I have been toying, playing with the idea of teaching the Effortless Abundance Course…
What has been blocking me is the kinds of people who want it.
You see effortless is a lie… although efforting, per se, is unnecessary.
Efforting is a concept. But doing things, learning things, unlearning things, is sometimes hard work. And for most people, who are attracted to the Effortless Abundance idea, work is a dirty word.
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The other day I used the free community van to get to stores I cannot get to easily on my own.
Note: in the illustrations I am not taking sides. I am illustrating that there is confusion and disagreement in what race. what is racist. what is racism, and what it does is it makes people rigid, lie about what they think, and vote for Trump… ugh.
The driver of the van has a PhD in sociology He asked me if it bothered me if he continued to listen to NPR radio, National Public Radio. There was a public debate on Trump and on the question whether he was a racist or not.
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As difficult as dirty dishes can be, they’re even worse when you let them sit for a while. And the longer they sit, the harder they are to clean.
This is life. Something that is potentially easy to clean up right after it happens – an unkind word to your father, a lie to your best friend, an insensitivity to your girlfriend – can become a difficult mess if you don’t deal with it now.
Do the dishes today.
I have been thinking about Kaizen a lot. Kaizen can be the saving grace for a lot of people, because Kaizen is a way of life, a non-threatening way, but it is an awake way, and most of us are not awake, get jolted out of our sleepwalking by big things only. I am awake, and Kaizen is for me.
So I decided to use Kaizen to ease back into exercising. Since I stopped exercising, my face aged 10-20 years. That is a lot. I used to have no wrinkles, now I have folds, and wrinkles inside the folds… not pretty.
I have no special occasion to be pretty at, I just think that looking into the mirror should be a joyous occasion, not an occasion to berate myself.
So I am now doing 15 seconds of the exercise I used to do. I am happy. It is starting to show on my face. Hm.
Another Kaizen thing: in airplane bathrooms there is a sign that says something like this: would you be so kind as to use your paper towel to clean the sink before you throw it away?
Very Kaizen. Imagine going to the bathroom and someone’s soapy dirty washwater is still in the sink. (The airplane sink stopper needs to be manually lifted, otherwise it stops the water from emptying…) I would never wash my hand again on an airplane. But with that little Kaizen note, most 99% of the passengers follow the instructions, and everyone washes their hand. (I think that sign also reminds people to wash their hands, which many people don’t see a reason for… ).
And the third Kaizen example I read about in a Kaizen book, and it is about Toyota. The factory. They learned Kaizen from Americans… who would have thought… from Americans.
At Toyota, manufacturing cars happens on the assembly line. Nothing new there. In a normal assembly line everyone is concerned only about their part of the assembly, and the occasional errors are noticed and corrected, or not noticed and not corrected at the quality control station.
Toyota’s then CEO installed a rope switch above every workstation along the assembly line, where workers were asked to pull the rope every time they noticed an error in the work on the half-assembled car in front of them. The pull stopped the assembly line, they corrected the error, and pulled again to re-start…
It was a heretic idea, going counter with mass production. American auto manufacturers, that relied on quality control, had thousands of cars recalled, paid billions in restitution for tiny errors that weren’t corrected right after they happened.
Toyota went on to become the most reliable car. 250K cars are still sold and they run the highways: it
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I have been observing myself as a spiritual practice. Trying to “remember myself” as Gurjieff would say it, call upon the “witness” or “observer”. Be awake. Either way, I have noticed something remarkable about myself: see if you can relate.
When I am in front of my computer* (where I spend most of my day) and I encounter something that requires the slightest push on my end, I see myself automatically going to the computer game of my choice, freecell.
I began observing this phenomenon about 6 months ago (it was there, unobserved, for many years). But 4 days ago I decided to employ “restriction,” which is one of Kabbalah’s main tenets, and see what will happen.
For about 36 hours I closed the freecell program as soon as I opened it. Then every time I was “awake” which means I was by myself and I was still observing myself. On the other hand, every time I was on the phone, or watching a video on my computer, or listening to an audio file, my attention wasn’t on myself, and I played… until I “woke up.”
Still curious, more interested in the experiment than conquering the force that moves my hand, I saw something today that is worth sharing.
Since I have started this blog, I have been watching how I somehow leak the energy that is necessary for creative thinking and expression… by talking on the phone, by playing freecell.
Every occasion when I need the little push and I opt to play instead, two things happen: 1. I have diminished the internal discomfort 2. I have successfully diverted my attention from what is important to me.
The first one is good, right? Who would want to be uncomfortable, after all.
Every learning is becoming. Every action that is aimed at learning but doesn’t lead to becoming… is not learning, it is just a pretense. Treading water. The drift.
But becoming is not easy, and it takes longer than you would expect. OK, longer than I expect. Longer than I have been expecting… 🙁
Why? because some of the learning requires you to be “right there”, ready for that particular learning. You first need to become ready.
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