From the song Some Things Are Not As They Seem by Scott Foster:

It was early morning when they told me you were gone
Through a glassy-eyed expression, nothing left to say
As I washed my hands of the grief I felt a sinking in my heart
Still can’t help to feel losing you is so unreal

Felt like giving up
When a voice spoke inside of me

Some things are not as they seem
Some things are not as they appear to be
What you thought might be a tragedy
Is really a message from above down to you
Shining down on you

At about 7 AM on Saturday, I learned that my best friend, Scott Foster, had died.

Life has never seemed more uncertain to me than it does now. There are moments of love, moments of sadness, moments of joy, and moments of fear. There always were, but now I feel them more acutely.

Scott’s gift to me is an example of a person who lives his life as fully as he can. His lesson is to be totally present in whatever you are experiencing, feeling, and doing. In this way, he’s helping me be at peace through all of the emotions of the past several days.

I encourage you to get to know Scott through his music:

http://www.myspace.com/scottfostertribute

I love you, Scott.

Source of inspiration: Morgana Rae interview

Yesterday I caught a clip of financial alchemist Morgana Rae discussing how she changed her relationship to money. She went from thinking of it as a villain to a handsome suitor, and after that her whole experience of money was different. Right away I had the idea of putting that together with the “life is a dream” experience I wrote about yesterday.

For the next four days (at least), I intend to “dream” of money as a best friend — a hysterical, wise, honest, creative, and loving friend. (I entertained the idea of money as a sexy woman, but it seemed to complicate the relationship with insecurities about women. I’ll look at those soon, too…)

Why four days? I’m attending T. Harv Eker’s Millionaire Mind Intensive Thursday through Saturday. That whole seminar is about redefining one’s relationship to money. What a wonderful convergence of ideas and events!

I will not be posting to this blog while I’m away. I’ll continue to observe my inner experience and share it all when I return. Be well!

Source of inspiration: The Mastery of Love by don Miguel Ruiz

Ruiz writes about the Toltec teaching that life is a dream. This is not new to me as a concept. But today as I was reading about it, I had an experience of it that is new.

I assumed that my waking experience of life was a lucid dream (a conscious dreaming). And my first thought was, “Wow, what an interesting world my mind is creating right now.” On an experiential level, I felt the dreaminess of life. I felt life as a creation of my mind. But only in a reactive sense.

Upon reflection, it seems that there are two distinct parts to this experience of life as a dream, a reactive one and a proactive one. The reactive experience is the wonder and appreciation of what is happening in the dream: “Cool, a bird just flew by.” Or even painful experiences: “Ouch, that person’s insult hurt.” But the awareness of the dream keeps the pain from becoming suffering because I am conscious that it is not real. This reactive part of experiencing life as a dream seems very accessible to me.

The proactive part is a bit more elusive. It’s the perspective of “Okay, if this is a dream, then I can do whatever I want. There is nothing for me to be afraid of.” That seems a step or two further away. Clearly, I can’t step off the roof and fly (though who knows until you try, right?). But what about stepping off that metaphorical roof in social and professional circumstances that I’ve been afraid of up until now? When I imagine that, life seems scary and real, and not a dream at all.

So, although I’ve had an experience of life being a dream, I haven’t fully embraced that perspective. This seems like a fertile area for me to explore.

Sometimes I feel an acute separateness from other people. I can be walking down the street or interacting with a cashier, and I feel almost alien. As if other people are living real lives and I’m just pretending or something. It’s difficult to describe. And while it’s happening, there seems to be this internal struggle between a yearning to connect and a desperate desire to hide.

The most challenging part is that I don’t know why I sometimes feel this way and other times don’t. I do know it shows up in my relationship to strangers, not in my relationships to people I know.

I went for a walk yesterday and noticed this feeling, but by the end of the day it was gone. And I have no clear sense of when it changed.

I think I’m writing about it now simply to express it. By expressing it, I am acknowledging it and can now be conscious to observe it when it shows up.

Wow, roller coasters are a lot different than they were the last time I rode them (about 15 years ago). Higher and faster, yes. But also the many different ways you are seated. The Superman coaster, for example, puts you on your stomach like you’re flying.

It was interesting to bring a present-focused perspective to the experience. I noticed there were two distinct aspects to the roller coaster experience that created a feeling of excitement for me.

One was my relationship to fear. It worked like this: The “oh my god I’m going to die” feeling would build and climax, followed by a release and a “I’m still alive” kind of joy. The first coaster ride of the day was this kind of experience for me. And I had mixed feelings about it. It left me wondering if I even wanted to go on any others.

But I went on a second one with the intention to let go of the fear. And I had a second kind of experience.

I surrendered to the fear and it dissolved (mostly). And what I experienced was the excitement from the physical experience. The speed, the airtime (the technical term for that weightless feeling you get from a quick up and down — I prefer to call it “floaty action”), the turns and loops. This physical excitement was less acute than the fear-based version. But much more sustainable, in my opinion. I think this kind of experience would have let me notice and appreciate the nuances of a given coaster had I gone on any of them more than once, instead of each ride just being another blur of terror.

I remember hearing or reading somewhere that fear and excitement are very similar physiologically. And the main difference between the two is the mental interpretation or spin we give the experience. Yesterday’s great Great Adventure adventure showed me how easy it is to surrender to a scary situation and appreciate it instead. The next step is for me to apply this lesson to the more common fears that I experience day to day.

Today I’m going to Six Flags Great Adventure, a theme park, with a whole bunch of friends.

My intention is to embrace the name of the park and experience a great adventure full of joy, gratitude, and wonder. This worked so well a few months ago that I want to try it again (and why I lost sight of this practice, I don’t know).

I will report back on my experience.

Not sure what today’s post is about. But I figured, what better way to find out than to write it, right?

I have a full day of appointments today. I find I have mixed feelings about days like this. I love meeting with my clients, so what’s nicer than a day full of clients? On the other hand, there are all kinds of little projects and details that call my attention on any given day, and with back to back appointments, there isn’t the space to focus on them.

I think it’s an obsession about those little things. There’s a judgment in there. That it’s somehow wrong if they aren’t tended to. But lots of them aren’t necessarily important. Certainly not as important to me as meeting with clients.

So it’s a practice of letting go of that judgment. Being more fully present with what I am doing and releasing the low level anxiety over what I’m not doing. Today is a perfect day to practice that.

Today was a bit more challenging. I was in some group settings, and the group dynamic made it easier in one way and harder in another.

It was easier to say, “I love you, guys” to the group. There was very little fear, if any.

But it was harder (so hard I didn’t do it) to say “I love you” to the individuals in the group.

It’s become apparent to me that this is more than an exercise in personal growth. This touches real people’s lives.

Twice since I announced my intention yesterday to say “I love you” more proactively, I’ve found myself in situations where friends were in pain and I felt love toward them, and I felt open enough to express it where I think I would have previously held back due to fear.

Source of inspiration: The Mastery of Love by don Miguel Ruiz

This morning I awoke two hours before my alarm was set. My mind began racing immediately, filling me with anxiety. After 30 minutes of trying to go back to sleep, I finally got up.

Around mid-day, I was reading Ruiz’s The Mastery of Love. Ruiz was describing the difference between the Track of Fear and the Track of Love. I could see how fear runs my life to a much greater extent than love does. And then the muse spoke to me and I wrote myself a note: “Say ‘I love you.’”

How can I possibly follow the Track of Love when I often can’t even speak those three words? I’m inhibited by fear. I’m comfortable saying that to a girlfriend, or to my mom, or my sister, or my nieces (note that these are all women).

But with other women friends, I’m afraid the words might be interpreted as romantic love — that I’m crossing a line.

And with men, well, you just don’t say that to another man. It’s not cool. And let’s be honest, “not cool” is just code for “it means you’re gay.”

The rational part of me knows this is silly. And I have said “I love you” to both male and female friends. But even when I did, there was an underlying fear.

So I’m going to prioritize this practice over the many others I’ve discussed in these 100 Days of Peace. I will say “I love you” to people that I feel love for. I will start with long-time friends who I know I love. Each time I see them, I will make a point to say “I love you” at least once during that encounter. My thinking is that the more I get comfortable expressing it, the more I will get comfortable feeling it. And from there I can expand to more spontaneous expressions of love.

And there’s another funny part to this story — some feedback from the universe on me choosing the Track of Love:

When I was reading, I fell asleep for a few minutes. I woke up and Maintenance was working on the apartment next door. They had the radio on and I could hear it through the wall. The song that began a second after I awoke was “Silly Love Songs” by Paul McCartney. Remember the chorus? “I love you.”