Our journey through darkness

1.  I encourage you to adopt this vision of civilization:

The vision:  We envision civilization as a platform that supports and nurtures a thriving natural world and serves to fully empower every individual.

2.  Because civilization is a living breathing thing, this is a vision, not a destination.  It is a practice.  It is our guiding star.

3.  This journey of ours is made in darkness.  We do not know exactly what the world will look like when we are living this and we do not yet know how to measure when we have achieved it.

4.  But we do know that by looking toward the guiding star, we can determine the right direction to move in.

5.  And we also know that the light shines brightly off of those in sync with the guiding star.  Collectively the light is bright enough to help each of us illuminate the path just enough that we can each take the right step forward in our personal endeavors.  It is the journey of an individual amongst many.

6.  Lastly, we know that just enough light to illuminate our next step is all we need because step by step is the only way forward.

0 Comments
February 14, 2013 | Posted in Culture and Civilization

Guide the Momentum

Do you really want to start anew?  It’s not possible.  Too much has been done and learned and that’s a good thing.

You want to start with the active energy you already have.  It’s there and it’s working, it’s wanting to do something.  You want to benefit from that momentum.  You only want to guide it in a new way, putting in place attractive mile markers in the distance that, like a magnet, pull the energy in that direction.

You want to guide the momentum.

0 Comments
February 8, 2013 | Posted in Culture and Civilization, Local community, business, government, Personal and Spiritual

The Battle Between Fear and Trust

The first title of this article was The Battle Between Fear and Love.  I sat with it for about 1 minute before even typing any words.  It didn’t feel right.  Love isn’t the emotion I feel when battling fear.  The feeling is more akin to trust… and most would probably say that’s not an emotion.  So be it.  Let’s begin.

There is a lot of gun fever going on in the US.  People purchasing them, stockpiling them, trying to ban them, and so on.  Guns are not the problem here in the US.  The problem is deeper down in our cultural heritage.  The problem is the reason we even want to make people-killing guns in the first place.  Why are so many guns made with the intent on killing people?  Why is there a $1.5 Trillion world-wide industry based around death and destruction?  It has to do with the yearning to create a path as a people, and the fear of outsiders impeding on that path.  It has to do with fear of the lack of resources, fear of death, and ultimately fear itself.

This battle playing out in the US right now is similar to the one playing out between nations and it’s the same playing out in your head when you make daily decisions over seemingly mundane topics.

We all feel fear.  But fear is triggered by a light switch and the opposite position of that light switch is trust.  For example, imagine this situation: You are walking down a dark street at night alone and someone is walking toward you on the same side of the street.  You are in a safe neighborhood but it’s unusual to see someone else at this hour.  They are black, you are white.  They are male, you are female.  You’re scared, right?  Or at least doubtful of the person’s intentions.  I’m not going to finish this scenario.  I can only tell you that I know fear kicks into overdrive for you.  At that moment though, you have the choice to flip that switch and project a different scenario then the fearful one playing out in your head.  You can trust that all is good in this situation.  The most zen of us would say that even if it was a criminal wanting to rob you, you could have trust in yourself that you would handle the moment when it comes.

It’s hard for to get to the zen place, to have total trust in others and in the world, but that is where we need to go.  It’s where we need to go as a country and as a world if we are ever to have a creative peaceful world.  We can’t be afraid that everyone is out to get us.  We can’t be projecting fear into our lives.  It rots us from the inside.  It makes us want to buy guns because we suddenly value our individual life over the greater good.  It puts us in the position of the defensive.  We’ve been in the defensive for thousands of years and it’s time to move out of it.  It’s time to move into the creative, into the trusting.

Fear is closure, walled off, dark.  Trust is open, vulnerable, light, and creative.  Trust is a more exciting world because it put’s each of us on the edge.  Each time a person feels the fear and chooses instead to flip the switch, they break down a wall that keeps them from connecting to themselves and others in a deeper way.  It’s euphoric and the positive reinforcement is powerful.

Some day we will design our social design will be built from the place of trust.  As of now it is not, it is built from the place of fear and that feeds back into itself so our perceived need for defense grows stronger, our communities disintegrate due to lack of trust, people build fences and buy guns.

You are the starting point for breaking this cycle.  It starts with each person recognizing when they feel fear, and in that exact moment recognizing that they can let go of the fear and instead feel something else.  Instead they can feel trust.  Trust is others, in nature, in a greater good, in Life overall.  Trust is a more powerful, proactive stance to have.  Amazing relationships are built on trust.  Just imagine how big that could scale.

0 Comments
January 30, 2013 | Posted in Personal and Spiritual

Society has a flow state too

You may know the terms “flow” and “qi” (pronounced “chi”). The idea is that each individual has a life force flowing through them. Acupuncture works to open up the qi within a person who may have developed blockages (and I think we all do). And the term “flow” refers more to a psychological state whereby a person is fully living their story, fully engaged and maximized. It’s a beautiful feeling to be in flow and you’ve probably felt it at some point in your life when your skills and talents were tapped to full potential.

I believe that this flow state and life force also exist for larger systems. All systems – whether that be an organization, a society, or earth – hold the capacity to flow effortlessly. The organizing life force is compelled to move in a poetic and graceful manner. But just like with individuals, blockages can develop. From blockages come compensations, and compensations turn into habits and patterns. But all of these blockages can be undone and I think it’s the nature of the life force to seek out how to undo them, to seek out poetic flow once again. I’ve heard organizations referred to as vibrant which is an indication of a group that has learned how to flow.

What’s so important about this era in time is how many people are tapped into the sense that this life force exists, that it connects, and that it can and wants to flow. These social architects and healers, they are on the front lines of our advancing society working diligently to undo blockages, to rejigger the system, to redesign its pathways. You see new positions being created within organizations (Chief Culture Officer) and new measurements for an economy (Happy Planet Index) amongst a million efforts all pointing toward creating a socially and ecologically thriving earth.  When you see all of this it’s hard not to be optimistic despite our current blockages.

0 Comments
January 9, 2013 | Posted in Culture and Civilization

the open gate

I wonder if all the world’s people have felt the profound beauty that I have
I wonder if we’re all capable of it or whether it’s some special power I’ve been granted
I wonder if I can help others feel it, and if so… how?
If you could feel this feeling how could you ever war?
Why would you not walk away from differences and instead spend your energy seeking this feeling,
teaching others along the way
I wonder why this profound clarity, this gateway to the world’s source is always so fleeting
I would like to live here for some time
to prop the gate open and release the flow for everyone
to build a world from this channel
but just as I think this, as I try to grasp it, as I focus to get these words just right…
it disappears,
not to be found again. at least not the same one. for time and place are part of its dimensions.
but with practice… there it is again.

As you awaken to a new day, I am wishing for you the open gate.

0 Comments
October 28, 2012 | Posted in Personal and Spiritual, Poems

Is Global Warming Real?

Photo by: vlasta2

This debate gets tossed around a lot. Scientists point to data showing proof of global warming… critics argue it’s just part of standard global temperature fluctuation. The trouble in “selling” this problem to the world is that most of us don’t feel global warming on a daily basis. It’s beyond our human scale comprehension – beyond what we can feel and measure in our daily lives. Talking about it in broad and future terms doesn’t connect for most of us.

Let’s frame it another way. Do you like air pollution? In more detail: Would you prefer to breathe while (A) standing behind a diesel truck or (B) standing in the middle of the forest? If we can all agree that we’d prefer (B) – breathing fresh air in the middle of the forest, then we should all also agree that doing what we can to have fresh air everywhere, and not just in the middle of the forest, would be an amazing ideal to work toward. Right? No need to bring in any extra arguments about economics or science… let’s just all agree that fresh air everywhere would be amazing. Now, what do we need to do to get there?

…and coincidentally if we could solve this problem then the largest contributing factor to global warming (CO2 emissions from cars and factories) would have been eliminated as well… and we didn’t even need to focus on the controversial issue of global warming to get there.

0 Comments
October 25, 2012 | Posted in Culture and Civilization

Knowing what you don’t do

It is a gift to figure out what you do and to do it well.
With this comes momentum.

Then comes the momentum killer – the task/project that lands on your plate and it’s just not what you do. It slows you down as you fumble over it, either trying to learn how to do it, or trying to hide from it.
If you’re in the market for learning, by all means, take it on. But if you’re in the market for capitalizing on what you already do and do well, then it’s time to take this off your plate. It’s time to find the person who specializes in what you don’t do and let them tackle it.

What you “don’t do” is someone’s “do.”

0 Comments
October 19, 2012 | Posted in Personal and Spiritual

Ubuntu

I once read a quote (which I can’t find now) that stated something like ‘I am able to do what I do because of what you do.’

Another quote (which I also can’t find now) came from a woman (Update: It was Elizabeth Warren and here is the quote) speaking about how not one of us is completely independent as much as we’d like to think we are.  If we live and partake in the United States experience then we are directly benefiting from the work of others whether it be government workers, business, or family.

I think what Obama was trying to say when he was quoted as saying “you didn’t build that” is that no matter how independent you’d like to think you are, there is no way you built your business independently even if you put lots of hard work into it.  You owe so much thanks to mysterious forces that birthed you into this country in this time and place, to the government police forces that provide for your safety, and to the engineers that make your machines run effectively.  To think that you are completely independent is an act of hubris.

A defining element of our culture is our drive for independence, our drive to make a difference, to be something in this world.  A side effect of that drive is the rejection of community in some small way.  Our competitive nature can become so strong that we forget that our support net is even more important for our well being.

In Africa, I recently learned, there is a word for the recognition that we are all connected.  The word is Ubuntu.  One interpretation of the word is “I am what I am because of who we all are.”  Another explanation from Desmond Tutu is:

A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, based from a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed.

What we need in the US is a fully integrated adoption of this philosophy.  It doesn’t mean we need to throw away our competitive nature.  I think it would instead cast our competition in the light of play because we’d see that we’re inherently all moving in the same direction.  We’re all on the same ship.

Of course, change at the cultural level is not something you can sell.  The fabric of our culture and our belief system is like the air we breathe – it gives us life, but it’s hard to identify.   So what’s the answer, how do we change the way we operate to be more collective?  As always, the best we can do is try to exemplify this in our personal lives.  The easy story is to see that the world is “us” against “them” which is the story the news media paints.  Instead we need to try in our personal lives to see that it’s “our” story and that we are each one of the many writers.

0 Comments
October 17, 2012 | Posted in Culture and Civilization

The power of singular thoughts

One powerful factor preventing us from communicating our ideas more often is the perceived pressure to capture and communicate a “true” statement.  Afterall, once an idea is exposed it can be reacted to (and thus boo’ed by either everyone else or our own selves).

When others intake your idea and react to it and we have the uncomfortable task of explaining ourselves if they misunderstood.  Or, in my own experience blogging, often times I’ll write down a nugget of “truth” but then internally I’ll expose it to different scenarios and connect it into other thoughts and soon I’ve convinced myself that it doesn’t hold up well enough to be conveyed. In short order, our thought is shut down by the peanut gallery.

To battle that, we must seek the center.  We must grab hold of the singular thought that feels most true, write it down or otherwise expose it, and then leave it at that.

0 Comments
October 17, 2012 | Posted in Personal and Spiritual

The Currency of Deep Connections

For several years now I’ve found it strange that I’m not compelled to make loads of money.  In this society, I should be programmed for it.  I came from a good middle-class family and went to a leading university where most of my friends graduated to become doctors, lawyers, and businessmen at multi-national corporations.  But somehow I ended up as the artsy hippie freak who chooses to drop out of society instead.  Ok, I’m exaggerating a bit, but still, what’s wrong with me?  I like what money can buy but it’s not my primary motivator.

Over the past few months I’ve been pondering this question: what it is I’m seeking if it isn’t the collection of dollars?  I finally concluded that rather than being focused on gathering more dollars, I’m more interested in gathering deeper connections or deep shared experiences.   That’s my most valuable currency.  For me, there is no greater reward, no more powerful feeling, than that of connecting deeply with someone (or even one’s self).  Hence, the reason I like coaching so much.  If others are collecting money and that is their goal, I am collecting deep connections or deep experiences, and that is my goal.

As it turns out there is a sociological explanation for this.  As economist Richard Layard points out in his book Happiness, in individualistic societies (of which the US is the top), increased deep connections yields more happiness.   And in economically developed countries (of which the US is also the top), more income doesn’t improve happiness much after $75,000 (granted that’s a lot of money by most standards).  Put those two ideas together and you’ll see for example that in a collectivist society, like China, if you’re poor and sharing a family house with 5 people, adding a sixth won’t increase your happiness much.  But adding enough money so that you can all eat meat occasionally will increase your happiness significantly.  By contrast, if you live in a US suburban home buying another appliance adds little to your quantity of happiness if at all.  But a new friend, a new connection is a significant addition to your happiness level.  (paraphrased from Deep Economy by Bill McKibben).

To value deep connections over financial reward is not easy in our culture.  The fears are always there – will I have enough money for retirement, children’s education, and vacation?  The reports have shown it to be true, but how do we really convince ourselves that the pursuit of lots of money is a losing game (statistically speaking)?  How do we wire our brains to instead value deep connections as our primary currency?

I don’t know the answer other than to say that it’s a daily practice for me to remind myself of what matters most to me.  And I figure if I can just stay true to that voice it will all work out.  Scary?  Yes, absolutely.  But you could spend all your time trying to make a buck and die tomorrow.  Someday if enough of us wake up to the fear playing out in our heads, we will see that true happiness is only a handshake and smile away.  And then… then we will have a good ol’ fashioned revolution on our hands.

0 Comments
August 15, 2012 | Posted in Culture and Civilization, Personal and Spiritual