Academic Convenience 7A - Loosening the Roots

The writer of academic convenience 7A commented on the potentially troublesome nature of secrets.To be more precise, she suggested that keeping pain hidden can perpetuate the feeling.She advocated some analysis of the problem (trimming thorns and loosening roots), and then suggested exposing troubles to openness, to light, air, sun, rain, and dew.The openness can provide a new perspective on pain or wounds, and can lessen feelings of isolation.

Convenience 7A

Another method of replacing the pain is trimming the thorns on each side of the wound, loosening the roots.

A few days in the sun will help

Do not neglect the direction action of the light, air, rain, and dew.

 

International Convenience 2A - Prevent Distance

This particular writer prefers to work with what she considers to be the canon of conveniences.Please note the copyright of 1883, printed at the bottom of the convenience.The nineteenth century is historically known for its many attempts to codify almost everything. For that reason, this nineteenth-century convenience is an excellent historical artifact.Many social customs began to change near the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, and conveniences from those times were typically less insistent on conformity to established practices. 

International Convenience 2A - Conveniences in America

One advantage of being close

is to prevent the modification of convenience passages

Homestead Convenience 7 - Abundant Possibilities

The style of this Convenience places it squarely within the Homestead Convenience tradition.The Convenience writer tells her readers that her work with the Conveniences offers a wide variety of options and possibilities. 

Travel Convenience 18 - Tourists and Travellers in our Own Lives

Throughout Conveniences history, many Convenience writers have come from a tradition of traveling.Some writers have traveled extensively, some have been armchair travelers; many have found themselves between those two points on the traveling experience spectrum.This Convenience was clearly written by a woman with some experience, both in actual travel and in life.Her comments about tourists and travelers tell her readers that she is likely familiar with both, and that she recognizes a distinction between the two.Regardless of this distinction, she advises that her readers work with the inevitable changes in life.She suggests that accepting change will allow readers to inhabit their own lives and claim their own experiences.She explicitly states that she does not advocate settling for any or all circumstances. She advocates finding options and approaching situations differently; she recommends diversity and various kinds of peace. 

Homestead Convenience 3A - How to Identify a Woman on the Path

The attribute that makes a Convenience a Homestead Convenience is the style, not the content.A Homestead Convenience may be created by any woman, regardless of education, class, or any other aspect of identity.Some create Homestead Conveniences because they prefer what they consider to be a simpler style.Others create Homestead Conveniences because they prefer the ways that the meanings are emphasized.This Convenience is a Homestead Convenience in style, although its meaning is anything but simple.Many readers may note that this writer has used a page from the book Modern Woman and How to Manage Her by Walter Gallichan, 1910.Notice how the writer has allowed the reader to see the derogatory comments about women: St. Augustine asking why women were born at all, Luther advocating withholding culture from women, and women having the fierceness of dragons and the snake's cunning, among many other negative comments.The writer subverts all of these comments by locating and emphasizing her own descriptions of women on the path.The writer uses her own words and claims her own identity and her own place in history and culture.

Academic Convenience 35 - Open Doors and Community

This convenience invites the traveler, seeker, practitioner, and/or wanderer into something new.It encourages noticing the open doorway that might lead to adventure and a sense of community among like-minded souls.

Convenience 35

From time unknown

open doorways invite the wanderer

into Community

Academic Convenience 23 - Re-form and Recompose

This convenience highlights the importance of reshaping and/or reframing some bad or inadequate experiences.I was taught that this convenience does not mean that all experiences are accepted without question or without action.Reshaping an experience might mean using it as an impetus toward change. It might also mean examining the experience to discover its lessons.The lesson might be change, or it may be acceptance. It might be both.Use discernment.The effects may ripple further than we would ever imagine.

Convenience 23

Re-form and recompose the objectionable

The stakes extend beyond a considerable distance.

 

Homestead Convenience 21 - Dig on the Other Side

Convenience 21

This version of this Convenience advises trying something different.Einstein is often credited with the quote, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."Whether the quote is correctly attributed or not doesn't really matter; the sentiment conveyed by the quote seems to be recognizable and validated by many.This Convenience, attributed to an 1888 Convenience writer, supplies the same message.Please note the added artistry of this writer; she has chosen to draw the faint outline of a fence behind her text. 

Convenience 21

Be done with the ordinary

And to do this, when ready,

dig on the alternate side of the fence.

Anytime Especial Convenience 17 Pull Instead of Push

Especial Convenience 17 - Pull Instead of Push

I have many, but this is one of my favorite Conveniences, composed by one of my favorite Convenience writers.Her true identity is unknown to scholars, although the composition and content of her writings suggest that she was composing in the last quarter of the 19th century.This writer advises attracting clients rather than pushing opinions and services onto those we might seek to help.Her graphic of two women talking tells Convenience scholars that this Convenience writer advocates friendship as motivation for helping another.She goes further when she states that attraction has a far less tendency to harm those seeking help, and her final statement reiterates that friendship, "like parts," is by far [emphasis mine] the best way to approach others. 

Especial Convenience 17

pull instead of push

in pulling there is little tendency to injure

The best way is to make like parts

 

Academic Convenience 25 One Aim is Best

Convenience 25

This version of this Convenience encourages focus.Because it is a Convenience, the unwritten subtext is obvious: having focus will allow healing to be accomplished much more easily. 

Convenience 25

Many have about sixteen aims

One is best

Academic Convenience 48 - Safe to Share

Convenience 48

This Convenience states that it is safe to share our dreams.Implicit in this Convenience, because it is a Convenience, is the idea that all dreams are not too expensive and are not too valuable; there are plenty of dreams to go around.Also implicit is the suggestion that sharing dreams may be helpful because other people may be able to help a person realize a dream. 

Convenience 48

One great trouble is the thinking that DREAMS are too expensive and valuable to be shared

It is safe to share

 

Academic Convenience 9 - Desire is Free

This Convenience suggests that desire [to change] is a necessary component for actuating change.The writer also reminds us that desire is free.I, and other Convenience scholars, believe that the image of the woman was included to illustrate freedom and simplicity.The woman is outside, in nature, and her countenance appears peaceful. Feeding her chicks is a simple task.Some scholars have dissented, saying that feeding chicks can be an onerous daily task, and that her expression is less peaceful than resigned.Make your own assessment. 

Convenience 9

Another good device is free: desire

Academic Convenience 22 Movable Gate

Convenience 22

This convenience writer speaks to the differences among practitioners and clients, highlighting the idea that just one way will not be appropriate for all.She also emphasizes the important of a curiosity that might lead an individual to investigate options.The writer suggests that a gate, perhaps as a representative for all openings, is movable.She encourages the reader to not assume that the openings are fixed, but rather to discover other potential gateways to a destination.

Academic Convenience 19 - Take but Little Luggage

This convenience advises the client to leave behind emotional and mental baggage, and asks the client to remember that the baggage must be identified.As much as many of us might wish to magically lose our [mental and emotional] baggage, that magic rarely appears, and a practitioner can find it difficult to effect change if the client is too invested in the past.The practitioner can often help the client drop the baggage, but the client must become willing to abandon the unneeded luggage.

Convenience 19

Take care to hold but little baggage

Remember that baggage must be identified

Some people save themselves trouble by dropping baggage in the "left-luggage" station

Homestead Convenience 1G - The Eternal Mystery

Convenience One is different for every convenience writer, because it is the text in which each practitioner describes her (or the occasional his) initial experience with the convenience mysteries.This writer clearly stated that she believed that the ability to understand mystery was within the realm of possibility for all. 

Convenience 1G**

Many years ago a woman spoke of the Eternal Mystery as within reach for all.

Visit the possible.

 **Please note that the 1G name is merely a scholarly designation intended to make it simpler for future students to differentiate among the various first conveniences. 

Homestead Convenience 100 - Sinking into Grace

Convenience 100 implies an interesting question, and then it suggests an answer.How do we sustain the beneficial changes and growth that have occurred in our lives? Which of us has not experienced a backslide into old behavior, even if that behavior is harmful in some way?This Convenience suggests that maintaining change is a matter of grace.Some Convenience activists have fiercely disputed the suggestion that grace is required to maintain progress. They have argued that activism is definitely required.Are they wrong?Here again, the either/or question: contemplation or action.Later Convenience writers consider the either/or question to be a fallacious one.They would say it is both.

Homestead Convenience 6 - Visionary Art, Observations, and Rich Memories

This convenience writer emphasized the visionary arts and the importance of observation and memory.As you are undoubtedly coming to realize, each convenience writer tends to emphasize the qualities that she herself possesses.I don't personally read The Conveniences as indicating that each convenience writer believed that only her qualities are/were suitable for service.But it is true that several convenience scholars have read the pieces with an exclusionary eye, and some contentious academic disagreements have broken out over the years.Some scholars have made a career out of rebutting others' arguments in various academic journals.Most of the disagreements seem to rest on right brain/left brain conflict.Do The Conveniences describe process? Logic? Art?All of it?

Convenience Six - Visionary Art, Observation, and Rich Memories

Find new inspiration by becoming familiar with visionary artists.

Work may be improved by some observation,

deepened with a store of rich memories.

Homestead Convenience 4 - Put Things in Their Places (mind, heart, soul)

This convenience seems to be about focus.The convenience writer suggests that we have everything we need (mind, heart, and soul), and that we can focus on that fact to go about building a future more in line with our dreams.The writer tells us to use what we have.

Convenience Four

Put Things in Their Places

We have a mind and a heart and soul ready for use in the right place,

and that are good by themselves and the rest should go.

Throw the rest out of reach

Academic Convenience 14 - Herb of Grace

The writer of this version of Convenience 14 was clearly familiar with Harry Houdini's publication, The Conjurers' Monthly Magazine.As many of you may already recognize, this writer has used phrases from the book review page of the September, 1906, Volume I.The fact that the writer has used a 1906 source for part of the writing suggests that this version was composed near the start of the 20th century.This writer also clearly favors the herb of grace over any hints of magic. Herb of grace refers to rue, a common garden herb that is said to protect against witches.A little bit of research reveals more of Houdini's commentary and his claims about the origins of the phrase hocus pocus (commentary found in the same volume referenced above):So, here again, we have a clever Conveniences writer who intertwines and juxtaposes meaning: hocus pocus, grace, protection against witches, rue, and (by inference) consecration.This writer also uses the more formal format of a brief essay which is written on a heavier linen paper and is decorated with a border.

Commercial Convenience 2 - Quality

This convenience speaks to the inclusive and nondual nature of the path.Despite disagreements about how to interpret The Conveniences and which types of people should be allowed to work on them, everyone and everything is still part of the one. 

Convenience 2

Quality Trade Mark

Whatever the requirements,

whatever part of the country,

you find the same quality, comfort, and adaptability everywhere.

Always one: Perfect, excellent, beautiful.

only the one