Very sad news in this morning’s Sentinel:

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/business/os-cfb-real-estate-0708-20130707,0,1142747.story

Maybe this was inevitable after Mark Wayne’s death last year. Mark and his wife Lorna Lambey were the mainstays of The Red Fox bar, performing lounge standards with huge gusto and enthusiasm. I spent many, many happy evenings there, singing along like some kind of idiot. Once I also saw Mark & Lorna (they seem to need that ampersand) in a special benefit performance at The Social, but it wasn’t the same. They only had the magic inside the Red Fox — a tiny little room with maybe 12 tables and a dingy and uniquely depressing bar. Like many I suppose, I originally went to mock, and stayed to cheer. It wasn’t a question of talent or taste… Mark and Lorna believed in what they were doing, and they loved doing it. You couldn’t help loving them back. RIP Mark… kisses Lorna wherever you are… and farewell to a little piece of Orlando heaven.

This morning I spent some time looking at photos of vintage Los Angeles.

Pretty intensely nostalgic, especially the 60s and 70s with their relatively empty streets and the space between the buildings. One of the reasons we left L.A. 20 years ago was because, starting sometime in the late 80s, the population doubled. The city I remember is long gone; it’s been overrun and obliterated by massive hordes of strangers. The L.A. in the pictures seemed to have some breathing room in it.

The good old days, right?

That’s one cliche; the other is: “it was a more innocent time.” Well though I was only a child, I remember the tail end of the 60s pretty clearly: the assassinations and scary violence, the crackling anger in the air. The intense green of the war in Vietnam on TV every night, juxtaposed with the dirty hippies protesting it and the old people snarling at them in turn. The shuddering way American life rent apart in a way that turned out to be permanent. Innocent is the last word to describe it.

And yet looking at those photos I see an innocence we didn’t know we had. It’s there in the pre-digital look of everything. The facial expression on a teenage boy looking at a hot rod speaks volumes about how much time and bare attention people seemed to have then, versus how frantic, self-absorbed, corporatized and impersonal life is now.

That’s the problem with nostalgia, though. The person who experienced it all, the person I was then, is also long gone. When I was ten years old, Van Nuys Boulevard was magical… it had a kiddie park next door to Ho Toys Chinese Restaurant. I mean: Chinese food! You went upstairs to eat, of all things. Paper lanterns, hot brown mustard, fortune cookies. Until around the time you turn 30, each new experience is an adventure, and you attach that sense of adventure to the people and places around you. Then you look back and it’s like a highlight reel: only the excitement remains.

I remember when I was 21 and traveling on my own for the first time, walking the streets of Berkeley sniffing the air for possibilities like a dog, dreaming of the girl I’d come hoping to see and feeling a glorious sense of freedom while I ate the only thing I could afford, a blueberry bagel. Forget the girl — that bagel is what I remember. It tasted like no bagel has ever tasted since.

I mentioned breathing room, but of course if I push my memory a bit harder, I remember what it was like breathing the Los Angeles air in the 70s… on some days, the smog was so bad that it rolled in like a bank of fog. There were days when you literally couldn’t see from one end of the high school quad to the other due to the thick brown haze. Before President Nixon, of all people, strengthened the Clean Air Act, the smog around L.A. could make your eyes burn and tear up, and you could feel it stirring in the bottom of your lungs when you took a deep breath. That’s the other problem with nostalgia: it only works when you carefully edit the facts or cook the books. Hell, you could even get nostalgic for Nixon.

And again that young man eating the bagel… would I go back and walk in his shoes again? He knew so little, about the world and about himself. Self-medicating, powerless, clueless… he was a mess. If you could have shown him the man I am now, the man he’d someday become, he’d have shit in his overalls. His little eyes would have bugged out of his head, and he’d have wanted to fast forward to get here.

No, it’s not my younger self I want to go back to, not California, not the 60s. It’s that feeling of having all the time in the world stretching ahead of me. It’s the sense of endless possibility.

Breathing room.

I’m going to start with an example from politics, but don’t worry: this post isn’t really about politics. It’s about magic.

Back in 2004, a lot of us Democrats convinced ourselves John Kerry had a shot at winning the presidential election. We were convinced, I guess, because we were so opposed to the policies Bush was pursuing (I’ll spare you a list). Election day came as a bitter surprise and made us feel pretty alienated and depressed.

Rebecca and I went to church the next Sunday, and the minister John said something that really stuck with me. He said exit polling showed that of people who voted Republican, 60% described themselves as strongly pro-Bush and 30% as anti-Kerry. Of those who voted Democratic, 70% called themselves strongly anti-Bush and only 40% as strongly pro-Kerry.

And John made the point that metaphysically speaking, if you’re really passionate about “George Bush,” that’s what you’re going to get. God (for lack of a better word — call it the Universe, energy, The Force, whatever) doesn’t know or care whether you’re Pro or Anti. What you think about, what you give passion and energy to, becomes what you experience.

So when I listened to the Right going on about Obama this and Obama that, and when they nominated a candidate they didn’t really like solely in the hope he could beat Obama, it wasn’t difficult to predict the outcome: Obama. I was the only person I know predicting a landslide for the President, and it’s not because I’m so smart… it’s because I know about the Law of Attraction.

John’s sermon was a few years before the release of The Secret, the DVD that went viral and taught many of us about this. A lot of people have a violent negative reaction to The Secret — a good friend of mine said “it reeks of snake oil” and after Oprah promoted it, there were tons of snarky, dismissive media stories. I suppose that’s partly a reaction to the over-the-top theatrics of the presentation: the scrolls and cheesy re-enactments and highly suspect quotes. Also it’s because The Secret makes the Law of Attraction sound like magical thinking… think about a bicycle and presto! a bicycle will appear!

That’s true, actually, except for the “presto” part. The fact is, you can “use” the Law of Attraction only in the same way you can “use” the Law of Gravity. Things in this world work a certain way, and you can go with that and make things easier for yourself, or go against it and have a much more difficult experience. And the way it works is this: strongly held emotion and thinking become consistent action, and consistent action creates results. Sometimes it is like, Presto!, and other times it takes a bit longer.

But what’s tricky is that we’re not always fully aware of what we’re consistently thinking and doing — other people see it more clearly than we do. Often they tell us pretty clearly what we’re doing, and we shrug it off. It takes wisdom, maturity, and sheer courage to just face up to the hard truth that we have created our own results. Your spouse walks out on you and your first reaction is to blame them for everything that went wrong. Harder to look at yourself and notice that you were selfish, uncommunicative, unhelpful with the chores, or just impossible to live with. Especially in a relationship, you get that highly accurate mirror — the other person is reacting up close to what you actually do every day, as opposed to your good intentions. It’s one of the most difficult things in life to look at your circumstances and really own them. I was about 27 the first time I really did that, and I still recall vividly what a bitter pill it was.

However, if you look at the habits of any really successful person, they all do one thing: they take 100% responsibility for everything that happens in their lives. They spend next to no time on self pity, victim stories, or excuses. Whatever happens, they own it. And that allows them to learn from it, and make course corrections. Success and great results aren’t random, or magic. They’re a direct result of this kind of thinking.

One big difficulty people have with this concept is that once they start to get it, they flip it around and use the word blame. “So you’re saying I’m to blame for my cancer, my getting fired, a tree falling on my house, or (fill in the blank).” They frame it up like this: “If something I don’t like comes into my experience, then I must have caused it by my bad thinking.” And then they either totally reject this idea, or accept it and feel hopeless and guilty.

But blaming yourself for the “bad” stuff in your life is a dead end. Blame is finger pointing. It’s a super subtle way of avoiding taking action, and it gets you nowhere. What we have to do is take responsibility, meaning “response + ability.” Something has happened that I don’t like. What am I going to do about it? There’s only this moment, right now; that’s all that exists. All of our power resides in the present moment — that’s where we get to look at what IS (not what was, or will be) and take action.

Thoughts become things. It’s as simple as that. The more consistent the thought, the more passion and energy we bring to it, the faster it manifests as our experience. Once you really begin to use this knowledge in a consistent way, it can change your life. Like magic.

“What is this salty discharge?” — Jerry Seinfeld, crying for the first time, on Seinfeld.

Something strange has been happening to me lately. I’m developing empathy.

Once in my 30s I had a calendar for Geminis that described us as “good listeners… as long as you’re interesting” and I had to laugh, because that pretty much nailed me. For most of my life other people fell into two categories: interesting, and not. Those in the “not” category barely existed for me — they were formless blobs who had to really get in my face to even come into focus.

I wasn’t some kind of psycho; I managed to get married, have friends, raise a kid, and I think I was pretty present in relationships.

But for the most part it was as if a glass wall existed between me and other people. The wall, I suppose, was my judgment and control, which in turn were driven by a deeper sense of powerlessness and fear.

I turned 50 a year and a half ago. It was a trauma. How could I be 50? I mean, I dug the benefits of getting older: more wisdom, more poise, better judgment. But in my mind I was more like a 25 year old who was getting very cool. The idea that I could no longer be considered young by any objective measure was pretty sobering.

On the heels of that came a few serious difficulties and intense life changes that I won’t go into here, coupled with deeper spiritual practice including meditation and yoga.

And lately, more and more, everyone is interesting. I find myself much less focused on advancing my agenda and point of view, and instead just watching. Really paying close attention to people, noticing the tiny flickers of expression that cross their faces, listening to the gaps and pauses between their words, and hearing what they’re really saying.

And it’s breaking my heart a little bit, because what I’m seeing so often is that powerlessness and fear in them. The harsh self judgment, the shame, the anxiety. The little child that’s still there, innocently looking for love and validation (thanks for the video, Mina), and so often not finding it. What William Blake was talking about in “London.”

It’s changing me. Like a couple of weeks ago when our dishwasher broke and I had all kinds of crazy difficulties with HH Gregg. I ended up in the store with my fistful of paperwork, righteously and justifiably pissed off, engaging in a tug of war with a pompous middle manager over their policies and procedures.

At a certain point, I stopped talking, and started watching.

The middle manager just wanted to be right. He had his little square of turf, and on that turf he was the king. He had a few things to say. And I realized that he was going to give me everything I wanted, but only after he made his little stand. So I let him. It didn’t cost me anything (except 20 minutes) and I walked out with a free $175 upgrade, and a somewhat belated apology. And I made a point of thanking him, using his name, and giving him that little bit of respect he was craving.

It works the other way, too. There are people I love, and in the past they just got the stamp of approval and that was that. I took it for granted that they knew they had my affection, and secure in that assumption, I said whatever I wanted and only noticed their pain or their needs if they specifically brought them up. Now I’m really seeing, and it’s astonishing that these beautiful, radiant people are experiencing so much confusion and self doubt.

I hesitate to put all this out here. Maybe you all have this empathy, and I’m just an arrogant asshole who’s getting older and scared about it, and finally becoming “nice.” But even if that’s true, it’s okay. A whole new world is opening up in front of me. Everyone has something to tell me… something important. I’m paying attention now. Better late than never.

This morning, we did something different in meditation class: a walking meditation. About 20 of us went across the street to the park, our teacher Jamie struck a chime on his singing bowl, and we were off.

I shut my eyes and started out. At first, I couldn’t get the self-conscious grin off my face, thinking how silly I must look to the passing cars and pedestrians. But then I stopped thinking and began to focus – partly because I had to.

With my eyes closed, each step was an adventure. Lift the leg… bring it forward… wobble slightly on the other… put the leg down. At one point, the ground wasn’t where I expected it to be and I fell forward slightly. Ah, expectations… valuable lesson there. Stop thinking. Back to mindfulness. One step at a time, with full curiosity about each subsequent step. So different when you remove your ego with its endless expectations.

There were big trees in the park, and I worried I might walk smack into one. But as I focused closely on each step, I could feel the ground changing under me. Some slight softening of the earth, coupled with an incline, signaled that I was nearing a tree. Something would tell me to stop and I’d open my eyes slightly and I’d see a tree either in front of me or next to me.

We did this for 25 minutes, but it seemed like a matter of seconds. I could have done it all day. It was the best meditation I’ve had yet — a powerful demonstration of the benefits of staying firmly in the present moment and paying rapt attention to it. We are, after all, walking through a park with our eyes closed… if only we knew it.

You stand with one leg in front, bent; the other stretched behind you. A deep bow at the waist, head down, with hands interlocked and arms stretched high behind and above you. It takes enormous strength and balance, put in the service of humility, devotion, receiving. It’s a yoga pose called humble warrior.

It’s also an attitude.

In Living in the Light, Shakti Gawain explains how we all have male and female energy within us. The “male” energy is our ego: our ability to take action in this world. The “female” energy is our intuition: our inner guidance that feels like it comes from some higher power; it certainly knows way more than our ego does, and often we don’t know how it knows what it knows. But it’s always right.

To understand this, you have to put aside your socialized views of men and women, of GI Joe and Barbie, and however you feel about that. This is about energy, not gender.

The proper synergistic relationship between our inner male and female, Shakti says, is when our inner female says “I want that” and our inner male says “Great! I’ll get it for you.”

In so many people, what you see is the ego running wild and deciding everything, with the intuition a lonely, unheard voice in the background. An inner male dominating and subjugating, or simply ignoring, an inner female. And of course, there are plenty of demonstrations of this in the physical world: men or women who are aggressive, pushy, narcissistic, domineering, etc.

Or the reverse: often you see people with a strong inner sense but limited ability to take action. The sweet, kind people who can never seem to get their career going, to get over their illnesses, to make any money, or get ahead with their lives. The beautiful losers. And while often they’re superficially attractive people, they do a lot of damage through their inability to take a stand, draw clear boundaries, fend for themselves, or manifest their actual agenda in the world. Often these spiritual people turn away from the world entirely, which is emphatically not what the world needs. Often they tell themselves they’re taking the high road by not taking the action they know they should be taking, when really it’s helplessness. Turning away from a fight isn’t a moral decision if you’re actually unable to fight. People like this are manifesting a strong inner female but a weak inner male.

You can see this playing out in relationships: one partner sets the agenda, makes the decisions, “wears the pants” so to speak. The other is the supportive homemaker, the nurturer. At worst, these relationships can become abusive and toxic; think about the Me Too movement. But even when the partners stay relatively balanced and harmonious, sooner or later the moment comes when one gets fed up and says: “why can’t you ever…?” because conflict arises over this fundamental difference. The problem is that in the long run you can’t simply outsource to job of your inner male or your inner female, whichever one you can’t actualize yourself, to a partner.

On a more public scale, you can see this manifesting in the Republican and Democratic parties. Republicans usually think they can “go it alone,” that they’re self-made, that people needing help are whiners, that might makes right. Often, their ignorance is shocking. They know how to use power, but their use of it is mindless at best and monstrous at worst. Ego is the whole show. Democrats are about inclusion, “fairness,” helping the needy, leveling the playing field (which often rightfully enrages Republicans who earned their money and don’t want it taken away and given to people who didn’t). Democrats’ values are great but they usually don’t know how to fight effectively and often their solutions are unrealistic and idealistic to the point of absurdity. And as often happens on the individual level with intuition and ego, they only get a chance to prevail when the other side (the ego) crashes and burns through its corruption and blindness. On the political level, ego and intuition hate each other’s guts, and yet they need each other. It’s the same as with relationships. They’re actually two critical parts of the same system… if only they knew how to work together.

So the answer starts on the personal level. What we want to have is a healthy and confident ego that knows how to make things happen in the world…  but 100% in service to, and in support of, a clear and fully realized intuition. This is the proper role of both energies, developed and encouraged to be equally strong inside of every individual. This should be the goal of real spiritual practice: not turning away from the world, but engaging with it mindfully. Fearless and focused action based on steady wisdom.

In other words, humble warrior.

From the Buddhist who led my meditation class this morning:

7 Factors of Enlightenment

* Mindfulness: to be aware and mindful in all activities and movements both physical and mental
* Joy or rapture
* Investigation into the universal laws of nature
* Concentration
* Relaxation or tranquility of both body and mind
* Energy
* Equanimity: to be able to face life in all its vicissitudes with calm of mind and tranquility, without disturbance

5 Hindrances to Enlightenment

In Buddhism, the five hindrances are negative mental states that impede success with meditation and lead away from enlightenment.

* Sensual desire: Craving for pleasure to the senses
* Anger or ill-will: Feelings of malice directed toward others
* Sloth, torpor or boredom: Half-hearted action with little or no concentration
* Restlessness or worry: The inability to calm the mind
* Doubt: Lack of conviction or trust