What If...we are being given so much more than we know, right in the middle of the circumstances we are in (perhaps because of them or, even, in spite of them)?
What would be different if we were able to have more imagination for that possibility?
Circumstances don't make the man, they only reveal him to himself.
-- Epictetus
All personal breakthroughs begin with a change in beliefs.
-- Tony Robbins
As noted earlier this week, changing our minds (especially others') is an interesting dynamic.
This may mostly be because of the way what we think is formed. Ultimately, it seems we are rarely convinced of something by theory alone. We become convinced of things more largely by forces that resemble the way waves on a beach shape it — relentless repetition, especially when combined with negativity and fear.
Here's an example:
Many people believe morality is declining — but it may be an illusionSo, what really impacts changing of the mind the most?
It is more often when information impacts something personal for us that our thinking embraces its ability to adapt. Otherwise it rarely changes (at least quickly) and, more often, it is simply affirmed (repetition). In other words, proximity to different information can often trump the ideological. If we maintain distance from anything that we aren't already familiar and comfortable with, our thinking (how we see things) remains largely the same.
When have you changed your mind about something? What contributed most to causing that to happen?
An amazing and inspiring example of how breakthroughs of the mind (and action) can occur:
Ever noticed...that you rarely ‘win’ arguments?
…or how (relatively) powerless you are to change what someone else thinks?
Just because people occasionally get struck by lightning doesn’t mean that lightning is a bad thing….
We become good at something that we’ve done 100 times — an expert at something we’ve done 1000 times.
There is something mutually disempowering in our attempts to simultaneously hold on to and let go of things.
In relationships, don't we want to know that there is something even stronger than the impact of our latest experience (fight or fun ) — that even as those experiences accumulate, there is still something we can trust in with each other?
Prior 3 Observations & A Question….
'Poem for the week' -- "Evening":
Another word I love is evening
for the balance it implies, balance
being something I struggle with.
I suppose I would like to be more
a planet, turning in & out of light
It comes down again to polarities,
equilibrium. Evening. The moths
take the place of the butterflies,
owls the place of hawks, coyotes
for dogs, stillness for business,
& the great sorrow of brightness
makes way for its own sorrow.
Everything dances with its strict
negation, & I like that. I have no
choice but to like that. Systems
are evening out all around us—
even now, as we kneel before
a new & ruthless circumstance.
Where would I like to be in five
years, someone asks—& what
can I tell them? Surrendering
with grace to the evening, with
as much grace as I can muster
to the circumstance of darkness,
which is only something else
that does not stay.
-- Jeremy Radin
I'm wondering...about emotional gaps. Do you ever feel a kind of gap between you and another person at times?
I wonder if the gaps we sometimes feel with someone are related to gaps that they feel or are within themselves (even if they’re not felt or identified).
Many times you can’t do it, if you haven’t put yourself in a position to do it.
Perhaps one of the truest measures of humility is our internal response when we are being criticized.
There is what you think you need and there is what you really need — and, there’s what you don’t think you need, that you really do.
You don’t have to use the word God to reference God – why do you think there so many different names and descriptions of God (even in the Bible)?
Prior 3 Observations & A Question….
While unintelligent people are more easily misled by other people, intelligent people are more easily misled by themselves. They’re better at convincing themselves of things they want to believe rather than things that are actually true. This is why intelligent people tend to have stronger ideological biases; being better at reasoning makes them better at rationalizing. In the end, rationality is not about intelligence but about character. Without the right personal qualities, education and IQ won’t make you master of your biases, they’ll only make you a better servant of them. So be open to the possibility that you may be wrong, and always be willing to change your mind — especially if you’re smart. By being humble and curious you may not win many arguments, but it won’t matter, for even losing arguments will become a victory that moves you toward the far grander prize of truth.
-- Gurwinder Bhogal
By hanging on to things, we lose them. Whereas by offering ourselves into the world, we find infinite richness.
-- James Low
Among many others, one of the basic problems with fundamentalism (particularly of the religious kind, but the concept itself is a larger one) is that it requires a certain amount of selective blindness to, of all things, truth.
Fundamentalism proports itself to near exclusivity about truth, and yet by definition, only maintains a portion of it (the fundamentals). Terminology most often used to describe it identifies the (most) important elements involved in truth that need to be held on to. And, while that is not necessarily untrue, it clearly disregards what I believe to be another “fundamental" dynamic of truth — that it is ever-growing (at the very least, our understanding of it). I would suggest that truth is even more dynamic than it is static. And, while that nearly sends shivers down the spine of fundamentalists, it points to truth as something infinite (as opposed to a finite list). The inhibiting nature of fundamentalist ideology seems to be predicated on the premise that truth is finite and, therefore by implication, must be held onto tightly. But if truth is, in fact, limited (to only certain basic things, not to mention the complications of who decides which ones those are), there are all kinds of ramifications many of which end up tossing you on a dumpster fire of co-mingled truth and (human) power issues.
Many would not disagree that God is infinite; in part, it seems to me, because the opposite would be too problematic. Many of the same people would also say that ultimate truth is defined by God. If so, on those premises, truth cannot be finite. And if truth is, in fact, infinite then the whole direction and energy behind one’s relationship with it is fundamentally different. Why is it that Jesus said the truth will set you free? What, then, is freedom if not expansive in its richness? Is the mode (and the mood) of his observation consistent with finitude?
There are some merits to the notions we hear often these days that sound like getting back to the basics is needed. But, I suspect that has more to do with the means, than it does it the ends. God is ever-pulling God's creation forward into the ideals of everything that God created. It's hard to imagine that God is hand-wringing about whether or not sin (or whatever is evil) will effectively suppress the truth in the end. It seems to me that it is man that is concerned with that possibility and, often, thru the use of reduced realities about truth. And, even in recognizing that, thru the incarnation, God essentially said something like, "Let me get closer to my creation, so that I can make even more manifest, what is true". This may be the nearly some total of the great prayers of Jesus — for the revelation of God to creation that everything that God created is still at its core good. And, God himself seems to want to leave us with the impression that that goodness as limitless ('storehouses' of it that are waiting to be revealed!). God is infinite. God is Good. Goodness is infinite. And, it is our discovery of this infiniteness that perpetuates the very revelation of it. Such is the very nature of truth!
So, beware of...finish here.
You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.
-- Atticus Finch
We claim spiritual progress, not spiritual perfection.
-- The Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous
No one can have more impact on your overall health…than you.
You have to follow your heart — but, first, you have to learn what is in it.
The more you try to eliminate something, the more you keep it alive — resistance creates persistence.
How much of successful aging is based on the recognition of how little we control?
Prior 3 Observations & A Question….
'Poem for the week' -- "My heart":
sings but the apparatus of singing doesn’t convey
half what it feels and means. In spring, there’s hope,
in fall the exquisite, necessary diminishing, in
winter I am as sleepy as any beast in its
leafy cave, but in summer there is
everywhere the luminous sprawl of gifts,
the hospitality of the Lord and my
-- Mary Oliver
You are only entitled to the action, never to its fruits.
-- Bhagavad Gita
So many things are out of my control....
But, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t ANY things that are within my control.
Often times, our relationship with things that are out of our control have to do with certain outcomes we desire. So, really, it’s what we do in the meantime that matters.
For example, even though I do try to anticipate the possibilities, when I plan a trip I can’t guarantee that the weather will be good. But, I can go ahead and plan the trip and prepare for it by taking clothes for whatever the weather might be (like this trip, which had both). Or, I suppose, I could just not plan the trip because of the possibility that the weather could be bad....
Or, when trying to get a job, I can’t control whether somebody will hire me or not, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t look, apply, or interview for a job.
Take finances — I can’t guarantee (or even anticipate) everything about what I will need financially in the future, but that doesn’t mean I can’t take simple steps now to save a little bit of the money I make (as opposed to spending it all).
What about our health? We can’t ultimately control whether we get cancer or not, but we can do things now that are healthy or unhealthy…which may contribute to whether we do or don’t get cancer.
In relationships, we can’t control how another person will react or respond (or choose to do) to things that are needed to maintain a healthy relationship, but we can still choose to love (even if they don’t).
These days, we seem to have become a bit fixated on outcomes. If the outcome we desire isn't guaranteed, we tend not to try. But, what we don't realize as much anymore is that so many times, it is the effort — the trying — that truly enables us. There will be an outcome, to be sure. It may or may not be directly related to the effort (most of the time, it is). It could be that the outcome is very different that what we imagined it would be (often times, it is).
When we look back, we can often see a connection between our efforts and outcomes. But, along the way, it may often feel like it isn't going anywhere (but, it is). And, so, it seems to come down to something like this; we learn to trust the effort more than the desired outcome.
In many ways, being in control is much closer to fantasy than reality. If we can accept that, then perhaps we can simply give the effort it takes to live our lives in constructive and healthy ways. One that builds on itself and that, in the end, leads us somewhere good.
Ever noticed...that sometimes you have to walk away from something in order to understand more purely what it is?
You make a life out of what you have, not what you're missing. -- Kate Morton
It's not what the world holds for you, it's what you bring to it.
-- L.M. Montgomery
Do your little bit of good where you are; it is those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.
-- Archbishop Desmond Tutu
If you don't, who will?
-- Tom Hanks, 2023 Commencement Address
Prior 4 Observations (from Others).
...outrage is the business model of about one-third of the companies on the NASDAQ.
-- Sunny Bonnell AND Ashleigh Hansberger
What ever happened to leading by example?
My wife just finished another year teaching second-grade and it seems like the things we teach second-graders somehow don't apply any more...especially to our leaders / politicians. Maybe they don't think they really have much influence anyway. Or, maybe, we're all acting like this because they do? Who's copying who is sometimes hard to determine...especially when it's bad.
At the very least, it puts those trying to teach basic civility in a tough spot as they try build a base for children on how to relate to others...not to mention the aggregating negative social impacts that are being revealed in all kinds of ways each day.
No one said it was easy to set an example, but sinking down to the lowest common denominator doesn't even really make sense. We must have lost all faith in the goodness of humanity and, therefore, believe that the deepest realities are the baser instincts of our fears. Why else would we effectively sanction bullying in political and social spaces while we try to still pretend like it's a bad thing on the playground?
Whatever the context, it seems like two basic drivers are involved too much of the time — survival and greed.
Unfortunately, one seems to drive the other. And, it is too often those with too much who are effectively creating the dilemma of survival for the others. Fear is at the heart of both — one is real and the other is contrived. Sometimes this is intentional. But, I'm more concerned about the unfettered and disrespectful ways we are now normalizing and the cultivated blindness involved in doing so.
When will we realize we all live here together and that just because we have tried to insulate ourselves with some nice trees to block our view, it doesn't mean we're not all still living on the same dirt and breathing the same air? We have to take care of our shared resources and treat each other in helpful ways. It doesn't matter if it doesn't bother us directly...doesn't work anymore.
We must resist looking to the frameworks of the past to lead us into the future. Doing so is a way to pretend to control, to tighten our grip and reduce our cultural aerodynamic flexibility. Instead, perhaps we turn to ways of wisdom that cultivate intuition, patience, and ingenuity.
-- Cameron Trimble
I guess the case I’m making here is...finish here.
I trust the forces of goodness. That they're taking care of the universe. And I believe it. It restores my faith and restores a feeling of well-being.
I focus on and have faith in the goodness around. And I think eventually, it will prevail.
-- Urvashi Sahni
The word change normally refers to new beginnings. But the mystery of transformation more often happens not when something new begins, but when something old falls apart. The pain and chaos of something old falling apart invite the soul to listen at a deeper level, and sometimes force the soul to go to a new place. Most of us would never go to new places in any other way. The mystics use many words to describe this chaos: fire, dark night, death, emptiness, abandonment, trial, the Evil One. Whatever it is called, it does not feel good, and it does not feel like God.
We will normally do anything to keep the old thing from falling apart, yet this is when we need patience and guidance, and the freedom to let go instead of tightening our controls and certitudes. Perhaps Jesus is describing just this phenomenon when he says, “It is a narrow gate and a hard road that leads to life, and only a few find it” (Matthew 7:14). Not accidentally, he mentions this narrow gate and hard road right after teaching the Golden Rule. He knows how much “letting go” it takes to “treat others as you would like them to treat you” (Matthew 7:12).
Spiritual transformation always includes a disconcerting reorientation. It can either help people to find new meaning or it can cause people to close down and slowly turn bitter. The difference is determined precisely by the quality of our inner life, our practices, and our spirituality. Change happens, but transformation is always a process of letting go, and living in the confusing, shadowy, transitional space for a while. Eventually, we are spit up on a new and unexpected shore. We can see why Jonah in the belly of the whale is such an important figure for Jews, Christians, and Muslims.
In moments of insecurity and crisis, shoulds and oughts don’t really help. They just increase the shame, guilt, pressure, and likelihood of backsliding into unhealthy patterns. It’s the deep yeses that carry us through to the other side. It’s those deeper values we strongly support—such as equality and dignity for all—that allow us to wait it out. Or it’s someone in whom we absolutely believe and to whom we commit. In plain language, love wins out over guilt any day.
It is sad that we settle for the short-term effectiveness of shaming people and shutting them down, instead of the long-term life benefits of true transformation. But then, we are a culture of productivity and efficiency, not terribly patient or even open to growth. God is clearly much more patient—and, finally, much more effective, patiently supporting our inner transformation through all of life’s transitions.
-- Richard Rohr
If nothing else, discovery is often predicated on effort.
There is the story you’ve lived and then there is the story you've developed around that story.
It can help when you realize that you need to be pushed and, even more, how (what works best overall for you) — this is like acknowledging both a strength and weakness at the same time...and is a kindness to yourself.
What If...it's easier to work from growing awareness of what we have than it is from what we don't have?
Prior 3 Observations & A Question….
'Poem for the week' -- "Speak to us of Children":
And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children.
And he said:
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.
-- Kahlil Gibran
The whole thing seems to fairly routinely rotate back toward identifying what is possible when energized by what I want.
Wait, what?
Did I miss something — like part of the conversation somehow?
Well, yeah, probably.
You see, I've had this rolling discussion with myself for years now. It comes and goes, often returning to a familiar theme — can we really just do what we want to do?
I'll often catch myself saying things like, "If I could, I would love to...". Which will inevitably be followed by something like, "Yeah, but how then will this other thing work?" Practically speaking, I often don't know how to make 'what I want' happen or I can't afford what I would lose in order to get there. So, really, I want more than one thing. And, truth be told, I need more than just one thing.
Discipline is choosing between what you want now and what you want most.
-- Abraham Lincoln
In the end, I actually have needs that supersede just what I might want. But, I do have to admit what I want, too, or other problems emerge. Where things seem to meet up then is the nexus between what I want and what I need — each informing the other.
The most significant factor, though, that seems to frame navigating the question still IS what I want because even what I need is largely filtered through what I want anyway. Too often, I don’t even know what is needed without the energy that comes from what I want pushing up against it. In other words, if I don’t want it, or even know that I want it, then I often don’t even detect what is needed.
For example, if I’ve grown up in the suburbs (which I did), I likely have not imagined much about the wonder and beauty and values that exist from living on a farm. I may easily assume, based on what it looks like from a neighborhood, that farms are just a lot of work. But there’s also a lot in that kind of assumption-making that is missing. Or, to back it up one step further, if I were to grow up in the city, I may not have much imagination for what it would be like to live in the suburbs, especially if I’ve never seen them.
To beg the logic of this a bit further, this might apply to many dimensions of our particular experiences with reality. We know what we know. And, we are limited by that knowing, especially when it comes to things we actually need.
So, the case I think I'm making here (to myself) is that it is more what I do with the healthy tension between my idealism and my pragmatism that matters. I can acknowledge both...and need to. Practically speaking, either / or (as in so many cases) is not realistic anyway (nor, for that matter, all that helpful).
What we want is an important kind of energy, as is acknowledgement of appropriate constraints. Energy is a source of so many things in our lives, especially in the tensions between them. It can be quite useful, in a variety of ways, to help us more fully engage these realities we face.
So, what DO I really want to do?
You are unique and if that is not fulfilled, then something has been lost.
-- Martha Graham
We pay too much attention to the most confident voices — and too little attention to the most thoughtful ones.
Certainty is not a sign of credibility. Speaking assertively is not a substitute for thinking clearly.
It's better to learn from complex thinkers than smooth talkers.
-- Adam Grant
I'm wondering...about how often we assess the value of something that is changing primarily through a frame of relativity to what is or has been.
Makes sense — pretty normal way of going about things. But, what does it leave out when we don't exercise imagination for what could be?
A Prayer for When God Seems Absent:
Oh God, comfortable would we be if You gave us formulas and answered prayers and realized hope. But You call us beyond comfort.
But God, life upends us. We face divorce or miscarriages, financial struggles or job insecurity, and the people we love are tossed about by disease or loneliness or homelessness or addiction.
We are afraid. We don’t have adequate answers. And sometimes we can’t find You.
Or, we can’t find the person we hoped You would be.
May we learn to trust that You aren’t asleep on the job. That You haven’t forgotten us. That You are as near to us as our very breath. Give us the courage to press on. To suffer with hope that You have overcome the world.
May again and again we be awed by Your presence. That even when we feel like we’ve hit rock bottom, may we recognize we have fallen into Your arms because there is no place so deep or so dark or so scary that Your presence cannot reach.
In the name of the One who can still the seas with mere words, amen.
-- Kate Bowler and Jessica Richie
In many cases, the best time to do something is...now.
One of the key features of participating in goodness seems to be the willingness to wait for it.
Not everything that needs to be understood is understood at the same time or at the same pace by everyone — all of us are working with pieces and parts of reality that we understand, at any given point.
Humility is one thing; humiliation another — but, doesn't it seem the first often has to follow the second?
Teresa of Ávila's favorite nature image was water. She speaks lavishly of flowing springs, pools, wells, and fountains, rivers, waves, and the sea, urging us to irrigate our hearts with the waters of Life. When instead we clog our lives with triviality and endless distraction, she sees us bogged down in a swamp, struggling to get muddy water out of a puddle.
-- Tessa Bielecki
-- Nelson Mandela
As I was getting ready for work today, I noticed the waves of nearly effervescent green in the Spring leaves outside my window. A slight breeze was making a flutter through them and as I looked beyond the specific tree I was observing, the whole world seems to be moving in a graceful little dance.
Its beauty grabbed my attention which then drifted to the notion that there are so many dimensions in which our existence is alive — always growing, dying, and starting again. Over and over and over, throughout all time. It made me think about where I fit into this broad and deep dynamic of living things, all co-existing to one degree or another.
I thought about how adaptable things are, especially humans. We conform to our surroundings, especially over time. And we, because of that very adaptability, also become quite conditioned by them. This certainly happens to us physically. We build all kinds of things to help us manage that. And, then, we become dependent on those things. And the stasis we subconsciously are seeking (and, to some extent, achieving) affects how we view things, all the way from the basic dependencies we inadvertently foster up through the disposition we develop about what our lives should be about.
There seems to be be great flexibility in this dynamic. But, we also are becoming more aware of some of the ways that elasticity is not infinite. The slow slide of use to ever-increasing consumption, even just for the sake of doing so sometimes, is (has been) having some consequences. Collectively, we are more aware of some of those than ever. Environmental, social, financial, spiritual impacts abound, not to mention mental, emotional, and psychological ones in which we are now seeing all kinds of cracks.
It is becoming increasingly obvious how inter-related everything is. There really are no isolated or independent parts. Everything we do impacts something else. We can even appear a bit irritated by that simple reality, as if we're somehow owed our mutual independence. But, by design, nothing was created that way. And, despite our attempts to force the issue, it simply can't be done. In the end, our individual 'rights' never supersede our collective needs. And, just because we can create (and perpetuate) the illusion that we operating independently (minding our own business), the whole world is impacted by our choices in aggregate. My survival is, actually, subordinate to our survival. ...as is my prosperity.
The glimpses I have this particularly beautiful morning offer a kind of peace that nothing is inanimate — everything is alive, in its own way.
And while this dream-state is disrupted by on-going news of events where this peace is being destroyed in other parts of our global existence, I am startled by the severity of both and the reality that I need to live consciously in ways that reinforce the collective good, especially where that is not happening.
We awaken in others the same attitude of mind we hold toward them.
-- Elbert Hubbard
I’ve noticed...that sometimes I think IF I knew more about my future, I could relax and enjoy more.
But since that's an impossibility....
It has become important for me to acknowledge each day one thing that I don’t know about — this helps keep me from concluding that I know way more than I actually do.
It often gets complicated when you’re trying to make something happen at the same time that you’re trying to keep something else from happening.
Nearly everything that expands seems to include pain — but when it is viewed as growth, we learn to accept it...partly because of the joy growth presumes.
Are we the most adaptable in areas of our lives that pain us — if so, would it follow that we are also the most rigid where we are the most comfortable?
Prior 3 Observations & A Question….
Well, we've got just the pick-me-up for you. Last week, the Skoll World Forum was bustling with innovators and entrepreneurs engaged in the work of "transformational social change" — that is, making the world a better place. We drew lessons in optimism from six individuals in attendance, who shared what gives them cause to be hopeful — why they find themselves smiling in spite of everything...continue here.
-- Ari Daniel
You are more open when walking, more receptive, more enmeshed in the landscape through which you pass…walk out your door every day with an open heart and a real, watchful reverence. You will be absolutely amazed at what it will reveal to you.
-- John O’Donohue
In anticipation of turning 60 (today), I recently queried some people I respect about their experience with awareness, particularly as they get older. As you might expect, there was a variety of responses, which probably reinforces the point here. Which is this — one of the greater opportunities we have as we age is the increasing capacity we have for awareness. For one thing, it is obviously evident that the longer you live, the more you've likely experienced.
One might assume, as a result, that experience would translate to more understanding, which in turn would increase overall awareness. The problem is, however, it doesn't always seem to work that way. And, from certain points-of-view, it might look more and more like it rarely does. I guess it depends on who you hang around with. For example, it's not hard to notice that many older people seem to become more narrow, less able to tolerate difference or change, more in favor of something they thought they once knew than of things that are now less familiar.
But, as we age and certain aspects of our existence wane, other things seem like they accumulate, if nothing more than the simple function of more time and exposure to life. What seems more conspicuous, though, is what we do with this opportunity (of accumulating experience). Does it provide something beyond knowledge and understanding? Does wisdom emerge? For the healthy, it seems to or, at least, it can. Mitigating factors aside, we have an opportunity, both individually and collectively, to expand our imagination for all is going on as we age. Whether or not we take the opportunity is another thing. And, we could think about why we do (or don't)...become more wise about life and reality.
As I mentioned above, and like many other things, it would appear that a lot about awareness is related to social factors. Values of groups of people obviously impact not only awareness in general, but also what people in a particular group are sensitive to. And, people who isolate themselves may not have as much awareness as those who don't.
I feel much more aware of many things than when I was younger. Besides the obvious, this also seems like a choice. In other words, I chose to become more aware (rather than do the opposite). Of course, not all of this was a direct choice on my part. In many cases, I was forced to choose this. Some of it was self-protection (don't want to go through that again, etc.). And, some of it was due to the attraction I had to certain people, a way about them that seemed consistent with the more beautiful parts of the world.
I'm not claiming to have arrived anywhere on some kind of awareness scale. I'm just aware that so much of the way I relate to things is a function of what I do with my surroundings and my experiences. They inform me. Awareness can enable me to relate to them in increasingly constructive ways. As I head into the age of decline in many ways, I also enter into something else that has an opportunity to only grow — imagination for what is actually happening (despite what the populist version seems to describe), especially the good.
Many people seem to define their existence in terms of loss...finish here.
