Sometimes I feel caught between two opposing selves — the “false self” imposed by society and what I would call my “true self.” How often we confuse the two and assume society’s mould to be our true self. … I saw that the entity I had taken to be “me” was really a fabrication. My true nature, I realized, was much more real, both uglier and more beautiful than I could have imagined.*
Thich Nhat Hanh

When Eve saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her Adam, who was with her, and he ate.**

Alas, there are no shortcuts to wisdom;
Knowledge remains only that
until we begin to live with or in spite of it.

Seeking to know ourselves is the
beginning of our path to wisdom:
We will not enjoy all that we discover about ourselves, for sure –
There will be some enjoyable surprises, too;
If we try to begin somewhere else,
This is where we’ll be led back to:
It’s the human condition.
We call ourselves homo sapiens sapiens
… which means”to taste” or “to know.”
The species that knows and knows that it knows.
And noe maybe we need to live ourselves into
owning that name
by cultivating awareness
and awareness of awareness itself
and let that be in some sense the guide
as to what we’re going to invest in … .^

*Maria Popova’s The Marginalian blog: How the Great Zen Master and Peace Activist Thich Nhat Hanh Found Himself and Lost His Self in a Library Epiphany;
**Genesis 3:6;
^Jon Kabat-Zinn from Krista Tippett’s Becoming Wise.

Talent is cheap – you have to be obsessed, otherwise, you are going to give up.*
John Baldessari

I found myself telling him … that I felt stopped at a crossroads, looking for direction, unsure of my next steps. I told him I was beginning to feel a few icy tendrils of cynicism around what work might actually mean to most of the adult world, and with a long work life still ahead of me, I wanted to know what it took to find a life and a work such as he had found, a work into which you could really put your heart and soul.**
David Whyte

If Richard Sennett is even half-right^ about how
the first industrial revolution took away people’s skilful hands, and
the second industrial revolution incarnated in the computer
took away our skilful minds,
Then AI will only compound our forfeitures.

We are meaning-making creatures, and a part of this
is meaningful work to shape our days with purpose.

There’s never been a more critical time –
How often have these words been spoken through history? –
To identify our talents in which a deep passion resides,
To notice what we are doing when we are feeling highly energised,
To inscribe these things within our values,
To stop waiting for someone else to dictate our story and
to pen our own.

*Austin Kleon’s blog: You have to be obsessed;
**David Whyte’s Crossing the Unknown Sea;
^Richard Sennett’s The Craftsman.

To know yourself is, above all, to know what one lacks. It is to measure oneself against Truth, and not the other way around. The first product of self-knowledge is humility.*
Brother Dave

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.**
Jesus of Nazareth

Who is the most humble person in the world?

No-one knows, but they must be having
a whale of a time,
The grandest of adventures.

I come to this place at the beginning of the day
to calm and quiet my soul,
To meet with larger thoughts from
greater lives –
Not to become more like them or
do what they do,
But to become more who I am
and do what I must do:
Sooner or later we must distinguish between
what we are not and what we are.
We must accept the fact that we are not
what we would like to be.
We must cast of our false, exterior self
like the cheap and shiny garment it is … .
We must find our real self,
in all its elemental poverty,
but also in it great and
very simple dignity … .*

*Ian Morgan Cron’s The Road Back to You;
**Matthew 5:5;
^Thomas Merton from Ian Morgan Cron’s The Road Back to You.

Everything in my life, it seemed, had led to this point, this perfect point, poised between the unwashed white and blue of temple and sky.*
Jean Houston

Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey
helps us to see that there is both an ordinary world
and a special world;
There is the ordinary world of
catching buses and spinach between the teeth,
But there is also a mythical world of
meaning and significance.

Systems thinker Peter Senge informs us
that there is both a reinforcing loop and a
balancing loop to any system;**
When there is a problem,
We must go to the balancing loop
to fix it –
And on the brighter side,
When it’s working well,
It takes us to
our perfect, timeless point
of being and doing.

Our myth, or story, is the balancing loop
for what we experience as life-in-all-its-fullness.

*Jean Houston’s A Mythic Life;
**Peter Senge’s The 5th Discipline.

We connect to an inner place of wonder, and thus we are open to recognising the spirit of wonder in the world around us.*
Kelvy Bird

Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.**

Silence and wonder,
These excite me;
If these were all my life were about,
I would be content, I feel.

And yet there is more,
For I find I must break the silence,
Allow the wonder to pour into inspiration and
into activity:
All you have to do is write one true sentence.
Write the truest sentence you know.^
Yet, I know where I must come
first of all.

*Kelvy Bird’s Generative Scribing;
**1 Kings 19:11-12;
^Ernest Hemingway, from Bernadette Jiwa’s What Great Storytellers Know.

And no matter how hard you look, you’re almost invisible
to yourself,
Camouflaged by familiarity.*
Verlyn Klinkenborg

When you feel the rush of fear as you put your point of view, your art, or your idea out into the world, this is not an invitation to step back into the shadows; it’s a sign that you’re at the edge, right where you should be.**
Martin Amor and Alex Pellew

Do what you are passionate about:
It will save you from the overfamiliar that even now is
closing in around you,
And will save you from those lullabies of
“easy and repeat.”

Your passion reminds you that
you are more than this,
A Human Becoming,
Journeying, never arriving,
The worries and fears telling you how
you are still alive.

*Verlyn Klinkenborg’s Several short sentences about writing;
**Martin Amor and Alex Pellew’s The Idea in You

Innovation is a collective phenomenon that happens between, not within, brains. Therein lies a lesson for the modern world.*
Matt Ridley

The imagination is more like the moon than the sun because it is dependent on another thing and exists, in no pure state by itself … . It needs and openness to whatever is there at the moment and to not reject whatever is there because of any formulaic concept from the past. The imagination allows me to die a credence and an integrity to any existence outside of myself.**
Michael Burkard

But it is hard to remain open to the other,
Demanding and tiring,
And yet we know this is where our future lies.

We might say,
The heroic life involves being lost in the other:
Once across [the threshold],
the hero is swallowed by the unknown,
be it a whale, a wolf,
A sarcophagus, or a cave.^

The same is not enough for us,
Something dies in us before we die,
But when we press on, if
we press on, then
I sense we may discover life’s larger topography
of grace and forgiveness and patience
and love and goodness
and compassion.

*Matt Ridley’s How Innovation Works;
**Mary Ruefle’s On Imagination;
^Jean Houston’s A Mythic Life.

Notice that as soon as something around you changes, you change in response to it. You respond all the time to your environment. A lot of the time you are completely aware of these changes. In Solution Focus we make this natural process of change work for us.*
Rayyya Ghul

 [I]f anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile.**
Jesus of Nazareth

Margaret Mead would keep her hate mail and
use the anger she felt when rereading it in order
to regain her energy when tired;
She was using the letter-writer’s criticism and threat
for being an agent rather than victim.

Contrast this with a university student demanding safe space,
Effectively remaining a victim when
really they are less fragile than they know:
I was feeling bombarded by a lot of viewpoints
that really go against my dearly and closely held beliefs.^

Jesus’ words perhaps have the appearance of
encouraging victimisation,
But on closer examination, we see the victimised
taking the initiative and becoming an agent,
Calling out wrongdoing with goodness –
For instance, a Roman soldier demanding a Hebrew
carry their pack for one mile
would likely get into trouble if they accepted the
offer of a second mile.

Of goodness, Iris Murdoch writes:
[Good’s] existence is the unmistakable sign
that we are spirit creatures,
attracted by excellence and made for the good.^^

Agency uncovers talents,
Notices energies,
Reaches towards values …
Employing them for the good.

*Rayya Ghul’s The Power of the Next Small Step;
**Matthew 5:39b-41;
Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt’s The Coddling of the American Mind;
^^Iris Murdoch’s The Sovereignty of Good.

Persons of tomorrow, though fully alive as individuals, are also at home in their relationships. Capacities such as loyalty, partnership, friendship, empathy, solidarity, support, nurturance and followership, are necessary ingredients for thriving in the 21st century.*
Maureen O’Hara and Graham Lancaster

Yes, we must continue to read and write and cipher, but we also need to embrace an education for liberating the ability to imagine, to dream, and expand the limits of the possible. … Perhaps I will find it in the future.**
Jean Houston

I’m all for someone knowing who they are,
It’s what my work is all about,
But knowing who we are only makes sense in community,
And community may well be how we come to know
who we are.

However, in the West it seems that
we are living in the age of individualism and
celebrity, and
when we do find each other can
be in the form of “us versus them,”
But this is not the future, and
it is not why we have struggled for so long
only to arrive here, now.

Agnes Varda declared,
There is only one age: alive,^
Which I borrow the style of when I suggest
there is only one future: us.

People from the future know this and
live towards this today:
Only that day dawns to which we are awake.^^

*Maureen O’Hara and Graham Lancaster’s Dancing at the Edge;
**Jean Houston’s A Mythic Life;
^Austin Kleon’s blog: A quote a day;
^^Henry David Thoreau, from Krista Tippett’s Becoming Wise.

Many people live half-lives, turning the rheostat down to a very dim version of what and what they really are.*
Jean Houston

The stakes in good work are necessarily high. Our competence maybe at stake in ordinary, unthinking work, but in good words that is a heartfelt expression of ourselves, we necessarily put our identities to hazard.
David Whyte

We want magic,
But when we discover that magic is
really about turning up,
Staying longer,
Paying attention,
Failing,
Learning,
Trying again –
With no guarantees –
Then we may be tempted to search out
a more convenient path,
BUT:
Inconvenient!
That’s great news …
because it means that most other people
can’t be bothered.
It’s valuable because the very inconvenience of it
makes it scarce.
The stuff that matters is almost always inconvenient.
If it’s not, you might be mistaken about what matters.^

The thing you really want to do
is likely to be inconvenient,
But that’s why we love it;
We see how it matters to you so much that
nothing will stop you.

And because it’s scarce,
It matters to us.

*Jean Houston’s A Mythic Life;
**David Whyte’s Crossing the Unknown Sea;
^Seth Godin’s blog: Inconvenient!