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 […]
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Telling 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 […]
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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 […]
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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. :)) […]
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