Crossroads Dispatches

game-changing, or how to turn economic recovery into a multi-player game experience

"Game-changing."

You hear that term bandied about in innovation circles. In application, it isn't that frequent as "game-changer" implies something that leapfrogs one out of the lock of a current system, institution, industry, regime, paradigm and defines its own brand-new game. 

I hadn't connected the dots with the synchronicity of hints and winks that life is a grand "game" until recently.

I sat down to eat lunch the other day, and absentmindly (well, could almost replace instinctually or spontaneously with "absentmindedly") pick up the top magazine in my Mom's pile to browse through for eye-candy. (Not typical for me; if I am going to read while eating it would be the Internet.)

I open up her recent Elle to the story of Jane McGonigal. The article profiles her life and her purpose: fleshing out her childhood joy into a profession, announcing her new game company, showing how she got into real-world gaming (differs from video games in that it interleaves real-world issues and real-life experiences with game mechanics), and the head injury that instigated her latest game: one that helped her regain her joie de vivre and her health.

So I thought: what if we were to repurpose Jane's concept of "how to turn recovery into a multi-player experience" into "how to turn economic recovery into a multi-player experience?" And I don't mean recovery as in return to the past or status quo. Perhaps dynamically better than yesterday: I like what Umair Haque says here about the classic Greek principle of eudaimonia: "Eudaimonic prosperity, in contrast, is about mastering a new set of habits: igniting the art of living meaningfully well. An active conception of prosperity, it's concerned not with what one has, but what one is capable of."

I'd been thinking that economics and money touches just about everyone's life--okay, nix that for fairies, elves and dragons. But humans are fairly enthralled (dare I say, seduced) by this whole game of exchange of gifts that includes bits of colored paper and tinkling coinage.

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." - Bucky Fuller

Backtrack a bit to May 2009, I was working on a grant proposal that tied into New Orleans' "Creative Recovery." (For context, "Creative Recovery" grants were through Transforma Projects mini-grants: "The Creative Recovery Mini-Grant program supported work produced at the intersection of art, social justice, and recovery in New Orleans. It fueled the recovery process with the energy of the local creative community by supporting the vibrant activity on the ground level.")

I realized after I'd dreamed it and written it up (then, reading the fine print) that I disqualified for applying for the grant as I was no longer a permanent resident (however, I was in New Orleans at the time). The seed of the idea kept tugging at me, so I wrote it up as a real-world game concept in February 2011. Here's the original Kickstarter project proposal here (unfunded); although, the concept has evolved considerably.

"The "next Google" is unlikely to be a search engine, however, just as the "next Microsoft" was not a desktop software company. I used competing directly with Google as an example of a problem with maximum difficulty, not maximum payoff. Maximum payoff is more likely to come from making Google irrelevant than from replacing it. How exactly? I have no more than vague ideas about that. I wouldn't expect to be able to figure out the right answer, just as I wouldn't have expected anyone to figure out in 1990 what would make Microsoft irrelevant. " - Paul Graham, entrepreneur, angel investor, and founder of the tech start-up incubator and education program, Y Combinator

At this point in my musing, I'm reacquainted with an old blogging buddy in his private Google+ circle last week, and he linked to the article below. (Worth reading the whole she-bang for context and inspiration.) My friend asks his circle how we might use Google+ to correspond with each other and take action towards life-enhancing visions of the world (or what I also call a Renaissance). That's when things get intriguing...

The article my Google+ buddy shared to kick off the private circle discussion:

"Put what, why, and who you love ahead of what, why, and who you don't, and your roadmap will begin to write itself.

Now, my little principle might cause those with hand-made suits and beancounterly tendencies to leap out of their chairs and hit me with the tarantallegra jinx. But even the cynics might be willing to admit: given a mysteriously non-recovering "recovery" for a global economy perpetually poised on the brink of perma-crisis, the status quo's out of ideas, out of options, and running out of time.

In an economy dedicated to the pursuit of more, bigger, faster, cheaper, nastier, the greatest hidden cost and unintended consequence is that something vital, enduring, resonant, and animating has gone missing from our lives — and it might just be the biggest thing: meaning in what we do, and why we're here." - Umair Haque, "A Roadmap to a Life that Matters," Harvard Business Review blog, July 13, 2011

I was surprised to see this article in the Harvard Business Review blog--it's a bit warm and fuzzy for HBR (at least the HBR that I recall from years ago)... although a great sign... sign... signal, design... as the article lays out a design intention as in William McDonough's mantra: "Design is the first signal of human intention."

Linked in the above post is Umair's post on eudaimonia, Greek philosophy of "a deeply fulfilled life", where Umair contrasts the trajectory we are on with what we may prefer to set into motion, into design. In my own blog (see purpose paragraph under the headline, Crossroads Dispatches), what he calls eudaimonia I've encapsulated as:

"A neo-renaissance, eco-epicurean savors, curates and shares slices from the surf's edge on the inspiration, imagination, the art of living, the living of art - and anything that screams Life."

"In short, I see an outcomes gap: a yawning chasm the size of the Grand Canyon between what our economy produces and what you might call a meaningfully well-lived life, what the ancient Greeks called eudaimonia.

The economy we have today will let you chow down on a supersize McBurger, check derivative prices on your latest smartphone, and drive your giant SUV down the block to buy a McMansion on hypercredit. It's a vision of the good life that I call (a tiny gnat standing on the shoulders of the great Amartya Sen) hedonic opulence. And it's a conception built in and for the industrial age: about having more. Now consider a different vision: maybe crafting a fine meal, to be accompanied by local, award-winning microbrewed beer your friends have brought over, and then walking back to the studio where you're designing a building whose goal is nothing less than rivaling the Sagrada Familia. That's an alternate vision, one I call eudaimonic prosperity, and it's about living meaningfully well. Its purpose is not merely passive, slack-jawed "consuming" but living: doing, achieving, fulfilling, becoming, inspiring, transcending, creating, accomplishing — all the stuff that matters the most.

. . . .  Though it harks back to antiquity, eudaimonia's a smarter, sharper, wiser, wholer, well, richer conception of prosperity. And deep down, while it might be hard to admit, I'd bet we all know that our current habits are leaving us — have left us — not merely financially and fiscally broken, but, if not intellectually, physically, emotionally, relationally, and spiritually empty, then, well, probably at least just a little bit unhealthy. Eudaimonic prosperity, in contrast, is about mastering a new set of habits: igniting the art of living meaningfully well. An active conception of prosperity, it's concerned not with what one has, but what one is capable of." - Umair Haque, " Is a Well-Lived Life Worth Living?," Harvard Business Review blog, May 12, 2011

So this is a backstory on the genesis of the game. I've a few ideas for an enchanting real-world game that'd be worthwhile for each of us individually--and widening the circle, collectively. I think the "economic" recovery is a matter of re-imagining our present and future as to what we would truly desire no holds barred, rather than constantly extrapolating scenarios of the past onto the future.

To tie this in all together to the present day, Google+ could be an effective way to communicate with our "allies" (i.e. us) on a near-daily basis to play a game I'm formulating. (I'll admit this is much simpler if you already use Gmail as your hub, as I do, then it's integrated into your Internet experience.)

Allies is the multi-player aspect of the Super Better game that Jane used day to day to recover from her injury and post-concussion syndrome; so it is not a game of solitaire ;)

Please let me know if you need an invite to Google+ by August 1st (I may not check comments at this post later).

   

The economic thriving game is unfurling in a baby step next week. [Above is Derek Sivers' video "Start Now. No Funding Needed." Derek founded CDBaby in 1997.]

If you have game suggestions, or other suggestions, please let me know in comments or over at Google+. And, please note, if you go over to check Google+ out, you are viewing the public posts. The way Google+ works is you have to be in my circle to view the super secret ones ;).

p.s. Jane McGonigal's new company, Social Chocolate, initially starts an online verson of her Super Better concept game that she used to recover from her own head injury; she's extended the game for any type of injury and/or illness (yet to be released, forthcoming). I've been thinking of what game-changing means in terms of healthcare and other fields too--but that's another story.

p.p.s. I'm well aware of the "this is a first-world problem" argument. We start where we are ourselves and branch out inclusively from there; it's not advocacy on public policy. This engages people to people. The game is meant to be something you can personally participate in.

ART CREDITS: Cy Twombly's Camino Real; iron hoop trundling was popular in the 1960s and 1970s in China; hoop trundling boys circa 1830 in New York City via Funny Emails; an American Indian hoop game via Buffalo Post.

Edmund Hilary was an ordinary beekeeper in Auckland, New Zealand, and other folks that didn't know how.

"In that wonderful story [Parsifal, Galahad and the Holy Grail myths], when any knight sees the trail of another, thinks he's getting there, and starts to follow the other's track, he goes astray entirely." - Joseph Campbell

I recently watched this video #1 that was sent to me via Sonia Ricotti's newsletter. It's worth watching (9 minutes).

Mind you, I already know the story of Edison, and the Wright Brothers, and the ascent of Everest pretty well. What I found intriguing was how Bob Proctor pointed out the fact that when they were in the midst of it, what they were attempting was not known. In fact, the refrain Bob repeated, "They didn't know how."

In the short six-minute video, Bob Proctor shows a slide of Edmund Hillary and Tenzay Norgay, the first documented (never know if some pilgrim didn't get there first but made no fuss) ascent of Mt. Everest.

"When they started they did not know how. They did not know how to get to the top of the mountain."

"Keep in mind that Edmund Hilary was an ordinary beekeeper in Auckland, New Zealand. Where did he ever get the idea he could go to the top of Everest?"

"It was believed that anyone that tried to get to the top would die." (And there are folks encased in ice up there.) Bob shares that he watched a TV interview with a Canadian woman that had just come down Everest, and was asked by reporters: "How does it feel now that you conquered the mountain?"

The woman climber's response: "We didn't conquer the mountain. That mountain can't be conquered. We conquered the limitations within ourselves."

Bob goes on to have us imagine Thomas Edison attempting to tell some of his friends, his wife or even his relatives about his "experiments.

"They would have thought he was right out of his mind."

Edison did not know how, he just knew he was going to do it. In another slide, Bob Proctor shares this tidbit:

"Thomas Edison's teachers told him he was "too stupid to learn anything." He was fired from his first two jobs for being "non-productive." As an inventor, Edison made 1,000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing the light bulb. When a reporter asked, "How did it feel to fail 1,000 times." Edison replied, "I didn't fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps.""

And, consider this, the Wright Brothers were bicycle mechanics.

"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible." - Lord Kelvin, The Royal Society of London, June 1985

I agree with Bob, that most people are locked into the idea of HOW (and then don't budge). When, to me, what matters is WHAT? or WHY? In the video, he asks to inquire: "WHAT DO I REALLY WANT? Just make a decision on what it is you want."

"The way to maintain one's connetion to the wild is to ask yourself what it is that you want." - Clarissa Pinkola Estes in the Intuition chapter, Women Who Run With Wolves

"You won't know how until after you do it," Bob continues.

So what does that mean you don't know how? It means you're on the edge of Unknown, hurtling toward another eternal horizon, and there aren't going to be a lot of folks that grok why you do what you do. After all, you are not them, and vice versa. You're on your path, unfolding your myth. No one else knows how for you.

Whatever skills and strategies acquired through status quo thinking and cultural conditioning fail to work in the domain of the soul's journey. Yet--something--something natural and spontaneous will take the place of automatically reacting to others out of habit.

If you do know how, it's probably too cozy for your soul to stretch to its own boundarylessness. So I agree with Joseph Campbell, "If the path before you is clear, you're probably on someone else's." As well as with Almine, "Let not the confusion that briefly figures in and out of your minds disconcert you. It is the releasing of the old; the releasing of the patterns and spiderwebs of existence."

In the midst of it all, it can feel lonely, or frustrating if you are seeking external kudos or support (it's not necessary if you can see yourself supported by and as Infinity and self-reference your Inner Ally). But like I said, just in case, consider me an ally, too.

p.s. Although Proctor made it clear that Edison mostly likely would have been underestimated by his relatives or friends, there are always other trailbrazers around to befriend. I'd have to research the precise dates of their friendship in regards to their respective inventions, yet Edison was close allies and peers with Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone in a mutually beneficial kinship.

Photo Credits: American Academy of Achievement photo of Hillary and Norgay at Everest base camp after their historic ascent; speaking of trailblazing: image of airship designed by architect Vincent Callebaut. "Hydrogenase, is a zero-emissions, biofuel-powered airship that specifically employs organic algae for power... The algae farm supplying the ship’s fuel is an organic purifying station that receives carbon dioxide delivered via ships. The CO2 is then processed by the seaweed," via Earth Techling.

Michel de Montaigne, retreat to self-study for advancement, I AM a verb = I Know Nuthing

At age 21, Ryan Holiday became Director of Marketing at American Apparel, the largest clothing manufacturer in the United States, and he recently guest-blogged at Tim Ferriss' Four-Hour Work Week blog about one of his guiding mentors, Michel de Montaigne.

What impressed me was that Ryan clearly knows how contrarian his hero is in today's "I have the answer" expert/guru cult(ure) and boldly forged ahead with his praise. This is the tiniest sliver from the well worth reading post, The Experimental Life: An Introduction to Michel de Montaigne.

"In late 1569, Michel de Montaigne was given up as dead after being flung from a galloping horse.

As his friends carried his limp and bloodied body home, he watched life slip away from his physical self, not traumatically but almost flimsily, like some dancing spirit on the “tip of his lips,” and then return. This sublime experience marked the moment Montaigne began a uniquely playful relationship with his existence and was a sense clarity and euphoria about life that he carried with him from that point forwards. Shortly thereafter he took a bold step, retiring from a promising public career—retired to himself, so to speak—and made self-study his official occupation.

...

3) Que sais je? (Don’t take yourself too seriously)

You’d think that Montaigne, as he grew older and more practiced, would have become more certain, more sure of himself. In fact, the more he studied, the more frequently he found himself asking his most famous question: “Que sais je?” or “What do I know?” The answer to the rhetorical question is, “Nothing.” Montaigne practiced the Skeptic’s notion of questioning what he “knew” and deliberately threw his assumptions into doubt.

By building up tolerance to uncertainty, he not only better suited himself for life in chaotic civil war-era France but primed his mind for tackling the big questions that don’t have easy answers. For a second, consider of all our major public thinkers today. They do the opposite, constantly telling how sure they are of their beliefs and criticizing their “opponents” for changing their minds. Changing your mind is a good thing, Montaigne would say. It means you’ve resisted the impulse to think you’re infallible. He wrote that as part of his profession of getting to know himself he found such “boundless depths and variety that [his] apprenticeship bears no other fruit than to make me know much there remains to learn.” If only we could internalize that attitude—instead of feeling cocky when we learn something, acknowledge that it really just taught us how much more we need to learn." - Ryan Holiday

One of my guiding, but alas dead, mentors is Buckminster Fuller. He was prepared to drown himself and was standing on the brink of one of the Great Lakes (after the death of his daughter, followed by a business bankruptcy) when he realized that he didn't belong to himself, but was part and parcel of the Universe--and, instead of wading in, he vowed to participate fully in the universe. Right after that epiphany, he went through a silent period to purge everything thing he'd learned from others that he didn't know to be absolutely true; basically, questioning all second-hand knowledge and adopted beliefs that he'd assumed were his own.

His clearing period lasted about 2 years. (Some folks call it Bucky's "gestation period.")

"I live on Earth at present, and I don't know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing — a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process — an integral function of the universe." - Buckminster Fuller

 My spiritual teacher, Adyashanti, shares that one of the best things he did to get really clear was to keep a journal where he only wrote something down if it were true. (Interestingly, Steven Johnson mentioned the "commonplace book"--a journal--in Where Do Good Ideas Come From? and Montaigne kept one too.) He'd ask himself, What do I know for sure is true? He speaks of this journalling often, but this interview is the only instance I've found readily online where he talks of the value of self-inquiry and why writing it down the questions and answers worked for him. I particularly mention my teacher precisely because he's one of the clearest, shining people I've ever yet met (Miguel Ruiz and Byron Katie are two others, and you won't know the others as they're not online much); he charts into the Unknown moment by moment.

"The valuable part was not only what I found, but was really also that it showed me what I didn’t know, which is really valuable. It’s extraordinarily important. It’s kind of like a spring-cleaning, you know? You just dust out your consciousness–you go, “Wow, 99% of the things that I think I know, when I really examine them honestly…” You’re all of a sudden not so sure if it’s really true or not. And it’s really valuable to empty out the mind in that way, and to empty out the old belief system." - Adyashanti, "I'm Not Babysitting Your Ego," Buddhist Geeks interview

I've had the privilege (at first it didn't feel like a privilege, but more like a dot-bomb and divorce catastrophe) of having much more than 30 hours a week for past 9 years devoted to contemplation and self-study ala Montaigne, Bucky and Adya.

I happened to be looking for an attachment in an email on an  incubator/hunch hub idea I had back in 2007 (yes, the Pooh tea party illustration is the right mood for said hunch hub/ serendipity Salon) when I happened upon a long, lost (or so I thought) 46-page retreat program I'd designed for an intimate group of folks that usually attended the Daring to Live an Authentic Life weekly gatherings that my housemates and I hosted when I lived in San Jose, CA. I called the retreat an "Advance" and it was held in spring 2005--two months after I vowed to quest for "What is Deathless?" post-tsunami.

I was surprised reading it how much I focused on self-contemplation (I was much more brute-force goal-oriented back then). The hypothesis was all the answers to the new, never-ending questions you're asking are already being presented to you within and in your unfolding life.

Here are the first two pages of the section ETHOS OF AN ADVANCE for your pleasure:

“Maybe your next vacation should be a journey inward,” read this month’s Body + Soul magazine.

This is a journey without a distance. It is not horizontal, but vertical.

“Buddha is a scientist of the inner world. Meditation is his basic contribution – turning the horizontal consciousness into a vertical consciousness.” – Osho, "Buddha: His Life and Teachings"

If we could take a journey, make a pilgrimage together, without any intent or purpose, without seeking anything, perhaps on returning we might find that our hearts had unknowingly been changed. I think it worth trying. Any intent or purpose, any motive or goal, implies effort -- a conscious or unconscious endeavor to arrive, to achieve. I would like to suggest that we take a journey together in which none of these elements exist.

 

If we can take such a journey, and if we are alert enough to observe what lies along the way, perhaps when we return, as all pilgrims must, we shall find that there has been a change of heart; and I think this would be much more significant than inundating the mind with ideas, because ideas do not fundamentally change human beings at all. Beliefs, ideas, influences may cause the mind superficially to adjust itself to a pattern; but, if we can take the journey together without any purpose and simply observe as we go along the extraordinary width and depth and beauty of life, then out of this observation may come a love that is not merely social, environmental, a love in which there is not the giver and the taker, but which is a state of being, free of all demand.

 

This journey I am proposing that we take together, is not to the moon, or even to the stars. The distance to the stars is much less than the distance within ourselves. The discovery of ourselves is endless, and it requires constant inquiry, a perception which is total, an awareness in which there is no choice. This journey is really an opening of the door to the individual in relationship with the world. So, the understanding of ourselves is not to the end of individual salvation, it is not the means of attaining a private heaven, an ivory tower into which to retire with our own illusions, beliefs, gods. On the contrary, if we are able to understand ourselves, we shall be at peace, and then we shall know how to live rightly.  -J. Krishnamurti

THE INNER GURU

There are no gurus "out there", but simply people whom reflect and mirror our highest selves and/or our shadow selves. In the yogic sense, a guru merely mirrors your innate but unawakened potential back to you.

Look within for answers. But note your blind spots in the mirrors (i.e. "other people") surrounding you.

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters, compared to what lies within us.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

“Not I - not anyone else, can travel that road for you. You must travel it for yourself.” - Walt Whitman

 

“You cannot teach a person anything; you can only help him find it within himself.” - Galileo

This story is very illustrative of our own capacities when we are still and listen. In fact, it’s illustrative of the ethos of the Advance. You may come in feeling thoroughly lost as well:

“You may remember A.A. Milne’s story about Winnie the Pooh, Piglet, and Rabbit getting lost in the Hundred Acre Wood. Under Rabbit’s bossy, officious guidance, the three go around and around until they’re thoroughly lost and terrified of lurking Heffalumps. Eventually, a disgusted Rabbit leaves Pooh and Piglet and goes to find the way home. He never returns. After a while, Pooh turns to Piglet:

 

“Come on, Piglet. Let’s go home.”

 

“But we’re lost,” said Piglet.

 

“Yes,” said Pooh, “but there are twelve pots of honey in my cupboard at home, and they are calling to my tummy. I couldn’t hear them before, because Rabbit would talk.”

 

This is what happens to someone who settles into the threshold of Square One [Square One's similar to what Joseph Campbell calls the ‘Initiation’], stops fighting the process, and accepts the strange formlessness of the situation. The chattering, Rabbit-like social self gets so frustrated and disoriented that it finally wanders away. Then something else comes through: a silent sweetness that resonates deep in your essential self, your pots of honey calling to your tummy.” – Martha Beck, Finding Your Own North Star

WHAT TO EXPECT

 

Nothing.

“I don’t know in advance what I am going to put on canvas any more than I decide beforehand what colors I am going to use.” – Pablo Picasso

Everything happens after the Advance. And even then, expect nothing for optimal results.

Okay, okay. You can expect clarity, insights, and a desire to commit and focus – but the what’s and how’s are not known yet. Don’t worry about them now.

art credits: Just Walk Away by Dasha Denger; journal page Will I Ever Find An Answer? by Hannah of Spans Stitches blog (p.s. yes + yet more infuriating questions galore after that one--enjoy the unfurling infinite mystery!); A.A. Milne illustration via Mystery of Existence (how apropos!) blog; last photo of journaler via She Knows blog.

i can't talk to all the theoreticians because there don't exist theories where i am

I smiled when I saw my buddy DK Brainard's post after all the science talk yesterday... now science fiction. He's admits to reading tons of science fiction and fantasy genre lately, and not any mainstream or classics. I can relate:

"Part of me has a hard time copping to my current obsession. You see, I have a Master’s in French Literature, obtained jointly from the University of Paris and the University of Cincinnati. I have a double B.A. in English and French

...[Eventually,]

I stopped looking at the world as this fundamentally fixed environment and I realized that the more radically I change my internal reality, the more the Universe I perceive changes also.

We hear all the time, “Change your mind and you will change your life.” But what I’ve found is that this is true far beyond what most of us are willing to consider.

I think that’s why I’m so drawn to fantasy literature right now. Because it’s pushing me further out of my preconceptions about what is possible for me. You see, after nearly ten years of dedication to a meditative practice and the spiritual path, I’ve seen that the mind can work amazing changes on my outer reality. But I also know I’m just scratching the surface of my potential.

The more I read these books – and reflect on the many well-documented accounts of remote viewers, spoonbenders, shape shifters and people who can levitate objects using only the mind – the more I wonder, “Why aren’t we doing more with what we have?”" -excerpt from D.K. Brainard, "Reality vs. Fantasy", WordsForThePeople.com

I've also gravitated toward science fiction and fantasy myself--that is when I read any linear novels anymore. Strange, as I'm the gal who won regional contests in high school for essays on Jane Austen. Why read Cliffnotes--that's like skipping out on desert? I devoured The Classics--even ones that weren't assigned. I wished to study English Literature and Philosophy in college, but I was fiercely into financial indendence at that age and opted for a Computer Engineering degree, instead. Part of me always wanted to be a creative writer.

I put in a whole year coming up a narrative alternate reality game that would push the edges of people's consideration of possibility by relying on the age-old "suspension of disbelief." I put my money where my faith was and even showed up to Book Expo America in New York to grok the publishing world even though that meant I left a weekend job behind, and showed up with $50 (I don't do credit cards) in my pocket at JFK. (That's another story--the prosperity hunch and experiments have altered yet again.)

I found myself being so drawn into the storyworld and its characters, I'd abandoned the original mission... which is Life itself. The whole ARG was to get people more engaged with their own life and see it as an adventure. I didn't want folks to be so entranced by the storyworld that they willingly push aside their own life to find out "What happens next..." to fictional characters. I tabled the whole project recently; although it might find a form later if I make your life the main storyworld.

I wondered why can't we talk openly about possibilities and paradoxes and miracles and marvels without the pretense of fiction (although that can be fun)? Why make taboos or heresies out of exploration and experimentation and edges?

This is the hunch I have: that your life right now as it is is guiding you to the edges of possibility, to the unknown. Yet I'm thinking we also take the lead in asking the questions.

It's pretty tuned to your specifics, too. Don't do bibliomancy?--no problem, it'll spill from the mouth of babes. Don't do external clews?--no problem, you'll get inner inclinations, lurching gut, tingling pulsing currents or emotional beacons. Anything I say may or may not apply, it's tailored for you. Be skeptical of common wisdom and theories and be wary of bandwagons, and go for your own data--directly (sometimes 'experience' is a bit less visual, and more visceral or employs other senses besides the eye).

I recently read The Hunt for Zero Point after a deep quest to learn more about Vickor Schaumberger (originally my interest was water... but I never know what I'm going to uncover.) The point here is that the author started following threads of personal interest in a taboo topic in his field of aviation journalism. It's just "science fiction," they scoffed around his office. He followed his gut and kept digging into anti-gravity propulsion. Years later, he interviews a brilliant scientist at an aerospace company that he thinks might give him more clues.

The main takeaway the scientist tells him is you get to a point--which if you look at Life as the grand experiment--where you've gone as far as the theories take you, or the data pouring in is altogether new and not quite fitting in. That's how new theories develop.

The data is important--not adhering to an established theory.

You have to pay close attention to your life, to reality as it is showing up for you. And maybe even entertain the notion that perceived reality (not necessarily Absolute/Formless reality) is dynamic, so that even a theory that worked yesterday may be obsolete. Or even that that last sentence may be utter nonsense if time is simultaneous.

"But now that the interview was over, the minders [there's always PR people monitoring corporate interviews] were looking the other way. They'd done their job and I'd done mine. Boyd Bushman had spilled no secrets either on or off the record and that was what mattered. Nor had he in any way tarnished the reputation of the Lockheed Martin company. [Funny, I used to work for what is now known as Lockheed Martin--in the million-dollar video games department, aka flight simulators.]

That I had learned nothing of value must have shown on my face, for without warning, Bushman leaned forward and put his hand on my shoulder.

He asked me what was wrong and I told him.

"It's a lonely walk, but a rewarding one," he said, so quietly that I almost missed it. I looked into his eyes, which were quite blue but for that superficial milkiness that sometimes denotes the onset of old age.

He smiled at me. "Keep traveling the road and you might just find what you're looking for."

"What do you mean?" I asked cautiously.

"In all my years with this company, no one has asked me the questions you came here with today." He paused a moment, then said: "Here, I want to show you something."

He produced a videocassette from the folds of his loose-hanging suit and gave me the same smile that had crossed his face a number of times during the interview; usually, I noticed, when he needed a moment or two to think about a particularly awkward question I'd thrown at him. He looked not unlike Walter Matthau, the Hollywood actor, with a kindly, hangdog expression and thick straight hair to match. Instinctively, I'd liked him. But more to the point, I knew that I could trust him. Unusually for someone who toiled in the heart of the U.S. defense-industrial complex, he looked somewhat like someone who was incapable of telling a lie.

Bushman appeared beyond the retirement age of most good man-and-boy company men, which in itself spoke volumes about his ability.

Before I met him, I'd been told that he was a one-off, one of those people who liked to think out of the box--defense jargon for a guy in the trade who looked at things differently. Just how differently, I was about to find out.

The picture on the TV screen steadied and I found myself staring at a scene of such ordinariness I thought for a moment that Bushman had plugged in the wrong tape.

From the graininess of the film and the way the camera trembled, it rapidly became clear that this was some kind of a home movie. It depicted the interior of a garage or workshop. In the middle of the frame was a saw on a pockmarked wooden work surface. Beside it was a pair of pliers and a handful of nails.

For a while, we both just stood there watching a picture in which nothing happened. The minders had taken a quick look and apparently decided it was an eccentric end to a quirky afternoon's work, because they went back to their own conversation.

My gaze drifted back to the TV just as one of the nails in the center of the screen began to twitch and the pliers moved--jumped, rather--a centimeter to the left. Within seconds, everything was shaking, as if rocked by a series of earth tremors. And then, quite suddenly, the nails stood up, like hairs on a cold forearm.

I looked at Bushman, who was studying the screen intently, "Watch," he urged, "this is the best bit."

One by one, the nails took off and shot off the top of the screen. A moment later, the pliers started to do a crazy nose-down dance across the work surface and the saw began flapping around like a fish out of water. Then they both went the way of the nails, shooting out of frame toward the ceiling.

Then, the picture switched: same background, different still life.

Ice cream was creeping up the sides of a see-through tub. A lump of it broke away and rose toward the ceiling trailing little pearls of cream. Seconds later, the whole tub jumped off the bench.

My skepticism was working overtime. But Bushman read my thoughts. "It's no fake," he said. "This is as real as you or I." He cast a look over his shoulder at our companions. "The man responsible is a civilian, nothing to do with the defense business. That he's a genius goes without saying, of course. You needed to see this, because it's confirmation of the data." He emphasized the word as if somehow it would help me understand what I had just seen. "You must get to see this man. I think, then, you will be closer than you think to the end of your journey."

"Data? What data?" I looked at him more closely, hoping for more, but he said nothing.

As I was ushered out of the room, the scientist looked down at the thick pack of material he'd handed me before the interview. I hadn't had time to look at it. Now, I wished I had.

That evening, I sat down with Bushman's file in my hotel room. He'd loaded me down with so many papers, I didn't know where to begin or what I was really looking for. There was a stack of photostats relating to the patents he'd filed during a long and illustrious career that had included stints at some of the giants of the postwar U.S. aerospace and defense industry: Hughes Aircraft, Texas Instruments, General Dynamics and Lockheed.

There was his resume, which noted his top secret security clearance, as well as copies of scientific papers, stapled neatly at the corner, with exotic-sounding titles that meant little to me.

My eyes swam over pages of complex mathematical equations and algebra sets. I was looking for clues, but seeing nothing that made much sense.

I pressed the "play" button on my tape recorder.

From the tenth floor of my Fort Worth hotel room, the lights of the city shimmered in the sizzling 90-degree heat, even though it was a good half an hour after the sun had slipped below the skyline. Inside, the air-conditioning was cold enough to prickle my skin.

". . . I went back to some of the first work on gravity done by Galileo. . . "

[Aside on Galileo: "When he later defended his views in his most famous work, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, published in 1632, he was tried by the Inquisition, found "vehemently suspect of heresy," forced to recant, and spent the rest of his life under house arrest.]

Bushman's voice crackled in the darkness, clashing for a moment with that of a CNN reporter on the TV. I adjusted the volume on the tape recorder, hit the fast-forward button and pressed play again.

"So, what I think is: Follow the data and log your data very well and don't throw it away because you have a theory. The theory of gravity is just a theory. Einstein improved on the original theories of Newton and he was verified by data--and data gave precedence. No one believed Einstein until the data arrived. Well, our data's arrived. . . "

I scrolled the tape again. As I did so, I spotted something among the collection of papers Bushman had given me. Tucked beneath the patents and company brochure material on weapons technology was a grainy photocopy of a UFO flying low over a straight stretch of desert road. A handwritten caption underneath identified the location as Santa Ana, California, and the date as 1966.

Flicking past it, I found another cluster of photostats taken from the "Ramayana of Valmiki--Translated from the Original Sanskrit." A stamp on the title page identified the book as belonging to "Lockheed/Fort Worth."

Puzzled, I toggled with the buttons on the tape recorder and finally found the part of the interview I'd been looking for.

"Nature does not speak English," Bushman had been telling me. "Not only that, but if we verbalize it, we're probably approximating, but not telling the truth. Math comes close, but it isn't there either. What Nature tells us is what must be honored. It has been talking to us on many domains."

I let the words echo in my head for a moment.

Bushman was a senior scientist for one of the world's biggest defense contractors; a member of the fraternity that I'd looked to for expert comment all my professional life, and he was telling me to trust in what I saw. Folllow data, he's said, not theory. He worked on programs that lay beyond the cutting edge of known science.

"I can't talk to all the theoreticians," he'd told me, "because there don't exist theorires where I am."

"For the past ten years, I had been following data and the data had shown me that existence of something real. And yet some of the brightest minds on the planet were struggling to produce theory to underpin it. How could there be no theory for effects that were genuinely manifesting themselves in the environment?

What Nature tells us is what must be honored. It has been talking to us on many domains.

And we'd only understood a fraction of what it had been saying.

If we verbalize it, we're probably approximating, but not telling the truth.

And then it hit me. That's all theory was or ever had been--an approximation of the truth. Sometimes that approximation worked out and held fast, becoming scientific currency; other times it didn't and was superseded by another theory.

In this case, there were so many holes in our knowledge, it had allowed for people like Podkletnov and Schauberger to fall through the gaps, to show us things that science couldn't account for. Because science theory hadn't mapped them yet.
...
Einstein had followed Newton and data had verified them both. But in this field, as with other fields of scientific endeavor, the data was still coming in." - Nick Cook, The Hunt for Zero Point: Inside the Classified World of Antigravity Technology

Bonus: I have my own notes from the book I'll share. It's worth a read if you're peering over edges, especially related to energy research.

Art/Photo Credits: Sylvia Ji's Spring; can't find the original artist source, but I got this whimsical illustration via Copper Witch's cached blog; going for the labyrinth myth and clews angle too, this awesome digital composition is by loutremauve on DeviantArt.com; gravity-defying levitator is a photo effect via Geekologie; the 3D rendered anti-gravity propulsion vehicle is by Victor Alatorre (can't find his website) via Paranormal People; and, whoa 'miracles' that look really fun...walking on water ball.

fire the grid, making love to your beast as every footfall is your own

I awoke at precisely 4:11 a.m this morning from a nightmare.

All I remember now hours later was there was a beast in it. And I was none too sure the beast was my ally. Though knowing all too well of Jungian shadow work, I'm pretty sure the Beast represents beloved, though shoved away into a deep dark corner, aspects of my own self.

Being an outlier in the New Age community (I'm a skeptic; while I'm open to new information, ultimately rely on my own direct experience and knowing which places me at odds with said 'community' much of time), I'd heard of the Fire The Grid global meditation scheduled for 11:11 a.m. Greenwich time, July 17, 2007.

Which would be exactly 4:11 a.m. Pacific time for me.

I had vacillated whether I was going to participate or not. My own gut instincts told me that this particular channeller's message wasn't resonating for me; although the personal story of her son's recovery from a near-fatal accident emphatically did. That story rang truer than many things I've read in ages.

The rest of the site, I picked up sensations of fear and worry from the material which I don't share about the fate of the planet. The visions I have sensed of the future are so startingly palpably real and beatific they're so much harder to swallow (you ought not because I say so; inquire for yourself) than scenes and memes of doomsday and annihilation we're accustomed to.

Also I didn't sense that anything of significance galactically was happening on July 17th. (July 8th, however, was a different story.)

As the weeks went by, the Fire the Grid meme spread like wildfire. (Someone was doing their marketing homework.) The more websites that referenced Fire The Grid, and the more email I got from newsletters I'm subscribed to and from well-intentioned individuals endorsing the global meditation, the more and more I began to doubt my own (conflicting) instinct.

Who am I to know for myself, eh? Memes know better, right? Memes are gospel, silly. (Have you ever noticed meme screams me, me?)

So last night I was still vacillating whether I would participate at 4:11 a.m. Although weeks earlier I'd been certain I was not. My own personal decision. I wasn't going to tell anyone else whether they ought to or not.

Finally, around midnight, I decided that I was not going to do it, although, this nagging doubt accompanied me to my slumber. As usual, I prayed to my higher self to show me what I didn't know I didn't know as I lay down.

In the move to San Francisco, I ended up giving a lot of philosophy, spiritual and business books away. I realized I am never going to crack many of them open. I want to rely more and more on my own innate instincts, intelligence, power and love to guide.

I'm not sure when we became a self-help society, but the signs are everywhere that this is so. It's intricately tied up with celebrity and expert worship too. Constantly continuously giving our own power away.

There's a part of me feels like maybe the best thing I can do is close the curtain on this blog and simply remind you that you have access to everything you ever need to know

...in the moment you need to know it. Trust your holy self.

That said, there are reasons to share. There are reasons to read. Sometimes it's all a game we're playing in a house of mirrors.

Once I sent the beginning of a poem I was writing to a friend. This is how it started, and then I got snagged not knowing what was next:

if said angel wandered the earth
she gallavanting mistletoe in a sphere of lapis

There was a little more in the email about nebulas and nurseries where stars are born, and he writes back (and this is someone that has had more than his fair share of beastly experiences):

I've found the worst turns to the best because contrast is all really see

live it be humble enough to see it and then tell it in your own words........

glory be to the one ones who know that every footfall is their own

Those words sum up the motivation I have to continue to write - and share. Tell it in your own words: poetry - not gospel.

And so when another friend texting with me this morning says: i love my nightmares... Wonder what it b like 2 make love 2 ur beast?

I understood. And I understood why I rolled over in the crisp covers, and simply went back to sleep at 4:11 a.m.

Bonus: One of the most sane responses to the Fire The Grid meditation I'd read. Stumbled upon at midnight last night when I just meant to read more David Wilcock. Snippet below:

"[W]e feel the key is not in group meditations, but rather in an ongoing practice. The Law of One philosophy only ever gave two techniques that create an ‘exponential increase’ in your spiritual growth in a short time:

1. Seek the love in this moment.
2. Reflect on issues from your past that inform this moment.

Each additional seeking of love in the moment creates an exponential increase. Each additional issue from your past you can bring up and examine for its relevance to this moment creates an exponential increase. 

The world is healed by our own diligent effort in healing ourselves, day by day, consistently. - "Should I Meditate on July 17th?", David Wilcock, Divine Cosmos blog

images Fallen Angel, by Olivia de Berardinis (hmmm, embracing our fallen angel self is making love to the beast, perhaps); Girl Before a Mirror, by Pablo Picasso

Not A Spiritual Blog Either

I received a nice email from an intriguing Epicurean philosopher in Hong Kong in Ithaca, NY: "I was very impressed with your biography, especially its skepticism and multifaceted freedom-to-pleasure..."

Yes of course he's only met me so yes he 'grokked' me instanteously -- you however might be a long-time reader and be easily impressioned by the past.

Lately I chuckle when someone tells me I ought to meditate more if that gives you an inkling of change.

In last few months, my spiritual practices have consisted of prayer, a morning ritual of drinking tea usually in the garden, lovemaking (more wishful imagining than actual, thus creating material for...), creative writing, and running.

On the long train and bus rides, I am currently reading Like Water for Chocolate, not Ramana Maharshi. I admire the wit of Oscar Wilde, and am relishing going through the books in the Absinthe Literary Review.

My current favorite spiritual practice is flirting.

So there you have it. That's my tantrika path ("ask your heart what's right and follow it"). As runners quip, your mileage may vary.

I'm certainly not one for definition by negation, but that'd be hard to tell lately with an earlier post titled, "This is Not a Marketing Blog."

And with the last few Zen like postings (well, actually I'd label them rather nondualism, or certainly more Dzogchen, Ch'an or Vendanta), it'd be hard to buy the assertion that this is not a spiritual blog either.

I've dropped out of my spiritual social circles lately. A friend asks why yesterday and I had a difficult time formulating a response then. Today I write back:

"I didn't start out intending to go on a spiritual journey whatsoever. I set out to see reality and my life clearly without my distortions, my projections, my conditioning, my assumptions, my beliefs leading me astray or at least be aware I was seeing things through the lens of my beliefs -- wanted to make my beliefs transparent rather than so ingrained I'm not even aware that I'm operating from them and everyone else isn't. I knew I had blind spots, but I didn't even know what they were. So it ended up being a process of asking a lot of tough questions."

Not everyone has the same objectives around 'spirituality.' In 2001, as my life as I'd known it was unraveling furiously I finally had the humility to end up on the way of the skeptic, the way of the fool, asking questions eternally, questioning everything especially questioning and observing myself. It was only then that I even willing to ask questions as I have deep-seated guru tendencies, predilections for know-it-all intellectual pride that lives in answers (still have those tendencies which I have to be vigilant for).

"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks the door will be opened." - Matthew 7:7-8

The interesting thing is that answers beget more questions, such that life becomes a great unknowable perpetual discovery not too far removed from innocent childlike wonder.

Few have a passion for questioning their own positionalities, though.  My main question usually revolves around, "What am I not seeing here?" rather than "How do I get them over to see my side?"

I don't need to go anywhere to practice, and like my teacher says spirituality has a way of becoming just talk. And arid talk at that, at least for me. I don't need to go anywhere specific to practice (which is why years ago I picked up running rather than tennis, you can do it virtually anywhere): "Everybody's life - as it is, if they just let go of seeking to avoid it - is actually the perfect avenue for their own spiritual unfolding. It doesn't matter if you're right here in Palo Alto working at IBM, or being a monk in a monastery somewhere," says Adyashanti.

I know this blog does have a following of genuine spiritual 'seekers', and I've grappled since I have shifted so much in a short timeframe as to how to respond.

I worry too much about startling my long-term readers. A dear old friend said to me a few months back as I was loosening up, "Yeah, I wondered if you had a chemical imbalance." He he, you ain't seen nothin' yet.

"But that which is spiritual was not first, but that which is natural, then that which is spiritual." - Corinthians 15:46

On 'spiritual' (whatever that is) matters, I have absolutely no one-size-fits-all approach. My 'God' allows me to speak of Buddha to Buddhists, philosophy to philosophers, quantum physics to scientists, beauty to flowers (yes, I do and zucchini and tomatoes when I'm really open -- Michael Crichton talks to cacti in his memoir), Jesus to Christians, and so forth which is natural and spontaneous in one-on-one dialogue. Mostly though I enjoy not speaking about religion.

I struggle to address the 'spiritual' yearnings of readers because I cannot blog anything individualized since this is a one-to-many medium mostly, regardless of what they tell you about conversation. Even, of late, I sometimes feel telling you too much of my path may skew you off yours. It baffles me how I even attempted to write anything before because there are as many paths as there are people.

Like Krishnamurti I agree, "I maintain that Truth is a pathless land... If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organise a belief. A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organise it. If you do, it becomes dead, crystallised; it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed on others."

"It is also part of integrity to never be satisfied with anybody else's truth." - Adyashanti

The good news is I think I have a solution for those that resonate very specifically with nondualist teachings (such as Advaita Vendanta, Ch'an, Dzogchen, Vajrayana). First, check out my favorite 'spiritual' blog, Graceful Presence and favorite email newsletter, The Nondual Highlights; second, I'll post more often to my Pointing to the Moon blog; and third, I'll be offering dokusan face-to-face, phone and via email by appointment (details Monday).

It's my inclination these days to be freed from my abstract tendencies, and be more immersed in the concrete feminine aspect of the divine -- thus the sensual material world. (BTW, this post is a perfect example of abstract to the hilt.)

And so I should end this now, take my leave and start working on the "I Believe in Love on First Sight" and "Myself I Am a Shameless Flirt" posts.

p.s. Of course this is a spiritual blog. What could be excluded? "Love is my religion and the universe my book," (Coleman Barks) is fundamentally my own 'philosophy'.

p.p.s. Christians aren't excluded. My book is suffused with Biblical symbology inspired by Jesus'  forty days in the desert.

Bonus: I love this post from epicurean Steven's blog. Cultivating apperception is what led me to 'spirituality' and that's brought me back full circle to a harmonized materiality. A snippet below:

"Philosophy serves culture, not by the fancied gift of absolute or transcendental knowledge, but by suggesting questions which help one to detect the passion, and strangeness, and dramatic contrasts of life. -- Walter Pater, essay on Winckelmann

...Pater reduced philosophy to pragmatism; it was to be a means for humanity to attain greater pleasure, through intercourse with beauty. Specifically, the skeptical foundation of philosophy should lead to the cultivation of the faculty of apperception, or ‘awareness’—which means only awareness of material things, which can be known and appreciated sensually. In my own reading of Pater, philosophy is a work in progress, which begins in skepticism. By doubting as much as possible, by looking at life as though it were mostly unknown, we rediscover some of its strangeness, and in that rediscovery there is pleasure, lately regrown ripe."

images I don't know how to explain that when I see lovely kalamata olives, I think Epicurus. Flickr photo by true2source.

Fish Hooks

Chinese giftpaper wrapped narrow boxes stretch and float on the black ink pool.

Squid fishing boats in the distance shine like the flashlights in the tangle of the jungle.

The absence of whirring speedboats echoes in the tender kiss of sea with shore. 

I walk home along the beach. It's nearly 11:30 p.m. on December 26th.

My mind falls back to this exact time last year. I am in the Phuket hospital. The doctor has suctured and stitched my split-open knee. I look at the ceiling straight above me on a green vinyl bed sandwiched between a young Swedish girl and an elderly Swedish lady.

The past is like a fish hook. I carefully lift it free from my flesh and I continue my walk above the coral rocks and enter the jungle path.

This morning, I stumble upon a book laying inside a large shell by the reception area as I wait for Yao to return the torch (I've adjusted to British English) he borrowed last night:

Some people come to meditate and yet chat about the past. It is full of suffering. I would like to ask you that of you: Cut off all problems. This is like a high level donation without paying anything. - The Law of Karma, Dhamma Practice by Phra Debsinghapuracariya (Jarun Thitadhammo)

Instinctually it feels important to feel all if feeling arises. Without getting caught, then letting it pass.

I finally went to Loh Moodee Beach - the scene of my own tsunami experience - on December 28th. Leaving nothing unturned, unfelt, unmet.

Why do we come back? For me, it's not as if the past had been cremated on the funeral pyre but rather was a rotting corpse in the closet.

The class 4 Rubber Rapids was named after the way that it'll bounce your boat like a rubber ball if given half a chance. Funny image, but no joke. . . - Gorp.com

I relived and revived every ounce of fear from whitewater mishaps in the rushing river hurtling me past coconut palms last year. It hadn't completely dissipated, dissolved, been digested, or transmuted. 

Years ago I'd stopped kayaking and rafting after I shattered my ankle in three places on the Middle Fork of the Salmon River. I believed that was putting it behind me.

We have to endure the arising problem. Do not run away from it. You can attain the 'not running away' state by contemplation. Face it. Do not run away.

The Buddha explained to Ananda, his royal cousin. "Look, Ananda. Where would you run away from scolding? Is there any place where no body scolds us? People scold us in this town. If we go to another town, they will scold us again. Where would we go?"

"What do we do then?" Venerable Ananda asked.

"We have to solve the problem. Eliminate the problem at its root cause." - The Law of Karma, Dhamma Practice

There is no full moon this year. The glittering red Christmas lights enshrine the tree at the Hippies Bar which booms the macarena.

I see stars I did not see this time last year. And remember:

"I taught my son when he was a boy," says Guy, the owner of Maprao, "that we come from the stars. And one day we return to the stars."

Carnival of Healing #18 - Grace & Gratitude

"The greatest thing is to give thanks for everything. He who has learned this knows what it means to live. He has penetrated the whole mystery of life: giving thanks for everything." - Albert Schweitzer (via the clear still waters of Whiskey River)

That is surely a healing attitude. Often we sift out what we chose to be grateful for. The words grateful and grace derive from the same Latin root, gratus. Gratitude, says Sarah McCroskey, is interrelated with with grace "one begetting the other - action and outcome. By expressing gratitude we invoke a state of grace."

I am grateful for the opportunity to host this week's Carnival of Healing #18. The week's submissions fall neatly into wellness and wealth categories - two expressions of our bounty and prosperity on this Thanksgiving holiday weekend. (Next week's Carnival of Healing will be hosted by Lucy MacDonald at her Positive Perspectives blog.)

(Bonus: Rumi's poem "A Small Green Island" is a good read to reflect on plenitude and gratitude and grace.)

On the wellness side, Different River starts off the carnival by putting a human face to what is often abstract policy in "Will the FDA kill Brian White?" regarding the FDA's 1962 policy change from issuing approval for "safe" drugs to "safe and effective" drugs:

I’m sure most of the FDA’s employees are hard-working scientists, doctors, and bureaucrats who do the best they can with what they’ve got. But these [folks awaiting drugs] are human beings we’re talking about.

Through Range Guide we can be grateful that an Avian Flu pandemic is not necessarily a given in his post "Bird Flu Hoax":

"[Peter Palese of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York] notes that studies of serum collected in 1992 from people in rural China indicated that millions there had antibodies to the H5N1 strain. That means they had been infected with an H5N1 bird virus and recovered, apparently without incident."

Reb Chaim HaQoton presents a fascinating exploration of wine's significance and symbolism to the Jewish in "Wine and Alcoholism":

Through different struggles and challenges, this baby grows into an adult, similar to wine’s fermentation process. The external factors in a human’s life are represented in wine by the yeast. As time flows, the wines taste is greatened and a human’s wisdom increases...

Maharal (Rabbi Judah Loew (1525-1609) of Prague) gives an interesting explanation: While all physical desires lose strength as time passes, spiritual concepts gain strength. Wine is the only physical object that shares this property of improving with time, placing wine as in-between the physical and the spiritual. Wine can go either way. 

Marilyn at California Fever reveals her wise life lessons in Lesson Plan. Here are just two gems she generously shares:

"The most powerful transformations can begin by doing just one kind or compassionate thing a day. Do one nice thing today for someone you really dislike...not for them, for you"

"Most people think they crave fame...when what they really crave is to be known."

After nearly two years of blogging my submisssion this week is one of my own favorite posts. I speak of many things including poet Mary Oliver's line: "We succumb to grief so we can fully live." I realize how grateful I am even when stuff shows up as "fierce grace." As The Corner says "This Year I Am Thankful for Falling, For Grief, For Loss" (yep, me too). The post is titled "This is What Things Can Teach Us" after a line in a Rilke poem.

The hip & zen pen is grateful for the wider lessons of Zen aesthetics in "The Zen of PowerPoint?" An undivided life is healing.:

Showing how zen principles can be applied to even the most business-focused parts of our lives is a reminder that we don't have to be two separate people...our personal selves and our business selves...we can try to integrate our principles into our one self.

(p.s. Scholar Huston Smith says, "The genius of Zen lies in its determination to fuse the temporal and the eternal; to widen the doors of perception so the wonder of the satori experience can flood everyday life.")

Gratefulness and grace oozes from Joe Vitale's Beyond Marketing when he writes about his encounter with modern day shaman Dr. Len's teachings in "Living Bliss, or, My Awakening at the Hands of a Hawaiian Shaman":

In a previous post: Two years ago I heard about a therapist in Hawaii who healed people but never saw them... This therapist worked on the mental hospital patients by "working on himself, doing an updated ancient Hawaiian healing method called ho'oponopono... What he would do was look at the patient's file and then look within himself, trying to clear what was in him that created the patient and his condition.

They don't need healing; you do. You have to heal you. You are the source of all the experiences

Steve Pavlina offers an uncommon and grace-embued take on "Titheing":

As I’ve driven myself to shed scarcity thinking, I eventually dropped the practice of tithing in favor of aligning my entire life with what I perceive to be the highest good of all.  I realized that if I’m giving money to a worthy cause, then perhaps I’m also telling myself that my own life is inherently a less worthy cause.

BTW, I loved Steve's observation: "I no longer think in terms of giving vs. receiving.  They’ve become the same thing for me." Now this is how grace in invited into our lives.

I thank you, deep power

that works me ever more lightly

in ways I can't make out.

The day's labor grows simple now,

and like a holy face

held in my dark hands.

- Rainer Maria Rilke, The Book of Hours, (The Book of Poverty and Death, I, 62)

Bonus: Via Shaboom, I found out about SoulCollages (see blog): "Find images. Cut. Paste. Magically you have a collaged card that is a message from you to you -- your Soul speaking." The image at top in this Carnival of Healing is a card entitled "learning to love brokenness" by Sheila Filan.

My thanksgiving wish: May the prosperity we experience bless all people.

Leaves 2

The clock read "Now."

Among the images and thoughts that entered my mind lying on the ground with my left leg propped up on a log, the split open knee bandaged up with the young German's black T-shirt in that span of time between the wave and the purported arrival of the rumored next wave is the vow to begin practice. I once said:

Purists have scoffed when I say washing dishes, long-distance running, and long commutes are my meditation.

All well and good except I don't really wash many dishes, run consistently nor mindfully, or take in long commutes frequently.

Without practice, you will never move beyond the phases of belief, faith, and random peak experiences. You will never evolve into plateau experiences, nor from there into permanent realization. You will remain, at best, a brief visitor in the territory of your own higher estate, a tourist in your own true Self. - Ken Wilber, One Taste

So here I was just one week ago at my very first all-day mindfulness retreat. The clock in the room is entirely covered by a stark sign with simple black lettering that reads "Now."

My mind is agitated all week. I've been straining to come up with creative breakthough strategies. Since 'strain' and 'create' don't mix the results are mixed too.

My car decides not to start that morning.

Finally I am nearly sprinting to the mindfulness retreat. As I pass another student calmfully reminds me in the hall: what's the hurry?

I laugh. Ah, the irony of it all.

Practice.

Zen is more than a philosophy, more than a way of thinking. Zen is a practice. It is something that you do, preferably every day. You cannot think your way into the present, into altering habits and patterns formed over a lifetime. You cannot simply read books. Zen requires a regular meditation practice - a time to pay attention to your mind and body. It requires taking what you learn from your way-seeking mind into your work, relationships, and everyday life. It requires your life to be guided by values of openness, honesty, and compassion. - Marc Lesser, Z.B.A.: Zen of Business Admistration

Practice, the voice gently echoes again.

I resist: Who would I be without my thoughts?

Mind, Work, or TBD: The Source of Authentic Happiness

Tom Peter's new website poll is about the source of "authentic happiness."  That's always a very very good question to be asking, but I found absolutely no answer on the poll that even remotely aligned with my view. 

I've been reflecting on (and taking more action related to) neuroplasticity, homeostatis, mind training and its effects on personal creativity and innovation as well as joy, meaning and empathy.

And last night at the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction course I'm taking, I was handed fascinating research with insights into areas as diverse as enhanced immune function to meaninfulness at work to reading people's emotions accurately to personal contentment done in 2003 by Richard Davidson, PhD, director of the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD, founder of the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. (I couldn't find it online; the original article I'm quoting from below is in the Dr. Weil's Self Healing newsletter, September 2003, based on research published in July/August 2003 issue of Psychosomatic Medicine.)

I'll refrain from adding too much of my commentary as I think the results speak for themselves.

Earlier research by Dr. Davidson, using brain-imaging technology and EEG readings of brain electrical activity, suggested that each person's brain has a natural "set point" for good versus bad moods. People who are generally happy and calm typically show greater activity in the left side of the brain's frontal area compared with the right side. In contrast, those more prone to sadness, anxiety, or worry typically show more activity on the right side of the frontal area and less on the left. Life's ups and downs may alter your ratio of left versus right activity for a while, but it will tend to return to its usual level.

What Drs. Davidson and Kabat-Zinn discovered is that meditation can apparently shift this emotional set point in a more positive direction. The study looked at stressed-out volunteers from a biotechnology firm, who were randomly assigned to one or two groups. A group of 25 people attended eight weekly classes in mindfulness meditation (which involves remaining aware of bodily sensations and thoughts, without passing judgment on them) and participated in a seven-hour retreat. They were also asked to practice mindfulness meditation for an hour a day, six days a week. The 16 people in the control group didn't receive meditation training until the study was completed.

The researchers found the meditation group had a significant increase in activity in the left side of the brain's frontal area, and they also reported feeling more positive emotions in their daily life. (The control group didn't show these changes.) In addition the meditation group showed enhanced immunity: They produced more antibodies in response to a flu shot than did the control group. So meditation may not only make you happier but may also keep you healthier.

My instructor, Bob Stahl, last night also noted that most of the biotech employees had reported that their sense of "meaningfulness" in their workplace was low prior to the study. And the meditation group reported an increased sense of meaning at work at the conclusion of the study.

While this new study revealed that even novice meditators can reap health benefits, other recent research has some extraordinary effects from long-term meditation practice. When Dr. Davidson had the chance to test a senior Tibetan Buddhist monk at his laboratory, he found that the monk's brain had the highest ratio of left versus right activity out of all the 175 people tested, suggesting an unusual degree of emotional contentment. Paul Ekman, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of California Medical School in San Francisco, tested the startle reflex of a different Buddhist monk by exposing him to noises as loud as a gunshot: While meditating, the monk was able to suppress this reflex, his face not moving a muscle. This was unprecedented display of mental control over a supposedly automatic response.

If you've read Malcolm Gladwell's latest, Blink, or seen any of the excerpts or reviews, then this next section will definitely catch your eye.

Dr. Ekman had previously developed a test of how well someone can read other people's emotions from rapid, subtle changes in facial expression (the test involves watching a video-tape of these fleeting expressions and attempting to identify the correct emotion). Most people do poorly on the test, but when Dr. Ekman tested two advanced Buddhist meditators, they got nearly perfect scores. This suggests meditation may actually sharpen perception and enhance empathy.

Ah well, no wonders there. The highest goal of meditators is to embody and exude "unconditional compassion" which is essentially a flowing loving-kindness to all sentient beings - a very advanced practice indeed. In my own experience, it is impossible to attain that state if if you are harboring any lingering resentment or judgment towards anyone, including yourself. (Thus you now understand why it's difficult.) In his latest research measuring brain gamma waves, some of the highest-frequency and most important electrical brain impulses, Davidson compared a highly skilled group and a novice group. I found it most revealing that the researchers did not select the common breath or other object-oriented meditation.

Buddhist teaching describes that state [of unconditional compassion], which is at the heart of the Dalai Lama's teaching, as the ''unrestricted readiness and availability to help living beings.'' The researchers chose that focus because it does not require concentrating on particular objects, memories or images, and cultivates instead a transformed state of being.- Miami Herald, 1/18/05

Additional resources: Meditation Can Modify the Brain, Research Shows, Miami Herald, Jan 18, 2005 (reg req); more of Dr. Davidson's research; additional related articles via Fouroboros and Feb 2004 MIT Technology Review article, "Meditation and the Brain"