In ‘real life’ (i.e. my paying job) I sometimes help my clients with marketing and branding of their products. That means I find ways to promise customers deep emotional satisfaction as a result of buying my client’s products. It’s a powerful sales strategy.
I would never lie to promote a product. But let’s just say I know how to position the truth in the best possible light.
I like what I do for a living, by the way. And I have no problem with implying that a certain brand of dogfood will bring you closer to nature as you form ever deeper bonds of love with your pet.
Who knows. It might.
It’s very good dogfood, actually.
But I find I really don’t want to apply these sales skills to my own spiritual “products.” I’m completely turned off when I see others do it. I understand why they do it. These techniques work. And no judgment on those guys for promoting their books and workshops as best they can.
But it leaves me in a sort of quandary. Especially with workshops. To sponsor a workshop is a leap of faith for an event organizer. There are upfront costs involved. They put money on the line to bring a workshop presenter to town. And they could lose their shirts if not enough people sign up.
As a workshop presenter, I feel a sense of obligation – I want them to make their money back. And that means I need to do my part in helping persuade folks to plunk down hard-earned cash to come spend a day with me. What better way than by promising a deep emotional payoff when they buy my quality product?
In this workshop, you’ll…
• GET – permanent inner peace
• LEARN – the secrets of the universe
• BECOME – lighter than air
• BLAH – blah blah blah blah
The truth is this:
I – or any workshop presenter – can lay out all the TOOLS for attaining peace of mind or a happy relationship or a closer connection with God. Or whatever the goal happens to be. The tools themselves are magnificent. But we can’t actually make anybody pick up the screwdriver and USE it, you know what I’m saying?
What a person gets out of a book or workshop is something I have no control over. It depends entirely on who they are and where they’re at, at the time.
So it feels inauthentic to me to make promises I know I can’t keep. And yet if I don’t “sell” my workshops by assuring the buyer of the miraculous emotional benefits they’ll get…will they still want to come?
My first workshop in Louisiana is coming up in May. I wrote a kind of weird, not-very-compelling flyer for them to use to advertise it. And now I’ve just agreed to co-present a 5-day retreat workshop in Hawaii with Gary Renard in June.
Eek.
Other than gorgeous scenery and a tan, I wonder what I can comfortably “sell” about that one?
I guess the only answer is to hand it all over to Spirit and trust that a new paradigm is being born: One in which honesty trumps emotional manipulation, and the “customer” is trusted to make decisions for themselves.
Much love to you, as we inch our way into honest interaction together.
xoxo
Carrie
The road less traveled
I’ve been planning the cover for the next book, The Enlightenment Project. After viewing dozens of shots of empty roads in lonesome landscapes, I chose an image of the Southwest. An empty highway heading toward some red rock formations.
I could’ve picked any background shot but this is the one that spoke to me, the one that seemed to best hint of the “road” to enlightenment.
Today I got an email from Fran (of InnerVision 12 fame), she was poking around on my website to see what was new, and commented that she loves the computerized image of Monument Valley.
At first I had no idea what she was referring to. And then I just started to laugh.
A few years ago, she and I took off together and did a 5-day InnerVision journey throughout the 4 corners of the Southwest. Lots of mind-boggling spiritual experiences in lots of locations like Spider Rock, Mexican Hat and Valley of the Gods.
But the one place I HATED was Monument Valley. I expected to love it, of course. Who doesn’t love Monument Valley? But it creeped me out, and I thought it was hideously ugly.
To me, it looked strip-mined. A ruined wasteland.
In Fran’s words, “Monument Valley is a powerful energetic reminder of truth. It represents ‘in your face, here I am, no apologies’ presence… It holds a message of ‘stand raw and naked, hidden by nothing.’ Just as the monuments themselves do.”
Well no wonder I hated it.
Fran commented at the time that my extreme negative reaction to the energy of Monument Valley clearly represented something in myself that I’d have to face sooner or later.
I said yeah, whatever, and we headed for the next powerful site. I never looked back.
Pretty funny, then, that I singled out this photo to describe my own journey.
Even funnier: Fran tells me there is no such bright, shiny highway. Somebody photoshopped it in.
And both of these things seem very appropriate. The discomfort I originally felt in Monument Valley was due to very deep fears I hadn’t yet faced in my own life. This book is all about uncovering and facing those fears.
And the fact that the road I picture doesn’t actually exist …
Well, that’s perfect. What could be a more accurate way to talk about enlightenment?
On books and their sequels
Yesterday my dear friend Rob told me about a conversation he had recently with his eight-year-old son.
Rob was rereading part of my book, so his son asked what the book was about. Rob described it as best he could.
The boy said, “Oh. Is she gonna write another one?”
Rob answered, “I think so. Why?”
“Because I can’t wait to find out what happens next!”
• • •
You and me both, Kiddo.
Actually, I’m hard at work on a second book right now (due out in 2011) but it’s not really a sequel to the first one. Not in the way he means it, anyway.
But it is the reason I’ve gone so long without writing any blog posts. This next book has been tumbling out of me almost faster than I can write it all down – I really wasn’t able to spare the precious writing time (or mental focus) to work on anything else.
But now that I’ve nearly completed the first draft, the rushing river of information has slowed enough so I can catch my breath and multitask on things like checking in with you here on the blog.
Because I really have missed our conversations, you know.
Anyway, I just wanted to take this brief moment to reconnect and to wish you and yours a very happy holiday season.
Catch you in 2011!
Carrie
Reality checks
I woke up this morning thinking about a short story I loved when I read it back in high school:
This British WWII pilot gets shot down over Germany while on an important mission. He remembers nothing after his plane goes down, but wakes to find himself in a sunny hospital room in England, not far from where he grew up. The smiling hospital attendant informs him he’s been sent home to recover from his wounds.
The base commander will be in to debrief him as soon as he feels stronger, he’s told, but first he should just concentrate on getting well. In the meantime, they serve him just the right English food. The pretty nurses speak to him with just the right regional accent. And when he looks out the window, he sees countryside that looks just right. Just the way his corner of England is supposed to look.
But then he goes into the bathroom and turns on the water. And this water is very soft. But the water of his hometown area is hard as rocks, and everyone who lives there would know that.
So he realizes this ‘reality’ that’s been carefully constructed for him is just a trick. Despite what his senses are showing him, none of it’s real. The story ends in the debriefing session, as he answers every question with only his name, rank and serial number…
______
So in this story, the Germans are the bad guys and the English pilot the good guy. And although assigning guilt would get us nowhere, I can’t help finding some parallels to the predicament we find ourselves in when we start our search for spiritual Truth.
In Truth, of course, there are no good guys or bad guys. There’s only one of us, and we’re relying on our collective ego mind to fabricate a world for us that allows no hint of the Real world to shine through. We ask for that deception by choice, and the ego is happy to oblige us.
How does the ego mind keep out Reality? Through its crowning achievement: The body. We thoroughly believe our one eternal Self is split up into lots and lots of individual people, each of whom has a separate mind housed in a separate body.
We’re completely wrong about that, by the way.
But it’s not hard to see why we’re so thoroughly convinced of it. As Gary Renard says in The End of Reincarnation, “The body allows into its awareness only that which conforms to the reality of the ego’s cherished illusions. So now, everything we experience testifies to us of the reality of this illusion. That’s asking the illusion to explain the illusion.
So now, the illusion [of the mind] is telling us what to think and the [illusion of the] body is telling us what to feel. So it’s actually an illusion telling us everything about itself, and we buy it because it’s all that we experience.”
A closed feedback loop of fake sensory input.
Fiendishly brilliant, that ego mind. Which, of course, is really just us. (There are no bad guys here.)
But, if you’re paying attention, there are plenty of hard water/soft water-esque anomalies that prove the illusion has holes in it. In fact, (if you’re paying attention) it becomes ridiculously clear that it’s all smoke and mirrors.
It just takes a certain willingness to disbelieve what your eyes are seeing and what your ears are hearing and what your senses of touch and smell and taste are telling you, that’s all.
Name, rank and serial number, baby. That’s all I’m sayin.
Doing it wrong
A reader sent me a question today on a subject I know oh so well: The fear of doing it wrong.
“It” being spiritual practice, of course.
Back when I first started meditating, I could never get over the idea that I was doing it wrong—and that thought filled me with anxiety. And since I was pretty sure heightened anxiety was not what I was supposed to be feeling during meditation…well that just proved the point. I must have been doing it wrong. Right?
Well no. Not really. It just took time and some very determined practice to get past the stage where my ego mind could keep blocking out all peace by shouting its messages of failure.
The aforementioned reader talks about trying a form of meditation and visualization mentioned by Gary Renard in The Disappearance of the Universe. It involves picturing a circle of light, and then allowing that light to expand freely. It’s a beautiful meditation that’s all about Oneness with Heaven.
Except she don’t see no light. And she’s therefore sure she’s doing it wrong.
Not.
See, this is the main thing to keep in mind: Every human being is 100% equipped to join with Heaven in perfect peace and Love, exactly as we are right now. No ‘extra’ abilities are needed. And it doesn’t even matter whether we want to be equipped for it or not. Perfect divine Love is what we are, and we really have no say in it.
Oh sure, it’s fun to be ‘spiritually talented.’ To see visions and hear voices and dance in waves of celestial woo-woo. But it isn’t necessary. And it’s no reliable yardstick of spiritual advancement, either. It’s just a talent, like juggling or whistling is a talent. And just like juggling or whistling, the ungifted can practice assiduously until they’re pretty skilled at it too, just like the ones who came by those gifts naturally.
So, Dearest Reader, this is my message to you:
So you don’t see lights when they tell you you’re supposed to. No biggie. Concentrate instead on the important part: Do your best to feel the Love and the gentle expansion of freedom that is the true point of that meditation. If you can get focused enough to ignore your ego mind’s critique of your meditation skills, I’m willing to bet you’ll begin to feel that endless Love.
And if you don’t? Ask for Help, and then keep trying it until you do. You’ll get there, guaranteed.
Because no spiritual master who ever walked the Earth has anything on you. You’re the complete package, the real deal. You just don’t remember it yet.
(endless) Love,
Carrie
Learning to live without commercial interruptions
This past month or so has been an extraordinary time for me. My book is released and is becoming a bona fide hit on Amazon; my speaking career is in the process of revealing itself to me. (As in: what the hell might I say to a roomful of listeners? And in what sorts of venues might I say it?)
I’ve also informally partnered up with an amazing producer type guy and we’re collaborating on film and book projects; and in general I’m bowled over by the outpouring of love and support from all sides as I step forward and try my hand at this crazy public messengering thing.
So naturally, it was time for my ego mind to weigh in on this beautiful turn of events. Because that old ego’s been with me a long, long time. It knows me better than anyone else. And it knows with absolute certainty that all this success is just some cosmic mistake – I don’t deserve it and soon we’re going to have to engineer some kind of drastic monkey wrench in the works, something that slows my progress to a crawl.
Because a little love and success is fine, but enough is enough. It’s time to reestablish the natural order of things.
I woke up today very painfully aware of the deep down rage-filled workings of my ego mind. Which was ok with me, because lately I’ve been asking to see (and heal) the entirety of that unconscious mountain of mud. So while I was excavating down in angry, fearful Mudland, I took a good look at my firmly held belief that I can’t tolerate sustained success – and then chose to release that firm belief.
I handed over that very mistaken idea to Spirit. And then got out of the shower and got dressed.
A minute later the phone rang. It was Fran, calling from Sedona. She said she’d been trying to email (bad internet connection) but Spirit said, “Call her.”
She said she wanted to tell me how richly deserved all my success and momentum is. That she’s so proud of me, and feels like I’ve waited my entire life with the ‘pause’ button on, but now for the first time am stepping forward to tell my story with the voice of my true authentic self. (It feels that way to me, too.) And that Heaven can’t help but shower me with its joyous outpouring of ongoing love and support as a result.
Well that took my breath away. Spirit often speaks to me through Fran, but somehow the fast turnaround time really caught me off guard this time. I told her what I’d been wrestling with and she laughed and said:
“Well, those kinds of things will continue to come up from time to time. Think of them as commercial interruptions from the ego. So when it happens, just say you’re not interested in buying the product!”
Well I’ve been laughing with gentle joy ever since.
Sure, there’ll be ups and downs along the journey. How could life in this dreamworld be otherwise? But now I realize I don’t have to watch the commercials anymore.
Kind of like getting a spiritual DVR. Goodbye to unquestioned ego beliefs, and hello to the 30-second skip!
The Philadelphia experiment – part 3 (The explosive conclusion)
So. My vow to ‘get on with it already’, (that whole Earthly role and purpose thing) newly made, I left Philadelphia and headed for home.
And within 36 hours was contacted by the first of those Guys on Twitter (see ‘The Grudge’ for more about Guys on Twitter). Perhaps ‘contacted’ is not really the word for it. He reached out through the Twitterverse, grabbed my full attention and became an unregulated, unfiltered spiritual conduit, pouring massive quantities of direct Heavenly communication my way.
It was beautiful beyond description.
Naturally he had no idea he was doing it; the supplier of that kind of spiritual linkup is usually the last to know. The whole thing went on for over 2 weeks; it was way too much of a good thing, unfortunately – something like being hit continuously with a Heavenly firehose.
I spent hours each day in anguished prayer, just to keep from drowning in it.
If I sound like I’m complaining…well I guess I sort of am. Although it was glorious in concept and sometimes wonderful in actual fact, the overall event was really, really painful.
(The Divine communication itself was perfect, pure, gentle and completely loving. How could it have been anything else? But I wasn’t able to absorb such overwhelming nonstop light, so I experienced the gap between my own human frailty and that limitless Heavenly perfection as intense emotional pain. I know. Bummer.)
After at least 10 days of letting me flail around in complete WTF confusion (and more than a little humiliation over this peculiar, one-sided ecstatic experience that I was/was not sharing with a total stranger), Twitter Guy finally admitted that this sort of thing happens with him all the time.
He is, in his own words, a ‘catalyst for other peoples’ explosive awakenings.’
The operative word here being ‘explosive.’
What was this explosive awakening like, you ask? Like somebody dropped a brick building on me.
And everything that was fragile got smashed.
After it was finally over I spent another month or so sorting through the rubble. Then one day I suddenly realized:
Hey, I’m not scared anymore. I don’t mind if people find out about me. And I don’t care about hiding in shadows, either.
I think I might even be ready for that Earthly role and purpose thing.
So I changed my Twitter username from @carrietriffet to @unlikelymesngr the same day, as a first step out of that spiritual closet.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
(The moral of the story, of course, my darlings, is this: Be careful what you ask for. You’ll very likely get it.)
The Philadelphia experiment – part 2 (This time it's personal)
So Fran’s workshop was a complete success. Hooray.
But I knew damn well that when I told her: ‘You need to be authentic and tell these people who you really are and what you really do,’ I was actually talking to myself.
I know I’m incredibly fortunate to have the advantage of direct communication with Spirit; I’ve been told many times in no uncertain terms (both by Spirit and by Fran) exactly what my Earthly role and purpose are supposed to be.
I just didn’t want to do any of it. At least not yet. Maybe later – you know, after I’m more enlightened or something.
But on my last night in Philadelphia (aided strongly by Fran’s ‘spiritual conduit’ effect on me whenever she’s nearby) I knew it was time to finally accept that Earthly role and purpose, and just get on with it already. Time to make the quantum leap from terrified shadow-dweller to center-stage truth teller.
All it would take, really, was a shift in intention.
Maybe that, and a complete personality transplant.
But I decided to make that seemingly impossible leap of faith right then. No matter what it took. And no matter what kind of spiritual work I’d have to do to accomplish it. Sad. Happy. Painful. Scary. It really didn’t matter. (Usually I prefer my spiritual work to be of the gentle-joyous variety. To ask for lessons in whatever form necessary was a first.)
All this prayer and intention-shifting was taking place late at night in my darkened bedroom at Fran’s house. The moment I put that rock-solid intention out into the universe, I watched as a supernatural apparition started to form itself in the dark and move toward me.
Ooh. Scary.
In the past, that’s all it would’ve taken to make me back down and go diving beneath the magic covers for protection instead, my big brave vow forgotten. Because even though I was no longer terrified of the supernatural as I used to be, I didn’t exactly want it crawling into bed with me, either.
But this time, I just calmly watched as it approached, and then said: Bring it. Whatever it takes, I’m ready.
And the entity, whatever it was, hesitated for a moment and then vanished.
…You know, either I’ve gotten incredibly wordy all of a sudden, or there’s much more to this story than I thought. Maybe both. Anyway, there’s no way I can tell all of it here.
Stay tuned next time for part 3, I guess.
The Philadelphia experiment
Do you ever get that feeling, when life is changing at a blinding pace, that what seems like a year has only, in fact, been a couple of months?
Yeah. It’s been like that.
It all started in mid-May, with a workshop Fran was putting on back in Philadelphia. Her very first one. Naturally I had to be there.
(If you read the Sedona posts, you’ve met Fran as the intrepid Southwestern rock climber. The other half of the story is her previous East Coast society existence on Philadelphia’s Main Line. If forced to sum up Fran in one sentence, I’d probably say: Half trophy babe, half mountain goat. Don’t tell her I said so.)
Anyway, this workshop was a big step for her, for a couple of reasons. First, it took place entirely inside a downtown office building, with a whole bunch of people sitting in chairs and waiting expectantly to hear something spiritually helpful. That’s quite different from what she usually does out in nature.
And, second, she was forced (well, I forced her, to be honest) to admit to a group of strangers what she really does. She’s never done that before; has always been terrified of trusting others with that potentially dangerous information.
She began the day with an overview and a lecture on quantum science and spirituality – and it was a fascinating lecture, beautifully given – but we both knew she wasn’t really connecting.
During the lunch break she kept asking for my honest assessment of how the workshop was going, so I finally told her: You need to be authentic and tell these people who you really are and what you really do.
After lunch, she resumed the lecture but right away she began to be dragged to one person’s thoughts, someone who seemed to have unspoken questions that needed to be aired.
And I was so pleased, I felt like a proud mama to see her make the decision to interrupt the lecture and tell everyone the truth of what was going on.
In that moment, it all came together. The information flowed, it caused beautiful healing experiences for several of the workshop participants, and when it was over everyone present that day knew they’d been a part of something extraordinary.
What does this story have to do with me and the past 2 months? A whole hell of a lot, as it turns out.
But it’s longer in the telling than I realized, so I guess this’ll have to be the first half of a two-parter. So…
To be continued.
(Spoiler alert: nobody dies, although there are a certain number of explosions…)
The grudge – no boys allowed
There was a time, back in the day, when I used to be very, very angry at one half the world’s population. So angry in fact, that I probably would have willed myself gay just to be rid of the bastards, had that been an actual option.
It wasn’t.
Years passed, Buddhist practice ensued, and eventually I got over it. Or so I thought, anyway. I mean, I’ve been married nearly 19 years now to a seriously great guy, so you can understand why I might’ve assumed that grudge was ancient history.
But then I had to write this crazy book filled with the most horrifyingly private personal things. Things that nobody, male or female, has ever known about me. Bad enough to have to tell it to women, but to men? Please. I don’t think so.
The internal discussion about it went something like this:
I’m never telling men that this book exists, because men aren’t spiritual.
Well, ok…maybe a few men are spiritual.
But they’re not going to want to read a book like this – it’s chick-lit, for Christ’s sake. A woman’s story, as told by a woman. Men aren’t interested in that.
Well…maybe a few men would be interested in that. But it’s none of their damn business.
Ok so it’s none of their business. But the book is loaded with all those messages from Spirit. What about those? Are they really only meant for women?
…………No.
Maybe.
No, I guess not.
Well it’s not like I’m stopping a guy from reading the book; I mean, if he happens to find it on his girlfriend’s nightstand or something…
And then in mid-April I joined Twitter. And was immediately followed by all sorts of interesting spiritual people, many of whom were men. My God, there were a lot of spiritual men out there. Well, no harm in following back, I guess…
And the Twitterverse began to work its mysterious magic right away. Within days, I started meeting wonderful, wise, caring women. That didn’t surprise me, of course, because That’s How Women Are. (And bless all of you, dear ones, for your kind friendship. I’m honored to have met you.)
But here’s the astonishing thing: I also began to be pulled, over and over again, into radiant, loving, ‘spiritual conduit’ connections of the most profound sort imaginable…with men. Mind blowing, heart-expanding, eternity-inhabiting bonds. With MEN.
Ok, I get it. Lesson learned.
Twitter’s awesome role as powerful spiritual connector is the subject for some other blog post on some other day. Right now all I can say is: God bless Twitter.
And yes, dammit, God bless men.