In the future, you'll call the tele-marketer; In Memoriam Mr. Mitchell -- Inspiring Newsletters #30-35

Inspiring Newsletter

re-inspiration for clients and friends of www.InspiringWebCopy.com

an "aperiodical"—to speak when I am moved to speak

Issue 30

Wednesday, May 27th

My Garden Recharges Me

I started a garden on the land around my community house here in
Yonkers, on soil that has been bare, but for a few straggling weeds,.
and badly erodes every time it rains, and has resisted making a lawn
multiple times.
Recently I'd been finding I was rather resentful that other people
hadn't been helping with it. I knew, intellectually, of course, that
no one owes me to work on the garden, and that other people have less
of an interest in bettering the relationship with the ecosystem than I
have. That this happens not to appeal to them as strongly as it does
to me. I had accepted this in theory, but hadn't quite felt that way.
Especially since I felt that others gave a sense of direction to the
garden that I on my own lacked--I didn't feel motivated to build the
third bed since no one wanted to plant more, and didn't want to finish
filling in between the bricks of the second bed. I was tired, and
didn't have the surplus to do any more work on it.
My friend told me that the garden felt lonely to her, and that the bed
seemed to be asking to be visited more often. So I felt justified in
my resentment, and vindicated! All the people in my house need to do
is visit the damn thing, and it'll have better energy. How hard is
that? But still, what could I do to get them to visit the garden?
Nothing, probably.
Well, today I found a solution, which is so simple it really didn't
take a genius to come up with it, yet somehow had never occurred to me:
to visit the garden. Just sit there, without doing any gardening. Let
the garden nurture me.
Well, the garden inspired me today. I had my breakfast sitting next
to it. It said to me, It's plenty to just sit here and be next to me.
It gave me a feeling of being near a lake I used to visit with my
family in childhood, Echo Lake in Maine, a wide peacefulness, a
harmony, and soon it had me smiling ear to ear.

Note--what was inspiring and replenishing was three things (among
others):
--I was not doing any gardening, just sitting there
--the bird singing in the trees, a Baltimore oriole, which I'd been
hearing all day outside the window, turned from being a stressful
distraction to a pleasurable experience, since in fact I did if I were
honest have enough time to enjoy hearing it, and my sense of time
pressure was manufactured
--the energies from nature, from the earth, are inherently beneficial,
even when the earth has been compromised and eroded, and as I looked at
a mustard plant that was growing outside the garden, and a few stray
clumps of grass in the middle of the bare soil, I began to see them as
beautiful, feel them as heroic acts of nature to restore this soil to
fertility, rather than as the chaotic "weeds" I had projected
previously.

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Issue 31

Thursday, May 29th

Pre-verbal Beliefs that Shape Our Reality

John Dempsey, my mastermind partner, was wondering about which beliefs
were creating his perceived reality, and which ones he would want to
change.  In particular, he was wondering about beliefs that were
preverbal, that had been formed before he had words and that might be
impossible to articulate in words.  If these wordless beliefs could not
be articulated, then how could they be brought to light and
relinquished?  I found myself completely fascinated at the question of
what belief is there that could be absoltuely impossible to put into
words.  I'm always interested in what can't be put in words--poetry,
feelings--and this especially.  I had the strong sense that  there was
a way, and that the word would come out soon, but in a form that
neither he nor I expected, in a poetic and living language that would
surprise both of us and have us both feel awed and dumbstruck.  What
beliefs do you have that were formed before you could speak? what of
them can you put in words? is there an image, a color, a shape, a
memory of a night-dream?

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Issue 33

Saturday, May 30th

Dark Grass Blades in the Lenoir Preserve, Waving

The dark blades of grass, dark because they were in the shadow of the
tree, waving in front of the lighter blades in the sun, were made more
visible by means of this contrast. This fact allowed me to feel
particularly inspired with awe--those grass stalks waving slightly in
the wind, not rushing, not getting anywhere, not trying to sell
themselves.

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Issue 34

Sunday, May 31st

In Memoriam Mr. Mitchell

Another of my high school teachers died this week.

Robert Mitchell--Mr. Mitchell to us--was more than a Latin teacher. He
knew 22 languages, he gave us a living sense of the historical context
for the texts we studied (or failed to study), and he managed to help
us understand, or begin to, just how much of our world was an illusion,
how our understanding of the ancient world was hopelessly distorted by
the influence of the surroundings of modernism.

What inspired me about him most was his passion for the brother
Gracchus. Tiberius and Gaius both attempted to reform Roman society
and put public support back into farming rather than into war and
wasteful luxury. They were both murdered for what they did. I
remember one day a classmate asked, "Why did they do that? what was in
it for them?"

Mr. Mitchell, who was no pansy--he ran 6 miles every day and swam
another 3--had this to say in reply:

"They just cared. Some people do."

"No, nobody just cares, everybody is in it for some angle," said my
classmate. But she sounded uncertain.

Vale, Magister Mitchel. Now you can be with your favorite orators and
writers, with Cicero and Herodatus, and with the Gracchi.

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Issue 35

Monday, June 1

In the future, you'll call the tele-marketer

The thing that inspired me so much today was in my work with the
intuitive, horse-brain-like intelligence of nature itself, and the
spirit of partnership and mutual aid that exists between myself and one
of my colleagues.

We worked together today, and I was trying to come up with a definition
of marketing in the holistic paradigm, when it occurred to me that I
needed to define marketing in the old paradigm first. Then I got the
sense I should contrast the new to the old in each specific element.

I started with sales calls: And that's when it hit me--in the future,
the sales call will
--be done with primary attention on serving the customer, not on
selling any particular product
--be done with a salesperson who works not for one particular company
but for one particular purpose--e.g., to sell the best solar energy
system for the customer's needs
--honor the customer's own timing
--not sell the customer anything she/he doesn't need
--and be made at least 50% of the time by the customer--that is, the
customer calls the salesperson, and has the opportunity to choose to
learn more about the product. There is no element of transgressing on
the customer's boundaries--the sales call is not only consensual but
even sought after. What a vision for the future of commerce in our
society! I would never have come up with this alone!

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