Making the Leap

There’s a term, schadenfreude, pronounced sha-den-froi-da, I believe, which means “pleasure derived from the misfortune of others.” A common theme feeding the tabloid machines and fueling gossip as a lucrative currency.

I just finished reading The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver, which I loved by the way, but was saddened by this insightful sentence, “There are some who’d hardly lift a finger for kindness, but they would haul up a load of rock to dump on some soul they think’s been too lucky.”

As Kimmmm would say, “Le sigh…”

So what’s a term that means to share in someone’s joy? To root for them as they make a shift, to accompany them on their transformative journey of creative bliss?

If you’re not in the mood to read about someone breaking free from their own mental boundaries, by all means, make your escape. However, if you want to read about a favorite theme, Alignment, then welcome.

A friend recently confided to me that she thought every time we go out of town for a show, we do at least $10,000 worth of sales. Oh my heart is fluttering, what a thought! I have no idea where that came from, but I’m flattered.

This segues nicely to the phone calls I’ve been receiving. Somehow, and again, I have no idea, my name has been placed on a high-rollers list. I’m getting phone calls from movie producers, oil companies and other entities looking for large dollar investors. I mean, these guys are smooth, their voices like velvet champagne and honey, images of private jets and Rolls Royce’s sprinkled among “profitable returns yaddah yaddah,” until I am forced to interrupt them and tell them I am not their client.

They are puzzled at first, clarifying if I am indeed So & So? I tell them, yes, it’s me, but really, I am not their kind of investor. Oh, the disappointment and incredulity, as they stare at their list, wondering how they got it wrong? The honey and velvet dissipates quickly, iron and rust hardening into place. Their masks slip, revealing the rough beneath the smooth.

So while these calls threw me at first, I’ve started to look at them as forecasters of the future. While I do not yet have that kind of cash, it’s fun to imagine that someday I might and these tele-conversations are simply practice.

This again dovetails perfectly to what’s been unfolding. For the past two weeks, I’ve been inspired to design necklaces. I had a lot of fun until Friday night. That was when the pricing discussion with Groom occurred.

As this begins our 19th selling season, I must admit we have never priced a piece of jewelry over $90. We have had bookmarks for sale as low as $1 before, and our simple laminated pins start at just $5 and the rest of the jewelry has price tags in between, in other words, all within the two-digit range.

On Friday night, Groom became bold. As he priced and titled the necklaces, I gasped. “What are you doing?” I cried, (adding a little drama to the scene).

“Come now, Sweetie Blossom,” says he, “We’ve been under-pricing ourselves for years. With the new style of jewelry, incorporating metal work, antique components, pearls, sterling silver and fine gold finishing touches, we have to showcase them with higher prices.”

“But, but, the economy,” I sputtered. He smiled his sweet smile and continued pricing.

I went to bed feeling funny. I woke up feeling funny. I went to the Saturday Market feeling vulnerable. It’s one matter to create something and put it on display, but it’s another to design a piece and put it on display with a price attached.

Judgment about one’s creativity is akin to paper cuts compared with judgment about one’s value and worth. That’s a dagger to the gut. All day I was itchy and scratchy. Sure, Groom’s bravado was all well and good; he was safely tucked at home working. I was the one with my heart on my sleeve, for public display.

Sure enough, a man made a bee line straight for a necklace and mocked, “What is this?” He pointed and told me, “You start a design here and then stop. Start a new design and then stop. What’s your name, Collage?” He said the word collage like it smelled bad. “Oh well, just ignore me, I’m out on a day pass anyway,” he said and wandered off.

Gee, that was fun.

I understood in that moment, thanks to the guy with the “day pass,” that if I didn’t change my attitude and the signal I was broadcasting, I would continue attracting people into the booth that would validate my insecurity and vulnerability.

Time to Own It and step up my game or stay locked in to old, familiar patterns and prices.

And then the magic happened. A trio of women entered the booth, pulled in by the necklaces. One lady pointed to a necklace made with antique keys and tried it on. “How much is it?” she asked.

Gulp, the dreaded question. I pulled out the tag, hidden behind the counter, and said with as much conviction as I could muster, “This necklace comes with an introductory price of $185.”

“Do you take credit cards?” she said, and then told me to add in the pair of earrings I was wearing to match. She did not bat an eye, did not mock me, but praised the design with words and electronic cash.

With two bold moves, Groom’s for the pricing, and me for the adjustment in my psychology, we smashed the two-digit glass ceiling and made our first three-digit sale for a single item. Bonanza!

Chakra girl was in the booth at the time and noticed another person enter at the exact moment we broke our own barrier wearing a hat emblazoned with “Oregon Ki Society: Coordination of mind and body.”

This is sweet alignment. The necklace that sold was made from keys. The word Ki, which looks like it would be pronounced key, means energy flow or life force, and is pronounced chee. For me, it was a signpost that we’re on the right path.

After previewing the necklaces, a friend, Snow White, commented that I was “a conceptual artist.” I had to look that one up. Some of the other comments about the necklaces collected throughout the day included, Hardcore, I’ve never seen anything like it… It’s nice to see someone jumping out of the box… Steampunk… Sculptural, and oh yeah, “Collaaaaaage.”

When I told Groom about the man making fun, he said, “Sweetie Blossom, you’ve just moved into art. If everyone gets you, it’s a craft, if someone don’t get ya, it’s art!” Do you see why I love him? He always knows what to say.

Then on Sunday, when we went to the Flea Market to hunt for treasure, I had a very interesting response to a necklace I wore. A woman stopped me with a shriek, exclaiming, “That is the most freakin’ cool necklace I’ve ever seen in my life.” Verbatim.

Then, when she asked me where I got it and I told her I made it, she went on to say that if a celebrity were to be photographed in it, the necklace would sell for thousands of dollars. She said it would sell anywhere from $1,000 to $50,000. Okay, she might be prone to hyperbole, but the very idea that a design would be perceived, even by one person, to hit the four and five digit mark did something verrrry nice for my insides.

This encounter opened a portal to my psyche. I’m very comfortable selling 100 items for $15 each, but realized I squirm at the idea of selling one item for say, $1,500. I’m used to working hard to make lots of little things, but have not considered putting forth energy and creativity toward one really interesting piece.

The idea of placing myself out there to be judged on value and worth challenges me, but as I was talking to God’s Minion, a former metalsmith herself, she told me to blast out of my shell instead of peck peck pecking it to death.

“Be audacious, be bold,” she said, cheering me on. She’s very good at that. People have suggested she become a life coach and I think she’d do quite well.

Last Saturday, I took her advice and jumped into the audacious category, pricing some of the new necklaces even higher. Within the first hour of being open, we broke another record: the necklace “Day Pass” made fun of sold for $245!

Where in our lives do we set the bar and then complain things don’t turn out our way? If we are the ones setting the bar, then they do turn out exactly our way. Yipes!

It’s not like we priced things higher and never sold any, it’s that we never even thought of pricing anything higher. When we first started making jewelry, a pair of musical earrings, Do Re Mi, sold for $10. Nineteen years later, they sell for $10. See what I mean?

Perceived value. Whoa, a head trip. Talk about a journey…

Last Saturday, we sold a pair of Tree Frog earrings at the very end of the day (nice!). Moments later, my next door vendor-neighbor asked if I had my camera, because an itty bitty frog was poised at the edge of the fountain. In all my years there, I’ve never seen a frog appear. Curious.

So I looked up the symbolic meaning of frogs when I got home. Duh. Transformation. Metamorphosis is actually one of the four stages of their lifecycle!

They begin as eggs, then become tadpoles and eventually grow into froggies through “a dramatic transformation of morphology and physiology.”

I can make the leap. My thoughts start out as gelatinous blobs, then grow into polliwogs, and eventually, through a dramatic transformation (Hey, this is scientific lingo you know), becomes visible in the outer realm.

This suggests a four-stage development lifecycle of the psyche. The inner life of humans begins as spirit, becomes tangible thought, and through drama (emotions & feelings) births into physical manifestation.

Another signpost. Oh thank you little frog, Alignment makes me so happy!

The Fifth Dimension of Heaven

“You attract what you are.” This is what Groom announced to me the other day. He read it in a book. “Therefore,” say Confucius-husband, “You must become what you desire.”

Now how does this make a lick of sense? If I’m hungry, I want to attract food to put into my belly, not become food. If my bank account needs an infusion of cash, I want to attract money. If I’m feeling unlovable, I want love.

I mean, like, duh. Haven’t you ever heard of opposites attracting? The sick need healing, not the well. The poor need alms, not the wealthy. The nakedy need clothes not the Emperor. Okay, he actually does, but you get my drift.

I am a bead. What, that’s rather disjointing, you say? An article in the newspaper once defined a bead as “anything with a hole in it.”

I have a hole in me.

This hole has inspired me to fill it in. Years ago, it began as a leak in my pocketbook. I sought two different financial counselors and when they groomed my expenditures with a fine-teethed comb, neither discovered a single penny of unnecessary outgo. I did not have what the money gurus labeled “the latte factor.”

Their analysis? I needed to increase my income. Gee, thanks, I already knew that. But it seemed that no matter what I did, no matter how frugal I became, tightened the belt, lived on a shoestring, there never was enough to cover basic expenses.

So I set my course on a journey to discover a remedy. I went on a reading rampage. I checked out every book on money, wealth, and increasing one’s income the library had on its shelves.

And boy, was I disappointed. These books hooked me in with their titles about creating what I needed, yet none of them actually gave me the secret to prosperity. I wanted to know how to get rich quick and all those stupid books did was ramble on about how money was energy and how we have to change our awareness and-- next. I kept reading, one right after the other, hoping that the next book would actually tell me something useful, but they all said the same thing, that I should meditate, get quiet and go within and observe my thoughts. %#$@&*(*&!!!

I didn’t give a flippertyjibbit about my thoughts, my energy field, my vibrational offering for crying out loud, I just wanted quick and easy steps to take so I could become more than a hundred-aire. I wanted clear and precise actions that would give me an extra zero or two on the correct side of my balance sheet.

I’ve heard of slow learners and in this area, I think the guides of heaven had to create a new sub-category of emotional retardation just for me. It has taken me years and years to finally open my mind to what the masters have been saying.

We get what we focus on, that which we appreciate, appreciates. We live in an electromagnetic universe and one of the laws of physics governing our physical reality is “like attracts like,” or “that which is like unto itself is drawn.” Paper attracts ink, a magnet attracts little metal things and trailer parks attract tornadoes. Just your basic facts of life stuff.

I resisted this for a looooooooong time (for a more accurate picture, keeping adding more o’s to the word “long,” no keep going, a few more, almost there…). Bottom line is that I wanted, needed, desired more money. I could not wrap my head around the idea that I had to start feeling and becoming prosperous to attract prosperity.

If I was reading the words right, poverty consciousness attracts MORE poverty and prosperity consciousness attracts MORE prosperity. Okay, but sputter sputter... It’s the folks who are feeling poor that need more prosperity!!!! Isn’t anybody listening?

Oops, apparently I wasn’t listening, or couldn’t understand this simple, yet profound concept.

Let’s skip ahead, shall we? A gentleman recently surprised us with a book and several downloads of a particular author he wanted us to check out. Not understanding we were supposed to read the book first, we listened to the audio files.

Oh my.

Groom and I have a fairly broad spectrum of things we are interested in, but this was a giant step out of our comfort zone.

The info on the mp3 was a guided meditation leading us up through the “10 Dimensions of Heaven.” There were things on each floor we were to see, do, clear out and receive in order to ascend to the next level.

At one point, I asked Groom if this was like a spiritual video game or a version of dungeons and dragons? In the Fourth Dimension of Heaven we were given a cloak so that we could conduct our business without being seen and in the Fifth Dimension of Heaven we were to receive a spiritual gift, perhaps a harp or a jewel-encrusted staff.

My apologies to the gentleman who sent us this stuff, but we couldn’t help giggling. Throughout the next couple of days, we’d tease each other. Groom would say, “I can see you,” and I would answer, “No you can’t, I’m invisible, can’t you see that I’m wearing my cloak?” Or, “Watch out, I’ll pop you with my jewel encrusted staff if you don’t do exactly as I say.”

Two days later, on Saturday after the Market, we took our daily perambulation around the neighborhood. We were drawn right instead of left by a handmade sign that said “Love Him Her It Them Us Yourself.” Love and inclusion, we were groovin’ on the sentiment.

Two people were sitting on the sidewalk and welcomed us. Stepping beyond the sign to stand underneath a canopy of trees, we saw a little bit of magic. “Did you notice our money tree?” they asked, pointing up. Sure enough, there were many dollar bills hanging from the branches.

Just then, a third person popped up and said in a very lovely and theatrical voice, “Welcome. You have made it to the Fifth Dimension of Heaven. You can see me now.”

Say what? You’ve got to be freakin’ kidding me.

I looked at Groom and Groom was already staring at me to confirm we each just heard what we thought we heard. I felt my head soften into a cartoon, becoming all rubbery as I pretend shook it from side to side, jowls and saliva swinging in slow-mo like a basset hound as I mentally cleared any possible cobwebs.

Did he just say the Fifth Dimension of Heaven? I glance around. A red carpet rolled out before us, silver, gold and copper coins piled high and thick and generously all over the place.

The man “who we could now see,” disappeared (he bee-bopped into the house for a minute) and the two people sitting on the sidewalk offered us coins from the ground and suggested we toss them into a red bowl filled with water. We were instructed to gather up all of our fears and send them into the water along with the coins. As we did this, they clapped simultaneously and shouted “NO FEAR!”

Trying to take in the scene and get a grip that we had just listened to a meditation describing the Fifth Dimension of Heaven and less than 48 hours later we walked into somebody’s little play about it, well, it was trippy!

These three people put effort into creating a sacred space. There were candles burning, incense wafting, fruit in colorful bowls and a toy dinosaur wearing booties amongst many other curious artifacts.

The third man, who had announced our arrival, reappeared and was holding, can you guess? A jewel-encrusted staff! He said something very special to us (Yeah, I think I’ll keep that part private) and then he touched us on each shoulder with the jewel-encrusted staff, much like a monarch dubbing a knight.

We were standing on a red carpet of money with dollar bills dripping overhead. In addition to the fabulous playfulness and the Technicolor alignment, there was a joyful lesson to be learned.

Turns out the two people sitting on the sidewalk, well, their “van broke down in the Third Dimension.” If you did not just laugh, there’s something wrong. Instead of whining, complaining or freaking out, they took what they had and created something enchanting out of it.

Instead of hording their last bit of cash, they rolled out the red carpet and let it loose. They tied dollar bills to the tree. In other words, they became what they wanted to attract. It worked. Groom and I were so delighted by this spectacle that we asked if we could tie some money to their tree. They asked for nothing, they just were.

All this week, I’ve been drawn back there. I’ve seen them continuing to sit outside, soaking in the late summer weather, sipping wine and visiting with passersby. On one evening stroll, I said to the man who had “knighted” us, “Hello, I can see you now.”

The look on his face was priceless. He said, “I’m so glad, I like to be seen.”

Again, he had an inner need to be visible, but instead of becoming obnoxious to get attention, he gave a gift. He created the feeling that seeing him was an honor, that one had to shift into another state of consciousness to be able to see him.

It worked. I noticed him. I remember him. He became visible.

When we have a need, we all become something in order to get that need met. Perhaps we become angry, petulant, sick, demanding, fearful; we all have our modus operandi. Since we’re going to become something anyway, why not become something that is in harmony with what we desire rather than its repelling opposite?

I just have to say, this was one of the best moments of alignment and learning. George Bernard Shaw explains why it’s good to be lighthearted about things. “People don’t stop playing because they grow old. They grow old because they stop playing.”