Pressure to Finish Right Away

I awakened this morning with the thought that the natural state of things on earth is one of incompletion. Yesterday, I worked on making changes to a website for a client and felt pressured all day to get it done. There's way more that needs to be done than can be completed in a day and still my inner child was relentless. To him, the fact that the project is not complete is a sign that I'm a failure. He does not seem to have a concept of time (if he did he would realize that he lives in the past and that his simplistic survival formulae are useless in the present). Therefore, once I start a project, he feels anxious that it's not finished.

I haven't seen this so clearly before. In other words, the pressure to get it done quickly comes from his belief that finishing sooner is better. However, I don't see it that way. There are many details to this project and I have to handle each one, one at a time. Sometimes there are delays that happen due to the time it takes for alternatives to be discovered and decisions to be made. That's what it's like to be working with people who all have lives and with whom communication takes time.

I believe that keeping the realization that any project undertaken here on earth takes time and proceeds during its entire life in various stages of incompletion. The fact that my inner child is uncomfortable with incompletion is worth noting so that I don't succumb to his pressure to get it done right away (which is usually impossible and therefore unnecessarily stressful). I actually like solving problems and finding ways to accomplish the requisite steps elegantly and efficiently. I perform better and feel best when I am not operating under time constraints or deadlines. I also believe that the results of my efforts are greatly enhanced when I can work at a comfortable pace.

I am an eclectic person and have many interests that I pursue. I usually have multiple projects that I'm working at any given time. I like to work at all of them and enjoy engaging in each of them. If one project has a deadline, I will put most of my time and energy into getting it done in time, letting the others remain dormant until I finish. I don't like that arrangement as well because I have to review the details and sometimes review techniques required for the other projects when I finally get back to them.

I want to find a good balance between efficient production and staying involved in several projects at the same time. My inner child's propensity to want to finish a project right away mitigates against staying active in all of them but he doesn't make my decisions. Knowing that he's pressuring for completion can help me choose what works best for me.

A Sunrise Promise

The sunrise this morning was spectacular. It wasn't flashy with bright colors. The sky on the eastern horizon was partially covered in high, wispy clouds, mostly transparent. The sunlight caught those high wispy strands and lit them from below with the most beautiful pastel violets, roses and yellows. Because the high clouds did not fully cover the sky, blue sky glowed brightly between the bands of pastels. What made the sky so special, however, was the incredible height of the clouds, which floated far above the mountains and hills that are the horizon here.

It feels so wonderful and special to witness profound beauty in an everyday event. The sun rises in the east every day and yet today it found a way to celebrate its coming. I was deeply moved by the subtle beauty that spread across the sky and lit the earth in a warm, pastel glow. As I watched the sky light up with color and then fade into normal day light, I felt like I was witnessing a miracle. The routine of walking my dog in the greenbelt was transformed into an exquisite aesthetic experience.

I wondered how artists would feel who witnessed the sunrise today. Would it inspire them to greater creative heights or would it make their efforts to create beauty seem paltry in comparison. For me, I was moved by the experience. I felt exuberant and wanted to stay that present and full all day. I felt alive and creative, as though I could engage in my activities today in a deeper and more fulfilling way. I guess that answers my question about how artists would feel who witnessed the sunrise, if it's at all possible to generalize. In reality, each artist would respond uniquely just like different people would respond to anything differently.

I feel like sunrise this morning was like a pep talk. I feel energized and inspired, ready to add my own creative touch to the projects in which I engage today. There's no time like the present and there's no better place than right here where I am. Come alive, Richard. The sunrise offers an opportunity for a glorious day.

Spiritual Optimism

I watched a PBS special on the New Science last evening. One of the researchers interviewed on the show made a distinction between optimism and hope. He said that hope is the ability to imagine there's a possible way through the present difficulties. Hope is realistic. It sees the challenges in the present and imagines there's a way to resolve them. He contrasted hope with optimism which he thinks is not realistic because it imagines that everything will get better in spite of the current difficulties.

I see the scientist beneath his philosophy. I notice that I can be optimistic because I have a spiritual context for my life. Whatever happens and however each situation turns out, I feel confident that it supports my soul's agenda for my life. The situations may not work out the way I wanted but I trust that my soul wanted to experience something else. In the metaphysical realm, whether I understand it or not, spirit rules and my life evolves as an expression of my soul's wishes. That's why I can feel optimistic about my life. I want what I want yet am open to having the outcome be an expression of my soul's creativity.

I hadn't thought about the difference that my spiritual context makes. I can be present in the moment when I can trust that I am supported in having what I need and experiencing what I, in the deepest sense of being, want to experience in life. That means that whatever happens is appropriate and personal to me. Health, injury, illness and success are experiences that I might have, but to me it's not a random selection process. I do what I can to live a healthy life and choose an interesting, engaging way to earn a living. I like to be at ease in all I do and eliminate sources of stress. I like to eat food that nourishes me and supports my health. However, none of these choices guarantees that I will be healthy. My soul has other agendas and may want to experience aspects of life that I would rather avoid.

My opportunity is to live in the present with the experiences available to me. Being present with pain, being present with success, being present with aging. I feel optimistic because I have grown to trust that my soul is choosing well.

Being at Ease

This morning, as I walked with my dog in the greenbelt behind my house, I noticed small, green shoots breaking through the ground. I'm amazed. This winter was the driest winter in recorded history in Santa Fe with less than .3 inches of moisture over the past three months, but the grasses still push their way above ground. I didn't know whether anything would grow in the parched land this spring.

Seeing the new grass and other plants coming alive startled me. I thought how optimistic they are, taking what's given to them and moving forward with their lives. It's not that they know what the future will bring. They are doing what they can with what they have. If they don't get enough water to thrive, they will struggle and probably grow less than they would if water were abundant.

Yesterday, I spoke of anticipating ease to eliminate the stressful expectation of failure and doom that my inner child carries. Watching the grasses put their best leaves in the light in the current drought conditions in Santa Fe helped me realize another way to correct my inner child's fears. Rather than imagining something being easy in the future, I would like to feel optimistic in the present. I want to be at ease, feel confident, and optimistic right now. I know that my inner child can't live in the present because he lives in the past. His domain is the past and he anticipates the future with fear.

Optimism is a quality that I'd like to cultivate in myself. I can plant seeds of optimism in the present, letting it grow as much as it can with what I have, just like the grasses grow as well as they can with what's given them. In any case, I feel optimistic.

Anticipating Ease

Reflecting on my inner child's anxiety about the projects I'm doing, I notice that he assumes that whatever I do will be difficult, beset with challenges and disastrous. I wonder what I feel if I were to reverse his expectations and anticipate that everything I do and any projects I undertake will go well. Rather than fear the worst, I'd like to anticipate ease. I can imagine that I will create graphic designs that are functional and beautiful. I have enough experience working with projects to know that I always come up with something that works.

My inner child wants me to be brilliant. He wants my designs to be exceptional so that my clients will love them. In other words, he's still trying to impress others so that they'll think well of me and maybe even like me. He doesn't understand that few people become friends because of their talents or over their brilliant ideas. But that's beside the point; I do not need to impress people to get them to like me because I like the way I am and am happy living my life as I do. I do not need to pressure myself to perform for someone else for any reason. I do projects with other people because I want to do the project for some reason or other, not because I need them to like me.

For example, I'm creating a web design for a group and my inner child is pressuring me to come up with a fabulous design that is original and certain to please them. I recognize the pressure he's generating inside me to force me to work hard at this, as if that would guarantee perfection. On the other hand, I have a vague picture in my mind of what the site's appearance might be. What if I imagine sticking the photos and the descriptions in the layout I've already created and discover that I like the way it looks, colors and all. I usually don't think this way, so it's no surprise that my work often feels obsessive and stressful. But this time, I can imagine that my site preparation was appropriate and my design will flow out of the work I've already done. I can actually see how this could be easy.

The key point in this shift of perspective is to put myself first. By focusing on what I like and arranging the information and photos in a way that's pleasing to me, I can feel myself relaxing and the pleasure of creation returns to my heart. I can imagine enjoying this project since it will be easy.

The Mystery of Reality

I have not discussed any scientific topics in a while. This does not mean that I'm not thinking about them. It means that all the other topics were more important each day when I wrote my journal entry.

I am reading a book on Quantum Reality, which describes the many theories that physicists have regarding the nature of reality from the perspective of quantum physics. It's discussing the ways that physicists think about physical reality given the incredible predictive power of the equations of quantum physics. Of course, there are many theories about it, although most physicists seem to agree that there is no underlying reality beyond quantum physics. There are some physicists who promote the primacy of consciousness and others who promote the importance of interaction in determining the nature of reality. However, the majority want to use the equations to make predictions and explain interactions between quantum particles without speculating about what those particles might be like before they are measured or observed.

That makes sense to me. I like to think that reality is spiritually based and that it's being created as the beings who live here need it to be. By whom is it created? By the consciousness of all involved. I mean that all the beings incarnated now and all the beings who will incarnate choose to have certain experiences while they're alive. The desire to experience certain things puts requirements on the nature of reality that is manifest in the physical world we experience.

If creating reality were up to me, I would alter it slightly so that humans could transport their beings to other locations instantaneously without having to travel through all the intermediate locations. That would eliminate most cars, buses, trucks, trains, airplanes and subways because people could show up wherever they want whenever they want. Transporting materials would depend on the way that this transporting ability manifested in people, but large ships and air cargo planes could be eliminated. Bicycles, skate boards, running and walking would still be in vogue for the exercise and for the pleasure of physical exertion.

Apparently my dream is not a popular one, because it hasn't become reality. I don't even know whether it would work to convince enough people that it was possible so that reality would bend to make it happen. Yet I wonder about the nature of reality because I'm curious and I can spot a good mystery when I see one.

A Dam About to Break

Last evening and this morning, I had an image in my mind of a dam about to break and a sense of apprehension along with it. I went to California and back in the eight days since I last made an entry in my Scientist in a Spiritual World Journal, so I haven't done any work related activities since leaving. This sense of apprehension relates to the many projects and activities that I have going but which I am about to engage once again.

I realize that the apprehension is an inner child fear that I carry that this is too much for me, that I won't be able to finish the projects, that I will get stressed and overextended, that I would rather remain relaxed without projects and deadlines with which to deal. None of this is actually true because I have chosen each of these projects and am happy to be involved with each one. It's only my inner child who fears that the dam, the separation between me and my work, the ability to control the pace of my day, the conscious choice that contains the chaos of overwhelming demands, will break.

As I thought about this dam and the anxiety that I felt, I saw a door in the wall of the dam and opened it. Some of the water began to flow out of the door and I realized that I can open and close the door any time I want. In other words, I can control the flow of events and activities, I can choose how much or how little I want to happen in a given day.

This is the part that was missing when I was a child. I was given deadlines and demands were made. I perceived each of these as a challenge to see whether I could perform at a high enough level to satisfy the ones setting the deadlines and making the demands. I was trying to prove myself and that was motivation enough. I can see why my inner child would not want to live that way again.

The key difference between myself now and the child who was trying to prove himself worthy of greater responsibility and freedom is that I have power over my own life now. I choose which activities are worth doing and what deadlines are relevant for me. I decide what projects I want to do and decide how much time and energy to put into them. Since I can choose how much or how little water (projects, activities, focus) I want to handle in a given day, I am living the life I've always wanted.