It’s 7: 27 a.m. here in Suquamish, and a few minutes ago I had this sequence of thoughts:
Isn’t it arrogant to claim that I am the creator of all I see and experience?
If I claim that, aren’t I acting like a tyrant?
Oh! If I don’t admit that I am the creator of all I see and experience, who else am I imagining to be responsible?
Good question, don’t you think?
When these thoughts occurred to me, I had been working with The Process a la’ Bob Scheinfeld’s book, Busting Loose from the Money Game..
I got onto Scheinfeld via Bill Harris of Centerpointe.
But what was a nice girl like me doing with a book like that? Was I chasing down the back roads of spiritual materialism looking for a shortcut to eternal happiness?
You bet your sweet bippy.
Just because I am skeptical of glib clams about instant enlightenment and the law of attraction, doesn’t mean I’m immune to their appeal. I come by my skepticism honestly, the old fashioned way, by following my cravings for security and pleasure and approval all the way to the end of any and all available roads.
And there’s the real Secret, known to computer programmers, spiritual practitioners, and cooks: Garbage In, Garbage Out.
Cravings for what I believe I don’t have = Garbage In.
Disillusionment, resentment, and frustration = Garbage Out.
And the formula holds no matter what road you walk.
An intriguing corollary to this axiom is that the promise made by movies like The Secret and abundance gurus from Wayne Dyer to Esther Hicks of Abraham fame is, so far as I can tell, absolutely solid. Enlightenment, bliss, abundance — whatever flavor you prefer — are within reach so long as you don’t reach for them.
As the grizzled impresario in Shakespeare in Love was fond of remarking, “It’s a mystery.” And as Thomas Merton observed, “Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived.”