An Education that Matters
What is the fruit of these teachings? Only the most beautiful and proper harvest of the truly educated – Tranquility, Fearless, and Freedom. We should not trust the masses who say only the free can be educated, but rather the lovers of wisdom who say that only the educated are free. — Epictetus
Tranquility, fearlessness, freedom are radical experiences in the modern world — rare, fundamentally valuable which provide deep roots for life. The word ‘educated’ comes from Latin: ‘to lead out’. Originally the concept was that a teacher would help students discover what they already knew, but were unaware of. That the teacher would ‘draw out’ the knowledge innately there and have it become known.
Tranquility is distinct from peace. In a sense, peace is a surface phenomenon that springs from external circumstances that are favorable. Tranquility goes all the way to the bottom and is a state of being that remains even in the face of chaotic situations.
“They have healed the brokenness of My people superficially, Saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ But there is no peace. — Jeremiah 6:14
How to achieve a state change into tranquility? Tranquility is the state of the True Self or Source. The Groveler and Shadow crowd out the tranquility, not that the tranquility of the Source disappears, but is covered over. Just as the clouds on a drizzly day do not mean that the sky isn’t still blue, when the Groveler and Shadow are acting on center stage, the True Self makes way and moves into the wings.
What is the best way to deal with the Groveler and Shadow? I suggest that the way out is through: by fully experiencing the considerations, concerns, arguments, feelings, slights, involvements, ties, squabbles, the infinite reasons and rationales that the Groveler and Shadow throw into the mix that just keep coming like shark’s teeth. To fully experience something is to willingly and fully enter into that state. Not to resist or fight against it, as that just gives the Shadow and Groveler more energy. But for a moment to fully experience—in living color and sensurround—all that the Shadow and Groveler have for you in that moment. Then you will find that they disappear like fog before the morning sun.
January 3, 2017 Leave a comment
Radical Unreasonableness
Rather than a resolution set that is quickly swamped by the details of life, my one commitment for 2017 is to Radical Unreasonableness in every domain in life. An experiment in pushing the limits of the results I produce in every arena in my life: my marriage, immigration consulting work, personal transformation, family breakthrough, social media promotion for Laurie, the impact of the Encounter training.
My plan of approach is to develop habits that support Radical Unreasonableness. Writing this blog will be one of the habits, meditation, fasting 3 consecutive days every month, daily journaling, and aiming as high as I can imagine.
Radical comes from a Latin word ‘radix’ or ‘root’ — some source as ‘radish’. My goal is to focus on where life springs from, to tap into that primal energy that flows from God. In the meditation I have been doing (I’ll do a post on what forms of meditation I am practicing) I’ve noticed three ‘modes’ of relating internally. One is self that wants to look good, be right, be in control, and feel good about itself. Let’s slap him with a term — the Groveler. He prostitutes himself for the paltry coin of acceptance. The second self is the shadowy, dark/angry/bitter/vengeful self — the Shadow, who is ready to flare up into a conflagration at the slightest provocation. Beyond both of these would be the spacious source of my self, the authentic, True Self. I don’t experience these in particularly a linear way… they aren’t polite and don’t take turns. Rather they seem to be going all the time; always on in parallel. What shifts is the attention *I* pay to any of the three of them. When I realize that there *I* am choosing what to attend to and actually experience that freedom to choose, the truth appears that the True Self is bigger, more spacious, more primary, more real, eternal where as the Groveler and the Shadow are derivative, secondary, distortions, fallen.
January 2, 2017 Leave a comment
Transforming Basics: Communication is redundant
Communication is redundant. We are always communicating by our actions, body position, movements, and noises, in addition to our specific words. Often our words are the least revealing avenue of communication.
Like an iceberg, the most easily apprehended portion of our communication is the 10% verbal communication; the remaining 90% of our communication is non-verbal. However we often mistakenly think that our words are the totality of our communication. Try this out — think if it as a party game — have a conversation with someone about a meaningful topic. Take turns ‘listening’ to the non-verbal communication: the stance, the muscle tone in the face and body, the intonation and tension in the vocal cords. Then give your partner what you were sensing.
In paying attention to the 90% non-verbal modalities of communication, I find it helpful to ‘turn down’ the volume in my mind, to the point that what the person I’m in dialogue with is saying is unintelligible. This mental change helps me focus on the non-verbal. Another trick I use is to imagine what I would feel if I stood that way.
May 12, 2016 Leave a comment
Power Point #1: Reality
“The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names.” – Chinese Proverb
In this blog that I (very) occasionally post to, I’m starting a new series called Power Points with the goal of posting thoughts on human nature – how humans are wired because of how God made us – that when attended to and lived out, cause life to work better. My secondary goal is to post more frequently, for which having a theme will help.
This may be particularly relevant to those who have attended the 4-day Christian experiential training a lead called The Encounter (www.encountertraining.com) as it will provide some context and fill in some of the blanks that are inevitable in an experiential training.
In John 8:32 Jesus said, “and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” The word truth is the Greek word ‘alethia’ – ‘the reality underlying appearances’. How is it that grasping reality is freeing?
First, we must take a detour into a topic in philosophy called ontology, or the nature of being. One of the aspects of being human, is that we each have a totally subjective inner world that filters what aspects of external, objective reality ‘get through’ to us (the ‘us’ here being the subjective self). One easy image to capture this situation is to think about a map. A map is different than the territory that you are moving through. Potentially maps can have mistakes – both omissions, and less frequently additions – but without a doubt, the options we have for getting to our destination will be chosen from those we find on our map. To the degree our map of reality is deficient or inexact, the range of options open to us will be similarly limited.
When we improve our map – when it more closely matches reality, we will have greater power to navigate life effectively. The core idea is that distinction is the source of power; the more distinct we are about how reality is, our power will be much greater. Distinction comes in both observation – watching how reality is – and in articulation, the speaking of what is so. The distinctness of articulation can be most easily seen in giving and receiving feedback. The Chinese proverb I quote above speaks to this reality.
Acclimatization
An important aspect to know about how are emotions work is that they will change; sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. One consequence of this is that your emotions don’t serve well as a compass – when we use our emotions as a compass we are jerked around rather dramatically.
Another aspect of our internal life is that we are geared to notice differences. After a change, the sense of ‘difference’ gradually fades into the background – whether we are talking about changing your clothes or a radical change in perspective. Over a relatively short period of time the sense of difference disappears.
Years ago when I went to an early version of the experiential training that I now facilitate, I cried several decades worth of tears and felt much lighter and free. For several weeks everything felt new – fresh, close, alive. Then one morning I woke up and didn’t feel as different. Because I had been living with my emotions as my compass, I began to doubt that much had changed, because it seemed I felt the same. In reality, I was still different – in how I related to others, in what stood out for me in conversation with others – but because I no longer felt different, because I had acclimatized to my new way of feeling and relating to the world around me – I believed that nothing had changed.
When I woke up to what was really going on – that it no longer felt so different because I had acclimatized to the change – my sense of frustration and futility lifted.
March 9, 2015 Leave a comment
Bound in Promise
Promise and unforgiveness are the only two ways you are ever bound to another person in the domain of human relationships.
There’s a lot to explore to confirm that this bold statement is true and it may be the work of several posts. But let’s begin.
In a recent post about forgiveness, I made the point that forgiveness is interpersonal—that it is in essence a transaction between two people and therefore there is no sense in attempting to forgive oneself. The source of the debt that forgiveness inevitably deals with is a promise—whatever you were explicitly or implicitly promised.
In Webster’s original 1828 dictionary promise is defined as follows:
1. In a general sense, a declaration, written or verbal, made by one person to another, which binds the person who makes it, either in honor, conscience or law, to do or forbear a certain act specified; a declaration which gives to the person to whom it is made, a right to expect or to claim the performance or forbearance of the act. The promise of a visit to my neighbor, gives him a right to expect it, and I am bound in honor and civility to perform the promise. Of such a promise human laws have no cognizance; but the fulfillment of it is one of the minor moralities, which civility, kindness and strict integrity require to be observed.
2. In law, a declaration, verbal or written, made by one person to another for a good or valuable consideration, in the nature of a covenant, by which the promiser binds himself, and as the case may be, his legal representatives, to do or forbear some act; and gives to the promisee a legal right to demand and enforce a fulfillment.
3. A binding declaration of something to be done or given for another’s benefit; as the promise of a grant of land. A promise may be absolute or conditional; lawful or unlawful; express or implied. An absolute promise must be fulfilled at all events. The obligation to fulfill a conditional promise depends on the performance of the condition. An unlawful promise is not binding, because it is void; for it is incompatible with a prior paramount obligation of obedience to the laws. An express promise is one expressed in words or writing. An implied promise is one which reason and justice dictate. If I hire a man to perform a day’s labor, without any declaration that I will pay him, the law presumes a promise on my part that I will give him a reasonable reward, and will enforce much implied promise.
Let’s highlight just a piece of that wonderfully clear definition: “a declaration, written or verbal, made by one person to another, which binds the person who makes it, either in honor, conscience or law, to do or forbear a certain act.” Given that promise is made by one person to another it is, like forgiveness, interpersonal; plus promise binds the person promising to do or forbear (not do) a specific act in relation to the person promised. Thus making a promise creates an obligation to the person promised and that obligation exists in one or more of the domains of honor, conscience, or law. In our current culture, our concern in regards to action has devolved to a focus nearly exclusively on legality; we have become very rusty in the domains of honor and conscience, but I’ll have to take that up on another occasion.
Honor is the domain of our public reputation, the level of esteem that we carry in the eyes of others. We are bound in honor to keep a promise because when we don’t we get a reputation of being undependable, untrustworthy, flaky.
Conscience is the domain of our own internal sense of right and wrong; our internal judgment of our own actions. I believe that promise is an aspect of natural law; the nature of being human, and is not just a social convention that is negotiated and flexible. As demonstration of promise being a natural law, consider the reaction of a young child to a promise; let’s say the promise to go to the park after lunch. If after lunch, something comes up and you don’t take your child to the park, they will react and feel the loss of what is promised—maybe they cry, demand, and so on.
Law of course is the domain of explicitly stated prohibitions put in place by a specific government entity with appropriate domain.
Promise is one of a number of speech acts called ‘performative language,’ which are characterized because the act of speaking a promise actually creates the promise. When you explicitly (or implicitly) say ‘I promise’ a promise is created. This is different from ‘descriptive language’ which is a pointer to something else. For example when you say ‘a car’ a car isn’t created.
Random acts of kindness don’t carry the same impact as a promise. Think of our young child again. If after lunch you end up going to the park, the child while undoubtedly would enjoy the trip, there was never any expectation of going like there is in the case of promising to go to the park.
Now you may be thinking “this is all well and good Derek, but so what?”
If you are feeling isolated from others; if you are feeling disconnected from your friends and loved ones, it may be because you haven’t made promises that further your relationship with them.
Application: “What promises can I make to my friends, family, and loved ones that will further and deepen my connection and relationship with them?”
January 12, 2013 Leave a comment
Ready to Receive
In the car yesterday, I was flipping through my iPod and ended up playing all my Morten Harket songs. My favorite is from Wild Seed, called Ready to Go Home, the first bit of which is
On the street below these walls
Where I used to walk
Now I can barely crawl
All this darkness rising tall
Lord, shine a light for me
I’m waiting to be called
I’m ready to go home
I’m ready to receive forgiveness for my sins
I’m ready to begin
The line that struck me anew is “I’m ready to receive forgiveness for my sins”. Our culture has gotten off into the weeds on the concept and reality of forgiveness. The biggest error is when people say things like “I can’t forgive myself for…” The reason you can’t forgive yourself is because it is impossible! There’s no sense to the statement; but that it is so commonly said points to the mass confusion or maybe the mass delusion in our Western culture (actually I don’t know if it is a Western culture confusion or just an American culture confusion).
So let’s go back to the basics. Forgiveness is a transaction between two people (similar to promises but that’s another post). This truth is easiest seen in the banking realm, so consider Person A goes to Bank B and asks for a loan which B grants A. So A executes a promissory note (there’s that promise post trying to intrude) in favor of B which specifies the terms of the loan – the interest rate, the frequency of payments, the length of the loan, and so on.
If A ends up not meeting the terms of the promissory note and is unable to pay B back the principle and interest, it is possible (but not frequent in banking) that B can forgive A the loan. Which means that A from that point forward no longer owes B anything. So the essence of forgiveness is that A owes B something (explicitly or implicitly, for example parents owe their children love and care whether they actually ever explicitly pledged it – it is owed because of the nature of the relationship) and B can choose to forgive A that what was owed was not delivered.
To say that you want to forgive yourself is like taking money from your grocery budget and putting it into the electric bill category… no money has actually changed hands, to forgive that ‘loan’ doesn’t change the overall amount of money in the budget.
Of course when folks say that they can’t forgive themselves they aren’t talking about money, because if they did they’d realize how ludicrous it sounds. No they are talking about things they did or didn’t do to others, or poor choices they made and regret, or other aspects of their pasts that they in retrospect wish had come down differently.
Back to Morton’s lyrics. What struck me is that when people say they can’t forgive themselves, perhaps they are saying that they aren’t yet ready to receive forgiveness. They don’t want to yet leave debtor’s prison. Why would any of us prefer to stay bound up rather than be free?
The problem with freedom (another post begging to be written) is that with freedom comes responsibility, and people are uncomfortable with the weight and reality of responsibility. If you are truly free, blaming someone for the outcome or the current state-of-affairs is as ludicrous as thinking you owe yourself some money and deciding not to pay it. But being bound up in the impossible task of trying to forgive yourself is the perfect excuse to remain embedded in your self focus and self pity.
Embracing your freedom and running with it is a gift to the world, and results in a feeling of worth and vitality. Try it today. Ready go.
January 11, 2013 Leave a comment
The Dawn of Conscience
Conscience is a concept quickly sinking out of sight in Western culture. Maybe because it is hard to say distinctly from ‘conscious’; maybe because the demands of conscience are greater than we’d like.
I’m engaging in a one-man rear-guard action to defend conscience from the searing fires of modern culture. Today’s battle is with a quote from an early light in Western culture, Leonardo da Vinci (grabbed from the net here):
I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death.
Leonardo da VinciLet’s begin the study of conscience by examining it as if it were a foreign concept, in isolation. So from this quote we can discern that conscience is involved in the approving (and therefore the disapproving) of one’s one conduct. An internal sense of the rightness or wrongness of our own actions. The essential quality being that the jurisdiction of our conscience is our own choices and acts; in 1 Corinthians 10:29, Paul writes “for why is my freedom judged by another’s conscience?” It may be tempting to extend the reach of our conscience in judgment of others, but it is not appropriate.
January 6, 2013 Leave a comment
The Methusaleh Pill
I have long been eager for the unveiling of the Methusaleh Pill. While casting about the internet just now, I searched for references to the Methusaleh Pill, not knowing if I had heard of it sometime and someplace, or if I had just coined the term myself. Alas, I’m not the only inventive dreamer out there and there were plenty of references.
I ran across one blog post, written several years ago, that covers some of the ground in longevity research, but then dives deeply into the downsides the author saw society would run into with the advent of the Methusaleh Pill.
Let’s consider some of them.
“Generational milestones in our life will have lesser meaning – marriage, kids, education certificates, kids, their marriage, grandkids, grandparents.”
Depends on the person I suppose. Plenty of folks even with today’s short lives, seem to have difficulty in finding meaning in the milestones of life. I would think that the real question is the more general one of where one finds meaning in life. I come back to the part of the Rule of St. Benedict that I quoted here, that suggests neither the search for wealth nor the desire for heaven are routes to a meaningful life. With the Methusaleh Pill the personal growth industry will be in even bigger demand. At least with short lives, the brutishness of it all is manageable. With long, perhaps virtually infinite life span, the need for finding satisfaction, peace, and inner calm will be greater than ever.
Another objection is that with the old folks hanging around longer, the progress up the management ladder at work will be even slower. This objection seems grounded in the thought that the technology behind the Methusaleh Pill will be disconnected from progress in other areas. The Post-Scarcity Age will be radically different. Imagine if every physical need could be meet at nearly zero cost. The basis of current economic theory (scarcity) will itself be scarce. Again personal growth will need to come to our aid, as life for each of us will be like that of the super-rich: we will all be retired and not have to work. Work will be more avocation that what is required not to starve. Many of the other objections the blog’s author cites are all related to thinking that scarcity would continue, and perhaps become worse.
The struggles will be internal, not external, in the Post-Scarcity Age. Time to pickup and reread Amusing Ourselves to Death!
January 5, 2013 Leave a comment
Provided in a Spirit of Goodwill
Yesterday I mentioned that on and off over the past decade I’ve read (and attempted to follow) a modern interpretation of the Rule of St. Benedict, called Always We Begin Again by John McQuiston II. I recommend searching out a copy.
Here’s an excerpt from the beginning chapter called “The First Rule”—
Attend to these instructions, listen with the heart and the mind; they are provided in a spirit of goodwill.
These words are addressed to anyone who is willing to renounce the delusion that the meaning of life can be learned; whoever is ready to take up the greater weapon of fidelity to a way of living that transcends understanding.
The first rule is simply this: live this life and do whatever is done in a spirit of Thanksgiving.
Abandon attempts to achieve security, they are futile, give up the search for wealth, it is demeaning, quit the search for salvation, it is selfish, and come to comfortable rest in the certainty that those who participate in this life with an attitude of Thanksgiving will receive its full promise.
Challenging words to be sure that seem to hit me in the primary hidey holes I flee to when insecure—the two paths that seem to spell safety—the worldly way of accumulating wealth and the ‘spiritual’ way of achieving heaven.
January 4, 2013 Leave a comment
Serendipity
I get a weekly thought from Peter Koestenbaum (www.pib.net). The one that arrived today was interesting in three ways: it quotes Twelfth Night by Shakespeare, which I just happen to be reading as part of a commitment in 2013 to read all of Shakespeare’s plays. In fact, I’m currently in Act 2, Scene 4, the scene just before the quote. Secondly I have just yesterday picked up again a small book I’ve had for over a decade that offers a modern interpretation of the Rule of St. Benedict, the focus of which is to bring a depth of spirit to daily work and living. Finally I’m in the midst of discovering what direction my working life will proceed in.
Greatness is the decision to live, to say yes to the life force, to choose to be constructive. Depression is not only to have given up the will to live (not “lost” it, for you are responsible) but actually to have chosen its converse – to want to die, to be destructive, to obstruct progress – for the depressed person is not only sad but chooses not to be helped.
Shakespeare, in Twelfth Night (act 2, scene 5), writes, “Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.” How much attention do you give to greatness? ….
The ethical leadership decision to bond meaning with work can go only two ways: resign from work and choose something else that leads to authentic meaning (even though also to poverty), or – and this is what really matters – invest with profound and self-chosen meaning the work that you are now actually doing – or could be doing. That is the Zen of work, the decision to sanctify the work you do – not because the company requires it (which of course it does) but because the salvation of your soul demands that what you do every day be crafted like a poem, be composed like a work of art and illumined by a halo of profound significance.
January 3, 2013 Leave a comment