The Seven Habits of Highly Dramatic People

By Scott Kalechstein Grace

Do gratitude, contentment, and inner peace sometimes creep up on you and undermine your ability to indulge your anxiety? 

Here’s a quick and handy two-step process to make sure you get your M.D.R. (minimum daily requirements) of worry and chaos.

1. Believe and act like your safety, security, and happiness are dependent on people and forces outside of you that you can’t control.

2. Try to control them.

For those of you who prefer to keep it complex, here are seven habits to develop that will help you go deeper into your practice and guarantee a daily overdose of adrenaline. Allow me to be your drama director as we shout out the traditional opening words… “Lights! Camera!! RE-ACTION!!!

#1. Harness The Power Of Negative Thinking- Everybody accentuates the negative on occasion. What if I can’t pay my bills? What if I lose my house? What if I get sick? What if I’m alone for life? What if I’m in this relationship for life? But as your drama coach, I want to inspire you to master 'The Secret' by focusing all of your attention on the most negative possible outcomes all of the time.  When this discipline has been achieved, you can relax into the certainty that you will always find something to freak out about in any situation, and fear will never abandon you again.

#2.  Be Busy Till You’re Dizzy- Being too busy to still your mind and take good care of your body is essential on the path to drama-realization. Temptation is everywhere these days - health food stores, spas, gyms, yoga studios, meditation classes, and it takes courage to maintain abstinence while the whole world is stretching, sweating, chanting, and going organic. Remember, as our parents tried to warn us, engaging in meditation can lead to blindness, losing sight of all the things right in front of you to worry about. So wake up every morning painfully early, splash cold water on your face, brew up your caffeine, and go, speed racer, go!  Have you answered all your emails? Who needs a shoulder to lean on? Is there something on TV? Always make sure your life and your mind are filled with clutter and free of those annoying empty spaces between your thoughts that can disturb your absence of peace.

#3. Have A Swinging Good Time – In the 60's and 70's, a swinger was a person who relieved the monotony of monogamy by attending a variety of extra-curricular relationships. Nowadays, the term swingers has broadened, and is often used to refer to drama majors when they are found swinging like a pendulum from one extreme to another, churning with the thrill of constant crises, skillfully sidestepping the boredom of emotional stability. Would you like to be able to create, at the snap your fingers, a soap opera drenched in drama anytime you want? All you need to do is to stuff your feelings till you can’t hold them in any longer, and then explode without restraint or care for anyone, especially the ones you care most about.  As a practice, try being 100% nice and sweet. Stretch yourself to accommodate someone as much and as long as you can, and then take the lid off and let the steam out, like Mt. Saint Helens does once in a while. There is nothing as satisfying as having a good eruption after being good and silent for a spell.

#4. Leave Your Inner Child Alone Without Parental Guidance - When the child inside the adult gets scared, some really juicy drama can happen, but only if we withhold our compassion, re-assurance, and loving boundaries.  When we can resist such mushy self-help nonsense, our inner children will wreak havoc trying to get those things from others, usually through some very exciting acting out in the drama department.  When two or more people abandon their little kids at the same time, oh boy, that’s when the fun begins. The adults have left the vehicle, and you can guess who’s in the front seat, banging on the horn, flooding the accelerator, yelling out the window, and playing extreme bumper cars.  Yippee!

#5. Set Huge Goals, Maintain Unrealistic Expectations  - There is nothing more beneficial to your lifestyle than the habit of reaching for the stars, falling short of your lofty goals, and feeling like a colossal failure. Taking big leaps and falling flat on your face is paramount for maintaining healthy low self-esteem, which is the foundation of all good drama. Go for the mountaintop, and don’t look down at your feet on your way. One step at a time is for people satisfied with proceeding at a snail’s pace, always leaving behind a slime trail of serenity, gentleness, balance, and other dismal downers that drama kings and queens take royal pains to avoid. You can do better than that!

#6. Judge Your Judgments – Every human being judges, but only the ones who have learned the art of judging their own judgments excel in creating melodrama. Have you ever been known to shame and blame yourself for feeling afraid and stuck, telling yourself that there is something really wrong with you for not moving forward? Good! You are on the right track. Now, take your next step. Judge your judgments! Tell yourself that you should know better than to shame and blame yourself.  Heap truckloads of guilt on yourself for stooping so low to the curb of self-criticism, yet again. This will make you quite an energetic downer that can’t help but suck energy from those around you. You’ll be the lifelessness of the party!

#7. Get Grounded In The 3 B’s…. Blame, Blame, & Blame  -  Blaming yourself has already been covered. But don’t rest there. Blame everyone else too.  Life’s not going the way you want? Blame, blame, blame! Blame first, ask questions and take responsibility later, if at all. Appropriate targets are Mom and Dad, friends (if you still have any), your mate (if they are still around), the Bush administration, the Clinton administration, big corporations, small minds, and, of course, God.  Self-responsibility can lead to issues finding solutions, which flushes good drama right down the drain.  Instead, be generous with the blame dispenser, letting it overflow on everyone, uncontained, uncensored, unedited. Blame, Blame, Blame!

Affirmations For Good Drama

Every day in every way I am stressing out over everything, real or imagined.

Everything is working together to conspire to bring the worst possible outcome to my doorstep.

Life is against me and I am doomed.

This, or something worse, is now manifesting for the highest cost to all concerned.

I no longer have to work to create drama. Drama happens effortlessly and naturally, all around me.

Whatever calamity I can conceive, I can achieve.

I always have everything I need to manifest everything I don’t want, and all is hell in my world.

Copyright 2008 Scott Kalechstein, All Rights Reserved

Scott Kalechstein Grace is the author of Teach Me How To Love, A True Story That Touches Hearts & Helps With The Laundry!  In addition, he is an inspirational speaker, a transformational humorist, a life coach, and a modern day troubadour. He makes his home in Marin, California and loves presenting at conferences, giving talks, concerts and workshops. Visit http://www.scottsongs.com for more.

Impotent and Frigid No More

By Scott Kalechstein Grace

“We don't realize the big secret in our midst - which isn't how little power we have to change things, but rather how much power we have that we aren't using! We're like birds that were never informed, or have forgotten, we have wings.”
- Marianne Williamson


Lately I’ve counseled several people who were quite dis-couraged (removed from their courage) by the greed, violence, and destruction going down on the planet these days. Depression currently exists in epidemic proportions and many of us have lost our hope and vision for humanity.

I have not.

I have discovered something that gets me bouncing me out of bed in the morning without a need for caffeine and fills me with joy and enthusiasm all day long. It’s a safe and natural alternative to Prozac, and Viagra as well. It gets me up, inspired and ready for action, 24/7. Its potency is off the charts, and now so is mine.

It’s not a pill, however. It’s a point of view.

My point of perception is that I am an honorable member of God’s Reconstruction Team, here on a lifelong mission to penetrate the world with love. That’s my viewpoint, and I’m sticking to it. I used to worry that it was arrogant, and that I was suffering from delusions of grandeur. Then I immersed myself in the study of A Course In Miracles, which points out, “Without you, God’s Plan would be incomplete.”

Now I understand that I actually am recovering from delusions of impotence!

I once lived in New Jersey by a well-traveled road. One winter day there was a huge storm, and the cars right outside my home were gridlocked for many hours, not moving an inch. This was before the days of cell phones and laptops, and the drivers had plenty of time on their hands. I left the shelter of my house to observe the variety of responses to their situation. Some spent the entire time grumbling their grievances, stressing the stress of their missed appointments, clutching their powerless steering wheels, never accepting, always at war with their predicament. Others surrendered and got out of their cars to greet their new neighbors, making the best of things, laughing together at their shared helplessness. Children got out and played in the snow, blustery chaos a treasured playground.

A few people went from car to car to take orders for coffee and snacks. They braved the elements to walk an eighth of a mile up the road to the 7/11, and then graciously delivered the goods to their fellow stranded motorists. I noticed that the ones choosing to serve were enthusiastic and happy. The external temperature didn’t bring down their internal thermometers. They got it up for life, radiating the warmth of their love, dispelling the frigidity around them.

The day the Twin Towers went down I was glued to the television, like so many of us, trembling and weeping for our world. Later in the afternoon I wrenched myself away from the small screen and tried to tune into the bigger picture.

After some moments in the silence I heard my inner guidance say, “This event is an evolutionary quickening, bringing about an increase of both the dark and the light. Be of good courage. You came here for these times. Despite the tumult, the choice before everyone remains abundantly simple and abundantly clear: it’s love or fear. The media will mostly report and distort the reasons to fear, supplying the drugs for those with an adrenaline habit. You needn’t go there, and don’t curse those who still believe that attack will make them safe. Light your candle and find others who are illuminating the earth with love. Focus on the building of a new consciousness and a new world, even as this old one stumbles and falls. Be a stand for personal and planetary healing and you will live in the warmth of your loving no matter how frigid the climate around you.”

This is not summer vacation time on classroom earth. The curriculum is demanding, the lessons intense. The most fearful and aggressive people seem to have the most power. Certainly they have the most volume, being given a large megaphone by the media.

Is cheerfulness these days synonymous with denial? Are hope and optimism opiates for those with a lack of intelligence and an abundance of naivety? Will the meek really inherit the earth, and if so, where are they hiding? Ringo Starr has a CD called Choose Love. Could he be on to something, or did our beloved Ringo do too many drugs in the last millennium?

Humanity is at a fork in the road. What will we choose as a species? We’ve got some pretty big toys that can blow each other up in an afternoon. If we don’t raise our emotional maturity to match our advances in technology we might not be around much longer. Everybody on earth is aware of that on some level. We know the stakes are high.

It’s easy to lose heart, or to close the heart to protect it from the rawness of grief and pain. But as Yoda said to Anakin in the last Star Wars movie, “The fear of loss is a sure path to the dark side.” Anakin’s refusal to experience loss and face his grief led to the construction of Darth Vader: a black mask and armoring around his true self.

Take heart, fellow Jedi’s. It’s an honor to serve, and even our tears are a part of our contribution, so long as they do not come from believing we are powerless. Let’s revel in what we can do. We can do small things with great love each day, letting go of any attachment to outcome. Was Martin Luther King discouraged because he might not see his dream made manifest in his lifetime? I don’t think so. Planting the seeds and growing a dream is fulfillment enough, in and of itself.

It is a joy to serve God, but it is very stressful to play God.

I’m sure you’ve all heard the story of a man who encounters a lady on the beach. She is picking up starfish one by one and throwing them back into the ocean after a storm had dumped millions of them onto the shore. Her behavior is disturbing to him, as it holds up a mirror to his feelings of impotency. “Look around you! How can you feel what you’re doing matters, saving just a few, in the face of such overwhelming tragedy?” “It mattered to that one,” she replies as she happily tosses another starfish into the sea.

To curse the darkness when you could be lighting a candle (or saving a starfish) is quite a waste of vital life energy. To put it bluntly, it’s time for all of us to get it up - for God, each other, and our planet. It may be our darkest hour, but some of us can see dawn coming, and there’s truly something beautiful on the horizon- a new world waiting to be conceived and birthed. Your heat, your potency, your hands and heart are needed. And it is quite a pleasure to serve.

SHOW THE WAY

By David Wilcox

You say you see no hope, you say you see no reason
We should dream that the world would ever change
You're saying love is foolish to believe
'Cause there'll always be some crazy with an Army or a Knife
To wake you from your day-dream, put the fear back in your life...

Look, if someone wrote a play just to glorify what's stronger than hate,
Would they not arrange the stage to look as if the hero came too late
he's almost in defeat
It's looking like the Evil side will win, so on the Edge
Of every seat,
from the moment that the whole thing begins…

It is love who makes the mortar
And it's love who stacked these stones
And it's love who made the stage here
Although it looks like we're alone
In this scene set in shadows
Like the night is here to stay
There is evil cast around us
But it's love that wrote the play...
For in this darkness love can show the way


Scott Kalechstein Grace is an author,  a minister, a counselor and coach, a modern day troubadour, and an inspirational speaker. He makes his home in Marin, California and loves presenting at conferences, giving talks, concerts and workshops. In his phone counseling practice, he is a relationship specialist, helping both individuals and couples heal, manifest, and awaken into conscious relationship. Call 415-721-2954 to schedule a session, or email him at scott@scottsongs.com. You can visit www.scottsongs.com to read more about his workshops, to hear his talks or to sample songs from his nine CD’s. Send him an email to receive writings like this one on a semi-occasional basis.

My New Book/CD is Out & Available For Purchase!

Every so often a book comes along that thrills, tickles, and entertains as much as it touches, transforms and inspires.

In the tradition of such classics as Eat, Pray, Love, The Celestine Prophecy and Tuesdays With Morrie comes:

Teach Me How To Love

A True Story That Touches Hearts & Helps With The Laundry!

By Scott Kalechstein Grace

Includes CD with 17 of Scott's Best Songs!


$24.95 for Book/CD Purchase at www.scottsongs.com 

Or call (415) 721-2954 to get a signed copy - Scott will take your order cheerfully & personally.


"Captivating, illuminating and joyously entertaining." -Alan Cohen, author of A Daily Dose of Sanity and The Dragon Doesn’t Live Here Anymore


“Takes you by surprise with the depth of its transformational teachings.” -Jack Canfield, author of The Success Principles and co-author of Chicken Soup for The Soul


"Wildly funny!"  -Gary Renard, author of The Disappearance of The Universe


"A brilliant account of happiness that comes from the inside out."  -Marci Shimoff, Author of Happy For No Reason

“Teach Me How to Love is full of love, laughter and tears, the necessary ingredients for a story that will touch your heart, and yes, help with the laundry!”  -Dr. Bernie Siegel, author of Love, Medicine and Miracles


“Imagine a motivational and inspirational speaker/comedian/singer with a generous heart, twinkling wit, and disarming honesty, and you have a glimpse of Scott Grace. Teach Me How To Love sparkles with fun, wisdom and great humor as Scott relates the ins and outs, from very personal experience, of daring to live intentionally. It also happens to be the finest kind of love story, one that not only gives you hope and goose bumps, but also tools and a treasure map to your heart. You may just enjoy reading it so much that you don’t even realize how much you’re being healed!”
-Tama J. Kieves, author of THIS TIME I DANCE! Creating the Work You Love


“The world lives to hear love stories, and Scott’s is a doosey! Teach Me How To Love is a story that will help so many people who are on the fence, afraid to commit (and who isn’t!), and to move into the greatness of love.”
-Shannon and Scott Peck, co-authors of The Love You Deserve

 
“Teach Me How To Love is utterly brilliant. The writing is genius. I love the blend of extraordinary humor with the insightful wrap on the simple, the mundane and the deep stuff of life – all mixed together like a big club sandwich oozing with layers of fulfilling filling. It’s meaty, it’s fun, and it resonates deeply.”
-Susie Pearl, author of Master Mind

 
“Teach Me How to Love is a wonderful, authentic story of personal awakening. Scott’s journey from selling laundry bags on the streets of New York to becoming a singer, songwriter and minister of love is inspiring and wise. It will touch your heart.”
-Paul Ferrini, author of Love Without Conditions and The Silence of the Heart

 

“Teach Me How to Love offers the reader an exceptional opportunity to be uplifted, inspired, awakened and entertained by storytelling at its finest. Scott has mastered the alchemy of turning life experience into lessons in levity. Read it, breathe with it, smile with it, and share it with a friend!”
-Donald Epstein DC, author of The Twelve Stages Of Healing

 
“Teach Me How To Love is all about love. Scott Grace manages to unfold his own love story with such warmth, humor, honesty, and wit, you will find yourself irresistibly drawn in, cheering, crying, laughing, and learning as you go.”
–Barry & Joyce Vissell, authors of The Shared Heart and Meant To Be

 
“Teach Me How To Love somehow sneaks in the secrets to lasting love and healthy relationships while keeping you enthralled, laughing, and on the edge of your seat throughout. Bravo to Scott Grace for combining profound wisdom and escapist entertainment all in one wonderful book!”
- Jon Mundy, publisher of Miracles Magazine and author of Living A Course in Miracles

 
“Teach Me How To Love is one from the heart and for the heart. Scott’s gift of humor, combined with his eloquent transparency and vulnerability, will take you on a journey to the depths of your own capacity to love. Expect lots of laughter, a few tears, and plenty of precious pearls of wisdom along the way.”
-Paul and Layne Cutright, authors of You’re Never Upset for the Reason You Think and Straight From the Heart


“Got ENLIGHTENMENT? Then read this book! Scott Grace exposes his own raw revelations on his own path into intimacy, through the treacherous terrain of the core conflict in relationships between self-connection/Freedom and other connection/Love. Teach Me How To Love will tickle your funny bone and lift your spirits as it raises your consciousness.”
-Kelly Bryson MFT, Author of Don’t Be Nice, Be Real


“Scott’s lovely, lively story flows from laughter to tears and back exactly the way a juicy life asks of us when we tune into the musical comedy of the soul. Don’t let Teach Me How To Love pass you by!”
-Lee Glickstein, author of Be Heard Now

 

My Radio Interview with Vaishali

I recently was interviewed on the radio all about the love lessons I learned and wrote about in my new book:

Teach Me How To Love

A True Story that Touches Hearts & Helps with the Laundry!

Click Here To Hear The Interview:
http://ia600605.us.archive.org/25/items/ScottGraceAndVaishaliDiscussTeachMeHowToLove/251Yawyl5_13_11.mp3

The Tao of Intimacy

By Scott Kalechstein Grace


Opening up. Getting close. We are made for it. And many of us walk through our days on guard against it. Or, we are so hungry for it we leave ourselves while reaching out, and intimacy slips through our fingers like a wet bar of soap.


In our society intimacy is usually synonymous with getting physical. Yet plenty of people are sexual companions, but not really intimate with each other. Companionship doesn’t automatically mean letting someone in. And rubbing body parts together does not automatically create intimacy.



True intimacy is not a meeting of the minds or bodies. It’s between hearts and souls. It opens us to a whole other world, one rich with feelings, and one where the intellect takes a siesta. This is heavenly, what we long for, and what we are made for. Then, we are disappointed. Our unhealed wounds and romantic expectations put stars in our eyes, and we get attached to the yummy other person as the cause of our experience. We forget that they are just another messy mortal, and that opening our heart and getting out of the confines of the ego mind was the cause of our grand feelings. Intimacy, like all of life's goodies, is an inside job, arising from a state of consciousness, not another person.



When we believe that Mr. or Ms. Right is the source of our warm and fuzzy feelings, fear of loss becomes the driver of our behavior, bringing attachment and clinging. When fear is not leading the charge, intimacy can lead to sweet and soulful bonding, with a noticeable and refreshing absence of static cling.



That kind of bonding begins at home, inside yourself. Before reaching out, reach in. Say a gentle and compassionate hello to your hopes, fears, loneliness, and desires - everything that is present for you. Extend loving kindness and acceptance towards all your feelings, making sweet room for the entire spectrum of your humanness. If you are not self-validating, you are probably self-invalidating. So, turn it around. Release the hypnotic cultural taboo against self-love. Validate, validate, validate.



What’s next, after making intimate friends with yourself? Then comes hooking up to a Higher Power, getting online with the Divine. Bring me a Higher Love, but bring it on with feet in the ground of self-acceptance first. Most folks try to reach God in Heaven as an escape from the pain of believing they are damaged goods catching hell down here on earth. That causes us to be disembodied, disassociated, living out an illusionary split between spirit and body, heaven and earth, human and divine. If you believe on some level that God is Infinite Love and you are a can of chopped liver, well, as Dr. Phil would ask, "How's that working for you?"


It is through accepting and even delighting in our humanness that we can come to see ourselves as Divine Beings having a human experience. When you reject yourself, you cannot know God. Love yourself, warts and all, and you become a juicy embodiment of God's love, joy, wholeness, and peace.


The Tough News: Connection with a lover cannot fulfill you, or cause you to love yourself. If you do not come to a lover already hooked up to Self-Love and Higher Love, you will unconsciously siphon energy from another person's tank. They will eventually feel drained. And they will also be draining you. The feelings are mutual and between (unconsciously) consenting adults.


In our culture it's called falling in love, cause it can feel so glorious when it begins. But falling in love is so often co-dependency having a party, a party that inevitable ends as soon as gravity inevitably brings floating feet back to the ground.



The Liberating News: Wherever you are on the journey, from single and looking, to up to your ears in draining and being drained, you can begin to love and fulfill yourself. You can turn yourself on. You can get so connected to the Divine that when you have intimacy with another it will seem like a three-way.



If you are traditional church-going-God-fearing religious folk, you might be shocked, currently asking yourself if I just prescribed masturbation as a cure for neediness, and then copulating with the Lord in a kinky Ménage à trois as the ultimate carnal destination. Perhaps you think that's blasphemy. You can rest assured that I didn't mean it that way. I'm just having some fun, and making sure you are not dozing off.



What I did mean to propose is the spiritual necessity of deeply enjoying the company you keep with yourself, and coming to love yourself as fully and completely as you might dream of being loved, from your amazing head to your miraculous toes. Also, I'm talking about hitting the Source daily, drinking the Divine, and awakening to Higher Love. When you bring Higher Love to your human intimacy, it radiates, gushes, and effortlessly overflows. You’re a love-beam. Then you tend to attract and be attracted to people who have also awakened to Higher Love. Two waterfalls make for a lot of joyous spilling over.



Intimacy is as simple as in-to-me-see, letting people see into you. In-to-me-see as a committed stand in life shatters the ego's survival strategy, which is to keep you safe by hiding parts of yourself, pretending, protecting, defending.



The ego's love plan is to reserve your heart for one special soulmate partner, and keep you hiding behind a persona facade with the rest of humanity. That doesn't work. An open heart has got to be a way of life, across the board. You can't reserve your heart for one special someone and close your heart to others. That's not sustainable, nor is it real. Love, true love, is boundless, limitless, and joyously uncontainable. It always moves and expands to include others. You can be monogamous with your sexual expression, but not with your heart. Not if you are after true love.



At a certain point keeping your heart open across the board becomes more important than sharing intimacy with one special person. Paradoxically, that's when a soulmate partner can enter, through the doorway of your already established celebration of life and love.


I love what Emmanuel says on this subject in Emmanuel's Book Three, What Is an Angel Doing Here?


"You reach to another with the expectation that others can fill you. They cannot. It is a joyous experience to walk with another human being whom you love, but if you have not first filled yourselves with your own devotion, then you begin to demand something that is impossible for any other human being to supply. Make room in your life for the ordinary sweet human beings all around you who will give you the opportunity to practice giving and receiving love. Let your heart learn loving. You cannot keep the door closed until the perfect one appears. That "one" only walks through already opened doorways."


Intimacy As The Heart's Colonic

ntimacy heals by bringing old unconscious pain to the surface so it can be resolved and released. Closeness with another, or even the potential for impending closeness, flushes up and out our fears of abandonment and rejection, and their close relatives on the other side of the pendulum, fears of entrapment and commitment.


Both are two coin sides of the fear of loss: Fear of losing love, and fear of losing self.


These fears come up in all intimate relationships to be dealt with and healed. They are behind all behaviors of clinging, distancing, controlling, protecting, numbing out, aggression, passive-aggression, and the dance of mushy co-dependence and extreme, fear-based independence.


Let's hear it for those popular dance partners, mushy co-dependence and extreme independence! Have you played out both roles, been on both sides of the see-saw? I know I have. And I have stumbled my way to a balanced place between the extremes.


We all can get there, through the simple, profound, and courageous process of learning to take tender, loving, emotional care of ourselves, both alone and in the presence of others. It all boils down to self-love.


Go past your intimacy comfort zone and old fears and intimacy avoidance behaviors will eventually arise. Getting to know your fears and how they operate behind the scenes will help you get beyond them. Perhaps no human being is completely free of these issues, but it is possible to get to a place where they seldom run the show, and when they do, you have tools and support to get through them. When you can feel your fears without acting them out in your usual behaviors, you are one breath away from letting go and claiming your freedom.



Intimacy shines light upon all the scary monsters so they can come out of the shadows and heal. We heal monsters by hugging them with our own empathy and compassion, until they soften and reveal to us the innocent and lovable little boy or girl behind the monster mask. We heal by bringing our fears to the light and warmth of our loving.


It is safe to get close. It is safe to become known. You're well worth getting to know. In fact, you are hot stuff, precious and lovable through and through. What’s not to love? It's all God, and God don’t make damaged goods.


Scott Kalechstein Grace is the author of Teach Me How To Love. He is also a counselor and coach, a modern day troubadour and inspirational speaker. He lives with his partner and daughter in Marin, California and loves presenting at conferences, giving talks, concerts and workshops. In his phone counseling practice, he is a relationship specialist, helping both individuals and couples transition from drama and pain to having conscious and peaceful relationships. You can visit www.scottsongs.com to buy his book, to hear his talks or to sample songs from his nine CD’s. Send him a holler at scott@scottsongs.com to receive writings like this one on a semi-occasional basis.

Singing John Denver

By Scott Kalechstein Grace




I was presenting a lecture and a workshop on the healing power of music at a Mind, Body & Spirit Conference in Spokane, Washington. The Exhibit Hall outside the conference rooms was a thriving marketplace, complete with psychics, healers, and crystal salespeople offering their wares to shoppers looking for a tweak in their reality. Guitar in hand, I occasionally strolled the grounds, asking assorted attendees if they would like a song. One such woman replied with gusto, "Yes. Please sing me something from John Denver!" I graciously informed her that I was a prolific songwriter in my own light, and that I would much prefer to sing her one of my own. "John Denver!" she replied in a demanding tone that grated on my nerves.

Unconsciously, I tried to match her energy, in an attempt to protect mine. With a louder than usual voice bursting with cockiness and just a hint of arrogance, I suggested to her that she give me a topic, anything about her world or her life, so that I could instantly improvise a song just for her.  "John Denver is what I want!" she exclaimed with a sense of entitlement that had officially begun to piss me off.

Abandoning what was left of my patience, I blasted her with a direct hit from my ego's bullhorn, informing her that I had nine wonderful CD's of my own, thank you, and that if she wasn't so fixated on John Denver she might have a peak Rocky Mountain High experience hearing something new from someone who might very well be the next up and coming John Denver!

"John Denver, please." 


I felt heat rising up my neck. I was starting to take this a bit too seriously. Tempted to move on to greener pastures and more flexible ears, I took a breath, and asked for help in surrendering the power struggle that had infiltrated my nervous system. I looked into her eyes, and before my prosecuting mind could continue its case against her, began to play her Annie's Song, one of my favorite John Denver ballads.

As I started singing "You fill up my senses…" she began crying. In fact, she was openly weeping, with a big grin on her face as well. There we were, sharing an intimate and touching moment, right in the midst of the busy marketplace. Her tears were confusing to me. I thought about stopping the song to offer my support, but her beaming smile told me she was quite all right.

When I finished she practically crushed my guitar in her efforts to hug me. I was hoping for a few words about the depth of her feelings, and she didn't disappoint. "I met John Denver once in Colorado and he serenaded me just like you did. I will never forget the personal interest and warmth he showed me. Your song brought it all back. I needed that today. Thank you so much."

I went back to my booth, stirred up by the experience. I reflected on how close I came to passing her by and not honoring her request.  She asked me for love in the language she could best receive it, and I was grateful I had summoned up the willingness to give it.

I thought about the potential moments of connection I have missed, the times I have refused to speak somebody's John Denver, insisting on communicating in the language of my own comfort zone, rather than seeking to learn a bit about their dialect.

When I coach and counsel people, I want to converse in a way they can best hear me. If ‘inner child' is a foreign concept, or if the word ‘God' closes the mind, I try to remember there are an infinite number of ways to say the same thing. Could I say it differently? Can I be linguistically creative and flexible?

Recently I had a session from a woman who could only communicate in lingo she had learned from a personal growth workshop she was involved in, one that I had not taken. How frustrating! How limiting!

In matters of the heart, it pays to learn a second language, especially the one of the beloved in front of you. A person with painful sunburn does not enjoy receiving love in the language of a bear hug. Someone with a pressing fear of abandonment may not speak the same love language as a person who leads with a fear of entrapment.

Have you ever noticed that these two, one expressing abandonment fears and the other frightened of losing freedom and autonomy, tend to be irresistibly drawn to each other? These are matches made in Heaven, a divine language laboratory with mighty potential for healing and growth. "Don't leave me" and "I need space" join in holy friction so that the two can grow through and past the language barrier between them.

As Paul and Layne Cutright, authors of You Are Never Upset For The Reason You Think, remind us: "Relationships live or die in language." Most relationship problems can be traced not to a lack of love, but to a lack of language skills.


When I take my work to foreign countries, the people are so pleased when I make an attempt, no matter how clumsy, to communicate in their native tongue. My intention is always warmly and graciously received. Marshall Rosenberg, international peacemaker and teacher of non-violent communication skills, is constantly reminding his students that our heartfelt intention to connect is always more important than our skills or lack thereof. He encourages us to always put connection before correction.

 
The language of love is the language of the one before us. In all our relations, whether between countries or partners, it is our sincere intent to learn the language of the one we are communicating with that builds a bridge between hearts, making us multi-lingual lovers and personal as well as planetary peacemakers.

"I am here to be truly helpful."
-A Course In Miracles


Described as a cross between John Denver, Eckhart Tolle, and Robin Williams, Scott Kalechstein Grace has been a full time inspirational speaker, relationship coach, musician, writer, and transformational humorist since 1990, with nine CD's distributed internationally. A pioneer in the field of music improvisation, Scott creates therapeutic "Song Portraits", original compositions of voice and guitar, created in the moment for people wishing greater clarity or guidance on specific issues, and recorded onto CD. His entertaining website is at www.scottsongs.com.

Containing Our Reactors

By Scott Kalechstein Grace


What do you think spreads and kills faster, radioactivity coming from a meltdown at a power plant, or mushroom clouds of fear coming from a mind that has forgotten it's power source?

Learning to contain and cool down our ego reactors with the healing waters of love, safety, and gratitude is crucial for a happy and productive journey on this planet. No matter what is going on outside of us, we are always deciding between responding with love or reacting in fear. And whatever we choose, we can always choose differently in the next moment. And the next. We all get reactive and have meltdowns. It's how quickly we clean them up that counts.


Early this week I was sitting in the dentist's chair getting a cavity worked on, the most troublesome of three that the x-rays had found. I hadn't been in for a check-up in over two years, feeling scarce about both time and money, I and now I was going to have to pay the price of neglect and cough up some time and money. Halfway into the process my dentist looked concerned, stopping and frowning. She called an associate into the room for a second opinion and the two of them stared into the hole in my tooth. The usual playful banter and levity in the office had suddenly been replaced by a dense layer of seriousness. They left the room and whispered outside the door, just beyond the scope of my radar. When they came back, they announced in solemn unison that my tooth needed root canal.

Root canal? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!


My family and I had been going though financial challenges for over two years, and so the first words out of my numb, cotton-ladened mouth was "How much is it going to cost?" The price quoted made me wish I had had nitrous oxide instead of anesthesia. At over $2000, this was going to drill quite an unexpected hole in the wallet. My thoughts spiraled into fear as I got on a runaway express train bound for Scare City.

I told them to get on with it and get it over with. The procedure, the actual root canal, was nowhere near as painful as my protest and resistance to what  had just been served up on my plate. The drama going on in my head was louder and more invasive than the dentist's noisy drill, as my mind kept spewing out endless variations on the themes of  "NO!" and "We're Doomed!"

This day was not going my way, but, much worse than that,  I was letting my fears go nuclear.

Fear, I believe, is always a lack attack, my ego's imaginary trip into a future of worst case scenarios. It plays out as a loud, unruly conversation in my head, one that in any moment I could interrupt and end by injecting some faith and coming into the safety and sanity of the present moment, noticing and appreciating all the overwhelming evidence within and around me that all is well.

And that's what I decided to do.

Right there in the chair I performed a self-administered intervention, trading in my grievances for gratitude, starting by silently saying thank you to the doctors who were using their skills to save my tooth.  Then I gave thanks for the opportunity before me to release myself more thoroughly from fear. My gratitude soon spread to include various blessings in my life - my health, relationships, peace of mind, the beauty of this planet. Finally, giving thanks for the miraculous gift of life itself, I found myself  reclaiming my joy and becoming peaceful again. I  spent the rest of the day being playful and joking with others about my adventures with root canal. My partner told me how uplifted she felt by how I was not letting this turn of events turn down my spirit. If anything, I was more turned on! My spirits were high because I had remembered that Spirit is who I am, Spirit is the only reality, and everything else in this world is the temporary passing parade of illusion, with no power but the power I give it.

For years I had been a conditional giver of thanks. I gave thanks when things went my way, and withheld my gratitude when life served up challenges, disappointments, or other assorted  learning opportunities. But for those of us wanting to use this lifetime for growth and mastery, the situations that stimulate our fears offer our greatest blessing. Healing cannot be found when fear is held at bay in the cozy harbor of our comfort zones. The experiences our egos shout no at can be be the very catalysts for awakening, the Zen whacks from a teacher's stick that cause us to get present, release identification with ego, and  more deeply find and dwell in a peace that is not of this world.

I used to play a game as a child called Hot Potato. Now I am playing it again, this time without the carbs. I am learning to drop my scary hot potato thoughts more and more quickly, sometimes instantly.  If someone actually threw you a painfully hot potato and you caught it, you would probably drop it at once. If it is our grievances, gripes, and fearful  thoughts that cause us mental and emotional pain, why not drop them as quickly as you would a hot potato? The other choice is to nurse them, get agreement about them from others, and huff and puff in radioactive clouds of righteousness, panic, and drama.

 BEEN THERE, DONE THAT!

A nuclear free world begins in our heads, spreads to our hearts, and then goes viral all around the planet. When we are planted in our authentic power, no earthly power plant can hurt us. And love, divine love,  is our authentic power, our only security and safety, our only reality. It hurts like hell to contain it, so let's not. Let's spread it together.




Scott Kalechstein Grace is the author of Teach Me How To Love. He is also a counselor and coach, a modern day troubadour and inspirational speaker. He lives with his partner and daughter in Marin, California and loves presenting at conferences, giving talks, concerts and workshops.  In his phone counseling practice, he is a relationship specialist, helping both individuals and couples enjoy more conscious relationships. You can visit www.scottsongs.com to read more about his work, to hear his talks or to sample songs from his nine CD’s. Send him an email to receive writings like this one on a semi-occasional basis.