Inconvenience 4 - Privilege and Criticism

Inconvenience 4 speaks to the insidious and destructive natures of privilege and criticism.Assuming privilege, and assuming the practice and right to criticize, can create the other: the other person, other class, other race, other gender, the other [pick any characteristic].This is not to say that criticism and critique are not valuable for many inequitable situations and for instigating change.But Inconvenience 4 is not about civil discourse. This Inconvenience describes the evils of dissatisfaction, projection, and a sense of superiority.The practitioner using this Inconvenience is certainly sowing seeds of discontent and discord. Making some people feel superior to others and encouraging negative criticism creates a crooked worm, as the Inconvenience states.The writer's use of the word worm tells the reader what the practitioner really thinks about the client.Notice the classic indicator of an Inconvenience, the upside-down heart. In this rendition, the writer has used the word heart and has placed it into position at the bottom of the figure.

Inconvenience 4

the simplest

the most dangerous and directest method of construction:

esteem privilege

inoculate with the virus of criticism

and the worm will be crooked enough

 

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 5 - Stretch the body and mind

Convenience 5 speaks to the holistic and complex nature of each person. The condition of the mind and body can affect how easily the heart softens and accepts change.I personally love this convenience for its emphasis on the whole person.I was taught that it also stresses the idea that there are multiple points of introduction for change, including the body, mind, and spirit.

Convenience 5

Stretch the body and mind.

This allows to heart to open to receive the change more easily.

 

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

Deadly Sin Inconvenience 1 - Covetousness

I've been avoiding introducing this topic for a while because it can be a difficult subject to discuss.As indicated, The Conveniences are positive statements about how to help people.The Renegade Conveniences are statements that are not particularly helpful, but are still primarily benign. They may encourage some greed or may try to profit from the dreamscape, but they are not intentionally harmful.The next category within the dream realm is that of The Inconveniences.The people who have written The Inconveniences intend harm. They are deliberately trying to lead others into pain, confusion, and misery.I'll introduce an Inconvenience now and then, perhaps weekly, but perhaps not. As I said, The Inconveniences, their temptations, and their instructions can be quite difficult and painful to contemplate.But, as an academic researcher, it is, of course, exceedingly important for me to address them directly and not to pretend that they don't exist.This particular Inconvenience was created sometime between 1850 and 1910.  Convenience scholars have attempted to narrow the timeline, but have so far been unable to do so.We do know that this particular Inconvenience writer based her recommendations on the Seven Deadly Sins.Please note that each page of the various versions of The Inconveniences typically contains the image of an upside-down heart.This page has this image at the top, on the left and right. To repeat, The Inconveniences are meant to injure the human heart, and this repeated image of the upside-down heart further emphasizes that point.The Inconveniences are the greatest immediate antagonist to the goodness and helpfulness of The Conveniences.

Covetousness Inconvenience

The crop of covetousness in my garden is a stockier, thicker, ranker growth than kindness.

It is decidedly "bitey," and it is a WONDER

Make human beings desire others' lives, companions, etc.

This is the plant.

If it is cut frequently, the roots being left in the water of Misery,

a continuous crop will result.

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.

[Renegade] Convenience Advertisement - Pleasure and Profit in Dream Work

This advertisement is clearly renegade.Some convenience practitioners did, and do, enter the practice for pleasure (primarily the pleasure of helping others), and some have made at least part of their living from the work.It's the commercial aspect of the advertisement that is problematic for its time, likely early twentieth-century.This advertisement appears to be part of the nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century industry impulses to codify everything and to make almost all parts of human life into commodities.

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 Commentary about Age

This is not really a convenience, more of a commentary shared by a convenience writer who appears to have been getting older and appears to have been feeling unheard or less valued.This convenience writer acknowledges that the period between birth and middle age seems to be the most active and vigorous time of life, but asks that experience in older age be valued as well. 

Convenience Comments About Age

Different seasons make very satisfactory conditions

Germination to October is the most vigorous interval

But experience should be more honored