Category: The Imagined Life

KICKING THE TIRES OF SEPTEMBER 9 2020

S R Janssen

This afternoon I engaged in an event in which I missed the mark by a mile in terms of desired outcome. BUT it led me down a new path of thought that I will be testing for this week.

Since third grade, I’ve feared people disapproving me; for decades I’ve allowed fear of people’s reactions to turn me away from from goals. So, this afternoon, I was determined muscle my way to a specific result when engaging with a stranger. Instead of achieving the result I wanted, I got a lap full of disapproval. On the one hand, it was a win in that I stood my ground for once and “waded in” instead of my usual cowardly retreat from the field of battle. The disapproval slid off like water from a duck’s back. For that, I award myself a gold star.

However, I failed to achieve my objective. Keeping a blind eye on my objective, I expressed myself in forceful manner which immediately elicited resistance.  Now I am re-thinking what it means to be powerful. It could be a mistake to define power as “the greatest application of force.”

What if power results from focused imagining of the desired outcome before engaging in activity?

What if I actively imagine a desired outcome, then stand aside and allow the desired outcome to work itself out using resources of which I am unaware?

What would have happened if I had taken ten or fifteen minutes to actively imagine the desired outcome, before engaging myself in that event?

Had I not been so blindly determined to achieve my outcome would I have been smarter and taken a breath and taken time to assess the energy in the room and assess the other person’s state of mind?

Funny thing, the interaction that occurred was an exact reflection of myself.

KICKING THE TIRES OF MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 7

S R Janssen

This Labor Day indeed has been laborious, but not in terms of actual labor. The soaring temperature which is setting record highs across California is bringing the usual weekend activity in this home to a grinding halt. The few tasks that are getting done, are completed at a snail’s pace, or abandoned altogether. Both cats are flattened into rugs and comatose: Julio in the shower and Romeo in front of the living room fan.

Last Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, the Census had no cases for me. I retaliated by making myself unavailable for the entire Labor Day Holiday. And that with only a whisper of compunction. Driving around in heat clocking over 106 degrees would have done me in.

In my seventies, I find myself still worrying that “others” will think badly of me. I harbor thoughts of not holding up my end, and of other people thinking me unreliable. The truth is that I am unreliable: I am unreliable to myself, and fake reliability to others.

I feel such unease about doing only what I want to do, because I don’t trust myself to do the right thing. I have already proved I do not “do the right thing” anyway so I may as well stop splitting my energy. I can’t clean up what was done: I can choose my state of consciousness (reference Neville Goddard).

My Labor Day toil consisted of mapping the electrical circuits in this place and labeling the circuits in the junction box. As a result of this exercise, I concluded that the job I thought I could do myself will have to be done by a licensed electrician. Although my research on You Tube informed me about the “principle of the thing,” my attempts to fix the failed circuit in my bedroom would be hazardous. This is a case where spending money on expertise is the least expensive route to restored electricity.