I had been coming to this funky old barber shop in Longmont, CO for several years, now.  It was really cool because it had been in operation, as a barber shop, in this location, for over 100 years.  I would frequently tell my friends that it was just like stepping into a Norman Rockwell painting and getting my hair cut.  Plus, I would get a really great haircut at a reasonable price.

I also enjoyed the “male energy” in there.  The men would talk about fishing and motorcycles and football, and things like that.  Healing of my own male energy has been a major theme of my adult life.  (I actually did not start liking football until I was in my late 40′s.)  So it was fun to get my haircuts there and hang out in this energy.

Politics did not become much of an issue until Obama got elected.  As long as Bush was in office, George, one of the barbers there, (not his real name) was pretty content.  I would listen to his point of view, find it interesting, and present some of my own.  I was under the mistaken impression that we were having an intellectual discussion for the purpose of our mutual learning and growth.

Then one day, a few days after Obama got elected, I came in for a haircut.  ”I bet you voted for Obama,” one of the barbers said.  ”I was a delegate for Obama,” I replied.  Dead silence.  After a time, George began to mutter things about Obama that I knew were not true.  ”Born with a silver spoon in his mouth.”  ”Well, I am all for a black president, but not him…”

Foolishly, I presented the truth as I understood it to be.  ”He was raised by a single mom and his grandparents.”  ”His mother died of cancer while they were arguing with the health insurance company about what would be covered.”

From the look I received from George, I knew I had just made a serious mistake.  After all, this man had a straight razor held to my neck and he was MAD!

So what is this that makes some Republicans hate some Democrats, and vice versa?  What is it that makes Al Quaeda hate Americans and all that we stand for?  What is the underlying mechanism behind holy wars?  And what is it that makes it painful for me to listen to Fox news, or for my neighbor (I assume) to listen to NPR?

All of these things represent a challenge to our paradigms.  One thing about paradigms is that they tend to protect themselves from new information.  ”Galileo’s accusers refused to look through his telescope,” so the legend goes.

I find myself considering that maybe there is some survival benefit associated with this tendency.  After all, people who think like you are more predictable and trustworthy.  You have a much better idea what to expect from them.  People who think differently from you are unpredictable, and you don’t have any idea what they might say or do.  I can imagine in the past, that there was much more actual physical danger associated with people who thought differently than you, maybe because they were from a neighboring village where they worshiped different Gods, might attack in the middle of the night, or whatever.   So maybe this tendency to mistrust people who think differently than you do does have some survival benefit, and maybe there is some sort of mechanism in our DNA that makes this tendency stronger in some people than in others.

So what can we do with this information that is actually useful in a practical way?  One of the key ideas in The Music of Systems is that all paradigms are approximations of the Truth.  If you find yourself getting angry or upset when hearing information that you disagree with, you can notice that and learn about yourself, that you may have just reached the edge of your paradigm.  You can learn what it feels like when your paradigm is being challenged with information which, if true, would cause you to have to reorganize the way you look at the world.  For most people, this is somewhat uncomfortable.  For some, it is absolutely enraging.

The challenge for all of us is to expand our paradigms by taking in new information, so that they become progressively more and more accurate approximations of the Truth.  That uncomfortable feeling you experience in the presence of information that you disagree with is your signal that this means now.  That uncomfortable feeling means that you have an opportunity to receive new information and rethink your world-view.  Doesn’t mean that everything they are saying is truth.  It does mean that there may be something there for you to learn.

Not very many people I know, do this very well.  Yet this is one of the most important skills for us all to develop, if we are to have Peace on Earth.

OK, that’s not me right now.  But I have gone through some very hard times, such as becoming almost totally disabled in my mid-30′s and moving in with my parents so they could take care of me.  (I’m fine now).

But one thing I have learned about times like these is that if you stick it out, things will get better.  And in that light, when it seems like your world has fallen apart, you have a golden opportunity to determine how you would like to put it together differently.

One important aspect of The Music of Systems is the notion that you all have some sort of personal “mission”  - a contribution for the betterment of life on Earth, that is uniquely yours to make.  Many of us have a notion of what that might be.  When times are good, it can seem impossible to move forward on this “mission” – with the mortgage, and the job you are locked into in order to pay it.  So maybe, if all that has recently gone away, you have an opportunity now.

What did you want to be when you grew up?  What skills do you have that you might be able to use, to the benefit of others?  Do you have a sense of something you have always wanted to do? Or some inkling that maybe you are supposed to go to a particular place a week from Tuesday?

What gets you excited?  What brings you joy?  How can you re-assemble your life so you get to do more of that?  What kind of jobs are available related to those things?  Do you think you would compete well if an interviewer senses your passion?

What skills would you need to learn to do your passion as a business?  How could you learn them?  What resources would you need?

OK – don’t kid yourself.  There is usually work involved with making any of theses things happen.  Sometimes, you work really, really hard.  And other times, it can seem effortless.  But even if you are working really, really hard to get your dream to happen, you are so far ahead of the people who are working 70 hours per week at something they hate, to pay the mortgage on the house they are upside down on.

If this resonates for you, I would encourage you to consider, “what would be the first step?”  Do you have the courage to take it?

If you decide to take a step, watch for the magic.  This would be your clue that you are on course with discovering your mission.  If you would like, you can read my story about how pet hermit crabs led to the development of a new energy-healing technology.  OK – the “magic” doesn’t have to look like it did in my story, it can take many forms.  If you simply feel uplifted, joyful, or on-purpose with your life, that can also be great feedback that you are headed in the right direction.

For other fun and inspiring stories of other people who are fulfilling their missions, check out this link to e-chievement awards stories.  And if you would like to share something about your personal “mission,” or your journey towards it, please feel free to leave a reply below.

One of my personal strengths is that I am really good at filtering out everything that is not relevant to the task at hand.  This is a strength, in that I am not easily distracted when I am flowing with the intense energies of creativity that so often accompany my work in my Perkl-Light™ business.  When I am “in the flow,” I am perfectly capable of ignoring the beeping timer on the stove for 10 or 15 minutes while I complete a task.  I believe that it is this “strength” of being able to filter out distractions that allows me to tolerate a significant amount of clutter in my environment.  I get focused on the task at hand, and I just don’t “see” it.  Sure, if you point out a  scrap of paper on the floor, I will see it then.  But I can go for days at a time without even giving a second thought to the relatively substantial amount of clutter in my house.

But all this is changing,  with some really deep healing work I am doing, using the Perkl-Light, and also in some growth workshops I have been attending.  The last couple of days, in particular, I have had the relatively odd experience of “seeing” an item of clutter, that has been there for weeks, if not months, as though I were seeing it for the first time.  ”Oh – I better clean that up,” is the thought, and I do.  Then I “see” another, and another, and another.  And in 10 or 15 minutes, a little area of my house has been cleaned up.  Pretty cool!  I am sure that Kristy will be really relieved, assuming that this trend continues.

So here’s the point.  I am “seeing” the clutter, not because there is something different going on with my eyes, but because there is something different going on with my personal paradigm.  In the paradigm of “The Music of Systems,” your personal paradigm determines virtually everything about how you relate to the world – what you think is important – how you think things should be different than they are.  These are just some examples.  But your paradigm does something even deeper than that.  It determines what is real for you, what exists, and what does not.

In the movie, “What the Bleep do we Know”, there is a scene where the indigenous tribal people are looking out at the ocean, and don’t even see the ships bearing the Europeans  until they are about ready to land.  The indigenous people did not have a paradigm for ships, and they therefore, did not see them.

Another example was when I spent the night in intensive care a few years ago, with chest pains.  I had a couple of Perkl-Lights with me, and found them very helpful.  The doctor of course, did not know anything about “chi” or “clearing blocks to the flow of your vital energy.”  None of this existed in his paradigm.  So when I explained it to him, he said, “Helps you feel more relaxed.”  True, but there is a lot more than that going on.  But that was the closest approximation of the truth that he was able to “see” with his paradigm.  (By the way, my heart was fine.)

Another example of this that you are probably familiar with is what happens when you buy a new car.  All of the sudden, everywhere you look, you see that kind of car.  It is almost as if the boats just landed and thousands of those cars just showed up on the streets, just as you were in the process of buying yours.

Of course,  those cars were there all the time.  You are just “seeing” them now, because they have greater significance to you in your paradigm.  Once again, like my process with the clutter, you begin “seeing” all those cars with your paradigm.

My “challenge question” for you is to ask yourself what there might be that you currently don’t “see”, because of the limitations of your own paradigm?  It would be fun if you wanted to post some responses to this blog in answer to this question, so we could learn from one another.

There is a lot going on in this statement. First is the obvious wound reflected by a certain amount of truth in the statement. Being a man, I can’t exactly speak for women. That said, I would hope that things are better for women now, such that the saying on the coffee mug is less true today than it was when I was a child, for example.

But let’s look a little deeper into the statement on the mug.  In the paradigm of “The Music of Systems,” our egos are simply a mechanism for protecting us from our own woundedness.  The entire mechanism of our egos is reflected in the statement on this mug.  First is the wound – that for a long time, in many aspects of life, society has valued the contributions of men more highly than women.  If you are a woman, and you have found yourself limited by this tendency in some way, that hurts – that is the wound.  The second aspect of the ego is also reflected in the statement , “Luckily, this is not difficult.”  This second aspect of the ego is that when people have wounds (which we all do), we commonly protect ourselves from them by building our egos up in some way.  You all know the ways we do this – by the rationalization of our “less-than-optimal” behaviors, by the seeking of approval by others, by finding others with whom we can compare ourselves to favorably, and on and on.

So what is the challenge here?  Very simply to notice when your ego is going.  Consider what a more balanced truth might be.  Instead of, “I am the greatest!” a more balanced truth might be, “I just won an international chess competition.”  Instead of, “I just got promoted because I am better than all these other people,” you could tell yourself, “I just got promoted because my management considers me best qualified for this position.”  If you can discover the balanced, neutral truth, and hold that in your consciousness, you can discover the wounds you have been covering.  Then it is just a matter of bringing love and acceptance to your wounds, to facilitate the healing process.  Simple, but not necessarily easy.

If you recognize that we all have wounds, and we all have egos, and we all are doing the best we can with all this, then it becomes easier to accept your own.  We are all magnificent beings of Light, and our egos, and our life situations, and our healing processes are just the particular classes in school we are in.  So next time you see someone making a total idiot out of themselves, remind yourself that they are a magnificent being of Light, learning this particular lesson.  The next time you see someone do something really amazing, remind yourself that they are a magnificent being of Light, learning this particular lesson.  That is really all that is going on here.

Kristy is a successful business owner.  I don’t think she really believes the statement on the mug.  It is a cool-looking mug, however.

So we are smarter than that horse. But are we wise? In our smartness, and absence of wisdom, we are destroying the planet, something the horse would never do. And that brings up what I think is the greatest danger to life on this beautiful planet – bigger than global warming, bigger than pollution, nuclear terrorism, bigger than genetically modified organisms gone awry (pollution that can reproduce itself). Through our intelligence, we have created technologies that give us enormous power to reshape the very nature of life itself. The biggest danger to life on the planet earth is that we have developed this power without the wisdom to properly apply it. Power without wisdom. Think about it.

Kristy commented about how beautiful the horse was, as it broke into a canter, in the soft glow of the late-afternoon sunlight.

You are also voting for more of whatever environmental damage was caused in order to make it. There is little or nothing you can buy in terms of a physical product that does not involve some degree of environmental damage for it to be manufactured.

This, as it turns out, is a key part of a “system to change the system.” The fat cats in their boardrooms like to think they are in control, and to some extent they are. But the deeper truth is that we are in control, and we exercise that control whenever we spend our money, or choose not to. They will follow our spending, do their best to manage their image so that they look good to us, and try to lure us into opening up our wallets. At the end of the day, whatever we vote for with our dollars, they will do more of. So we are ultimately in control.

So here is a business opportunity that can change the world. This business opportunity has the power to strongly influence the large corporations so that more and more of their behavior is agreeable. Less exploitation of workers or the environment, for example. More corporate responsibility in general. So how can a single business have such broad and powerful influence over the largest corporations in the world? Here is how:

What is needed is an application that runs on a smart phone to help us know what to vote for. It could scan the bar code on the item with its camera, look it up in a database, and rate the product for greenness, and also for political activity (amount of money the company spends on election contributions, for example). Consumers would then be able to make a quick, informed decision about which product they would like to vote for with their dollars.

The business model could be subscription-based charging say, $5 per month, to make it work as a business. This is certainly not the only way this could be done, but it might be a good solution. I would love to do this myself, but I am busy with my Perkl-Light™ business. Anyone else want to give it a try?