BREAKING THE MOLD AND MAKING LUCK

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There are two ways to break out of the same old mold and make luck for our-selves:
     • Conversion, a spiritual experience, accompanied by revelation, resulting in new insight and genuine change.
     • Recovery, any type of aided self-examination, bringing about understanding of one's history and habits, resulting in new insight and genuine change.

On a hot day in 1962 around 5 PM in Modesto, California, George Lucas, high school student with term papers due, was racing his tiny yellow Fiat Bianchina back from the library to the family's ranch.   He was pushing the souped up engine to its very limits.   He did not allow for anything, not the bunch of traffic tickets he had gotten already, not even the knowledge that, not long ago, seven high school friends had died in a collision right behind his home, to slow him down.
When he made a left turn onto the dirt road to his home, he missed seeing the Chevrolet Impala, driven by a schoolmate. The crash for sure would have been deadly, if the seatbelt had not miraculously snapped, hurling George out of the open roof, or if he had landed on his head, instead of miraculously landing on his chest and stomach.
So great was the impact that the tree, roots and all, shifted two feet.
Recovering in the hospital George realized: "I'd been living my life so close to the edge for so long. That's when I decided to go straight, to be a better student, to try to do something with myself." The crash literally woke Lucas up: "You can't have that kind of experience and not feel there must be a reason why you're here. I realized I should be spending my time trying to figure out what the reason is and trying to fulfill it. The fact is, there is no way I could have survived that accident if I'd been wrapped around that tree. Actually, that seatbelt should have never been broken, under any circumstances."
The near death experience transformed Lucas from an aimlessly driving and dreaming teenager into a man with a mission, fully committed to changing his life.
"The accident made me more aware of myself and my feelings.   I began to trust my instincts.  
I had the feeling that I should go to college, and I did.   I had the same feeling later that I should go into film school, even though everybody thought I was crazy.   I lost a lot of face because for hot rodders the idea of going into film was really a goofy idea.   It was the early sixties.   Nobody went into film at that time.   In a way movies replaced my love for cars and motorcycles; it was really all-consuming.   After my accident, I knew I could not continue with that, and I was sort of floundering for something.   And so when I finally discovered film, I really fell madly in love with it, ate it and slept it 24 hours a day.   I had the same feeling when I decided to make Star Wars, when even my friends told me I was crazy.   You just have to be stubborn and bullheaded, and move forward no matter what you're up against. 
What's valuable for me is to set standards.  The one thing that art can do is to show you the way things should be, to inspire you to say: this is the world we want to have and these are the kind of people we want to be. 
These are just the things that have to be done and I feel as if I have to do them."
Thus he did, making glorious history, proving in real life and movies that one can learn to master one's fate.   "I could bring my vision into reality."

Richard Pryor was loved by fans and fates alike, lucky enough to get more than one wake-up call when, after reaching the impossible, his life started spiraling out of control.
First came the voice when he sat in a hotel lobby in Kenya, Africa.
"Look around, said the voice, do you see any niggers"?   Richard looked around and saw beautiful, dignified, black people everywhere.   So he said: "No."   And the voice said: "You know why? Because there aren't any!"
Illumined Richard regretted ever having uttered the "N-word" and vowed to never use it again, vowed to stop perpetuating hate and self-hatred.   Yet it was easier said than done.
To walk the vow, when one is deeply embedded in the mire of mark, mimicry and merry go round, one has to let go, unlearn same old-same old and rise to a new ball game.
He needed another wake-up.   It came in the summer of 1986 when he literally saw the light, lying in bed in his house at Hana, on the island of Maui, Hawaii. " I watched shards of light explode across my field of vision as if I was standing in an empty field during a lightning storm. I did not know what to make of it. Death had knocked on my door before. Bullets had just missed me... I had even set myself on fire and suffered third degree burns over 50 % of my body in 1980. But the stuff that'd been happening lately scared the s... out of me."   He was told he had multiple sclerosis.
Yet though he had quit the drugs and literally seen the light, he kept resisting, kept going the hard way, kept kicking and screaming, still fighting the issues of his youth. "So rather than surrender to the forces beyond my control, I've decided to hang on till the end of the ride."
He could or would not let go, not even when the fates send him an opportunity in the form of a wheelchair.   He was living in the past, still believed he was a victim, instead of a man with free will, power of mind and plenty of sunshine on his face.   If only he would make a difference for himself.   After all, he had already made a difference for many others.
Imagine he could just chill, review his life, sort out what happened way back, work through the guilt and fear and dare to indict the original perpetrators.   Imagine him finishing up the emotional business - making past, past at last, in head as well as heart, reuniting with his very best self, catching up with the reality of his success.   Imagine him enjoying his children and the improved woman he remarried.   Jennifer Lee Pryor had taken a time out, to work her way out of the mire, insisting she become clear headed and strong hearted, trusting herself.  
Imagine him seeing and receiving his luck and celebrating his full humanity...

Eric Clapton, was well on the way to self-extinction, ignoring fate's wake-up calls in the form of near death accidents and illness, until he drove out to the river Wey to do some fishing. "I was drunk... lost my balance and fell over onto one of the fishing rods, breaking it clean off at the handle. Other fishermen witnessed the scene and looked away in embarrassment.
The last vestige of my self respect had been ripped away."
He checked into Hazelden and came out clean.   Yet it was still hard to break away from the same old mold. "A more intelligent approach to rebuilding my life would have been to leave recording for a while... and spend a few years finding out what it was that I really wanted to do rather than just step back into the accepted pattern from the past. But that was not to be... as I was back on the treadmill looking for a formula for a successful album."
So he relapsed.   And received more wake-up calls, in the form of alcohol related seizures, two pregnant mistresses and a trial separation from his wife. "I'm back where I started – jealous and rejected", he wrote in his diary.   Clapton desperately held on to the old habit, fleeing in alcohol and women. The same old merry go round and mold, naturally created the same old outcome. "Suddenly my world was in tatters. I was disenchanted with my now pregnant mistress and I'd lost my wife. I was in conflict and bewildered, and felt like I'd opened a vast door into an empty chasm. At some point during this period I decided that the only answer to my problems was suicide."
It was little angel Conor, born on August 21, 1986, who injected in Clapton the power to challenge himself.   He was a father now and it was high time to grow up.   "I just had an incredible feeling that this was going to be the first real thing that had ever happened to me. Up till that moment, it seemed like my life had been a series of episodes that had very little meaning."
Clapton made up his mind to go back into treatment, for the sake of his now deceased son Conor, who deserved a better father than Eric felt he was in that moment. "I had to break the chain and give him what I never really had..."
He surrendered, literally going down on his knees, begging for help.   Grace is ever viable.   When we reach out to the universe, the universe always answers.   The compulsion was taken away at that very moment. "I found a place to turn to, a place I'd always known was there but never really wanted, or needed, to believe in."
The man who had been enabled by his environment for decades and looked upon himself as a victim, learned to take responsibility.   He woke up and became more and more aware of how he resurrected and repeated the past.   He took time to find out who he was as a person away from music.   He learned to go counter reflex and counter reactive.  He learned to take control, and let go of bad choices.   He worked through frustration and rage and learned to differentiate between lust and love and between pleasure and happiness.
Most vital, he learned to stick with it, not to run away.
When Conor died, after a fall out of the window of a high rise in New York, he apologized to his son during the farewell in the funeral home for not being a better father.   He slowly developed a relationship with his daughter Ruth, born to one of his lovers.   "What saved my life was the unconditional love and understanding that I received from my friends and my fellows in the 12 step program. I really was in a position to say, well, if I can go through this and stay sober, then anyone can. At that moment I realized that there was no better way of honoring the memory of my son. The presence of Ruth had a profound effect on my wellbeing as a whole and was absolutely vital to my recovery. In her I had found again something real to be concerned about and that was very instrumental in my becoming an active human being again."
The brave and enlightened never stop growing.   Clapton too continued self-knowledge through therapy and helping others, through founding a recovery facility, Crossroads Centre, in Antigua.
After he broke the mold he made some luck, remarried, had three more daughters and is determined to be the parent he missed out on.   "... just being there and staying there is sometimes all that's required of me, and that in itself is big."   Naturally he is still touring the world.  
Playing the blues, recovery and breaking fate's chains: pure revolution, pure spirit!

When Tina Turner was born Anna Mae Bullock in 1939, in Nutbush, Tennessee, her parents did not love each other and showed no interest in her. "She just did not want me. The fact is, I had no love from my mother and my father from the beginning, from birth. I loved my mother and she did not even realize it. I didn't have anybody, really, no foundation in life."
Tina was smart, always quick to catch on to things, always looking, listening and learning.
Her parents might have failed her, but that did not keep her from relying on a family of choice.
Her first teacher was cousin Margaret, three years older. "Oh, I loved Margaret. She was my only real friend. She was a godsend, truly. You see, I believe that you're always given someone – maybe not a father or a mother or a sister or a brother, but someone. And I was given Margaret. For a while anyway.  Later there were more who came into my life just to touch me, to teach me... "
Whether it is the Native American dignity and spirit of her ancestors, her extraordinary life force and compassion, her spirituality, her imagination and trust in dreaming, most likely all of it, Tina always chooses her own way, no matter what the circumstances are. "I had to make my own way. Always. From the start. I had to go out in the world and become strong, to discover my mission in life."
She never bought into the neglect or abuse imposed on her, growing up or while married to Ike Turner.   She suffered it, but did not swallow it.   She knew she did not deserve it.   She dared to implicate the perpetrator, original or current.
"She hit me with the backhand lick to the side of my face. But I hadn't done anything wrong. I felt that I was a good girl. I went to school. I did all the housework at home. I didn't think I deserved to be hit. That was when I realized how much I resented my mother."
"He kept control over me with fear. I was so bogged down with my life. I was like a shadow. I almost did not exist. I guess some people in my position might have turned to drugs, or drinking, but I never did. I knew I needed something to help me deal with what life had become, to help me find a way out; but I knew that drugs weren't it. I was never one to fool around either."
Touring with the Rolling Stones and meeting David Bowie in Great Britain after "River Deep Mountain High" became a hit, opened Tina's eyes. "England was the beginning of everything for me – the beginning of my escape from Ike, I guess you could say, and the beginning of me seeing a new way of life, a new style of living." A trip to France and Germany changed her life. "I felt like I had come home. Like I never knew my real home until I came to Europe."  
When she got a deadly illness she got the hint.  "So I went to the hospital.  I thought God, I'm really sick.  Naturally Ike did not drive me to the hospital.  I had to drive myself. 
... I thought, well, I'm not going to let this man kill me."
She worked with psychic intuitives and after a friend introduced her to Buddhism, she added chanting to her daily prayers. "... I began to think about who I was, and to feel like who I was. 
I was exploring my soul for the first time.  I was really seeking a change, and I knew it had to come from the inside out – that I had to understand myself and accept myself, before anything else could be accomplished.   Now I could feel the power deep inside me, stirring up after all these years."
She understood she was simply working through fate, learning her lessons, finishing up karma.   She understood the unlimited unified power of spirit, free will and mind.  "I knew it was the chant - that it was helping me to rearrange my place in the universe."  She literally worked, prayed and chanted hell out of her life, made luck and dreams come true...

Quotes from;
*Interview with George Lucas, October 1989
*Skywalker. The Life and Films of George Lucas by Dale Pollock, 1999, updated edition
*Mythmaker. The Life and Work of George Lucas, John Baxter, 1999
*Pryor Convictions: and Other Life Sentences by Richard Pryor, 1995
*Clapton. The Autobiography, by Eric Clapton, 2007
*I Tina by Tina Turner with Kurt Loder, 1986