Results tagged “austinmeeting”

'I would see Bill Clinton across the table. He would be eating a banana sandwich. He would talk about... stuff... There would be lurking secret service agents.' "Make sure you frame the goal positively. Don't say I have to quit smoking. Say, I will be happy when I can breathe clearly." 'I will be happy when Bill Clinton is eating a banana sandwich while sitting across the table from me... He will talk about... stuff. There would be lurking secret service agents.' "And make sure it's something you can influence. It can't be I wish he/she would do such and such. It must be initiated and influenced by you." 'Re-frame: I will be happy when I am eating a banana sandwich and Bill Clinton is sitting across the table from me... I will talk about... stuff. There will be lurking secret service agents, but I will make them go away.'

"Spoon bending is a metaphor for change," she continued. "Internal and external changes both start with energy applied to clear intent. Spoon bending shows us that everything is changeable as long we have clear intent." I couldn't help but be distracted by the couple who'd just joined us. The woman held a big wooden staff. Think Moses. Or the kind of thing they ban from festivals. And she was wrapped in a white sheet-like contraption. She had a calm smile on her face- one that signifies either inner peace or really awesome drugs, or perhaps some causally-vague combination of the two.

After all, these were practical folks. Problem-solvers. Puzzle people. How could you be concerned with something as trivial as how much your all-you-can-eat buffet breakfast cost ($20) when code monkeys all over the world were making unauthorized changes to databases on mission-critical servers? When they were creating massive outages and expensive system downtime? When they were causing unfathomable revenue losses? When you could wake up in the morning and read about #ITFail (gasp) after #ITFail after #ITFail?

Here's the deal: Have you ever been in a room full of hardcore computer geeks? You know how they talk in a different language, even though they're still speaking English? You know how it's more confusing than if they were, say, speaking Aramaic? Well... That's kind of how I felt sitting in the living room surrounded by these hardcore football geeks. I mean, sure, I understand football, but this is different. This is work. Pencil-behind-the-ear, squinty-eyed, brain-straining work. Research. Analysis. Statistics. Psychology. Stacks of paper. Extensive Google searching. Limiting beer intake to maintain clarity...

This week, I signed up for a Speed Dating event. It seemed like a pretty fertile subject. What could be more fascinating than a whole bunch of single folks in varying states of desperation and curiosity trying to find true love in four minutes or less? That's kind of like randomly meeting someone on the street...

The girl on his right introduced herself. "I'm today's Word Master," she said. "The word for this meeting is arcane. Arcane means difficult to understand, mysterious, knowable only to the initiate." She pointed to where she had written the word on the wipe board; the applause was deafening.

Believe it or not, Satanists are pretty much just like you and me. This is assuming, of course, that you and me wore black trench coats and played with big foam swords in the courtyard outside my college dorm. Which I did not do. But still. There's more to a person than his or her taste in outerwear or choice of sword construction material. When it comes down to it, the meeting of Satanists, Dark Pagans, Left-Hand-Path Occultists, et al. really wasn't that different from any other meeting of like-minded individuals that I've attended.

Obviously there are lots of folks who never outgrow the spirit realm. Shirley MacLaine comes to mind first, but also some people I actually know and trust. And I've always had a sort of lurking question regarding subject: Are they feeling something I've forgotten how to feel, or do they have skills that I don't have, or are they just plain crazy?