I cannot tell you any spiritual truth that deep within you don’t know already. All I can do is remind you of what you have forgotten - Eckhart Tolle The Power of Now

Here lately when it comes to the lessons I am learning in life I am often finding myself asking God, “Didn’t we already cover this in an earlier chapter?” But then here comes a pop test, and I quickly realize I have forgotten some very important parts of that assignment.

Over the past couple of months, knowing in the back of my mind I would begin to create my exit strategy from Starbucks in the first weeks of 2009, I began to grow frustrated.  Some people call it “short timer’s syndrome.”  I was ready to go, in fact I still am, my desires in life have not changed, but an earlier lessons began to unfold before me again, and this time I’m starting to see there were more layers to this lesson than I had noticed before.

A huge part of my frustration comes from wondering why I am still at Starbucks, how come I haven’t moved on, and how come magical doors have not been opened to me.  WHAT THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO LEARN FROM THIS?!

I know one of the reasons I got my job at Starbucks was to get over my ego and understanding that a job making fancy named latte’s was not below me.  I learned that lesson.  Honest work is good, no matter what the job is, do your job well, and do it with pride.  Okay class is over, promote me now.

But as I have meditated over these thoughts, wrote in my journal, prayed nightly, it all began to come together yesterday.  There was more to that lesson, much more.  As I sat outside in my truck eating my lunch, I watched people going in and out of Vons when a co-worker caught my attention.  I asked myself “Is he happy with where he was in life?”  Looking from the outside, not really knowing what he was thinking he seemed to be happy.  But of course looks can be deceiving.  I then began to wonder what brought him here to this point in his life and would he be like so many others at Vons and work there most, if not all of his adult life.  Well lunch was over, my answers didn’t come to me then, but it sure did get the ball rolling.

That same afternoon, I was driving over to Jim’s house to meet with him and Denny.  I decided to take all surface streets across Vegas, I didn’t feel like messing with all of the freeway construction near the strip and downtown.  So in order to pass the time, I strapped on my headphones and began to crank out some tunes.  I love to drive, especially when I am not in a rush to get anywhere because in my car I seemed to get inspired, and the thoughts just come rolling in.

As I drove down Durango and was beginning to cross the 215 where two lanes merge into one, I saw in my side mirror an Escalade roaring up behind me, and they were going to disrupt the flow of traffic and instead of taking their proper turn and getting in behind me, they were going to try to pass me on the right.  Well my heart began to race a bit and my foot hit the gas and I sped up just enough to thwart their plans.  The Escalade was forced in behind me and what I saw in the rearview mirror was quite ridiculous.  At the wheel of this very pretty piece of machinery was a forty plus year woman who was clearly hanging onto her twenties a lot harder than her steering wheel.  In fact she wasn’t holding onto the steering wheel at all.  She was talking on her cell phone, which was held onto her shoulder by her chin, and both hands were in the air and she was dancing in her seat.  There apparently was a rave party going on in the vehicle behind me.

Of course the absurdity of the situation made me laugh, and that’s when I realized during that moment I wasn’t any better.  Who am I to police the world?  Why did I find it necessary to make someone else follow my imagined set of road etiquette  rules?  Even if I attempted to explain this imaginary set of rules to this lady she just was not going to get it.  So I told myself to just chill out, relax there is no hurry,” you are in the right place, at the right time.”

> Insert sound of a record player coming to a scratching halt<

I had a huge moment of clarity here.  I began to understand why I am still at this place in my life, wherever that is, because it is the right place at the right time.  In five minutes from now, in thirty seconds from now, when I complete this sentence, whatever happens good or bad, I will be in the right place at the right time.  There is a lesson to be learned from each second we have in this physical form that we have chosen to manifest ourselves, and that is very simply put, what time is it?  The time is NOW.  I must quit worrying about tomorrow, and focus on this keystroke, focus on this breath, and detach myself from the outcome because the future will arrive when the time is right, and wherever I am, I will BE.

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I just completed an overnight sleep study and as I was driving home I began to contemplate and meditate on different aspects of my life such as accomplishments, goals, and challenges that lie ahead.

One of my biggest hurdles right now is that I know where I am headed, I can see the steps, but a few of those steps require me to pull the trigger and make some decisions where the only thing that holds me back right now is fear.

One of those decisions is that it is time for me to leave my comfy world at Starbucks.  While Starbucks has provided a great place for learning, growing, and security, it is knowing that I applied that last word, “security,” to one of the most insecure things in life that causes me great distress.  A job has never, nor will it ever be security.  A job is only there for me, when I am there for it.  The moment I cease to be, the moment it ceases to be.  In other words, as long as I remain as healthy as I can be, that job will be there for me.  As long as my superiors continue to appreciate my efforts, that job will be there for me.  But to everything there is a season, and the sun will not always shine, there will come at some point a long hard winter, and maybe a few thunderstorms and eventually my season at Starbucks may change, and I may no longer be the fair headed wunderkind that is looked upon with favor.

I am still grateful for my job, especially in such a time of economic turmoil that has devestated a lot of families.  I pray that this is the economic bottom, and if anything, over the next couple of years we will only plateau, or begin our rise again.  So while I do feel grateful, I also feel a load of guilt for wanting to move on, and not just guilt for wanting to give up the job, but I also feel guilt because I am taking up an opportunity, a blessing for somebody else who maybe wants a career with Vons or Starbucks, while my stay is only temporary.

But in the end, it is those two words that haunt me.  Job security.  It is job security that has stopped people from growing, learning, loving, and living their life’s purpose.  It is job security that has kept people from realizing their life’s dreams.  One of my dearest friends may not have realized the level of success she has experienced, if she had not turned her back on the security of a government job.  That one step in faith, has lead her on a journey around the world.

Me, I have been a victim of my own fears for so long, and I don’t believe getting over a fear can be done by slowly peeking my head out to see if the coast is clear.  The question I must ask my self is, when is NOW the right time?

Stay tuned, this year will be an interesting one.

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photo credit: ken mccown

“Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase. Just take the first step.” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Pour a cup of coffee, kick back, because I think this is going to be another long winded post.

In my early twenties I was introduced to the writings of an old curmudgeon by the name of Charles Bukowski, whose simple beat style prose intrigued me.  Hank, as he was known by friends, family and fans, was “blogging” well before the net was invented by the US government in the 1970’s.  Hank could take some of the simplest things in life and through his writing he would make them interesting.  He didn’t seem to get caught up in the fluff of writing, he just wrote about what he did, what he saw, what he smelled, and what he tasted.

I spent an entire summer learning from Bukowski’s writings.  It was as if everything I wrote could be titled, “A study in ____ .” Of course you fill in the blank.  I had hundreds of pieces of paper, scraps even, whatever I could find where I wrote about things like filling up my gas tank that afternoon, driving to work, or cleaning my bedroom.

What I had learned during this time was that talents are like muscles, if you don’t use them, they tend to atrophy and grow weak, but if you did use them, the pump that is your mind, was always primed, and thoughts and ideas flowed freely.  This time in my life was one of my more prolific times.  There were many nights where I spent hours over state of the art technology like an electric typewriter riffing like a jazz pianist hopped up on reefer in a 1930’s anti-drug movie.  These writings ranged from prose, to poetry, to Dennis Miller like ponderings that I was sending off to friends across the states.  I’m sad to say that I have since lost every single piece of writing from that period.  Whether or not my old friends still have those letters I sent I don’t know.  I haven’t spoken to any of them in years, and don’t have much hope.  I apologize, I am getting to a point but it will take some time to get there.

I have written here on my blog in the past about my inability to get from A-Z by going through the smaller steps like a to b, to c, to d.  I would rather skip the whole process and just go straight to the end of the line.  It is because of this lack of patience I haven’t completed certain short stories that I have begun, among other projects.  But in the last week or so I have been inspired to journal again.

Now when I say journal, this is something completely different than my blog.  I purchased a journal at Wal-Mart that is now filling up with ideas, questions, and inspired thoughts.  One person that inspired me to do this was my father.  My dad has been buying me journals for years but I have never used a single one.  I still have them all packed away somewhere.  What I came to realize was that my dad, who is an amazing writer, has compiled a number of books (unpublished for now) by combining thoughts, and poems written over many years.  Sometimes it takes a lot of work to penetrate this hard skull of mind with one of the most simple concepts like, I don’t have to write an entire novel in one evening.

As I said, the thoughts are flowing, some of it may get posted here, most probably will not.  But as I sat outside for lunch today I filled up three pages in my journal, and something hit me, it was recognizing the next step I need to take in life.  It was such an inspired moment it hit me right between the eyes so hard that I wrote at the bottom of the page.  “This is the next step.”

I am doing my best in life to walk my preach and just keep taking those steps in faith, knowing that there will be another one to follow leading me upward to achieving my goals.

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