Today’s indicators are as follows…

For some time now in cutting the DappleShades I’ve wished that I didn’t have to fly by the seat of my pants, exciting as that can be. It’s so great when one gets it perfect, and the paper hangs and ripples just so, and I know it can never be repeated exactly like that. I tried to comfort myself by saying perhaps it can be better when I do the next one, and sent a sharp shuddup to the voice that wondered if the next time would be anywhere close….

When a beloved advisor brought up this very issue and said something like, ‘You need a pattern derived from the most successful designs so that you can just go on autopilot and listen to your French course and enjoy yourself without all that stress…’  With a pattern, I could ‘trace’ with a knife because a light-box system could be set up. I explained that I’d lost my big white translucent cutting mat and I’d tried to source another one, because of course that would be the answer, with no risk of starting all over again should my mind stray for a second.  But these were no longer available here – I’d looked for one on Google a year ago and found nothing. And there the matter rested.

A coffee-break to steady the nerves...

The search string I’d put in was ‘cutting mats’ and I’d found only green ones like those I already had. So I’d given up and went back to the freehand, scary cutting method, making it up as I went. But because of this conversation yesterday, I googled ‘white translucent cutting mat’ – and voila, there they were. At first I found only small ones and then the bigger ones came to light. Okay – R2300 a pop, but still. They are available! Now I can take the best bits from all previous designs (and there are many by now) and come up with something really cool.

For me this incident has so many other meanings. It really says, so loud and clear:  ‘Specify exactly what you want. Lose the ballpark vision.’ Or, as people of an esoteric fibre would say, ‘Energy flows where attention goes.’

This also brings to mind somebody wise who said that declaring your intention to the Universe/God/Life/Your higher Self in order for things to happen, is like putting your indicator on in the traffic before you change lanes. It’s the indicator that makes the other cars respond and then the gap happens, especially if you start to edge over a bit and make it clear that you’re serious about this. Some people drive along until they see a likely gap and only then put on that indicator. In Cape Town, we tend to indicate only once we’re already in the other lane of course, but that doesn’t serve this analogy. I’m just saying it before you say it. On the other hand, isn’t that like landing up somewhere and pretending that this is what we wanted all along otherwise we’ll go nuts?

Anywaaaaaaaaaayyy – so. Indicate. Point to the desired outcome as if you’re a kid in a candy store. How else does Life know what you want? In coming to the decision of where you want to go, it can become obvious that there are two simultaneous and conflicting goals, and that if X happens, Y cannot also be.  Perhaps that’s why there’s something to the Stones’ song: ‘You cain’t always get – what you WA-hant… like the taxi I saw in a middle lane on the opposite side at the lights. It sat between two cars. The car on the left was indicating left, the car on the right was indicating right, and the taxi had both indicators on…

In my life I have various delightful scenarios in mind, not just two. They’ll have to happen consecutively, because even if I had a few clones around, they’d all have separate minds and the original ‘I’ would still only get to enjoy just one outcome if everything happened at once. Then again, there’s the  concept of the group soul where several incarnations of the same soul live out their lives simultaneously and I guess all have a show and tell afterwards once everyone’s in the other dimension again. But that’s a subject for another day.

One way I’ve found effective to make interim and long term goals happen is to write out an entire ‘perfect day’ from beginning to end, as suggested by Barbara Sher in Wishcraft. (I haven’t read ‘The Secret’ but  it seems more or less to agree about intent.) It’s an extremely powerful technique and has worked for me many times. But the trick is to work out clearly what you want, and then request it.  And stay focused so that you can change lanes elegantly and gracefully and notice that gap when it appears. Oh and there are other small details like being grateful for what you already have, adding emotion etc etc.

Then again, nothing’s written in stone and you can just change your mind if you decide you’re no longer wanting X. But do, I implore you, remember to put your indicator off…