On the road to Thanksgiving

The excesively polarized political debate in recent years focused the consciousness of the nation on negatives, on what we purportedly lacked, on what we didn’t have, on what somebody somewhere was doing wrong. During this time, the country and our lives were not without value, yet the daily whining tended more than anything else to obscure what we could have been and should have been thankful for.

My belief system is quite unwielding on one point: What you resist, persists.

To our detriment, lack–even before the nasty political bickering of the last eight years–has long been a favorite topic of conversation, in barber shops, over the backyard fence, on street corners with strangers, beneath satin sheets with lovers, and one could almost laugh at it as the tragicomedy of the human experience if it weren’t making such a mess of our lives.

If one’s lumbago wasn’t acting up, if it weren’t too cold or too dry or too wet or too windy, if the President hadn’t just said something idiotic, if the promotion hadn’t gone to company clown, if the neighbor hadn’t just painted his house pink with green stripes, if if if if, then for goodness sakes, there was veritably nothing to talk about. Lack, for many, makes the world go around.

Like attracts like, the gurus tell us, and so it is that those who focus a fair amount of their waking thoughts–not to mention their dreams–on lack seem forever surprised on the constant deluge of additional lack into their lives. Many, as we have seen, have been quite willing to mortgage their souls as well as all of their temporal assets in a blind attempt to escape from lack.

When we focus on lack, what we already have is slid onto the back burner. We don’t think about it. We’re not grateful for it. We take it for granted. We even hide it on purpose because–should it be seen–it might diminish our argument that fate and other people have cast an unfair amount of lack into our lives.

As Thanksgiving approachs, a large part of our daily conversation remains focused on lack, on just how bad the Black Friday sales figures are likely to be or on how early we need to get up on that day after Thanksgiving to get to the store before anyone else does so we can beat them to the sales tables and get rid as much of our lack as possible at the lowest possible cost.

The cost, I think, is far too high regardless of the amount we spend, and the consequences of worshipping the daemons of lack are far too dear to leave the house with credit cards in hand.

I have an alternative proposal. It’s not my invention. Thousands have already said it and said it better. Stay home with what you have rather than going out in search of what you think you’re missing. It’s a difficult habit to break, I know, but it’s the only way to your heart’s desires.

Each day on the road to Thanksgiving, we have an opportunity to ponder that which we are likely to be grateful for if and when we give it a clear focus within the mind’s eye. What we have requires more of our attention than what we don’t have. Perhaps it’s a warm coat or a lover or a house filled with friends or a job or a perfect weekend or a full pantry or a pleasant disposition.

Gratefulness leads to more gratefulness and thanks leads to more thanks, do you think?

Seriously, I’m Not Really James Bond

When my friends answer their phones, I’m likely to say, “My name is Bond, James Bond.” Then, after they say, “Malcolm, I know that’s you,” we get on to the real reason I called.

In my heart of hearts, I realize I’m not James Bond. For one thing, my psychologist Dr. No Way has informed me that it’s “wrong” to pretend to be who you’re not. Years ago, Kurt Vonnegut warned that such pretense is dangerous.

What is less clear is who I really am.

Yes, I do know my name and I’m happy to tell you I remember it most of the time. But that name is merely a convenient label, perhaps like a brand such as Coke or Pepsi and General Motors or Ford. You know what’s what with such brand names, but with Malcolm Campbell you may be less sure, and I would agree.

Masha Malka begins her beautiful little book The One Minute Coach with this question: “Whose life are you living?” I’m not sure I can answer this question correctly. What about you?

The psychologist Eric Berne, widely known for his work with games and scripts, suggested that when we were young, we accepted so many of the “you should” and “you ought” admonitions from parents and other adults without question and that we still accept them today as gospel. Consciously, we might exclaim: HOW CRAZY IS THAT while subconsciously we still believe “you’ll never make anything of yourself” and “dreams like that are only for rich people.”

In a similar vein, author Nancy Whitney-Reiter says in her recent book (Unplugged: How to Disconnect from the Rat Race, Have an Existential Crisis, and Find Meaning and Fulfillment) that there are reasons most people aren’t happy even though they’ve achieved many of the goals we set out to achieve. Among them is the fact that we’re shoved into the school system and then into the world of work with goals that are programmed into us by parents, friends and society. We don’t have time to ask, “Do I really want to be a highly paid CEO of a giant company who lives in a million-dollar house and drives a $100,000 car?”

How many of us are trudging ahead from school to marriage to kids to jobs following either the expectations of others or the expectations we accepted without question?

Reiter urges us to “unplug” from the hustle and bustle of every day life, take some time for ourselves, and learn who we really are and what makes us happy. Malka urges us to spend time each day taking action steps that will lead us toward an authentic life. Why don’t we do such things?

We just don’t get to them, right? Remember all the things you told your friends you were going to do some day: learn another language, go back to school, maintain a savings account, lose weight, stop smoking? Like New Year’s resolutions, they sounded good, but they took a effort and seemed to be such endless processes that we didn’t get anywhere. So, whose life am I living? Whose life are you living?

In his e-book The Principles of Successful Manifesting, Thomas Herold observes that we’re going to make progress in those areas where we place our attention. This echoes a question that has been asked by Silva Method instructors: “If you spend 15 minutes three times a day thinking positive thoughts about yourself and your goals, but then spend the rest of the day thinking negative thoughts about your life and your job and your relationships, what kind of result will you end up with?”

Indeed. If we’re not attending to ourselves and our dreams, I don’t think we’ll find either of them.

If we had started that savings account 25 years ago, it might be worth something now even though we could only deposit a little bit of money each week. If we had started learning another language ten years ago, we might have some fluency in it by now even though we only had time for one lesson a week. Had we placed more of our attention on learning who we really are and what we truly desire, we might now be free from parental admonitions, the un-verified assumptions, and the expecations of those who embrace the consumer matrix version of “life.”

Malka asks where we’ll be next year at this time. “Will you be doing the same things, going to the same places, spending time with the same people, wishing the same things, and realizing that with each year that passes, those wishes will probably never materialize?”

Those of us who have noticed that we might not really be who we want to be are told by friends and co-workers, “that’s the breaks” and “that’s just the way it is” and “you’re stuck now, so let’s just go grab a couple of beers and watch the ball game.”

We’re hearing more and more these days from more and more people that we’re not stuck, that we do have choices, and it’s not too late. In 1902, James Allen wrote his ground-breaking and inspiring book “As a Man Thinketh.” My father had an original-edition copy on his bookshelf and I read it as a young man thinking what a wonderful dream. Problem was, I saw it as a dream rather than a reality. One of the more positive developments I see in a time many are describing as chaotic, is that thousands of people are finally catching up with the beliefs Allen stated over a century ago.

Our choices are real and viable. Unlike tasks requiring bricks and mortar, Allen’s beliefs–and those of his modern-day counterparts–do not take years and years of painful 24/7 effort that are beyond are schedules and our capabilities. Seriously, they’re relative quick and painless if there’s a lot of passion behind them and oh, so little time.

Mind is the Master power that moulds and makes,

And Man is Mind, and evermore he takes

The tool of Thought, and, shaping what he wills,

Brings forth a thousand joys, a thousand ills:—

He thinks in secret, and it comes to pass:

Environment is but his looking-glass.

                                         –James Allen

Copyright (c) 2008 by Malcolm R. Campbell who takes this philosophy neither shaken nor stirred.

Join me on December 11th for a discussion with author and publisher Shelagh Watkins. She’ll be here to talk about Forever Friends, a new poetry and short story anthology released by Mandinam Press in October.

Do you agree that perception is reality?

“Most all of the current brain research is leading to one conclusion. Most of what we consider to be happening ‘out there’ is really occurring ‘in here’ within the confines of our own head. Perhaps this is why mystics refer to the external world as maya, or an illusion. It’s interesting to note the word ‘illusion’ is derived from the Latin root ‘illusere,’ which means ‘innerplay.’” –MaAnna Stephenson in The Sage Age, Blending Science with Intuitive Wisdom

What do you make of this quotation from MaAnna Stephenson’s new book?

Do you view perception is reality as figurative? That is, psychological in tone, warped or clarified by our attitudes, preconceptions, philosophies, likes and dislikes.

Or, do you view perception is reality as actual? That is, literally concrete, dynamic, and totally synchonistic with your intentions (conscious or otherwise) and mission here on the planet.

Or, do you view the notion as merely interesting and/or absurd?

We can step into a labyrinth here, suggesting that if you believe perception is reality, then it is, but that if you believe perception is not reality, then it isn’t.

Perhaps your perception of perception has a great impact on your view of how things work in the world, whether it’s a jungle or an oasis, whether it’s filled with hate or love, whether goals and intentions create the “future” or whether fate and the purported stronger wills of others bring tomorrow into actuality, whether there’s more room in our lives for fear or for hope.

As the Christmas song asks: Do you see what I see? I’m suggesting that you may or may not see what I see and vice versa, and that problems between people often occur because they presume their perceptions of reality, while necessarily synchronous in many basic respects, are hand-in-glove matches. To know, better yet to understand, another person or another group requires, I think, really seeing what they’re seeing, that is to say, knowing quite literally where they’re coming from and where the “live.”

Does this make sense? How do you perceive such ideas? Are they foreign or are they an integral part of your reality? Either way, I’m suggesting that the universe is responding to your opinions and your imagination. Or, it may be better to say, I perceive that it is within my reality.

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Copyright (c) 2008 by Malcolm R. Campbell

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Embark on the Journey, Follow the Fantasy, Create the Reality

The Sun Singer, new age literary fiction by Malcolm R. Campbell

Buy the e-book for only $5.33 at Powell’s Books

Sun Singer Interview

Yesterday, I enjoyed stopping by Yvonne Perry’s Writers in the Sky weblog to talk about my fantasy novel The Sun Singer. The interview was fun and it was nice to see a couple of folks from the long-gone WritingUp blog community stop by an say “hello.”

A New Age Fantasy

The day before, writer/reviewer Geri Ahearn posted a very positive review on her site, Amazon and B&N. Here’s my favorite part:

Malcolm R. Campbell takes the reader on a magnificent, magic carpet ride to the past, the present, and the future. The story is enlightening, and tugs at the reader’s heart as the adventure becomes a journey that strikes a chord in every reader, while looking back into the years of growing up. This novel is packed with riveting intensity, and is hauntingly powerful. As each page in “The Sun Singer” fits another piece to the mysterious puzzle that Robert is determined to put together, the story becomes more entertaining, and touching. The author created a brilliant, must-read fantasy that makes you crave for a sequel. –Geraldine Ahearn

Last month, I took part in a 24-hour read-a-thon to help celebrate the 25th anniversary of a book store in nearby Gainesville, Georgia. Our profits were donated to the county’s literary alliance. It was fun talking about the novel again in a reading/signing environment. We had a good group of people even though it was a rainy night.

As an author, I see such things as gifts, for when a book has been out for a while (four years) one isn’t involved in the heady hoopla of promotion attendant to launch dates. It means a lot when, for example, a person comments on a weblog and says they lent the book to a friend who liked it and lent it to another friend or family member.

Writing is a rather solitary profession, and those of us who don’t get out much and who don’t know how to act when we do get out, relish the moments when somebody rings the door bell or shows up at a book signing or leaves a review on B&N or Amazon or stops by a Facebook or a Myspace profile and says, “hey clown, I hope you’re having a good weekend.”

The Illusion of Separation

Zero Degrees of Separation

Within the sweet labyrinth of my reality, no one ever dies. “Death” is a moment of unlimited remembrance and birth is a moment of limited forgetting.

Knowing my point of view about such moments, the universe placed a copy of Sandra Hatfield’s delightful novel Zero Degrees of Separation on my desk when it came time for me to review a book for the November issue of Georgia’s Living Jackson Magazine.

Sandra Hatfield, whom I haven’t knowingly met in this lifetime, lives a few miles up the road. Yet, we may well have walked some of the same pathways as we each found ourselves drawn to remember how the universe works; especially “death,” “dying,” and the “afterlife.” As I read Zero Degrees of Separation, I discovered a fictionalized account of my own belief system in which “death” as call it and fear it and avoid it is a very natural transition between realms.

Most readers of Zero Degrees of Separation will clearly see before Hatfield’s main character Christina sees it, that she has died. Even so, she finds herself thinking that she’s never felt better in her life, for gone is the hospital bed where she lay dying where her family experiences the grief of our universal experience when we appear to be separated from family and loved ones for all eternity.

The novel provides us with a window into an afterlife that contrasts sharply with the traditional versions most of us grew up with. Whether Hatfield’s version seems plausible or not as you read, Christina’s experiences make for an interesting story. So, too, Christina’s compassionate feeling for those left behind who are experiencing grief at her absence.

No doubt, Hatfield’s many years of experience with Hospice and The Twilight Brigade, helped her write the novel’s scenes about grief in a way that is not only real to readers, but potentially empathetic and helpful in their own lives.

Hatfield’s novel, which I think you’ll enjoy, is available from her own website for $18.30 (including S&H) via check or Paypal.

Copyright (c) 2008 by Malcolm R. Campbell

Negatively Bound

“Revolution doesn’t have to do with smashing something, it has to do with bringing something forth. If you spend all your time thinking about that which you are attacking, then you are negatively bound to it. You have to find the zeal in yourself and bring that out.” —Joseph Campbell
in “Man and Myth”

How easy it is to become bound to that which we do not want. The more we argue, the more we worry, and the more we focus on negative conditions as we perceive them to be, the longer those conditions will remain.

We create through our thoughts, either more of the “bad” we are focusing on, or changes for the “good” as we dream and imagine them.

Malcolm

Discovering fire for the second time

“Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides, and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of Love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, humanity will have discovered Fire.” –Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Will it make the news?

Down at the bottom of the half-hour local report, after sports and weather, just before the anchors look at each other and say something mildly lame that’s supposed to be funny, just before fading to black, “this just in, a man and woman standing at the summit of Going to the Sun Mountain discovered fire for the second time.”

“Gee, Bob, I hope they weren’t just playing with matches.”

Perhaps it won’t make the news.

Perhaps it’s an individual event and has already happened, and the rest of us are wandering on wondering what it will be like and whether or not we’ll get burned in the process.

How the world came to be the way it is

Looking back in time as far as my old eyes can see, I am at times overcome by the number and variety of seeds we (you and I, families, nations, the world) have planted that have blossomed into the current moment.

We have planted with love that has brought us roses and we have planted with chaos that has brought us tangling vines and we have planted with hate that has produced weeds.

I do not know whether to laugh or to cry when I hear people ask upon awakening, “what has happened to my garden?”

When I sow apple seeds, I expect Winesaps and Rome Beauties and Golden Delicious to appear.

If I were to plant kudzu or leafy spurge or spotted knapweed, I would expect a harvest of weeds.

We know what has been written, “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap,” yet time passes and we seldom look back to see what we have planted.

And so it is, that we wake up each morning ever surprised by the condition of our lives and the world, and speculate throughout the day how it was that luck and the cruel hand of fate conspired to produce our private hell or our garden of heaven.

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Copyright (c) 2008 by Malcolm R. Campbell

Book Review: Reflections of a Khmer Soul

We all reflect upon who we are and where we came from, trying to understand ourselves. This book demonstrates the process of the inner journey in a compelling way.

Navy Phim was born in Cambodia in April 1975 as the insurgent forces of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge seized control of the country bringing to an end a brutal civil war against the US-backed government of Lon Nol. However, the brutalities did not end with the war’s end: two million Cambodians would die at the hands of the Khmer Rouge during the next 45 months through starvation, execution and torture.

Pol Pot proclaimed 1975 as Year Zero and began his “purification” of the country ridding it of city dwellers, capitalists, westerners, banks, stores, hospitals, churches and other purportedly unnecessary organizations,  while forcing mass numbers of people into agrarian work camps. Those who did not survive the work and the torture, those who were often forced to dig their own shallow graves, ended up in what Cambodian photojournalist Dith Pran called “the killing fields.”

Reflections of a Khmer Soul is a collection of stories, “snippets,” travels and contemplations representing Navy Phim’s inner and outer journey away from that Year Zero. Her outer journey began when her parents left Cambodia for Thailand for economic reasons in 1979. Swept up in a mass exodus of some 600,000 people, Phim’s life for the next four years was largely defined by refugee camps and the roads between them.

At six years of age, Phim helped the family earn a living in the camps by selling bread at a marketplace stall and nearby neighborhoods.  “When I returned to Cambodia and saw young merchants touting their produces,” Phim writes, “I remembered my life as a peddler in the refugee camps and how much I hated walking around with my merchandize being afraid of meeting Thai soldiers.”

Finally, after a year in the Philippines in a refugee status, her family was sponsored to the United States, ultimately settling within the large Cambodian population of Long Beach, California.

This beautiful, well-written book also explores Phim’s inner journey, one concerned to a large degree with identity. She asks questions and tries to understand how and why Khmer could kill Khmer. Phim lives within the very long shadow of the Killing Fields and the near-requisite negative connotations for the word “Khmer.” While that shadow is real and persistent, Phim did not see, much less know about, the Killing Fields as a child in the late 1970s.

“To think of myself as a survivor of the Killing Fields is strange,” writes Phim. “I did not live through the Killing Fields per se, but I am trying to understand the pain, loss, dehumanization and post-traumatic syndrome that lingered in the minds of many survivors.”

Some people assume that because she was born in Cambodia, Phim is Khmer Rouge or that her parents were Khmer Rouge. It’s as though an entire people have become tainted in some way or held to be complicit in the actions of Pol Pot’s political party. Phim’s inner journey brings her to the realization that while she does not carry shame for being born when and where she was, “being Cambodian requires a lot of explanation.”

Phim’s journey took her back to Srok Khmer, the country of Khmer, the motherland, four times. She writes that the “kind of love, heartache, and pain I feel for Srok Khmer is deeply imbedded within my soul; these feelings are suffused with glorious memories and stories  that are real, even if they are stories and distant memories that may not even be mine.”

Reflections of a Khmer Soul is a rich tapestry of memories, dreams and reflections of the tragic yet wondrous Srok Khmer into which Phim was born on Year Zero and the America where she grew up and makes her home. Phim’s soul is “poetically Khmer,” and this book shows us that she has found joy and hope and peace in that ultimate reality of her world.

What are we seeking?

“In this visionary work, New York Times bestselling author (and key team member behind The Secret) John Assaraf teams up with business guru Murray Smith to offer special insights, specific tools, and surefire mental strategies that will help you leap ahead in any career or business venture and achieve major financial success.

“Are you ready to transform your life and live exceptionally? The home of your dreams, financial freedom—or whatever your aspiration is, is within your reach with this brilliant step-by-step process. Using cutting-edge research into brain science and quantum physics, Assaraf and Smith show you how it is possible to rewire your brain for success so that you can create the kind of extraordinary life you want.”

–One Spirit Book Club blurb about THE ANSWER

The editorial reviews displayed on Amazon.com call this book a “must read” and a “masterpiece.” Currently number 15 on Amazon, the book is attracting attention.

While I have no idea whether The Answer delivers the kind of answer that will transform readers’ lives, I’m curious about what the question might be. What, actually, are we seeking? Perhaps we’ll know when we hear the answer; or perhaps we’ll know another person’s version what we ought to be seeking.

One would have to be living in a closet not to have noticed that in recent years, there have been a seemingly infinite number of books, gurus, websites, channelers, teleconferences, seminars and retreats all claiming to have the answers we need. 

Some commentators say all this is happening because we are in, or approaching, a universal shift in consciousness. While the cynic within me wants to ask, “according to whom?” I still think that quantum leaps are not only wonderful, but probable.

Are these books the tip of the iceberg, examples of a world-wide wont for transformation? Perhaps so. Or, are they a knee-jerk response to the growing ills we see in the world? Possibly, though I hope not.

It must take a great deal of passion and belief on one’s part to be able to write a book called “The Answer.” I don’t think I could do it even if I thought I had the answer. If 10000000000 books, sites, gurus, etc. all claim to have the answer and/or the secret, is there some redundancy here? Are they all saying the same thing? Or are there 10000000000 parallel universes here with a different applicable answer for each?

This is all a puzzlement.