When we come together for some common purpose we often arrive in different frames of minds, different ways of seeing reality. If we can’ come into alignment for out time together we’re much more effective in whatever we want to do. To understand the dynamic, think of these different ways of seeing as different imaginations, different ways of approaching reality and being together. Imagination 1 is ordinary waking consciousness though this can be more or […]
Continue readingCategory Archives: Uncategorized
On not knowing what to do
Well, there’s a nice image for you! Some of you might recognize it as two cards from the OH deck, a radically improvisational way of generating images. The deck has 88 “frames,” words, and 88 impressionistic images, many of them much less friendly than this one today is. It’s definitely not all sweetness and light. Using a device like this, or a poem, can be a writing prompt or deepener, as it was today for […]
Continue reading
All our efforts are toward Presence
All efforts are toward Presence. All our efforts in therapy or self-help, or whatever are part of a larger effort, our reaching for Presence. But what is Presence? It’s not an object so no words can really catch it. It’s more like the lived experience of right now, a now that we’re not escaping or wanting to escape, a dawning recognition that this is the right place and time, that we’re the right person and […]
Continue reading
Your public voice and your unique voice
Recently I’ve had numerous conversations, in workshops or intentional places, with people responding to the question, “What are you experiencing now?” It’s a naked question, a brazen question, a rude question. Certainly an unfamiliar one when it’s really asked and there’s room to respond. Yet people can powerfully moved by having five minutes to respond to it – perhaps no one has ever asked them before. (Here’s the simple presencing practice I’ve been using for […]
Continue readingBeing effective in this bewildering moment
Martin Buber wrote an amazing book in 1923 that has endured and perhaps will endure as a classic. It was called I-Thou. In vivid poetic language that is as fresh today as it was then, he spoke a timeless truth. (Here are excerpts that give the flavor of his writing.) Humans have two modes, I-Thou or I-It. I-Thou is relational and we speak to and from the whole of ourselves. I-It is transactional (my word) and […]
Continue reading
How to get from breakfast to lunch without losing your mind
The world is well on its way to waking up. If it doesn’t blow itself up first, which it’s also well on its way to doing. It’s the best of times, the worst of times. But do we have to choose, good reader? Old Aristotle suggested no: “The mark of the truly educated is being able to entertain an idea without accepting it.” But how do we do that? I’m not talking about abstract notions […]
Continue readingTelling My Story
I’ve been avoiding telling my own story. For several days I was writing a blog post about how we needed more honest personal story, more sex and gender in our conversations. Then I noticed I wasn’t telling my own. Telling is unfamiliar because I’ve been very close-mouthed about great chunks of my own story, forever. Though much easier, it’s still difficult to talk about my early childhood and the pervasive experience of abandonment that persists […]
Continue reading
Risk in consciousness groups
I’m lucky to have places where I can speak frankly about what’s most important to me. I can be well heard and hear other too. I learn, stretch and grow in those generative depths. But pleasure and expansion aren’t the whole story. Quite often I’m careful, walking on eggshells, wondering how to get my messy as-yet-unformed experience into a common space with others. This evening I was in conversation with a male counselor and a […]
Continue reading
The way of not-knowing
Going down rapids in a canoe is a thrilling experience because you’ve no time – and no way – to figure out what to do. It feels like having the mind vacuumed, not a thought in there. The habitual pattern of thought is thoroughly interrupted. Our current world situation, the one we’re all in, has overtones of this. The journey is much too complex for rational processes to capture usefully, too much for “knowing.” Our […]
Continue readingRisking seeing – and being seen
I’ve been learning recently that I’m not always so good at receiving gifts of the heart. From others or from “the universe.” The common factor of course is me, the receiver. But how to learn to receive better? Last year I published a book about evolutionary self-development. It’s a good book and it points to a particular slice of our predicament in a unique and telling way. (I think you should all read it. :)) […]
Continue reading