Posts from — November 2009

This from the lovely Gail Goodwin’s (aka @inspiremetoday) blog and many wonderful folks on Twitter. She asked people to share the best wisdom they ever learned in 140 characters. My response was: I can say it in one word. “Relax.”

There is no doubt that the more we can relax around even our most painful or stressful situations–the more we can relax about each thought in turn and not grasp any one of them too hard–the more readily natural, indestructible, non-personal wisdom arises. And then you can channel that. Without really understanding how it all works.

The moment I think I’ve got a lock on the formula for wisdom is the moment I’ll know I’ve stepped out of the stream. It seems that not knowing, being uncertain, testing each moment afresh, experiencing great awkwardness is wiser, far wiser, than thinking you’ve got anything figured out. After all, whatever you have figured out can only have applied to the past, perhaps not to the present. Letting go of that knowing is the only way to tell…

Check out what some other lovely people have said over at Gail’s blog.

Appearing in the current issue of the fabulous, wonderful, beloved Shambhala Sun. (They are having an amazing auction next week. Check it out.)

We’re moving. After nearly 10 yrs in one house. We weren’t necessarily planning to do this. I have been wanting to move for quite some time. We live in a suburb and I’m just not a suburb type person. So we’d been looking casually for maybe 3 years. (!!)

I was hoping for something more citified. A loft perhaps. Situated in a place that had a sense of community. Bohemian-y. Nothing trendy or glam.

Everything we looked at was either too small, too expensive, or too cheesy. Then I stumbled upon this 2200 sq ft loft in our price range in a converted factory building that had once been restricted to artists. The building has its own gallery and seems to still have a large population of painters and photographers. There are 155 units in two buildings with a beautiful courtyard in between. Our unit opens on to the courtyard and is situated in a single-story ell–so there is no unit above and there are giant skylights.

We made an offer. They said yes. We said, wha?! There had been no expectation they would accept it but they did and here we go.

Big renovation plans: taking down walls, new kitchen, floors, etc.

Big money terrors.

Big, rough marital terrain.

Bring it on.

Pictures here.

I’m involved as a partner in an internet publishing startup called Essential10! My job is Chief Creative Officer, which is the coolest title ever.

We’re looking for books!!

Here is our tagline:

Essential10® is a digital publishing company that redefines the author-reader relationship by making it easy to publish succinct, interactive books for busy people.

We will only publish for the iPhone store, the Kindle store, and as an Ebook.

What is an Essential10 Book?
An E10 book will contain 10 things anyone thinks everyone should know about something. You can be an expert in your field, an expert in your own mind, or both…

Each book will contain 10 essential points about the subject of your choice.

What Makes E10 (Quite) Different
A book can be as long or as short as an author likes. A recommended length is 2500-10000 words (15-30 pages), but if you need to express yourself in 500 or 50000 words, go for it.

The author sets whatever price he or she wants to charge for their book. We recommend between $0.99 and $4.99, but if you think you can get $199.99, go for it. Like if you’re General McChrystal and you want to write The Essential 10 Secrets to Creating Peace in Afghanistan and the World, you could probably charge a pretty penny even if it was only 10 sentences long.

The author can change the price of the book anytime he or she wants. So you can experiment with charging $9.99 and if it doesn’t work, got to $2.99 and see what happens.

The manuscript is always live, meaning the author can change the manuscript anytime he or she wants. (There will be a small charge for revising more than two times.) An E10 book can always be updated and made current.

The community will discuss, review, and rate the books. A good book is one that serves as a focal point for creating a community of interest –these will become our best sellers.

The playing field is equal and sales will be based on actual merit rather than marketing strategies or track record.

And here are the kickers:

The author gets 75% of each sale.

It only costs $49 to be published and within 3 days, your book will be available for sale on the iPhone, Kindle store, and as an eBook. If you charge $4.99 per book, you only need to sell 10 to recoup your investment.

Why You Might Write an E10 Book
You possess expertise that you’d like to share.

You want to write and publishing something because it is your dream to do so.

You want to demonstrate that your ideas can sell before trying to get a publishing deal.

You have a book coming out that you’d like to promote and your E10 book will introduce people to it.

You have a business you’d like to promote.

You’re a publisher and you want to repurpose your backlist.

You have pre-existing material you’d like to repurpose for a wider or different audience.

You don’t know why you want to do it, you just do.

What E10 Will Do For You
Format your book for the iPhone store and sell it via our iPhone app and/or

Create an iPhone app for your book (costs extra)

Format your book for the Kindle store on Amazon and make it available for sale

Create an eBook from your manuscript and make it available for sale on our site

Give you a personalized author page on our website to promote yourself, your book, and your other activities

What E10 Will Not Do For You
Tell you what to write.

Tell you how long your book needs to be or what you should charge for it.

Publish you, if what you write is pornographic or incites hate.

Examples of E10 Books

Essential10 Most Poisonous Snakes of Costa Rica

Essential10 Things Every College Graduate Should Understand About Money

Essential10 Points of Mindful Leadership

Essential10 Guide to Building a Desk

Essential10 Guide to Editing Photos from your Digital Camera

Essential10 Ways to Pick Your Nose in Public

Essential10 Hard Questions for Adults and Their Aging Parents

Essential10 Ways to Survive a Zombie Attack

These are real titles of books being written for publication. As you can see, books can be practical, emotional, obscure, and/or playful. You can write whatever you want. (Except porn or hate.)

How To Get Started
Read this PDF.

Email me with questions!

Our site will launch in a few weeks. Please sign up to be invited to the beta test.

I truly believe that Essential10 is off and running with groundbreaking innovations in the world of publishing by making it possible to immediately publish concise, topical (digital-0nly) books that can serve as a focal point for creating communities of interest and intense dialog (nose-picking notwithstanding). This is the direction publishing is heading and I believe that E10 is among the first to get there.

An excerpt from my upcoming book, The Wisdom of a Broken Heart, out in January, 2010. What do you think of these ideas about having a heart? You know I love hearing from you… And why not? After all, you’re YOU.

One way to think of all these tears is as a flood of love. Liberated from its object, love now flows freely, powerfully, mercilessly, as rain, as sorrow, and as longing. When your heart is broken, it is broken open and in some sense your limitations in love have been removed. All the love you had for a particular person is still there but instead of attaching to an object, it floats freely. It is groundless and without reference point. Through one lens, this is a supremely painful situation. It is. But through another, it is something else. I won’t say that this something else is pleasurable, but it is real. It is real and raw and very deep and even if you don’t want it to be this way (you’d rather your love had an object), it is. And now that you’re here, up to your neck with love unbound, you could try to do something with it. Because although it doesn’t feel good, it is very, very precious. In fact it is wild and deep and basically unmanageable. This is your heart. Freed of the containment of relationship, it roars. You didn’t know all this energy and intensity was in there to begin with. What you thought was a cute little kitty-cat you now see has been a ferocious mountain lion all along.

Now available for pre-order! Go on! It will mean the world to me!!

October 29, 2009

Today we are snowed in at Shambhala Mountain Center, an extraordinary Buddhist retreat center in the Colorado Rockies. This may be my very favorite spot on earth. I’m here for a week, teaching a meditation retreat for writers. When I look out my window, this is what I see.

It’s like the best writing situation ever. There is no cell phone reception. We are almost two hours from the nearest city of any size. We spend the day practicing meditation and writing and absolutely no one or nothing can interrupt us. In the evening we meet to hear someone read their work. The snowstorm only adds to the sense of being sheltered, hidden away, embraced, at peace. Each day is a deeper experience of relaxation, joy, and creativity.

This sounds good, no?! It is. However, I can’t help but notice that the more fun it is, the more my students cry. During meditation, I see people tearing up. When I give my little talks on creativity, some eyes well up. When people pull me aside to chat about this or that, before they can get any words out, they begin to cry.

It’s awesome.

Awesome because, in the Shambhala tradition, sadness is seen as a mark of warriorship. Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche says that this tenderness is the first tip of fearlessness. You are not afraid to open yourself to the world and when you do, everything touches you. This is just how you are built.

When you taste your own gentle goodness, it can be quite frightening. If I had say, $10,000, for every time someone said to me, “Well all very well and good about this softness thing, but what happens when I get back to the real world?”, I’d be a millionaire. My friends. THIS is the real world. The real world is where people are kind to each other, help out in times of need, celebrate each other’s victories, and maintain a powerful sense of inner balance that enables them to maintain these qualities through good times and bad. That other place—the one built on speed, aggression, insecurity, and “me first,” do you really think that is the way we were born to act? I think not. Babies are born soft and open and loving, they don’t come out of the womb demanding better accommodations, hoarding away milk and toys from other babies, or giving people the finger in traffic jams because they’re in a hurry to get to a playdate. (Although that last one I’d kind of like to see.) That is the phony world, the one built on misconception after misconception about what is valuable, meaningful, and important. I mean, really.

So how does one return to the fake world without slipping right back in to old, bad habits? How do you protect your gentle, open heart so that it doesn’t get stomped?

The first thing to remember is that your heart only needs protecting if what you’re trying to build is a comfortable, threat-free life that shuts out whatever and whomever you don’t like. (Which is actually impossible, but don’t tell.) However, if what you’re after is a life of authenticity, wakefulness, joy, and deep connection with others, an open heart is your best friend. It is how you take the world in.

This doesn’t mean you need to walk around like a sap, being all hushed and new-agey and more blissed out than thou. A person with an open heart can be spotted in this way: They laugh hard. They cry a lot. They pretty much like themselves. They question themselves and experience doubt frequently. They get their feelings hurt. They are there for you in a crisis. They keep trying to love you and get you to love them back.

One reason people cry so much on retreat is because they glimpse this possibility and it is so incredibly touching and real. The trick is to stabilize your heart in the state of openness so that you can use it for good instead of being overwhelmed by your own sensitivity. It is possible to do this. A daily meditation practice really, really helps. I mean REALLY. In fact, I don’t know how one would practice openheartedness without it.

So I super-strongly suggest to my students that they continue to practice meditation in some reasonable way, like 20 minutes a day or 10 or 90, whatever they can do. And beyond this, I try to explain the three steps that can make their meditation more than an exercise in relaxation (not that there’s anything wrong with that), but a sacred declaration of aliveness and goodness. I write about them in my upcoming book, The Wisdom of a Broken Heart, and I’d like to share them with you now.

Before you do your spiritual practice:

1. Make offerings. When you walk into a shrine room of any religion, there are often flowers, candles, and incense. These are offerings. You can make a similar type of setup in your home, by creating a smaller version of a traditional shrine. Or you can simply place some fresh flowers next to a picture of someone or something you love and aspire to emulate. You can light a candle as an offering of warmth, light, and safety. And, when in doubt, the best offering is one you can always make, no matter where you are or how you feel and that is your own experience in the moment.

Before meditation, touch in with how it feels to be you right now. Maybe you feel great, crappy, or all of the above. Feel it. Offer it to whom or whatever you hold sacred by saying something like, “I offer exactly who I am right now to the highest wisdom and goodness I can imagine.” You don’t have to know exactly what this means, just rouse a sense of generosity.

2. Request blessings. It’s totally OK to ask the world to bless you. And who do you ask? If you are a Christian, you could ask Jesus. If you are Buddhist, you can ask for your teacher’s blessing. You can seek the blessings of magic if you are an Alchemist, of Gandhi if you’re a pacifist, of the earth if you’re a Pagan. The idea is to seek the blessings of your lineage.

What lineage do you belong to? Is it a religious tradition? Maybe so, maybe not. Maybe you’re of the lineage of poets or scientists, of painters, mothers, CEOs, crusaders, or lovers. Get a sense of your heart’s lineage and, in whatever way feels natural to you, request the blessings of that line.

After doing these two things, do your spiritual practice, whether it is meditation (hint, hint), journaling, hiking, or reading something uplifting.

3. Dedicate the merit. Once you have finished your practice, connect with whatever benefit you may have created for yourself through undertaking this practice. Once you have this felt sense, give it away. In whatever way feels natural for you, make the aspiration that the results of your practice could be used to also benefit others. This is very important. My beloved teacher, Sakyong Mipham, says that not dedicating the merit is like not hitting the “save” button on your word doc before shutting down.

So try these things. I wish for you the precious and potent tenderness that comes from acknowledging your own basic goodness.

From the bottom of my laughing, crying, cranky, needy, and deeply loving heart, Susan