Thursday, October 21, 2010

Four levels of listening

From Otto Scharmer's Theory U: Leading from the Future as it Emerges

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Downloading
“Yeah, I know that already.” I call this type of listening “downloading”—listening by reconfirming habitual judgments. When you are in a situation where everything that happens confirms what you already know, you are listening by downloading.

Factual
“Ooh, look at that!” This type of listening is factual or object-focused: listening by paying attention to facts and to novel or disconfirming data. You switch off your inner voice of judgment and listen to the voices right in front of you. You focus on what differs from what you already know. Factual listening is the basic mode of good science. You let the data talk to you. You ask questions, and you pay careful attention to the responses you get.

Empathic
“Oh, yes, I know exactly how you feel.” This deeper level of listening is empathic listening. When we are engaged in real dialogue and paying careful attention, we can become aware of a profound shift in the place from which our listening originates. We move from staring at the objective world of things, figures, and facts (the “it-world”) to listening to the story of a living and evolving self (the “you-world”). Sometimes, when we say “I know how you feel,” our emphasis is on a kind of mental or abstract knowing. But to really feel how another feels, we have to have an open heart. Only an open heart gives us the empathic capacity to connect directly with another person from within. When that happens, we feel a profound switch as we enter a new territory in the relationship; we forget about our own agenda and begin to see how the world appears through someone else’s eyes.

Generative
“I can’t express what I experience in words. My whole being has slowed down. I feel more quiet and present and more my real self. I am connected to something larger than myself.” This type of listening moves beyond the current field and connects us to an even deeper realm of emergence. I call this level of listening “generative listening,” or listening from the emerging field of future possibility. This level of listening requires us to access not only our open heart, but also our open will—our capacity to connect to the highest future.




Saturday, October 16, 2010

Lies

Some of the most deceptive and effective lies are concealed in a masterful mimicry of truth.

Sunday, October 3, 2010

Repression does not lead to virtue

"Repression is not the way to virtue. When people restrain themselves out of fear, their lives are by necessity diminished. Only through freely chosen discipline can life be enjoyed and still kept within the bounds of reason."
-Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Conscience

"To know what is right and not do it is the worst cowardice." 
-Confucius

Friday, July 23, 2010

Kissinger wisdom

“Nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes. There’s too much fraternizing with the enemy.”
-Henry Kissinger

Monday, July 19, 2010

Cultural contrast offers a form of redemption

Wherever you live there's a predominant culture--a common system of values, beliefs, and behaviors that informally govern people's living. This culture can be your national culture, regional culture, city culture, religious culture, racial culture, academic culture, or even family culture. The less people travel, study, and otherwise interact with different ideas, the more their cultural beliefs become reinforced. And even for those who do enjoy the benefits of travel and intellectual development, such people are more likely to socialize, work, and live with others who hold their beliefs. For example, the Washington DC metro area is full of educated, experienced, well-traveled people who do those things because of what they value and/or how they were socialized. Many of these people live in the same neighborhoods and have similar work, vacation, shopping, and leisure patterns. Nevertheless, being influenced by different cultural systems does not necessarily equate to adopting their beliefs and behaviors. But the stronger the influence and the longer the exposure to the culture, the more likely we are to begin adopting the thinking, the attitudes, and the practices of that culture, for better or for worse. A person who works with cynics, has cynics for neighbors, goes to college with cynics, and socializes with cynics on the weekend will likely develop some cynical tendencies, unless deliberate efforts are made to the contrary. And that's why living a multi-cultured life can be very beneficial for helping one to retain his/her values.

Let's consider three different cultures: work, church, and home. Within each of these systems there are different norms for what is considered good behavior. There are different philosophies for how to appropriately interact with others, spend your time, participate in the political sphere, and basically anything else you can think of. If you have no existing beliefs or concepts about a particular aspect of human experience, these systems will certainly try to influence you. And when one of these systems conflicts with your personal beliefs, it can require a great deal of effort to counteract the effects of that system. For example, if you work in an aggressive and abrasive environment, it will require significant personal commitment and effort to not become like your aggressive and abrasive co-workers. One of the most effective resources in combating unwanted cultural influence is active exposure to different cultures. An aggressive work culture can, in part, be countered through active exposure to a patient and peaceful religious or family culture. An intolerant family culture can be countered through a compassionate religious culture. We can temper our natures by keeping company with the people who we wish to become like. And entertaining multiple circles of association also helps us to avoid the group think that occurs from consistently being surrounded by people who believe the same things.

So if your work culture, your religious culture, and your family culture are relatively similar it's likely that you'll spend your time in those systems being reinforced and re-indoctrinated over and over again, with a decreased capacity to realize what elements of those systems are not founded in truth...Then again, if you've left your own cultural cradle and gained a glimpse of something else that permanently opens your eyes, you may never again be completely comfortable with swallowing your own culture in its entirety.

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Our human experience is fleeting and our perspective so limited, but we can know love.

"Again and again, however we know the landscape of love
and the little churchyard there, with its sorrowing names,
and the frighteningly silent abyss into which the others
fall: again and again the two of us walk out together
under the ancient trees, lie down again and again
among the flowers, face to face with the sky." 


-Rainer Maria Rilke

Friday, June 25, 2010

Dad is key

"I hasten to acknowledge that there are too many husbands and fathers who are abusive to their wives and children and from whom the wives and children need protection. Yet modern sociological studies powerfully reaffirm the essential influence of a caring father in the life of a child--boy or girl. In the past twenty years, as homes and families have struggled to stay intact, sociological studies reveal this alarming fact: much of the crime and many of the behavioral disorders in the United States come from homes where the father has abandoned the children. In many societies the world over, child poverty, crime, drug abuse, and family decay can be traced to conditions where the father gives no male nurturing. Sociologically it is now painfully apparent that fathers are not optional family baggage." (James E. Faust in LDS General Conference Report, Apr. 1993, 44-45, 47)

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Children need fathers

"Studies show that fathers have a special role to play in building a child's self-respect. They are important, too, in ways we really don't understand, in developing internal limits and controls in children...Research also shows that fathers are critical in establishment of gender in children. Interestingly, fatherly involvement produces stronger sexual identity and character in both boys and girls. It is well established that the masculinity of sons and the femininity of daughters are each greater when fathers are active in family life" (Karl Zinsmeister, "Do Children Need Fathers?" Crisis, Oct. 1992).

Saturday, June 19, 2010

Deceived

"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right."
-Thomas Paine, Common Sense

A bumper sticker I saw last week

Secrecy promotes tyranny

Friday, June 11, 2010

Listen to yourself

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become."
-Steve Jobs

Monday, June 7, 2010

The Free

"No arsenal...is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women."
-Ronald Reagan,
Inaugural Address 1981

Friday, June 4, 2010

Good America, Great America

"I sought the greatness of the United States in her commodious harbors, her ample rivers, her fertile fields, and boundless forests- and it was not there. I sought for it in her rich mines, her vast world commerce, her public school system, and in her institutions of higher learning- and it was not there. I looked for it in her democratic Congress and her matchless Constitution- and it was not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great!"
-Alexis de Tocqueville

Monday, May 24, 2010

Stumbling over the truth

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened."
-Winston Churchill

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Men need to be needed

Dr. Leonard Sax, author of Boys Adrift, was interviewed by NPR on April 4, 2006 after he wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post about his ongoing study of unmotivated boys and young men. The op-ed received widespread attention, being reprinted in three dozen newspapers, and in response to his interview he received over one thousand emails from listeners. Dr. Sax included some of these emails in a chapter of his book. The last email of the chapter is quoted in part below.

From: "Kent Robertson"
Subject: NPR interview

I thought I would share an epiphany I experienced during your interview.

With 4 sons, teen and pre-teen, this "Failure to Launch" trend is one I need to get in front of. You mentioned that these men are quite content despite their lack of motivation. Well, why the hell not. These man/boys have it all. Their material needs are handed to them. The over-indulgent Moms will see to that (didn't the mother who called in make that clear?). Their emasculated fathers usually have little say.

Here's the epiphany--or confession, if you like. I sense that I am only a marital separation away from sinking into such a funk...I have seen many grown men, when their marriage fails, drift toward the man/boy zero-ambition style of life, living in a shanty or maybe back home with parents, in pursuit of personal gratification over everything else, exploiting every sexual opportunity, not unlike the man/boy you described on NPR.

You mentioned "the engine that runs the world." As for me, I think that the engine is the love of a good woman and the ambitions we have together for the family we are raising and for the world we want them to inherit.

Has our intellectual elite and our popular culture tinkered with "the engine that runs the world?" Have we violated something that the ancients knew intuitively but which we have arrogantly ignored?

Kent Robertson

Monday, May 3, 2010

An Important Book!

Boys Adrift, by Dr. Leonard Sax, explores the growing phenomenon of unmotivated, underperforming boys in modern society. He offers five reasons for this epidemic:
*Video games
*Teaching methods
*Prescription drugs
*Environmental toxins
*Devaluation of masculinity

Read more at http://www.boysadrift.com/.

Saturday, May 1, 2010

Quiet grit

The thoughtless, the ignorant, and the indolent, seeing only the apparent effects of things and not the things themselves, talk of luck, of fortune, and chance.  Seeing a man grow rich, they say, "How lucky he is!" Observing another become intellectual they exclaim, "How highly favored he is!" And noting the saintly character and wide influence of another, they remark, "How chance aids him at every turn!" They do not see the trials and failures and struggles which these men have voluntarily encountered in order to gain their experience; have no knowledge of the sacrifices they have made, of the undaunted efforts they have put forth, of the faith they have exercised, that they might overcome the apparently insurmountable, and realize the Vision of their heart. They do not know the darkness, and the heartaches; they only see the light and joy, and call it "luck"; do not see the long and arduous journey, but only behold the pleasant goal, and call it "good fortune"; do not understand the process, but only perceive the result, and call it "chance."
-James Allen, As a Man Thinketh

Friday, April 30, 2010

Television programming and role modeling

Television programs receive extensive attention for how they characterize different racial and gender groups. Many sitcoms pay particular attention to avoid racial stereotypes and portray minority families in positive relationships with successful lifestyles. Programs that fail to do so are criticized for perpetuating negative images and attitudes of these groups. In a similar way to minority groups, women are depicted as competent and balanced, often juggling a career and childrearing with ease. Fathers and husbands, on the other hand, are frequently depicted as bumbling, lazy, incompetent, and even superfluous. Sometimes it's as if the man is just another one of the children that mother must take care of, rather than a dependable, contributing leader of the home. This modeling of husband and father gives an image of men's familial roles that can be discouraging and disappointing for both men and women--for men in light of their roles, and for women in their relationship to men fulfilling those roles.

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Misandry

Somehow it has become widely acceptable to berate and disrespect men as a gender. Man-hating is validated and justified while the same attitudes and behaviors towards women are condemned as sexist and inappropriate. Perhaps some feel that this antipathy is deserved for offenses committed by men. But returning raling for raling is false justice. Our fates are tied together. We cannot do harm to another without harming ourselves. Derogatory attitudes towards men and their roles, especially as fathers and husbands, have both personal and societal consequences. As we undermine their contributions and malign even purposeful and constructive concepts of masculinity, we not only discourage men from filling crucial roles in their families, but tell them they'll be inadequate or even total failures in doing so. People naturally become as we regard them. Misandry will not help improve men's behavior any more than misogyny will improve women's.

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

The Tongue Reveals the Heart

"How can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh."
-Jesus Christ

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Internal work

"What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality."
-Plutarch

Monday, April 26, 2010

Words from a fashion writer

"Clothes are not everything, but you cannot have depths without surfaces. They communicate with what is within; between the two there is always a great dialogue."
-Linda Grant

Saturday, April 24, 2010

I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more!

Well, I try my best
To be just like I am
But everybody wants you
To be just like them...
-Bob Dylan, Maggie's Farm

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Organizations that reward conformity vs. original thinking

Hierarchies that exist for the primary purpose of sustaining and propagating themselves reward conformity over original thought. Organizations that are more concerned with accomplishing the mission for which they were created not only tolerate, but welcome creative and divergent thinking to further their purpose.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

A world without planes

Unlike planes, "the soul invariably travels at the speed of a camel."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8626000/8626927.stm

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Time to love

"If you judge people, you have no time to love them."
-Mother Teresa

Monday, April 19, 2010

An Incredible Model for Saving Lives

The Delancey Street Foundation, based in San Francisco, helps those who have hit rock bottom to turn their lives around using a powerful leadership model for personal change.
http://www.delanceystreetfoundation.org/

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

The Truth

"The truth is not to be found in either side, but in the debate between them."
-Unknown

Monday, April 5, 2010

Great Bumper Stickers

I love my country, but I think we need to start seeing other people.

The five day work week: Brought to you by the labor movement.

Think! It's not illegal yet.

Honk if you love peace and quiet.

A closed mouth gathers no foot.

Monday, March 29, 2010

Feeling safe to pour out your words

"Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person; having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but to pour them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with the breath of kindness, blow the rest away."
-George Eliot

Saturday, March 27, 2010

One hand open and one hand closed

A room of business associates were once asked, half in jest, by a professional presenter, "What's the purpose of life?" A man raised his hand and responded, "The purpose of life is to be mature. To be mature is to walk with one hand open and one hand closed. It is to live with openness in considering new ideas and receive the good things around you: walking with one hand open. And it is to live with determination in your principles and beliefs, remaining steady in your goals and purpose: walking with one hand closed."

If we desire to enjoy the fulness of life, it is important that we learn to balance our impulses to command with our instincts to receive. There are some who passively accept what they receive from others and from circumstance, be it against their principles, be it abusive, or be it a waste of their time. These are people with no resistance. And there are those so rigid that they feel compelled to control others and their circumstances, impose their opinions and whims, and demand compliance with their way of doing things. With them there is no negotiation or flexibility. Finding a balance between these two extremes allows us to stand firm in our convictions while receiving and embracing the contributions of others and the good in life. By doing so we can live a structured and purpose-driven life, while remaining adaptable and amenable to life's constant encounters with the unknown, the unexpected, and the unwanted.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Persian proverb

When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Practicing music

Each of us plays a figurative instrument with a distinct sound. We have certain melodies that we like to play and certain rhythms that appeal to us. We even have a certain tempo at which we like to play our songs. In our daily interactions we blend our sound with others, sometimes harmonizing and sometimes not. Sometimes it can take time, practice, and careful listening to hear another's rhythm and adjust our own playing to create music. The more we play together with a listening ear, the more we learn to hear the subtle characteristics of others' songs and learn to make great music together. Those with whom we share our closest bonds are those who we've learned to play well with.

Makers of themselves

"'They themselves are makers of themselves' by virtue of the thoughts, which they choose and encourage; that mind is the master weaver, both of the inner garment of character and the outer garment of circumstance, and that, as they have hitherto woven in ignorance and pain they may now weave in enlightenment and happiness."
-James Allen, As a Man Thinketh

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Unlearning

Your ability to survive, get by, or even thrive in life is a function of your ability to learn. Those who effectively learn are able to adapt to their environment as well as changing circumstances, and they may even be able to influence the systems within which they operate. Learning how to progress in your relationships to others, your health, your profession, your faith, your understanding of yourself, and anything else you care about depend upon your concept of progression and how you are able to learn the necessary knowledge, skills, and abilities to move yourself towards your goals.  What lessons you choose to take from your life experience are directly connected to how you learn. Those who quickly draw conclusions based on limited information are inclined to make superficial and innacurate judgments. Those who take time to gather more data as they construct their perspectives will form even more astute judgments. And those who are best able to learn are those who can unlearn. Even with our best efforts to understand the world around us, we will get many, if not most, things wrong. Having the humility and dexterity to question our assumptions and re-evaluate our positions enables us to unlearn erroneous ideas and practices, hopefully putting us closer to the truth in our beliefs and behaviors.

As emotional beings we are prone to fears and coping mechanisms that inhibit the free exercise of our minds and spirits. If a person injures a limb and thereafter chooses to protect it by keeping it in a sling, that limb will never fully heal. So too are our minds and hearts. Our inability to unlearn false conclusions about life condemns us to function in an inhibited way. We persist in these neurotic patterns because we cling to our learned behaviors, failing to forgive and forget ourselves and others. We also become resistant to unlearning our habits because with time and practice our manner becomes so entrenched.  Unlearning breathes new life and opportunities into us and helps us to use all our faculties again.

Monday, March 15, 2010

Satisfaction

"It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question."
John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Still children

"In reality, we are still children. We want to find a playmate for our thoughts and feelings."
-Wilhelm Stekel

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

The Burning Ladder

                 Jacob
never climbed the ladder
burning in his dream. Sleep
pressed him like a stone
in the dust,
                 and when
he should have risen
like a flame to join
that choir, he was sick
of travelling,
                 and closed
his eyes to the Seraphim
ascending, unconscious
of the impossible distances
between their steps,
                 missed
them mount the brilliant
ladder, slowly disappearing
into the scattered light
between the stars,
                slept
through it all, a stone
upon a stone pillow,
shivering, Gravity
always greater than desire.

-Dana Gioia, Daily Horoscope

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Passion

http://www.danagioia.net/essays/epassion.htm

Change yourself to change your circumstance

"Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves; they therefore remain bound."
-James Allen, As a Man Thinketh

Sunday, February 28, 2010

Intimacy and power

True interpersonal intimacy is not built by the wielding of power, but by the yielding of power.

Friday, February 26, 2010

Live or die for a cause

"The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one."
-Wilhelm Stekel

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Pining for youth

Those who continually live in the days of their youth as the pinnacle of their existence have either closed doors of opportunity through their decisions or failed to open new ones revealing new adventures. Their clinging to the past is evidence of an unwillingness to cope with the rigor of life's greater challenges and discover the value of new opportunities for creating an abundant life. Those "halcyon years" of youth were never meant to last forever. Each phase of life has its own joys and its own sorrows. The innocence of youth is unburdened by the cares of experience, but the joys of perspective belong to the seasoned.

Monday, February 22, 2010

Life is a wave

A wave moves across space and time, transferring energy through physical media. Along its path it creates disturbance, bringing motion and activity to previously inert elements. Then it continues on its path and these elements come to a rest behind it. The wave does not permanently deposit its energy nor does it accumulate matter along its path.

Life moves as a wave. It passes through the generations, giving itself to common elements by immaculate organization and then setting them in motion. Each new being follows the pattern of its species while standing unique among unlimited possible versions. Babies come into the world in simple brilliance and undefined potential. They live their lives and grow to maturity, eventually bringing forth their own children. These parents nurture and steady their children as they grow older and assume distinct lives of their own. Eventually they become grandparents. They grow old and pass on. Their bodies return to the earth, empty of the energy which once animated their matter. And the living wave rolls forward. Those that die leave behind their posterity and the legacy of their lives.

Saturday, February 13, 2010

The Stages of an Idea

An idea begins as an inkling--as a hunch--and when it is pursued through questioning one begins to discover the length and limits of that hunch. In its inchoate stages, the idea is amorphous and weak and useless. If it withstands enough mental or empirical testing to demonstrate its applicability in a variety of contexts, then it moves from being a hunch to becoming a useful idea with borders and backbone. Continued testing of the idea will knock off its rough edges and perhaps force a shifting of its form. The greatest ideas are elegant and compelling. They are powerful in reshaping peoples' consciousness and perspective. The greatest ideas find ready application and wide applicability.

Monday, February 8, 2010

How long does it take to change yourself?

We often think that it takes a long time to change ourselves. That's not true. Change is instantaneous. It's not changing that takes so much time.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Children follow their parents' cues

How do children navigate the enormous confusion of a complex world? They follow the lead of their parents. What they choose to value, to pursue, and to conform to is heavily influenced by the opinions and attitudes of their parents, even if those views are only expressed through their behavior. Parental influence also shapes how children learn to categorize their surroundings and rank their preferences.  Parents with a strong desire to be accepted and validated by others will raise children who are more susceptible to peer pressure, whereas parents who focus on making decisions according to firmly held beliefs in principles will raise children with greater discipline and conviction. Parents who ignore the flood of media deceptions and actively choose to limit themselves to enriching media will raise children who discriminate in their own media choices. Your ability to break a negative pattern in your own life can bless your family for generations.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Your "way of being" matters

"Generally speaking, we respond to others' way of being toward us rather than to their behavior. Which is to say that [people] respond more to how we're regarding them than they do to our particular words or actions."
-The Anatomy of Peace

Monday, February 1, 2010

Do schools kill creativity?

A very funny TED talk on the diversity of intelligence and how to cultivate it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY

Friday, January 29, 2010

Ending Violence

"We first need to find our way out of the internal wars that are poisoning our thoughts, feelings, and attitudes toward others. If we can't put an end to the violence within us, there is no hope for putting an end to the violence without."
-The Anatomy of Peace
from the Arbinger Institute

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Cultures at the far edge of the world

A fascinating twenty minutes on the world's cultural diversity and the need to protect it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL7vK0pOvKI

Friday, January 22, 2010

Reason and Passion

Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon which your reason and your judgment wage war against passion and your appetite.

Would that I could be the peacemaker in your soul, that I might turn the discord and the rivalry of your elements into oneness and melody.

But how shall I, unless you yourselves be also the peacemakers, nay, the lovers of all your elements?

Your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul.

If either your sails or our rudder be broken, you can but toss and drift, or else be held at a standstill in mid-seas.

For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction.

Therefore let your soul exalt your reason to the height of passion; that it may sing;

And let it direct your passion with reason, that your passion may live through its own daily resurrection, and like the phoenix rise above its own ashes.

I would have you consider your judgment and your appetite even as you would two loved guests in your house.

Surely you would not honour one guest above the other; for he who is more mindful of one loses the love and the faith of both.

Among the hills, when you sit in the cool shade of the white poplars, sharing the peace and serenity of distant fields and meadows - then let your heart say in silence, "God rests in reason."

And when the storm comes, and the mighty wind shakes the forest, and thunder and lightning proclaim the majesty of the sky, - then let your heart say in awe, "God moves in passion."

And since you are a breath In God's sphere, and a leaf in God's forest, you too should rest in reason and move in passion.

-Khalil Gibran
Lebanese poet

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Travel

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."
-Mark Twain

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

A poem by Rainer Maria Rilke

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.
Flare up like flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don't let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

Saturday, January 16, 2010

What you can give to your children

"You may give your children your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts."
-Khalil Gibran

Friday, January 15, 2010

...........I Know the Way You Can Get..........



I know the way you can get
When you have not had a drink of Love:



Your face hardens,
Your sweet muscles cramp.
Children become concerned
About a strange look that appears in your eyes
Which even begins to worry your own mirror
And nose.



Squirrels and birds sense your sadness
And call an important conference in a tall tree.
They decide which secret code to chant
To help your mind and soul.



Even angels fear that brand of madness
That arrays itself against the world
And throws sharp stones and spears into
The innocent
And into one's self.



O I know the way you can get
If you have not been drinking Love:



You might rip apart
Every sentence your friends and teachers say,
Looking for hidden clauses.



You might weigh every word on a scale
Like a dead fish.



You might pull out a ruler to measure
From every angle in your darkness
The beautiful dimensions of a heart you once
Trusted.



I know the way you can get
If you have not had a drink from Love's
Hands.



That is why all the Great Ones speak of
The vital need
To keep remembering God,
So you will come to know and see Him
As being so Playful
And Wanting,
Just Wanting to help.



That is why Hafiz says:
Bring your cup near me.
For all I care about
Is quenching your thirst for freedom!



All a Sane man can ever care about
Is giving Love!



-Hafiz
Sufi poet

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

The Ability to Forget

"A retentive memory is a good thing, but the ability to forget is the true token of greatness."
-Elbert Hubbard

As we allow people the freedom to have a new beginning every day, we allow them the freedom to change and grow. The same principle applies to ourselves. As we forgive ourselves and exercise faith in our ability to change, we become free to blaze our own trail, to abandon old habits, to set new patterns, and to liberate our spirits.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Empathy

True intellectual inquiry sometimes requires empathy. To understand a contrasting viewpoint, especially in the presence of strong emotional disapproval, demands that we suspend our perspective to entertain the validity of the opposing viewpoint. As we place ourselves in the shoes of others and sincerely seek to understand how they arrived at their conclusions, we will receive a glimpse of their orientation towards the issue and a better understanding of their personal context. This process requires both humility and curiosity. Our patience will be rewarded with a broadened perspective and a more generous heart. If we seek only to justify ourselves and defend our positions we will be blinded to any deeper understanding.

"Empathy is the experience of foreign consciousness in general."
-Edith Stein

Monday, January 11, 2010

You are what you think about

"Your mind will be like its habitual thoughts; for the soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts."
-Marcus Aurelius

Friday, January 8, 2010

We see the world as we are

"We do not see things as they are; we see things as we are."
-The Talmud

The way we see the world, our relationships, and our life situation is a direct representation of who we are. I'm reminded of the expression, "What you say about me says more about you than it does about me."

Friday, January 1, 2010

The Humanness in Kershisnik's Art

American painter, Brian Kershisnik, captures human life in its simple, awkward, and humorous manners. His creations breathe new perspective into our relationships to the divine, to ourselves, our spouses, our children, and even our pets. His works are profoundly spiritual but unidealized--in fact, they are often quite humorous. Here are some of my favorites. See more of his work at his website: http://www.kershisnik.com/


Flight Practice with Instruction



Father and Son



My Ancestors Kissed



That Song



This Splendid Inconvenience