A Cool Evening of Signs, Surprises, and Spirituality

On Tuesday, I got the chance to see Dr. Wayne Dyer. I got the tickets from the local PBS station, when I ordered his DVD, CDs, and book. I like to sponsor my local PBS station, especially when there's something cool on.

My son was going to go with me, but after missing two days of school with the flu, he felt the need to make up for lost time. So I decided to head up there with an extra ticket. I left an hour before the doors opened, only to hit a ridiculous amount of traffic on the way up to San Francisco. At first I groaned, but then I let go of it. I figured that the worst that would happen was that I would show up late.

Almost as soon as I let go of needing to be there when the doors opened, the traffic cleared up.  I sailed up to the City, arriving in the neighborhood of the Masonic Center about 45 minutes before the presentation began. The Masonic Center is at the top of Nob Hill, a pretty steep hill in San Francisco. Parking up at the top of Nob Hill was $45. Parking at the bottom was $15. Guess where I parked?

As I tried to slow my breathing, I walked up to the Center behind a woman and two men, one of whom was smoking. I thought to myself, "This isn't helping me catch my breath..." They turned up the ramp toward the Center ahead of me. Just as I was about to pass them, the woman turned to the other man and said, "Now we just have to find somebody with an extra ticket."

They offered me $50 for my ticket, which made both of us very happy. They had bought two tickets for $75 each, so they saved $25, and I was $50 wealthier.

Inside, it was an interesting mix of people. There were a lot of pretty wealthy people, some who couldn't put their cell phones down until Dr. Dyer spoke. There were a lot of very pretty older women who all wanted to sit down front. I am always amazed at their profound disbelief that despite arriving 45 minutes after the doors opened, they couldn't find a seat up front.

To me, half the fun of arriving early is watching people find their place in open-seating. Some expect to be up front, and are disappointed or even incredulous when that's not possible. Some look for the best seat -- they're usually the first to grab an aisle seat or find the row with the most legroom. And some seem to look for the most inconvenient seat possible, crawling across eight others to reach a seat in the center of a row.

Then Dr. Dyer got up and started talking. One of the more profound things he said was that, "if prayer is you talking to God, then intuition is God talking to you." I began to think about all the times I've ignored God talking to me. What was I thinking?!? "Oh God, get real... You don't know what you're talking about..." That was a real head-to-forehead moment for me.

It was interesting to hear him talk about being called to something at 65, but not knowing what it was. He just knew he had to turn in a certain direction. Finally he came to realize that he would be studying the Tao and living life in a new and better way.

That also rang so true to me. I've been called. I just don't know where it's going. But I do know that one of the things I'm going to do is read his book, "Change Your Thoughts -- Change Your Life" beginning tomorrow morning.

I think what I like best about him is that he shows his human side – the fallible, normal guy who makes the same mistakes. That gives me more hope than the people who never seem to make mistakes (or at least never admit them).

So some of my favorite quotes from the evening include:

“Finding the great path is not about finding something outside of you, it's the return to the place from which we came, and knowing it for the first time.”

“You don't accomplish big things by thinking big, you do it by thinking and acting small.” (Phew! That's a relief!)

"The sage is kind to the kind, and kind to the unkind because the nature of his being is kindness." (The Tao Te Ching, Verse 49)

“Don't worry about your reputation, focus on your character.” (I really liked this one.)

“Don't die with your music still inside you.” (I don't remember who he was quoting there.)

“Feeling good is feeling God.”

“The greater danger is not that our expectations are set too high and we fail to reach them, it's that they're set too low and we do.” (Michelangelo)

“True nobility isn't about being better than anybody else, it's about being better than you used to be.”

It was a great evening for me. And once again, I was inspired and propelled in a better direction.