The Germinations of Change: The Transition Movement

I've discovered Mars. And that I am, in fact, Martian.

My "Mars" is a movement called the Transition Town Initiatives. The movement is a grassroots effort to combat the affects of climate change, by making a difference one individual at a time. The movement has its roots in principals of permaculture (a gardening technique turned into a way of life - see http://patternliteracy.com/). Emphasis is placed on intentionality - a thoughtful and educated decision making process. It is so very zen and cool. My new friend Floyd, which is a spokesperson for Transition East Bay, told me yesterday that the permaculture guild meetings are like the meetings of the Jedi Counsel. I told him that I want to attend a meeting, just so that I can finally meet Yoda. Floyd said that he knows of three Yodas at the Guild - and that they are spiritual gardening Masters. In my head, I silently had a fantasy that they would perhaps wear judo uniforms and talk funny. Overjoyed, I was.

The Transition Movement is apparently a movement that started in England, and has made its way to the U.S. http://www.transitionus.org/ Transition Berkeley is just starting. There is no website yet, but the Ecology Center hosted the first Transition Berkeley Introductory Meeting the other night. The room was swarming with energy and interest. It felt like the beginning of a grassroots revolution grounded in NVC ("non-violent communication" - see http://www.baynvc.org/) principals. The excitement for the arrival of the movement to Berkeley was palpable. (There was also an article about the meeting in the local newspaper.) Finally, there is light where there was darkness. Finally, there is community where there was void.

Albany, which is one town north of Berkeley, has a wonderful chapter:  There is a woman named Catherine that is a huge proponent of Transition Albany, and I have heard her say that when she discovered the movement, she felt that she had found her life purpose. I knew she was a kindred spirit when I heard her say that.

I found out about the Transition Movement in a happenstance way. It's actually a long story.

My housemate Stacy and I went to a local vegetarian restaurant called Herbivore three weeks ago.  By the way, Herbivore is my new go-to restaurant when I am feeling both hungry and lazy (I have to cut corners somewhere in my life to have time for other things). I can have a delicious and nourishing vegetarian feast for under $12, including tip. My favorite is the curry-coconut udon noodles w/ tofu. This reminds me of how the Oracle and I used to go to a noodle restaurant near his house. It was our local go-to restaurant. I used to have the "Grilled Niman Ranch Beef Udon in a Coconut Lime Curry Broth" every time. It's poetry that now, I am having basically the same dish, except my new restaurant is vegetarian, walking distance from my house, less expensive, and just as delicious. The dish is also creative (they put some really yummy mushrooms in it that make the dish exotic and delightful). The shift in my restaurant choice symbolizes so much about the transition that I am experiencing in life at large, on so many levels. And the coconut udon dish can get me excited about life every time. What can I say, I still very much look to food as a source of happiness. For now, I believe that this is a healthy and normal relationship with food. I know that I am no Francis of Assisi, though I admire the man.

There are now many vegan / vegetarian restaurants within walking distance from my house. I never really even think about eating meat when I go out to eat anymore, as long as I get to choose the restaurant. Saturn Cafe, Gather, Flacos, and Herbivore are just several of the many stylish choices in fine Vegetarian cuisine around town. I love them all. I am especially addicted to the Flacos Fried Tempe Taquitos with avocado salsa, and their pozole or tamale are to die for too. Yum. But I've digressed - let's go back to Herbivore.

When Stacy and I were getting ready to be seated at Herbivore, we ran into Ann from the Bee House. Stacy had stayed at the Bee House for several months when she first moved back to the United States (after leaving Chile). The Bee House is a cooperative-living collective here in Berkeley, which has been in existence for twenty-six years. There are many of these "coops" in Berkeley, which is what I've modeled my current living situation from. Before moving to my current house, I had picked up experience living in a Berkeley cooperative. Of all the different living arrangements I've tried, I have found that living cooperatively with other mature adults provides me with the best growth opportunities that life can afford me. It's not for everyone, but it is one of the main ways in which I can keep learning about other people and the World around me while maintaining a busy life. Living this way forces me to understand others at a deeper level. It stirs the assumptions in life that I didn't know I had, and brings them into the realm of awareness.

The Berkeley cooperatives are very different from New York City's version of "coops." In NYC, coops are a group of people who get together, form a company, and then buy a building together and run it like a condominium. In Berkeley, cooperatives have their roots in U.C. Berkeley's student-run cooperative housing situations. But because Berkeleyites are "creative" social entrepreneurs, the legal construct of these Berkeley cooperatives are all over the place. Sometimes functional, sometimes not.

Because I had heard about the Bee house from Stacy, I went to town asking questions about the Bee House when Ann joined us for dinner. I wanted to know what kind of wisdom would be accrued the residents of a cooperative, after twenty-six years of living in an intentional community. Also, as it so happened, Ann and I were both Gleeks (people who love the hit musical T.V. show "Glee" on FOX on Tuesdays), and we were in no shortage of things to talk about. At the end of dinner, Ann invited us over to a party at the Bee House the following weekend.

When the day for the party came, I didn't feel very social. I have discovered recently that I am both comfortably introverted and extroverted. When I'm in I'm in. When I'm out I'm out. Whatever I'm doing, I usually want more of. So I had had an introverted day and the idea of going out seemed like a lot of work. But Stacy said that she was going to go anyways without me, so then I changed my mind and went to the party at the Bee House.

Stacy and I walked to the Bee House, which was a mile away. It was cold outside but I felt community with my environment and the night sky and the stars and the moon. I used to stare at the Milky Way in awe. I've started to do that again because I walk everywhere. The Buddhists have a spiritual practice called Kinhin. Walking teaches us to slow down and be in thoughtfulness. Walking is a practice that was built into our lives for a reason, and we should not forsake it. It helps me slow down and look around, for once, at the World I live in as if I were an audience.

Stacy and I got to the front of the Bee House, and heard chattering from inside. It was a well-kept Victorian building with white trims. It was right by the hospital where I had seen Perro in one of his last bursts of energy. In the oxygen tank, Perro had done a little happy dance when he saw me coming. Stacy and I knew we were at the right house, and I knocked, but no one answered the door, but the door was open. We opened the door and walked in, and Ann was standing right there, and greeted Stacy and I at the door. Ann was talking to a girl named Jen. We briefly introduced ourselves but Stacy had walked further down into the living room, so I swiftly followed. I was introduced to several other people and chatted some more, but when I found out that there was an outdoor fireplace, I didn't want to miss the opportunity to stare at the burning logs and smell the smoke-filled air and be, once again, in meditative silence.

There is something very deeply spiritual about sensing burning wood in all the different ways that I can. My friend who calls herself the Wonderful Me gave me a CD set of brainwave-enhancing "clinically proven audio programs based on 25 years of research." http://www.neuroacoustic.com/compactdisks.html The CDs have taught me that sounds found in nature (like the sound of falling rain, crickets and the wind) hold a scientifically-proven resonance with our brainwaves and thus these sounds automatically soothes us. Science has proven what we have known intuitively all along. Now I believe that things in nature, like burning wood, automatically possess a resonance with our brainwaves - not just as sound, but by the way it looks, smells, and feels. It's ALL good juju. It's like I've been a part of the Earth's grand design, and the very fabric of my genetic code responds to the natural world as if they belonged to each other. I selfishly think that maybe God made Fire, in part, to help us heal ourselves when we feel lost or broken.

So I went outside and seated myself in front of the fire. There were three other people conversing around the fire. I quickly joined the conversation and had an interesting discussion with an ex-city planner from Florida about the vision that Walt Disney had had later in his life about a "Community of Tomorrow."  Disney's vision encapsulated an attitude of an industrialized nation towards its environment. During that time in our history, humanity had taken the Earth for granted. Now we know better (I hope). But Disney was still ahead of his time because he emphasized the importance of a community, and the magic of walking down Main Street. He was absolutely onto something there.

At the party, I stepped away from the conversation about Florida to go get a glass of water. When I returned to my bench in front of the fireplace, the city planner from Florida was engrossed in conversation with someone else. I turned to the other direction, and met Jen and Catherine, who had just seated themselves there. I had met Jen at the doorway, and Catherine was Jen's housemate who had started Transition Albany. Jen had recently made choices to slow down her life. She had been re-trained professionally as a Baker (she formerly worked in fundraising & development for a non-profit). Catherine invited me to a Transition Albany event the next day at the Albany Main Library. They were having a movie screening for a movie about Permaculture the next day. I was excited. I went to the meeting, and met Floyd, who was (and still is) starting Transition Berkeley and Transition East Bay. Floyd is himself an accomplished writer of twenty or so books, one of them being about Climate Change. True to his convictions, he bikes everywhere and has his own war stories about his transition. It's fun to compare notes with him and see how universal some of our personal experiences have been.

The Circle is growing. I now regularly have conversations about my transition, and other people's life stories relating to their transition as well. We are all gathering, talking, exchanging ideas, practicing, learning, growing, evolving - having a lot of fun while at it. There is a Japanese phrase that says, "It's not scary when you're not alone." It's very true.

On another note - In general, I am feeling a shifting of energies in the Universe all around me. Many of us are making the choice to change, right now. The decision to try to change is one small step for man, and one giant leap for mankind.

And we are not alone.

The Seeds of My Change: My Life in Manhattan

I was woken up by a phone call from my boyfriend Dale that morning.
"You should go to the roof and look at the World Trade Center. It's burning."

I rubbed my dry eyes as I told him I would. Then, Mom called.
"I'm watching N.H.K. (Japan's version of the B.B.C.) and I can see the Twin Towers burning. Are you O.K.?" My Mom watches N.H.K. religiously, and she was in Los Angeles watching a news feed from New York via Japanese satellite T.V. from Tokyo. I told her that I was just on my way up to the roof to go watch, so I walked up one flight of stairs up to the roof. Up on the roof, my neighbors Susan, Rob and Rob's wife were already watching the Manhattan downtown skyline.

Susan, my neighbor from apartment 6D, was President Herbert Hoover's artist-rebel second-cousin (her father was a cousin to the Prez), who used to live up in the hills of Boulder, Colorado before relocating to New York City. She used to squat in the cabins up in the hills and shoot bullets into the sky to scare off any intruders. She's a short lady, but she wears platform sneakers (sneakers with five inch soles) everywhere, so she appears taller than she really is. To this day she's never told me how old she is - but the lovely deep wrinkles on her face don't lie - she's been there and back. A musical hippy of her time - Susan is a guitarist and a poet. Through the years, she'd taught me how to play guitar and write poetry. We'd been good friends ever since I moved into 6B five years ago, despite our age difference, because I guess we both knew a fellow artist-rebel when we saw one. We were Kindred Spirits, as Anne of Green Gables used to say.

Rob was Susan's Italian-American ex-boyfriend who lived downstairs - except theyd' broken up several decades ago when she was 40 and when he was 30. Since then, they'd both moved onto greener pastures and now Rob was married with a teenage son and a wife crammed into their small three bedroom Village Coop apartment on West 10th Street @ Bleecker. Our building was a short block north of Christopher Street between Seventh Ave. and Hudson St. It was a great place to watch the gay pride parade go by in the Summer, as it wound down those last several hundred feet towards Hudson.

Rob was videotaping the tower inferno - building number one - with his camcorder. I saw immediately that it wasn't just a fire - that there was a big fat hole in Building One, and everyone was talking about how the hole might have gotten there. "I hear there was an explosion." "I hear a plane went into it." No one knew for sure - but the number of neighbors on the roof had doubled after five minutes.

Suddenly - a powerful explosion rocked the building to the left of Building One. Building number two released a huge plume of gas and fire. I was still on the phone with my Mom, so I told her: "Mom - I don't know what's going on but I'll call you back later (in Japanese)." and hung up. Soon after, someone's radio delivered to us President Bush's message that this was most likely a terrorist attack on American soil. The radio informed us that two planes had crashed into the Towers.

The crowd of us had seen the explosion in Building Two - but not the plane, and we still stood in disbelief that it wasn't just an accident. I thought that maybe, the second explosion was caused by the first. But Rob, who had been videotaping the whole thing rewound his video and on his small camcorder, we all saw a shadow of a plane crash into Building Two. It was clear. It had been a plane and a terrorist attack. I looked at Building One, this time with binoculars that a neighbor had brought up. Our Coop was less than two miles away from Ground Zero. There were people in Building One, looking back at us. I could see them very clearly. And I saw some people jumping off of Building One. It was surreal.

And without warning, Building One started to crumble, as it created a plume of smoke that kept growing underneath it. We could see everything. At one point, the dark plume grew rapidly towards us, and we thought it might cover us too. Rob's wife went into a panic. Their teenage son attended Stuyvesant High School, which was across the street from Ground Zero. She left the roof to go find him.

It's all a blur from around there. I had gone downstairs to get a glass of water and by the time I went back to the roof, Building Two had crumbled too. Now - I could see from our rooftop that the towers were no longer. Before 9/11, I used to use the twin towers to help orient myself when I got out of the Subway. If I could see the twin towers, I  knew I was facing South. Now with them gone, the skyline seemed lonely.

Those days, I was working in midtown Manhattan at a law firm. With the ensuing fiasco, I called into work  and was told I didn't have to go in. Someone said that the subways had stopped running because of the explosions. There were people in suits walking up West Side Highway covered in ash from head to toe. Dazed, they walked their way uptown (presumably towards home), looking traumatized.

My part of town was closed down by the authorities immediately, except to those that lived or worked there. The police created a check point at 14th Street. 7th Avenue and Hudson St. were closed down for the ambulances to bring the injured survivors back to St. Vincent's hospital, which was at 7th Avenue and 12th St. Except no ambulance came carrying any survivors. The destruction had been complete. Doctors and medical attendants lined the sidewalk outside the hospital eagerly awaiting for survivors to arrive. People started to post "Have you seen ___" along side the South-side wall of St. Vincent's hospital.

My Mom had a hard time reaching me for the rest of the day, since our phone lines were maxed to capacity with everyone calling in from all over the World to check up on their beloved New Yorkers. My friends John and Amy, who lived in Battery Park across the street from Ground Zero, suddenly found themselves homeless, and they came to stay at my apartment. They had to go buy some clothes because they had nothing to change into. All we did that evening was get drunk. We were all in our late twenties, self-medicating our pain, not knowing what was happening or what else we could do. The local liquor store attendant told me that on 9/11/2001, a lot of people were flocking to his store in the Village to get some hard liquor. My guests and I imbibed Southern Comfort that evening.

In the days that ensued, we saw an increase in police and military presence in the West Village. There was an outpouring of volunteer police officers from all over to help out (I remember talking to this one officer that had driven up from Florida overnight), and everyone else seemed to be willing to help each other. Soldiers in full fatigue marched up and down Hudson Street. My car was parked in a City-owned parking lot that was turned into the Military Staging Area, so getting my car out was not possible for two months. The number of "Have You Seen ___?" posters and pictures grew along the South-side wall of St. Vincent's Hospital. The number of the missing kept growing. The air smelled funny, like burnt plastic, for many days. Ground Zero continued to smoulder for weeks. Some said the air was toxic. Banana trucks eerily lined the West Side Highway. They used the portable refrigeration facilities to store the bodies of the deceased, until family members could identify and claim the bodies. My boyfriend Dale found papers that clearly had originated from the Twin Towers strewn all over the yard of his Dad's house in Brooklyn. The wind had blown the papers deep into Brooklyn. My other friend Chia was downtown that day and reported seeing large chunks of the planes on the ground near City Hall.

The out-pouring of help was amazing. Everyone gave blood, and everyone wanted to help out with the clean up and rescue efforts. There was too much blood being donated and too many volunteers. So many of us who wanted to help didn't know how to. Some friends and I decided to get together the next day at a Cafe above 14th St. on 7th Ave. It was right outside the military zone, so that we could all get there without having to prove our identity. We gathered at the basement of the Cafe that day looking for community - something humans naturally do in times of crisis - to talk with each other about the unspeakable events that had unfolded around us. My friends were quite diverse - there were several Swiss nationals (one journalist, one human rights activist, one graduate student), a Jamaican-American lawyer / teacher, a Jewish-American accountant turned paparazzi journalist, a Long Island-Italian-American spa business owner, a Taiwanese NYU film school Ph.D. candidate, a White-American documentary film maker, etc. - some Gay, some Straight. We loved each other and our life in New York. We collectively asked ourselves, "Why did this happen?"

After 9/11, I developed a phobia for going into sky scrapers. It was especially uncomfortable the first year. I still don't like going into tall buildings or getting into claustrophobic elevators. It pretty much killed my desire to ever work in a traditional law firm, because that meant I would probably work in a sky scraper. This also made me realize that my time in Manhattan was ending. When I moved back to California a year later, I bought a cabin in Placerville, far away from the City - because I had imagined that I would need a place to escape to if something like 9/11 ever happened in my life again. (It was also because I couldn't yet afford to buy a house in Berkeley.) I was traumatized by the trailers on T.V. for the movie "The Day After Tomorrow" when the trailer showed the Golden Gate Bridge collapsing. To me, it was too uncomfortably close to reality and was incensed by its insensitivity. I think I stopped watching network T.V. around the same time.

9/11 helped me come back to Berkeley, the city I most loved. I chose Berkeley because of its progressive (thus forwarding thinking) values, amazing weather, and accessibility to nature. I chose Berkeley over Los Angeles (where my family lives) because the events of that day taught me that life is too short to live in a manner that did not reflect my ethics and values. And I guess I knew enough to know that if I lived here, I would find the person I'd want to become within me. I needed to become a student of change, before I could become the change I wanted to be.

As I search within for the change I want to see in the World, I am reminded of what began my process towards change: It was 9/11. Because of what I saw that day, I have a firm conviction that I would do anything in my power to create a better World than to not have tried at all.

Our Learning Abilities, and Why We Need Each Other

People should be taught what their learning abilities are when they are young. I'm not going to call it learning "disability" because it's not a disability a lot of times - it's just that we individually have different preferences about how we learn and absorb information from the external World around us. For example, most men are, on average, more visual than most women.

I think people's learning abilities can easily be measured if you take each measurable brain function and test for it. A good diagram of the brain's functions can be found at: http://hiddentalents.org/brain/113-left.html and http://hiddentalents.org/brain/113-right.html) Regardless of whether this website is completely accurate, you've got to wonder - what are MY strengths? For example, I have EXCELLENT visual memory. I never need a GPS, as long as I've been there once before. And I remember faces very well. But not names. Names, I suck. In my mind, I see the first letter and that's all I can recall sometimes. I also know of a genius who has exceptional taste memory. This one friend of the Oracle's could recall the taste of wine in minute detail - as in sequences as well as overall sensation on the tongue at any moment during that experiential taste sequence.

Another case in point: After graduating from Berkeley, I went to law school and then got another degree in tax after law school - and at the very tail end of my 38 year ascent through the educational system I FINALLY realized - oh, I have what other people call a learning "disability." I have trouble retaining "words" in my memory. I can remember pictures and concepts better than most other people, but not words. So becoming a biologist was not possible for me. I couldn't remember the different parts of our anatomy, even if my own life depended on it. I made up for it in other ways, obviously. The practice of law works for people who can memorize concepts - which is something I do really well because I see the World in pictures. (Because I'm bilingual, people often ask me whether I dream in English or Japanese. I always say I don't dream in either language. I dream in visual sequences - in other words - I dream in pictures, not words. And it's not that I'm completely incapable of memorizing weird words - it just takes me longer. But thanks to the Internet - most of the times, no one notices, because I can just look up the word that I can't remember on the Internet.)

Another thing is that concept driven people (me) are better at certain tasks. We make good Judges / Teachers / Business Owners because we can be given pretty confusing instructions but prioritize what's important and create order out of the chaos. Concept-oriented people thrive in the gray areas of life. People who are more literal prefer receiving more concrete instructions, and pay more attention to the details - and that's a good thing too.

Oh, and the other thing about my brain is that I tend to remember the small stuff (like statutes and case law), if it's useful or interesting. I enjoy tax law and immigration law both because tax and immigration policies are both full of politics and human drama. And I learn something about human nature in both of these areas.

Point is, I would have loved to have learned when I was younger that what works for Jane Doe didn't necessarily work for me when it came to learning. I wasted so much time trying to learn like everyone else!! Doth I protest too much? It's because I struggled for 30 years thinking there were parts of me that were retarded. I've known several people in my life who were considered geniuses, and none of them are perfect either. Point is, we are ALL flawed. And conversely, we all have individual strengths. I joke that our personalities are a composite of our respective brain damages - which is why we need each other. The point is that TOGETHER, we become more whole and can see the World more clearly.

I offer to you my flawed thesis in this blog, so that at least I could have a starting point to this conversation that I want to have with you. I offer them to you with the hope that we become better people as a result of this exercise. I just want us to start this conversation, a conversation about how we can create a better World, together. If we put our heads together - I think we will prevail. After all, there are seven billion paths to peace. Each of us is an integral piece of this puzzle.

EVOLUTION STEP NO. 2: How to Better Communicate, so that we can Evolve as a Species towards Enlightenment

Dear Friends,

I am really interested in finding better ways to communicate with others honestly. We have a lot of difficult things we need to talk about in America today. If the key to a better World is Communication, then I want to share with you the best communication tool that I’d ever been taught, from someone I respect.

The communication tool is called the Integrity Tone Scale (the "Chart"). It has really helped me overcome life's challenges when I feel stuck. It is actually a lot more than a communication tool - it helps me see the perspectives of the people I have conflict with, so that we can work together without getting "tripped up" by the small stuff.

Different Versions of the Chart on the Internet

Here is one version of the Chart.
A pdf version of the Chart can be found here.
It's a little confusing just looking at it, so I'll walk you through it.

(We all absorb information differently. It's a very useful exercise to stare at the chart, understand it, and then create your own version using your own words.) 

Samsara (Buddhism version)

In Buddhism, there is a concept called "Samsara." Samsara is:

• our training ground;
• the space that most of us fill while we reside in this Universe;
• the unconscious life that is somewhere under "Enlightenment (Heaven)"; and
• the realm in which we experience Life as Suffering.

Samsara is a place where I selfishly see the World through my own, myopic Dirty Goggles, where I often do not take responsibility for my own actions, and view the world in self-serving ways without bothering to learn the "other" perspective(s).

When I am in Samsara the only things I see are reflections of my own belief systems; because if I believe in something, I see more of it. Similarly, if I don't believe in something, I simply won't see it, because it just won't agree with my viewpoint.

The Chart is a Road Map To Enlightenment

The concept of Samsara overlaps beautifully with what the Chart says, except that the Chart adds one extra step. The Chart teaches me how to climb out of Samsara. The Chart allows me to see other possibilities, other perspectives. I do believe that we can awaken ourselves from within, using this Chart.

Below is my explanation of the Chart, as it relates to Samsara.
Samsara represents the bottom portion of the Chart(s). When my Spirit resides in Samsara, I might approach life from the following perspectives:

        Anger;
        Fear;
        Withdrawal
        Grief / Self Pity
        Apathy
        Blame / Victimized
        Shame
        Excessive Pride
        etc.

When my Spirit is in Samsara, I might blame anything and everything else if something goes wrong (just not me). I might kick a tire in anger and sulk. Conversely, an enlightened person may take the opportunity to enjoy the weather while they wait for help to arrive.

The Chart identifies many of the ways I have and still do harbor misconceptions. The Chart then shows me ways in which I can get "unstuck" from that misconception.

How the Chart works:

Example # 1:

We're having a disagreement. Both of us are arguing for our own reasonable versions of the truth:

Me: "The highway is the best way to get from point A to B."

You: "No it's not. It's the streets. "

Me: "Yes it is."

The Chart suggests that, in order to get beyond this adversarial situation, I may need to acknowledge that I am trying to be Right about something instead of moving beyond it. "Wanting to be Right" is one way I have gotten stuck in life. If I always think I'm right I'll cease to learn and grow.

I learned this lesson the hard way once when my friend and I got into a car to go somewhere, but we never got there because we couldn't agree on the quickest way to get there - we got into a silly fight and never went. A more evolved person might have kindly let the other person be Right.

Example # 2:

I might blame the 1% for getting us into this mess. The Chart suggests that I should be more honest about the situation and acknowledge my own responsibilities: that I have been complicit with the 1% all along by buying things and engaging in commercial transactions with the 1%.

By acknowledging our own responsibilities, we can shift our perspectives from blaming others to feeling empowered and responsible to create the change we wish to see from within ourselves. We each hold a key to unlock this power from within.

Above Samsara - the Path to Enlightenment.

Once we clean our goggles enough to escape Samsara, we'll see ourselves as active participants in the World. But we're still going to struggle, mostly to steadfastly believe in ourselves, and what we may be capable of.  So remember the following:

• WE MAY LIVE IN UNCERTAINTY (Meaning, we're still not going to be sure of ourselves at this stage, and we will experience self-doubt - so just choose who we want to be and persevere.);
• WE MAY NEED TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE GOOD THINGS WE DO (Take responsibility for them - in a good way.);
• WE MAY NEED TO BE REMINDED OF OUR OWN IMPORTANCE (Don't think that your thoughts are not important.);
• IT MAY TAKE EFFORT TO KEEP COMMUNICATIONS OPEN (Keep communicating whatever that comes up as important to you - believe in yourself.);
• IT MAY TAKE EFFORT TO MAINTAIN MOMENTUM (You're doing great - just keep it up - don't stop now - just keep getting better at what you do - practice, practice, practice!);
• MAKE SURE TO NOTICE THE POSITIVE RESULTS (Give yourself credit! Great job!); and
• AND KEEP DOING WHAT YOU'RE DOING (At some point, you'll KNOW that you're on the right track. You will feel exhilarated, grateful, and happy.).

Patterns in the Universe?

I love that, in the end, the teachings of the Chart overlap with the message that Steve Jobs delivered to Stanford's graduating class in June 2005: that I should follow my heart and become who I want to be, which is essentially the same thing that Gandhi said when he spoke about becoming the change that I want to see. They both say that I should become who I want to be. This also coincides with what Oprah talked about in her commencement speech at Wellesley College in 1997.

[I]f you were to ask me what is the secret to my success, it is because I understand that there is a power greater than myself, that rules my life and in life if you can ... connect yourself to the source, I call it God, you can call it whatever you want to, the force, nature, Allah, the power. If you can connect yourself to the source and allow the energy that is your personality, your life force to be connected to the greater force, anything is possible for you. I am proof of that. I think that my life, the fact that I was born where I was born, [in] the time that I was and have been able to do what I have done speaks to the possibility. Not that I am special, but that it could be done. Hold the highest, grandest vision for yourself.

Just like Mr. Jobs and Mr. Gandhi, Oprah agrees that we should become who we want to be, that we should envision our best self, and as long as that vision is connected to the "Source," she says that ANYTHING is possible for us. The Chart teaches us how to reach towards that "Source." The Chart has worked well for me so far. Knock on wood (real wood, if you can find it).

The Executive Summary

My Experience is affected by my perspective(s).

I can often change how I experience life by changing my perspective.

Stay Positive, because we do often have a negative bias.

Conclusion

I know of course that this isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea, but one person that is able to use the Chart to dislodge stuck thoughts and communications can help improve the communication of a lot of people around him/her. By having these skills, we can help facilitate the changes we wish to see in the World directly around us. And I am comforted by the thought that we're going to be exactly where we need to be, wherever we go with this.

I am open to your criticisms and feedback.
Thank you very much for reading.
Namaste.

Post Script: Where am I on the Chart?

The Wonderful Me asked me where I am on the Chart via Facebook, and this is how I responded to her:

"I am all over the Chart at different times of the day, given different situations.

• Sometimes I catch myself in Blame, which is within Samsara.
• Last week, when I was in LA, I felt Apathy and felt Depressed and Hopeless as I was stuck on I-405 Northbound between Torrance and Westwood for THREE HOURS in traffic from 3pm to 6pm. Surrounding me was TEN LANES of bumper to bumper traffic stretching miles and miles on the highway. If I was exposed to that kind of traffic nightmare daily, I know that I would have a harder time believing that I am the Source of Change, that I have the potential to create the Change I wish to see. It is hard to know that that is reality for MANY people. I know this is a luxury but in my present lifestyle, I do not drive for the most part. I can go up to feeling like I live in "Choice" and that I can choose to be the Change I want to be.
• When I am feeling super good and rewarded, I can go as high as feeling Abundance, but it takes a lot of effort and constant "cleansing" of the negative experiences I collect as I go through daily life. Yoga, swimming, playing music, and dancing are the ways I cleanse my spirit. All of these activities help me release trapped energy or "chi" from my body, which helps me move forward and release stuck thoughts and feelings. It is a daily practice in maintaining self-awareness. Daily life is our spiritual training ground.

One thing: I do not judge myself or others for where we are on our respective journeys. We are where we are, and it is what it is. Shouganai. We're all just ambling down life's paths." Let him who is without sin cast the first stone." Let's live by example (positive reinforcement), and not in judgment (negative reinforcement)."

Act 2: Searching Within, for the Change I want to See in the World