Author Archives: Regina Clarke

10 Quotes That Explain American Politics

The American Way…

These 10 quotes that explain American politics are but a small selection. Americans have been watching, observing, and commenting on their politicians for several hundred years. As yet, there are very few positive offerings, for most appear (how extraordinary!) to doubt the actual effectiveness of our elected officials to uphold the principles of our Founding Fathers.

As July 4th approaches, here are a few observations that struck me as relevant today, in this election year, suggesting that our candidates would do well to remember the people at least half the time (instead of themselves all the time) when they set up their eager agendas.

Some American Classics

“Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.” –Mark Twain

“The taxpayers are sending congressmen on expensive trips abroad. It might be worth it except they keep coming back.” –Will Rogers

“I love to go to Washington, if only to be near my money.” –Bob Hope

“There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.” –Mark Twain

“This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when a baby gets hold of a hammer.” –Will Rogers

“Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.” –Ronald Reagan

“Members of Congress should be compelled to wear uniforms like NASCAR drivers, so we could identify their corporate sponsors.” –Caroline Baum

“If his IQ slips any lower, we’ll have to water him twice a day.”
–Molly Ivins, about a member of Congress

“Congress is so strange; a man gets up to speak and says nothing, nobody listens, and then everybody disagrees.” –Will Rogers

“We have the best Congress money can buy.” –Mark Twain

If You Were Offered Enough Money For Life, Would You Take It?

It’s a proven fact that when people win the lottery–in other words–have enough money for life–some of them stay where they are at the same job, and in the same house, and almost all of them are broke within five years.

What’s going on with that?

Do We Want Enough Money Deep Down in Our Hearts?

Lots and lots of websites in the personal development field offer answers. The owners of those sites are experts, and the fact that they have the ability to help people find a better way to live their lives is proven, too. They all share one common thread–our choices are driven by what we believe.

So if we believe having a limited supply of money and living in the same house forever is good for us, we don’t adapt happily if those factors change. If we believe we should not have more money than other people (not a problem celebrities and politicians tend to have), then our lifestyle will be modest at best. If we believe having a million dollars and more is scary, then winning the lottery is a burden we are only too glad to drop, by letting the money vanish as fast as possible. If we are disdainful about money, feel it is not spiritual or valuable in any way, we can be sure it is unlikely to show up in our bank account.

What Beliefs Make Us Sabotage Getting Enough Money?

I’m no expert. These are just a few meandering thoughts based on reading and studying over two thousand websites over three years on the subject–partly because I was driven to find out how the rich get rich and partly to find out why our beliefs run us so very, very well. I have had a personal investment in both subjects, but I am still an amateur.

However, I think I can safely name three beliefs that keep us treading water instead of taking a deep dive into not just being financially free, but free in spirit–because the two go together. They do. You’d be surprised how much. With more than enough money, you can help the world and be in service to the planet. If you have only enough money to survive on, you can’t. Anyway, here are the three:

Certainty we are just holding on financially by our fingernails (even if it isn’t factually true)
Conviction if we have money we are bad people (even if we are good)
Fear of doing better than our parents, grandparents, and/or ancestors

What About All the Greedy People?

Yes, they’re out there (and include a lot of celebrities and politicians). The thing is, having money doesn’t make you one of them. The truth is we use that idea as an excuse. Maybe even as a way to feel proud of ourselves for not having enough money. Who knows where our resistance comes from. But my research suggests to me we’d do well to find out. Living on the edge, living with a moral tenet that isn’t true, or buying into an ancestral mandate–all three are beliefs that leave us in the dollar-less dust, metaphorically speaking.

So What Happens If You Say OK to Changing Course and Letting Money Flow into Your Life?

I can’t pretend on this one. It IS scary. You could lose it, get it taken by con artists, have relatives clamoring at the door for a handout, discover old friends are upset with you, and some new ones are a little too eager.

At the same time, you have a power, freedom, and choice that you’ve never known before. You have the chance to see what you’ll do with it all.

The Risk of Having Enough

And this is why it’s scary–you get to know who you are when you really do have the means to help the world in your own unique way–and you get to find out firsthand if that is what you want to do–and even more to the point, what you choose to do. Most people would rather not face that revelation.

How about you?

Love the Self Regardless of What Has Been and Is

We so often forget that we are here to love the self regardless of what has been and what is. It is an unconditional existence, this life–that is, it is given to us by God without strings attached. Our presence is its own justification for being. It isn’t something we have to earn or deserve.

But how seldom we are able to accept this. Our most frequent thought is that we are unworthy. If we don’t say it out loud, we think it, which is just as powerful a means of persuading ourselves we are right. We act as our own harshest critic most of the time. How often in a single day do we tell ourselves we are loved and have significance, no matter what is going on? How often do we dare to suggest to ourselves that we are precious evidence of God’s presence on earth? Our habit–and our choice–is to deny such things readily. Far easier, we seem to find, is it to declare we have done nothing to deserve God’s love and care.

What makes us deny our own validity? We hold on to more reasons perhaps than we can count, drawn from and influenced by family, society, culture, experience. There are people working with remarkable acuity in deciphering some of the reasons for us, people whose work is extraordinary, like Margaret Lynch, Eckhart Tolle, Mary Morrissey, and Anthony Robbins. There are such effective modalities, like Ho’oponopono with Dr. Hew Len, the work of Jane Roberts in the Seth books, and the energy healing of Donna Eden. They all continue a tradition through the ages of helping to empower others. In the early twentieth century another group of people appeared doing the same thing, including among them Ernest Holmes, Edgar Cayce, Emmett Fox, Napoleon Hill. The essential thought shared by these speakers and teachers is that we are inherently worthy. They seek to help us remove the blinders we have accepted to this truth and to know our own inner light, which is always and forever with us.

What about our mistakes, some of which could be egregious in our minds, or what about injustice done to us? Thoughts of both reinforce our feelings of inadequacy. It is just about impossible to let go of those thoughts–they stay clamped to us.

The thing is, letting go is actually very simple. We say out loud “I let go of this.” We say it every time the same thought appears. If we do this faithfully for a week, something amazing–something astonishing–happens. The thought loses power, may even become entirely powerless, and stays that way. At whatever level we want it to exist, or not exist, so it is.

The dragonfly lives in its nymph state for several years, but only a few days or weeks once it has emerged into the adult stage. During that time it has been known to migrate across oceans, and its flight patterns can move in all directions in the instant, if it needs to, as well as hover in one place observing what is going on. Like all non-human creatures on the earth, the dragonfly has a complete acceptance of its rightness of being. How long it exists is not in question. It goes around obstacles in the midst of flight. Realizing its full potential is a given, for whatever time it lives.

We are the same, whether we see this yet or not. We are living even now in the rightness of our being.

Illuminations of Spirit

Infinite Variation

If we do not look for the infinite variation that surrounds us, we are closing ourselves off from illuminations of spirit that can bring the awareness we are never alone, or separate, or lost. The truth is that we are always being given guidance and we are always being loved by All That Is.

Evidence of this lies in our unique selfhood, which in its vitality illuminates our days and has been offered to us as a gift. It is confirmed when we allow ourselves to feel compassion toward the unique vitality of each other and of all the creatures of the earth.

Allowing Grace

Our being here is no accident, and our life purpose is no mystery. Our job is simple–allowing God’s grace into our life however it shows up, and letting it work in us and through us.

Some believe we must do remarkable things to be of value, reach some kind of celebrity in our field, as if that way we know we are significant. It isn’t so. Every day there is a reason we exist, something only we can do, and the hard part is often allowing ourselves to enter that path. What if it ends in obscurity?

But there is no obscurity in a child of God. Not ever. Our human perception can merge with divine perception on the spin of a dime. We only have to say yes.

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What Is the Passion That Drives You?

“Tempête de Neige” exposé en 1842 de J.W. Turner
Snow Storm – Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth making Signals in Shallow Water, and going by the Lead

The Artist’s Way

As a writer whose life is immersed in words, I have an inevitable and contrary fascination with the passion of artists who paint and draw their images instead of writing them, people like J.M.W. Turner or Georgia O’Keeffe or Thomas Hart Benton or Monet. For them there was a need to create their works non-stop, as if they were trying to keep up with the flow of what they saw and felt before they were trapped into stasis by the avalanche of ideas that came to them unceasingly. They had nothing like the angst that writers so often describe, no blocks, no hesitation or self-doubt. With or without applause, their lives were too filled with the passion to get the image on paper or canvas to worry very often or very much about whether someone approved. Yes, they felt competitive, yes, they made choices that were sometimes flawed, and many succumbed to a life that seldom held a cautionary approach, be it with their lovers or their families or the way they chose to live. What they did do was live their passion.

Musicians are much the same. I recall Philip Glass answering an interviewer when asked if there was ever a time he didn’t think about music. He said it was always with him, that often he felt he was holding down a cauldron of sound, letting a little of it out at a time, but worlds of it waited to be released. No, he said, there was never a moment when he didn’t hear the music.

Seeding the Stories

The point here, one to be explored in other posts to follow, is that it is the same for writers. We are never without the image and sound of the words that grab us. A phrase on a piece of scrap paper is as much evidence of this as a formal page typed in its final revision. I find notes everywhere…in old boxes of forgotten stories, in the pocket of a coat, in a drawer of receipts, in a handbag, or pushed between the pages of a book. I find the outline of a story on the back of bill envelopes from years ago. They serve as the apprentice notes for stories not yet written or ones that don’t need to be, or that appear later as if out of the blue, having already been seeded, and they are as ubiquitous as breathing.

I think writer’s block is not a sign that inspiration is not there but rather a sign that so much of it is, we can become afraid of opening it up, like Glass’ cauldron. When we do, we sense the passion that won’t let go. We take a step that can’t be retracted, and we can’t assume an instant longer that we don’t care. We do. The words are there.

Thoreau’s Reflections in “Walking”

Thoreau’s reflections in “Walking” give us such a clear vision of the sacred experience of being in the natural world, and more, of being free in our soul, and knowing who we are.

It was the precursor to Walden and influenced Ralph Waldo Emerson and early environmentalists. He wrote this in 1851 for a lecture at the Concord Lyceum. What I would give for a time machine to go back there and listen.

Excerpt from Thoreau’s “Walking”

“We had a remarkable sunset one day last November. I was walking in a meadow, the source of a small brook, when the sun at last, just before setting, after a cold, gray day, reached a clear stratum in the horizon, and the softest, brightest morning sunlight fell on the dry grass and on the stems of the trees in the opposite horizon and on the leaves of the shrub oaks on the hillside, while our shadows stretched long over the meadow eastward, as if we were the only motes in its beams. It was such a light as we could not have imagined a moment before, and the air also was so warm and serene that nothing was wanting to make a paradise of that meadow. When we reflected that this was not a solitary phenomenon, never to happen again, but that it would happen forever and ever, an infinite number of evenings, and cheer and reassure the latest child that walked there, it was more glorious still.

The sun sets on some retired meadow, where no house is visible, with all the glory and splendor that it lavishes on cities, and perchance as it has never set before–where there is but a solitary marsh hawk to have his wings gilded by it, or only a musquash looks out from his cabin, and there is some little black-veined brook in the midst of the marsh, just beginning to meander, winding slowly round a decaying stump. We walked in so pure and bright a light, gilding the withered grass and leaves, so softly and serenely bright, I thought I had never bathed in such a golden flood, without a ripple or a murmur to it. The west side of every wood and rising ground gleamed like the boundary of Elysium, and the sun on our backs seemed like a gentle herdsman driving us home at evening.

So we saunter toward the Holy Land, till one day the sun shall shine more brightly than ever he has done, shall perchance shine into our minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening light, as warm and serene and golden as on a bankside in autumn.”

The Unforgettable Thalia Theater

The Thalia in the 70s

When I knew this theater, back in the day, it was just like this photo, a strange, narrow little place on 95th Street just down from Broadway, a few blocks away from where I lived. I remember the floor sloped up toward the screen, making it hard to see over heads sometimes. It was a magical place for someone like me, who had only recently come to the city from a small town. Each time I went I felt a frisson of anticipation, for no matter what film was playing, I knew I was going to fall in love with it. The old theater is long since renovated and it’s now called Symphony Space/Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theatre. I like that, being a Nimoy fan, and he was apparently a great supporter, but what a strange convergence, too–Mr. Spock and the old cinema.

Discovering Independent Films

The foreign films the Thalia showed came from Poland and India and Japan and Italy and France and Sweden. Many might seem stylized now, but I remember them as striking and powerful, from Bergman’s Wild Strawberries and The Seventh Seal to Luis Bunuel’s Belle de Jour, from Satyajit Ray’s Days and Nights in the Forest to Fellini’s La Strada, from Andrzej Wajda‘s Ashes and Diamonds to everything by Kurosawa, from René Clément’s Is Paris Burning to Alain Resnais’ extraordinary Hiroshima Mon Amour and Last Year at Marienbad–and so many more.

The Joy of Seeing Films from a Golden Time

The American and British films came mainly from the 30s and 40s, and they were enchanting, and never before seen, by me, anyway: Katherine Hepburn with Fred McMurray in the exquisitely quirky Alice Adams in 1935 or her heartbreaking Morning Glory from 1933, Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca and Bogart with Bette Davis in The Petrified Forest, Noel Coward’s precious, unforgettable film Brief Encounter, Joseph Cotton and Orson Welles in Our Man in Havana and Citizen Kane, Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt and The Lady Vanishes, Barbara Stanwyck and Fred McMurray in Double Indemnity, and Chaplin’s City Lights. The 50s and 60s got their turn, with Ida Lupino and Robert Ryan in Beware, My Lovely, John Sturgis’ The Magnificent Seven—and here, too, so many more.

The Thalia’s Enchantment

The Thalia I knew changed the bill often, and even included films from private collections and others seldom seen. It was an education of its own, an island of constant stimulation and entertainment like no other I’ve experienced since. It expanded my awareness not only of theater and film in general, but also my understanding of the boundless creativity movies have brought to us from every direction, and the enchantment of being able to experience them all.

Your Presence on This Earth Is Essential

It IS a Wonderful Life

The fact is—your presence on this earth is essential indeed. Would that we could all have a night like Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life and discover the truth—how bereft the world would be without us, and how many friends we have. We are not expendable. Every moment we exist gives something that is good to the life and spirit of everyone else.

You may want to challenge this and point out how little you can do to alter the chaos and troubles that our newscasters bring to us 24/7. You may want to point to events and experiences that brought pain and misery to you at one level or another and how the memories of these things reduce your joy in life. You may believe, based on evidence in the world, that you have no power to effect change or increase peace and love in any direction.

You ARE Unique

You would be so mistaken. Most of us have no certainty about our destiny. But one thing you can be sure of, you are not living a trial membership in the human race. You did come here for a reason and there is no one exactly like you on the planet. You are unique, and so therefore is your contribution to this Earth as it spins through an infinite space. Every word you say, every action you take, every thought you have, no one else has in quite the same way. What matters to you in your heart is the essence of who you are and it is meant to be expressed, and known, and shared.

We each have a role to play, and some are on a grand stage while they do it and everyone knows who they are. Others have a quieter role. Each way matters equally. You can conduct an orchestra, be a prodigy in some field, gain fame through talents you have, and bring happiness to a wide audience. You can also live an ordinary life in the town where you were born, go about your everyday life, and never know that the smile you gave the man you passed on the corner one rainy afternoon saved his life, because it gave him a gladness he had lost.

You Are a Light

We have no idea of our impact on others. Most of the time we assume there is none. The truth of the matter is we are a light to everyone we meet. It is not something we see—it is something they receive.

Allow yourself to remember that.

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The “Almosts” in Life

What are the “almosts” in life? They are the times we think about now and again, or maybe too often, that resonate with the poem by Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken.” Sometimes we call them “missed opportunities” or let words go through our minds like “I should have….” or wonder where we’d be if we’d only done something another way. This train of thought, if we let it linger, can bring regret, sadness, even anger and resentment. The truth is we are exactly where we are supposed to be, because we are in the life we have created. Those other paths are probabilities we’ll never know, but they don’t matter. Something inside us led us to make the choices we did that brought us to the present moment. That is what matters.

There is a theory in art that describes painting an image not by drawing the actual subject, but by drawing what is in the space around the subject, so that whatever emerges is a truer vision. If we look at the things we “almost” did, it is the same way—they are the space around us, out of which we emerged not as part of them, but as a unique subject born out of the unknown.

I have often wondered why I didn’t take this or that path that opened to me or for me. But that kind of thinking is tricky. Had I taken any of those “almost” opportunities, all the others would have closed. It is not as if all paths are open all the time—at least not in our earth-bound terms. Each one taken becomes its own world and sets up its own trajectory. We shift the trajectory each instant of time when we make a choice.

It’s often when we don’t feel we have a good enough handle on things that the other roads we might have taken, the choices we almost made, come to mind. We wish for the “almost” life.

But it is the “I” we are now that matters. So it seems important to me that we give into this life all we’ve got, trusting that it is the way it is for a reason. We are meant to live with our fullest energy and potential wherever we find ourselves, because this is our destiny here and now, not in some far away place or time that might have been. It is a wonderful unknown to reveal.

The Stories We Tell Ourselves

The stories we tell ourselves are not who we are, but we have become so used to them, we mistake the soul of us for the story itself. A frequent part of current seminars on self-improvement and personal development (see my post on Letting Go of the Past) speak about the stories that keep us stuck in the past, that can come out of painful and unhappy times and become a part of our psyche, even, or especially, if they are distortions of memory. We all do this and moving forward out of such stories can be intensely difficult. The problem is that often we treat the story as absolute truth and it can become a kind of self-imposed prison of feelings and shifting memory, what I call the vampire effect. So long as this state remains, we are never fully in touch with who we are, or what we are here for. We think we are mirroring our real self, but in truth, we are recalling an illusion.

So what keeps us from changing the narrative, and letting go of that prison, however we may have shaped it? For no matter what we tell ourselves, the design of the narrative is our own creation, and only we can change it from something negative into something life-giving. We are not in the present moment when we remember what has caused us unhappiness. We are not our authentic selves when we rely on the past to serve as our interpretation of reality. If we do, we will always be wrong.

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