Magic Bullet… How To Make a Miracle

this blue pill will make you potent for a few hours... is this what you want?You wave your magic wand, and bada bing bada bang, a little magic dust, and you have a miracle.

Or you take a little pill, and you wake up beautiful, slim, sexy, and rich.
Or you pray that God gives you a miracle
Or you meditate
Or you buy that get-rich-quick scheme that promises overnight money with no work at all
Or you play it over and over in the theater of your mind… You feel it… you appreciate everything… still…

But all these don’t cause a miracle.

No matter how skillfully you wave the wand, or how fancy (and expensive) the little pill is, how passionately you pray… etc. etc. etc.

No. none of them work. Continue reading “Magic Bullet… How To Make a Miracle”

My life in Film Noir, Fritz Lang’s M, The Tongue in The Shoes

hand, m, film noir, fritz langI had a conversation with Zsuzsa, a friend of mine from architecture school.

I normally hide from her, because she is traditionally very negative. But last instant messaging we had she sounded upbeat, so I thought, I’d give it a try. I know how to break off a conversation when it goes south.

As fate has it, she broke her hand a few months ago, it didn’t heal well, and she has had a lot of pain. Interestingly it has changed her. Permanently or temporarily, I don’t know. My hunch is that it is temporary…

Anyway, I shared with her my experience with the nose bleed. She didn’t quite grasp it at first. She has had nose bleeds but her first thought wasn’t: this is the beginning of the end, so for her the chance of a breakthrough with that would have been small.

On the other hand, given that she is an architect, her right hand is her bread and butter, so creating a new way to look at it was a definite breakthrough for her.

I was mulling over this today as I was washing my hands in the bathroom.

“You need to trust the whisper inside your head that says that what’s happening is a good thing.” I thought, but then I cringed. Some 58 years ago I thought just that and where did it lead me?!
Continue reading “My life in Film Noir, Fritz Lang’s M, The Tongue in The Shoes”

Sharing. The misused word… just share… i.e. sell?

thegood-thebad-theugly

I know the word sharing gets thrown around in these emails quite a bit. Sometimes we become numb to the word. To get back to basics, sharing means giving something of ourselves.

It can be sharing with someone we’re not used to sharing with. It can be opening up with someone we’re not used to opening up to. It can be calling someone with whom we’re holding a grudge and wishing them well and saying something nice, some words of wisdom. It can be anything. It just has to be an unconditional stretch.

As a certified est-hole and Landmark junkie, I have heard the urging “Share, share share.”

In Landmark they mean “Bring more chumps like you so that Landmark can become a World Class Organization, here to stay.” They mean: do our selling for us. Maybe they don’t, but that is how it lands for people.

In multilevel marketing companies (network marketing, MLM) they say the same thing, but mean, definitely, selling. Continue reading “Sharing. The misused word… just share… i.e. sell?”

Get the f… out of my way!

Hitler's army style military marchRecovering Victim, get the f… out of my way.

That was on the front of my T-shirt in 1991 at the Communication Commando Course… a week long Landmark Education program.

What was that about?

Here is the story.

In the course, on the 2nd day, if I remember correctly, we were talking about your “default” albeit hidden way of communicating. We formed small groups of five, and we looked at each other and made up a little statement of what we thought the person was communicating under their usual facade. Continue reading “Get the f… out of my way!”