- for Dorothy…

©2007 Archiereus Publishing

In the living meadow of Silkwere Forest, the grass is green, the sky is a tumbling joy of clouds and blue, the light wind whisps softly through the odd soft bush and the perimeter of the meadow is lined by tall secure warm pines. But these are not just any pines, these are living pines. They think. They are sentient. They love. They hurt. They feel. They watch across the eons the lives of the animals that inhabit the forest.

Deer and bear alike drink from the circular glassy pond in the middle of the meadow with no fear of each other. Almost as if a magic comes over them when they enter the clearing…no harm shall come to anyone in this place. Fear, Anger, Aggression, Abandonment, Loneliness, Anxiety and Lack all flow out of the feet of each animal as it pads through the magical grass. It flows into the absorbing blades such that when they reach the pond, they are free from their animal instincts and are able to create themselves in the order of mankind’s potential: enlightenment. 

Can you see the negative beingness flowing out of their paws and hooves as they walk? Can you sense the release of the burden that they feel? Can you see their lightness at the pond? Can you turn up the colors and sounds of the meadow in your mind’s eye and see yourself standing on the same grass with the creatures? Fearless? Full of joy? A pillar of beauty amidst beauty? Luminescent. But the animals can’t see you. Are you there now? Good.

In this land, there is no need for words, only feeling, and the feelings are light. The trees feel too and give off powerful ambient atmospheric pheromones.

But there is one tree in the grove of living trees that is cursed. It has been cursed from the Dark Wind of the Gorge. By no fault of its own, the Dark Wind has made the tree a stalwart impregnable fortress of dark energy. Forever bound to the earth and reaching to the sky, the surrounding trees have done their best to grow at an angle away from it. 

As you soar towards it to get a better look, there, you see him. 

Benny, the rabbit. 

Benny has also been accursed by the Dark Wind, but unlike the tree (which had done no wrong), Benny had stopped believing. He questioned his power. He doubted his importance. He began openly mocking the gifts he’d been given. He became cynical and depressed. His little hind legs stopped bouncing as high. He couldn’t run with his friends as well. In fact, his friends didn’t want to be with him, because they couldn’t understand why he would use words…and the words he used were so foreign to them…the dark words. Words that showed that he didn’t believe in the creator’s magnificence. In the design. In the great plan. He doubted. He got scared. 

The poison from the words became so deep that even the grass could not absorb it…and then…the Dark Wind heard his voice and made his fears a reality. For that’s all the little bunny wanted: to be right. To be right that the universe was not a safe place. That he was weak. That it all was so unfair. It was as though he had lost sight of the abundance that was right in front of him…everywhere. It was as if it wasn’t enough. 

Poor Benny. Dark Wind chained him to a tree…Cursed Tree. No one had ever gone near Cursed Tree until Benny was chained to it. Benny was sad. He realized that he’d created all this. He used his words to try to apologize to the bears and moose and his fellow rabbits…but they couldn’t understand him. Apologies existed abstractly outside of peace, freedom and abundance…outside of feelings.

The worst part was that Dark Wind gave Benny the key. The Key to unlocking the chain! But Benny was too ashamed. He knew that he had screwed up. He deserved to be chained to the tree. He had to be right. 

“See? I AM worthless. I deserve this. Everyone is better off without me in the meadow. Even the meadow’s sheeny grass can’t cure me.” 

And so it went that Benny would hop around and around the tree, his little hind legs chained. The key became a companion…the only thing that would stay with him all the time…and the tree. Eventually, he forgot that the key even unlocked the chain. His life became used to the chain, and everyone in the meadow came to understand that Benny had become happy at the Cursed Tree. Everyone seemed to forget that he himself was cursed. They began to play with him and visit him a lot more. Now, although he was still chained and could only hop so far, people began to forget that he was different than they. In time, Benny could even jump as high…no…higher than the unchained bunnies! 

Life was good again. The chain had become his friend…his identity. And the key was forgotten. He had overcome. Soon, his beautiful brown white-speckled fur became dark pink with the toxicity of his imprisonment. Even Cursed Tree began asking his fellow treemen what to expect from this new kind of rabbit. But the oldest of the trees had never seen the like. It was very strange.

Do you still see Benny sitting at the tree, now? Do you see his little body hunched and forlorn? 

Benny secretly wishes for someone to free him. He wishes that a bear would come and rip the chain and take him under her wing. Or maybe even one his fellow Shihine. Any of his rabbit friends could easily manipulate the lock and key. They could take him into their coven. He would hide and be cared for by them. He wouldn’t be a nuisance any more. 

He knows that it will never happen. Not unless he asks for help… but he can’t do that. The chain has become who he is. The easiest thing would be for him to unlock himself, but then, wouldn’t he be just like he was before? Scared? Miserable? Lonely? Who would he be then? How could anyone accept him? “My life isn’t that bad!” he’d console himself. “Besides, I got what I deserve. I’m okay with it. I’m even better than the other rabbits.”

The sun is now rising on the next day. Dark Wind blows through the meadow before any animals wake. He decides to find Benny. Expecting to find him among the other rabbits, he is shocked to see the altered rabbit still chained to Cursed Tree. He becomes enraged and yells at the Shihine. Benny is frightened awake. Dark Wind scolds him for still being chained to the tree. It was never his intention for him to be chained for 5 years! He asks why he never used the key.

Benny smiles. He burrows a few inches into the soil and produces the key. “You mean this?” 

Benny explains that he has a new life thanks to the chain. That people like him next to the Cursed Tree. He has a purpose. He makes a difference. 

Dark Wind roars in anger. He berates the incompetent rabbit for learning nothing, seeing nothing and living inside his own whiskers. It was never the intention of the chain to imprison. It is the purpose of the chain to empower. He screams at the poor bunny that he has never seen any Shihine be more stubborn, self-hating and yet more powerful than Benny. Benny can do anything he wanted if he could only see… he would see that his destiny was for something wonderful…something that no one in the meadow had ever seen…

With that, Dark Shadow vanishes with a sonic boom that rattles the bark of the trees. Benny is left stunned. He is afraid. The idea of using the key begins to expand in his little bunny belly for the first time. It is like a ball of fire that cannot be stopped. The chain has been his friend for so long. Even Cursed Tree is his close friend. He looks up at the tree while holding the key in his paw. His sweet eyes gazing at his friend…”Why am I cowering in fear?” thinks Benny. His ears are folded back. “Why am I so afraid?”  Cursed Tree looks down on his frightened companion with sympathy. 

Then Benny, after using words all his life, begins to feel. He begins to use words.. but stops. His feelings take over. Sadness. Sadness of losing the life he’s created…his friend… his identity in the chain, the horrible callouses around his ankles, his pink color… All of it is him… yet all of it is false. For the first time in years, Benny feels. He feels the cost of his lack of vision. He projects his feelings toward Cursed Tree. Cursed Tree sends feelings of support back. 

Benny, overwhelmed, cries. He cries hard. He doesn’t want to leave what he knows. It is safe being shackled to Cursed Tree. But he also knows that he is not fulfilled. Not happy. Not really. And he realizes that no one is going to help him. Not a bear, not a fellow Shihine, no one. They don’t want to, because they are afraid too. They are afraid of what he might become. They can only create him as big as he can create himself. His little rabbit tears dissolve into the roots of Cursed Tree. And Cursed Tree begins to cry too. For the first time in 500 years. 

Only Cursed Tree is crying, because he knows something that Benny doesn’t. 

Benny has no faith. No vision for faith. 

He only has hope in a future he can be sure of. Cursed Tree knows that Benny’s worst fear is leaving the chain behind without having something “for sure” to go to. Cursed Tree would have used words to tell him that years ago, but Cursed Tree has no mouth. Cursed Tree could only be there for Benny silently. He so hopes now that Benny will see that the essence of faith is creating things hoped for in the future whether they materialize or not. His tears, now, are tears of hope and joy that Benny might see it for the first time.

Fifteen minutes pass. Benny is exhausted and spent. He looks at the pond that he has longed to drink from. He looks at the animals that are now drinking and frolicking happily. He looks at his shackles. He looks at the key still in his paw. He looks from one to the other. Strangely, he looks up into the tree canopy above him. It seems as though the sky is calling to him. He doesn’t know why. He’s never felt this way before…then again, he’s not felt in a long time. 

Something in him clicks…

Benny flips onto his side to expose the keyhole in his shackles. He bravely inserts the key into the hole and freezes. His little rabbit lower lip sticks out as another small tear falls onto his pink fur. He looks up at the tree… a giant wave of support feeling engulfs his little frame. He turns the key…

The shackles fall off with a double-clank and sheen of chain. Hairless bloodied rings of flesh are exposed from where the shackles were on his legs. Then, the pain..

Searing pain. 

The flesh exposed to air for the first time in 5 years. Benny writhes on the ground in agony at the unexpected sensation. He screams and wails as loud as his little rabbit voice can render. The meadow animals race to him to find out what the matter is…and when they see the shackles open, they know. They step back and give him their support without doing or saying anything. For there is nothing to be done. Only support. Benny has to face his pain, but he will not do it alone. 

When the agony subsides, Benny sees that he is surrounded by love. He is happy to see everyone supporting him. He starts to speak, but then catches himself. He sends his feelings of gratitude instead. They respond. Their powerful feelings enfold him in a way that he couldn’t receive before. 

In a flash, the fear comes on again as it had before. He is unhappy, things aren’t right, he’ll never fit in, who was he to be… His heart beats quickly… but he is not the young Shihine that he had been before. He marshalls his strength and thank the fear for protecting him…”but I’m choosing to see this another way.”

He rolls into a sitting position. He tests his free legs by hopping just a little bit. He hops a little more…and more… until he hops just farther than the chain has let him go in 5 years. It is ground his paws have not felt in an age. He turns and looks at Cursed Tree for approval… A huge wave of approval nearly knocks him down. 

With a smile and leap he races toward the pond. He can almost feel the cool water on his fur and the magical grass healing his legs… but there is something very wrong. The ground feels nearly textureless…the ground is moving down…the sky is lowering…

Then with a start, Benny realizes that he is flying through the air like bird. With each hop of his powerful legs, he  sails forty and fifty feet high. The animals saw it long before Benny recognized it. The wind whips through his whiskers. He can’t hold back his joy. He lets out an excited scream. His legs have become super powerful having jumped in chains for so long. He now propels himself into the air like a bird. Indeed, no one, not even the trees, had ever imagined such a thing. 

He leaps into the water and leaps out so high that it is like rain on the animals below. Everyone is amazed, and even the Bluhui birds are shocked. 

Benny is so elated, so fulfilled, so filled with joy that there is not even a memory of his life that was…only what is now…and what will be…

Naturally, all the animals want to know how to do it…how to fly! Benny, the smartest Shihine rabbit to ever live, within weeks, has now taught the animals how to “joy-jump.” Even the bears are flying around like giant bombardiers thundering when they land. By merely changing the context of the simplest of things, impossible flight becomes inevitable.

And so it is, that the living meadow of Silkwere is more joyous and exciting that it has ever been before, because of a little rabbit named Benny…who learned what faith was.

Wouldn’t the holiday season just be weird if it were in the middle of the year? Celebrate the big gift-giving holidays and then, “back to work, you’ve got 6 more months until the New Year’s party – ” Yick! There’s just something about having Christmas, and Hanukkah stacked next to the new year that gives it such an expectation.

I suppose it doesn’t hurt that throughout our childhood lives, the holiday season not only meant gifts, it meant 2 weeks away from school and free time. For me, though, it was the time with my extended family that made all the difference. I could celebrate the holidays with my immediate family of four, but there was just something completely incomplete about not having the grandparents, cousins, arguments, laughing, and food-binge-fests around. And I miss it.

Now that all of my grandparents and half of my Aunts and Uncles are gone, I find my holidays (Thanksgiving included) to be really sad affairs. I in fact have so dreaded the holidays that I wait to put the tree and lights up until the last minute, I take as many playing gigs as I can to stay busy, I refuse to send Christmas cards or go to holiday parties – humbug! I find that I cry during the tale of “A Christmas Carol” and “The Grinch that Stole Christmas.” I relate with the protagonists in those redemptive stories. Strangely, I find that once I get the Christmas tree up along with the lights and paraphernalia, it occurs to me that I should just leave them up all year, because it makes the house so cheery.

So you’re saying, “Mark, I’m confused. Do you or do you not like Christmas?” I say, I can’t live without it. What has made it so powerful to me, however, has nothing to do with gifts, or lights: it has to do with the grandest of all excuses for a mass familial get together – that I no longer have. Thus, when the holiday season rolls around, it hurts. It doesn’t help that I’m single either. Worse yet, I live in Los Angeles, and like the rest of you Angelinos, I don’t even know my neighbors. The more I look, the more I find that lots of people feel the same way that I do. I hate that.

So now you’re saying, “Okay Mark, now I’m depressed too. Get to the ‘fix it’ part.” See, I am the “possibility” of creating miracles in other people’s lives and whether through the use of film, music, or just a conversation, I love to inspire people to live more powerful lives. Unfortunately, to be able to do that, I have to create some miracles for my life first. Specifically, I have transformed the conversation that I’ve had about the holidays: “The holidays make me sad, I don’t have extended family anymore, I hate the holidays.” So here’s the fix it part:

To transform your holidays this season, I recommend the following steps:

One: Distinguish the part of the holidays that makes you sad. Now, granted, this very first step might be considered the hardest step of all, but if you can’t figure out what “disempowering conversation” you’re having with the holidays, it makes transforming your view of the holidays tougher. You may find that at first, the realization of what makes the holidays sad brings up more sadness. This is actually a great sign, because it means that you’ve finally allowed some healing to come to a wound that has been unable to heal. Nice work.

Two: Decide what you want your holiday season to look like. Create this “new, perfect” holiday season without reservation or censorship. For me, I created simply having a holiday season where the warmth of a small family is more than sufficient for my emotional holiday expectations. Maybe for you, it’s creating a holiday where your family enjoys the company of each other, or that your pain about not having a loved one present is trumped by the love that friends have for you, or perhaps even that more homeless feel loved and considered this Christmas than at any Christmas in your past. I don’t know, but you do. Create it and own it.

Three: Determine that nothing will stop your creation from transpiring. “Mark, now I know you are a part of a cult! That’s not possible.” Okay, in conventional thinking, yes. But since the holidays are a time for the miraculous, consider the following postulate: I have created that my holidays are painful. Me alone. No one made me do it. I could be the last person on the earth on December 25th. So what? Am I alone? Yes. Does that mean that I have to be lonely? No. What does family really have to do with happiness on Christmas day? Nothing. Now, it’s easy for me to create unhappiness. I’m good at it, and so are you: “Who am I going to share my life with?” “I miss the old days” “I wish my cousins were here” “I wish I had a girlfriend to snuggle with.” I’m creating those stories independent of my circumstances – nothing to do with what’s really happening. Where we get hung up is in the fact that we have been duped into thinking that what has happened or what is creates our upset. Nuh-uh.

Is it true that I don’t have a big family any more? That I miss the old days? Yes. But that is also true for the rest of the year. Why the holiday season? Simple: expectation. Upset is based on simple unrealized expectation. If you lose the expectation (which is solely based on your past,) you can create a future that is nothing like you could have experienced otherwise: miraculous.

Case in point: last Turkey day. I hate Thanksgiving. Boring. Platitudes. Heartless conversations with my family historically. Not this year. This Thanksgiving, for the first time in my adult life, one of the most creative and talented musical families ever assembled actually sang songs in harmony together. In fact, this is the first time in my adult life that we spontaneously did anything together that we all had fun doing – much less having fun doing what we are most gifted at. Incredible! Was it solely because of my “creation” of a Thanksgiving dinner that would be a warm, fun time with a family that is typically cold and trying? Maybe. But even if we hadn’t sung songs, it is compelling to realize that I was going to love being with my family regardless of the outcome.

It’s a powerful way of being! I call it, “living into my future.” Now before you get weird on me, consider this example: you’ve just bought your plane tickets to your Maui vacation in two weeks. Tell me, how do feel at your loser job? Better right? There’s a spring in your step, you smile all the time. Why? Because you’re living into your vacation in two weeks – but you’re living into it now. Are you on vacation? No. Are you assured of going on vacation? No. You could die in the plane crash for all you know! Now, put yourself three days before you have to go home. Oops, you remember that you’re going to have to be at work on Monday. Crap. Now how do you feel? Bad right? Are you still on vacation? Sure. Then why are you feeling lousy in Maui? Because the fact is, we live into our futures every day. It has nothing to do with our circumstances, it only has to do with how we perceive them. So, if you can live into a vacation, why can’t you live into a great time with your family during the holidays? Are you guaranteed to have a great time with them? No. You could die in the plane crash. But boy, what great time you had for the three days before the plane crashed – or your Dad yelled at you after Christmas dinner. And even if he does, or the emotions of your loved one not being there get the best of you, you’ll be in a place to see what’s happening to you. Grieve. Buy more plane tickets. By the way, you can’t go to Maui without taking the initiative and courage to first give up your life the way it is, and buy some tickets.

Thus, this holiday, if my cousins don’t come, or what if they do come and they are jerks, or what if my parents yell at me, it doesn’t change how I choose to view my holidays. My view of the holidays is independent from my holiday circumstances if I’m really interested in being happy. So, I can have the meaningful, fun, loving, warm holidays with my small family, because I chose to throw out the “I don’t have what I want, so I can’t be happy” baloney, and I choose to “be” and believe that I’m going to have a great time with my family, period. You could say that I’m “creating” it in my mind before I go. You also may be surprised to find how much of your creation happens in the real world simply by you being and living into the future you’re creating!

Four: Demonstrate that since you have created your holidays to be everything you want them to be, you can create that everyone around you will have great holidays too. We are never truly happy in our lives unless those around us are happy as well. Reach out to those who are experiencing much the same sadness as you are. Be great for them. Help them create a holiday season that they can love regardless of their circumstances. It may mean more than just telling them how to create it as a mental discipline i.e. you may have do something, but it’s critical to understand that if those in your community are sad, being successful in your creation is more difficult.

So, this Christmas, I’m going to have a great holiday. Not because anything different is going to happen – although I know it will – but because of how I choose to see it. What’s more, I’m already looking forward to it. I’ve bought my tickets and the tickets of several other people in my life. It’s my hope that your holidays are the same.

Feel free to drop me a line if you’re not clear about how the power of “creating” your holiday can change a “Scrooge” view of an inevitable holiday into a new view of positive possibility.

Mark Edward Lewis

Sometimes it’s just hard to fall in love. Sometimes it’s easy. For me, though, most of the time it’s a chore. I don’t mean I hate doing it, but it does take a powerful stand to let someone else into your life. To feel with them. To open yourself to them. It doesn’t come naturally to me.

The first love of my life, we’ll call her Maggie, was a woman that I opened myself to fully. Amazing woman. Full of feminine energy and spunk. A great dancer. In fact, I learned to swing dance just so I could be with her…and I recommend all men learn to swing dance… Because of what I thought were mitigating circumstances at the time, we broke up. Two months later…she’s engaged. Talk about a heart break. It wouldn’t have been that big of a deal if the woman that I had dated before her hadn’t done the same thing. Yep. Two months after we broke up…engaged. It happened twice in a row.
So you can imagine my anger and heartbreak about Maggie. Even though we’d broken up, you don’t just “get over” a love of your life. You certainly don’t expect someone to get over you like you were nothing and then get married to someone else two months later. Drag. Heinous. So take the way-back meter and push it forward eight years. This year in fact. I find another woman that I’d just as soon spend the rest of my life with. We’ll call her Sally. She spends a week in Vegas with her friend and comes back done. Conjures up a brilliant excuse having to do with the fact that I remind her too much of her ex-husband. Of course, I’m sure it’s true since I share his name… To be fair, there were some things that I was struggling with, and I suppose I shared my internal struggles a bit too much with her (that I did at all was too much I reckon). She decides that her career is more important than me, and indeed she was a mother of three – so the energy required to do career, mommy and “manage me” has her choose to go solo. I’m crushed. Naturally. Sure, it wasn’t all perfect roses, but I was on the cusp – and indeed had – figured out the kinks and I was excited for what the future held. Not now. No chance to see them to fruition. She was committed to being right about the fact that she needs to conserve energy. In the end, I was okay with that.

So, two months go by. Can you guess where this is going? Yep. You got it. Get a call from her that she’s engaged to her ex-boyfriend who she works for. Her life is wonderful, idyllicnow. Making tons of money, happy family times, everything she’s ever wanted. It feels pretty wonderful to hear that once she got rid of her “baggage” her life took off as it were. [sic]

If I look at the situation, we’re talking, after she vowed to take at least 6 months off of dating, 3 weeks into working with this guy (who she’d sworn off) they’re smashing face. And what’s really going on? I can only guess that her insecurity around being safe (since she was adopted, divorced and an independent contractor for years) has most likely blinded her to a situation (working with her ex) that is a simple framework of safety- the absence of which will render present all the same things that she hated about him in the first place. I mean, it’s possible that they really are perfect for each other…it just seems a little too convenient and doesn’t make a lot of sense. The worst part of it was that I told her it was going to happen…twice. I just didn’t realize it was going to happen within 6 weeks. Sheesh. I realize this is quite the rant, but the question for you is this: who am I being that draws women that really don’t want to be with me? Who am I that I’m deceived into taking their words of affection and commitment at face value? Who am I that I open myself to them?

..and what is there to do about this?

I’m open to suggestions from all and any. May this not happen to any of you…although if it has, I’d love to hear about what you did to get through.

Mark L.

So, this weekend I had the opportunity to spend two days pitching Goji to 20,000 Persians. I got everything from excited yesses (about 6 of them) to near violent encounters (about 2 of them) and everything in between (mostly no’s).

Now, I’m the guy who hates pitching, hates hearing no’s, hates trying to sell someone. I don’t know what I was thinking when I said that trying to pitch arguably the tightest people group on the planet was something I was going to have fun doing. Sheesh! I figure, I pitched 3 or 4 times the amount of people in two days that I’ve pitched in my entire Freelife life… With about a 4.6% success rate. Ick. I had about a 40% success rate before…

Still, after about 6 hours, I found that I could pitch an obvious “no” and just “practice” on them. I knew that the guy was a no. Didn’t matter. I was going to practice my pitch, and I did… and some people became definite maybes. After 14 hours of it, I didn’t care if I got a no. I just kept sharing. I quickly realized that my survival mechanism (that way I get when I’m confronted) is a terrible way of trying to get someone to say Yes. This survival mechanism sounds like “I have to sell them! Get to the pitch!” Dumb. Getting related to them was not present in my speaking at all. By the second day, I found that getting related was the best way to create an opening for them to say “yes.” It also was a lot more fun. And selling Goji should always be fun.

So, what did I learn from all this? Loads. Last year I started taking on the idea that “Failure is my wealth.” What do I mean by that? Well, it might be possible that it is impossible to achieve true success without a good deal of failure. How much failure? Well, consider baseball. If you are a god-like baseball player, at the end of the season you have roughly a .300 batting average. That means that you’ve been thrown out, flied out, or struck out 7 out of 10 times. That’s a lot of not being on base. Still, we’d call that guy a god.

Most heads of sales for large corporations would expect their top sales people to do around 20% successful closings. Why? Simple. If you’ve got a sales guy that is doing 90%, it means that he’s playing it safe. He’s only going to safe prospects. He’s not playing a big game. If someone is getting 80% no’s, then they’re playing to win, as opposed to playing to “not lose.” Playing to not lose means that you’re afraid to lose, so you go to the “sure things.” So, you end up with a 90% success rate. That seems great on paper, but in reality, it sucks. Playing to win means that you’re going to lose. Get used to it. If you can lose well, then you can win…period.

What do we do then? Transform what we say that failure is. So, if you HAVE to fail 80% of the time to have true success, then you’ve got some work to do! Failure is your wealth! No failure? No success. Period. So, get excited about failure, because really, failure is a success…most people don’t have the courage to even try. You do. You’ve got the results. Congratulations!

Let’s celebrate our failures! They’re really successes! Besides, when we fail, then we can grow and get the support we need to be better. Perfectionism isn’t the answer. Excellence is. Excellence is defined as continually doing better every time. Perfectionism is defined as focusing on what’s wrong in order to get it “perfect.” In the end, your excellence will be far more perfect than your perfectionism can ever be.

So fail. Fail a lot. Celebrate the failures. They’re your wealth… and have some Goji Juice…

Your ever happy, horray-for-you upline,

Mark Edward Lewis

Just as soon as your New Year’s Resolutions have been broken, it’s time for more emotional reckoning: Valentine’s Day. If there is a holiday in the year where there are more unmet expectations, down trodden faces and anxious behaviors I don’t know of it. Why? Unrealized Expectations. Let’s face it: everyone likes being in love. Everyone. Now, you might argue that many people don’t like the responsibility that goes with being in love, but the “feeling” of being in love is a universal high that no drug can match. It is the feeling of knowing that another finds you equally as attractive as you find them, that you’ve finally found someone that you can share yourself with, that after months (or in my case, years) of searching, you’ve found someone who wants to be with you, and accepts you for who you are. Okay, well it’s also that feeling you get when that person touches you…and more. So if you’re not in love when V-day comes around, you’re a loser and a third wheel to all your “together” friends. Don’t call us, we’re busy. As a result, you get to be alone on V-day too. Sucks.

Now I’ll avoid the specifics of the reality of what “Being in Love” really is. As accurately described in the movie “What the #$%& Do We Know,” it is a simple physio-chemical reaction sent into the bloodstream from the hypothalamus. It just so happens, that our bodies are designed to react positively to those chemicals, and we “feel” in love. Thus, if you’re in a relationship merely to be “in love,” when the body’s addiction to those chemicals requires more of those chemicals than your relationship can give, you’ll tend to cut off the relationship. From there, you’ll have withdrawals which adds to the depression etc. etc. A very forensic analysis, I know. Even still, I’ve got no problem with physio-chemical reactions if they have to feel like that… and if I can distinguish them and not let them rule me. Still, this doesn’t help me with V-day.

“Then what’s wrong with Valentine’s Day?” Nothing…unless you’re single or in a relationship where the other party in your relationship wants to experience perfect V-days forever. What do you do then? How can you cope with the reality that on the “love” day of the year, the only thing you get to do is send cards to your Mom and Dad and buy a catnip mouse for your feline? Good question.

Personally, I have hated V-day since I was 7. When I was in Ms. O’Doherty’s class in 3rd grade, she always made a big deal out of holidays. I’m not sure why, but I think she wanted to be fair to the other holidays, since St. Patrick’s day was such a big celebration for her. Nevertheless, she encouraged us to give cards and make stuff for friends in class. Well, let it be known that I had a crush on Anastasia Pappas. I knew that my feelings would be obvious to everyone if she was the only one I brought a card to. So I got cards for everyone I liked in the class (8 kids) and signed them myself with personalized notes. So, young Mark gets to school on V-day and is trumped by the physical law that I was to learn in Physics 15 years later, “More mass in motion equals more kinetic energy.” Yes, everyone was checking the pink and red envelopes they were receiving for “mass” – candy. So, Mark, with his inert cards, immediately feels “less than,” and forlornly gives his cards out in the face of “What? Oh man, no candy?” So, naturally, for the rest of my life I have hated those stupid heart shaped candies posessing those ridiculous valentinian quips food-colored on them. They taste terrible, don’t you agree? Yes, the taste of rubber from my shoe in my mouth tastes better…

So for me, and since I can’t remember the last time I had a girlfriend on V-day, I have hated the holiday…totally. The candy, the expectation, the color red…everything. Funny thing is, most people that I talk to (that are single or hate their current relationship) feel the same way. There’s something in our pasts that make us cynical and resigned about a holiday where we are supposed to show love for those that love us as sweethearts. Sucks.

“So, I’m sick of hearing your sob stories. Tell me how to have a great Valentine’s Day already!” Alright. Gee, touchy. I did some research (emphasize some – I hate research) into the origins of the holiday. It is somewhat clouded in mystery, so the most reasonable postulate is the one that I chose to believe:

“In Ancient Rome, February 14th was a holiday to honor Juno, Queen of the Roman Gods and Goddesses. The Feast of Lupercalia started the next day.

“During these times boys and girls were segregated. However, the young people had a custom that began on the eve of the Festival of Lupercalia. The girl’s names were written on pieces of paper and inserted into jars. Each boy then drew a girl’s name from the jar and they were partners throughout the Festival. After being paired, the children would often continue to see each other throughout the year and on occasion even fell in love and got married.

“Emperor Claudius II of Rome, also known as Claudius the Cruel was having a difficult time recruiting men as soldiers. He believed that the men did not want to leave their sweethearts and cancelled all engagements and marriages throughout Rome. St. Valentine, a priest of Rome at the time, secretly married couples. He was eventually caught, arrested and condemned. He was beaten to death and beheaded on February 14th, around the year 270.

“Lupercalia was a feast to a heathen God. Pastors and priests of the early Christian church did away with the pagan custom by replacing the names of the girls with the names of saints. They chose St. Valentine’s Day as the day of celebration for the new feast.

“Valentine Day greetings became popular during the middles ages. During that time period, lovers sang or spoke their sentiments. Paper and written Valentines became popular at the end of the 15th Century. The oldest Valentine that exists today was made during this era and is on display in the British Museum.”
-nh.essortment.com/valentinesday_rmhv.htm

What I love about this story is the fact that originally, this festival had nothing to do with love, but rather honoring those beings that created everything. The young people were the ones who created friendships that otherwise would not have taken place in their culture. These friendships often continued and sometimes turned to marriage. I find it compelling to note that these “friendships” became so powerful that the Emperor had to change global policy to stop these relationships from continuing. So if the origin of V-day comes from a heritage of friendship and celebrating creation, how can we apply the original intent of the early Roman tradition to our mixed up modern custom?

Unfulfilled expectation is a killer. We tend to want to attach ourselves to outcomes, and when they don’t come into existence the way we want, we create upset for ourselves. Don’t have a sweetheart? In a bad relationship? Hate your past V-day experiences? Even if you have a sweetheart, these steps will work powerfully toward the possibility that you can have the best V-day you’ve ever had.

Disappear your past. What do I mean by that? Simple. Since this is a celebration of those who create, we should also create in order to honor them (depending on your religious views of course). However, in every religious holy book it is agreed that truly powerful creation can only happen from nothing. You can’t create origin when the origin smashes on top of something preexisting. Thus, for us to create, we must disappear that which would get in the way of our creation of a great V-day: your past experience with the holiday.

1. First, think back to the very first time you can remember feeling the way you do about this situation. For me, it is my grade-school example. Then, in the language of a 7 year old (or however old you were at the time), remember what you said about what happened. In my case, it was, “my love is not as good as theirs.” Brutal, right? So is yours. It becomes clear really fast how your child conversation has mutated into an “adult” version of the conversation. For me, it sounds like, “V-day makes me feel lonely, because I know that everyone else has a significant other and I don’t…because my love is no good.” It’s just an example, your results may vary… some assembly required.

Once you get your conversation, you can look at what really happened and take the meaning away from it. If you have watched “What the @#$& Do We Know?,” you’ll remember that it maintains that we have no idea what “true” reality is, because all of our tests for reality are based in a mechanism that is strongly influenced by the chemistry of emotion. Thus, you and I together can read this column, yet we can have a vastly different experience about reading it… However, regardless of what you say happened while reading the column or what I say, there exists a “real” reality about what happened that has nothing to do with our perception. It’s critical that you distinguish what really happened in your past from what you “say” happened or experienced happening. I say that kids in my class said hurtful things to me about the lack of heart shaped candies in their V-day cards. Therefore, V-day candies hurt me, and V-day hurts me. Is that true? No. What REALLY happened was that some kids said some stuff to me when I was 7. That’s it. Period. However, I MADE IT MEAN what my “story” was about it. My language based on my perception (again, tainted by emotion) defined the events in that classroom and created in my mind and for others what happened… not what really happened. What did you have for breakfast this morning? Cereal. Don’t lie. It was Fruit Loops, admit it. Which of these two things do you think more affects your being right now: cereal, or that thing in your past? The Toucan rings. Hands down. “No, but [your incident inserted here] really hurt me!” Yes, I get that… it hurt you in the past. Now? Not a chance. How is that circumstance affecting you at all now except for your allowance? In fact, the cereal, which is still being digested by the way, is REALLY affecting your being much more tangibly than anything in your past. Now, I know this is hard to get. I don’t like to be reminded of this either, but the fact of the matter is, you are totally responsible for your interpretation of your past and your emotional upset about it now. It is strictly an interpretation, and the language you use to describe it creates what it is in your future. Yes, I think that what happened to you was aweful, and I don’t condone it, but I also don’t condone you dragging it with you into your future like a badge of courage. Especially when your interpretation of it BY DEFINITION OF EXISTENCE is terribly flawed.

2. Once you can distinguish your conversation about V-day from what really happened, then you examine what it’s costing you. In my case, it’s costing me peace, the possibility to love those who ARE in my life, cynicism (which is creative death), hope, and, quite seriously, the possibility of having a significant other on V-day. Yes, I’m serious about that. If you are the stand that you never have a boyfriend on V-day, then you’re right about that – and you never will. Why? Because as humans we tend to live our lives to “be right” about everything. We make everyone else wrong so that we can be right. Have any friends that disagree with you on everything? Nope. Me neither. It’s the same with ourselves. We have to be right about who we are. Thus, if you say, “I’m so clumsy,” I’d say you’re right, because you’re creating it for yourself. I’ll disagree about who I think you are, but for you, I know you think you’re right. Plus, you get everyone to agree with you, and they “create” you to be that in their minds too… and voila, you’re bumping into things and spilling red wine on your neighbor’s angora rug in the corner. Conversely, if you change your conversation and say you’re super coordinated and everyone agrees with you… well, you become super coordinated don’t you? What you speak into existence is true for you, because you must be right about yourself. Thus, “When will I have a boyfriend on V-day?” – which really means I don’t think I ever will – speaks your lonely V-days into existence, and you don’t have the space in your life to allow anything else… and nothing else will happen. If you have to be right, at least be right about something empowering, “I am the possibility of being in love on V-day.”

So, what’s all of this costing you, really?

3. Then comes the hard part: what are you getting out of it? “I’m not getting anything out of this you moron! I just hate it!” Well, not so, pal, you love it. Like being right, we humans only do things if we get something out of it. Thus, even if there’s a bad result, like a reverse Machiavelli syndrome, we’ll do it, because what we are getting out of it is greater than the cost at the end. Since we all hate looking bad, it’s difficult to want to look at what disgusting behaviors we’re creating to perpetuate pain. For me, my payoff is the following: sympathy from others (“Oh, you poor thing… have some chocolate”), I get to be right about me, I get to be right about my past (as described above, I’m right about what I’m making it mean), and I get to believe that by being completely inauthentic (back to the sympathy), some girl somewhere is going to have pity on me, all-of-a-sudden change her desire from wanting to date a strong, complete man to wanting to date an insecure whiny man (which I am being) and solve my problem. Pretty disgusting, but welcome to my life for the last 15 years. Yick. So be clear about all the payoffs you’re getting out of your V-day hatred. You’re getting a lot, I guarantee!

4. Finally the easy part: do the math. If your payoff is greater than the cost, well, stay the way you are. You don’t really want to change, and the more you “try to change” the more pain you’ll get. Horray!
However, if the cost is greater than the payoff, you can finally disappear everything, because you really want to. You’ve gotten in touch with what it’s really costing you, and you want out. So, to disappear your past:

Think back to the very first time you can remember feeling the way you do about this situation. Distinguish your conversation about what really happened from what you made it mean (what you said about it at that time, in the vocabulary of an X year old)
Forgive yourself and anyone else involved for whatever responsibility or liability might exist there (then let it go). Change your language (create a different interpretation) about (what happened) how you describe your past (stop telling the story). Once you’ve completed and disappeared your past, you can create a new possibility for V-day and your future. Let’s take on the idea that V-day originated from starting new relationships during the celebration of our creators (which can also include parents). If this is our paradigm, what becomes possible for us?

Well, for those of us who are single, how great would it be to be committed to starting a new relationship on V-day? No, they’re not committed to starting one, YOU are. Remember, “if you want a friend, be a friend?” What could be possible there? A new friend? A relationship with someone you already know in a way that wasn’t possible before? Creating a relationship of authenticity out of the ashes and smoke of an inauthentic relationship? Creating a deeper relationship with your family and close friends? Doing random acts of kindness for someone you don’t know, have nothing to gain from them, and otherwise wouldn’t care about them? – Remember, those ancient Roman children didn’t know who they were going to be paired up with, and I guarantee dimes to dollars that many of them didn’t like their potential partner until they were partnered.

For you coupled folks, what is possible? A reexamining of your significant other’s wonder-traits? Telling them where you’ve been inauthentic with them, and recommitting to being authentic? Choosing your relationship, everything that it is and everything that it isn’t, stopping your stories and meanings about it, and creating and standing in the possibility of having the most miraculous relationship with them you’ve ever dreamed of? Maybe it’s even seeing your relationship with your significant other, realizing your inauthenticity, and breaking things off on V-day… thus creating a new relationship with yourself and with them.

And since we’re celebrating creators, why not celebrate your parents and the supernatural power you serve? If it weren’t for them, you wouldn’t have the gift of being able to have a V-day. What’s possibile if you incorporate the celebration of new relationships with the celebration of your creators? Miracles.

If you can disappear the stories about V-day from your past, share your new possibility with others in your life, and “be” that stand for yourself and others, you will have the space in your life to have a miraculous V-day like you’ve never had before.

If you want to chat further or if you’re at all unclear, please don’t hesitate to call or e-mail me:

Mark Edward Lewis

We’ve all heard those old wives-tale investment paradigms: “buy low, sell high,” “invest for the long term,” “daily compounding pays off,” “T-bills and Euros always move obliquely.” Alright, well maybe not the last one, but do you ever feel like those sayings were thrown down to us by the gods of Wall Street to deceive us? I do, every time. And you know what? I’m right. They are diversionary tactics to keep us from getting a good return on our investments. Want to know the investment secret they won’t tell you? The strategy you can use to topple their money-grubbing vice-grip on our economy? Here it is: discipline your children. Yes, your children. Nothing will bring about a more potent return on your time and money than drawing a line in the sand with them.

I’m a single parent with a nine-year old boy. I’m blessed with a kid who is one of the most well behaved and socially adept individuals I know. I attribute a good deal of our positive relationship to the fact that the kid got spanked… a lot. Now, I’m not going suggest a method of discipline, but I will say that you must utilize it whatever it is. If you don’t, monetary riches won’t save your family from the ruins of a wayward child.
If your child is anything like mine, from 2-4 years, it’ll seem like all you do is discipline them. The investment protocol is this: You ask your child, “pick up your mess,” or “don’t touch that” etc. You’ll most likely receive defiance. You ask them again defining the consequences of noncompliance. They’ll probably defy you again. Parents, your next move is the most critical point of the next 16 years of you child’s life. If you give in, give them another chance, or give grace prematurely, you’re bankrupt. They need to make sure that rules stand firm in any circumstance. Even if it needs to come from the wrong end of a swat in a populated grocery store. If you stand your ground and lay the law down precisely as you indicated, you deposit moral cause-and-effect which rolls over into maturity in their future. After disciplining, make sure they understand what happened, that you don’t hate them, and that if they do it again (which they will) the same thing will happen. Hug them. Don’t hold it over them. Go have some frozen Flaky Flix with them. You see, the flip side of investing discipline is investing quantity time. No child ever loved a parent that ignored them. Similarly, no child ever loved a parent that refused to discipline them. Of course it’s hard, but raising kids is hard.

Quantity time spent and discipline are 4000 year old tried-and-true currencies of good parenting. Although you may have to discipline your children hourly from 2-4 years, think of it as dollar-cost averaging in the uncertain climate of a child’s rearing. Besides, the return on integrity in child’s life is beyond the dreams of Avarice.

There should be a rule book for people living in Los Angeles. I’ve lived my entire life here, and I find that I still make horrific faux pas in the most embarrassing ways. This book should be offered at all LA book stores, and it should cover behavior, LA-speak, personal façades, and the LA club scene. Every page should expound on dos and don’ts of the city. Why? Because there’s no city like LA, and there are no people groups like Los Angelenos. The kind of eccentricities and embarrassing scenarios one encounters here can’t be learned intuitively anywhere else. The reason is obvious: no other city has Hollywood. Yes, Hollywood. Breeder of fame, fortune, and political power.

As you know, it’s not uncommon to see the odd celebrity doing mundane tasks around town. We’re nearly used to it…or at least we play it off like we are. You know the LA drill. Don’t stare, take a picture secretly and go one with your life. That’s all well and good unless you don’t know they’re famous.

Cut to: Mark Edward Lewis sitting in a café in Burbank that he’s never been to. In walks an exotic brunette with short hair, spaghetti strap top, bright blue eyes and a saunter four feet wide. Cut to reversal: Mark is doing everything wrong. He’s staring at her, not because she’s so striking, but because he thinks he knows her. He’s so sure of it, that when this babe looks back at him, he doesn’t flinch. He’s sure she’ll recognize him. Her frown, her wince and her look of “in your dreams, buddy” doesn’t phase him. He leaves his stool and ambles in her direction. Four feet from his fingers tapping her bare shoulder, Mark has a flicker of a memory. Cut to Flashback: His living room, a television, late night channel surfing, seeing her chiseled body smashing thugs wearing black. The bumper before commercial reads: “VIP.” Back to café and a medium shot of Mark’s hand inches away. He yanks his hand back as though from a snake. His face turns shades of red, and he slinks back to his stool muttering hindu grace. No, he doesn’t know her. He had simply channel surfed onto one of television’s most exploitative and sexist shows. He’s ashamed he even knows this woman’s face at all, but he’s relieved that he didn’t make a fool of himself and repeat the most used celebrity face-slap pick-up line in the LA club scene: “Hi. I think I know you from somewhere.” Ugh.

Yes, it was Natalie Raitano. Yes, it really happened. No, I didn’t get her number. The lesson: if you think you know someone in LA (and they’re gorgeous), it’s okay to cross into their line of sight so they see you, but honestly, they don’t know you. Making this mistake with a network television star is relatively harmless compared to the more incriminating scenarios you could find yourself in…

I’m a native. A California native. Worse, I’m a Los Angeleno native. Born, raised, and most likely will die here. I reek of surfer inflection in my English, of West Coast fashion, gait, brazenness, and rebellious long hair. I grew up in a musical family, recording in LA studios, with LA musicians from the time I was twelve. Tragic. I know AFM rules like my social security number, how to balance string player eccentricities with trumpet player pride, and I definitely know when an orchestra has lost respect for me. In LA, it happens after your first mistake. Thus, one day, like a frightened fish drowning in a bowl of applejuice, I found myself conducting a recording session in London, England, and my usual LA intuition had to be scrapped. Apparently, my session coincided with both a John Williams and a Jerry Goldsmith session…all in London.

I’m not sure how but, I still got the cream of the London Philharmonic crop. The players smelled my California aroma immediately upon arrival. These were the very players that had performed some of my favorite scores. Feelings of inadequacy permeated me as I took the stand and was announced by the contractor. The players applauded! I realized that it was a British custom, but my heart didn’t care. They paid me respect, and now I could conquer Everest. As we recorded, there were several orchestration problems that I had to deal with on the stand to my great dismay. After the second “conductor” mistake, I figured I’d lost that respect. Not so. They encouraged me on with winks and smiles even though they had every right to ridicule me. On one particular cue, the poor first trumpet player had to hit high “E”s over and over while the violins were playing sixteenth notes. Unfortunately, the violins kept blowing it, and because of the setup of the studio, we couldn’t overdub. Had we been in LA, by the third take, the lead trumpet player would have bounded into the violin section and bent his “C” trumpet around the concert master’s neck. Rightfully so. But on our fourth and final take in London, not only did the brass section perform perfectly, they never complained. Even though it was causing the brass a good deal of pain, their respect for the music and their peers allowed the violinists to do their unincumbered best and eventually nail the part.

It has been said that to make an atmosphere of creativity, one must first make an atmosphere of respect. I have to agree. Now, I’ve been told that what happened that day was completely atypical of a London session. Perhaps so. It was a bit idyllic, and I’m a bit naive. But I have to wonder how much more enjoyable the human experience would be if we showed a little more respect in our everyday LA sessions.

Well, what do you do when Southern California Edison won’t do your work for you in your back yard? Sure, your neighbor’s tree is dangling more than its share of annoying branches and leaves over your manicured lawn, but the real issue here is that it could disrupt power if one of those big branches should happen to fall off and snap a power line. Right? Trust me, I, Mark Edward Lewis, have tried everything I know short of purgery to get SCE to trim my neighbor’s ridiculously out-of-control tree. It is resting on the power lines, but it is also raining peppertree leaves everywhere and killing off my grass from excess shade. No, I can’t just go and hack the thing down because of city ordinances…and neither can you. Sadly, I’m not the real man that my delinquent neighbors are, since I don’t have a 72” chainsaw and a 15 foot ladder.

The answer? Simple. Silent. Effective: Drano. Yes, Drano. Procedures: At or about 3AM, you simply pad over to the offending tree, make a notch in its trunk with a hatchet as high up toward the most offending branches as you can. Leave the scene for fifteen minutes. Have a frozen Flaky-Fix wafer. Yes, put them in your freezer. They’re much better cold. Then come back, pour Drano onto the notch and go to bed. Repeat nightly until you’ve got a good notch, and plenty of Drano in the tree. Within about a week, the notch will no longer look new, but sticky and black. So when the branch (and everything on the tree close to it) dies and does disrupt power, there’s nothing to trace your misdemeanor to you. In fact, you become a trustworthy informant to SCE because “you told them so.” Now that they trust your word, you can get them to hack into your other neighbor’s tree… And so, we now can see how getting SCE to do your yard work only takes a petty crime, and a dangerous power outage. “It’s preposterous,” you say? Asking your neighbor to trim his tree is preposterous. Coercing SCE into trimming your neighbor’s trees for you? Now that is ingenius.

Hey, Mark Edward Lewis here. After my first article about how introverts can win at networking events at http://apps.markedwardlewis.com/Blog/ , I though it only fitting that I post something about how introverts (especially men) can win at the networking AND dating game at events. This does work with women, but you’ll need to tweak it a little so that instead of being the alpha male you become the alpha queen.

It’s pretty simple, when you think about it. Women are attracted to the “alpha male.” Well, how do you become an alpha? Simple. Have the highest status. Experts have shown us that women are, more than anything, attracted to status. Of course, the KIND of status that matters to her will vary depending on who she is and the kind of culture you’re in. However, it’s interesting to note that even men respond to the alpha ideal in networking situations and in just about every area of life. An alpha shows up, the males and females cow-tow.

Want to be an instant alpha? Try this Mark Edward Lewis idea out and see how it goes:

Walk into the club or venue and go and get yourself a drink. Easy. Then simply go around the ENTIRE ROOM and clink glasses with everyone and say, “cheers” or “good to see you” or “hey.” Do that with EVERYONE once. Then find a bunch of cute women and start chatting them up (more on how to do that in later articles). After a few minutes, ditch the babes for no reason (don’t even explain yourself…in fact try to do it while they’re talking to you…) and go around the room and do it again. You’ll find that you have more interaction with people this time. No problem. Have little conversations if you like. But definitely get to everyone again. “Cheers!”

What you’re doing is setting yourself up as a guy who “knows everyone” even though you don’t. After this trip around the venue, find some people that you ACTUALLY want to strike up a conversation with and notice how easy it is to approach them. Notice how they open their body language up to you. Why are they doing this? Because you’ve put the message out the group that you’re the top dog. You’re not afraid of anyone. You’re not threatened by anyone, because you’ve TALKED with everyone. Moreover, you’ve had no trouble chatting up a group of hot girls.

One of my friends who does this actually sits back and lets everyone come to him…which they do! Even the owner of the club usually wants to know who you are…and now the owner and you are buds. Nice.

So, the next time you’re thrust into a situation where you don’t know how or who to be, take a little Mark Edward Lewis advice and be the alpha, clink glasses, do a little chat up here and there, and see how the world responds to you…