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Making it the Way It Is

April 24, 2017 by Nate Rabe

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Van Morrison

I don’t know about you but in my book when the music and self help industries try to sell ‘uplifting’ music they get it all wrong.  You either get Christian rock and breathy chants or waterfalls and mellow moog loops.  Pretty dire.

I happen to love music. I also like to be inspired to enjoy a better human existence.  And while an 8 hour track of gentle musical gurgle may be useful to get me back to sleep at 330am, when it comes to listening to music I need something with meat and gristle on its bones.

And there is no shortage of inspiration to be had all across the spectrum: rock, pop, folk, classical, even rap, for goodness sake. Music by terrific artists, singers and writers who refuse to water down the music just to get across their message.

Here is just one example from the great Irish mystic Van ‘the Man’ Morrison.

This has been one of my favorite albums since I first heard it way back nearly 40 years ago. Van has always been touched by the Celtic spirits and it would be hard to identify any of his records that is completely devoid of the spiritual touch.  But in the early 80s he released a number of albums that put the whole mystical/spiritual quest right up front. This is the first, and in my opinion, the best of them.

Common One, as the title suggests, points to the Universal Spirit that permeates everyone, everything as well as all time and space. It is the one thing we all share in common. In this respect the record is a hymnbook to that non-religious ‘godhead’.  Opening with the stunningly beautiful Haunts of Ancient Peace and closing with a dreamy When Heart is Open, Common One takes the listener on a journey of spiritual discovery and longing.   The album shimmers with the dappled light and shade of jazz and lush orchestration. The tempo is generally leisurely, much like a tramp across the highlands on a long summer’s day which is not so say it is monotonous. The music builds and collapses, slows then rushes frantically forward again throughout the album, often in the same song.   Summertime in England is a perfect example of changes in pace and intensity.

Each song is finely and specially constructed to deliver and elicit a particular emotional response. We hear Van whisper prayers of desperate loneliness  (Spirit) as well as lose himself in trances of mystical delirium (Summertime in England) chanting the names of long dead muses. But lest you think this is all pretty heavy and depressing he pops up with joy and delight too.

Such is the song Satisfied. 

Let’s go walkin’ up that mountainside
Look down in the valley down below
And we survey this wondrous scene
Wait a minute
Hold that dream.
Hold that dream.
Don’t want to change my name and write a book
Just like Catcher in the Rye
Settle down in a shady nook
Talkin’ to my baby now
I’m satisfied
With my world
Cause I made it
The way it is.
Satisfied (Satisfied.)
Inside.
Go to the mountain
Come back to the city
Where a whole lot of things
Don’t look very pretty
Spiritual hunger and spiritual thirst
But you got to change it
On the inside first
To be satisfied
To be satisfied
Sometimes I think I know where it’s at
Other times I’m completely in the dark
You know, baby, cause and effect
I got my karma from here right to New York
I’m satisfied
With my world
Cause I made it
The way it is
Satisfied (Satisfied)
Inside.
Sometimes I think I know how it is
Other times I’m completely in the dark
You know, baby, cause and effect
I’ve got my karma from here right to New York
I’m satisfied
Cause I made it
The way it is
I’m satisfied (satisfied)
Inside

This track is a glorious hymn of exaltation.  It opens with a syncopated organ two-step that builds steadily into a horn adorned R&B groove before reaching its ecstatic highpoint with a ripping flugelhorn solo by Mark Isham. Van himself, in addition to singing his heart out, sets Isham’s solo up with some competent sax work.

Resting in this luxurious setting is the song’s central lyric.

I’m satisfied
With my world
Cause I made it
The way it is

I’ve listened to this song hundreds of times over the years but just a few days ago the power of these lyrics hit me.  The world we inhabit, the world we experience is of our own making. Everything around us, whatever its form, is a reflection of ourselves. A reflection of ‘I’.  And our experience of that world also is completely our own making.  Whether we are satisfied or unhappy there is no one to fault but ourselves, “cause I made it/the way it is.”

Spiritual hunger and spiritual thirst
But you got to change it
On the inside first
To be satisfied
To be satisfied

He follows this up with another pearl.  Because there is nothing ‘out there’ that is not of our own making, any spiritual quest for peace, love and joy must originate from the inside.  It matters not how deep your hunger or thirst is. It matters not how many gurus or teachers we seek out. No matter what it is we want to change about ourselves, ‘you got it change it/ on the inside first’.

All in all a one-two punch of profundity and exhilarating music!

Filed Under: Personal Development, Uncategorized Tagged With: Coomon One, Mark Isham, Satisfied, Van Morrison

Betting on Ourselves

December 22, 2016 by Nate Rabe

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The kids have been singing that old mariner’s tune, What do you do with a drunken sailor, over and over.

 

And appropriately, Yvonne and I have been feeling like drunken sailors in the last few weeks. We wake each morning feeling slightly woozy and bleary eyed. Life is moving fast and it seems our legs are wobbly as we try to keep up.

 

We’re racing toward the end of year. The kids’ school year came to a hectic climax, there is all the Christmas shopping and visiting to cram in, elderly parents are struggling with the sorts of curses Old Age brings and our home business just keeps barreling down the track.

 

We’ve been business owners for the past 12 months. Looking back from this vantage point to our first weeks and months in the business, it seems as if a lifetime has passed. Full time employment is a distant memory. The silly (and not-so-silly) mistakes we made have been many. In fact, we just made a doozy this week and created some unnecessary chaos for ourselves.

 

We started out with real excitement, expecting the learning curve to be less severe and far less elongated than it turned out to be. In the middle of winter, when we were several months in and still not making money, the rain and dark clouds that showed up most days matched our mood perfectly. I always thought I was pretty resilient, but I had to dig deep in those months.

 

My daily walks proved to be the thing that kept me going. Bundled up in my St Kilda hoodie and headphones, I’d stomp down the path listening to Shane Krider, Wayne Dyer, Neville Goddard and a whole host of others talk about possibility, choice, personal responsibility, focus, consistency, imagination and the actual relationship between the invisible and visible worlds. My stomping would quickly lighten to striding. And most days, by the time I got home, I felt as I’d been walking on air.

 

It was on one of those walks that it dawned on me that regardless of how much money I made in the business, I had already more than recouped my investment in Prosperity of Life. The depths of perception and understanding that have been opened to me through the course material are truly profound. Life, for the first time, is something I know I can be in charge of, rather than a victim of. This is stuff I can keep forever. And apply wherever.

 

Talk about a reward!

 

The money was still hard to come by as winter moved into spring. But then the tide turned.

 

We’re still not sure why it did because we weren’t doing anything differently. We were still marketing and still prospecting. But suddenly, it seemed the prospects were serious. They ‘got’ it. And best of all, they ‘wanted’ it. In our first income-earning month we cleared $24,000. Gulp!

 

The income kept coming in, which was wonderful. Our shoulders relaxed a bit and we pushed harder. But along with the money came new challenges. Things like cash flow management and customers cancelling orders, or disappearing just as completely as if they had been abducted by aliens.

 

What the…? He was here just a minute ago, I swear.

 

We say every day that we are looking for people who want to make at least $10,000 a month within the first 6-12 months of setting up their business. We never doubted that the business would deliver. But if we’re honest, there were many times in the past year we wondered why ours hadn’t shown up yet!

 

In the past three weeks we’ve earned AUD 50,000 in profit! Within our first 12 months in the business we’ve hit that six-figure income. And though our heads are spinning and we’re feeling a bit punch drunk it is wonderful to confirm that Prosperity of Life is a truly powerful business. Far more powerful in fact, than we ever imagined when we, with not a little trepidation, put our money on the line and did the foolish thing of betting on ourselves.

Filed Under: Career, Motivation, Personal Development

Making Mistakes on Purpose are key to Success!

November 15, 2016 by Nate Rabe

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I have a history of making wrong decisions at critical times in my life.

I was raised, like most people in the American middle classes, to place a premium on success. It was important not just to achieve that elusive state but also to be perceived as being successful by others.

Lord knows I tried.

In my college days I agonized about how I was going to launch myself from campus to ‘respected big company’. And once, by some miracle I did that, I stressed about how I would move ever forward in an upward fashion.

A couple of days ago, as I marveled yet again about the wonderful life I’ve had so far, it dawned on me just how much of my success has come, not because I made the right choices, but precisely because I often made the wrong ones.

Here are three of the biggest mistakes I’ve made.

1.   I chose to study South Asian Studies.  Figuring out what I should study at University was a big deal. It was confusing. I didn’t question the basic assumption that study should segue naturally into career. But as I had not the foggiest idea of what sort of career I wanted I spent the first half of my tertiary career just sort of hanging about.

I parachuted in and out of courses and college with regularity. I tried my hand at Anthropology, English Lit., and History but couldn’t find a hook to which I could tether an imagined career.

I went more practical next. Photography for a while, and then journalism. [My moment of glory came when I read the announcement of Khomeini returning to Iran from exile on the campus news radio.] Long stints as a fast order cook gave me a handy portable skill.

But none of this was career stuff.

Throughout those years, my love of Hindi and all things Indian sat bubbling gently on the back burner. I knew it was there but didn’t seriously consider turning up the flame. What the hell sort of job would that get me?

But after four years of dithering, I had had enough. I wanted to be done with University and get on with the career part. And the only thing I knew I could commit myself to with any enthusiasm was South Asian Studies.

Much to the restrained horror of my parents and even my own Christian soul, I damned the torpedos and enrolled with a full slate of South Asian courses: Ancient History, Hindi Literature and Comparative Religion.

My intellect and imagination sparked to life. I couldn’t get enough and by the end of the second semester I knew my next step would be a Masters in Indian History.

There was a time when area specialists—as I was called—were in high demand on American campuses. But that time was coming to a rapid end by the early 1980s. My most likely career path led to a small state university as a junior professor on a salary of less than $20k a year.

This grim truth did haunt me from time to time, but overall, I just so enjoyed reading Hindi Literature and studying the Bengal Renaissance I didn’t care what awaited at the end of the road. It was a road, in fact, I hoped would never end.

But end it did and the long avoided question had to be answered. What career?

As my college roommates went off to work in politics and Maritime Law I steeled myself for cold winters at the State University of Southern North Dakota where I would teach world history to the children of wheat farmers.

As graduation loomed the weight of my dumb decision to study South Asian Studies felt heavy indeed.

Yet, Fate.

Out of the blue I received a call from a friend who had landed a job with the UN in Pakistan. He said he’d see if there were any more. As it turned out there were.  Within 5 months of that call I was working for the UN in Pakistan myself.

Had I pursued a course in the Law or culinary arts or journalism this would not have happened.   But precisely because I made the ‘wrong’ educational choice and was one of a very small number of Americans who was fluent in Hindustani, I was considered a brilliant candidate and my unexpected career as an aid worker began.

2.   I quit the UN to join the NGO world. I was delighted but wholly baffled by landing a job in what I considered to be the bluest of all blue chip organizations. I had every intention to make a long and lucrative career in the UN and die with a blue Laissez Passer in my hand.

But then I met a sexy nurse in a minefield in Iraq and life was never the same again. It was made known to me that love and UN were incompatible and I chose the former. Which meant saying good bye to the latter.

It was not just my colleagues that were aghast. You’re a rising star! You’ll never land a job as good as this again.  I too could not believe what choice I was making. I mean, love is great but there are limits! This is a UN career we’re talking about, after all!

I entered the NGO world with a chip on my shoulder, convinced that I had made the biggest career blunder of my life.

Fast forward several years.

I’ve had a series of field based leadership roles in several NGOs. I’m making good money. Best of all, I’ve got an impressive skill set: technical skills, M&E, budgeting, general management, fund raising, program design, public speaking, negotiation. I have an appreciation for diverse corporate cultures. I understand aid from multiple perspectives.

Had I stayed on in the UN I would certainly have gained skills. But most would have been focused on relating to or managing within the UN system. My understanding of humanitarian issues would have confined almost entirely to refugee issues. And it would have been impossible for me to rise to the highest field positions within the UN as rapidly as I had within the NGO sector.

It didn’t take me long to figure out that the ‘mistake’ of leaving the UN had actually been one of my smarter career moves.

3.   I jettison a 28-year career to start a home business. After nearly 30 years in the same industry, I had little left to prove. And while my own ambitions were dented by the natural cynicism three decades of ‘saving the world’ brings, I could have and indeed, was being supported to rise higher within the ‘System’.

But I wasn’t happy. The debates were tired and redundant. The passion had long oozed out of the endeavor and I wanted to achieve something fresh.

So on the cusp of retirement age I cashed in every one of my chips and in a final act of foolishness turned my back on a robust pension plan and professional respectability and started an online business.

I have not a business bone in my body or the bodies of my immediate family circle. Yet, I could see the opportunity and that what success in this business required, were things I knew I had: resilience, patience, creativity and a desire to break free of organizational constraints.

A year in, the business is off the ground and delivering more in a month than any job in the aid sector ever paid.

So, dear reader, if you are feeling the shame, guilt and dread of having made a dumb move, my advice is straightforward.

Always follow your heart. Even when it seems like it’s leading you off the cliff.

We inhabit a world of illusion and wonder.

The delayed embrace of mistakes we make on purpose, or for a purpose yet to materialize, always seems more warm than the cold kick in the pants we give ourselves at the time.

Go forth and bumble!

Filed Under: Career, Personal Development Tagged With: mistakes, success

Raising the Vibration through Music

October 10, 2016 by Nate Rabe

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As I drove my daughter to school this morning I was overcome by a powerful urge to hear a song.  It was an old favorite from that period between the wilting of Flower Power and the rise of Punks. A time when the trend was for solo artists to bear their souls in song. Confessional rock, some people called it.

No one epitomised this style more than angel-faced Jackson Browne. And it was the title song from his 1974 album Late for the Sky that I wanted to hear.

 

The lyrics, like the album cover, are dreamy and speak of moving between sleep and being awake. They are infused with that ambiguous simultaneity of meaning that incorporates both the lover’s world as well as the realm of the Spirit.

How long have I been sleeping?

How long have I been drifting alone through the night?

How long have I been dreaming that I could make it right?

If I closed my eyes and tried with all my might

To be the one you need?

Some may find this sort of ‘heart-on-sleeve’ songwriting slightly uncomfortable. Even embarrassing.  I kind of still dig it, but that’s not what gets me about this song.

As I listened to the familiar intro–Jackson’s deliberate piano playing; David Lindley’s hesitant but soon swirling guitar chording–I felt something move deep inside me. In a flash, I had the sense that I was in the presence of the Beyond. As the music swelled and built I felt as if I was being lifted up to that mysterious place where just a few notes can vibrate in such a way that tears come to your eyes.

It is part of my daily practice of Life to feel good.  In the jargon of the New Age, I try to raise and keep my vibration high. I consciously choose to meditate, be mindful and think about things that make me feel good.  As part of that practice I listen to a lot of podcasts and clips of spiritual teachers and wise people.  All of this activity I categorize as ‘personal development’.

Raising my vibration, until recently was a phrase I never used. The idea that I even vibrated seemed silly.  But since embarking on this path of ‘slow, perpetual rebuilding of the inner structure’, which by the way, is C.S. Lewis’ description of personal development, I’ve come to understand that not only do I vibrate, but everything around me does too.  And that a huge part of vibrating at a high level equates simply to feeling good.  The better you feel the higher your vibration. And the higher your vibration the closer you are to whatever it is we all long to be reconnected with: love, God, soul, Bliss, Consciousness.

Back to the music.

As I let the music take me, I, not for the first time, realised just how powerful music is as a form of worship. Or as a means to connect with that deep mysterious part of ourselves and the Universe.  The way Lindley plays (starting at 3:15 – 4:01) simply transports me to a higher plane. His non-verbal singing echoes Jackson’s lyrics. Searching, longing, unsure but demanding.

As the song continued and moved towards its end I understood that this was a meditation of sorts. By just allowing the music to cover me and sink into my bones and cells I was experiencing a subtle union with something bigger than myself. And as the Almighty said after creating the world, “It is good.”

Immediately my mind jumped to a whole bunch of other songs which, whenever I hear them , transport me to a similar locale.  A place that the Psalmist often refers to as ‘the presence of the Lord’.

Another all-time personal fave of mine, T.B. Burnett is a very different sort of songwriter than Jackson Browne.  A man of deep musical knowledge and personal faith he rarely pens a lyric that does not have some of the gall and righteous indignation of Jeremiah.

The River of Love is a gorgeous little song from his last great album. Listen to the lap steel playing throughout but especially the section (1:21-1;50).  Pure musical mercury designed to tingle you into submission.

Finally, (but not really finally, for there are thousands of equally deserving candidates to demonstrate the purpose of this post) just dig the guitar mastery of Mr. G. Benson on this piece.  Alternating between rhythmic slicing and groove laden picking, if you can’t find your vibration and raise it to a high level in these three minutes, then you may  need to seek professional help!

 

 

 

Filed Under: Personal Development Tagged With: George Benson, Jackson Browne, music, T.B. Burnett, vibration

Community Development vs. Personal Development

June 29, 2016 by Nate Rabe

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As an aid worker I spent much of the last 30 years thinking about and striving for a vague concept known as ‘community development’. Not my own community mind you, but the communities of Asians, Africans, Balkans, Pacific Islanders and Aboriginal people. Communities that were deemed to be problematic, poor, unempowered and standing in the need of outside assistance.

As an aid worker I didn’t really have a community. Not a real one with brick houses, churches, village squares and pubs. I shared a virtual global community with hundreds of thousands of other aid workers. From time to time we met up in refugee camps, project offices and disaster zones that were situated within or which soon became real communities of the aforementioned poor, unempowered and victimized.

Development was something ‘we’ did for them. Sometimes ‘to’ them. And increasingly, we liked to think, ‘with’ them. It was an exercise in the demonstration of power and privilege, even when it was performed by individuals with genuine humility and goodness of heart.

But when it came to our own development, aid worker ambitions generally stretched only as far professional development. I wanted to develop a career (at least for a while), and once I got the job I was eager to exploit whatever professional development opportunities could be squeezed from the system.

When it came to developing the finer points of my character, or mind, or personality, or body, however, I was decidedly uninterested. Like the vast majority of my peers in the aid ‘community’ I drank and ate without much thought of what it might be doing to my body. I rarely exercised and for many years smoked packs of cigarettes a day. I travelled way too much, often in dodgy equipment, and didn’t keep up on my vaccinations. I worked (or at least stayed in ‘work’ mode) too long. My idea of ‘work-life’ balance was a long weekend.

I left the Aid world behind a few months ago. These days I spend my time working on the development of me.

This has been quite a shock. And even more challenging than getting poor communities to engage with all those finely-designed community development projects. But unlike those projects, the results of personal development are far more tangible.

**

In 2011 I was a well-paid shareholding executive on the rise.  Six months earlier I had been appointed by the CEO of the large international company I was employed by, as the company’s initial Global Leader.  I was tasked with establishing the company’s first global business unit working with colleagues in Africa, Asia and Australia to create a $100 million/year international development assistance business. For three years prior to that I had been the General Manager of a subsidiary company and viewed my promotion as a yet another sign from heaven that I was pretty cool.  The parent company was very profitable and private.  To achieve shareholder status was to be ushered into the inner sanctum of significant wealth.

I had arrived.

On March 4 my boss flew into town for a routine meeting. We sat in a small 10th floor office. The autumn sun was bright. I had brought my notebook with several points I wanted to cover.

Thirty minutes later the meeting was finished and I was no longer employed. Results were poor, margins across the world were down. Cuts had to be made. Sorry, but thanks so much for everything you’ve done for us.

I made my way home. It felt weird to be on a tram at midday. Where was everyone?

**

I imagined life would continue as it had to this point. I’d land another senior ‘role’ within a few weeks. Sure, it didn’t feel nice to be shown the door but if truth be told, I was glad I was out of the corporate world.

I took the opportunity get onto LinkedIn. I networked. I explored new industries and consulted. Backed by a big payout I embarked on the path of ‘my next phase’ with a sense of excitement and possibility. It was just a matter of time before I was employed again.

But unbeknownst to me where I thought I was headed and where I was actually going were two very different places.

http://www.sensationallives.com/

Filed Under: Career, Motivation, Personal Development Tagged With: career, community development

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