Non-Violent Communication

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Non-Violent Communication (NVC) came up in a recent conversation with my friend Logan, and I was intrigued enough to explore further.  What I found was not simply a new style of communicating, but a way of being in the world that allows for a natural expression of empathy, honesty and connection with ourselves and others -  "...being open and available to what is alive in others ... and being in tune with what is alive in us in the present moment."
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Here are some highlights from the Center for Non-Violent Communication's Instruction Guide:

We live in a world in which violence has become more and more accepted as the norm. It’s all around us. From wars between nations to crime on the street, and even imposing on our everyday existence, violence manifests itself both explicitly and implicitly. Yet for many people, the very idea of violence seems foreign. They are not involved in physical confrontations or abuses, and thus they believe that violence is not present. But the reality is that whenever we become disconnected from our compassionate nature, whenever our hearts are not devoid of hatred in all of its forms, we have a tendency to act in ways that can cause pain for everyone in our lives, including ourselves. 

Nonviolence, then, does not refer to the mere absence of physical harm. It is a way of life that takes its lead from a compassionate and connected heart, and can guide us toward a more complete and happy way of being. As Mahatma Gandhi said, “Nonviolence is not a garment to be put on and off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our very being.” It is a practice rooted in understanding, in living honestly, and in acting empathically with all beings. Of course this starts with the self. We must first understand and act empathically towards ourselves in order to impact the world in wonderful and compassionate ways. This means cultivating nonviolence in every action and being present to our own needs and feelings in each and every moment.

NVC is a “language of life” that helps us to transform old patterns of defensiveness and aggressiveness into compassion and empathy and to improve the quality of all of our relationships. Studying and practicing NVC creates a foundation for learning about ourselves and our relationships in every moment, and helps us to remain focused on what is happening right here, right now. Although it is a model for communication, NVC helps us to realize just how important connection is in our lives. In fact, having the intention to connect with ourselves and others is one of the most important goals of practicing and living NVC. We live our lives from moment to moment, yet most of the time we are on autopilot, reacting out of habit rather than out of awareness and presence of mind. By creating a space for attention and respect in every moment, NVC helps create a pathway and a practice that is accessible and approachable. 

Here's that link again.  May it benefit.

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The way we communicate with others and with ourselves ultimately determines the quality of our lives.
- Anthony Robbins
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A Creative Flow

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A Quote of the Week from Andrew Cohen:
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Think about your experience of those moments when you are most creatively engaged. What does it feel like?

Being in a creative “flow” can be ecstatic and, simultaneously, there is an often surprising sense of urgency to bring into being that which you can sense is possible. That’s why great artists or scientists will work day and night, neglecting to eat or sleep. They are driven by a vision, something just beyond their reach that will not let them rest until they have brought it into reality. That drive is the very same impetus that caused the whole universe to burst forth, fourteen billion years ago, and is now expressing itself through the body, mind, heart, and talents of an inspired human being.
 
When you feel that creative flow, often you discover a part of yourself you are not normally aware of but which feels more like your “self” than the person you usually think you are. It’s like plugging in to a deeper source of energy and passion that transcends whatever limitations you ordinarily assume. A deeper, more authentic part of your self is creatively released. That’s why such moments are so fulfilling—it’s not just the creative work you produce, but the experience of being more alive, more connected, more in touch with a sense of meaning and purpose.

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Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction.
- Pablo Picasso
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Bozos on the Bus

From Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow
by Elizabeth Lesser

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We're all bozos on the bus
so we might as well sit back
and enjoy the ride
- Wavy Gravy
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One of my heroes is the clown-activist Wavy Gravy.  He is best known for being master of ceremonies at the Woodstock festival in 1969.  His contention is that we all have our frailties and vulnerabilities, but can fall down and skin our knees and still come up smiling.  He appears to be unafraid of looking silly.

He is also a master of one-liners, my all-time favorite being the one above about bozos on the bus, one he repeats whenever he speaks to groups, whether at a clown workshop or in a children's hospital.  I use this phrase to begin my workshops because I believe that we are all bozos on the bus, contrary to the self-assured image we work so hard to present to each other on a daily basis.  We are all half-baked experiments - mistake-prone beings, born without an instruction book into a complex world. None of us are models of perfect behavior.  We have all betrayed and been betrayed; we've all been known to be egotistical, unreliable, lethargic and stingy; and each one of us has, at times, awakened in the middle of the night worrying about everything from money to kids to terrorism to wrinkled skin and receding hairlines.  In other words, we're all bozos on the bus.

This, in my opinion, is cause for celebration.  If we're all bozos, then for God's sake, we can put down the burden of pretense and get on with being bozos.  We can approach the problems that visit bozo-type beings without the usual embarrassment and resistance.  It is so much more effective to work on our rough edges with a light and forgiving heart.  Imagine how freeing it would be to take a more compassionate and comedic view of the human condition - not as a way to deny our defects, but as a way of welcoming them as part of the standard human operating system. 

Every single person on this bus called Earth hurts; it's when we have shame about our failings that hurt turns into suffering.  In our shame, we feel an outcast, as if there is another bus somewhere, rolling along on a smooth road.  Its passengers are all thin, healthy, happy, well-dressed and well-liked people who belong to harmonious families, hold jobs that never bore or aggravate them, and never do mean things, or goofy things like forget where they parked their car, lose their wallet, or say something totally inappropriate.  We long to be on that bus, with the normal people.

But here we are on the bus that says BOZO on the front, and we worry that we may be the only passenger on board.  This is the illusion that so many of us labor under - that we're all alone in our weirdness and our uncertainty; that we may be the most lost person on the highway.  Of course we don't always feel like this.  Sometimes a wave of self-forgiveness washes over us and suddenly we're connected to our fellow humans - suddenly we belong.

It is wonderful to take your place on the bus with the other bozos.  It may be the first step to enlightenment to understand with all of your heart that the other bus - that sleek bus with the cool people who know where they're going - is also filled with bozos - bozos in drag, bozos with a secret.

When we see clearly that every single human being, regardless of fame or fortune or age or brains or beauty, shares the same ordinary foibles, a strange thing happens.  We begin to cheer up, to loosen up, and we become as buoyant as those people we imagined on the other bus.  As we rumble along the potholed road, lost as ever, through the valleys and over the hills, we find ourselves among friends.

We can sit back and enjoy the ride.

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Well worth a click:  Elizabeth Lesser talks to Wendy Schuman of BeliefNet about being Broken Open.
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Elizabeth Lesser is cofounder of Omega Institute, the leading educational center for holistic health, psychology, arts, and spirituality. Lesser has studied with renowned teachers like the Dalai Lama, Deepak Chopra, Thich Nhat Hanh, Ram Dass, and many others who have come to Omega. In the 1970s, she lived in a spiritual community and worked as a midwife. The mother of three and author of two books (her first was "The Seeker's Guide"), Lesser teaches workshops on spiritual transformation. 

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Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional.
- Kathleen Casey Theisen
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Being Too Keen

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A martial arts student went to his teacher and said earnestly, "I'm devoted to studying your martial arts system.  How long will it take me to master it?"  The teacher's answer was casual:  "Ten years".

Impatiently the student replied, "But I want to master it faster than that.  I'll work very hard.  I'll practice every day, ten or more hours a day if I have to.  How long will it take then?"

The teacher thought for a moment then replied, "Twenty years".
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The Dangling Conversation

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Simon & Garfunkel's music is not just heard with the ears but also felt as a wave of sensation flowing through the body. I find the melodies in this song particularly evocative... how such fluidly sensuous music can at the same time convey that quality of a "still life watercolor".



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If you liked that, you might like this:
The Power To Evoke
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Would I Still Exist?

from Leap Before You Look
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Take some time to reflect:   Who have you defined yourself to be?
You can write your answers on paper, or practice with a friend, and ask your friend to makes notes for you.

I'm a plumber.    
I'm intelligent.     
I'm a father.     
I'm uneducated.     
I'm a Liberal.    

Now for each of these statements, ask yourself:
~~ If I stopped defining myself in this way, would I still exist?

     ~~ If I were no longer a plumber, would I still exist?
     ~~ If I no longer defined myself as intelligent, would I still exist?
     ~~ If I no longer thought of myself as a father, would I still exist?

Take your time to work through all the labels you have placed upon yourself, and find out if any of them can really define you or contain you.

When all labels have been cast aside, what remains?

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Some labels are easier to drop than others.  Here's a more difficult one:
     ~~ If I no longer identified myself as a woman or a man, would I still exist?

If your definition of yourself is more conceptual, such as "I am light" or "I am consciousness", then your challenge is:
     ~~ Would I still exist without this thought, without this concept?

Whether you do this exercise alone or with a friend, you will need some time for it to go deep.  When it does, stop and feel your own presence when you have let go of all definitions.  Are you still here?  Can you still feel, see and hear?  Take some time to relax into knowing the face you had before you were born.

We perform myriad roles during our lifetime.  Each one may be necessary, even creative or enjoyable, but each can also become a prison if we become completely identified with the role and forget our deeper nature.

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Related RoadKill Posts:
Leap Before You Look 
Who Do You Think You Are?

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The question of identity depends on what I'm meant to be.
I sometimes think that I'm too many people,
too many people, too many people at once.
~ Pet Shop Boys
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Leap Before You Look

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72 shortcuts for getting out of your mind and into the moment
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Just got this wonderful e-book by Arjuna Ardagh - this is from the introduction:

"In recent years many people just like you have fallen into the realization of who they are deeper than the mind, a realization of being silence, of being peace, of being infinity... that what they have been seeking outside themselves is actually who they are, and who they were all along.  What they have been seeking in fact is the medium, the stillness, in which everything arises.  They see that who they are is the silence in which sound is happening, the spaciousness in which movement occurs.  This kind of recognition, whether fleeting or abiding, is called an awakening.

"We discover that who we are, who I am, who everyone is, is less of an entity and more of a presence.  Not even a presence, but presence itself, with no boundaries, no beginning or end in time.  That living presence is empty of form and content but full of love, full of creative intelligence.  Presence is that which is aware of all that is changing.  In order for a recognition of that latent presence - the silence beneath the noise - to be transformed into a gift and a blessing, practice is needed."

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What I like about this book is that the author does not talk about presence as just another idea or concept - he offers what he calls "shortcuts", awareness and embodiment exercises that can be done in the midst of ordinary life, that allow you to experience presence directly and immediately.  Here's an example from the chapter on Letting Go:

Could You Let It Go?

When caught up in a strong belief,
needing to be liked, to be right about something,
or stuck in a strong emotion, ask yourself,
"Could I, just could I, let it go?"
Could you abandon your position?
Could you open your clenched fist
and allow whatever is held there to drop to the floor?
Are you willing for your position to be defeated,
even when you think that you are right?
When you have no position left,
knowing nothing,
how does the world smell to you now?

This practice is not intended to put you under pressure to let things go.  That only creates resistance.  The exercise is simply to inquire and evaluate, in a relaxed way, if it is possible to let it go.  This discrimination, between what is obligatory and what is optional, is liberation.

Letting go does not happen primarily in the mind - it happens in the body.  You do not need to decide to let go; you need only ask yourself if it is possible.  In the recognition of this possibility, something happens in the body: a deep sigh, a muscle spasm, or a release of tension you might not have even known was there, and what had seemed to be a prison becomes a choice.  There is no need to know where a belief comes from, or to try to change it in any way, or to understand anything at all.  It is enough to feel into the essence of any contraction.  That alone will release tremendous energy.  That very energy becomes awakening and connects us to what is real.

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The medium is the message.
~ Marshall McLuhan
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Think About This: The Joy of Stats

courtesy of EnlightenNext:

The issue of cultural evolution is still a controversial one. Have human beings really evolved in the last several millennia? Pointing to the violence of the two world wars and the environmental destruction caused by industrial civilization, some suggest that humanity has not progressed in the last couple of centuries but may have even stepped backwards.

But statistics tell a different story. At least that's the message of the following clip from a recent BBC show, The Joy of Stats. In it, Professor Hans Rosling charts over a hundred thousand points of data and comes up with a unique presentation that is one of the most inspiring, original, and eye-opening four minutes that we have ever seen.



Pretty neat indeed!

"We have become an entirely new converging world, and I see a clear trend into the future - with aid, trade, green technology and peace, it is fully possible that everyone can make it to the healthy, wealthy corner."
- Hans Rosling
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Who is the Victor?

You may have thought mime was silly and harmless, but think again.



Just Don't Mime
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Dawkins on Immortality

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Many religions teach the objectively implausible but subjectively appealing doctrine that our personalities survive our bodily death.  The idea of immortality itself survives and spreads because it caters to wishful thinking.  And wishful thinking counts, because human psychology has a near-universal tendency to let belief be colored by desire.
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Richard Dawkins; The GOD Delusion
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The Power of Gentleness

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Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.
~ Leo Buscaglia
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Upstream/Downstream

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A Contemporary Fable
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It was many years ago that the villagers of Downstream recall spotting the first body in the river.  Some old timers remember how Spartan were the facilities and procedures for managing that sort of thing.  Sometimes, they say, it would take hours to pull ten people from the river, and even then only a few would survive.

Though the number of victims in the river has increased greatly in recent years, the good folks of Downstream have responded admirably to the challenge.  Their rescue system is second to none: most people discovered in the swirling waters are reached within 20 minutes - many in less than 10.  Only a small number drown each day before help arrives - a big improvement from the way it used to be.

The people of Downstream speak with pride about the new hospital by the edge of the waters, the flotilla of rescue boats ready for service at a moment's notice, the comprehensive health plans for coordinating all the manpower involved, and the large numbers of highly trained and dedicated swimmers always ready to risk their lives to save victims from the raging currents.  Sure it costs a lot but, say the Downstreamers, what else can decent people do except to provide whatever is necessary when human lives are at stake.

Oh, a few people in Downstream have raised the question now and again, but most folks show little interest in what's happening Upstream.  It seems there's so much to do to help those in the river that nobody's got time to check how all those bodies are getting there in the first place.

That's the way things are, sometimes.

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Donald Ardell:
High Level Wellness: An Alternative to Doctors, Drugs and Disease
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Who Cares?

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Richard Dawkins (The GOD Delusion) musing on how polytheistic cultures manage to keep track of "who's who":

Who cares?  Life is too short to bother with the distinction between one figment of the imagination and many.

Just started the book and I like this guy already.  May not agree with everything he says but it's a fresh and fun read so far and I like the fact that he's unapologetic about his opinions.  Most of my friends are like that too.  Coincidence?  I think not.
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Wife She Is Very Small

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A (maybe) true story...

Pablo Picasso was traveling by train on a journey across Spain when he was recognized by one of his fellow passengers, a businessman who was used to getting his own way. After exchanging pleasantries, the businessman told Picasso that while he admired his success, he felt his paintings could be improved.
“How so?”, replied the bemused Picasso.
“Well,” the businessman began, “Your paintings are too abstract – you should paint things more as they really are.”
“Could you explain more specifically what you mean?” Picasso asked politely.
“Certainly!” the businessman replied, pulling a small photo from his briefcase. “Look at this photograph of my wife. This is how she actually looks – not some silly stylized representation.”
Picasso studied the photograph carefully for a few moments, then asked “This is how your wife actually looks?”
The businessman nodded proudly.
“She’s very small,” observed Picasso.
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That story is actually the lead-in to another good article by Steve Errey (The Confidence Guy) called Get Confident Enough to Stop Controlling Everything.  He suggests that sometimes creativity means deliberately allowing things to happen as they will instead of getting attached to a certain outcome...

Allowing things to happen takes real confidence and is one of the most powerful and liberating things you can do. It’s not about ‘not doing anything‘ or ‘giving up‘ – it’s actually an active process and a specific attitude.
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Tasting and Touching Transcendence

The Ecstatic Faith of Rumi
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The 13th-century Muslim mystic and poet Rumi has long shaped Muslims around the world and has now become popular in the West. Rumi created a new language of love within the Islamic mystical tradition of Sufism. We hear his poetry as we delve into his world and listen for its echoes in our own.


Rumi's poems are best-sellers in the West and he has long influenced Islamic thought and spirituality, though his Muslim identity is often lost in translation. With an Iranian-American poet and scholar, we'll explore why that matters in our time. And we'll hear the lyrical words Rumi put to the common human search for meaning. He understood searching and restlessness as a kind of arrival. He saw every form of human love as a mirror of the divine.

In this episode of  Being  (formerly called Speaking of Faith), Krista Tippett speaks with Rumi scholar and poet Fatemeh Keshavarz.  Ms. Keshavarz is chair of the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures at Washington University in St. Louis. She is also a poet, and often sets Rumi's words to music. She grew up speaking the Persian in which Rumi wrote, in the Iranian city of Shiraz.  Together they explore the exuberant world of Rumi and reveal the relevance of his 13th-century wisdom to the modern Western world.

I hear Rumi as a perfect voice for the spiritual longing and energy of our time. With his vigorous and challenging language of the heart, he reminds us that we need poetry as much as we need science, alongside our politics and within our diplomacy. We need passionate searching words, not just logical decisive words, to tell the whole truth about what it means to be human, and about the past, present, and future of our world.

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Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn't make any sense.
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A Story about Heaven and Hell

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A holy man was having a conversation with God one day and wanted to know what Heaven and Hell are like.

So God showed the holy man two doors.  He opened one of the doors and the holy man looked in.

In the middle of the room was a large round table.  In the middle of the table was a huge pot of stew, which smelled delicious and made the holy man's mouth water.

The people sitting around the table were pale, thin and sickly.  They appeared to be famished.  They were holding spoons with very long handles that were strapped to their arms, but it was still possible for each of them to dip the spoons into the pot and get some stew.  But because the handle was longer than their arms, they couldn't get the spoons back into their mouths.

The holy man shuddered at the sight of their misery and suffering.

God said, "You have just seen Hell". 

Then they went to the next door and opened it.  The second room was exactly the same as the first one - there was a large round table with a huge pot of stew, the scent of which made the holy man's mouth water.

The people were equipped with the same long-handled spoons strapped to their arms, but here the people were well-nourished and plump, laughing and talking with each other.

The holy man said, "I don't understand".

"It's simple", replied God, "It requires just one skill..."

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Kneel and Kiss the Earth

as we near the end of Coming to our Senses
by Jon Kabat-Zinn

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Today like every other day
we wake up empty and scared.
Don't open the door of your study
and begin reading.
Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel
and kiss the earth.
- Rumi
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Across the span of nine hundred years, Rumi is evoking reverence and how easily it can be missed if, in the face of our endemic discomfort, we persist out of habit in opening the door of our study and begin reading when we might, alternatively, "take down a musical instrument," the closest at hand being our own living body, and let the beauty we love, if we can be in touch with it, reveal itself in the many different ways we might carry ourselves in this moment, here and now.  This is nothing less than an exhortation to practice being truly in touch with what is most fundamental, most important, and a nod to there being no singular one right way to go about it.

When we do not limit ourselves to one way of knowing, or one vocabulary, or one set of lenses through which to look, when we purposefully expand our horizon of inquiry and curiosity, we can take delight in all the various ways we have of knowing something.  We also have a chance to recognize the mystery of what is not known conceptually but sensed, felt, intuited, attended to by the confluence of all our senses in direct unfragmented experience, not excluding anything, even our concepts and what they reveal in any moment, all summing to an ongoing exchange with what is larger than we are and that is nothing other than us as well.  Every one of our mysterious and miraculous senses, including mind, is a way of knowing the world and a way of knowing ourselves.

We are larger than any one way of knowing, and can enjoy all of them as different incomplete and complementary modes for appreciating what is, and for participating in what is with gusto and delight for the moments, timeless and yet fleeting, that we are here for.  We can rest in not knowing, as well as in knowing, in the beauty of form and function and in their mystery, on any and every level that the senses and the mind, our instruments and our instincts, and our efforts to understand, deliver to us in any moment.

- Jon Kabat-Zinn

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Sounds of laughter, shades of earth
are ringing through my opened views
inciting and inviting me

From: http://www.musicbabylon.com

- The Beatles
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Arriving At Your Own Door

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from Coming to Our Senses
by Jon Kabat-Zinn
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The time will come
when with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say sit here.  Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine.  Give bread.  Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit.  Feast on your life.

- Derek Walcott, "Love after Love"
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Every moment we are arriving at our own door.  Every moment we could open it.  In every moment, we might love again the stranger who was ourself, who knows us, as the poem says, by heart.  We already know ourselves by heart in every sense of the word, but we may have forgotten that we do.  Arriving at our own door is all in the remembering, the re-membering, the reclaiming of that which we already are and have too long ignored, having been carried, seemingly, farther and farther from home, yet at the same time, never farther than this breath and this moment.  Can we wake up?  Can we come to our senses?  Can we be the knowing, and at the same time keep don't know mind and honor the not-knowing?  Are they even different?

The time will come, the poet affirms.  Yes, the time will come, but do we want it to be on our deathbeds when we wake up to who and what we actually are, as Thoreau foresaw could so easily happen?  Or can that time be this time, be right now, where we are, as we are?

The time will come, yes, but only if we give ourselves over to waking up, to coming to our senses, and going beyond our own underdeveloped minds.  Only if we can perceive the chains of our robotic conditioning, especially our emotional conditioning, and our view of who we think we are - peel our own image from the mirror - and in the perceiving, in seeing what is here to be seen, hearing what is here to be heard, watch the chains dissolve in the seeing, in the hearing, so we rotate back into our larger original beauty, as we greet ourselves arriving at our own door, as we love again the stranger who was ourself. We can.  We can.  We will.  We will.  For what else, ultimately, is there for us to do?

How else, ultimately, are we to be free?

How else, ultimately, can we be who we already are?

And when, oh when, oh when is the moment this will happen?  "The time will come..." the poet says.  Perhaps it already has.

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I learned as a child not to trust in my body
I've carried that burden through my life
But there's a day when we all have to be pried loose.
If this were the last night of the world, what would I do?
- Bruce Cockburn
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Life Before Death

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Friend, hope for the guest while you are still alive.
Jump into experience while you are alive!
Think ... and think ... while you are alive.
What you call "salvation" belongs to the time before death.

If you don't break your ropes while you're alive,
do you think
ghosts will do it after?

The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic
just because the body is rotten -
that is all fantasy.
What is found now is found then.
If you find nothing now,
you will simply end up with an apartment in the City of Death.
If you make love with the divine now, in the next life
you will have the face of satisfied desire ...

- Kabir - from The Time Before Death
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Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body

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That may be an address too many of us share.  Taking the miracle of embodiment for granted is a horrific loss.  It would be a profound healing of our lives to get back in touch with it.

All it takes is practice in coming to our senses, all of them.

And ... a spirit of adventure.

- Jon Kabat-Zinn in Coming to Our Senses

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and I loved you for your body
there's a voice that sounds like God to me
declaring, declaring
declaring that your body's really you
- Leonard Cohen
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You reading this, be ready

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Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now?  Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day.  This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life--

What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?

- William Stafford
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The spell of the sensuous...

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...is no further than the sound of the rain taken in, or the feel of the air on the skin, or the warmth of the sun on our backs, or the look in your dog's eye when you come near.  Can we feel it?  Can we know it?  Can we be embraced by it? 

And when might that be?  When?  When?  When?  When?  When?

- Jon Kabat-Zinn: Coming to our Senses

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- Spell of the Sensuous is the title of a book by David Abram which  "...ponders the violent disconnection of the body from the natural world and what this means about how we live and die in it" - Los Angeles Times
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How to listen to music

with your whole body
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Enjoy this soaring musical journey as Evelyn Glennie, a "deaf" percussionist, gives us a remarkable lesson in embodied listening.
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... allow your body to open up, allow your body to be this resonating chamber... experience the whole journey of that sound.
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more about Evelyn
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Find Your Voice

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The moment a person finds their voice... is the moment their life takes on grace.
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That quote is from Steve Errey, the Confidence Guy, in a post called Find Your Voice or Die a Slow Death.  It's a short post but it speaks volumes - here's a condensation of the post, a comment response by Steve and of course my own two cents' worth (hey, it's my blog):

Grace is simplicity, effortlessness and congruity.

Think about it.  What are you speaking with before you find your voice?  What are you saying?  And who are you being before you find grace?

Everything before you ‘find your voice‘ means that you’ll be struggling with things in and around your life, for the simple reason that you’re missing something fundamental.

Your life might be full of clutter and noise.  You might feel like you’re searching for something.  You might drift through much of your career, with no real plan or agenda.  You might feel, in those quiet moments, that something’s missing.

You’ll be dying a slow, safe death.

And all because you haven’t found your voice; that voice that gives you elegance, ease and a sense of wholeness.  That voice that gives you the confidence to do things your way, follow what matters and relax into yourself.

Find your voice, find grace, find confidence.

Asked what 'finding your voice' means, Steve replies:

Your voice is simply finding what matters to you, the things that have meaning and relevance to YOU, and then honoring those things in your life. Look at a moment in your life when you felt really alive, when you were buzzing, firing on all cylinders and feeling on top of the world. Then dig into that moment and ask yourself what was so important to you in that moment. What was it that made it stand out? What is it about that moment that resonated with you? That will give you clues about your personal values, and that will help you find your voice.

Finding and using your voice isn’t about finding answers, it’s singing simply because you have a song.

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That last sentence refers to a quote from Maya Angelou:
A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer: it sings because it has a song.
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As someone who has only recently found my own voice (and who is still learning to sing), I can say without reservation that everything Steve says above is absolutely true.  Once you even begin to realize what is important to you - what gives your life meaning and purpose - then you find your voice.  This is exactly why I blog, and the more I blog, the more I clarify my purpose and the more I recognize my song.

You don't need to wait for some huge epiphany or for some future time when you feel ready - right now start a journal, or a diary, or a blog, and write as if no one is going to read it.  Just speak your truth and don't worry about what anyone else thinks.  Keeping your gift locked inside yourself is, as Steve says, like dying a slow death.  Finding your voice makes you come alive, gives you confidence, and shows you like almost nothing else who you are and why you're here.

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the gift keeps on moving
never know where it's going to land
you must stand back and let it
keep on changing hands
- Bruce Cockburn
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Remembering the Past, Envisioning the Future

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Today is November 11th - Remembrance Day in Canada, Veterans' Day in the United States.  There is a lot of old combat footage on TV, mostly black & white images of World War II.  Every time, I'm struck by how young the faces are and how, even though these boys are smiling and joking for the camera, their eyes are full of fear.  It's sobering to think about how many of those young men never got any older than they were the day those pictures were taken.

Somewhere between 62 and 78 million people were killed in World War II.  Civilians killed totaled from 40 to 52 million, including 13 to 20 million from war-related disease and famine. Total military deaths: from 22 to 25 million, including deaths in captivity of about 5 million prisoners of war. Most of those who survived the war have since died; only a few remain of those smiling boys going off on the adventure of their lives.

The Vietnam war is said to have resulted in approximately 60,000 American casualties and four million Vietnamese deaths - one million of the Vietnamese killed in that war were combatants, the other three million were civilians.

So today is a day for remembering everyone who died in those and other wars - the good guys, the bad guys, the innocent and the guilty - as well as those who were forced to take the lives of others who were just as frightened and confused as they were. Let's remember also the young men and women who are still putting themselves in harm's way, fighting for causes they may or may not believe in.

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But today is also a day for envisioning a new future for humanity.  It's a day for remembering that each one of us has the power to influence what that future will be, and to believe with all our heart that collectively our power is unstoppable.

Is it possible that we can heal our planet and prevent cataclysms?  Could we visualize world peace into existence through a massive pulse of belief transmitted by one million people around the world at the same time?

The best guess today from quantum physics is, "Yes, probably."

If you are inspired by that probability, if you believe wholeheartedly in a positive vision for the future, if you believe that the energy of one million people intending a new global reality together can tip the balance, please visit the New Reality Transmission  site and click the button that says Learn More.

On November 11, 2010, one million people across the globe will mentally project a unified vision of a new paradigm for our species... a new reality.  The very real physics that connects human consciousness with molecular structure will be harnessed en masse during the largest scale simultaneous manifestation transmission in recorded history.

In a world where the messages of Fear and Greed fight with each other daily, it is worth a try to move in the other, more inspired direction.

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you may say I'm a dreamer
but I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
and the world will live as one
- John Lennon
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The World Beyond the Window

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Effing the Ineffable:
How do we express what cannot be said?
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Thomas Aquinas ended his life in a state of ecstasy, declaring that all that he had written was of no significance beside the beatific vision that he had been granted, and in the face of which words fail.  But Aquinas was exceptional. The history of philosophy abounds in thinkers who, having concluded that the truth is ineffable, have gone on to write page upon page about it.

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I have long been in awe of people who can express the inexpressible, who can describe their inner and outer experience with such depth and precision that their words penetrate to my very soul, to that place inside us all that is the source of our being, of who we are.

I think we all long to be able to put into words - and thus share - that "world beyond the window" - at the same time we know it's hopeless, that to describe it is to somehow diminish it, to reduce that mystery that "cannot be described but only revealed" to familiar labels and concepts.

Anybody who goes through life with open mind and open heart will encounter these moments of revelation, moments that are saturated with meaning, but whose meaning cannot be put into words. These moments are precious to us. When they occur it is as though, on the winding ill-lit stairway of our life, we suddenly come across a window, through which we catch sight of another and brighter world — a world to which we belong but which we cannot enter.

Roger Scruton also longs to open that window.  In this article at Big Questions Online, he wonders what these moments of revelation have to do with our ultimate questions - do these ineffable moments point to that which science cannot explain?  Do they point to the cause of the world?

We love each other as angels love, reaching for the unknowable “I.” We hope as angels hope: with our thoughts fixed on the moment when the things of this world fall away and we are enfolded in “the peace which passes understanding.” Putting the point that way I have already said too much. For my words make it look as though the world beyond the window is actually here, like a picture on the stairs. But it is not here; it is there, beyond the window that can never be opened.

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Roger Scruton is a writer and philosopher living in England. His many books include Beauty and The Uses of Pessimism and the Danger of False Hope.
Learn more about him at www.roger-scruton.com.
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all these years of thinking
ended up like this
in front of all this beauty
understanding nothing
- Bruce Cockburn
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You Are Already Here

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Non-Striving
The Fifth Attitudinal Factor of Mindfulness
by Jon Kabat-Zinn
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Non-striving is related to dropping in on the present moment and the timeless quality of the present moment...

Non-striving isn't trivial - it's realizing that you are already here.  There is noplace to go because the only agenda is to be awake.  It isn't some ideal that after four years of sitting on top of Mount Everest or in a cave in the Himalayas or studying with a million Tibetan teachers or doing 10,000 prostrations or whatever it is, that you'll be any better than you are now.  It's impossible - you'll just be older.  What happens now is what matters.

If you don't pay attention now, said Kabir (the great Hindu Sufi poet of the 16th Century), if you don't pay attention now, you will only wind up with an apartment in the City of Death later.  T. S. Eliot said in his last poem, Four Quartets: Ridiculous the waste, sad time stretching before and after.

Non-striving - even the tiniest little bit of letting ourselves off the hook and just realizing we're already here.  The future that we want - this is it.  This is the future of all the previous thoughts you have ever had about the future.  You're in it - you're already in it. What's the purpose of all this living if it's only to get someplace else and then when you're there you're not happy anyway - you want to be someplace else...

This is it.  This is your life.  You only have moments.  This moment is as good as any other - in fact it's perfect.

The Doing comes out of the Being - to some degree that's an art form.  Are any of us good at it?  No.  But at least intending to live that way has a chance of greater balance - greater emotional balance, greater cognitive balance, greater clarity of mind and heart - and is a lot less toxic for other people who live with you or around you.

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nothing left to do when you know that you've been taken
nothing left to do when you're begging for a crumb
nothing left to do when you've got to go on waiting
waiting for the miracle to come
- Leonard Cohen
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Guardians of Being

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The Essence and Being of Animals
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Pet lovers will enjoy these images by Patrick McDonnell, from Guardians of Being by Eckhart Tolle - there are a few more HERE.
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When you pet a dog or listen to a cat purring, thinking may subside for a moment and a space of stillness arises within you, a Doorway into Being.

What is it that so many people find enchanting in animals? Their essence - their Being - is not covered up by the mind, as it is in most humans.
And whenever you feel that essence in another, you also feel it in yourself.



Millions of people who would otherwise be completely lost in their minds and in endless past and future concerns are taken back by their dog or cat into the present moment, again and again, and reminded of the joy of Being.



If you'll excuse me, I need to find a cat (or two) to pat right now...
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Blought for Today

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Although we have been made to believe that if we let go we will end up with nothing, life reveals just the opposite: that letting go is the real path to freedom.
- Sogyal Rinpoche
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Put a Dent in the Universe

~~~~
Your body is the vehicle for your life's expression, and it's your responsibility to express that life in ways that are most meaningful.
~~~~
Another inspiring video from Steve Errey (The Confidence Guy)
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~~~~
Confidence is the life-blood that lets you get out there and participate fully in the world no matter how big your fears or doubts are.

What kind of dent do you want to make in the universe?
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Let Yourself Be Seen

~~~~
Dr. Brené Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston, Graduate College of Social Work, where she has spent the past ten years studying a concept that she calls Wholeheartedness, posing the question: How do we engage in our lives from a place of authenticity and worthiness?
~~~~
In this video Dr. Brown tells a candid and moving story of how what started as an academic research project eventually brought her to the realization that, through her willingness to embrace her own vulnerability, she could open her heart to joy and the courage to be imperfect.  She ends the talk with this heartfelt advice:

let yourself be deeply seen
love with your whole heart
practice gratitude
lean into joy
believe that you're enough

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Who are you?
I really wanna know
- The Who
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Hymn to the Great Song

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In Search of The Great Song, a Song Without Borders documentary series by Michael Stillwater, explores and celebrates the song within us, connecting us and surrounding us. Filmed in America, Europe, and Australia, it features artists, educators, scientists, spiritual teachers and 'ordinary people' giving expression to their unique perspective on this universal concept.

In this episode, 'Hymn to The Great Song', Brother David Steindl-Rast, a Benedictine monk known worldwide for his contribution to interfaith dialogue and advocacy for the power of gratitude, speaks of song born in silence, St. Francis, and the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke.

"There is really only one song, and it's the Great Song, the cosmic song, the song that all things, animals, plants and humans sing in their deepest heart. And every song that a human sings with his or her voice is only an expression of that one Great Song that is there from the beginning and will be there after the end."



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Even though the world changes like cloud formations,
all that is fulfilled returns home to the One,
to the changeless One.
- Rainer Maria Rilke
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A Gentle Re-Minder

~~~~
from Full Catastrophe Living
by Jon Kabat-Zinn
Chapter entitled Yoga Is Meditation
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Bringing mindfulness to any activity transforms it into a kind of meditation.  Mindfulness dramatically amplifies the possibility that any activity in which you are engaged will result in an expansion of your perspective and of your understanding of who you are.  Much of the practice is simply a remembering, a reminding yourself to be fully awake, not lost in waking sleep or enshrouded in the veils of your thinking mind.  Intentional practice is crucial to this process because the automatic-pilot mode takes over so quickly when we forget to remember.

I like the words remember and remind because they imply connections that already exist but need to be acknowledged anew.  To remember, then, can be thought of as reconnecting with membership, with the set to which what one already knows belongs.  That which we have forgotten is still here, somewhere within us.  It is access to it that is temporarily veiled.  What has been forgotten needs to renew its membership in consciousness.  For instance, when we "re-member" to pay attention, to be in the present, to be in our body, we are already awake right in that moment of remembering.  The membership completes itself as we remember our wholeness.

The same can be said for reminding ourselves.  It reconnects us with what some people call "big mind", with a mind of wholeness, a mind that sees the whole forest as well as individual trees.  Since we are always whole anyway, it's not that we have to do anything.  We just have to "re-mind" ourself of it.
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Sunflower Seed Meditation

~~~~~
A bird in the hand....
is worth a thousand words about being in the moment
~~~~~

I'm always fully present

I'd rather have raisins.

When can we eat?

Eenie, meenie, miney, moe...

They all smell the same.

Shhh... I'm listening.

Can I swallow it now?

Awesome - let's do it again

the world offers itself to your imagination
- Mary Oliver
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Are You a Seeker or a Finder?

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You don't have to make any effort to be free.
Freedom is letting go, and letting go is freedom.
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Lately I have noticed myself feeling extremely content and at peace.  Not that that's unusual, really - I'm generally pretty happy, positive, not too many complaints.  But this is a more fundamental contentment - and reading these words from Andrew Cohen brought this present state of being sharply into focus - I am content because I am no longer looking for anything. 

Are you a seeker or a finder? This is a very important question. If you are on a spiritual path, have you found what you are looking for? Or are you still searching? If you are doing a spiritual practice, are you doing it to reach a goal or are you doing it just because you think it's a good thing to be doing?

Or are you doing spiritual practice from another position altogether--the position of being a finder? Being a finder means you are one of those rare individuals who has unequivocally found what they are looking for, and are now doing spiritual practice only because they want to continue to develop.

I can't pinpoint the exact moment that I became aware of this shift to another state of being.  No longer striving, I realize that I already have the life I want, that I already know my greatest gift and can give it freely without reservation.  My path now is, as Cohen says, to fully participate in that life and to continue to develop that gift.  The path and the goal have become one.

I don't know if this state will last or for how long.  But that's okay.  Right now I feel no bias towards either being or becoming, but am satisfied to let both dimensions manifest in their own time.  I believe that they are as inseparable as form and emptiness, and that as aspects of innate awareness, they are both always already present.  I need do nothing but nurture a deep, unshakable trust in the process.

If you are a sincere seeker, then it's important that your spiritual practice be imbued with a life-and-death commitment to your own liberation here and now. The short-term goal must be to get to the other side of existential doubt. You want to free your soul from both the ego's suffocating self-concern and the outdated and spiritually unenlightened values of our modern and postmodern culture. First and foremost, you need to do whatever it takes to free yourself. Why? So you will finally be available to participate, consciously and wholeheartedly, in the greatest gift you've been given...which is the life you're already living right now.

If you are no longer a seeker but one who boldly claims to be a finder, then that means you no longer have any doubt about who you really are and why you are here on this Earth. In your own direct discovery of and awakening to Spirit's true face, existential doubt has died a sudden and irrevocable death, liberating an infectious confidence rooted deep in your soul.

... as finders we're no longer doing practice in order to experience a spiritual epiphany that will convince us of something we don't already know. Now we're making the effort to evolve because we're in love with life and are committed to unlocking its higher potentials through our own development.

But of course that's not enough for Andrew Cohen.  We have to co-create Heaven on Earth.  No small feat to be sure, but he does give us some pointers.  He describes the usual "outside-in" approach to spiritual practice which starts from an intellectual understanding of our selves and we move along a spiritual path because we think it makes sense to do so.  In contrast, his "inside-out" approach begins with our direct experience of the Truth of Oneness - our path (and our goal) being to align the various dimensions of our being with that Truth.

To create this Heaven on Earth we need to make our relationships with one another our highest spiritual practice.  We need to cultivate what he calls spiritual self-respect, which always includes respect for God or Spirit - for that which is higher.  And of course we need to commit to putting our inspiration into practice, so that we will simultaneously create and reap the heavenly rewards.  He concludes:

The life we have chosen to live and our relationships will become an ecstatic cauldron of creative ferment. Because Spirit is both freedom and creativity, our own empowering realization of spiritual freedom will give rise to an unusual capacity for creative engagement. The truth of God will emerge again and again and again through our own ongoing love affair with the possible.

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Read the complete article in the Huffington Post HERE.
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There Comes A Time

from garden writer, philosopher & poet Doug Green:

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There comes a time in every season
when it is time to stop and reflect
There comes a time in every life
when it is time to stop and reflect
How marvelous when the leaves fall,
allowing us spaces to see clearly
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What Might Happen...

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You may or may not have noticed, but most of our fears revolve around What Might Happen in the future.  We take these imagined scenarios to be real and we let them guide our decisions and behavior - limiting our choices and in effect creating a future shaped around our fears.

And most of the time our fears about What Might Happen are drearily predictable: fear of failure, fear of success, fear of looking stupid, fear of change, fear of death... on and on ad nauseum.  So since our fears are imaginary anyway, why not get crazy, why not give yourself permission to imagine some new, more creative and enjoyable versions of What Might Happen, for instance ~

• the discovery of Atlantis and a whole new race of fish-people
• David Letterman and Slash from Guns n Roses getting married in a Scottish castle and adopting Richard Simmons
• God appearing drunk, live on Oprah
• the Internet becoming sentient and taking a sabbatical in Thailand to get away from the crowds, then dropping out and starting a folk duo with Joaquin Phoenix.

Doesn't that sound like more fun? 

That list actually came from Steve Errey (The Confidence Guy) in a post entitled How To Beat the Fear of Success, where he not only reveals possible futures, but looks at the three main reasons we fear success.  It's an interesting article and I hope you enjoy it.  Maybe you can come up with some fun fears of your own.

A related RoadKill Post:
What Makes You Come Alive?

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Beat your fears of success by recognizing what’s real and what isn’t.  What might happen is not real.  What you’re doing right now is real.  What matters to you is real.  What you’re capable of is real.
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What If?

~~~~
What if  we realized that our "personal problems" are simply basic, ordinary manifestations of ego?

What if  we gave up the "endless and pointless archaeological dig" into our past traumas?

What if  we awakened to a part of our self that was never wounded or traumatized, that doesn't need to be healed, that is already whole and complete, that has access to boundless energy, creativity, and positivity, and is completely ready to participate in life fully, boldly, passionately, holding nothing back?
~~~~

For the answer to these and other questions, here's a wonderful article by Craig Hamilton of Integral Enlightenment.  If you like that one, here's a previous post by Andrew Cohen along the same lines.  Enjoy.

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Nothing is confined except what's in your mind.
- Bruce Cockburn
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Meditation is Training for Life

A quote of the week from Andrew Cohen:

Meditation is training for life. If we want to be free, it is important to learn how to directly experience the unbroken chaos and impersonal confusion of our own minds without being disturbed by any of it. Only if we can bear it will we be able to take responsibility for it. If we cannot calmly endure our own minds, others will inevitably suffer the consequences. If we cannot handle our own thoughts and emotions while we are simply being still and paying attention, then how are we ever going to be able to make the appropriate choices when we are walking, talking, and engaging with others?
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Waiter, There's a Fly in my Trash

Why Dumpster Diving will save the planet
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Browsing through the latest offerings from Reality Sandwich, came across this article by Jill Ettinger.  She starts with the teaser:

Americans throw away nearly 100 billion pounds of food every year - almost as much as we eat.  In Dive!, filmmaker Jeremy Seifert set out to find out why supermarkets are letting perfectly edible food end up in dumpsters instead of being donated to starving people.  What he discovered will shock you.
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What really surprised me was that they're not talking about spoiled food or leftovers scraped off plates at fancy restaurants - what supermarkets are tossing into the dumpsters is perfectly good, fresh meat, milk, eggs and vegetables which often have not even reached their expiry date.

You can read her full interview with Jerry Seifert HERE,  watch a trailer for the film HERE, and learn more about what's being done (and what you can do) around the issue of food waste HERE.

For me, an important first step to really caring about the issue of food waste was hopping in a dumpster, bringing home the food, and eating it. Eating trash is a subversive act. It goes against a culture of over-consumption and gratuitous wastefulness. Experience that initial rush, shame, fear, and exhilaration of "stealing" trash and eating it will change you in good ways.
- Jeremy Seifert.
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Ego, Soul and Self

~~~~
Aspects of Ego is Part 5 of a 6-part Guru & Pandit series entitled Creating New Structures in Consciousness, featuring Andrew Cohen and Ken Wilber in conversation, filmed live in Denver, Colorado.  The series can be enjoyed in whole or in part - each segment is a profound teaching in itself and they hang together beautifully when viewed in sequence.

This short clip is by far the most eloquent discussion of ego that I have heard anywhere.


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What we are calling ego in the positive sense, I believe, emerges in its most beautiful radiance to the degree to which our attention is being compelled towards something which transcends it.
- Andrew Cohen
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Here are links to the other videos in the series:  
Part 1 - Creating New Structures in Consciousness 
Part 2 - Trust and the Creative Principle 
Part 3 - The Purpose of Meditation  
Part 4 - A Closed Loop  
Part 6 - The Evolving Soul   
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The Most Important Conversation Of Our Time

~~~~
Beyond Awakening: The Future of Spiritual Practice
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How can a living spirituality enable human beings to create more enlightened responses to our common problems?

There is no more important conversation—or commitment to action—in the world today.

Join 27 of the most dynamic contemporary spiritual teachers as they engage in this series of dialogues. Each teacher will bring a distinct, profound, and catalytic perspective to the Big Conversation. Each has drunk deeply from the wisdom of the past, and is also embodying their wisdom in a new way, freshly attuned to the challenges of our moment.

This groundbreaking series will explore an an "embodied, engaged, evolving spirituality that is true to who we are, here and now — and that can empower us to co-create a sustainable human future."  You will learn:

• How to turn the fast pace of life into a profound practice to experience clarity, purpose, and inner peace.
• How to find community in our fragmented, virtual world and get the support you need.
• What neuroscience can teach us about skillful, effective (and efficient) personal practice, and how you can apply this research in your everyday life.
• How to question our inherited spiritual wisdom, and at the same time rescue the light of that wisdom, like precious jewels, from being dimmed down and fragmented.
• How you can help catalyze the transformation of our culture as well as your own consciousness.

Through these dialogues you will meet such remarkable teachers as Ken Wilber, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Ram Dass, Adyashanti, Surya Das, Diane Musho Hamilton, Andrew Cohen, Gangaji, Steve McIntosh, Katherine Woodward Thomas and others.

To learn more about this FREE teleseminar series, or to register, just  CLICK HERE.

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You are the Crown of Creation
and you've got no place to go
- Jefferson Airplane
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Secrecy Is The Original Sin

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Secrecy is the Original Sin. The fig leaf in the Garden of Eden. The basic crime against love. The purpose of life is to receive, synthesize and transmit energy. Communication fusion is the goal of life. Any star can tell you that. Communication is love. Secrecy, withholding the signal, hoarding, covering up the light is motivated by shame and fear.”
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I encountered the above quote from Timothy Leary through an article in Reality Sandwich entitled A Supraterranean Manifesto.  Supraterranean is an on-line magazine where people can freely publish any type of creative work without having to go through the usual editorial process.  In the manifesto the magazine's creator, Nick Meador, chronicles his own amazing journey. 

Perhaps it hit me when Time Magazine named their 2006 Person of the Year - YOU. It was so simple, so obvious. The decision must have been based largely on the runaway success of YouTube. By that time, many considered a night of watching "viral videos" and bootleg concert footage to be more rewarding than flipping channels on TV. Much else was changing about the ways we communicate and spend our free time and energy. But even that simple switch from passive to active media consumption was one that, I felt sure, would forever transform our society.

Through this manifesto Meador addresses much of the current cynicism about the influence of the World Wide Web on our personal, cultural and global evolution and allows the possibility of a radical new order emerging through that portal.  He talks about how his generation, disillusioned by the "reality" that was being presented to them through mainstream media - institutions, marketers, advertisers and editors - found the communication and connection they were craving on the Web.  Moved by this personal revelation, he began looking more deeply into traditional journalism and publishing practices and did not like what he found.

For too long the creative instinct has been bottled up to make human beings into consumer robots. I see now that I wanted to break the mold, while helping existing robots (myself included) regain the optimal path.

This guy has certainly done his homework.  Drawing from such visionary minds as Freud, Kerouac, Hunter S. Thompson, Henry Miller, Neitzsche, Robert Anton Wilson, Carl Jung and others, he developed a personal and professional philosophy which eventually found expression through Supraterranean.  It's a fascinating and compelling story and I cannot possibly do it justice by summarizing - you can read the full manifesto HERE.
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The Web allows people to project their mind in endless directions, at an unprecedented speed and distance. It’s a collective out-of-body experience that lets us share in each other’s daydreams – a new map of time-space to help to navigate the inner and outer cosmos.  On Supraterranean, we are all connected by the creations that people share with the community.
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“Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need roads.”
– Doc Brown, Back to the Future
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A Simple Question

from Andrew Cohen, near the end of a talk entitled "The Miraculous Impulse to Evolve":

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Isn't the transformation of the world we are living in entirely and totally dependent on the changing of the individual at the level of consciousness - to move from self-obsession or extreme narcissism to care for the whole process itself at the deepest level?

Isn't our collective future in the end entirely dependent upon that?
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To hear the entire talk (in three parts) follow these links:
Part 1 - A Universe Without God
Part 2 - Enlightenment for the 21st Century
Part 3 - Partners in Creation

Rescue Yourself

Why you need to abandon your rescue fantasy

Dave Navarro has hit the nail on the head again.  Rescue fantasies are so subtle and insidious we seldom realize that we are buying into them, let alone being aware enough to look further and discover how we use them to shield ourselves from the brilliance of our own unlimited potential.

When we catch ourselves repeatedly using phrases like "if only..." or "someday..." or "when things are different...", those are cues that we are stuck in a rescue fantasy or wishful thinking.  We are convincing ourselves that there is something outside ourselves - something we think we don't have - that will make us happy.

When we cling to our rescue fantasy, we make life more difficult.

This excellent post by Dave links us to a blog post from Mahala Mazerov entitled Suffering by Desire, which starts:

At the most basic level, the definition of suffering is wanting things to be different than the way they are.

Abandoning the fantasy of some conditional future happiness connects us with the present moment, which already contains everything we need.  And this discovery brings a wonderful feeling of freedom and possibility as we realize that our happiness is in our own hands, that we can cultivate the practice of gratitude for everything we have right now.

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Seek not happiness too greedily, and be not fearful of happiness.
- Lao-tzu (604-531 BC)
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Rethinking the Human Narrative

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A video by Jeremy Rifkin
~~~~

Rifkin believes that humans are "soft-wired" not for aggression, violence, self-interest or utilitarianism but for such qualities as sociability, attachment, affection and companionship - and that the "first drive" is an empathic one - the drive to belong.

This really is an amazing video and a beautiful message.
 


Is it possible we could actually extend our empathy to the entire human race as an extended family and to our fellow creatures as part of our evolutionary family and to the biosphere as our common community?

What do you think?
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