Month: October 2014

  • "Panic Culture" and Ebola

    Airborne

    I had the “pleasure” – if you can call it that – of traveling through one of America’s busiest airports today. On my way through, there were headlines and TV’s blaring: “EBOLA!!!” 

    Scare. Fear. Worry. Doubt.

    “It could strike you at any time, so be AWARE, be CAREFUL, be SAFE.”

    Now, look. I have done a lot of computer modeling using fancy-sounding things like “Agent-based modeling.” I’ve played with the simulations of disease spread. It used to strike fear in me.

    If you believe like I did that something like Ebola can strike you down at any random time, then you are screwed. If not this virus, then the next, or the one after that. Or heart attack. Or cancer. Or meteor. Or war. Or murder. You’ll find a way.

    There are MANY ways to die, and a lot of people spend their entire lives, not LIVING, but AVOIDING DEATH. That’s so silly, because you can’t avoid the inevitable.

    No Regrets

    And yes, I’m going to die someday. Maybe soon, maybe later. Would I prefer the “later” scenario? Sure – but only because I feel like I have unfinished business, like raising kids and getting some more positive messages out into the world through the work that I do. I also want to explore some places I haven’t seen before. Yet, if it happens today, or tomorrow, I feel that I’ve lived life FULLY so far. I’ve done in one lifetime what few people do – experiencing life as a student, a teacher, a scientist, an entrepreneur, an explorer, an author, a man, a woman.

    And IF it happens soon, I don’t give any credence to the idea that it’s just “random.” If that happens, it means that I’ve accomplished what I came into this body and this life to accomplish, and it’s time to move on. There is nothing WRONG or SCARY about that.

    Led by Fear or Leading by CORE

    One of the principles of our universe – and our lives – is that you get what you focus on.

    So, if you’re constantly tuned into the news that is screaming EBOLA or disaster – you’re constantly tuned into fear. Since you get what you focus on, you’re going to get more FEAR in your life – i.e. an ever-accumulating pile of things in life to worry over, all adding up to the BIG ONE, the FINAL thing that you worried about but couldn’t ever fully prepare for (because you were so afraid to think that you might be snubbed out so handily by “circumstances” that you pretended you weren’t thinking about it – but you were).

    I’m not talking about sticking your head in the sand. You can be aware of your goals (such as “I’ve got more to do here”) and act in accordance with those goals (such as “I should wash my hands and avoid dangerous situations where possible.”) But it’s easy to go over the top with this, and lose connection with your CORE – your intuitive guidance system that can HELP you accomplish your goals. If your goal is to live longer, that guidance system is far more powerful than any screaming alert sirens or flashing headlines. It will help you line up with the people, places, and things that help you accomplish your goals.

    Auto-pilot vs Taking the Controls

    What screws most of us up in that is that we get lost in doubt, worry, and fear. Those things disconnect us from that very guidance system – much like an airliner that has just been flipped off of autopilot into manual flight mode. Manual flight is ok, but has a few challenges: it is tiring because it requires constant vigilance – and it requires VERY good instruments. Especially in our extremely complex world, operating on “manual” will tie you in logical knots about what is right, safe, and correct versus what is wrong and unsafe. Our “rational” minds cannot deal with a complex future, so we end up making these “rational” decisions with heuristics – i.e. shortcuts.  One of the most common heuristics is: “everyone is doing it, so that must be the way to do it.” Talk about a dangerous way to run your life. It’s like an airiner on manual pilot flying through fog. There are many illusions and without very good instruments, an “incident” is quite likely. Good instruments are like your CORE guidance system – yet most of us ignore those.

    An intuitive signal from the CORE is powerful. A heuristic is weak. They are NOT the same. Listening to heuristics leads to those random bad things (and some good things, too). Listening to the CORE helps you stay on track to what you want – as long as you’re clear about it and you don’t contradict it with the worry, doubt, and fear.

    Do not succumb to the fear mongers. Yes – be aware – but more important is to stay in tune with what you want out of life – your positive vision – and keep moving towards that.  And by God, if you’re not living life FULLY right here and now, start doing it. Ebola or not, one day you WILL be dead. It happens to the best of us 🙂

    Morgan

  • Accepting What You Deserve: YOU Deserve it ALL!!

    Dear One,

    Deservingness. You’ve been told a lie and you’ve told a lie.

    The lie that you don’t deserve it.

    It doesn’t matter what “it” is.

    But you find yourself always making excuses for why you have to do X, Y, and Z BEFORE you can deserve it.

    A better life. Improved health. More happiness. A better relationship. Better  work. Better clients. More money.

    We find all the excuses in the world for not allowing these into our lives…

    Because, we say, “I don’t deserve that!!”

    Or worse, guilt and shame. “I feel guilty because if I get that, I’m taking from someone else.”

    It’s a lie. Who knows where it started. That does not matter here. What matters here is only one simple thing. 

    Did you believe it? Do you believe it?

    Because at its core, most believe it to be true. At some level, good things only come from really hard work. They only come from suffering. They only come from lots of guilt.

    Yet that’s not EVER how good things come. No good thing has ever come via the pathway of shame or guilt. Not a single one. Those are negative attractors that only bring more of the same to themselves.

    You cannot believe that these things are the pathway to “success” in what’s important to you and ever achieve success in that thing.

    The avenue is different. The avenue is from something more fundamental, more basic.

    The avenue comes from eliminating the lie and getting to the truth!

    You didn’t come into the magnificent body to hold success and well being away from yourself – at least not for long.

    Yes, you want challenge. You want growth. But because we internalize this lie of non-deservingness, we go way beyond the healthy aspects of challenge and growth, into a perpetuation of states that hold us back. They keep us from embracing the growth that we could have had so simply – if we had only felt we deserved simplicity and ease.

    If you are overwhelmed, it is for one reason alone. It is because you do not believe at your CORE that you deserve your success to come to you easily and without struggle.

    Perpetual struggle is not a “natural” state for any being except modern humans. All other creatures may have brief struggles, but they quickly move on. They understand that struggle is not from love, not from flow.

    We do not. We have accepted the illusion that in struggle is glory – and so struggle we do. Always. We turn it from something that may happen once or twice into a state of being.

    That is a state of being which says: I do not deserve joy, I do not deserve flow, I do not deserve ease. It says: if I overcome one hurdle, I have to immediately find another one to embrace, or else I will not have value.

    Yet you DO have value. Intrinsically. Who you are is valuable. But if you have forgotten that, then you start associating your value with what you do, and with how people react to you.

    Do you see how fickle that is? Those people you are depending upon for your sense of worth, deservingness, and value may or may not give it to you. And so you stake your fate on external factors that you will NEVER control.

    Human babies do not do this. They feel their value. They feel worthy of the attention they receive. Of the love they receive. Then, as they grow up, they start learning that worth comes from pleasing others, and from “hard work” or accomplishment!

    Yet there is never enough hard work or accomplishment or pleasing of others to fill the void! Those are incredibly weak factors. They are transitory. The void never gets filled.

    You are deserving. That deserving does not come from outside, it comes from the inside. Inside of you is a loving, deserving being. But in your attention to these outside factors, you forgot to look inside for that which you seek. You’ve buried it, much like a treasure lost at the bottom of the ocean – and now it’s so far down beneath the water, that you can’t even see where it is.

    IT IS THERE! It may take some effort to find. But if you TRUST, and BELIEVE that it is there, and persist in your search, find it you will. You will find the greatest treasure that any human being could have: a sense of worthiness, well beingness, and deservingness. 

    Once you find those things, and truly FEEL them, LIVE them, you can have any external thing you want. Yet those external things will not matter so much to you, because they will pale in comparison to the treasure you have found INSIDE of you.

    Seek your treasure. Seek your own inner worth and value. Learn to feel deserving again. It is the most important adventure and challenge you could ever embark upon. So go in haste, my worthy, wonderful human being! Now is the time.

    -Morgan