Trying Too Hard

I had a client, a perfectly lovely woman, who was constantly having problems at work. She was cited continuously for some minor infraction of the "rules", everyone was uptight and impossible to work with and it was generally a cut throat atmosphere. She was pretty much buying me out of oils, sage and candles not to mention amulets and self-help books.
Finally one day I asked her exactly what she was doing, step by step to fix this problem. I was exhausted before she got to lunch. There were the morning affirmations followed by the morning cleansing bath followed by more affirmations and rushing in early to smudge her area before anyone caught her and so forth to the special route to the break room on another floor with affirmations for every step on the stairs, visualizations of positive white light around her....are you tired yet?
Well, grab some caffeine  because we aren't done yet and remember, it isn't lunch yet. She was guarding every single thought to make certain it was the bastion of positivity and any negative thought had to be countered with a positive one, anything negative from coworkers equally and all communications had to be filtered for self defeating word play and dear Goddess, there were even smiley faces!

My eyes must have been as wide as saucers and I am sure my mouth was open by that point. So, I began:

You are focusing so much on every tiny piece of everything that you can't see the forest for the trees. No one can have totally positive thoughts or communications. It's no wonder you are making so many mistakes at work. You are totally distracted from your actual work.

So, let's start by simply ignoring everyone and everything else but your job. Cleanse at night and then build your protective wall in the morning visualization. Go to work. Focus on work. Come home and jump in the shower to get rid of any lingering influences and go about your night.


Now, if you think anything in my world ever gets solved that easily, here, have a nice long walk in my shoes.

It wasn't two days before there was a clattering at the shop as I was packing up to go home. I opened the door to a woman I didn't recognize but since she was nicely dressed and looked professional I figured she wasn't the neighborhood robber. It actually took me a minute to realize who I had in the shop. It was my client and she was distraught. She had just had a reaming by her boss about something she had not even done. I got her sat down and took a good look.

The woman who arrived on the weekends in jeans and a T-shirt with a happy saying on it, sandals with hair in a lovely casual cut and unpainted nails had transformed to coiffed and sprayed with enough lacquer to be a fire hazard, fake nails, business suit so stiff I could have used it for siding on the building and heels so high she was now at least 6 inches taller than me marionette. Her makeup looked like she had just escaped the counter at Macy's after a bad encounter with an over zealous technician or three.

All I could mutter was, "What happened to you?"

She began to launch into the encounter with the boss and I stopped her. "No, I mean where is the person I see on the weekend?"

I have seen few people look so mystified and then I began to explain that her entire work persona was basically stick up the arse perfectionist. No wonder every infraction was being pounced upon. She was the source of the problem in the office and everyone else was reacting to her.

Now, if you think she believed me, here are my shoes, again.

So I laid out a modest proposal. The next day she would wear flats to work. The protest began but I countered with the sandals she wore that weekend were perfectly okay for work with some stockings. If the universe failed to crash, since there was no dress code in the work place, two days later she would ditch the suit jacket and every two days, one aspect of this fake person would go away and the real her would start to emerge. She was certain the four horsemen of the Apocalypse saddling up as we spoke but she agreed to try it for at least the rest of the week. Then I dropped the bomb. After a week of this, if the world was still spinning and if she had had no more complaints, the affirmations would go. If she agreed to that, there would be no charge for session. Well, you could see the conflict over being a really miserly person and giving up the beloved affirmation of which I was certain she had an entire library. Finally money won as it always does and she left.

I didn't hear from her for several weeks and almost breathed a sigh of relief. To be honest, she was wearing me out, but, well you know the drill...here try on my shoes.

Sure enough on the one night I was open late, she strolled in wearing a softly flowing skirt, loose top, large hoop earrings I knew she loved but obviously never wore to work, cute little kitten heel sandals and her hair was longer and brushing her shoulders. The precise makeup was now casual and she looked 10 years younger and much happier. She sat down and told me that things were going great at work. She even had friends but now, without affirmations, without three times daily meditation, she felt as though she was being called to the ocean to work. A reading revealed it was in fact time to move on..on out of the area and six weeks later, she was in another state, no longer an executive but running a small beach front business where she interacted with the previously dreaded public and even went barefoot at home in her very small little cottage with a yard. This woman was previously afraid of house plants.

However, her metaphysical support group of the positive attraction variety wasn't speaking to her and that I strongly believe was good thing. Some times, the single most important lesson in your life is learning to follow your heart and by that, learning who you really are and what YOU really need to make YOU happy.

If the 9 to 5 you bears no resemblance to the weekend you, I will bet that is the problem with your life. Bring them into alignment.

High John the Conqueror

High John the Conqueror root is identified as Ipomoea Jalapa, a red morning glory in most texts and now all over the net. However, there are a few things that bothered me with this designation. The first of which is it is used in HooDoo which is originated in the barrier islands of North and South Caroline and Louisiana and favored by slaves as the legend of John the Conqueror is of a slave. The plant is native to Mexico, South America and some parts of Southern Europe.
So, why would this plant be John the Conqueror root? It doesn't grow in the area in which Hoodoo and much of Voudoun are practiced in this country.
Then the other night while looking something else up, I came upon what must be the real John the Conqueror plant. It is Ipomoea Microdactyla which is a red morning glory that is native from the pine rocklands of Miami-Dade County to the Bahamas and Cuba. It's range is zones 10/11. The Bahamas and Cuba were stop overs for slave ships where slaves were sorted and cleaned up before bringing them ashore to the southern states. No doubt, this plant will grow in other locations because it produces a giant tubor like root. It  is sometimes called small fingers because of the small projections that often grow from the root.
Now comes the part that I think lends to the legend. After a fire in the area where this plant grows, it really takes off, covering everything and creating a showy display of bright scarlet flowers. It uses the burnt stems of other plants as a trellis.
It is endangered in Florida because the native rocklands are being destroyed for development. In Cuba it is called Bejuco colorado which means red reed or red rattan. It is also called: Man in the Ground.
Since the plant is so beautiful and red morning glories are seldom seen in cultivation, no one is certain why this cultivar isn't grown more.

ref: Everglades Wildflowers by Roger Hammer