I've started reading Martha Beck's book Steering by Starlight, and doing the exercises. I always liked her on Oprah, and her columns in O magazine. She has a nice balance between lefty brain sciencey thinking, and a righty brain mystical approach.
It's PERFECT for where I am right now. Already in the first chapter she's talking about meditation, and how you can change your brain. Hello! Just like Mindsight etc. (I've been working on my daily meditating, like a good girl.) Her first chapter goes like this...
- If you make a list of things you want, you'll find what you really want is to feel certain things. Eg. Getting a job so you can feel calm, not worried about making rent. Getting a better job so you can feel energized. Getting a promotion so you can feel a sense of accomplishment.
- She advises you to work on feeling those things now, as though you already had them. Because acting calm, or energized, or accomplished will increase you chances of getting the job, promotion etc.
- Gives the example of her aikido coach who's a cop or something. When you burst in on people you have to arrest, it usually results in a lot of violence. Once day he decided to stop bursting in, but to feel as though the job's already done, the people surrendered, everything gone according to plan. So he enters the room calmly now, and it has almost always resulted in a non-violent reaction by the people he's after.
- How to get this way? Meditation! Neurons that fire together wire together. So start building a calm and happy brain.
- She points out that if you think of the good stuff in your life, and work backwards through the events that led to them, you'll probably find some negative circumstance. For example my parents divorced, my dad married Stepmommy, she and dad started going to a church, she was shy and asked me to come with her, and I met my husband. Parents divorce --> husband.
- So start acting today as though those good things you wish for have already happened. Even if life sucks at the moment, there might be wonderful outcomes down the road. So why not act with those outcomes in mind?
- Which fits in perfectly with something my grandmother said on the phone a couple weeks ago, talking to me and my dad. We were talking about my aunts, and then Gramma said with a chuckle: "If I knew how good all you kids were gonna turn out I wouldn't have spent all those years worrying!" I've been keeping that seriously in mind--to stop worrying about my present, because the future is already great. So when I read this Beck chapter it really resonated.
- And kind if resonates with the series I watched on time and space. The past, present and future all coexist!
There you go. Chapter one. You can thank me when all your dreams come true.
