Tonight while flipping channels, I made the decision to listen to the ABC Nightly News. I do my best to avoid what passes for news these days. At it’s “best”, it’s simply another medium to program your thinking. It doesn’t let you decide what to think, it tells you. Call me a Cronkite-era baby, but hey, at least he considered me intelligent enough to make my own decisions.

At it’s worst, it’s an over-glorified gossip column. What was the 2nd story of the day: The Tiger Woods car accident saga. Are you kidding me? What part of that story is actually relevant to my life or even news worthy?

I only continued to watch because I was hoping to hear something about the economic drama in Dubai but was also “hooked” in by a story about one of my favorite authors, Dr. Wayne Dyer.

While I didn’t get the goods on what’s up in Dubai, I did get clear on the fact that the so-called journalist believed that what Dr. Dyer teaches (along with others like him) is just a bunch of crap and that he’s gotten rich off of it.

But I stayed with it.

You see, Dr. Dyer has been diagnosed with cancer. What became clear (to me) was that the “journalist” wanted to point out the flaw in Dr. Dyer’s teaching that thinking positively can attract wonderful things into your life. Obviously, if Dr. Dyer has developed cancer, one must conclude by his teachings, that his thoughts created it.

And why would any one create cancer?

Why indeed.

I read Dr. Dyer’s first book when I was 9 years old. I thought “Your Erroneous Zones” was a “dirty” book and I was going to sneak and read it and be a “naughty” girl. The book wasn’t anything of the kind and it started me on path of thinking beyond what I’d been taught. I would veer off course severely, but life would bring me back to his simple teachings. I don’t own every book he’s written, but I do have dreams that he will write the foreword of my book. He’s been a great inspiration.

So, tonight as I listened (quite superficially) to the reporter’s questions of Dr. Dyer, I began to think about the quote from Shakespeare’s Hamlet:

…for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

[William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2]

You see, the reporter’s point was that Dr. Dyer must be a fraud because he has attracted something “bad.”

But who says cancer is bad?

Every cancer survivor I have ever met tells me that their cancer was “the best thing that ever happened” to them.  Huh?  I always walk away from those conversations dazed and confused because I have seen the destruction cancer causes to a person and the pain those around them endure watching their loved one suffer.

Cancer is UGLY.   Of course, it’s BAD, Lisa.

I began to think about most people’s perception that attracting a million dollars into their lives would be a “good” thing.  But what if after getting that million dollars, your entire family was murdered because someone else wanted you to give up that money?  Would you see that windfall now as a “good” thing?

Let’s consider Dr. Dyer’s diagnosis.   What if from this cancer, he develops a closer relationship with his kids and grandkids?  What if he is gifted with a vision that outlines a cure for AIDS?  We have no idea what will come from this, so we are not really in a position to call it “good” or “bad.”   I believe Dr. Dyer will see the experience as a gift from Source and think and act accordingly.  This will keep him in the flow and totally aligned with Source.  I would guess that if you can manage that connection, it doesn’t matter what’s going on “out there”.  You can find total peace and harmony with what “is”, no matter what “it” is.

That’s flow.

And that’s the experience we came for.  That’s what this game is all about.

So to the critics of your thoughts create reality, I say you just don’t get it…yet.  We don’t attract circumstances, per se with our thoughts.  We attract experiences. If love is what we want to experience, sometimes the circumstances we get is heartbreak.  As f’d up as that might seem, when you learn to love deeply, unconditionally, you don’t question “how” you got there and what you “went through” to experience it.  You savor and appreciate the feeling, which is what you really wanted to attract all along.

I believe that “positive” thinking will allow your experiences to be less painful, but it will not necessarily stop the painful ones from showing up.  Those experiences allow us to re-focus and reconnect with who we say we want to be.  They strengthen our resolve to BE that person.

I Get it Now.

Thank you, Dr. Dyer, for once again helping to know something through my own experience.  Because of this story and your diagnosis, I finally understand that quote from Hamlet.  I finally “get” that I can choose how I think about any event in my life without judging it as good or bad, right or wrong.   What a huge gift to finally understand and live, “go with the flow.”

Best of all,  I can finally write the last chapter of my book, not surprisingly titled, “I Get it Now.”

How perfect.

Be well.  Stay in flow.

Today is my best friend’s birthday.

Although today we are celebrating her “arrival”, for several months we have commiserated about the challenges of living on the planet. Both of us contemplated suicide in our younger years, so death is not a conversation we avoid. In fact, we have somewhat of pact for our afterlife. If we indeed get to choose to reincarnate, we have promised each other that we would pull the other out of the line, “Sign up here to return to Earth.”

You gotta love friends like that.

This morning we laughed about her “following” me here (My birthday was last month) and how grateful I was that she made the brave choice to come after me.

You see, she has been one of the few people who has stood by me over the past few years as my former life fell apart. I have her phone # memorized (who needs speed dial??) and when I call, we can talk for HOURS. She reaches out to me when she is creatively stuck. (She’s a gifted graphic designer, so that’s pretty fun when you consider that I can’t draw a stick figure). We laugh together, cry together, create together, and always see the best in each other.

The most amazing thing about our friendship? We have never met face to face.

She lives on the coast of Oregon and about 5 years ago, I stumbled on her website. To this day, I have no idea how I found her.

But more than her portfolio spoke to me. You could see that she had the capacity to love deeply. You could see the joy she derived from creating something beautiful. Once we spoke on the phone, her amazing intuitive nature came through as well as her crazy sense of humor. She understood coaching (and is a pretty gifted one as well) and was really curious about my diversity work. (Even now, we continue to have LOTS of conversations about race, class, and politics).

She designed a beautiful logo for me that really captured my vision. I knew that I would always highly recommend her to others and that I would return to her for other design needs (Bless her heart–she’s done 1000 website designs for me!) but I never imagined that she would become the rock upon which I would lean, the shoulder I would spend countless hours crying on, in what has become the darkest period of my life.

And because of my dear, Susan, I know that there HAS to be a God(dess). It is because of her, I can see the best, the potential in humanity. And the reason that I still have hope.

Thank you, Susan. And Happy Birthday!

I am so lucky to have friends in high places.