From the Marin Independent Journal August 7th, 2006:

San Rafael firefighters are investigating the cause of a two-alarm fire that destroyed a D Street apartment Sunday afternoon. No one was injured in the fire. “We have no idea what caused it,” Battalion Chief Ritt Hewitt said.

He said the fire’s origins were confusing, but not suspicious.

“It began in a room that was almost bare, except for some books and small electronic items,” Hewitt said. “We’re not sure what happened.”

Firefighters arrived at 412 D Street at 2:19 p.m. to find a small but intense fire burning in the apartment of Addrianna Reitenbach.

“The glass blew out, and we were worried that the fire might spread to a nearby utility pole,” Hewitt said. “But that was only for a short time.”

While the fire left Reitenbach’s apartment a charred, blackened mess, the rest of the building, a commercial/residential complex, sustained no significant damage, Hewitt said.

“Both of our laptops, which contain both of our businesses, weren’t in the apartment at the time of the fire, so there was no harm done there,” said Jason McClain, a friend of Reitenbach’s. “We have a wide community of friends that we can stay with, so there should be no problem.”

Reitenbach and McClain had left the apartment earlier that morning and were mystified by the cause of the fire, McClain said.

“We’re not smokers, and we didn’t have any heaters on or electronic devices plugged in,” McClain said.

Part 1: Identification

“The ultimate spiritual practice is dis-identifying from that which you think is you—objects in your awareness…” —Ken Wilber, Kosmic Consciousness

On August 7th, 2006, my apartment burned down. I lost everything aside from my laptop and the majority of my clothing, which had luckily been moved the night before to another location.

What do you do when your house burns down and you lose virtually all of your possessions? In the context of Personal Evolution, it is an opportunity. An opportunity to dis-identify from that which you think is you—and that which you have grown attached to. It is also an opportunity to explore just where and to what ”things” you are identified, or more accurately—to what degree.

You may ask, “why?” or “for what purpose?”

One of the aspects of the human experience that people could most benefit from is emotional freedom. To learn to become free from what is quite often self-generated misery. That is, the ability to respond rather than react. The ability to skip over the misery you need to move through anyway in order to uncover the solutions. The ability to rapidly overcome challenges. The ability to rapidly see the gift or the benefit to whatever painful experience we may have in our human being-ness. And above all, the ability to stay resourceful, or rapidly return to a place of centered authentic resourcefulness, in the face of great adversity.

Notice the word “ability” repeatedly in those statements.

It is a skill; an ability to develop. Developing “facility with Self”, that is, the ability to navigate your own interiors such that you can have choice…choice around your interpretive experience, choice around your evaluative experience, choice around and over your subjective experience in general. And, choice exercised for long enough becomes a habit.

That habit becomes emotional freedom.

If I were forced to pick just one…the practice of dis-identification is the single most powerful gateway to emotional freedom.

The reality is, we are all identified with something to some degree. It may be to a large degree. It may be subtle and minute. The degree to which we are free from identification is largely the degree to which we are free emotionally around the object of identification.
What do we identify with?

It may be our finances. It may be our possessions. It may be our intimate relationship. It may be our political affiliation, our sexuality, our beliefs or our religion, our nationality, our ethnicity, our looks, or our bodies. It may be our reputation or our efficacy or our intelligence. Whatever the case or cases may be, this seems to be part of the human condition if left to our devices—if we do not practice dis-identification.

Have you ever felt fear or panic at the loss of a possession only to later find it? Have you ever actually lost a possession and felt great sadness as a result? Have you ever become extremely defensive or aggressive when someone challenged a belief you held dear; defending it almost as if you were defending your very life? Have you ever experience extreme misery once a relationship ended to such a degree that you felt lost—literally uncertain of who you are without it? Have you ever felt severe shame or even despair when a behavioral choice you made resulted in a dramatic negative impact on your social or professional reputation? Did you contemplate suicide as a result? Do you know someone who did or has?

These are all clear symptoms of an unconscious identification with the “object” or “concept” being challenged. That is to say that consciously [rarely] or unconsciously [often] you feel it actually is you.

Do you have your possessions—or do they have you? Do you have your relationship—or does it have you? Do you have your reputation—or does it have you? Do you have your finances—or do they have you? Do you have your political positions—or do they have you? Do you have your spiritual beliefs—or do they have you? Do you have your emotional experience…or…does it have you?

Of course the universal spiritual truth is that you are none of those things. Who you are is the Witness—your awareness; that which is observing it all. This is all well and good to intellectualize—to have the insight. Many have had the insight. Be it in prayer, through the reading of a particularly insightful book, in meditation, through the experience with a guru, or walking down the street one fine day. It is not the realizing it that brings freedom. Just as reading a book on finances does not make you a wise investor, it is the integration of this principle into every context of your life that will give you the freedom you desire and deserve. It is the integration of this principle that will ultimately have you experience more consistent joy, happiness, and peace.

What would it be worth to you to have consistent access to those states?

Having become clear on the what and the why, the question becomes: “how do we practice dis-identification?” The answer is simple, and not easy. Whenever we are identified with an object in our awareness, we will know from our emotions and/or our bodily sensations.

When we imagine losing something—or think it will be taken from us, which is essentially the same—be it a limb, an intimate relationship, or a possession, do we feel fear? Panic? Do you feel a pulling sensation? A turn in your stomach? An uneasiness, etc.? Once we notice this, then the practice is to detach from it through observation. Objectify the sensation in a positive way—become fascinated by it. In this moment, notice you are not the sensation. You are not your fear or your panic or your compulsion or your desire. You have it, but it does not have to have you. You are not it. Who you are is the watcher, the observer, the Witness. You are consciousness. Pure awareness.

Do this often.

It is a skill; a muscle to build. And just as when you visit the gym for the first time ever, or for the first time in a long while, the movements at first may seem uncoordinated and unpracticed. They may seem awkward. However, just as with any skill to be developed, from kinesthetic to artistic to intellectual to sexual to communicative, it takes practice to become efficacious. It may not be easy at first, but it will become more and more so. And the easier it becomes and the more practiced you become at it, you will begin to notice the tremendous benefits and results of your skill. You will begin to navigate your own interiors. You will begin to experience greater and greater choice and freedom. And in the space of that freedom, your natural birthright will be uncovered and arise, bubbling to the surface. Your natural human nature—innocence, joy, playfulness, spontaneity, and true happiness. Happiness from within. Happiness arising from the purity and cleanliness of your own consciousness.

Once enough of us have reached that stage, and have consistent access to it—once it is our center of gravity—then we will have truly conspired in happiness. We will have collaborated to create a world in which we all want to belong.

Be sure to see parts one, two, and three here, here, and here respectively.

In this piece we will examine the assumptions that lead to guilt, the structure of shame, and the antidotes to both.

Guilt

Q: “I often feel guilty for things I have done.”
A: [S.N. Geonka ] “Guilt has no place in Dhamma [the path to enlightenment or ‘the law of nature’].”

I assert that guilt serves no purpose in inter-personal relations. No legitimate purpose.

Some say “if the person feels guilty or remorseful, then I can be assured they will not repeat this terrible wrong they committed against me” or “ I am assured of their good character”.

Is this accurate? Let’s examine this together.

Sharon slept with another man, violating the monogamous covenant she shared with her husband. She felt “bad” and out of guilt, told him the truth. She swore it would never happen again. Seeing how badly she felt, her husband felt assured this would not happen again and stayed with her and the marriage commitment. A few years later, Sharon was unfaithful a second time and in fact, carried on an affair with another man. This time she felt she best not be honest with her husband. How many chances would he give her, really? Unfortunately, he found out about it through some carelessness of hers and some direct questioning which followed. Again, she was authentically remorseful and felt guilty for misleading and breaking her husband’s trust—she did not feel bad just for getting caught, rather she felt authentically guilty for what she had done. They separated, sought counseling, and eventually divorced.

Far from Sharon being a fiction of my mind for the purpose of illustration, this story is real, and the name has been changed. And, this is just one example of many I could give of patterns of behavior, remorse or guilt, and repetition of the problem behavior.

Guilt is unreliable [at best] as a guarantee of future behavior. We have all seen people apologize and be guilt-ridden, yet commit the same acts repeatedly.

I go so far in my own relations as to let people know very clearly that their guilt and apologies hold no currency with me. I WANT them to feel free emotionally about any “wrong” they may have committed against me. At the same time, I may not want them to commit the same act against me again—I do want assurance of a shift in behavior and an honest and earnest intention by them to do so through learning. For that, guilt does not help. In fact, it is a hindrance What is simply needed is their acknowledgement of the mistake and their pledge to not commit the act again. If it happens repeatedly, then there are practical choices to be made: do we continue to invest time and energy with this individual?

Part 1

Part 0 can be found here.

[Note to reader & disclaimer: 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. I am leaving pieces out intentionally. however, it is my hope that in revealing these excerpts free to you, that these I.D.E.A.s may begin to make a difference in your life…even now.]

–

Living consciously is an infinite and life-time endeavor. Often in the West we think of being “conscious OR unconscious”. That is, we are one or the other. And, unless we are asleep or in a coma, we are thought to be “conscious”. Are we really? How many of our actions are conscious? How much of our existence is managed consciously? Do you order yourself to breathe every breath? Think every thought? Make every movement? Of course not. And it would be impossible to do so. Our conscious minds are not equipped to manage the millions of actions that are taking place at the cellular and molecular level. It is a good thing that this is all happening “unconsciously”.

What about those things we are supposed to be consciously controlling or at least consciously aware of? Driving, walking, eating, making love, conversing, our surroundings…have you ever been driving on the freeway and passed your familiar exit and it was miles before you realized it? We all have. Have you ever been driving, arrived at work or home and can not remember large portions of your drive because you were lost in thoughts? We all have.

However, living consciously is not just about being aware and being “present to” your surroundings or what is happening, although that is certainly part of it and good practice for your mind. A practice we will cover later. And it is not a binary experience—not digital, but rather it is analog. That is, it is not a question of whether we are living consciously or not, but to what degree.

Living consciously is about making conscious choices; choices that will increase the likelihood of our long-term happiness regardless of [and at times, in spite of] our short-term desires. In order to do this we must first define our values consciously. This is simple and easy enough to do, but is seldom actually done. How does one define their values? Define is actually less accurate than “discover” or “distinguish”. We can do this by asking ourselves a simple question repeatedly:

The type of answer we are looking for will be an abstraction—a nominalization—that is, it will be a process stated as a noun. Some examples are:

• Contribution
• Family
• Security
• Prosperity
• Love
• Freedom

I am not sure what they are for you, but we will soon discover them. The type of answer we are not looking for is a static noun. Examples are:

[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.

“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.

Who am I? Who are you? Who are we? Do I “know” you?

The ultimate spiritual practice is dis-identifying with that which we think is us—objects in our awareness. It may be our possessions. It may be our finances. It may be our looks. It may be our intelligence. It may be our social reputation. It may be our behaviors, our sexual orientation, our beliefs, or ideas. And yet we are none of that.

As the Buddhists would say—we are the pure witness. As Mark Michael Lewis would say—“We are not [XYZ], we are that which is experiencing [all of it]”. As Ken Wilber would say—“[You are] the witness, the original face you had before you were born—before the big bang…is not a thing or an object. It is a feeling…an atmosphere”.

I would agree with all of that—indeed, the ultimate spiritual practice is dis-identifying with that which you think is you—anything other than pure awareness—pure witness, and add: before we can dis-identify, we must first recognize when we are identified—when we have a case of mistaken identity. Yet even before we can recognize this, we must have developed self-reflexive awareness.

Simple, but not easy, as in the moment [any moment] when we are in our experience, we are often IN our experience—That is to say our experience has us, we do not have it. AND, to the degree we have built the muscle of self awareness and self-reflection by being able to take our very self and make it an object in our awareness is the degree to which we have choice.

Even further, to the degree that we have “meta-cognition”—that is the ability to think about our thinking—is the degree to which we have choice around our thinking. And as most of you know, how we think about something creates our emotional experience around it. The more we exercise and build the muscle of witnessing, the more we move from misery to emotional choice and finally to emotional freedom.

How do we know if we are identified? If you imagine anything being taken away from you and you experience a high degree of fear or anxiety—or if it has been taken away from you and you are in grief or misery—you are identified. You have a case of mistaken identity [or a “confusion of identify location” as I like to phrase it]–and you are identified with something other than who you truly are—pure witness; radical spirit; God.

Yet we judge ourselves [and often go into shame] when we do not attain what we think we should with the objects in our awareness. We are judging our degree of success with them as us—as our very Self.

All this is sad enough, yet we don’t stop there do we? We go even further and we judge others [and indulge in self-righteousness] with the same case of mistaken identity. We judge them for their dress, their speech, their intelligence, their attractiveness [or lack thereof], their possessions, status, sexual orientation, political affiliations or positions, etc. etc., etc.

While it sometimes makes sense to judge behaviors [and even at times to insist they stop or are dealt with from a justice standpoint] we do not judge just the behaviors—we judge the being at their core for a behavior. Something external to who they are truly. This is all too easy to do and too often indulged in to feel superior or reinforce our fears or…

The bottom line is that collapsing behaviors [or any other object in our awareness] with identity is a gross confusion of logical levels. To do it to ourselves creates misery in one form or another. To do it to others allows us to feel superior or reinforce our self-indulgent fears—or both.

To free yourself from this trap is the ultimate spiritual practice.
To do so means taking on five simple steps:

1. Develop self-reflexive awareness
2. Notice how you are thinking about yourself or others [meta-cognition] and whether it serves your ultimate happiness
and thrival
3. Recognize when you are identified [fear, anxiety, misery, loss, or grief in specific contexts]
4. Notice that it is not really you—there is the noticer—behind what you are aware of is that which is aware. This is you.
5. Take this on as a daily spiritual practice

And as an additional exercise, step into the belief that we are all in evolution and are therefore always deepening and changing and therefore we never really “know” anyone. As a result we must take on the practice of continually updating our internal representations [our interpretations] of others. Continually looking to increase and update our accuracy in who we think they are. But that is another thought to flesh out at another time.

May you be happy and free.

–

For more on dis-identification, read The Key in the Darkness, which can be found at The Priest and the Punk.

“it’s okay to lose, so long as you learn from every game you choose…”
“If there is no future, and there is no past; if all we’ve got is right now, then…let’s make it last.”
“Remember your dreams because your dreams become the life you lead…”
–Prince

Human beings have a strange relationship to time.

We sometimes get stuck in moments and replay them over and over again. We often fail to live in the present—not hearing the person right in front of us. Some of us are so focused on our goals in the future we often fail to enjoy them when we attain them—rather, setting new, bigger, more impressive or more challenging goals without ever pausing to enjoy the view from this new height.

Then there is this idea that there is only “the now”– which is certainly one way to think about it. At the same time, while the past and future may only live in our minds, so do so many other things. Does that mean they do not exist? Memories? Fondness for someone? Plans for our future? They are indeed “real” even if they are strictly intra-subjective experiences. If we declared they were not, we would have to say intentionality, compassion, hope, love, our memories, etc. were not “real”.

Aside from the most dogmatic scientific materialists, I know very few who are willing to support that argument.

What then is the most appropriate and useful relationship to time that we could cultivate, such that we accelerating our personal evolution? How can we use our internal representation of time for emotional choice and ultimately, emotional freedom?

The Past

The past, in the context of accelerating our evolution, is really only useful for one thing: learnings. It is a treasure trove of opportunities for learnings and therefore evolutionary advancement. If, while we review past events, we simply ask two questions:

1. How am I responsible?
2. What can I learn?

…then our relationship to the past is a healthy one. That is, it is one that supports increasing our spiritual depth and emotional freedom while building on mistakes in a useful way.

The first question builds esteem for the self as all responsibility does, so long as we are taking responsibility responsibly—that is free of shame. If we use it instead as an opportunity to shame ourselves or judge ourselves, then we have been irresponsible in this exercise and defeated the very purpose of it.

The questions must be answered with a positive or empowering forward look. In the case of a “failure” or a negative event, or perhaps in exhibiting behaviors that are out of alignment with our values: what can I learn such that this will not happen in the future? Or, What will I do differently in the future? In the case of “successes”: what can I learn such that I can continue to model this behavior? How can I increase my effectiveness even further?

The Present

People often speak of “staying present” or “being present” or “being in the now” as if we were somehow absent. We are always present—the question is, “what are we present to?” Often when people are not paying attention to what is in front of them, they are paying attention to their internal representations. Their internal thoughts, fantasies, imagery, or internal dialogue. Building the muscle of mastering our minds such that we are present to what is in front of us when we need to be—fully present without atemporal or past-related thoughts—is one of the critical components of the game of Personal Evolution. There are times when we are not even aware of our internal representations. We must bring these into consciousness so they can be managed appropriately and responsibly.

Once we become conscious of them, it may be necessary to use certain mental shifts and practices to “shelve” these thoughts to be dealt with later when it is more appropriate for our lives. Sometimes it is a matter of learning to simply quiet the mind through meditation. Or both.

The Future

Often when I work with clients and they are in despair, I elicit their internal representation of time and find it compressed. They are seeing perhaps only two weeks into the future and the events that are occurring in their present are unpleasant. When we extend their sense of time out to include another 100 years these feelings often turn into convictions about what needs to be done.

The truth is that regardless of what is occurring—everything has a nature: it arises and passes away. Nothing lasts forever. This is especially true for human beings. In the greater scheme of things, or in the larger view, or with an expanded sense of time, as we literally zoom out, we become more emotionally free from whatever may be troubling us at that one moment in time. Once the events become objects in our awareness and we are no longer identified with them, we are free form them and can use the events for learnings and make more appropriate choices.

This practice is especially useful for fear and anxiety. The structure of fear and anxiety is that we are imagining some future event with a negative result or outcome. However, since we know that the future exists only in our minds [although in our subjective experience it is very real] then we can bring that imagined future into consciousness and change it to a positive one. Given that neither is more “real” or “true” than the other, the evolutionary master of their own mind will change the imagined future to a positive one and “live into” that—thereby aligning their consciousness around it.

While a high level of facility is required, we can all build the muscle of a more responsible and useful relationship to time. Just like all exercise, at first It may cause soreness. So we start off light. We increase the frequency of our exercise gradually. Eventually, we are lifting heavy weight indeed and are excited about how are new habit is transforming the way we experience ourselves and how we feel. And it is then, that we are becoming free.

If you missed the April Interview of Suraya Keeting, Drama Therapist, on Reality Sandwich , with Julie Mathews, my co-host, you can now download the audio file [25mb] HERE.

Enjoy.

“…how can you tell your brother, ‘Brother, let me remove the speck that is in your eye,’ when you yourself don’t see the log that is in your own eye? You hypocrite! First remove the log from your own eye, and then you can see clearly to remove the speck of chaff that is in your brother’s eye.”—Luke 6:42

There is always a gap.

A gap worth turning our attention to in every moment if we are to live with integrity, as examples, and to be most effective in contributing to others. It is a gap worth shrinking.

It is the gap between our insights and our integration. It is the gap between our vision and our ability to demonstrate our ownership of our understandings. It is the gap between our intellect and our application of the principles we know to be universal truths.

We have all read a book, been to a workshop, listened to a spiritual teacher, or received advice from a friend that we considered to be sound advice. If the goal is to be in this process of the upwardly spiraling and ever-expanding and ever-greater embracing path, then the primary focus needs to be bringing our lofty insights, our visionary experiences down into our bodies—to em-body them. The focus of constant and intentional behavioral integration of our insights will serve us in all aspects of our lives.

Rebecca had a friend who was “going through a rough spot” in her marriage. Her friend needed support; needed a shoulder to cry on and needed advice from someone who had her best interests at heart. Without thinking it through, her friend came to Rebecca with tears in her eyes, uncertainty in her voice, and pain in her heart. Rebecca was compassionate, loving, and did indeed have her friend’s best interests at heart. Rebecca offered her wonderful advice. Sound advice. However, as a result of her lack of integration, the unfortunate truth was, Rebecca’s relationships did not demonstrate the soundness of this advice. Because of this, her friend went away uncertain and untrusting. Her friend’s best interests were not served as a result of what some would call Rebecca’s hypocrisy.

Jeff had just finished a great book on relationships. He had begun to incorporate some of the distinctions and models for communicating included in the book into his daily life and had experienced a renaissance in his relationship with his girlfriend. They continued to deepen their intimacy and understanding of one another. It still required a great deal of awareness, conscious partnership, and grace from them both, but their integration of the insights offered in the book was obviously increasing. Having noticed this, Jeff’s friend Rick came to him much like Rebecca’s friend did, frustrated and hopeless about his own romantic relationship. Aware of his need to even further increase his integration, Jeff offered advice to Rick while acknowledging he was in no way a master of these insights, but told Rick that when he did apply them, it had a dramatically positive impact on the outcome of his conversations in his intimate relationship. This created an opening for Rick that had him not only buy the book, but created incredible breakthroughs for him in his own life in other contexts.

Jenny sat before her spiritual teacher. What had drawn her towards him was not that he taught love and compassion, and contemplative techniques for transcending unnecessary misery to achieve happiness. What drew her towards him was that, without fail, he demonstrated love and compassion for all beings and seemed to be always happy and had perspectives that effortlessly maintained all of this. The gap between his insight and his integration was so slight that only he could perceive it within the subtleties of his own experience; his own self-reflexive and self-reflective thoughts. As a result, he was able to not only live an emotionally liberated life, but was able to positively impact all of those who chose to be around him.

Integrating new distinctions is often like building a muscle. When we first make the movement with the weight, it is perhaps awkward. Sometimes we get sore as a result of our efforts. However, sooner or later it becomes second nature, we increase our weight load and begin to take on ever more complex moves. If you decided to go to the gym tomorrow for the first time in your life [or for the first time in a long time] you would not expect to be able to lift as much weight as if you’d been there for a year diligently working away. You would also not walk away from it tomorrow in despair if you were unable to do so. It is the same with insight and integration. Integration is not an event. Integration is a process. A process worth every sore muscle encountered along the way, as the pay-off is not only fuller liberation, but the ability to contribute to others as an example of a life worth modeling.

There is always a gap.

It is the gap between our insights and our integration. It is the gap between our vision and our ability to demonstrate our ownership of our understandings. It is the gap between our intellect and our application of the principles we know to be universal truths.

A gap worth turning our attention to in every moment if we are to live with integrity, as examples, and to be most effective in contributing to others. It is a gap well worth shrinking. Join me in the effort…