Tag Archives: Fear

Someone Is Smiling On Me

I knew Friday would be a big day. It was time to register with the city of Ghent. My visa to live in Belgium was approved four weeks ago, while I was in Canada. The Belgian Consulate in Montreal attached my brand new visa to the passport and mailed it back to me in Toronto. After I landed in Brussels last Saturday, the rule was that I had eight days to register with Ghent. I tried on Wednesday but the Ghent Administration Office was closed until Friday because they were moving to a new building.

Okay, those are the details. On Friday, I put all the originals of the necessary documents in my little backpack and started walking to Woodrow Wilsonplein, the square in Ghent where the office is. Momentous. Changing countries. New city. New home.

I took a number and after twenty minutes walked up to a friendly service representative. All that happened was that I was given an appointment for February 21. The cool thing was how welcoming she was. And making the appointment was good enough to fulfill my eight-day responsibility.

There was a skip in my step as I wandered away from the office. Soon I was beside the Leie River, and a row of blue metal chairs invited me to take a load off … to celebrate. So I did. My mind was as airy as the seagulls flying by. I watched two guys on the far shore having an animated conversation. The tram whizzed by on the nearby Veldstraat. I love the ring of its bell. Folks filled the street.

I was a smiley type of guy. All was well. Why not mosey over to one of my favourite pubs – Café de Loge – for a thrilling Belgian beer? Why not indeed? I raised my bod from the chair and headed off down a marvelous curving street full of buildings that are 200-300 years old. I felt LIGHT!

Wait a minute – a little too light. I reached behind for the backpack strap … and it was not to be found. I uttered a well-known expletive and whirled around. Passport, visa, originals of essential documents – O my God, please may they be there! Around one corner, now two. The third one would give me a view of those blue chairs. I had put my backpack on the ground beside the rightmost one.

The corner of the last building, and then revealed was my backpack, sitting on top of the chair. O my God again! Somebody moved it. As my legs sped up my feet, and I was only metres away, there stood a young man. I pointed to my chest. He nodded … and smiled.

“I hoped you’d come back.” Me too. “I didn’t look inside. You’re very lucky.” Agreed.

We talked for a few minutes, after I had ripped open the pack and found everything intact. He was a nice guy, a really nice guy.

Thank you, whoever is watching over me in life. (Sigh) I am blessed.

Produce the Result

It could be that what I’m about to write is a repeat of what I wrote a month ago.  Too bad.  It’s what’s alive.

I’m often a Zoom host on Evolutionary Collective calls.  Today there were 24 souls online … and me.  It’s a responsibility.  People are depending on me to get things right so they can spend a quality thirty minutes with a partner in a breakout room.

The first thing I noticed was that my cursor was sluggish.  I needed to take various actions, such as closing the “Screen Share” banner as the call began.  It already was taking effort to move the cursor.  I remember one time when the cursor wouldn’t move at all and I was left floundering.  But that session didn’t have 24 folks waiting to get involved.

The fear started coursing through me but I had a job to do.  So what if every move I make with the cursor feels like slow motion?  “Produce the result, Bruce.”  I could feel my lips tighten as I struggled through this, that and the next thing.  But so far so good.

Once the participants are in breakout rooms (which I somehow organized without incident), there’s a sign that shows up onscreen every ten minutes giving new instructions for the next segment.  I typed the message a few seconds after the breakout rooms opened and went on to other tasks.

I reopened the message window close to the ten-minute mark to find that my message had disappeared.  Not only that but this showed up: “22222222222222222222222222222 …” and it was growing by the second.  I went to the end of the 2’s and slammed down the backspace key.  Nothing!  The 2’s kept zipping madly.  I scrolled down to the moving end of the 2’s and tried again.  Yes!  They started disappearing but there was a long way to go.  When they’d all disappeared, I started typing the standard message.  I tried inputting “The person just speaking …”  but it came out as “Th%% p..9erson *ust s*pe3akin …”  Owwie.  I erased all that and typed very slowly.  The correct message appeared from my fingertips.  I clicked “Broadcast” and off it went to the breakouts, about two minutes late.  But I did it!

At the twenty-minute mark, I was ready with a new message that I had entered so delicately.  And off it went into the rooms.  “Ahh … this is working.”

Near the end of the meeting, my job was to paste a web address into the Chat window, so that everyone would have access to it.  Before the meeting I had copied it, all set for pasting.  But now, when I clicked “Paste”, there was nothing there!  I tried to remember the sequence of characters, and started typing.  What was supposed to be “https”  turned into “httpps” … so no one could click the link and get to where I wanted them to go.  But my heart was in the right place.

Actually my heart was in the right place the whole time.  And it may very well be that no one on the call noticed anything was amiss.  They got to practice with their partner – easy peasy.  It was anything but from my end but what counts is their end.  Wayda go, Bruce.

P.S.  For those who read my post yesterday, still no birdies.  But tomorrow is another day.

Results

I’m in a yearlong teacher training program with the Evolutionary Collective.  On August 3, I teach the first of four weekly sessions comprising the Mutual Awakening Practice Course.

I’ve approached 102 people, inviting them to take the course.  As of now, two folks have registered.  Most of my contact has been by e-mail – three of them spaced out over four months or so.  I suggested that people check out the EC Facebook page.  I told them about a free e-course which discusses some of the principles of mutual awakening.  I posted a video of Patricia Albere, the founder of the Evolutionary Collective, telling guests about the course.  And finally I sent a fancy e-mail, complete with cool graphics (and even a video of me!), asking recipients to consider joining me on August 3.  I was on the phone with some, and face-to-face with a few.

I wonder what it means that only two souls have said yes.  By the way, thank you, dear souls!

For months, this quote by Thomas Merton, an American theologian, has roamed around in my head.  It’s time for it to be shared:

Do not depend on the hope of results.  You may have to face the fact that your work will apparently be worthless and achieve no result at all, if not perhaps bring about its opposite.  As you get used to this, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness and the truth of the work itself.

Having two folks sign up for my course is certainly not worthless, but yes, I had hoped for more.  And … I think Thomas is right.  The work of the Evolutionary Collective in having participants experience the world away from separation, a world we call shared unity, is immense.  It has the potential to impact far and wide in the world.  Whatever the number of registrations, I need to stay true to this work.

A year ago, I asked myself what do you do if you’ve discovered something with vast power to liberate.  My answer was to tell family, friends and neighbours about a possibility that they most likely don’t know is there.  Not to shove it down their throat.  That’s neither humane nor likely to produce interest.  Just let them know it exists.  They’ll choose to respond or not.  Which brings to mind another quote, this one from Marianne Williamson:

Your playing small does not serve the world
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking
so that other people won’t feel insecure around you

I have no interest in being enlightened
I have every interest in serving
I choose to be large

Not in Control

I’m often a Zoom host on calls of 10 to 40 people.  I started learning how to do this in October, 2019 and it’s been a rocky road since.  I’ve made lots of mistakes, ones that diminished the experience of many folks.  And I’ve forgiven myself for that.  It’s always my intention to be excellent but sometimes my brain has trouble keeping up with my heart.

Twenty-one months later, I’m a good Zoom host – not brilliant like a few Zoomies I know, but I take care of the participants well.  Then there was today.  I was a host three times … and adventures abounded.  For instance:

1.  There’s a chat feature in Zoom.  My job in the early morning was to post a message that the organization wanted to be passed on.  I copied and pasted and … Voilà (!) the window started filling with fast-moving “j”s!  Within two seconds, the space was full.  I scrolled down, trying to get to the end of the letters – still full – so I scrolled some more.  Finally a blank space at the end of the zooming “j”s.  I slammed my finger down on the space bar and the flood stopped.  I held the backspace key down and watched in horrified fascination as page after page of “j”s were sucked back into cyberspace.  “What’s going on?!”

2.  My job includes dividing participants into pairs for the breakout rooms.  There’s a “Create Rooms” window that appears.  Piece of cake occasionally, lots of focus required usually.  I clicked a little up arrow to increase the number of rooms to accommodate the 20 people who were on one call today.  Suddenly 100 breakout rooms appeared and I couldn’t think fast enough to get that number down to 10.  So there were 20 folks, each alone in a room, surrounded by empty rooms.  I gathered my wits (slowly) and manually paired up the participants.  The body was shaking.

3.  On another call, I set the length of the breakout sessions to the standard 30 minutes.  I thought I was finished with that part when I glanced down and saw that the time had magically morphed into 300 minutes.  I fixed that.  Then I got busy with other tasks.  Just before I was to open the rooms, a little birdie told me to check the settings again.  The big uncover?  The sessions were set to close in 3 minutes.  (Sigh)

Somehow (thank you, whoever you are) I got through all this.  The participants were well served, and blissfully unaware of my trials.

I ended the afternoon chatting online with a Zoom support person.  After much exploration together, he thought my program was corrupted.  “Uninstall and reinstall”.  So I did.

And tomorrow is another day.

Teaching Is A Dream

Well, there’s two things:

1. I’m teaching the Mutual Awakening Practice Course for the first time in August

2. I seemed to spend the whole night dreaming about it

I’m thrilled to be teaching how two people together can access a consciousness that is so expansive, so loving.  On the other hand, there was last night.  The course will be on Zoom, so naturally there I was, staring at a bunch of rectangles on the screen.  Each one was filled with people – old, young, happy, sad – and I didn’t recognize anyone.  Until I got to the one in the bottom left corner.  Seven people I knew (the folks who will be taking the course?) were sitting on bleachers in a high school gym, laughing.  They were also jumping around and throwing food at each other.  How will they ever listen to what I have to say if they’re moving and grooving, and their faces are full of banana cream pie?

I glanced at a Big Ben floor clock.  It was 7:29 … one minute before the class was to start.  You’re on, Bruce.  Have them see that you’re trustworthy and credible.  And then molasses took over.  I tried to open my mouth but words just inched out, and disappeared as soon as they hit the air.  7:35.  Oh, no!  I’m late.  It’s important to start on time.  I couldn’t find my rectangle … my people.  The other groups were migrating from tile to tile, visiting each other, I guess.  But where had the course participants disappeared to?  Where are you?  7:42.  I poised my finger over “Enter” to start the meeting but the darned digit wouldn’t descend to the key.  

I glanced at the bottom right corner and there were my folks, but they all had their backs to me.  Turn around!  We’re going to start.  No response.  It’s not that I’d lost the class.  I’d never had them in the first place.

Talk some more, Bruce.  So I did.  Nobody cared.  I suddenly realized that my ear buds weren’t plugged in.  That’s why they can’t hear me!  The truth was that I couldn’t even find the ear buds.  I leapt from the couch and into my bedroom, slithering under the bed and turning my neck this way and that to find the double cord.  The only thing to greet my nose were dust bunnies.

Now the bathroom, now the basement …  Where are the ________ ear buds?!  Far from the laptop, I just knew that my students were heading home.  (Sigh)

***

I sure hope August is an improvement

Dream a Rotten Dream

5:41 am … this morning.  I was thrust out of a sickly sleep back to the world of solid things.  Not sickly like physical.  Sickly like emotional pain.  I’m sure you’ve been there.

I was in a university program.  It felt like accounting.  There was a prof at the bottom of a lecture hall, talking about incomprehensible concepts of mathematics.  I looked around and all of my pen-wielding classmates were nodding in approval at the wonders of calculus.  Then it was a seminar room, with everyone walking around with rolled up blueprints.  Person after person unfurled their creations, to the delight of themselves and all assembled – except me.  Someone asked me a question about balance sheets and I stuttered and drooled.  Disapproving chins dropped in a 360° dance.  I blobbed to the floor.

In the cafeteria, I sat alone, shunned by the mathematically inclined.  No cell phone, no internet, no use on the planet.  Eventually some kind soul offered me a ride home in their van.  Seven folks watched me walk up the steps of home.  No one said “Goodnight”.

(Bam!)  5:41.  My mouth was sour, perfectly aligned with my stomach.  The details of university accounting poured out easily and I knew they’d remain throughout the day.  They did.

Where did this yucky world come from?  Why did it visit me, a spiritually sensitive human being?  Don’t you graduate from nightmares eventually?

Apparently not.

Being Different

I once asked kids at school why Nazis hated Jewish people. The most common answer I received was that “their religion was different”. In the US, for many decades some Americans have rejected millions of their fellow citizens because those folks had black skin.

I had the children visualize some leader entering the classroom, looking at each student, and culling out those whose eyes were blue. The unfortunate ones would then be ostracized, or worse. I believe that many of the kids got the message.

For a moment, imagine you’re a bird. Maybe you’re big, maybe you’re small. A fast flier or a slow poke. Bright plumage or muted. The differences are obvious but no big deal. You guys get along.

But here comes someone new:

What is that? Nobody should have a neck that long, and that coral colour is ridiculous!

Wait a minute now. Look at that weird twist in the neck. It should be a straight line. How does the thing even eat? And those legs! They’re not only grossly skinny, they bend … backwards! It’s an abomination. Drop poop on them all.

What?! That’s impossible – standing on one leg. And the idiot on the right looks like he’s sleeping. Birds are not meant to do these things. It’s unnatural. Only Big Bird has such powers. Let’s convince humans to shoot them all.

***

You’re different
Really different
You’re just a thing
And I hate you

Out Of An Abundance Of Caution

It’s an odd turn of the syllables. When I first heard the phrase, it was about the coronavirus. The words gave me pause. In the US, President Trump tested positive and was heading to the hospital for a few days. Cautious. I doubted that the danger to him was negligible. If you’re hospitalized, something major is probably going on.

Someone described the phrase as “precautions taken against a very remote contingency”. I kept returning to the strangeness of the words, and asked myself if I really wanted to armour myself against remote possibilities.

Oodles of caution seem to be spreading:

1. Seventy students and staff members at a high school go into quarantine after two teens contracted Covid

2. A professional football player developed some tightness and muscle soreness in his right calf. The coaches chose to remove him from the game

3. Some college students won’t be travelling home for Christmas due to Covid restrictions

4. Hackers injected malware into some government software. The programs have been removed

5. Schools switch to remote learning after coronavirus cases in the community rise, although the infection rate in local schools is low

6. Protests in the US about the death of George Floyd lead to the temporary boarding up of some stores in Vancouver, Canada

7. Most Republican politicians in the US Congress won’t say that Joe Biden is the President-Elect

8. Some people who speak out on TV about US politics (and some election officials who keep to the rule of law) are provided with security at home, at work, and while they commute

9. Today, as the Electoral College certified the results of the US election, some states changed the locations of the meetings and didn’t reveal those locations

***

I’m not disputing the potential value of these precautions but they do point to a hesitancy in modern life. Many people are unwilling to take chances, to burst nakedly into life full speed ahead, to be publicly themselves. Whatever happened to throwing caution to the wind?

A Story

Jack Kornfield is a Buddhist teacher, and the founder of Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Marin County, California.  He shared this story with us, written by a woman.

It was Sunday.  Christmas, our family spent the holidays in the Bay Area, but in order to be back to work on Monday we had to drive the four hundred miles back to LA on Christmas Day.  Normally an eight-hour drive but with kids it can be a fourteen hour endurance test.  When we could stand it no longer, we stopped for lunch in King City – a little metropolis of six gas stations and three diners.  Road weary, saddle sore, I sat Eric, our one-and-a-half-year-old, in a high chair and looked around and thought “What am I doing in this place on Christmas Day?”  It was nearly empty.  We were the only family.

My reverie was interrupted when I heard Eric squeal with delight and glee.  “Hi there!”  Two words he thought were one word.  “Hi there!  Hi there!”  He pounded his fat baby hands (Whack!  Whack!) on the metal high chair tray.  His face was alive with excitement, eyes wide, gums bared in a toothless grin.  He wriggled and chirped, and then I saw the source of his merriment, and my eyes couldn’t take it in all at once.  A tattered rag of a coat, obviously bought by someone else long ago; dirty, greasy, worn baggy pants; the zipper at half-mast over a spindly body; toes that poked out of the old shoes; a face like none other – gums as bare as Eric’s, whiskers too short to be called a beard, and a nose (varicose) that looked like the map of New York.

I was too far away to smell him but I knew he smelled.  And his hands were waving in the air, flapping about on loose wrists.  “Hi there, baby!  Hi there, big boy!  I see you, Buster.”  My husband and I exchanged a look that was a cross between “What are we doin’?” and “Poor devil.”  Eric continued to laugh and answer “Hi there!  Hi there!”  Every call was echoed.

I noticed waitresses’ eyebrows shoot to their foreheads and several people were going “Hmm … umm” out loud.  This old geezer was creating a nuisance with my beautiful baby.  I shoved a cracker at Eric and he pulverized it on the tray.  I began to get upset.

Our meal came.  The cacophony continued.  Now the old bum was shouting from across the room “Do you know Pat-a-cake?  Atta, boy!  Do you know Peek-a-boo, Peek-a-boo?  Hey look, he knows Peek-a-boo!”  Really loud.  Nobody thought it was cute.  The guy was drunk, and a disturbance, and I was embarrassed.  My husband was humiliated.  Even our six-year-old said “Why is that old man shouting and talking so loud?”

We ate in silence, all except Eric, who was running through his repertoire for the admiring applause of a skid row bum.  Finally I had enough.  I turned the high chair.  Eric screamed and clamoured around to face his buddy.  Now I was mad.  Dennis went to pay the cheque, imploring me to get Eric and meet me out in the parking lot. 

I trundled Eric out of the high chair and looked toward the exit.  The old man sat poised and waiting, his chair directly between me and the door.  “Lord, let me out of here” I thought, “before he speaks to us.”  It soon became obvious that the Lord and Eric had other plans.  As I drew closer to the man, I turned my back, walking to sidestep him.  And as I did so, Eric, all the while with his eyes riveted to his new best friend, leaned far over my arm, reaching with both arms in a baby’s pick-me-up position. 

In a split second of balancing my baby and turning to counter his weight, I came eye-to-eye with the old man.  Eric was lunging for him, arms spread wide.  The bum’s eyes both asked and implored “Would you let me hold your baby?”  There was no need or way for me to answer since Eric propelled himself from my arms into the man’s.  Suddenly a very old man and a very young baby consummated their love relationship.  Eric laid his tiny head upon the man’s ragged shoulder.  The man’s eyes closed.  I saw tears hover beneath his lashes.  Aged hands full of grime and pain and labour so gently cradled my baby’s bottom and back.  I stood awestruck.  The old man rocked and cradled Eric in his arms for a moment, and then his eyes opened.  He said, in a commanding voice as he looked directly at me, “You take care of this baby.”  Somehow I managed “I will … I will” from a throat that contained a stone.  He pried Eric from his chest – unwillingly, longingly – as though he was in pain.  “God bless you, ma’am.  You’ve given me my Christmas gift.”

I said nothing more than a moderate thanks.  With Eric back in my arms, I ran for the car.  Dennis wondered why I was crying and holding Eric so tightly.  And why I was saying “How could I have forgotten?  How could I have forgotten?”

70%

The poll about the US election got my attention.  It said that 70% of Republicans thought the result was “rigged”.  Joe Biden didn’t win fairly.

I was stunned.  Evidence has piled up that poll workers, supervisors and politicians responsible for elections were meticulous and demonstrated integrity.  So … reality is being ignored by a lot of people.

Who are these folks?

I feel that consciousness is evolving on the planet.  Maybe, though, it shows up as the jagged lines you see on stock market diagrams rather than a smoothly ascending curve.  Clearly some folks aren’t participating in the emergence.

Somebody asserts something.  Does the reasoning make sense?  We’re intelligent people.  We have the ability to analyze statements and sense if they ring true.  Does it matter if the person asserting is male or female, young or old, Republican or Democrat?  No, it doesn’t.  The truth speaks loudly, as do lies.

What if my leader says X?  Am I an underling, inferior in wisdom to the big guy?  Do I really need to associate myself with someone powerful, in order to boost my flagging self-esteem?  Do I need another human being to raise me up from deficiency to sufficiency?  No.

Ouch.  The mere thought of being surrounded by “yes” men and women makes me cringe.  Will the group and the guru have me forget myself as cause?

Arms holding aloft signs such as “Just Say No To Creepy Joe” and “Stolen, Rigged, Fraud” remind me of other arms, ones that long ago were held straight out at a 45° angle.  That didn’t end well.

I would like the 70% to be my friends but I wonder if that’s possible.