Sunday, January 25, 2009
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
It matters more than we think
From Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner
"Where we are is vital to who we are. By 'where' I'm speaking not only of our physical environment but also of our cultural environment. Culture is the sea we swim in--so pervasive, so all consuming, that we fail to notice its existence until we step out of it. It matters more than we think."
"Where we are is vital to who we are. By 'where' I'm speaking not only of our physical environment but also of our cultural environment. Culture is the sea we swim in--so pervasive, so all consuming, that we fail to notice its existence until we step out of it. It matters more than we think."
How does it hang together?
Join me as I document my various experiments in building community. Here's the deal. I think that to live a meaningful life--each person needs to belong to a couple of different communities that help them to frame their own individual life against the big picture of lots of lives. In the secular US (ok maybe just in Palo Alto), but in the secular US work is the most readily available form of community. But I don't think it's answering people's most pressing questions about why we're here. At the same time, older forms of community, like church, etc, aren't working for us either. So what is?
Join me as I experiment in building community--through ShineOnWomen. As I embarass friends and family by asking them weird questions about life, and as I figure out how this life we're living hangs together.
Join me as I experiment in building community--through ShineOnWomen. As I embarass friends and family by asking them weird questions about life, and as I figure out how this life we're living hangs together.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
It's Easy to Become Confused
From Happiness is An Inside Job, by Sylvia Boorstein
"It's incredibly easy to become confused. The mind becomes overwhelmed--by a challenge or its impulsive response to a challenge--and becomes confused, misreads what's happening, and frightens itself.
Mindfulness doesn't erase confusion as much as it notices it and dissolves, or at least reduces, the fear about it. As fear lessens, misperceptions begin to correct themselves. And opportunities for correction--which, allowing myself a slight pun, are also opportunities for connection."
"It's incredibly easy to become confused. The mind becomes overwhelmed--by a challenge or its impulsive response to a challenge--and becomes confused, misreads what's happening, and frightens itself.
Mindfulness doesn't erase confusion as much as it notices it and dissolves, or at least reduces, the fear about it. As fear lessens, misperceptions begin to correct themselves. And opportunities for correction--which, allowing myself a slight pun, are also opportunities for connection."
Sticking with yourself
From Practicing Peace in Times of War, by Pema Chodron
"Some people find the teachings I offer helpful because I encourage them to be kind to themselves--but this does not mean pampering our neurosis. The kindness that I learned from my teachers and that I wish so much to convey to other people, is kindness toward all qualities of our being. The qualities that are the toughest to be kind to are the painful parts, where we feel ashamed, as if we don't belong, as if we've just blown it, when things are falling apart for us. Maitri means sticking with ourselves when we don't have anything, when we feel like a loser. And it becomes the basis for extending the same unconditional friendliness to others."
"Some people find the teachings I offer helpful because I encourage them to be kind to themselves--but this does not mean pampering our neurosis. The kindness that I learned from my teachers and that I wish so much to convey to other people, is kindness toward all qualities of our being. The qualities that are the toughest to be kind to are the painful parts, where we feel ashamed, as if we don't belong, as if we've just blown it, when things are falling apart for us. Maitri means sticking with ourselves when we don't have anything, when we feel like a loser. And it becomes the basis for extending the same unconditional friendliness to others."
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
You can't give up in life
From A Christmas Sermon on Peace (1967) by Martin Luther King
"In 1963, on a sweltering August afternoon, we stood in Washington, DC and talked to the nation about many things. Toward the end of that afternoon, I tried to talk to the nation about a dream that I had had, and I must confess to you today that not long after talking about that dream I started seeing it turn into a nightmare. I remember the first time I saw that dream turn into a nightmare, just a few weeks after I had talked about it. It was when four beautiful unoffending, innocent Negro girls were murdered in a church in Birmingham, AL......Yes, I am personally the victim of deferred dreams, of blasted hopes, but in spite of that I close today by saying I still have a dream, because you know, you can't give up in life. If you lose hope, somehow you lose that vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of all. And so today I still have a dream."
"In 1963, on a sweltering August afternoon, we stood in Washington, DC and talked to the nation about many things. Toward the end of that afternoon, I tried to talk to the nation about a dream that I had had, and I must confess to you today that not long after talking about that dream I started seeing it turn into a nightmare. I remember the first time I saw that dream turn into a nightmare, just a few weeks after I had talked about it. It was when four beautiful unoffending, innocent Negro girls were murdered in a church in Birmingham, AL......Yes, I am personally the victim of deferred dreams, of blasted hopes, but in spite of that I close today by saying I still have a dream, because you know, you can't give up in life. If you lose hope, somehow you lose that vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of all. And so today I still have a dream."
Learn by doing
From Grayson by Lynne Cox
"Sometime it's the process of doing that makes things clear. If we don't start, we never know what could have been. Sometimes the answers we find while searching are better or more creative than anything we could have imagined before."
"Sometime it's the process of doing that makes things clear. If we don't start, we never know what could have been. Sometimes the answers we find while searching are better or more creative than anything we could have imagined before."
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Lighten up!
From Comfortable with Uncertainty by Pema Chodron
"Being able to lighten up is the key to feeling at home with your body, mind, and emotions, to feeling worthy to live on this planet. For example, you can hear the slogan "Always maintain a joyful mind" and start beating yourself over the head for never being joyful. That kind of witness is a bit heavy.
This earnestness, this seriousness about everything in our lives--including practice--this goal-oriented, we're going-to-do-it-or-else attitude, is the world's greatest killjoy. There's no sense of appreciation because we're so solemn about everything. In contrast, a joyful mind is very ordinary and relaxed. So lighten up. Don't make such a big deal.
When you aspiration is to lighten up, you begin to have a sense of humor. Your serious state of mind keeps getting popped. In addition to a sense of humor, a basic support for a joyful mind is curiosity, paying attention, taking an interest in the world around you. Happiness is not required, but being curious without a heavy judgmental attitude helps. If you are judgmental, you can even be curious about that.
"Being able to lighten up is the key to feeling at home with your body, mind, and emotions, to feeling worthy to live on this planet. For example, you can hear the slogan "Always maintain a joyful mind" and start beating yourself over the head for never being joyful. That kind of witness is a bit heavy.
This earnestness, this seriousness about everything in our lives--including practice--this goal-oriented, we're going-to-do-it-or-else attitude, is the world's greatest killjoy. There's no sense of appreciation because we're so solemn about everything. In contrast, a joyful mind is very ordinary and relaxed. So lighten up. Don't make such a big deal.
When you aspiration is to lighten up, you begin to have a sense of humor. Your serious state of mind keeps getting popped. In addition to a sense of humor, a basic support for a joyful mind is curiosity, paying attention, taking an interest in the world around you. Happiness is not required, but being curious without a heavy judgmental attitude helps. If you are judgmental, you can even be curious about that.
Our shelter in the storm
I bought Mary Pipher's book after hearing her speak at the Palo Alto Mother's Symposium in Winter 2007. With a little country in her voice she told stories about families, about anger between partners, about adolescents who rebel, about groups of people struggling to stick together. A therapist looking at the world through the eyes of an anthropologist, she related these problems to larger cultural stresses--to the way the culture presses down on families and endangers the tender shelter we have among each other.
Here's a piece from her book.
From The Shelter of Each other by Mary Pipher
"Families are our shelter from the storm, our oldest and most precious institution and our last great hope. Families were once powerful institutions, strong enough to withstand assaults. But now almost every force in our culture works against families.....
Our culture of consumption has thoroughly confused most people about how to live in families. We live in the United States of Advertising and many therapists have inadvertently played a ert in the spread of existential flu. Advertisers and pop psychology dovetail to produce a certain kind of adult--one who is shallow, self-absorbed, concerned about inadequacies.
Popular psychology has impoed that if one's intimate relationships are in order, life will be fine. But the situation is more complex than that. People cannot be whole and healthy unless they connect their lives to something larger than their own personal happiness. Freud postulated a great need for sex; I say our greatest human need is for love. We need to be reconnected with one another.
Therapists can train families to look at their culture with they eyes of anthropologists. We can help them to examine the effects of technology on the lives of their family and to make conscious choices about what technology to keep and reject. Psychologists can be what Donald Meichenbaum called "purveyors of hope." And we can encourage people to form a "tiospaye" for the families around them. The new millennium will be about restoring community and rebuilding the infrastructure of families. We need to take back our streets and our living rooms."
Here's a piece from her book.
From The Shelter of Each other by Mary Pipher
"Families are our shelter from the storm, our oldest and most precious institution and our last great hope. Families were once powerful institutions, strong enough to withstand assaults. But now almost every force in our culture works against families.....
Our culture of consumption has thoroughly confused most people about how to live in families. We live in the United States of Advertising and many therapists have inadvertently played a ert in the spread of existential flu. Advertisers and pop psychology dovetail to produce a certain kind of adult--one who is shallow, self-absorbed, concerned about inadequacies.
Popular psychology has impoed that if one's intimate relationships are in order, life will be fine. But the situation is more complex than that. People cannot be whole and healthy unless they connect their lives to something larger than their own personal happiness. Freud postulated a great need for sex; I say our greatest human need is for love. We need to be reconnected with one another.
Therapists can train families to look at their culture with they eyes of anthropologists. We can help them to examine the effects of technology on the lives of their family and to make conscious choices about what technology to keep and reject. Psychologists can be what Donald Meichenbaum called "purveyors of hope." And we can encourage people to form a "tiospaye" for the families around them. The new millennium will be about restoring community and rebuilding the infrastructure of families. We need to take back our streets and our living rooms."
Become a resevoir of joy and freshness
From Teachings on Love by Thich Nhat Hanh
"If you take good care of yourself, you help everyone. You stop being a source of suffering to the world, and you become a reservoir of joy and freshness. Here and there are people who know how to take good care of themselves, who live joyfully and happily. They are our strongest support. Everything they do, they do for everyone."
"If you take good care of yourself, you help everyone. You stop being a source of suffering to the world, and you become a reservoir of joy and freshness. Here and there are people who know how to take good care of themselves, who live joyfully and happily. They are our strongest support. Everything they do, they do for everyone."
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