Cindy Lets Go

Cindy Sheehan let go her cause this Memorial Day weekend, and the pundits and their commenters are all aquiver over it. Reading the comments on The Swamp, The Chicago Tribune’s Washington Bureau left me feeling alternatively proud, angry, hurt, glad, sad, disgusted.

Do you remember who she is? She’s mother who lost her son in Iraq and felt that she had to DO SOMETHING to make it clear to our government that she did not condone the cause for which her son gave his life. She made camp outside the ranch of George W. Bush. She’s been camping for two years.

This weekend, Cindy decided that she’d had enough and she let it go. What pushed her over the edge was Democrats calling her the same mean-spirited names that the Republicans have been calling her. At least that’s what she says. My take is a little different.

Bless her heart, Cindy has spent two years of her life AGAINST the war. Being against anything (even as your car brakes are “against” your tires) takes energy. After a while, it’s exhausting to be against things. Cindy’s been against the war for long enough.

Bless her heart even more, Cindy’s been in the public eye for two years. Two years! During which she has been lauded and lambasted, admired and admonished, rewarded and reworded.

Her time in the public eye is over. She hung up her protest badge. Cindy let go.

What happens now? It’s anyone’s guess. For Cindy, my thought is that she’ll reconstruct a new life for herself and her family. She’ll heal from the loss of her son to the degree that she can. She’ll make dinner. She’ll go to church. She’ll figure out what she's for.

For our country and the effort that Cindy Sheehan made? It’s anyone’s guess. One thing I know is this: Cindy’s letting go makes a space for something new to happen. Something brand new, spanking clean and surprising.

You will recall that letting go is a part of the creative process. The Last Step. Cindy let go her protest. Now, dig deep inside yourself. Are you called to pick it up? Let go with her? Set it down? Do something new? Do it, whatever it is.

Letting go is a good sign—usually, it precedes healing.

P.S. Bless you, Cindy Sheehan! May God/dess heal your heart and our world.

A Dangerous Business

Yesterday’s Google Quote-of-the-Day was, “It’s a dangerous business going out your front door.” These are the words of the venerable J.R.R. Tolkien.

It is, you know. A dangerous business, I mean. Waking, dressing, breaking one’s fast, going out the front door and facing God/dess only knows what. It’s the truth. We never really know what we’re going to face when we walk out that front door.

That’s why it’s important to know what you believe about the nature of the universe and its inhabitants. Albert Einstein said that the seminal question of his time was:

Is the universe a friendly place or not?

Is yours? Mine is. Why? Because I’m friendly. When I’m feeling unfriendly, then the universe is an unfriendly place. Diarist Anais Nin comes to mind,

“We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.”

This is not, dear one, a form of metaphysical malpractice. I’m not blaming you for whatever you experience. What I’m doing is telling you why I believe you experience whatever you experience. The blame thing we all do well enough on our own without anyone’s help.

There a small thing that helps me walk out that front door whenever I don’t really feel like it. It’s a spiritual practice. I breathe in the word Peace. Then I breathe out the same word. I do it three times.

What this does for me is that I remember what my purpose is.

I am here to be peaceful,
to bring peace to all others,
and to support the cause of peace in the world.

Remember that cartoon character from the 60’s, Cool McCool? One thing he used to say was, “Dangerrrrr . . . is my business.” That’s how I think about peace. Peace is dangerous—dangerous in the sense of unknown, full of possibility, tinglingly alive. I’m no Cool McCool, but a paraphrase of his famous quote sets up every day perfectly for me, “Peace . . . is my business.”

What’s yours?

Apology V

Seeds IX, 21

Any reader who wants the whole Apology series in one document, feel free to email me and I’ll gladly send it. seedsdrcorso@comcast.net and click the link to check out my week of posts on Amy Cunningham's Chattering Mind this past week. Blessed relating, Susan

Seed: Apology V

The final step of true apology is indicating how a breach will be repaired. Here is where a lot of us get into Trouble, with a capital T.

To tell you the truth, I don’t always know how to repair a breach in a relationship. Repair, despite my own brilliant ideas, is really up to the other person. At the risk of politicizing Seeds, were the U.S. to leave Iraq completely today, I have no idea what repair would look like to the Iraqi people. Do you?

My sweetie and I had a kerfuffle this morning over wrapping a package. I don’t know what repairs looks like in this instance either, but I do know repair is necessary. Ask the other person, What would repair of this look like to you?

Look at repair with me for a minute. Re-pair. To come back into a pair once again. Of course. True apology realigns those who have felt separate. One of its OED definitions is the act of returning.

A true apology is ultimately an act of returning. Turning oneself and the situation from separation and back to connection. Now that’s an apology.

Be serene,

Dr. Susan Corso

Seeds are remarkable gifts. Sown in consciousness, they bring you to the most important part of your being—your Divine Spark.

When you have friends you would like added to the Seeds e-mail list, send their addresses to me at SeedsDrCorso@comcast.net

What Does Andy Like?

I am fan of 60 Minutes, are you? Last week one of the co-hosts asked their viewers, “Have you ever wondered what Andy likes?” Andy, of course, is Andy Rooney, the resident curmudgeon of 60 Minutes. Bless his heart—in real life, the man gets paid to complain.

Last Sunday, however, Andy—Complainer-At-Large—took us to the New York Antiquarian Book Fair, which he LOVED. I’m with Andy Rooney. I love books. More than 20 years ago, my mom gave me a button which says, “So Many Books—So Little Time.” I still feel this way.

I’ve probably owned thousands of books in my lifetime. Periodically, I get a hankering for clearer shelves so I go through them and give some away or sell them. Then, I buy more. For me, a motto might read: More Books Is Better Books.

One thing Andy said on Sunday was that some books are just meant to sit on our shelves. We don’t have to read them to enjoy them. I have owned several in this category. One of my all-time favorites was a Nicole Hollander book of Sylvia cartoons. I owned it for the title alone which was My Weight Is Always Perfect for my Height—Which Varies. I didn’t need to read the book. The title said it all.

I have some special, old books that bring me joy just to see them. One is my great grandmother’s first edition of Emerson’s Essays. A friend has already asked that I leave it to him in my will! Another is an 1848 Holy Bible. In it is a card in that same great grandmother’s handwriting. It’s addressed to my mom and it says:

Dear Linda, this is your great-great-grandmother’s Bible. I thought you might like to have it.

Her name was Anna Ripley Kline.
Her daughter’s name was Sophia Jane Kline Mooney.
Her daughter’s name was Lucia Mabel Mooney Burton.
Her daughter’s name is Lucia Burton Jackson.
Her daughter’s name is Linda Jackson.

My mother’s handwriting takes over as she adds her married name:

Falk.
Her daughter’s name is Susan Lucia Falk Corso.

That’s six generations of reading women. I know that if he could hold the book in his hand, Andy would love it.

Goals v. Intentions

My title looks like a court case to me. It isn’t, or is it? Does anyone else have trouble with setting goals? I mean, measurable, tangible, so-I’ll-know-it-when-I-get-there, capital G, Goals?

I am on a kick of reading through some of the latest success literature, particularly relating to Internet e-businesses, and one of their number, a gentleman life coach, named Drew Rozell, Ph.D., made a distinction in an interview between Goals and Intentions which intrigued me.

When asked about his future plans for his life and his business, Dr. Rozell said,

“To me, goals are about the future, and limited in scope.”

My belly got tense and did an internal flip-flop. Something has always felt weird to me about goals although I’ve never bothered to look at what exactly that is. Here’s what it is:

Goals are about the future.

Of course they are! This is why the goal wizards tell us to write them in the present tense as if we already have them.

Coach Rozell provided a valuable answer to me. Goals are about the future—and, despite the fact that I am an intuitive, I don’t know what the future holds. Not only don’t I know, but I can’t know because it’s not mine to know. What I “know for sure,” to quote Oprah Winfrey, is: my future could hold anything.

And besides, I stay very focused on the current moment, so that I’m showing up, present, accounted for, and awake to whatever happens.

So Coach Drew goes on,

“I’ve replaced plans with intentions of what I want.”

My belly relaxed. This feels better to me than goals. He goes on to explain why,

“If I’m in planning or goal mode, I try to operate from a script as to the way things should happen. I tend to agree with the old saying — ‘If you want to make God laugh, make plans.’ Like most folks, I end up feeling frustrated when things do not go as I planned. And I’ve found the truth to be that when I’m trying to stick to some plan, I’m not noticing all the opportunities the universe is placing before me.

“I get what I want much easier if I do not plan too much. I just follow whatever gives me energy.”

AHA! Intend, yes. Plan, no. Intentions, yes. Goals, no. My whole body relaxed. This has to be the truth for me. How about you?

I turned to the OED for confirmation.

For goal, the first three words in the etymology are “a difficult etymology!” I laughed. No wonder we have conflict about goals. Then I looked in my own God’s Dictionary.

There it was: goal is from Anglo-Saxon roots meaning—get this—to hinder!!!!

Next I checked intention which is not in God’s Dictionary. Back to the OED, intention’s first etymology is a verb: intend which comes from Latin roots meaning to stretch.

Do some word magic with me:

Do you know the British English word for American English jail? It’s spelled gaol. Swap the vowels of goal, which means to hinder, and you wind up in gaol!

Now intend is a verb, an action to take, instead of a goal to make. It means to stretch, and we see the same root in our word tendon, that which allows us to stretch our muscles.

No wonder I like intentions better than goals!

Let’s go back to coach Drew Rozell, who may be found at http://www.evolutioncoaching.com/,
and requote him, “I just follow what gives me energy.”

This is a principle taught by many spiritual masters. For me, following energy often involves a stretch which lets me know that I’m reaching for my best intentions.

Here are two for my guest blogger spot on beliefnet’s Chattering Mind this week:

1. The list for free Seeds subscriptions is quadrupled.
2. Connections happen which begin my next radical adventures in life.

Feel the stretch? So do I.

EXCITING NEWS

I'm so pleased to announce that I have been invited by beliefnet.com to be the Guest Blogger for Amy Cunningham's national blog, Chattering Mind, from this Monday, May 21st through Friday, May 25th. There will be between two and three posts a day, usually after 3 PM. Do come and visit!

http://www.beliefnet.com/blogs/chatteringmind/

I'll see you there!

Apology IV

Seeds IX, 20

Seed: Apology IV

The next part of apology, say the sociolinguists, is acknowledging damage. Damage comes from Latin roots meaning loss. Decoded this means: what has the person lost to whom you are apologizing?

Most often what’s lost is peace of mind. When apology is necessary, there’s ongoing turbulence in a relationship. It may seem just fine on the surface but somewhere there’s a bubbling pot about to overflow on a stove burner.

There are more serious losses than peace of mind, but no matter what the loss, there is usually a feeling of violation, damage, and theft. When I need to hear an apology, I feel as though something has been stolen from me, meaning taken without my permission.

Apology, that valuable tool, is a way of acknowledging that I am not you. I do not experience what you experience. I do not see what you see. I do not feel what you feel. I do not have your history so I cannot pretend to understand where you’re coming from. Apology acknowledges that I am different from you, no matter how similar we are.

Be serene,

Dr. Susan Corso

Seeds are remarkable gifts. Sown in consciousness, they bring you to the most important part of your being—your Divine Spark.

When you have friends you would like added to the Seeds e-mail list, send their addresses to me at SeedsDrCorso@comcast.net

Car Talk

Is there anyone else in the world who has a guilt response to something going “wrong” with their car?

Maybe it’s because I just don’t understand cars. No, that’s not it. It’s that I don’t really want to understand cars. There are other people on the planet who understand cars. I understand things that the car wizards don’t. I can’t be an expert on everything! And I don’t wanna be!

Here’s what happened. I was doing errands on the first hot weather day we’ve had in a long time. When I went to turn on the air conditioning, it wouldn’t cool. Or didn’t seem to cool. I took the car, whose name, by the way, is Emma, to our garage down the street and they told me they’re not “doing A/C” this year.

It was a long story about a broken and very expensive computer but there it was. I asked if they’d recommend someone who would do A/C. “Oh no, we never recommend anyone else. We don’t know the kind of work they’ll do.” I see.

Is it Miracle on 34th Street where one department store begins recommending a competing department store just so their customers can get what they want? I think so. Nothing doing, here on the A/C front.

Anyway, the weather cooled down and I forgot about it. When my sweetheart got in the car with me, I mentioned the malfunctioning air conditioner. She turned it on, and it worked just fine.

What happened? The truth is that it was probably fine all along and I just hadn’t let it run long enough to cool down. But more, and more importantly, she wasn’t afraid. She wasn’t afraid that the A/C didn’t work. She wasn’t afraid that it might need to be fixed. She wasn’t afraid that she’d done something wrong.

There are theories about how our machinery reflects ourselves. What was Emma reflecting to me? It’s pretty simple. It’s a rare reason that’s reason enough to fear—ever!

Mothers' Day of Peace

Yesterday was Mother’s Day. It’s often poignant for me. First, because I am a mother but not a parent; my son died the day he was born. Second, because my own mother is dead. Every Mother’s Day, however, I am heartened by remembering what caused the very first Mother’s Day. Do you know?

Mother's Day began with a woman named Julia Ward Howe, the woman who wrote The Battle Hymn of the Republic, and who nursed the wounded during the American Civil War. In 1870 she started a crusade to institute a Mother's Day as a Day for Peace. Here is her Mother's Day proclamation.

Mother’s Day Proclamation

"Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts, whether our baptism be that of water or of tears!

Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.

We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says "Disarm, Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."

Blood does not wipe out dishonor nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.

Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after their own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace."

The same day I was reminded of the proclamation, I received a notice about a website that made me cry. It’s called Mothers’ Day for Peace. I won’t say more except click here http://mothersdayforpeace.com/, watch the video, and let your heart break open.

I am a very interested observer of the Campaign to Establish a U.S. Department of Peace. On the Friday before Mother’s Day, they had a special campaign directed at our national and local legislators called . . .

Peace Wants A Piece of the Pie!

We were enjoined to visit our legislators and deliver each a pie; you know, blueberry, apple, coconut cream. It was quaint, okay . . . hokey even, and I loved it. The pie in question here is really a pie chart, that of the federal budget. It would cost a nearly imperceptible fraction of the defense piece of that pie to establish a cabinet position for a Department of Peace. Slowly, our legislators are climbing on board.

The thing about all this mothering business is that it is a reminder of our similarity. All living things have mothers. All. Even an oak tree has a “mama” acorn. Granted, we all have different mothers, but that’s what makes us so fascinating.

The next time you’re angry or disappointed in a human being other than yourself, stop a moment and give thanks for that one’s mother. See if it doesn’t take you closer to your own Department of [Inner] Peace.

Newer Light Bulb SPECIAL ALERT

Here is why so many of us have a hard time making decisions:

We don't/can't see the whole picture.

It turns out that CFLs have one small "problem." Disposal. The element on which they're based is Mercury and it's toxic, and disposing of used CFLs looks like just so much (more) landfill.

A blog reader informed me about a newer still kind of light bulb. He sent me this article.

On Wed., May 9th, I will be announcing the launch of a significant technological breakthrough in energy-efficient lighting. EcoLEDs (http://www.EcoLEDs.com) will be a new generation of extremely bright, mercury-free LED light bulbs that use only 1/10th of the electricity of incandescent lights (and 1/3rd the electricity of compact fluorescent lights). They also last 50,000 hours, or over a decade of daily use.

Unlike fluorescent lights, our LED lights contain no mercury and yet they're extremely bright (producing more usable light than incandescent light bulbs in desk lamp applications). They pay for themselves in 1-2 years in electricity savings (varies by region) and offer substantial reductions in CO2 emissions. Our 10-watt LED bulb, for example, reduces CO2 emissions by an astonishing 9,000 pounds over its lifetime, compared to a regular 100-watt light bulb. It also saves you $450 in electricity costs over its life.

See pictures of these new LED lights: http://www.ecoleds.com/CAT21417.html
Order the lights at our new eco-friendly online retail site:http://www.betterlifegoods.com
You can read about the significant advantages of LED lights over incandescent and fluorescent lights at:http://www.ecoleds.com/Tour1.html

A portion of every EcoLEDs sale goes to fund the Consumer Wellness Center non-profit to launch our nutrition programs for expectant mothers. I'll also be using profits from this endeavor to fund other much-needed programs for personal and planetary health.

I can't point you to any articles about these lights yet, because we haven't gone public with this story. But you'll soon see stories published demonstrating why these are the most energy efficient LED lights available anywhere in the world, and why they're going to be the next big trend in "going green."

Please note: All our lights work in the U.S. and Canada. Our high-end lights (10-watt and 7-watt LED lights) operate under a wide range of voltages, and they work in the United States, Canada, the EU, Asian countries, Australia and most other countries. Shipping them outside the U.S., however, is currently very expensive (thanks to UPS). Shipping in the U.S. and Canada is very reasonable. Check our site for details:http://www.BetterLifeGoods.com

Regards,

Mike Adams, the Health Ranger and founder of EcoLEDs

P.S. A 10% discount is in place for buying 4 or more of any LED light.

P.P.S. We are the original manufacturer of these LED lights. Wholesale discounts are available for volume orders. We're also looking for distributors in Canada, Australia, EU countries and elsewhere. Email us at wholesale42@ecoleds.com if you are interested in volume purchasing or carrying our EcoLED lights outside the USA.

So, a revision (note that word: re-vision) is in order. These new LED lights are biodegradable unlike the CFLs. Biodegradable is good. And yes, I'll make sure that Environmental Defense knows about this, too.

Apology III

Seeds IX, 19

Seed: Apology III

The second part of a true apology is showing remorse. When you apologize, are you genuinely sorry? The OED says remorse means a feeling of regret.

It’s funny, I know, but Ralph Waldo Emerson is right when he says, “What you are shouts so loudly that I cannot hear what you are saying.” If you’re not genuinely sorry when you apologize, then you may as well not do it. People can feel energy. They may not be able to name it, but they can feel it. What this means is that if you’re not genuinely sorry when you apologize, the person knows it.

This is an opportunity to look within. Before you apologize, be still. Look inside to discover what you’re sorry for. A lot of times it’s simply that you’re sorry your friend, coworker, whatever is upset by whatever happened. (You may not be sorry you did or said whatever you did or said.)

I think apology requires specificity. It’s not a blanket to be tossed on top of an uncomfortable situation. If you’re sorry, check your conscience. What are you sorry for? What’s causing you remorse? What are you regretting?

Be serene,

Dr. Susan Corso

Seeds are remarkable gifts. Sown in consciousness, they bring you to the most important part of your being—your Divine Spark.

When you have friends you would like added to the Seeds e-mail list, send their addresses to me at SeedsDrCorso@comcast.net

Light Bulb Q & A

Do you have a favorite light bulb joke? I do.

Q: How many Jewish grandmothers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Never mind—I’ll just sit here in the dark and remember your face.

I actually have a Jewish grandmother, and I can’t even type this out without laughing. What is it about light bulbs that is funny? Why light bulb jokes and not light switch jokes? Light bulbs are just funny I guess, and light switches are not. Ever heard Dave Letterman’s phone call to the store in Manhattan, Just Bulbs? Don’t get me started.

Here’s a not-as-funny light bulb headline that I found in Spirituality & Health magazine.

Q: How Many Light Bulbs Does It Take to Unscrew the Environment?
A: One Million.

Not, mind you, that I think the environment is screwed, but it’s askew to be sure. Here’s what the editors of S & H are drawing to our attention.

There’s a simple way to help with global warming. A very simple way. It’s fast, it’s easy, and it saves you money. How’s that for a sales pitch?

Environmental Defense suggests that we swap out our regular light bulbs for CFLs—compact fluorescent light bulbs. You know the ones they mean. Those spiral-y ones with the same screw base as a “regular” a.k.a. incandescent light bulb.

If you’re like me, this suggestion brings up a smattering of resistance. You see, I’m attached to the warm light quality and tone from the good old light bulbs. We live in a Victorian house with lots of century-old dark woodwork and doors. I like the warm light.

So? So, it requires an adjustment. That’s all.

Sort of like switching from whole milk to two percent. Initially, we don’t like it, but over time, we adjust.

Here’s why I think we ought to do the Great American Light Bulb Swap which Environmental Defense calls the One Million-Bulb Swap-Out. Their goal is one million light bulb exchanges to prevent ONE BILLION pounds of CO2 from polluting the environment further. One billion pounds!? How do you even measure one billion pounds of pollution? (There’s a page on their website that explains this but when I went to read it, the light went out in my being, giving new meaning to lights on, nobody home.)*

At the time the May/June issue went to press, www.environmentaldefense.org/home.cfm
had 110,688 pledges saving 119,432,352 pounds of pollution from our precious atmosphere. As I write this, it’s up to 224,561 bulbs (that’s almost a quarter of a million bulbs) saving 242,301,319 pounds of pollution. On their site, go to their light bulb guide—they’ll give you the scoop on a lot more than spiral CFLs—and click on Take the Pledge.

The prevailing wisdom is that these bulbs use one-third the energy of an incandescent bulb. Could that mean one-third the electric bill as well? I’m all for that.

All right, it’s been nagging at me so I’ll be right back . . . I just counted the number of light bulbs we have in our condo. It’s a whopping 32! Who knew? to quote my Jewish grandmother.

So I have to confess. We have an absolutely stunning Victorian stained glass lamp in the living room. I turn it on almost every evening to read by it. Whilst the old-fashioned bulbs made for warm lighting, I’m getting to be a certain age, and the spiral CFLs make for clearer reading, much clearer reading.

I adjusted.

I pledged, too, so the number is up by 32 already.

Q: Will YOU?
A: Never mind—just sit there in your new CFL light, and remember our planet.

*I just checked my email after closing this file and of course there’s one from ED thanking me for pledging and suggesting I forward their email to three friends making my pledge triply effective. I’m going to do it, but first I wanted to add here that they boil down their complex formula to about 1000 pounds of pollution is saved per light bulb. Wow.

Against? Or, For?

My sweetie has been away for much of April and all of May so far with another week or so to go. This means I’ve had a lot more time alone—a lot. I’ve enjoyed it, and there’s been some missing going on as well.

More time alone means that I have a lot more freedom to think, ponder, wonder, daydream, meditate and just be. A full-time relationship takes time. Anyway, I started to ask myself what was the predominant idea that had been coming to me during this alone time. Here it is:

I’m tired of being against things.

I mean it. Really, I am. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote over a hundred years ago: What you resist persists. It’s one of those winsome phrases that sticks in the memory because of its alliteration. Re-sist. Per-sist.

The other thing about it is that it’s true. The classic example I use to demonstrate this when I’m speaking to audiences is . . . okay, whatever you do, don’t think about the Statue of Liberty.
. . .
How long did it take her to show up in your mind? Less than a nanosecond I’d bet.

The other thing about this Law of Resistance is that it’s universal. That’s why it has the status of Law.

Resisting ANYTHING makes it persist. Try these on for size: Democrats, Republicans, global warming (which has recently had a linguistic upgrade to ‘climate change’—far less threatening-sounding, don’t you agree?), parents, kids, neighbors, the church. I could go on and on but you get it.

After I realized that “against” had been the primary idea for me, I began to consider its far happier-for-me corollary:

What am I for?

I mean it. Charles Fillmore, the co-founder of Unity, wrote (sorry, I have to paraphrase because I can’t find the quote at this particular moment): Show me someone who is for something, and that one can change the world.

So, what am I for? I’m for love, for kittens, for Oreos, for books and more books, for breezes, responsible living, listening, giggling, massage, humanity, trees and more trees. I’m for Rogers & Hammerstein musicals, political candidates who can say they don’t know, joy, Spirit, God Herself. I’m for computers, the Healing Codes, babies, zaides and nanas, chick flicks, theatre of most kinds, breathing, prayer. I’m for curiosity, I’m for prosperity, I’m for all kinds of things.

What are you for?

All this musing has left me wondering that if we humans were to shift our focus for just one day from what we are against to what we are for would we change the world? I have to hazard a guess at the answer: Yes.

P.S. Suggestion: Why don’t we who are inspired by this idea try it in our own lives one at a time? Let’s spend, say, Thursday, being for things and against nothing and see what happens.

Apology II

Seeds IX, 18

Seed: Apology II

When you apologize, do you mean it? Or, do you apologize because it’s good form? Or a necessary rite? Do you take a full stop to apologize, or do you use it as a tool to get past whatever the discomfort?

Ms. Quindlen writes about true apology as having four parts. The first is admitting a fault.

This can be a difficult rite of passage. Somehow we don’t like to be at fault. I think it’s because fault is closely allied with blame, and the blame game and the shame game resemble each other too often. Deciphered, this means, when we’re at fault, we’re ashamed.

Why? Whose rule is it that to be at fault means we ought to be ashamed? And what a silliness! When I do something wrong, whether it’s mis-conjugating a foreign word or betraying the trust of someone I care about, I’m at fault, but I don’t need to be ashamed.

Our western culture associates being at fault with weakness. Do you? I don’t. Being at fault means I still have things to learn. Sure, it’s a deficiency in me, but one that can be corrected.

Be serene,

Dr. Susan Corso

Seeds are remarkable gifts. Sown in consciousness, they bring you to the most important part of your being—your Divine Spark.

When you have friends you would like added to the Seeds e-mail list, send their addresses to me at SeedsDrCorso@comcast.net

Controversy, Always Controversy

Oh dear, the controversy over The Secret rages on. I’m reading through the May/June issue of Spirituality & Health. Do you read it? It’s one of the best magazines on current spiritual trends.

Rabbi Rami Shapiro, whom I respect deeply, writes his whole column on The Secret. When one realizes that he has only six columns a year to write, his devotion of that precious publishing real estate to how wrong is The Secret it's impressive. His argument is a good one, too.

I had an inkling of what might be to come when I read Stephen Kiesling’s From the Editor column. He had an opening salvo: “The ‘secret’ is the ‘Law of Attraction’ which says that if you want something you only have to tell the universe and it will come. Fortunately, the universe doesn’t work that way . . . .”

Doesn’t it? Read on.

The Rebbe is equally adamant. He calls The Secret “a New Age version of age-old snake oil” in his first sentence. Ouch.

I love that he cites the original law of attraction, “called Coulomb’s Law after the eighteenth-century physicist C. A. de Coulomb, [it] states that opposites attract and likes repel—just the opposite of what The Secret argues.”

He goes on, “The good news is that The Secret is a lie.”

Is it?

“You are not what you think.”

Aren’t we?

“You are what you do.”

Yes, we are.

Kiesling adds an Editor’s Note at the end of the rabbi’s column: “When I saw The Secret DVD, I wished it would go away.”

Oh dear, oh my. Controversy sells better than agreement, doesn’t it? Even in spiritual magazines.

The Secret isn’t a lie, dear one—at least not wholly a lie. Follow my logic:

A thought of an action must come before the action otherwise the action won’t happen. In order to make our best dreams come true, we need to “put hands and feet on our prayers,” as the Quakers say.

Sitting on your sofa and praying to manifest a new job isn’t going to cut it—I agree with the rabbi on this front.

I also agree with The Secret. Dominion is promised humans in the Hebrew Bible. The only place where we have true dominion is over our own minds and behaviors—and even that has the subconscious to consider where dominion is dubious at best!

I think Rhonda Byrne has provided a wonderful service to humanity. Very few people know that we can control our own thinking IF we’ll work at it.

The Secret promulgates a partial lie, yes. We can’t think something, do nothing and expect the something to ring the doorbell. But we can think something, choose it, take inspired action (just like Rhonda Byrne did) and make our dreams come true.

I think the planet is better served by people who are willing to look at their own thoughts to see how those same thoughts are contributing to world conditions. The Secret is a seed planted globally. Now comes the mystery of growth in the darkness so that the seed can expand and bear fruit.