Category: Uncategorized (So Far)

Now that we’re in the last two weeks of autumn, it’s time to bring full awareness to the shifting of the season’s energy. In less than two weeks, we will meet the still darkness of the year’s longest night, and the old year will pass away, making room for the birth of the new one.¹

To be most skillful about that shift in energy, it is necessary to consciously make space for that shift to occur.

Here in autumn’s last weeks, it is time to slow way down. It’s time to complete our preparations for winter. Now we put our tools away, for our work this year is almost done. As we do so, we reflect: this is the year that was.

Between now and the solstice, my focus here will be on reflection. I will put my tools down to make space for the rest and rebirth that comes with winter.

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¹ I’m speaking energetically, of course. Obviously, the energetic new year–the solstice–and the calendrical one don’t match up.

When I am called to act, I act. When I am called to act and I feel fear, I act anyway.
When I am called to act, I act. When I am called to act and I feel fear, I act anyway.
When I am called to act, I act. When I am called to act and I feel fear, I act anyway.
When I am called to act, I act. When I am called to act and I feel fear, I act anyway.
When I am called to act, I act. When I am called to act and I feel fear, I act anyway.

Why does the change in language matter?

I always resisted affirmation practice, despite multiple sources over the years declaring that affirmations absolutely work. They explained it like this: you take something you want to be true and state it in the present tense. For example, if you tend to stay up too late at night, then need the alarm to get yourself groggily up and to work, and this is a pattern you wish to change, you might say, “I go to bed early enough that I can wake up naturally, refreshed and ready to meet my day.”

That present-tense expression is part of the key, every source I’ve ever read agrees. You don’t say, “I want to go to bed…” or “I will go to bed….” You say, “I go to bed….”

So then what was my resistance? Because as soon as I taught the practice, I understood completely that it would work.

Once I couched it in terms of energy–that words have energy, and that by making that same present-tense declaration of truth you are invoking the power of the words to make it true–then the whole practice fell into place for me. And that pointed to the problem with affirmation. Affirmation has the wrong energy. If I say, “I am tall,” I am affirming the fact that I am tall. (Relative to the general population, anyway. Let’s not quibble.) But if, for example, I say, “Each month, I earn five times my expenditures”–which is not currently true–I am affirming … what exactly? I guess I affirm my desire that it be true–but the language of the present-tense expression jars with the reality. Every time I tried it, it felt like I was lying.

These present-tense linguistic constructions invoke the power contained within the words in order to make real what currently isn’t. You are, more or less literally, casting a spell. So let’s acknowledge it as such. Affirmation is a weasel word. It takes magic and hides it behind the banalities of psycho-speak. Instead, let’s call them what they are. Let’s call them “incantations.”

When the universe requests my presence, I am present.
When the universe requests my presence, I am present.
When the universe requests my presence, I am present.
When the universe requests my presence, I am present.
When the universe requests my presence, I am present.

So have I been living the way I claim to be living? Have I been living my deepest truth? Clearly, unavoidably the answer was No. I learned that I am able to teach flow and yet ignore my own teachings.

What a mind-fuck that was.

You can rest assured that since that discovery, I have begun to make significant changes. I am a person who can learn when he’s wrong. I am a person who releases old, self-limiting beliefs.

I release self-limiting beliefs.
I release self-limiting beliefs.
I release self-limiting beliefs.
I release self-limiting beliefs.
I release self-limiting beliefs.

Even when it challenges me, I welcome flow.
Even when it challenges me, I welcome flow.
Even when it challenges me, I welcome flow.
Even when it challenges me, I welcome flow.
Even when it challenges me, I welcome flow.

I welcome flow.
I welcome flow.
I welcome flow.
I welcome flow.
I welcome flow.

In my piece from a week ago, I described asking myself, “Am I living what I claim to be living?”

Yesterday, I was given the opportunity to see clearly how much the answer has been, “No. No, I am not.”

I was teaching about overcoming self-limiting beliefs. Usually beliefs of that nature are tied to a certain linguistic expression, something along the lines of, “I can’t do _____.” I was teaching that if you were to take what you desire to replace the self-limiting belief and turn it into a positive sentence in the present tense (“I can do _____”), over time you will find the grip of the self-limiting belief loosening.

Now, this in not a new idea. This practice is often referred to as “affirmations.” Yesterday, I chose instead to call them “incantations,” declaring it the more accurate term: that speaking something as though it were already true and having it become so is a form of magic.

The teaching was obviously correct. I could feel the flow of it as I was speaking it. (When this happens, I can barely take credit for what I’m saying–I’m basically just a channel.)

But then I took a moment to look at my own behavior. I asked myself, “From the perspective of the actual practices in my life, do I actually believe what I’m saying?” And the answer, quite clearly, was, No. I have in fact always rejected affirmation practice.

How interesting to discover that I am capable of teaching one thing–a correct thing–and doing something else entirely.

I think it’s more like this: Free Refills might be seen to contain a blog, or, ultimately, even several blogs (relating to different subjects, for example), but the site itself is not a blog. It’s simply bigger than that. As I start to assemble pieces into bigger pieces, the not-blog nature of what Free Refills is and has always been will be far more apparent. Reverse chronology implies that my pieces lose value as they recede from the present. I’ve never accepted that idea and I never will.

That said, there may be times when the right approach is to dive back toward process and explore from there. That approach, to me, is the very sort of thing that blogs excel at. Still, it remains critical to me that as many pieces as possible connect to greater wholes; I won’t lose sight of that goal. And I’ve noticed, looking back on my work, that even when a piece fits the standard idea of blogpost, I retain a faith that there’s something ultimately valuable–to the world, not just to me–in the play-by-play of figuring out exactly what it is I’m doing here. I have faith that something truly helpful will ultimately come into focus.

And if not? If I’m wrong about that? It’s nevertheless been personally helpful, and also fun, to operate As If.

This idea came to me in the shower and I’m pretty sure it’s worth playing with. It may not yet be fully baked. Shit, I’m not sure it’s even been in the oven. But I think we might at least have here some tasty batter.

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I no longer work. It’s such a nasty word in its verb form, with all its pejorative senses of loss of joy and freedom.

Instead, the things I occupy my days with, the kinds of things I do with the goal of earning money: I don’t work. I give.

I give, and the universe gives back in return.

I made my first declarations that Free Refills is not a blog back in April of 2015, about a month into my work here. And I realized on Monday that at this point, I’m willing to set that whole idea down. The zero-draft work I did Monday told me that I need to have space to explore without forcing the direction of the exploration. If the goal is long-form work, then letting the zero drafts do what they do best–figuring out what needs to be said, to make space for depth of exploration in later drafts–is far and away the best approach. For a zero draft to be maximally useful, it needs permission to not simultaneously be a first draft. But if I’m always trying to pull a piece from the zero drafts, then I’m constantly putting that kind of pressure on the zero drafts, and it’s getting in the way.

At the same time, what I can no longer do is create situations in which the daily publishing ends up being hard. I need to find ease. If I’m going to keep doing the daily publishing–and I’m getting increasing positive feedback, which suggests that the value of it is getting more clear to my readers–then when there isn’t an obvious piece from the zero drafts, I need to have a path to something easy. Stepping back from the zero draft’s exploration in order to get a little perspective looks like it might be the perfect approach.

I had rather a different approach to my piece yesterday, in that it kind of wasn’t a piece. The zero-drafting I did yesterday morning went really well; I found myself exploring interesting places. However, when I initially sat down to write, I had the idea that I’d find my way rather quickly toward a finished piece on the topics I was exploring. Instead, things turned out to be quite a bit more complicated than I initially expected. This is not an unusual occurrence. Something that seems relatively straightforward in my initial thinking turns out to be far less so when the zero drafting starts. This is exactly what I want from a zero draft. I follow the zero draft where it wants to lead, and I learn a lot.

The problem is that at the end of that process, I feel like I’ve done great work, and yet I’m still no closer to finished piece for the day’s publishing than I was when I started.

So it hit me that I should start making more space for exactly that kind of thing to happen. Rather than beat myself over my head, I thought maybe it would be useful to do what I did yesterday, namely to step back and take a kind of bird’s eye view on the work I’d done that day.

It definitely felt useful. On the other hand, it wasn’t lost on me that what I was doing there, irrespective of all my claims to the contrary, was pretty much one-hundred percent straight blogging about my work.

Maybe it’s time to put my protests down and evolve my process.