Your Money or Your Life rides again

Your Money or Your Life has long been due for a revision - weeding out and/or replacing old stats and stories, tips and assertions. I undertook this task starting in January, unaware that in August as I put on the finishing touches, the dominoes of the financial system would start to fall and that my publisher, Penguin, would want the book out by December. It's in bookstores December 10 and I'll be on tour in January. My old co-author of course is Joe Dominguez, but my new one -the one who went over every word with me, checked every stat, egged me on - is long-time sustainable consumption leader Monique Tilford. Look for her on the East Coast and me on the West Coast, along with the financial planner who helped us redo the investing chapter, Mark Zaifman. On http://www.yourmoneyoryourlife.info/ you can find the tour schedule, our blogs and videos, the chapters from the prior edition that are now significantly different (in case you want to go back to the original), an excellent summary of the book and a link to the 9-step resources developed the non profit - the New Road Map Foundation - that Joe and I and friends cofounded in 1984.

Ground Hog Day - Take Two

On February 2, so legend goes, the Ground Hog pokes his up his head after a long winters' nap. If it's sunny, he sees his shadow and it scares him so much he goes back to sleep for 6 weeks.

The movie by that name is a great spiritual teaching tale. A world weary reporter, sent to report on a hick town celebration of Ground Hog Day, discovers that he wakes up again and again on the same day - there is no tomorrow. Nothing he can do can move time forward and he becomes more and more reckless, knowing there will be no consequences as there is no future. Only when he actually gets over himself and becomes a loving human being does the clock start ticking forward again.

Hmm. And what does this have to do with me? I'm a bit shocked after a long snooze about the shadow I cast - and I'm looking for a way to not get stuck in my reactions. Read on...

As Your Money or Your Life hits the bookstores and nearly the top 100 bestseller list on Amazon - and as I become more active in support of it (blogging, website, emails) - I'm visibly reemerging from my 5-year 'sleep' (to heal my body and life). More light is shining on me. Several times in the last month or so I've winced at how my words and work are being picked up by others. More than once something I considered "mine" - words, website, name even - is used by someone without request or attribution. Part of me wants to say, "Hey, wait a minute, that's mine" and another part knows that no words or ideas are mine - they are just my unique re-mix of language and thought honed over thousands of years by my ancestors.

I pondered this. When is it wise to defend what is mine, and when is it wise to just let it go?

My work on freedom and limits helped a lot. Freedom, I saw over years of thought, is only possible in the realm of spirit. Only in spirit (or in love) can we occupy the same space at the same time with another - happily. The rest of the time we're in the everyday material world. Here, everything that exists has a boundary. As Meg Wheatley said in a Simpler Way, everything that exists has a purpose, an identity and a boundary. To define anything - a cell, a relationship, a book - you need to say where it begins and ends. You say what it is by what it isn't. Like a girl's club means "no boys allowed". If boys are allowed into the girl's club, well it loses its identity - and purpose - and value.

If I put my name on a combination of words and ideas, that makes them in some way part of my identity. If someone sees my name on the outside of something, they know there will be a particular kind of value inside. I don't want to be selfish or stingy - but if my name is to mean anything, if my words are to carry value, if my special honing of ideas are to carry weight, there needs to be some patrolling of whether others have taken them as their own. No?

I brought this dilemma with a fellow writer. He said when he was younger and his ideas were lifted without attribution he felt flattered. People more famous than him thought his stuff was smart enough to put it in their own work. After he got older, though, it bothered him that things he'd written were reworked by others who then put their names on it without giving credit.

"And now?" I asked, thinking I'd find a clue to being more spacious about my work being taken without permission or citing source.

"It still bothers me," he said. He went on to talk about an early book (see I forget the name) about the Internet where the author talked about the etiquette of the net is "hyperlinking" - that if you lift something from another site you hyperlink to acknowledge your source and give your reader a chance to see beneath the surface to those who inspired and informed you.

Both these ideas - boundary and hyperlink - are about respect. Understanding where you end and another begins, and having good manners - courtesy - at the meeting ground. In fact, life IS about relationship – and so it’s about politely, firmly, lovingly and incessantly negotiating boundaries. The Ten Commandments are largely about knowing who owns what and respecting that.

When I first heard a Native American introduce himself I was puzzled by his recitation of tribe, clan, parents. My hyper-individualistic US self wondered why they all hadn't liberated themselves from their past. Over time this recitation grew on me though. I saw that they had something I'd lost before I was born - a sense of belonging to a people and a place. About a decade ago I spent a year doing weekly Lakota sweat lodges and sank deeper into a worldview that calls on ancestors and spirits to guide, protect and defend the living. And of course just by getting older I've lost some of the arrogance of thinking of myself as having made/remade/invented myself.

Through honoring their source, the native people's make themselves stronger, not weaker. They can call on the power of their ancestors to see them through. They know they are part of a living web of relations - and walk always with respect. They understand the hoop of life, that all things are connected. Respect for the other is how they walk.

So I now see that honoring source, hyperlinking, respecting boundaries is part of what keeps the wholeness of all life in balance through time and space. Ignoring these linkages, taking as one's own what come from the web of life, unbalances, disturbs and trivializes life. Value is held and preserved and increased by a proper boundary just like wine or cheese, sealed off from the outside, improves over time.

I want to be honored - asked permission and acknowledged - because that wince at my words or name or ideas being taken without attribution is there to defend the integrity of life - not just my sorry ass ego.

So how does this work in the world of the web where ideas and text and words fly around like drops in an ocean, losing source as soon as they are released? I don't know. At this level I just need to "get over it" when I see bits of "me" zip by with someone else's name on it. That's life now. If it matters to me, I need to politely write the person/website and say, "If you got that from me, would you be willing to link to my... website, book, blog. Thanks - and I'm glad you liked what I said enough to copy it." I need to let others know what feels like good manners to me. I need to ask for a hyperlink.

If it cuts deeper - if people take my name or work and use it in a way that is antithetical to my intent - I need to defend that boundary with even more vigor - but no less inner ease.

And as I go through life - googling to supplement my addled brain - I need to also hyperlink, honor source. If I don't then I trivialize my own thought and I make the whole web of life and knowledge more superficial. I act as if I am self-made. I disconnect with the wisdom of my elders and others. I make the world more lonely and flat.

As an originator of many things, I am happy when one of my creations takes off and becomes a source for others. Soon enough the hyperlink is lost - and others put their own stamp on it for so long that it becomes truly theirs. My only hope is that I launch my ideas with such clarity, integrity and love that some perfume of that intention lingers even through many iterations. All signals fade eventually, though scraps of every utterance reverberate through all time and space. I know that now, as I reemerge from my tunnel and see the light again, others will again notice, imitate, admire, align with, rebel against and more whatever I put out into the public domain. If I react, I'm stuck in Ground Hog Day until I remember love, remember to soften and share and get over myself.

At the same time, I'll be a stand for honoring source - in my own work and with people who work with me. We all need to be way more humble about what we've actually really really originated as well as a lot more clear about where our boundaries are and how we want others to treat us.

Footnotes for this set of thoughts -- I thank Tad Hargrave and Marilyn Daniels from inspiring these thoughts, Leif Utne, Victoria Castle and Helen Gabel for listening to me chew on them endlessly, Suzanne Fageol for being a stickler on footnotes in the new edition of YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE and also my old webmaster for presenting me with the challenge of wondering what is mine at all. And of course everyone else... this could get ridiculous, but I feel far stronger naming those who've been my teacher than acting like I did it all by myself.

Keeping Quiet - A poem for this time of year

This is my Christmas message for 2008. I've gotten so much beautiful response that I decided to post it here for anyone and everyone to find. I'm even finding others have picked up this Neruda poem for their own season message in emails and on websites. May his words keep moving and moving - around the world and in our hearts.

December 20, 2008

Dear friends around the world,

I'm snowed in, and savoring the quiet and beauty. With all the madness of shopping and emails and busy-ness, I offer as my holiday greeting an invitation to pause as Pablo Neruda suggests in the poem below.

I'll be busy myself soon enough. With the reissue of Your Money or Your Life (see the site), I'll be on tour in January and am already getting audiences and reporters asking me what to do about the unfolding economic crisis. While the questions are looking for simple, quick fixes this is a problem decades in the making and I can think of no better tonic right now than, as Neruda says, to keep quiet. Settle down. Settle in.

As with any trauma, we need to stop, feel the impact, tell the story to friends, know we are alive and safe, trace how we got there and if there was some lie or blindness involved -- and choose again, choose anew.

Liam Moriarty posed these "what can we do questions" to me last week in a local NPR interview. Click to listen. It's short and I think it carries the spirit I carry now.

With deep wishes to each of you for a wonderful season of quiet and a richly loving New Year,

Vicki

----------------------
Vicki Robin
www.vickirobin.com
Co-author, Your Money or Your Life
www.yourmoneyoryourlife.info
Box 1501,
Langley, WA 98260
Business Phone: 206.931.8162
Home (personal calls only): 360.221.2251

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Keeping Quiet - A Callarse

Pablo Neruda
(Translation from Peaceful Rivers)

Now we will count to twelve

and we will all keep still.

This one time upon the earth,

let's not speak any language,

let's stop for one second,

and not move our arms so much.

It would be a delicious moment,

without hurry, without locomotives,

all of us would be together

in a sudden uneasiness.

The fishermen in the cold sea

would do no harm to the whales

and the peasant gathering salt

would look at his torn hands.

Those who prepare green wars,

wars of gas, wars of fire,

victories without survivors,

would put on clean clothing

and would walk alongside their brothers

in the shade, without doing a thing.

What I want shouldn't be confused

with final inactivity:

life alone is what matters,

I want nothing to do with death.

If we weren't unanimous

about keeping our lives so much in motion,

if we could do nothing for once,

perhaps a great silence would

interrupt this sadness,

this never understanding ourselves

and threatening ourselves with death,

perhaps the earth is teaching us

when everything seems to be dead

and then everything is alive.

Now I will count to twelve

and you keep quiet and I'll go.

Kurt's Car Fast

My goad for doing the airplane fast from thanksgiving 07-08 was Kurt Hoelting, a local fisherman and meditation teacher who announced his commitment to not getting into a car for 2008 and not traveling more than 100 Km from home. His blog is http://insidepassages.blogspot.com/2007/12/circling-home-welcome-to-journey_13.html.

I just went to a solstice celebration which completed his year. It was at a beautiful retreat center hall on Whidbey Island. So much snow had fallin in the week before that most events were cancelled, but Kurt persevered and so did we - 70 or more of us showed up for him, for the inspiration of his year and for our own commitment to stretching beyond comfort and assumptions and into braver ways of living.

He offered the following list of learnings from his year, which involved not just NOT doing cars but hiking and biking and kayaking the beaties of his 60 mile region. His learnings are so like mine i wanted to share them with you:

o If we decide to do something, and if we decide that everything worthy of our love hangs in the balance, its amazing what we’re capable of

o Living without a car is challenging, but completely within our capacity

o Making these changes has been easier than I imagined. I can no longer imagine feeling bored or confined here.

o The benefits of this experiment have exceeded the costs by a country mile

o Staying close to home and actively exploring my home terrain has vastly increased my sense of connection and belonging in this place

o My inner life feels richer and more grounded than it did a year ago

o My sense of connection to my neighbors and gratitude for my community is much stronger

o I’m in better shape physically than I’ve been for years, and I’ve hardly even been to the gym

o The daily act of moving from place to place is lived time now, rather than lost time. I’m not checked out when I’m traveling. I’m much more fully engaged.

o I am far less prone to seasonal depression and feelings of despair about the world. I am more open to the truth of what we face, without being so overwhelmed by it.

o I am much more willing to share my gifts and talents without the burden of feeling that my actions are continually out of alignment with my deepest values and convictions. I have a long ways to go in that re-alignment, but I feel I’ve made an honest start, and I feel very encouraged by that.

o I’m far more hopeful that serious change is possible, that we each have it in us to make real changes on a scale commensurate with the challenges we face.

o I am more willing to take other risks now, and I’m not nearly as afraid of what the future might hold.

· When reality steps forward with ultimatums as large as these, and when we turn toward these truths with curiosity and intelligence rather than fear and denial, then the real adventure begins, and there is no measuring what we are capable of.

The Airplane Fast ends

Can you believe it's been a year?

A year of no flying. A year of sticking fairly close to home. A year of settling, grounding, growing roots, growing a bit of moss.

I began the fast because I could no longer pretend that the benefit to the earth, life and the future of my flying was equal to the cost. In other words, I was out of integrity. I was a hypocrite. I was a fat-footed Western Boomer exercising the privilege that comes with being white, educated, American and still somewhat in demand.

I also began the fast because I realized I was now unaware of what needs were being filled by flying, but knowing my identity was somehow tied up in getting up up and away.

I wanted to be down and here. I wanted to know myself without the dazzle of travel. I wanted to belong where I am, be part of someplace and not just a someone, anyplace.

After a few self-conscious months of twitching and itching as the identity of traveler flaked off I stopped completely thinking about what i WASN'T doing and enjoyed ever more the finer things in life. Finer as in seeing finer details of the life I am in - the growing season, the neighbors, the village, the buzzing of the community, the morning light and winter skies, the plays and events. In doing that, I also seemed more settled in myself, seeing deeper in with the surface a bit less roiled. Mind you, "settling down" for a person whose life metaphor is 'on the road' was never appealing, but I had no idea that letting the surface settle would reveal in so much alluring detail the contours of the infinite facets of a single day.

One beautiful long meditation on Orcas Island centered on the classic spiritual question, "Who am I?" The deeper in I went the more I was aware of a self-congratualtory and incessant narrator who is constantly interpreting and evaluating and delightfully chatting and theorizing about my life. I stopped to listen and, like a thief caught red handed, the voice skulked away. In its absence I became aware that I am quite thoroughly a figment of my imagination. That I am nothing, and that nothing is the doorway into being "it all". I became a big motherly surround holding everything within my embrace effortlessly. Who, I asked, do I think is listening to my merry chatter? Who am I trying to impress? For whom am I reshaing through words my raw self into an entertaining persona? For hours I could shuttle back and forth between ecstacy and ego. It became crystal clear that relinquishing ego wasn't good, wasn't virtuous, earned me no brownie points in heaven. Surrendering what isn't real (though entertaining) is the ticket to heaven. What a joke! (of course that voice loves blogging - if you ever read this it has secured it's greatest pleasure... someone listening).

I think who traveled was that voice - the entertainer seeking an audience. I was looking for the echo of myself to know I am somebody. This year has been like a vacation from the demands of the public self so the private self could hang out and have a good time. I'm not fundamentally different, only I am more aware of myself, living at a deeper layer of myself and not so into myself. jeesh. what a joke.

The airplane fast has certainly not been limiting me. Instead it's been limiting a habitual behavior so I could live more in reality. I don't know if the fast did this, but I am more aware, as i appreciate life's finer things, that I am now in the autumn years. I've definitely rounded a bend. Cancer whipped me into the curve and in this year - the fifth since diagnosis - I've slowed enough to make it around the bend. The tasks of the Autumn years are so different and delicious. In my Summer I couldn't imagine how what interests me now would be any fun. What's here, though, is a concentration of the juice of my life, a simmering to blend the flavors of all the many adventures, an asking, "What is this really that I've been through? What are the tasks now? What does it now seem I landed here to learn and have I learned it? What do I do, if anything, with all I've accumulated?" I call myself a "baby elder" because I sense I'm in preparation for another phase and quite awkward in this new skin.

This year has, as well, been productive and challenging. I took on to rewrite Your Money or Your Life and helped produce the second global conversation week and found myself, by the end of the Summer, on a fast track to being out in the world again with the update arriving just as the market finally lost its footing and began to tumble. Looks like my five years of cancer and healing, my five years of getting planted and rooted in self and community, my five years of becoming a thinking feeling body rather than a head with something hanging off it, my five years of fitting back in to life after a big wild ride out there as a 'player' - those years are done and i'm again saddling up and riding out.

My year just ended with a flight at the end of November (last flight was November 2007) to SF to, in part, meet with my colleagues on this new edition of Your Money or Your Life. And in January I'm on the road for real speaking in Denver, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Portland, Vancouver, San Francisco, Seattle and environs.

It's good to belong where you are before being somewhere else - and now i'm ready.