You are currently browsing the monthly archive for October, 2007.
I have been on a crusade of sorts, against talking on a cell phone while driving.
The fact that it is not outlawed with severe penalties says much about where we are at as a society. I suppose we only need to look at how long it took for us to get on top of second hand smoke and drunk driving to understand our inability to get this.
It makes me wonder about the $$$ involved.
Imagine if all motorized cell phone use instantly ceased.
How much would the phone companies lose?
Answer? Mega-Buck$
Is there any chance the phone companies would line the pockets of law makers to protect their interests?
Driving while talking on a cell phone should be against the law, period!
I just returned from an amazing experience in my hometown of Regina, Saskatchewan (Heyyy Riders!)
I was given the opportunity to provide a workshop to about 100 Home Care Service Providers, Nurses, Aides and Managers, as part of a SAHO Conference.
If there was ever a group perfectly suited for the
message I share, this was it.
An audience of 100 open hearted, curious, intelligent, playful and passionate women … and 1 man.
Although my material was brand new,
the laughter, book sales and the evaluations I received after the event would suggest that it was immensely enjoyed by 95% of the attendees (50% of the evaluations even gave a perfect rating).
The basic gist of the workshop went like this:
As Health Care Providers, we are in a position of tremendous opportunity to touch and heal the hearts of those we come in contact with.
Although we may have some very good intentions and strong values that support our care giving, we are also human.
Because we are human we also come to the workplace with a variety of patterns of thinking, feeling and relating that, when triggered can stop us from serving from our good heart.
Difficult situations, frustrations, job dissatisfaction, home life, and a variety of other normal and natural factors can play a role in our own ability to stay in our good heart and provide a quality of care that comes from that place.
There is no escaping these facts.
But what happens when we become so aware, so awake to those factors that close our heart that we can actually commit to opening our hearts in the midst of that?
What happens when we begin to use the stuff of our messy lives to practice opening our hearts and strengthening our capacity to remain kind and compassionate, even while right in the middle of difficult situations?
What happens when we commit to waking up from a life of reactively spreading darkness, and waking up to responsively sharing the light of our hearts?
It was and is my basic underlying premise that Attention Training that leads to Awakened Attention, is the single most important skill for Health Care Workers.
Without it, we are living on autopilot, playing out patterns of reactivity and programming at the mercy of our emotional lives. And that is NO WAY for Health Care Providers to function.
Explorations designed to uncover personal patterns, and practices designed to open the heart were then offered, ending with Q & A and more laughter.
If you’re interested in the recording, contact me here.
After several gallons of coffee and hot chocolate, hundreds of laughs, countless deep conversations and $1150.00 of generosity from pledger’s for The Central Alberta Woman’s Shelter, the First Annual Red Deer Wake-Up-A-Thon Benefit ended as a smash success.
That isn’t to say it was an easy thing to do.
The first 12 hours was a breeze, then… the cold… then … the wall.
Struggling…. to…. keep… lids…. up….
Then, from 8 to 10 was again, a breeze.
Thanks to Paul at Copies Now for donating the promo materials.
Thanks to Tara and Anna at The Central Alberta Woman’s Shelter.
Huge gratitudes to the amazing Shawna and Joe and the staff at La Casa Pergola for allowing us to use their space for this event and their generous pledge (Go eat there now!).
And of course a huge thanks to the pledge collectors/participants, my gal Susan, Judy, Carol, Win and LaDon. I couldn’t have done this without you.
I’m already planning for next year, but for now… bed.
(Watch for more pics soon)
For some reason I’ve always been able to get a lot of enjoyment out of watching my cat attempt to catch a flash light beam.
Even after years of futile efforts, she will stalk the focused light on a wall and chase it as vigorously and as energetically as she did the first time I teased her.
Excuse me but, I can’t help but see an analogy here.
To you and I, there is obviously nothing tangible for her to catch. It’s hopeless. Yet it appears she is not capable of understanding that the light beam is a two dimensional appearance.
Stupid cat.
And yet…
What is the difference between that and the emotional chaos and catharsis that we humans seek when we go to the movies?
Sure, we are looking at more intricate displays of color and light, even set with sound to make it more realistic, but that’s my point. It’s not realistic.
It’s a flat white screen, with moving lights and images of actors we recognize and have seen before, being paid to perform a contrived role that was written and recorded months/years ago, while we’re sitting in a big dark room with sticky floors and pimply faced teenagers telling us to take our feet off the seats in front of us.
In short, there is very little that’s convincing about the whole thing.
And yet ..
and yet…
We buy into it. We WANT to buy into it.
Fear, sorrow, drama, horror, intensity, drama, suspense, violence, drama, drama, drama…
We love drama. Even comedy’s are full of drama, and how could it be otherwise?
Without drama, what reason is there to keep paying attention?
If we know how it will all turn out, why bother watching?
Why would we be interested, without the drama?
Just like my crazy beautiful cat, I think we humans have a built in need for drama.
Even though my cat has never caught the flashlight beam, she believes she can, and because she believes she can, it adds flavor to the game. (Cats would suck if they were too smart to be fooled by us humans. Humans would suck if they couldn’t fool cats)
Even though you and I have never seen a ’self’, we want to believe there is something tangible there, a self we can touch and see and hold.
Even though the self is nothing more that a bunch of flashlight beams being played on a wall by the hands of Life to make it appear as if there is something tangible, rather than a two dimensional appearance, we want to believe.
No one has ever caught a self, because just like the flashlight beam, it only appears to have substance.
In actuality, both the flashlight beam and the self are nothing more than a play of color, light and movement.
Both the flashlight beam and the self are insubstantial and transparent, yet, like a mirage, both have the capacity of fooling its cat/human viewer into a delusional state of unexamined certainty.
Waking Up happens when the cat/human no longer buys into the appearances.
For the cat, there is no hope because she is not capable of it.
What about you, human?
Chase any flashlight beams lately?
What about this moment now?
@ @ @
Interested in more of this kind of perspective?
Take a look at this here.
We are all simply colored crayons
in the child-like hands of Life.
Here is my crack at a Zen Death Poem:
A few years shy of 50
I have fallen short in every way -
Man, husband, father, friend…
Life cares little for our stories of success or failure
Days grow longer in the summer and
Shorter in the autumn
But my joy goes on…
(In accordance with the Zen tradition, at this moment I laughed and then died)
I invite you to take some time to write your own and then share it with me.
It may take you a day or a week or a month but it will feel right when it’s complete.
I would love to read it.
Just because an idea is held by the masses does not make it true.
Indeed, in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind,
an idea that is widely held is more likely to be false than true.
~ Bertrand Russell
The wacky love affair between Pop Psychology and New-ageism has spawned numerous myths regarding our possibilities and probabilities in the realm of human development. Combine this a belly bursting with Chicken Soup and the fact that anyone and everyone has their own personal definition of Spirituality (usually something that makes me feel good) and Spirit (usually something I can somehow manipulate to get what I want), and we have all the ingredients for a virtual cornucopia of confusion, distortion, and delusion.
(Sorry to mix my metaphors so self-indulgently, but I was having fun with that)
Here are 5 myths that are worth examining, because getting past them means you have entered a whole new world. Actually, you’ve entered to real world having exited the world you’ve been sleeping in.
Welcome!
Myth #1. Self esteem is the key to personal development.
The Real Deal: Self esteem is only a key until it is obtained, then it should become a non-issue.
Self-esteem tasks begin in the late stages of childhood development and continue through adolescence, and unless a pathology or trauma occurs, should be adequately navigated and secured well before the 20th birthday.
Good enough self-esteem is a worthy goal, but a very poor lifelong project.
Self esteem, as important as it is, should be acquired, then left behind for deeper and more encompassing stages of development, unless you would rather hang around the middle rung of a ladder instead of climbing closer to the top, where you are afforded the most vast, spectacular and accurate view.
Myth #2. Life/Spirit is an aspect of you as a person.
The Real Deal: This is called confusing source with expression. Ocean is source, wave is expression. Sun is source, sunlight is expression. Life is source, the person is expression.
What is it that likes to believe that Life/Spirit is under its control or can be summoned to do its bidding through petitionary exercises like prayer and meditation?
That is called ego, or the separate conceptual self, which is also simply another expression of Life/Spirit.
Most people like the idea of ‘letting go’ as long as they can keep control. They say to them selves, “I’ll work on my spiritual self and become a better person.”
This is like the wave saying, “I will work on my ocean self and become a better wave.”
The problem is, the wave is an expression of the ocean and does not at all exist in the way it imagines. It is already nothing but ocean.
You, are already nothing but Life/Spirit. You can’t be otherwise.
Myth #3. Beliefs are important.
The Real Deal: Santa seemed pretty real once too, until that belief was exposed to be unreal. Not that once it was real and then it became unreal. It was always unreal. In much the same way, all beliefs are destined for demolition, either replaced by experience (makes the belief obsolete) or exposed as delusion (makes the belief disappear).
We don’t believe in chairs, anger, sunshine, or pain. We know them directly through experience. Belief’s are also on the bottom rung when it comes to deep understanding and wisdom.
Put simply, who, what, and how would you be, without a single belief? The belief that beliefs are important is a self-fulfilling delusion par excellence.
If you sign up for my special report here, you can download a free copy of my book, Ruthless Words: Unsentimental Quotations From the World’s Wisdom Sources, and see what some of our greatest beings say about belief.
Beliefs are candles that man uses to ward off the surrounding darkness.
They are charms we use to hold infinity at bay,
to dispel the black cloud that hovers over every head.
~ Jed McKenna
Myth #4. Positive self-talk is better than negative self-talk.
The Real Deal: This is only true until you go beyond self-talk altogether. I don’t mean that self-talk will end, only that it will be seen accurately and allowed its proper place.
Positive self-talk is only better than negative self-talk because it makes you feel good. This is called self-pleasuring.
A good dream is only better than a bad dream until you wake up and realize they are both just dreams.
As I said in my book, Waking Up To Life!, self talk is for children and sleeping adults.
Myth #5. You can heal your way to wholeness.
The Real Deal: While some healing is important and even necessary, you can never be more whole than you always already were and are. This is because what you are in essence is Life itself, alive as a person. Life cannot be broken, partial, or unwhole.
Life is always whole from start to finish, and beyond. Anything otherwise is fantasy and misinterpretation.
An acorn is whole, a sapling is whole, a young tree is whole, a mighty oak is whole, a felled oak is whole, an oak rocking chair is whole. All are whole expressions of Life, lacking nothing… except the false belief of un-wholeness.
The idea of healing to wholeness is actually a belief that could be looked at and possibly discarded, when it becomes experientially obvious that what you are, which IS Life, is always already whole and complete from the start.
Of Myths and Mirages
I’ve always found it interesting that a mirage is something that anyone and everyone can be fooled by, yet there’s nothing really there. The word mirage means ‘an optical illusion’ as well as ’something illusory and unattainable’.
The fastest way to expose a mirage as ’something illusory and unattainable’ is to try to get close to it. When you do, it will become quickly apparent that there is nothing really there. That doesn’t mean that it will never seem to appear again, only that you will come to understand the nature of a mirage.
In just the same way, the fastest way to expose the ’self’ as ’something illusory and unattainable’ is to try to get close to it. When you do, it will become quickly apparent that there is nothing really there. That doesn’t mean that it will never seem to appear again, only that you will come to understand the nature of the ’self’.
The belief that you are an unwhole self may seem to appear to be real, like clouds seem to obscure the sky and waves appear to be separate.
But the sky is always wide open, waves are actually Ocean deep, and you ARE the enormity of Life, fooled by the mirage of an itty bitty self.
Once again, the 5 myths of human development in point form are:
* Self esteem is the key to personal development.
* Life/Spirit is an aspect of you as a person.
* Beliefs are important.
* Positive self-talk is better than negative self-talk.
* You can heal your way to wholeness.
It doesn’t matter if you’re rich, powerful, intelligent, or kind, these 5 myths can sustain the average human for a lifetime of delusion.
What we call normality in psychology is really a psychopathology of the average, so undramatic and so widely spread that we don’t even notice it.
~ Abram Maslow
If this article rings true to you, maybe it’s time to go deeper? Maybe it’s time to step beyond what you’ve been taught by society’s mediocre middle?
If so, I invite you to Develop A Lust For Life
