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OPEN HERE, You Hold The Keys

by Suzanna Stinnett

223 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #02-1041; ISBN 1-55395-326-6; US$21.00, C$29.00, EUR18.90, £13.10

Your imagination holds the keys to the vibrant future we all desire. Use the tools in Open Here to develop your unique expression, engage the limitless of your imagination, and manifest your vision for a positive future.

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about the book      about the author      sample excerpts or Table of Contents      catalogue info

About the Book We must begin now, with small steps, today, to recognize and become all that we are meant to be: Powerfully imaginative, multidimensional beings walking on the earth with compassion, joy, and an open-armed inspiration to share with the world. We are the material of a metamorphosis. We are love, and we are whole beings. Two things are missing: One is recognition of our resourcefulness. The other is deliberate choice. CAN YOU IMAGINE what you would create? Love? Health? Time? Community? Joy? You hold the keys. Open: start your future here. Use the tools in this book to: Develop your unique expression Realize your joy is what we all need Engage your imagination's limitless world Attract abundance through deliberate optimism Manifest your vision for a positive future "The most radical activism is to re-invent our lives. S.B.Stinnett is a kind of docent of the metaphysical, leading us toward a refreshingly illuminating vision of how our lives might be changed. In a culture starved of practical spiritual approaches, this book arrives in the nick of time. "Relax into it, and your imagination will join you fully." -Molly Albracht, California Poets in the Schools Stinnett tilts & bumps the model as we now know it. Speaking directly to the hidden optimist in us, she provocatively points us to our own true north, guiding us through the daily debris to the enchanting, connected destiny we all share. -Susan B. Gross, Author-Illustrator

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About the Author Suzanna Stinnett resides in Nothern California with her husband Patrick and their dog Daisy. Working behind the scenes on the transformation of modern culture, Ms. Stinnett is now completing the companion book, OPEN NOW due out in 2003. Her company, Crow's Moons Productions, will be presenting performance art related to the transforming culture starting in Fall of 2003. For More Information, Click Here

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Table of Contents and Introduction

Contents

Preface

Imagine

Introduction
...let your unlimited essence inform the parameters of your reality

visual vacation #1, Door5

Chapter 1: Little Shifts
...of attitude...of action...of joy

visual vacation #2, One

Chapter 2: Radical Acts
...stopping...silence...breathing...noise... exercise...imaginative play...using intuition... meditation...writing...optimism...connecting... asking...candlepower...joy...remediation

visual vacation #3, Welcome Grid

Chapter 3: You Are Here
...our complicated lives...316 choices... impact...planetary price...guiltless chocolate... possible futures

visual vacation #4, eieio

Chapter 4: Clear Your Frontier
...creative's gremlins...Clutter: Take It Seriously ...little shifts

visual vacation #5: Order

Chapter 5: The Landing Pad
...imagination's home base...what works for you?...portable landing pad

visual vacation #6: Connecting Cells

Chapter 6: Tending A Wild Garden
...nourish your brain...foods...supplements... playtime...future elders

Chapter 7: Imagine It Here
...visualizing...navigating...imagine faith...see your guide...portable altar...nature's mystery

visual vacation #8: Riding Herd

Chapter 8: Writing Through the Window
...finding the time...reasons for sobs... the force of your voice

Memory Trigger 146

Chapter 9: The Memory Project
...global anthology...our stories...writing with community...publish your work

visual vacation #9: Group 9

Chapter 10: The Great Adventure
...scoop up the world...tokens of agreement... earth charter...business...sustainability party

visual vacation #10: Palms

Chapter 11: Touching Eden
...imagination and outcomes...historical precedent...where we might go

visual vacation #11: Illumines

I Double Dare You

Reference Section:
Resources, Websites, Books

From The Introduction

With this book I bang the drum to announce the arrival of a culture of imagination. My vision tells me that our transforming culture now needs all beings in their highest creative state, interacting, suffusing each others’ lives with inner wisdom developed over centuries. We must share our stories, singing them, dancing them, painting, writing and publishing them. Growing our diversity into a harmonic kaleidoscope of expression, our dreams can then coalesce into a cultural vision. We are in the beginnings of a renaissance.

We live in a time of tremendous potential for positive change. A sense of urgency rides my wrist, pushing the pen across the paper. I feel we need to shove our arms into the clay elbow-deep, and find the form inside. Women all over are strengthening their minds and bodies, honing their tools, the zing of sharpening is in the air. I found myself walking in this new world, so new it has not yet recognized itself. The failures of the last decades have given us raw material to create what we want for our future. It is time to sweep up the front steps, reclaim and rename our creative lives.

Our future is limited only by our vision.

We cannot afford limiting beliefs. We are changing, and we can choose changes that further our dreams and desires. What we are actually choosing is a facility of movement: To move gracefully, deliberately, through the world's mandala, weaving our dreams and desires, adding our all-important uniqueness to the vision. We are making an original imprint and feeling the relief and satisfaction that comes with voicing our essence. Our planet's diversity lives within us. Each small act increases the energy for deliberate creative change. Let your unlimited essence inform the parameters of your reality. We have two choices in life: growth or atrophy. Nothing remains static. Life changes happen with or without your participation.

Choose change at a level you can tolerate.

From Chapter One: Little Shifts

Light a Little Candle

All through this book you will find opportunities to choose small changes. Consider each one to be a tiny candle you are lighting deep in your soul. With the very first one, there is luminescence where there once was darkness. That is a profound change. Your imagination, that brilliant, outlandish, willing partner to your soul's desire, will carry a torch if you will light it. As you travel through the weeks and months, choosing little shifts along the way, your inner life will take on the unmistakable glow of joy.

From Chapter Two, RADICAL ACTS

radical -- adj. 1. fundamental 2. far-reaching; thorough. 3. revolutionary.

(3.) BREATHING -- The rushing stress of our daily lives has had one profound effect on our bodies: We hold our breath. Breathing is, of course, a reflex. But the physical and emotional triggers that keep us in a shallow breathing pattern are continually enacted in multiple forms of stimulation all around us. Breathing deliberately and deeply restores the element of emotional stability to our physical being.

(12.) ASKING -- Asking is a doorway to self-discovery. When did we unlearn how to ask? Somewhere along the line, our culture taught us not to. As an independent, self-sufficient woman, I tend to resist asking for anything. Actually, I'm terrible at asking. I'm afraid that, for some unknown reason, the power will go out, darkness will descend, and I'll end up having to clean all the spoiled food out of the refrigerator, because the universe will shout an unequivocal "NO!" in response to my asking. Still, I'm learning to ask. Asking requires that you layer in through your personal onion, finding the needs you have at each new layer. As you ask and then listen, your dreams bubble up, and they are needy little buggers! It's time to ask for all that you desire.

Maybe asking feels superficial, like all you can think of to ask for is a new car. Go ahead! Practice! Pay attention to what it feels like to ask. Who are you asking? Can you allow yourself to need the world? To need your sister, your friend? Try to ask without expectation, there's a good trick. Just ask, simply. Asking is different from expecting. When you ask, you tug on the universe, telling it to release abundance.

Needing people is a form of competence.

Asking really means breaking your heart open to the love and desire that runs deepest. This is what makes it a radical act. Allowing positive visions to occupy your emotional landscape, and sharing those visions with others, is the beginning of our bright future.

From Chapter Three: You Are Here

Your Imagination is Without Limits

We act on our expectations. Our expectations are formed by limiting criteria -- unless we shift to an imaginative way of being in the world. This is the primary impact of inviting imagination into your daily process.

From Suzanna's Journal

Huge releases make you wise. It is not the taking in of data, but the moment of complete dispersal. That is arriving. Giving up the flow, the accumulation of learning. Giving it away is when it happens.

If you find yourself sobbing, suddenly and often, it may mean one or more of the following:

YOU ARE NOT CRAZY :

You are desperate to discover what your life is for.

You are flooding with inspiration that has not made it to the surface.

You know the answer to a question so big you don't even know how to articulate it.

You are having lots of thoughts about the quality of your life, and you are on the brink of putting it all together.

You have doubts that your present life can accommodate The Real You.

Any or all of the above, and you are scared sheepless.

From Suzanna's Journal

If you believe in the process, you won't need to put on the brakes -- or force a definition -- or hurry -- or fear the outcome. Return to faith.

From Chapter Nine: THE MEMORY PROJECT

A Global Anthology

Our Stories

Something important is missing from our historical archives: Women's stories. For many reasons, men have had the monopoly on the printed word for centuries. Men's stories are important too, but I believe we need to address the imbalance of information currently at play. Generations of womens’ lives are missing -- a huge void of guidance and insight gone. In order to create a balanced and healthy future culture, we need to embrace the stories of womens’ lives. This chapter is your formal invitation to participate.

From Chapter Ten: THE GREAT ADVENTURE

Where our imaginations go, so will we.

I imagined a book that would help people reach their deep dreams, and connect them to a bigger purpose, ultimately plugging our creativity into a tangible plan to heal our future. What you are reading now is the product of that imagining. It is one of my adventures. It has opened doors to many other paths.

DREAMS YET TO DREAM

My good friend Molly asked me one day, "What do you want to do with all this?" I looked at her fair, honest face. We were discussing our lives, our visions, our projects. I told her, "I want to scoop up the world." She beamed her wise smile and nodded.

Scoop up the world. It's a dream, but a vague one. What did it mean? Working with my imagination, asking for clarity, I was surprised to realize it meant specifically this: I want to reach a million people with my message. How could I do this? I held the question close, observing what came to me. I took notes.

Somehow, I knew that if I could touch a million people with this message of optimism, the rest would take care of itself. That matrix I created would keep multiplying. My heart, my joy, my essential expression, my imagined world would be moving in this physical world as it is meant to do.

Along the way, I looked for connections -- ways to keep moving closer to my vision. I looked at projects other people were playing with, noticing what was working. When you have a vision, you have to give it up to the larger forces.

Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid.

-- Goethe

Almost all of us would say we want to see a more balanced world, reflected in our own quality of life. Almost all of us would like to feel less guilty about some of our routine indulgences! And most of us would like to feel that we are making a difference: that we are effective in making positive changes in our communities.

Owning your own business, helping someone who is working on a business of their own, or participating in some special way in the development of small business is a great way to offer your unique creative energy to the world.

Fun and Sustainability In the Community

Have a sustainability party. Have you ever been to a Tupperware party? You know the drill. Let's look at another way of gathering and doing what is essentially group shopping while eating, laughing, and enjoying each others’ company. On my website you can find lists and suggestions for creating a Sustainability Party of your own. Check it out! I think you'll be amazed at how many connections you can make through this process. You can choose to positively impact an indigenous group while buying jewelry, or educate children about living safely on the earth, or protect animals that are endangered or abused.

In considering products for the sustainability party, use this criteria: Consider the item's use. How is it made? What is its lifespan? What things are the company doing for the planet? What is the ultimate end of this item? Seeing its whole lifespan will help clarify the Planetary Price of this object.

Consider reused objects. Women are pretty good at sharing clothes. My friends often have gatherings where everyone brings all the stuff from their closet they're ready to get rid of, and, amidst much gaiety, trading them around. This is a sound earth-safe practice. Once an object has been manufactured, all the resources that were used to create it have been spent. All the toxins produced are already here for us to deal with.

That item must be given its true value and not be wasted or thrown out. Create a new use for it with minimal energy expense. Find creative ways to extend the useful life of any items you have already purchased. Consider nothing disposable.

Outcomes

What happens when we imagine something beautiful and it doesn't come to pass? What if we see a fabulous outcome to an adventure we create, and instead something difficult happens? What happened to the vision? I believe the images we produce have their own life. I believe we are doing something productive in the very act of imagining what we want for our world.

Being ready to accept the form that vision takes when it arrives is the key to fully imagining. If we can remain open to the information within the outcome, we won't have to hold back from our ultimate desires. Instead, we are filling the future with positive energy by projecting our visions.

Think about it. We don't know exactly what happens, energetically, to our thought forms, although there are some wonderful theories about this. What if our positive visions are merging together with the heartfelt dreams of other beings around the world? What if we deliberately included this idea in our vision?

Embrace fully the brightly imagined desire. Allow this merging with other visions. You are spinning out threads, tethers that strengthen the connection to the imagination. You are informing the process with your own dream.

Accept the anticipation, too, as a tangible energy we create and move within. Anticipation allows us to reach out, grasp and transform, no matter what the seeming eventual reality. This is half of the real work available to us as humans with desires: Allowing the possibility of good.

Remember These Things:

We can change the world by turning slightly

Business is a powerful force for social change

Women's wisdom and imagination are called forth urgently now

The imagination loves a great project

We are rushing toward a great time

To begin is enough to break inertia

A Word About Historical Precedent

We are told that it is foolish to look to the future while ignoring the past. Yet what we see when we cast our glance back is only the dismal failure of past cultures to address the future. I say, let history go. Use very little of the past in creating the future. We have reached a point of exponential expansion that we could never have measured, and history cannot repeat itself. Indeed it has not repeated itself in decades -- for the world's ever compounding population dictates new territory -- new frontiers of potential -- year by year.

We cannot apply historical models to a world with billions of inhabitants. Billions of minds. Billions of dreams. Billions of energetic desires. The vibration of billions of hearts.

This is a new phenomenon. These are new criteria and new ways of being. This is a new world of possibility. We need active imaginations and a deliberate choosing of the dream, together. We are called upon to work to the edge of our ability to secure these dreams. And we are given what we need to make it through to the next place.

You see, through all the narrowing of attitudes and options we have perceived for many decades, that whole time, abundance has always poured forth. Its passage through our lives was restricted. The dominant energies have been so stingy, so punitive, so mean. Sisters, the dam is breaking. We must get ready for a deluge of joy, a sort of orgasm of the universe. During this time we are evolving from lack-based cultural beings. We are moving on to a center of abundance.

Use these tools to shift your seat on the mandala, thus changing the entire context. Let your imagination feed it all back to you, in your journal, in your quiet space. Take this information and imagine again, a huge, expanded vision, an absolute hallucination of a glorious future.

Little Shift

Breathe, smile, and relax. When you close this book, sit for a moment with it in your hands. Close your eyes and allow images to surface. You are opening to your journey, right now.

Keep letting your vision emerge. Keep expanding the limits, adding elements from the dreams of others whom you admire. And please, relax. Take any or all of these suggestions and turn them into a part of your life. Look at your notes. Search them for clues your imagination is sending through, clues to your best next step. Keep writing. Exhale fully. And reach out to your community. You are here for a reason. There is a portal hidden in your life -- there may be many. Every day gives an opportunity to enter. Prepare to transform.

What deepens you deepens all: We all need what you need.

I DOUBLE DARE YOU

If you have not done a single exercise in this book, I double dare you to do this -- just this one. Take this moment to sit quietly with your feet on the floor, and summon your imagination. See yourself sitting in an empty room. From some corner a voice speaks to you. Over and over, you hear the same words: "all is forgiven." Allow yourself to hear this message, over, and over, and over. When you finish reading this, put the book down and walk to the kitchen. Pour yourself a glass of water and drink it. Continue the words in your mind, like a gentle counting. All is forgiven, all is forgiven, all is forgiven. Keep hearing it until you feel a physical shift. Hold a glass of water in your hand and look at it as you repeat these words. Remember this whenever you fill a glass for yourself or your beloveds. Allow it to go on in the background, for hours, for days, forever. More than anything else in this book, this one shift will release energy and open you to the ecstatic power of your imagination.

I call this a pure liquid blessing. If you can give yourself this one quiet exercise, if you can allow these words even as you create them, you are ready for Eden.

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Catalogue Information

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