Blank Page

Blank page. Openness. 

All possibilities still here. 

Add a line, mark, letter or word

and infinite possibilities fade

into finite actualities.

Fabric of the Universe

Modern quantum physics suggests that 
uncertainty is woven into 
the fabric of the universe. 
Each of us reflects the 
wholeness of all that is. 
Can't be certain 
we'll be here tomorrow.  
Statistically, chances are good 
for being correct when saying, 
"See you tomorrow morning." 
That's not absolutely determined. 
So be humble. 
Nothing is certain - 
not even death and taxes.

Let the Good News be Told

Before the sun rises, let the good news

be told. Today is a better day. Today

I'm feeling well again. Today love rings

the Earth with wisdom and power.

Sitting, standing, breathing, eating, day

dreaming, flying in my memory from spot to

spot in the ocean of past scenes –

now a youth, now a lover, now a student,

now a father, now an older man. Pain and

joy flickering like stars in vast

velvet spaces.

New Beginnings

New Beginnings

are often

disguised as

painful endings.

    ~ attributed to Lao Tzu ~ 

Merits of Hard Work

Metamorphosis

Image: http://www.revuemag.com/2011/06/metamorphosis/ 

"Metamorphosis" implies "changing forms". Life requires going through stages of transformation - changing forms or stages of life. Before you are a baby you are a fetus, after birth you are the small little creature. You can't even walk, but later you start crawling, followed by walking, later on you're talking, one day you're going to school. Eventually you grow up and become fully functional. A worm turns into a butterfly. You are like a butterfly who had once been a worm. Now, what's next?   

Beyond Limits - Arthur C. Clarke

The only way to discover the limits of the possible 

is to go beyond them into the impossible.

~ Arthur C. Clarke

Vision Actualization Process

The following is a ten step process for making your visions happen. I developed it with hundreds of students in my PACS 164A (Introduction to Nonviolence) class at the University of California, Berkeley. You can do it by yourself; however, it's more powerful if you do it with others. We had over 400 students go through this process. All kinds of wonderful projects emerged. Lives where changed. Thousands of people outside our classes (even in foreign countries) received the benefits of student visions for good turned into tangible actions in the world. 

Vision Actualization Process

Date: _______________

Name:  Last_________________ First_______________

A personal vision contributing a nonviolent sustainable good society.

Write down responses to the following steps. Read your responses. Rewrite as you become clearer on your project. Share with others what you are doing. Take feedback. Make adjustments if needed. Rewrite again. Act. Feedback. Adjust. Act again. Actualize.

Vision Title
A short descriptive title for your personal vision.

Detailed Vision Story
On a singe sheet of paper, describe your current vision. Keep in mind that it is perfectly okay to now have a different vision than the one you originally declared in class.

Mission Statement
A brief summary of what you are trying to accomplish.

Territory
The “landscape” of people, problems, and projects your vision is embedded within. Why is it needed? Who else is doing it? How can you do it better?

Limiting Beliefs, Re-framing, and Positive Self Affirmations 
Identify the limiting beliefs that slow down or stop you and re-frame them into affirmations supporting your vision.

Goals
List specific goals that must be met in order to attain your vision. (Could be one or several interdependent goals.) What resources do you need in terms of time, people, knowledge, money, and materials? What overall types of actions are required?

Planning
Provide specific steps and timelines for attaining each goal. 

Actualization
Let all of the above “hit the road”. Moving from thought to action. What actions did you already accomplish to actualize your vision? What actions are you undertaking at this time? What’s ahead on your "to do list" for today, tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, etc.?

Observations and Adjustments
Evaluate, reevaluate, and reevaluate again your ideas and/or process. What problems, complexities or issues are you running into? What modifications are, or have been, required of your plan?  Where are you now?

Any Other Comments.
For example, your personal experience with the vision project, your thoughts about doing this in the class context, or anything else.

Twenty/Twenty

There are many times when our actions don't reflect our intentions. When they negatively affect others it can feel like someone else has enacted them. So, who is this dark figure? The one who causes negativity. Is there a light figure who creates the positive?

It is like being thrown into the book, "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." The same person who has two identities: the light Dr. Jekyll and the wicked Mr. Hyde. There are some events where you feel like Hyde, others where you feel like Jekyll. While it seems these two are playing out their own lives, it always returns to a single choice. Sometimes choices are reactions and there isn't enough time to choose what we believe to be as best but regardless we are not born split into two pieces. There are choices which bring light and others which cast darkness. It is the ability to see our actions and their consequences which illustrate that we are complete. It's only through Hyde's eye that we can see Jekyll at all. Our choice is then picking what we want to nurture. Thank Mr. Hyde as much as you do Dr. Jekyll; it takes both eyes to see the full picture.

Updates

By changing the resolution on our computer screen the image we see becomes clearer. How is this any different from life? By changing ourselves, we change our perceptions and are able to see life more clearly. Isn't time we upgrade our operating systems?

Do you have a dream?

Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream. So did Gandhi and Cesar Chaves. So do great writers, artists, businesspersons, and parents. Truth is: we all have a dream. Perhaps, first encountered early in life. But it's forgotten or beaten down by parents and teachers. Forgotten by years of being "on track" with homework assignments, and one planned activity after another. Listen deeply now to your heart. What's your truest, deepest life purpose? The purpose that fullfills your longing to express and do love's work out in the world? Take time now to look and feel? It may be difficult; many false dreams may come. You may delightfully discover and celebrate that you're living that dream now. You may currently have what appears to be a "meaningless" job, but (at the same time), be sure to keep alive a connection to your dream today.

Work as Sacrifice

Do work as sacrifice, not for the sake of one's own ego. Selfless work makes you free and happy. You are out of the way. It happens to be the work you do. Action without attachment to results; action for its own sake. I know this is difficult to imagine. But, try it. Make it your personal psychological, spiritual practice for a while. You'll be living in the joy of the process, in the moment - not living for a result that later must be surpassed as if running on a thread mill. Be free - starting now!

Changing the world

How do we change the world? Don’t even try – it’s impossible. Any change you try will have unpredictable consequences. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Just change yourself, just wait until the obvious situation for change presents itself. You are there. Your hands can touch the levers of action, of power. Manage yourself wisely. Focus on love. Focus on the action not the outcome. Ride the wave. It may be only a ripple; or, a big wave that wipes you out. Wait again, try the next wave. Do nothing, melt into what is.

Intentional Living

If you have known how to compose your life,
you have accomplished a great deal more
than the man who knows how to compose a book…
You have done more than the man
who has taken cities and empires.
Montaigne*

A life can be composed, can be intentional. Freedom or liberty implies an inner power to change thought patterns, leading to new words and actions, leading to new life at large. We dynamically walk the path of our life purpose – that means that we change and adjust as we walk along the way. Here are several steps that enhance intentional free living:

• Create an ideal vision of the way your life can be.
• Write and repeat affirmations (a firm, “to make firm”), prayers, or mantras that support you in getting to that ideal vision.
• Make plans to support the steps of realizing each one of these affirmations.
• Externalize/realize. Turn plans into actions (either internal or external).
• Keep observing, re-evaluating where you are. Make adjustments based on feedback from circumstances -- so that your inner power works to change and improve circumstances.**

Circumstances are given to us from the beginning of life; but, at every point we are also changing those circumstances.

_____________________
* Quoted in The Practical Cogitator: The Thinker’s Anthology. Selected and edited by Charles Curtis, Jr. and Ferris Greenslet. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1962. page 85.

* * These steps based on suggestions from Mark Allan’s teachings.

Lampshade and light

Is the disturbing person next door nothing but an "idiot"? Is the boss only out to get us? Are those homeless people merely the untouchables of society? Do we pay attention mostly to clothes and possessions? If so, we're looking at "lampshades". We could instead "see the light and not just the lampshade."* The light in others is also the light within us -- a spark of Consciousness. The Golden Rule found in all great religious traditions becomes totally self-evident. At the core, everyone else is like us. What a marvelous sight to behold! Seeing the light in others spontaneously gives others permission to be all that they can be -- freed from our lampshade-like judgments.

* I've heard this attributed to the Jerry Jampolsky's Attitudinal Healing center.