A.T. Lynne

As I continue to hear from people who are re-friending their minds by playing the games in my book, my own insights continue to expand.

This time last year, a well-known editor I was interviewing to work on the book with me asked, “So who are your buyers, your readers?” I told him that, among others, I envisioned the book being read by bikers and prisoners.  He laughed and said, “Well, you can forget about ever selling any books then, because prisoners can’t afford them and bikers will just steal them.”

Maybe he’s right.

I wrote the book of games, initially, as a guide to my own mind’s ease and peace.  Then, I decided to publish the games to share their power with others who also felt caught and sought escape. These games do help people who feel they are imprisoned by circumstances beyond their control.  And for those who wish they could just climb on their imaginary Harleys and get the heck out of Dodge, the games dissolve the illusion that we must go somewhere else to reconnect with our own hearts.

In addition, then, to the games serving soldiers who must act as they are told and prisoners who are restrained from acting as they wish, these games are even more powerful for those people who are free to act at will, but whose troubling thoughts keep them from acting on their desires and in their own best interest.

As I considered the value of giving copies of 21 Games… to soldiers currently at war, I began rereading the Denma Translation of The Art of War by Sun Tzu.  Contemplating these ancient yet so currently appropriate concepts of victory in war convinced me that giving copies of 21 Games for The Mind that Won’t Shut the @#&* Up! would indeed be a gift.

More than 2,300 years ago these ideas ascribed to Sun Tsu were formulated by numerous authors to guide the military leaders of China. In the text, these ideas are addressed to “the Sage Commander.”  However, this is not a person who actually lived but a state of being that is possible for all of us to achieve.  ”If we seek the root of the Sage Commander’s power, we discover that he is simply and genuinely himself, always comfortable with who he is. The more he relaxes, the greater the power associated with him. In some people such openness may arise quite spontaneously. Or they may develop it from a strong discipline, or out of the sharp and sudden experience of seeing through the hold that fear has upon the human mind.”

The intention of 21 Games… is to be the catalyst for this seeing through the hold of fear.  These games are fast and easy, short and sweet, effective and memorable means of re-friending yourself.  They take a player beyond fear and into relaxation where calm thinking arises, where he is again comfortable with himself and where he becomes a genuine and powerful presence. Knowing that these games work well for me and are working to bring peace and new hope to others, I choose to believe that soldiers at war will find these games to be the gifts I intend.

Please read the next post for how to order a free book for any U.S. soldier in either Afghanistan or Iraq.

In May, a U.S. Army Major stationed in North Carolina bought an early-release copy of 21 Games for The Mind that Won’t Shut the @#&* Up!  A couple of weeks later, he wrote me an email saying that he would be taking the book with him on special assignment in Afghanistan.  I was profoundly moved that he would include my book with those few personal items he could take along.  And, I have thought a lot about how my games could be of special value to people doing what they can to survive in a war zone.

Before I began creating and playing these games, my life was so filled with drama, anxiety and worry that I lived as though I were in a war zone.  I battled with my thoughts, my bosses, spouses and even with my friends. I ran for cover or grabbed a weapon or attacked at the slightest disagreement or challenge.  It was truly a brutal and fear-ridden life.

Playing these games not only relieved me of the burden of incessant fear, I now can see inviting possibilities where I used to see only insurmountable problems.  Yet, it is the effective ways these games are serving other people that thrills me the most.  The book is now being read on every continent, other than Antarctica. And readers continue to tell me how playing these games is helping them restore their own peace of mind.  This is the result and reward of reading my book and playing my games that I wish for everyone.

Now, there are thousands of U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan who must face the real brutality and fear of war and death.  The last thing these men and women need is to be battling their minds.  This is surely a time when they cannot afford to distrust themselves, when resting their minds — even in the briefest moments – is essential for survival, and when it’s crucial to be able to tell friends from foes.

In service to these people who are in service to us, I have decided to give a copy of my book to any soldier in the U.S. military stationed in either of those war-ravaged countries.  I will also ship the books for free.

To order a copy of 21 Games for The Mind that Won’t Shut the @#&* Up! for any U.S. service man or woman in either Afghanistan or Iraq, send the soldier’s name with their postal address in either of those two countries to info@primenumberpress.com or send by mail to Prime Number Press, P.O. Box 898, Sausalito, CA 94966

The books will be shipped within two days following receipt of the order.

Today, when I opened Yahoo! to access one of my email accounts, I noticed that they have recently changed their log-in page. Now, there is a headshot photo of an attractive person, sometimes male, sometimes female, with the accompanying text:

Find your inner everything.   Make Yahoo! your home   Y !

Last year, I began reading about Information Theory developed in 1948 by a scientist named Claude Shannon at Bell Labs, a research division of AT&T.  In this reading, I learned that those who create telephones, televisions, iPhones, iPads, this computer, and all other communications devices have a very different take on what “information” is and why it matters.

For those in the communications industry who incorporate Information Theory into their designs and into their advertising of the sort quoted above, “information” relates to how many devices can be put between two entities wanting to talk to each other.  For example, it takes a radio, a TV or a personal electronic device for the non-print media to get their news or entertainment to you.  Also, it takes a telephone, a cell phone, a fax, a computer or some other sort of mechanical device for you to call someone living in another state.

Yet, as humans wanting to share our ideas, we most commonly use the word ”information” to refer to the meaning in the message we are communicating. Nevertheless, the businesses who provide us these devices for communication, could care less what we say or what ideas we transmit.  What profoundly matters to them is that we consider their bandwidth as necessary for our existence as are the synaptic gaps in our brains over which the instructions for our lives and very survival pass.

This new Yahoo! ad is bold evidence of this.  Not only are computers and their vast field of services now pitching to our desire to tell one another about our lives and our recent thoughts.  Now, we are being invited, not simply to use computers as adjuncts to our brains, but, by making a computer program “home” and the source of our “inner everything,” we are being invited to replace our brains entirely.

A bit disturbing, eh?  And, yet, I must yield in awe to the balls of their advertisers. How freakin’ clever!

Worry is a pervasive and perverse state of mind.  It is pervasive because it’s companion state of fear is the currency of media news broadcasters.  The experience of fear is incited by the belief that there is a powerful and imminent presence that is intent on keeping you from achieving your desire or, more potently, intent on taking from you that which you currently have.  Once the story of this presence takes hold, the mind formulates and recycles worry thoughts – visions of  these unwelcome events coming to pass.

Worry is perverse because it is not a creative state of mind in which you are actively engaged in moving toward that which you inwardly desire. Worry is, instead, a state that is entirely reactionary and focused on the world outside of yourself and beyond your control.  And, because the story that causes you to worry is something outside of your control and influence, worry engenders a state of impotence, as well.

There is, however, a way to use this state to one’s glorious advantage and, in the process, to transform one’s mind to regain a more effective and comfortable relationship with the world.  When you become aware that you are experiencing a worried state, allow it to awaken you to these three greater truths:

a) your attention has drifted from the only life over which you have authority — your own;

b) you have chosen to invest your imagination in a story about an unpleasant outcome, a story which relies on the, often unverified, perception that the people involved lack the capacities to deal effectively with the events in their own lives; and

c) you are also, simultaneously, investing in the story that you are more capable of dealing with their challenges than they are.

The next time you recognize you have fallen into the trance of worry, simply turn your attention back to those details of your own life which you can effectively influence and affect.  Through this realignment of attention, you will both recover your own composure and you will be contributing mightily to the forward, creative flow of life.  In addition, you will be a beacon of light who demonstrates how to live boldly while allowing others the respect and dignity to delight in their own adventures and experiences as they choose.

Should someone, then, ask you for assistance, your mind is open and ready to contribute the skills you actually possess to help effect a satisfactory outcome.

In today’s edition of the Blue Cat Screenplay Competition Newsletter, one of the topics is the current trend in Hollywood to produce movie remakes of earlier successful films or TV shows.  On a poster for the remake of The A Team , the tagline is “There is No Plan B.”

This is such a perfect example of drama-think.  Of course, as every student of dramatic writing knows – be it screenwriting, novel writing, short story writing and even poetry writing — conflict is the essence of drama.  And, for a movie about a group of vigilantes fighting the good fight to defeat crime and bad guys, this is a most appropriate tagline.

However, for your own daily life, to live hour after hour in this state of mind, defining your existence with the language of drama, is a guaranteed path to sustained hell and debilitating exhaustion.  Even in the most dramatic movie frought with battles and bad guys, the hero fights the good fight for a mere 120 minutes, max, before the story is resolved and peace is regained.  Even when the hero dies, he at least achieves the ultimate peace.

Yet, when you mistake the behavior and dialogue of dramatic structure for the language and behavior of an effective, successful and satisfying life, there is no respite from conflict.  In the drama state of mind, wherever two or more of you are gathered together and one is the hero, can you guess what role the other person automatically must play?  You guessed it; the bad guy.  The mind that is locked into the language of drama cannot help but do this protagonist-antagonist casting.  And, the person whose language patterns were predominantly learned from dramatic works — literature, fiction, TV, broadcast news, newspapers — will be most prone to apply those patterns to his or her own experience.

In STORY, Robert McKee’s book on screenwriting, McKee observes that 99% of the time, in real life, the outcome we seek to accomplish is acheived with a minimum of action and effort, and, more often than not, with the desired cooperation of other people.  This is easy to test for yourself right now by simply reflecting on the last hour of your life.

Just notice how, when you last opened your mouth to speak, the words you wanted to say flowed out.  When you wanted to walk across the room, your feet moved with minimal effort and probably without conscious thought on your part.  And, right this instant, your last meal is being digested and its nutrients being distributed throughout your body with neither your conscious effort nor your intellectual comprehension of how it is doing this.

So, back to Plan B.  In drama, there is no Plan B.  However, in life, in your life, there is always a Plan B.  For 99% of that 1% of times when success is not acheiveable with minimal effort, implementing Plan B only requires the addition of either a bit more energy or a minor shift in plans.

You want to say something and suddenly forget what it was.  So, you scan your memory for another moment and the thought returns.  You want to walk across the room and you trip on your laptop’s cord.  So, you take a few stumbling steps, maybe bump against the table, then you recover and continue on.  You eat a ton of hot peppers on your enchilada and your tummy swells up with gas.  So, often even without your taking an antacid, your digestive system expells the resultant gas, one way or another, and you are ready to eat more Mexican food in no time.

For most of us, most of the time, the lion’s share of all we want to do at any given moment is magnificently accessible and doable. And, at rare moments, just a bit more effort or redirection is required in order to acheive the desired satisfaction. However, as McKee points out, although “This is the great mass of experience, hour by hour, in life,” it is “NEVER, EVER IN A STORY” [capitalization by McKee].

Therefore, when the language patterns of dramatic structure govern a person’s mode of thinking and speaking about his life, he will do one of two things.  In order to conform to the rules of this language, the person will either edit out of memory the 99% of events that went as planned and only think about and share with others those moments when more effort or a change of plans was required.  Or, the other tack that is taken is to perceive or create dramatic skirmishes in every encounter with other people and with events in the world.  This is the birthplace of the drama queen.

A constant diet of watching and listening to famous, enviable people enacting dramatic roles and singing drama-infused songs combined with the high drama/conflict scenarios of broadcast news and “reality” programs only strengthens the illusion that conflict is essential and central to an exciting life.  Nevertheless, life continues on in its 99% cooperation with our survival, requiring minimal effort of us to keep us alive and actually thriving from one day to the next. Yet, only when people incorporate additional language patterns – the patterns of cooperation, appreciation, fascination and awareness of what is actually occurring in the world about them — can they harvest the true fruits of Life itself.

When those patterns are available, deciding upon and implementing your Plan B becomes an opportunity to use the rich resources of your imagination and is guaranteed to result in a story of success truly worth writing about.

As we grow from infancy into this worldly life, the initial and innate activity of our minds and, thus our bodies, is the giving of all we’ve got. In order to know what that all is, we first reach out to explore and experience all that we can. I suspect this is also true of every other species. Yet, watching and being of this group, I can most confidently say that this is true for us.

Our dominant motivation is not the getting of anything; it is the giving, the doing, the participating. We incessantly reach to know for ourselves the satisfaction and thrill of touching the world, engaging with Life and having influence in the lives of other people.

Yet, so often, these initial attempts at interaction, when we extend our arms into the air, are mis-interpreted or translated for us as “Baby wants to eat this,” “Baby wants Mommy or Daddy to do that.” And the adults who describe our experience this way were misdirected long ago. They may even hold themselves in disdain as having been reduced to incessant getting-machines. And, as they continue the tradition of turning new giving minds into getting mouths, they feel the yoke of being the infant’s waiter, chauffeur and slave.

Soon, the joy of having given birth to a helpmate is replaced by the resentment of being simply a caretaker. As the subservient parents are making one more generation of frustrated consumers, their own gifts to the world go unmanifested. And those world-enhancing, possibly, species-preserving ideas, which are eager to be expressed through them, may lie dormant for their entire lifetime. Then, even apart from child-rearing, this same, well-programmed adult may continue to believe his best contributions to life lie in what he gets. He, then, turns his attention to feeding, clothing and idly amusing himself, while the world spins on the poorer for it.

There is a pervasive state of mind more addicting than any substance and, exponentially, more damaging to the human spirit. It is the state of “Can’t do.” It’s contagion is so prevalent and so deeply embedded in the American psyche, that it is one of the earliest ideas to be passed from generation to generation.

Somewhere in the first few years of life, the words spoken to a child shift from “You can do it!” to “You can’t do that!”

“You can do it!” is accompanied by an approving smile when the baby stands for the first time, holds a spoon or goes potty. And, often, that first statement is accompanied by a reward, a treat or a hug and a kiss. The second statement, too, often comes with physical contact, from being pushed away to being spanked, or worse. And, the combination of abrupt and painful contact along with “You can’t do that!” quickly and deeply establishes the “truth” of the message in the child’s mind.

We each are equipped with a mind designed to interpret the world on our behalf. For most of us, our minds will never cease interpreting the world as long as we breathe. We continually notice things that we long to do, from something to reach for and put into our mouths to something to read and put into our minds. Our natural selves want to interact with this fabulous world. Until we adopt the false belief that “We can’t do that!”

Once this false concept about our inability to act is embedded in our minds, the person who (most often unwittingly) planted it there can leave the room with the confidence that the most we’ll be able to do is try. And trying is never the same as doing. And there we are, left in the care of our own betraying mind, which continues to repeat the mantra, “You can’t do that!” With the entrancing quality of that statement immobilizing us, the words running incessantly in our minds, we stop ourselves even before our arms reach out. The fascinating, inviting world lies all around us and we are paralized at it’s center. And that paralysis gives birth to frustration.

And then, appropriately socially programmed to try, while chanting to ourselves that we can’t, we go to school. There, for more than a decade, what we can’t do and what don’t know is emphasized day after day year after year, until we graduate — or not — and go off to work. We walk onward into our careers, our marriages and our myriad of adventures, even those we have longed for years to do, still stepping to the beat of that self-defeating declaration, “You can’t do that!” What’s amazing is that some seemingly successful people admit that these words drummed in their ears, too, on their way to appreciable acheivement. So, there’s evidence that this self-deprecating mantra won’t always stop you. What it will do, however, is make you hate your mind and hate your life.

But, that self-hatred isn’t the only consequence. That frustration from not daring to do what you long to do but have come to believe you cannot do, will incite you to flee your own company and seek out those people who apparently still “Can do it.” You fall out of love with yourself (the first love you ever knew) and into love with them. Once this happens, their values, their goals, their interests eclipse your own. And then, you do all you can to model how they live in the desperate hopes that mimicking their lives will bring you their self-acceptance.

But, it never happens. True self-acceptance never comes from a counterfeit life, one lived in imitation of someone else. And, in many cases, the very person you may be modeling is one of those who taught you to reject your own unique perspective and inherent potential. And, the one who would teach others to reject their own minds and ideas, has already rejected his or her own potential, too. So, you will at some point, realize that the people you have been modeling were merely modeling another set of people or standards outside of themselves. Their peace is no less shallow and fragile than your own.

And, all of this will finally, in time, lead you to the mirror. There, you will once again see the one person who has all along known you can do whatever you allow yourself to do. And then, when he or she says again to you, “You can do it!” you will be so grateful, so happy and so alive in hearing this. From that time forward, you will be able to do what you and that reflected expression of yourself agree upon without ever again needing to turn to another for permission or confirmation of what you can do.

One more step along the path. Today, I registered 21 Games… with Books In Print.

I recall, when I was a little girl living in a remote mountain town, seeing the four-inch thick hardbound copy of Books In Print on the librarian’s desk. I was awed and enchanted every time I opened its pages and scanned the titles and terse descriptive paragraphs, each hinting at new worlds to be explored. The big book that listed all the books in the English language, or so it seemed.

And now, to have my own work included in it! Wow! Along with literally more than a million titles that will be published this year alone. Yikes! … and Yiha! I am thrilled to be among these fellow adventurers who dare to share what matters in their lives with the vision that their ideas will be of value to others, too. What fun!

The next time you go to a doctor, think about what outcome you really want.  Is it really the confirmation that something is “wrong” with your body that will give you the most satisfaction? Do you really want to be able to brag about how good your doctor is by yielding to her certainty that you must stop what you love doing, endure surgery or ingest debilitiating and expensive chemicals in order to avoid death, or something even worse? Are you unwittingly enchanted by the idea that, at your age, your physical infirmaties are all that you have left to talk about?

Wouldn’t you really rather have health or renewed health? Wouldn’t you rather find another, more compatible outlet  for your desire to be the center of attention with your friends?  If yes, then, give your doctor fair warning.  Well before he clears his throat in preparation to pass some judgment or other, advise him that he is only allowed to discuss the specific benefits and health outcomes his prescriptions will produce.  Neither invite nor tolerate the overt threat so common in medical parlance that predicts dire and painful outcomes for you if you don’t submit to his recommended course of action.

This approach is so familiar in our culture that you may never have thought to question its validity. Fear is a potent ally to anyone selling anything, and in medicine it is one on which many procedures and prescriptions rest for their successful sale. However, put that same sales pitch in another marketing venue and it’s easier to see the absurdity of it. Say you want to trade in your car and the salesman chooses to focus on the failings he imagines your current car has rather than on the benefits of the car he is selling.  Say you want to take a trip to Barbados and the travel agent attempts to sell you tickets by telling you how lousy your hometown is.  Although negative pitches are present in marketing campaigns for many products and we can be somewhat swayed by them, the absurdity and ignorance of such pitches is more obvious in these examples.  Yet, to attempt to fill a buyer with doubt and fear rather than offering hope and certain satisfaction is a sign of a salesman who either doesn’t really know his product or, worse, doesn’t really believe in its capacity to fulfill the buyer’s need.

It is the height of hubris for anyone to claim to know with unquestioned certainy the “truth” about another person’s body and how it will live on into the future.  Regardless of the expense or ”sophistication” of the diagnosing equipment used, what a doctor knows from an MRI, an x-ray and a bank of  blood tests is a mere snapshot of who you and your body are. As anyone who has taken a photograph of anything knows, a moment later the light has changed and countless other facets in the scene have appeared or disappeared. Therefore, if the physician wishes to claim certain knowledge about anything, it must be the confident, and guaranteed, certainty about the curative abilities of the solutions she offers from her years of study, practice and training.

I find it an amazing wonder that the medical profession has cleverly excused itself from the legitimacy of guaranteeing its products. From food growers to computer outlets to automobile manufacturers,virtually all other merchants must guarantee to some extent what they offer us in order to be viable in today’s marketplace. We and our laws hold professionals accountable for the products they sell. The only other products I can think of that don’t come with guarantees are those of arms dealers and flea market merchants.  However, the former have a vested interest in making their products reliable, while the latter charges us so little that we can afford to bring home some tschotske that doesn’t work as promised.  Our bodies and the quality of our heath are different matters.

When a merchant won’t stand behind the quality of her products, it’s time to buy your goods from someone else. There exists today a growing number of trained medical professionals whose studies and practices encompass an ever wider array of viable solutions. It is much easier to find qualified advisors who will not prey upon your fears in order to profit from exorbitant insurance rates, but who will, instead, educate you about your body’s magnificent capacity to right itself, while helping you regain your health.  And, remember, what Emerson wrote applies to our bodies as well as to our minds, “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”