Little Pleasures

Seeds X, 51

Seed: Little Pleasures

I know, I know, spiritual teachers since the beginning of time have recommended that we appreciate the small things in life. It’s a good idea. Really.

I’d like to put a slightly different spin on it. From today until Christmas is seven days. Consider your six senses—one day at a time—as a path for appreciating the little pleasures. Friday: sight. Look for things that please your eyes. Saturday: sound. Listen for things that please your ears. Sunday: taste. Let your tongue be your guide. Monday: touch. Let your skin speak to you. Tuesday: scent. Follow your nose. Wednesday: intuition. You can view it one of two ways—either as a combination of the preceding five or ignoring the five and raising your awareness to your inner knowing.

Even though I’m writing this over July 4th weekend, I can tell you some of the little pleasures I’m anticipating . . . red, carols played by baroque trumpets, cinnamon buns, chenille sweaters, vanilla, and a revelation of a greater sense of who I am meant to be in the world.

Merry Christmas—what a pleasure.

Be content,

Susan Corso

Dr. Susan Corso

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

Check out the Seeds Archive for past messages of inspiration.

When you have friends you would like added to the Seeds e-mail list, send their addresses to me at susan@susancorso.com and please visit my website www.susancorso.com and my blogs,
Ode Magazine, and The Huffington Post.

Tradition

Seeds X, 50

Seed: Tradition

I never hear this word without the three notes from the song in Fiddler on the Roof coming to mind. Tevye sings, “Tradition! Tradition! . . . Tradition!” In the song, Tevye argues for traditional family roles for papa, mama, son and daughter. Tevye wasn’t living in the 21st century.

The OED says that tradition comes from Latin roots meaning a saying handed down. It surprised me a little because I’d always associated the word tradition with the word trade. And that’s my real recommendation to us all for this Season of Light.

Are there traditions in your family? Good. Now, get conscious about them. Do you like them? Do you want to keep them? If so, excellent, but if not, trade your old traditions for new ones. Things are going so fast in our world these days that traditions of any kind are of some value, except those that no longer suit who we are.

Consider putting a new tradition in place of an old one that no longer serves, dear one, and enjoy the holy-days.

Be content,

Susan Corso

Dr. Susan Corso

Seeds are remarkable gifts. Sown in consciousness, they bring you to the most important part of your being—your Divine Spark. Check out the Seeds Archive for past messages of inspiration.

When you have friends you would like added to the Seeds e-mail list, send their addresses to me at SeedsDrCorso@comcast.net and please visit my website www.susancorso.com and my blogs
Ode Magazine. and The Huffington Post.

National Sorry Day

Seeds X, 48

Seed: National Sorry Day

Hearing about this unofficial Australian holiday made me cry. It was started as an apology to the aboriginal peoples of Australia in 1995 and is held on May 26th annually. The history of the day documents a wrong done to the indigenous of that continent—their children were taken from them. It was called the Stolen Generation.

What do you think of every country of the world creating a National Sorry Day? For apologies to indigenous peoples, for apologies to other nations, for apologies within states, cities, counties, towns. Apology is one of the major tools in the kit of human relating. Rather than carry unresolved social or historical guilt or its correlate, anger, why not just apologize?

I realize that apology doesn’t undo the wrongs. Often it can’t. But what apology does do is acknowledge the hurt. Apology says, “Yes, I see you. I see the hurt, and I’m sorry for my part in it.”

This Seed arrives on the day after American Thanksgiving. Take a sec, and see if there are any apologies that might increase your gratitude.

Be content,

Susan Corso

Dr. Susan Corso

Seeds are remarkable gifts. Sown in consciousness, they bring you to the most important part of your being—your Divine Spark. Check out the Seeds Archive for past messages of inspiration.

When you have friends you would like added to the Seeds e-mail list, send their addresses to me at SeedsDrCorso@comcast.net and please visit my blogs Ode Magazine and The Huffington Post.

Disarrange

Seeds X, 47

Thank you to everyone who made the time to comment on my nomination as an Intelligent Optimist for Ode Magazine. Be especially blest, SFC

Seed: Disarrange

When we arrange things, we put them in order, usually an order that makes sense to us. Alphabetical. By size. By color. By item. When we try to arrange ourselves, I think sometimes the Universe responds by disarranging us.

“It is necessary for things to disarrange you,” wrote French essayist and poet, Francis Ponge. “We cannot truly see something until we approach it, not as a superior but as an equal that has the power to startle us with the marvel of its selfhood.”

Be on the alert for disarrangement, dear one. It usually happens when we ourselves our clamoring to grow but can’t see how to get it done. A new relationship will disarrange us. A new job. A move. Endings. Beginnings. A new book. A new course. A new route to work.

The trick isn’t to attempt to arrange the disarrangement. (Disarrangement isn’t always disarray.) It’s to look at the disarrangement and see where you’re called to expand who you are so the new arrangement makes sense to you.

Be content,

Susan Corso

Dr. Susan Corso

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

Check out the Seeds Archive for past messages of inspiration.

When you have friends you would like added to the Seeds e-mail list, send their addresses to me at SeedsDrCorso@comcast.net and please visit my website www.susancorso.com and my blogs Ode Magazine and The Huffington Post.

Synaesthesia

Seeds X, 45

Seed: Synaesthesia

Here’s a fancy word! I read it in Joe Vitale’s wondrous marketing book about P. T. Barnum called There’s a Customer Born Every Minute. If you’re into marketing, run and get it!

Mr. Vitale used synaesthesia to turn himself into a dynamic public speaker on an occasion when he was scared out of his socks. The word itself means a merging of the senses. It’s Greek and it denotes the condition of dreaming into reality. Here’s how Joe Vitale applied it.

He asked himself questions about the speech he planned to give. “If this speech were a piece of music, how would it sound?” His answer was: like Melissa Etheridge. “If it were a color, what would it be?” He saw fiery red with white streaks in it. For weeks before his speech, he dreamed it into being. Weeks after the event, he got the highest rating the group had ever given.

We are dreaming creatures, beloved. We literally dream ourselves and our lives into existence. Why not use your senses to dream the dream you want?

Be content,

Susan Corso

Dr. Susan Corso

Seeds are remarkable gifts. Sown in consciousness, they bring you to the most important part of your being—your Divine Spark. Check out the Seeds Archive for past messages of inspiration.

When you have friends you would like added to the Seeds e-mail list, send their addresses to me at SeedsDrCorso@comcast.net and please visit my website www.susancorso.com and my blogs
Ode Magazine and The Huffington Post.

Helper/Helpee

Seeds X, 43

Seed: Helper/Helpee

I quit helping people years ago. Does that surprise you? At the time, it surprised me. I had a client, a dear one, who I’d gone out of my way to help turn on me in rage and resentment. It took me a couple of years to process what happened.

Finally, I got it. I’d helped her and that made me “better than” her in her eyes. My intentions were good, don’t get me wrong, but the way I offered help to her, she felt “less than.” I wrote her an amends letter out of my new understanding.

Helper/Helpee relationships often mean that one person is up, and one person is down. It’s not always a pretty scenario. The thing I learned, and it might shock you, is this: Every situation which involves more than myself must serve both (or all) persons involved.

When I realized that I learn as much from my client as he or she does from me, we are both served. We both grow. We both heal. So, I gave up helping a lot time ago, and instead, walk parallel with people when they ask me to do so.

Be content,

Susan Corso

Dr. Susan Corso

Seeds are remarkable gifts. Sown in consciousness,
they bring you to the most important part of your being—your Divine Spark.
Check out the Seeds Archive for past messages of inspiration.

When you have friends you would like added to the Seeds e-mail list, send their addresses to me at SeedsDrCorso@comcast.net and please visit my website SusanCorso.com and my blogs
Ode Magazine and The Huffington Post.

Unknown Blessings

Seeds X, 42

Seed: Unknown Blessings

I can’t remember where I read these words, on beliefnet maybe. Regardless, indigenous wisdom reminds us: Give thanks for unknown blessings already on their way.

We all know about the giving thanks thing already. Robert Schuller coined it as an “attitude of gratitude,” and we know that gratitude is the energy that greases the wheels of our personal cosmos.

The thing that caught me this time was Unknown Blessings. Reflect a moment, if you would. Have you ever had a blessing arrive in your life unexpectedly? Maybe one of those famous blessings in disguise?

These words made me think of gazillions of blessings I’ve received that I had no idea were coming. It asks a far deeper question:

Do you believe the Universe is benevolent? If you do, then giving thanks for unknown blessings even when you can’t see them will feel natural to you. If you don’t, unknown will equate to scary for you.

The thing is, the Unknown we have always with us. Benevolent is up to you.

Be content,

Susan Corso

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 and please visit my website www.susancorso.com and my blogs
Ode Magazine. and The Huffington Post.

The Gift of Contentment

Seeds X, 40

Seed: The Gift of Contentment

Another Seed inspired by Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love. Have you gifted yourself with this book yet?

I’ve been a student of contentment for thirty years. In my twenties, I realized that striving was good but that contentment was better. To me, and someday I’ll write that book I’ve worked on for so long called Secrets of Contentment, contentment means I am at peace with what I am and that I have a dream which calls more to me.

Ms. Gilbert writes, “The search for contentment is, therefore, not merely a self-preserving and self-benefiting act, but also a generous gift to the world.” Wow. Wow. Wow.

Ever thought of contentment that way? Of course it’s self-preserving and self-benefiting, but a gift to the world? That makes sense to me.

If I am content, I will radiate it to others, and contentment is virally contagious. Just think, what a world we would have if each one of us made the search for and FOUND contentment. (Consider this year’s Seeds sign off below.)

Be content,

Susan Corso

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 and please visit my blogs Ode Magazine, and The Huffington Post.

Coexist

Seeds X, 38

Seed: Coexist

I drove past a car with a bumpersticker bearing an image similar to the one above for almost a year before I figured out what it said. And, of course, when I went looking on Google images for the exact bumpersticker that had confused me, I could only find images that were as clear as the one above!

Anyway, I can’t find whoever designed this but it’s allegedly a lesson on Coexistence for all beings. Track the symbols with me. First, the Muslim crescent; then, the peace symbol; the astrological symbols for male and female (and I’d add, all the genders along the spectrum); the Star of David; the Baha’i Star; the Taoist Yin/Yang; the Christian cross. From what I’ve read, the creator of this image intended it to be a recommendation to humanity that we are all dependent upon one another and the major religions of the world.

That works for me, but the more important statement in my mind is this: we have no choice, dear one, we all are coexisting whether we like it or not, and we can choose to like it if we want to so choose. Or not, and suffer the consequences. Me, I pick peaceful coexistence.

Be content,

Susan Corso

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 and please visit my blogs Ode Magazine, and The Huffington Post.

Fast Horses

Seeds X, 37

Seed: Fast Horses

I can’t remember where we were going but we were driving on a highway up a hill. That, I do remember. Oh, and the sign on the trailer in front of us:

Fast Horses
Slow Truck

We burst out laughing, and the idea stayed with me. Isn’t that what’s so about the human mind? Our thoughts go lickety-split just like fast horses, and our hearts and bodies can feel like slow trucks a lot of the time.

Do you know why? Thoughts travel, quite literally, at the speed of light. Emotions travel at the speed of water. And bodies, those dear vessels, travel at the speed of earth.

The next time your thoughts are out-stripping your feelings and your body, remember the sign on the back of the trailer and give yourself a break.

Be content,

Susan Corso

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 and please visit my blogs Ode Magazine and The Huffington Post.

Telling the Truth

As you know, I’m in the midst of working with a {marvelous!}web wizard to create susancorso.com—something I’ve been meaning to do for years. We’ve found a good working rhythm, my designer and me.

The process is fascinating. First, we created a Web Map. We decided on Navigation Buttons, and sub-categories for the items that would go under the major buttons. Then I took the Nav Map, and created one document called Web Copy ALL. On that I laid out, page by page, what visuals and text went on what pages. It was crystal clear, or so I thought.

You can imagine that much of our communication is via email, and it struck me this morning when there was a total misunderstanding about one page that I am doing a spiritual practice by telling my designer the truth. Don’t get me wrong, either. I do my best to tell the truth all the time, but this case made me look differently at truth telling.

This website is my website. It needs to reflect my work and my energy. That’s a no-brainer. What isn’t a no-brainer is that I’m suddenly aware of how I can fall into a pattern of allowing others to have “their way” in the name of making peace so that sometimes when I ought to insist upon what I want, I don’t.

So here’s the key. First, I HAVE TO TELL MYSELF THE TRUTH about what I want. My designer totally misunderstood something that was perfectly clear to me. I wanted a special, separate page for the current Seed of the Week. She did the whole of the Seeds pages and left this thing out.

Instead of immediately insisting on what I wanted, I spent some time pondering whether I could/should let this go! Ridiculous! I’m known for writing Seeds, and there ought to be a page for the current Seed. What caused me to do this? It doesn’t bother my designer if I need her to redo something.

I’ll tell you. It’s an overarching desire to “just get along” with everyone that makes me lie down and say yes when I need to say no. When I tell myself the truth, it’s easy to share that same truth with others.

And, here’s a bonus. If I can be unattached to the outcome, over and over again a newer, better iteration has arisen!

Truth creates.

Learn? Teach

Seeds X, 35

Seed: Learn? Teach

You probably already know that the fastest way to learn something is to teach it to someone else. I figured this out so long ago that the Universe helps me do it.

I’m in the process of creating and launching a website to promote my new audiobook and my healing mysteries www.susancorso.com, so what happened today? Someone called and asked my help on a website about healing. I looked at it and thought, I know what to do to help them, and I began to teach what I was already learning for my own website.

Sometimes all we need is to hear ourselves explain something in order to know that we truly do know our stuff. Want to learn? Teach whatever it is to someone else.

Welcome back to school!

Be content,

Susan Corso

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 and please visit my blogs Ode Magazine, and The Huffington Post.

I & Enemy

Seeds X, 32

Seed: I & Enemy

The Tao Te Ching, the classic text by Lao Tse says that one cannot have the words I and Enemy in the same sentence if one wants to be a master of Tao. The concepts of I and Enemy do not relate to one another in a master’s understanding of life.

So let’s look for a moment at ourselves. Do we have enemies? According to the OED, the word comes from Latin roots meaning not friendly. It may sound a bit absolutist but anyone or anything toward whom or which we feel not friendly is an enemy according to this definition. For me, that sheds a new and less yielding light on enemies.

Shall we take it deeper? The Hebrew prophet Micah said that the harshest enemies we can have are those “of our own house.” Are there parts of yourself toward which you are not friendly? Take a page out of Abraham Lincoln’s book, dear one, and ask, “Do I not destroy my enemies when I make friends of them?” Mastering our inner enemies by befriending them dissolves the outer ones as well.

Be content,

Susan Corso

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 and please visit my blogs Ode Magazine. and The Huffington Post.

People Change

Seeds X, 31

Seed: People Change

People change. They do.

Recently a friend told me a story about the beginning of a new romance in his life. His closest friend took the fifth about the relationship upsetting my friend. It took us a while to figure out that his best friend was simply reacting to the change in my friend’s life. New romances change us.

There’s a line in Lillian Hellman’s play Toys in the Attic. One of the characters says, “People change and forget to tell each other.”

The next time someone dear to you makes a change in his or her life, before you react, reflect. Is your dear one saying, subtextually anyway, “I’m changing and I’m telling you so”?

People change, and we get to change with them.

Be content,

Susan Corso

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 and please visit my blogs Ode Magazine. and The Huffington Post.

Micro-Vacations

Seeds X, 30

Seed: Micro-vacations

This Seed was inspired by Rev. Margaret Storz writing in Science of Mind Magazine. She highly recommends micro-vacations. She lives near one of the coasts of the United States so her micro-vacations are all about the beach. Mine are not. I’m a redhead; I don’t do beach.

A micro-vacation for me might be . . . a weekday afternoon at the movies . . . or thirty minutes reading fiction during the day . . . or a massage. But what Rev. Storz is talking about is even less time-consuming than these. She’s talking about 30 seconds to a minute several times a day.

Most of us have too much to do too much of the time. Do you have a post-it note nearby, dear one? Start a list of places to visit for 30 seconds at a time. Hawaii, if you’re a beach bunny. The Alps, if you’re not. The mind works in images. Create a Favorites folder on your computer full of micro-vacation images and take a minute to go there and relax every day.

Be content,

Susan Corso

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 and please visit my blogs Ode Magazine. and The Huffington Post.

Holiday Notice

Today I’m posting Seeds for the next two weeks. I’ll be out of town in California and Santa Fe and not doing blog posts (except in my mind) until August 4th. You can still read my weekly posts on Ode Magazine’s blog and The Huffington Post. Happy summer!

Susan

Heffalump Pits

Seeds X, 29

Seed: Heffalump Pits

Oh my friend, beware of heffalump pits! Do you know what they are? Do you know where they are? Do you know why they are? A heffalump pit is what one uses to catch a heffalump, and the genesis of such an ingenious device is to be found in A. A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh books.

In the story, Pooh and Piglet dig a heffalump pit to catch a heffalump but succeed only in catching Pooh with a jar of Hunny stuck on his head. Now you and I know that the heffalump is a phantasmagoria, but I want to ask you, is it really?

Isn’t the worst situation you’ve ever found yourself in usually one of your own making to one degree or another? Even if you can’t see it at the time? Well, I’m going to tell you a small secret about heffalump pits.

If ever you fall into one, look at your own hands. That’s right. Inspect each hand, one at a time. I’ll wager a quarter that in one or the other, you’ll find a shovel! The flip side of this is: if you’re unexpectedly holding a shovel, look out! There’s a heffalump pit nearby and you could fall in at any moment!

P.S. The easiest way to avoid Heffalump Pits is to refrain from Digging Them!

Be content,

Susan Corso

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 and please visit my blogs Ode Magazine. and The Huffington Post.

No Thank You Bite

Seeds X, 27

Seed: No Thank You Bite

As some of you know, I turned fifty last year. In a Manhattan taxi on the way downtown to have dinner with dear friends, this Seed was born.

Turned out it was a rule in my friend’s family that if one didn’t want to eat something at the dinner table, one had to take a “no thank you bite.” At my childhood dinner table, a “you have to try it bite” was mandatory. What a difference a phrase makes!

The experience of the second option was a thwarting of my will. I was made to do what I didn’t want to do. My friend’s family, on the other hand, honored her will. And accomplished the same goal! To get a kid to try something new.

The next time you find yourself in a power struggle of any kind, see if you can apply the No Thank You Bite rule. Find a way to honor the independence of the will of the person you’re struggling with. You’ll both be freer.

Blessed Fourth of July.

Be content,

Susan Corso

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 and please visit my blogs Ode Magazine. and The Huffington Post.

Ad Nonsense

Friends have been after me to sign up for Google AdSense. I had no idea what it was, but a dear soul took pity on me and walked me through the process so I did it. You can see the ads to the right of this post.

I don’t get to choose the ads, but there are plenty of rules about how they work. I’m not allowed to click on the ads on my own site. Anyway, after a complicated sign-up and verification process, I was good to go. The ads would be active within 24 hours.

I waited the requisite time and signed on curiously to the blog. The first ad is a list of five options.

Rare Seeds
Flax Seeds
Tomato Seeds
Sesame Seeds
Poppy Seeds

I burst out laughing! Seeds for Sanctuary started out as an homage to metaphysician Emmet Fox. His books were compilations of his brief essays, ideas, thoughts on metaphysics. A group of us starting meeting monthly in New York City for spiritual connection and I wanted something that kept people connected. Weekly Seeds is what that thing became.

AdSense is creating nonsense on the blog for the moment. The second ad on the site right now is for a Zen teacher. They use non-sense to teach sense all the time. Go Google!

Kwatz!

Seeds X, 26

Seed: Kwatz!

Zen masters, masters of all kinds really, can be hilarious. Often humans picture masters as realized beings, tabulae rassae, blank slates, that do not evince personality. The word of today’s Seed disabuses us of that silly notion.

“Kwatz!” is an exclamation used by Zen masters to shock a student out of dualistic thinking. Say it aloud even if you have to do it quietly because you’re in a padded cell of a cubicle. Doesn’t the word itself make you smile?

Consider using it for your practice for a week or so. When you notice that you’re caught in old thoughts or memories of any kind, just say to yourself, “Kwatz!” from your master self.

There is a master self within each of us that knows when we’re just playing out the old. Listen to her/him, and he’ll/she’ll take you right into now. Kwatz!

Be content,

Susan Corso

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 and please visit my blog Ode Magazine.