don't know it all. I don't even know all the technology that would normally allow me to figure out for myself. In the world of iClouds and syncing and backing up and disappearing calendars, and information getting pushed from places it shouldn't have access to...I don't know. It isn't rocket science, but it's new.

And new is different. And fun. But when you just don't quite get it and have been set loose with a completely personalizable piece of technology that is out of my realm of experience...well, it can be just plain scary.

Until now. Until a little Apple genius shared with me some details I was lacking. Until I embraced my fear and went in head on, willing to be vulnerable and not know it all, and asked for...

...gulp...

...help.

Knowledge is power. I walked out of the Apple store this morning feeling like a million bucks. Not because I was anywhere close to knowing it all, but because I knew in my gut that I still had the potential to learn. To be dangerous. :) And to play.

I'm not one for resolutions, but it seems to me this year it would behoove me to make better friends with my technology. Not so that it can take over more of my life, not so I can become more dependent on it, but so I can better utilize the tools I have at my disposal.

Viewing technology as the tool it is and doing the work to learn how to use it allows me to live my life where technology acts in service of me...not making me its slave.

Fear is what makes us a slave to whatever it is we're afraid of. Seeking knowledge and actively learning gives us power over the fear.

What self-limiting fears will you work to vanquish in the coming year?

Power on!//

Third Eye Blind

I had a dream the other night that I had three eyes, the third being in between the others where the metaphysical Third Eye would be.

(photo from personaltao.com)

In my dream, I was walking and talking with friends and caught my reflection in a store window as we passed by.  There it was, this unmistakable Third Eye that was an actual, fully functioning eye. I was startled by its strange beauty, intrigued and in awe of it.  And then, in the middle of appreciating the wonder of it, I became distinctly aware that no one else had one.  The result?

Fear.

In the dream I was suddenly gripped with fear.  Fear that people would think I was weird.  Fear that no one would understand.  Fear that no one would love me anymore.  Fear that I was different.  Fear that this part of me that I was enchanted with and in awe of would be considered ugly or freakish and I would be shunned.

I wonder...are we all born with a fully functioning Third Eye?  A connection to our spiritual selves, to the divine within -- the same divinity from which we just came?  I think we are.  I liken the Third Eye to our sixth sense -- a doorway to our intuition, that for most of us, as we approach school age, we let close because of peer pressure, to make nice, to get along.  Especially if we're not taught how to honor its wisdom.  The result is that it keeps trying to get our attention, as we have all the answers we need inside of us, and we struggle to remember how to really see, to access that wellspring of knowledge within us. We are hindered by our blindness.  For many, this remembering can occupy much of our adult lives. A great challenge, compounded in this culture that doesn't much value the esoteric, but the rational mind instead. My dream represents that struggle.

How many of us have gifts, talents, loves that we shun in ourselves out of fear because we're scared of what others might think if we developed them to the best of our ability?  How many of us pretend our biggest dreams and our deepest passions don't exist because we want to fit in -- because we're afraid to rock the boat?

What my dream didn't show was that we need to remember that we all have the same odd eye, the same intuitive pull, the same gut that provides us with much sought after information for us on the journey of our lives.  We need to remember that we all have hopes and dreams and are wishing in some way to live that inspired life directed from within.

What if, in honoring our own "Third Eye", we were granting permission to everyone else in our lives to honor theirs?//

What's For Dinner Tonight?
It's off to trick-or-treat with the kiddos for me.  I had a mid-day enchilada to take care of lunch, which I was too busy at work to scrounge together, and dinner, which I will be too full of candy to enjoy!  This early dinner has supplied me with a good base so if when I indulge a little this evening, I can handle my sugar and still get to sleep tonight.

A safe, fun and happy Halloween to all!

Peaceful Celebration

I completed the first draft of my memoir yesterday and sent it off for review. I had been sitting on it for a couple months, knowing that I had the opportunity to have it looked at once I completed it, yet couldn't quite manage to get it done. Jumping into it in fits and starts over those months, the task seemed too daunting, too hard, too taxing...all the things I tell myself for why I can't see a thing through to completion.

So I questioned it: why couldn't I get my manuscript done? Because the Saboteur told me I couldn't, that's why.

The Saboteur has been lording over me for more years than I can count, the fact that I never seem to finish anything. "Never" and "Always" being those exaggerations that the Saboteur is so particularly fond of to keep us paralyzed, under control, reigned in tight. Faced with the prospect of needing to finishing my manuscript, I was downright terrified.

Enter the Saboteur's partner-in-crime, Perfectionist. If the Saboteur gets edgy, if it thinks he needs reinforcements, he calls in his old pal for back-up. In my case, personally, this is particularly effective. Not only did I worry about whether I could "ever" get finished, I was convinced by the Perfectionist that whatever I did throw together would be crap. They give me the one-two sucker punch and sit in waiting, sure that my answer to all of this resistance will be "Why Bother?!?"

One of the things I vowed to do for myself this year is to question my assumptions. What is it that holds me down, holds me back, makes me careful and coming from fear? Listening to The Saboteur and Friends rather than my own wisdom.

Calling my hero, Courage, I found the guts to consider that as close as I was to finishing my manuscript, what if I just did it? Who cares if its crap? I mean, really. That's what first drafts are for; take a stab at it and see what comes next. Babies don't spring from the womb able to talk and walk; it takes time. And practice. And trying and mistakes and trial and error. Creative projects are just like children and deserve the time and the space to develop and grow and become, regardless of what others might expect of them.

The saying goes, we can do anything we put our mind to. I'd like to ammend that a bit: We can do anything we put our heart and mind to. The resistance we encounter through the mind isn't all bad -- it requires us to call upon the courage of the heart to continue on. We need both, in order to bring our best selves to our work. And to the world.

I have to admit, I expected some degree of fanfare when I clicked "send" and emailed my manuscript off to its reviewer. But there was none. Instead, there was a peaceful celebration, a content, satisfied quiet that let me know the Saboteur and his band of merry mischief makers were taking a break. If they're on vacation, it's all good. I'll take it.//