Greetings my friends. You all know me pretty well by now. My messages are usually designed to inspire and offer up new perspectives. I’m not about telling people how to live (we all have our own honorable paths to follow). I only want to suggest ideas you may not have considered before. I don't believe in right or wrong paths, as much as I believe in faster or slower paths to awakening; meaning no matter how lost you may feel, every day you have opportunities to try again, and learn new things... ebbing just a little closer to your own personal brand of awareness.

This write-up addresses one of my tough conundrums… how much influence do we actually have on the world around us?

On a less than glorious day, I can easily find myself lost in my worries. There are days I’m scared silly by how I perceive the world around me. Here's where it gets really esoteric; trying to identify the source. Is this experience happening to me? Or am I the one creating it as I go?

At a young age, I was taught the energy I put out into the world has a direct impact on the world itself. (Call it psychic energy; law of attraction; quantum entanglement. It goes by many names.) As an 8 year old, that's a terrifying thought. I didn't understand how things worked, well enough to feel like I should have that much power. And it felt like a catch-22. How do you live a positive life... create positive vibes, when you can't escape a negative headspace? This is what I'm jokingly calling 'The Futile Position’, where you wish you could crawl inside yourself, just to hide from the world. You're psychologically wrapped up so tight, nothing can get in (including the universal energy you really need). Bubble-wrap clothing starts to sound like a good idea, just so you suffer a few less blunt impacts in your day-to-day life. It's a bad space.

Is there a positive answer to this dilemma? I'm an avid believer there is, but it requires a little neurological gardening (Yes, I’m taking the ‘planting seeds’ analogy to ‘full garden’ levels. And seeds = thoughts, for those checking the math at home. :D ). It also takes a bit of patience and compassion. Like being selective about what goes into your outdoor garden, you want to plant things inside yourself that you really want growing there. If you're not a fan of 'depression peppers' or 'anger zucchini', don't plant them in the first place. If you planted them by accident (it's amazing what we allow into our gardens in fragile states), stop watering them. Let them just shrivel up and fade away.

We've heard stories of those rare few people having an 'ah-ha' moment, where the perfect storm of circumstances arose, and they experienced Satori (that quick boot to the head that causes awakening). While I'm very happy for them, I have yet to discover what causes that switch to go from off to on… and I've concluded it's dangerous to wait around for that to happen. What we can do is enjoy modifying that neurological garden every year, striving toward the perfect 'purposeful cucumber' to 'peaceful tomato' ratio. You may spend the rest of your life working on that balance, but regardless of whether you succeed brilliantly or never quite achieve perfection... you will have ultimately created a nice little harvest inside yourself, worthy of love and admiration.

So that's it. If you want delicious things in your life, start by planting the right kinds of seeds. And if you have an abundance of growth in that particular ‘season’, be sure to share. That's a nice way to influence the world. Best of all, we can get together with loved ones, combine our ingredients, and make the best salad we've had in years. It's amazing how many great flavor variations you can discover, exploring the results of other people's garden's.

I hope you survived my lengthy post, and I hope you enjoy my latest 'evocative eggplant', 'In The Futile Position'. :)