… you don’t have to tell me!

When information becomes knowledge, there’s always the danger of my wielding it as power: I know, you don’t know.

“Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so.”*

‘Motivation is a forest full of twisting trees, unexplored rivers, threatening insects, weird plants, and colourful birds.’**

We surprise ourselves.  This isn’t where we expected to turn up, or, to turn out.

We think there must be something big wrong with us but I wonder whether it’s something really small.  I don’t know for certain but I wonder whether it’s about noticing the small things that have a “tipping point” affect upon our lives.

Karen Armstrong introduces her twelve steps to a compassionate life with a description of the invention (or discovery?) of yoga:

‘the new men of yoga were engaged in the conquest of inner space and in a raid of the unconscious drives that held human beings captive to their ‘me-first’ instincts.’^

We are divergent-emergent-convergent people.  If we only notice the big things, we are only dealing with convergence: this is it.  When we first of all are divergent – noticing the many things, then emergent – noticing the things that connect deeply with ourselves and also deeply with others, then we are capable of moving knowledge to wisdom – something to benefit all.

(*Thomas Merton, quoted in the Northumbria Community‘s Morning Prayer.)
(**From Dan Ariely’s Payoff.)
(^From Karen Armstrongs’s Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life.)