There is so much good work being done in the world today. It is astonishing how many people are dedicating their lives more and more to helping others.

The human potential movement has spawned organizations and individuals committed to bringing change to the world through changing the individual. When Ghandi said “be the change you wish to see in the world”, he probably could not have imagined how many people would take up that call and attempt to make the world a better place by making themselves better people through self-reflexive observation and intentional changework.

As a result of the richness in the field that we can now experience, it is useful to distinguish among the many offerings.

There are three basic approaches I have noticed, experienced, and participated in directly. They are:

1. Development
2. Transformation
3. Evolution

These are each useful in and of themselves. They are “good”. And yet they have limitations that come along with their benefits. Let us examine this together… Read more…

Uncategorized

[Note to the reader: as this series is comprised of excerpts from a book draft, is it not meant to be complete. Some ideas will be developed and others will be left for a later time. Moreover, some of you who are familiar with my work will wonder why I am not covering a certain concept or other. This is for the same reason. It is my hope that in revealing these excerpts free to you now, that these I.D.E.A.s may begin to make a difference in your life...even now.]

*if you have not yet read Part 1: Emotional Imprisonment, you can find it here.

Once we have taken full responsibility for our emotional life and reactions, the next step is to accept and educate ourselves to the fact that our experience is not some amorphous mass—that it has structure. This is one part education and once educated, one hundred parts exercise and daily practice.

It is important to note here that developing facility is not a matter of acquiring this skill or that skill and then you suddenly “have facility”. In technical terms, it is not a binary or digital experience; it is not on or off. It is an analog experience; it is experienced in varying degrees. It is like building a muscle. When building a muscle, you go to the gym or work in some way you have never worked before. At first, you can lift a small amount of weight. After trying this new behavioral pattern, you may be sore. Some people give up at this point. They say, “Oh—this muscle building business is not for me”, and they go back to their old habit patterns. However, for those who continue to work at it, they notice they can handle ever-increasing levels of weight or demonstrate more endurance. They become stronger and are able to handle more.

Eventually they lift large amounts of weight with seemingly little effort. So it is with facility with self. Read more…

emotions, inter-personal dynamics, intra-personal dynamics, relationships

Part 0: Introduction

“When people are free to act, they will always act in a way that they believe will maximize their utility, i.e., will raise them to the highest possible position on their value scale. Their utility ex ante will be maximized, provided we take care to interpret “utility” in an ordinal rather than a cardinal manner. Any action, any exchange that takes place on the free market or more broadly in the free society, occurs because of the expected benefit to each party concerned.” –Murray N. Rothbard, Power and Market

“We must not be afraid to be free.”–Justice Black

Human beings have an inexhaustible spirit. Through wars, pestilence, oppression, disasters, genocide and personal tragedy, human beings continue to express creativity and ingenuity to the very degree that they are allowed the liberties to do so. It is an unquenchable and inexhaustible Spirit. It is the best—the Divine—within each of us that makes it so. And while at times, we have varying degrees of access to the divine within us, and sometimes the light is dim and flickers, the fact remains that there is a god or goddess in all of us waiting to come out and play.

What if we could integrate our work and our play? Our spirit and our finances? Our economics and our purpose? Our job and our internal worship? The mundane and the divine?

My assertion is that not only is this possible…it is necessary…for the conscious evolution of the planet and for our survival and thrival as a species. Not to mention our personal happiness. As many of us our satisfied–that is we have all the nice stuff. Cars, houses, fine clothing, computers, iPods, great relationships, money…but we remain unfulfilled. Read more…

Purpose, spirituality

“Liberty requires responsibility. That is why most men dread it.”—George Bernard Shaw

Most of us are in a prison. A prison we create with our own minds. We often do it unconsciously and automatically—not realizing the damage we are doing to ourselves and others. Not even realizing we are in a prison. Not realizing how limited the area is in which we allow ourselves to roam.

Fortunately, once we become aware of our imprisonment and the limits of our confines, we can appeal to ourselves—for unlike a real prison, only we can free ourselves from these confines—to be let out on parole, giving us more choice and more access to the real world. The more we exercise this choice and the more our mental habits improve, eventually we can discharge ourselves from parole and enjoy true freedom, true peace, and true happiness.

What is the greatest achievement we could all experience? What do we all ultimately want? Whether through our goals, our relationships, the recreational experiences we choose, the standards we hold for ourselves, the books we read, or the spiritual paths we walk—regardless of the context—we all are ultimately striving for the same thing: happiness. We could say that this is the human being’s purpose in life—to be happy and to live a life in service of real and true happiness according to our nature.

And yet, misery and unhappiness is universal–even accepted in some philosophical circles as the human condition. Suffering, they say, is the natural order of things. Or “simple pain—the pain of everyday life”. Or “misery is there”.

I disagree. Read more…

emotions, inter-personal dynamics, intra-personal dynamics