Wisdom Beyond Basic Morals

That I feed the hungry,
forgive an insult,
and love my enemy ....
these are great virtues!
But what if I should discover
that the poorest of the beggars
and the most impudent of offenders
are all within me,
and that I stand in need of the alms of my own kindness;
that I myself am the enemy who must be loved?
What then?

Carl Jung


prontoseminars.com

Meaningful Learning is Transformative AND Initially Uncomfortable

     "Fundamentally, transformative learning is a process whereby individuals engage in critical reflection to develop new perspectives, skills, and behaviors.

     Specifically, the process of transformative learning begins with experiencing a disorienting dilemma**, which is a life event that causes the learner to pause and question underlying beliefs and assumptions. The next and perhaps the most important phase is critically reflecting on the disorienting dilemma to expose the learner’s limitations and areas for improvement. The learner then addresses these limitations by acquiring new knowledge, skills, or attitudes. Ultimately, these newly developed skills will transform the learner by providing him or her with fresh perspectives and powerful means for enacting improvement." 

       Wittich CM et al. "Transformative Learning: A Framework Using Critical Reflection to Link the Improvement Competencies in Graduate Medical Education." Academic Medicine 2010; 85(11): 1790-3.

     ** a minor "shipwreck": http://healthyhealers.blogspot.ca/2012/05/self-concept-worldview.html

Citadel Hill, Halifax, NS

On Coming Home to Who We Are

     Perhaps it's not so much about receiving love as it is about being loving.

     "I am done with great things and big things, great institutions and big success, and I am for those tiny, invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, yet which if you give them time, will rend the hardest monuments of man's pride."                                  William James 
www.wisdomatwork.com

      “We can do no great things, only small things with great love.”                   Mother Teresa

      “The success of love is in the loving - it is not in the result of loving. Of course it is natural in love to want the best for the other person, but whether it turns out that way or not does not determine the value of what we have done.”                  Mother Teresa 

Monet's Gardeners

Huxley's "Minimum Working Hypothesis", Personal & World Peace

     The core of perennialism can "be found in all mystical traditions … 
     Augustine himself had written: ‘That which is called the Christian Religion existed among the Ancients, and never did not exist …’ 
     In Vedanta for the Western World (1945), Huxley had outlined his core idea in terms of what he called ‘the minimum working hypothesis’:

          THAT there is a Godhead or Ground, which is the unmanifest principle of all manifestation.
          THAT the Ground is transcendent and immanent.
          THAT it is possible for human beings to love, know and, virtually, to become actually identified with the Ground.
          THAT to achieve this unitive knowledge, to realize this supreme identity, is the final end and purpose of human existence.

     … mystical experience is real and valuable, 
     … specific privileging of mysticism as the root of all religion, (is) supported by the testimonies of such adepts as Meister Eckhart, St. John of the Cross, Rumi, St. Teresa of Avila, the Buddha, Kabir and Shankara … 

     If the world was ever to live in peace, it would have to learn to distinguish this deepest core of Truth from the various ways it is packaged in the traditional religions.”

       Dana Sawyer “Huston Smith: Wisdomkeeper. Living the World’s Religions. The Authorized Biography of a 21st Century Spiritual Giant.” Fons Vitae, Louisville, KY, 2014.

Public Gardens, Halifax, NS

Still Vetoing? And how's that working for you?

      “It’s hard to see how modern man can survive on what he now gets from his conscious life – now that there is a kind of veto against impermissible thoughts, the most impermissible being the notion that man might have a spiritual life he is not conscious of which reaches out for transcendence.”                            Saul Bellow, at his Nobel Prize ceremony in 1976

       Dana Sawyer “Huston Smith: Wisdomkeeper. Living the World’s Religions. The Authorized Biography of a 21st Century Spiritual Giant.” Fons Vitae, Louisville, KY, 2014.

Is the Grass Greener on the Other Side?

     “ ‘Someday,’ she said, sighing, poised with a cup of tea in one hand and cigarette in the other, parakeet fluttering in the air behind her head, ‘I may move somewhere far away from here.’ But something in her face in that sallow light made me think that it was almost certain she wouldn’t.”
       Michael Paterniti “The Telling Room. A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World’s Greatest Piece of Cheese.” The Dial Press, NY, 2013

     My daughter-in-law recounted a Tibetan teaching about having a wise relationship with moments of what we perceive as happiness. Consider a precious dove landing, briefly, on your open hand. And the moment when the dove starts flying away ... truly loving it, letting it go - complete freedom ...

     Preciousness & brevity; 
     Vitality & openness; 
     Freedom & spacious generous openness of the heart-mind.

     The periphery appears to remain disturbed. Keep returning to the center, which appears to remain still, silent, open, undisturbed, at peace. Yet life is residing in both at once - in the totality. As they say in Tai Chi, we join heaven and earth.

     Parts are relatively easy to "get", 
     the totality more challenging, 
     and yet ...
 

Citadel Hill, Halifax, NS

But Who's Listening?

     Misogyny, sexual discrimination, racism, antisemitism, and all sorts of other social illnesses seem to be, at least partially, communication problems. Progressive attempts to correct these therefore include immersive techniques such as talking circles, restorative justice processes, truth & reconciliation. The understanding behind these is that when we truly see, hear and understand an individual human being, we will naturally treat that person as a unique valuable human being, not as "the other" - something foreign, subhuman.
     We naturally expect people to behave in socially acceptable ways in public, such as in the workplace, educational institutions and health-care facilities. What's not so obvious, is that each of us behaves very differently depending on where we are and the company we keep. Who among us presents the same persona at work, in a place of worship, at a bachelor's party, babysitting, and hiking with an old friend in the back country? So, is one or more of these persona 'real,' and the rest 'fake' - mere acts put on to fool others? 

     I suspect that most of us don't really know, and find such questions that require deep self-reflection uncomfortable - something we rarely do (unless forced on us, occasionally, by traumatic circumstances). Because we're not self-reflective, we have far less conscious awareness of our thoughts, speech or behaviour than we assume. Instead, we instinctively condemn "bad" people, and feel totally different than "the bad guys." We strongly prefer avoiding such topics, and to busy ourselves with other matters - things we're good at.

    But without intentional deep self-reflection, we have minimal self-knowledge & self-acceptance. And if we're not aware of & can't accept our own many imperfections, then we can't really be sincere, full participants in corrective measures like restorative justice. We may be well-intentioned, but we're actually part of the problem! Without owning our own shadow, we simply cannot accept others' shadows. If we can't accept others' shadows, we tend to project our own onto others - see the things we can't accept about ourselves in others - "scapegoating". Scapegoating is expressed through: misogyny, sexual discrimination, racism, antisemitism, etc. These are widespread societal problems in our evolving (not evolved) human race.
     FIRST we must learn to be brave, and intentionally practice self-awareness. The deepest method is meditation; the easiest, most approachable form is Mindfulness. As we come to know & accept ourselves as far-from-perfect human beings with tremendous potential, we learn to be far more understanding with, and helpful towards others.
     All of us can intentionally evolve psychosociospiritually to contribute constructively to civilized society, and in doing so, find personal peace & deep fulfillment.

Gaudi's Park Guell, Barcelona

What Have You?

     Running on empty? In a dark place? What do you really need now to feel whole, complete, healthy, at peace, deeply happy & satisfied?

     YOU have that within you right now, & always have had. But many are hurting more than you. GIVE them this gift. Only in giving will you realize what you have, what you are, which is FAR, FAR more than you've ever realized. 
     Turn your love outwards - shine it on those who've forgotten their own immense power, their own amazing light - remind them (& remind yourself).

Real Life, Fantasies, Stories, Dreaming - Which is This?

     "It was like certain dinners I remember from the war. There was much wine, an ignored tension, and a feeling of things coming that you could not prevent happening."

       Ernest Hemingway "The Sun Also Rises" Simon & Schuster, NY, 1926.

Montparnasse cemetery, Paris

What is Time? Place?

     "In the morning I walked down the Boulevard to the Rue Soufflot for coffee and brioche. It was a fine morning. The horse-chesnut trees in the Luxembourg gardens were in bloom. There was the pleasant early-morning feeling of a hot day. I read the papers with the coffee and then smoked a cigarette."

     It's miraculously disorienting to peer through Hemingway's mind's eye, far removed in time & place, via our son's book, stamped on the inside first page with: "Shakespeare and Company, Sylvia Beach Whitman Foundation, Kilometer Zero Paris."

     
 

Hemingway at the Henry House, Halifax

Our World Churns

     Eric Reguly's article in yesterday's Globe & Mail http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/stories-from-the-burgeoning-libyan-smuggling-industry/article24210483/ brings to mind how life continues to churn, like a blender, all of us, everything in this world. We're all interconnected. No matter where we happen to find ourselves at any point in time, it will all change, sooner or later, in this huge blender called life.
     Everything is in flux, flowing, changing, blending, coming apart, coming back together, flowing, flowing, flowing.

 

Alleviating vs Curing Suffering

     "in certain Buddhist circles ... debate about the ultimate usefulness of assuaging temporal suffering is making the rounds. The topic is timely, given the commercialization of spirituality and the spread of the mindfulness movement. Most of us agree that the Buddha meant his paths to be curative rather than palliative. Shouldn't we be shooting for (enlightenment) rather than, say, 'stress reduction'?

     Although it can't magically wake us all up, Great Compassion can intervene by making our various situations just livable enough that we can shift our focus from pain, emotional overload, and warped coping strategies to the self-evident truths of the dharma: goodness, selflessness, and understanding lead to happiness; aggression, selfishness, and ignorance lead to suffering."

       Pamela Gayle White. "Alleviating Suffering. Can Working to Treat Pain Help Us Tackle the Fundamental Causes of Human Distress?" Tricycle, Spring 2015.                                www.tricycle.com

Gaudi Blues