The Perfect Moment

The Perfect Moment.

We've all heard of the Perfect Storm, that moment when against all odds all the factors needed to create the ultimate storm happen and a super storm is born to destroy everything.

Have you ever heard of the Perfect Moment?

For most people it happens when you are sitting outside, relaxing with not a care in your world and suddenly, there it is. You can't describe it but you know you are in the right place at the perfect time, doing and being exactly what you were meant to be. You are alone in this Perfect Moment and then the electric bill needs to be paid.... and you may try to return to the moment but it is gone forever, leaving you with a longing you just can't describe and a soul deep sadness.

I had a memory of that moment the other day reading Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto. I know that is an odd place to have the Perfect Moment but I realized he was trying to describe with his Manifesto the Perfect Moment.

Lucky for me, I experienced or had it shown to me, this perfect moment, in a dream that has just continued to haunt me for over 20 years. It is only now that I know I was seeing my and your past and that I now know what you are seeking everywhere but the right place and that you will probably never find.

First let me go back almost 40 years when a psychic reader wanted to trade a reading for an astrological chart. She gave me a reading while I calculated the chart. Yes Virginia, we didn't have computers back then and I survived being squished by dinosaurs. She was looking at her cards very perplexed so I asked her what was wrong. She answered that I had no real connection to my parents, that they were just acquaintances that agreed to get me to adulthood in this life. I told her she was absolutely right. I had no real connection to these two people and never did and neither did they really have one to me. We were just stuck in the same place at the same time.

Now fast forward a bit to the most detailed dream I ever had and remember, what's happened before, is happening now and will happen again.

I am in a strange car that is sort like a golf cart driving down a silver road in a desert. The car is totally enclosed with glass and has no engine compartment. I actually think the method of propulsion is under the car. It makes no noise and it has no steering wheel. On the front bench seat are my parents who are nothing more than people going to the same place. Next to me is my aunt who is a friend of theirs and mine. I have a small tapestry woven bag on my lap and I am wearing a simple shift dress and sandals. Everyone is dressed simply. My aunt has a large woven bag on the floor in front of her full of things she has made. The car is nice and cool though the temperature outside must be really hot. I see the heat shimmering off the desert sand.

We take a turn off the road and suddenly I am looking at a gigantic black pyramid. It is bigger than anything you can imagine and we are driving into the center bottom of it. Once we enter the pyramid, the glass that was the doors and windows, disappears and the temperature is hotter. It is twilight in this area and the little car pulls into a parking space between other identical cars. I had the impression that no one owned the vehicles. You simply took one when you needed to travel.

We got out and I looked around. The bottom floor was huge and all sorts of goods were being sorted and moved to the upper floors. This was the supply area. The man that was my father was complaining he didn't get a outside room because they weren't staying that long. My aunt raced over to one of the supply tables and placed her bag on it for them to sort and distribute. She was excited at the prospect of shopping on the next floor, the music that night, the exotic foods and staying in this place for a while. My parents were moving on the next morning.

We took an open elevator to the next floor. You stepped out of the elevator in any direction onto glass and walked over to the stone floors around it. That way everyone could see everyone in and out of the elevator. It was truly amazing and gorgeous. This floor was shopping and people had tables of merchandise and food and everything you could possibly need laid out. One man was complimenting a woman on what she had done with the wool he had brought and she was telling another woman how this bag she had woven of the wool was perfect for what she needed to carry produce in to the upper floors. They were all happy and woman went back to her weaving loom and the man said goodbye to return to his city and flock of animals. I didn't realize at the time what had seemed so odd, but now I remember, no one exchanged money. There was no money.

I had come to this pyramid to work and I continued to the 5^th floor where I was met by a bubbly little woman who took me to my compartments and she hoped I was happy with what her daughter had done. She was talking a mile a minute absolutely ecstatic about my job, the way she was organizing the clients and her daughters habitat program. I entered what could be called really minimalist space. Everything was stone except for the side which was black glass, looking out on the desert. It was absolutely beautiful. I had a south facing space so my plants would grow well and she was explaining how the gardeners had mixed the proper soil in the bin next to the window and left it ready for planting. There were other plants some of which I recognized as healing herbs and some I have never seen before in the stone planters around the room. There was even a wall fountain of water for moisture in another space that had a polished stone slab on it that was where my clients would lie. I realized I was a healer as I opened the little bag I carried in with crystals and seeds in it. Musical instruments had been provided for me in the next room and sat ready to use with some large crystals. I had brought no clothing, shoes, not even a change of panties because I would go downstairs and get everything I needed before I retired for the night. She was telling me how much the chefs looked forward to my tasting their dishes and how they had made a special dessert for everyone to celebrate me joining their city.

I have in my life begun many new jobs, some perfect for me and some not so nice, but all of them with extreme anxiety and diarrhea. I was perfectly calm. This was where I belonged, doing what I did best and with no concerns about paying the rent because there was no rent. This little perky monster was absolutely in ecstasy with her system for scheduling my clients and so proud of her daughter's creation of my living space. A lizard ran across the ceiling and grabbed drink off the wall of water and she explained they came in to keep the bugs off my plants. I knew that in exchange I would heal any of their injuries and was looking forward to having dinner and planting my seeds that night.

Everyone was doing what they did best and loved to do. The music was already starting downstairs and it turned out her cousin made the string instruments and a friend made the strings and didn't the musician just bring out the best qualities in what they made?

That is the society Karl Marx was trying so desperately and inadequately to describe. That is the Perfect Moment that is a whole life time. There was no money, no competition, no stress. There was cooperation and enjoyment in the achievements of others and your contribution to them. There was nothing except for what you brought to that world.

On another side that I remember, everyone was also a vegetarian. There was no meat in exchange. Animals were treated just like humans. People greeted them and spoke to them and some of them lived with humans or went their way. There would be no charge for my services and when someone found a new herb or crystal, they would bring it to me to be used in my work, not as an exchange of services but because that was what was best for everyone and everything.

That was the Perfect Lifetime. It is what you are searching for. I don't know if it can ever happen again because something or someone tampered with our world and made it what it is. They are still ruining it.

Do bad decisions really make you a bad person?

Blaming people for bad decisions or choices is all the rage of the Rightwing and the New Age Movement. After all, you attract everything that happens to you. You are responsible for everything that happens to you.

However, the actual process of making decisions can be flawed and that little fact is overlooked. You simply may not have all the facts or information to make what could be called an informed decision, but that assumes you are sitting here, all nice and calm sipping your coffee or tea and have access to the Internet to check your facts. There are four factors that can really mess with your decisions that you probably have never even thought about and are lurking around your brain right this moment waiting to pounce on you.

I am going to explain them in no particular order as they are all equally nasty little problems.

Many decisions are made in anger. Anger has a way of reducing you to reacting to a situation the way you learned to from your parents before they knew you could even understand them. Anger is well defined by the old adage, when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Most people are not in touch enough with their feelings to understand when anger is being misdirected, much like the man who beats his wife because his boss reamed him out or the person who breaks things and then has to fix them or buy new ones. Anger tends to be the final expression of fear and helplessness. Anger is the man who marries a woman half his age because he is upset with his previous wife remarrying and discovers he not only has nothing in common with her but just lost half of everything he has worked his life to get. See, another of those bad decisions that he will shake his head and have no explanation for because after all, he is a captain of industry. Anger is eating a gallon of ice cream because the boss yelled at you and then needing new clothes because you keep gaining weight which puts you in so much debt you can't meet the bills or look for another job, because now the world says you are fat, lazy slob.

Other decisions are made in fear of something. Fear has a way of producing tunnel vision and even though there are perfectly legitimate options sitting in front of you, you can't see them. All you see is the biggest opening to escape the fear. Fear is when you have more bills than money and start borrowing from one source to pay the second which you will borrow from next month to pay the second and being so paralyzed that you never resolve the real problem. Fear is put a bandage on it so you can't see the problem or solution and you'll deal with it next month. Unfortunately, fear keeps getting bigger and so does the problem and of course, when someone comes along and looks at it from that nice calm perspective you have no answer for why you made such lousy decisions and are now in way over your head. Fear is the poor couple I worked their engagement party who really weren't in love with each other, had been pushed into dating since Middle School because they were perfect for each other and now had families that had spent a small fortune on the upcoming wedding that they desperately didn't want to go through with but were afraid to say anything. That is how you can't explain why you are divorcing five years later when you now hate each other.

Panic is fear on Meth. Panic is what causes you to jump off a cliff and forget the one thing you pretty much figured out at birth: gravity. More relationships have begun in panic and ended nastily a few days later than you can imagine. This is how you wind up in the wrong profession, the wrong job, the wrong home, the wrong anything you can imagine and then can't figure out how because no one wants to admit fear or panic drove them off the cliff so you just hang in there for the rest of your miserable life. I spent a couple of days at a company that had more rules than you can imagine about what one could and could not have at their desk. You could not have any liquids, not even bottled water, nothing breakable, no pictures, no plants, nothing. I think they were moving to outlawing papers though they were at that time necessary to the work of accounting. The reasoning was always the worst case of the water shorting out the adding machine, ruining the receipts, cutting yourself on broken glass and so forth. The real problem was everyone would panic the moment the boss opened his office door and become clumsy in a blind panic. So everyone got to work in conditions that were awful because of this person and thankfully I was a temp but for them, the pay was good, the place was close to home and a million other justifications for this state of affairs. The truth was they were afraid to quit.

The last one is perhaps the most common cause of really bad life decisions on a daily and hourly basis. It is pain. Yes, it is just plain old pain and exhaustion. It is the headache that has you going through the drive through every day rather than eating a healthy dinner that you just can't face cooking. The backache that has you forgoing housework and becoming more and more of a recluse because of the mess. It is the acid reflux that has you dropping out of class because you double over every time the professor enters the room. It is an exhaustion that keeps you from doing anything you want to and finally giving up on life. Then one day you fall and call emergency services and they try to dig you out of the mess and you wind up trying to explain to a social worker how this happened. It seems pretty silly to say, “I had a headache from the stress at work and started getting dinner at the drive through, gained 100 pounds which made me ache all over and I couldn't do any housework and it just got worse as I got sicker,” because the first thing they are going to say is, “why didn't you go on a diet and join a gym or get another job?” I know it was because the headache just wore you out and you didn't have enough energy to do that but asking for help, well then we are back to explaining to the JUDGES why you didn't take some pills and soldier on rather than driving home with a bag of food designed to kill you, putting your feet up and trying to get enough rest to make it to work the next day. All you could see is you needed that job even if, and somehow you didn't see this part; it kills you. The prime motivation with pain as a companion to any decision is reducing the pain. Need new shoes; see if you can get away with loafers because your head hurts. Need new clothes; try to get away with sweats because your back hurts. Chop your hair off because it is too hard to wash and blow dry it. Everything is based not on dressing for success and getting that promotion but to eliminate some of the pain. BUT you aren't living up to your potential! No, you are living down to your survival.

Yes, it is easy to make good decisions if these four little things don't insert themselves between you and all those choices to where your decision is based not on the problem but these things. And this is why people make bad decisions when the good decision seems so obvious to the Judge Parties. So sip your coffee or tea and laugh and blame but I can guarantee, those four demons will eventually nail you.

It is easy to change your life, when you have a solid foundation to fall back on if something goes wrong but when every aspect of your life and those looking to you for support depends on YOU maintaining the support structure bad decisions will follow because the four horsemen of the bad decisions are galloping toward you and you can see them.