Life happens while we are having conversations with ourselves and other people.
Not learning from others may have a lot to do with not truly ‘listening’ to what others say. Listening is the context that makes life intelligible, allows anything to have meaning, and forms the basis for all communication (both written and spoken). It is a whole lot more than just ‘hearing’ the words that are spoken. I’m always listening, always bringing a prior interpretation or understanding of my world
By Shae Hadden | Bio
The green-crested hummingbird is at my window again this morning, hovering in mid-air sunshine and snatching bits of food from the plants as they begin to bud. He appeared in my life a few weeks ago, and has been coming back every day without fail. Today his weightlessness seems like a metaphor for a new way of Being. I have a choice about who I am being in the world, and I choose to be as light and iridescent as this beautiful bird. This isn’t about reducing my body to its less than 115-pound weight or changing my hair color and wardrobe. Nor is it about casting myself differently in different situations or seeing myself from different angles or perspectives. Lightness of Being is about letting go of all that weighs us down: negative thoughts, beliefs, actions, habitual patterns of pain or suffering…anything from our past that keep us chained to the earth and that limits us from becoming who we choose to be and living the life we want to live. This is the only way for human beings to fly—by consciously setting themselves free.By David Korten | Great Turning website
Read more posts in The World We Want series.
This brings us to the third element of the big picture of the human confrontation with the limits of our Mother Earth: the governing institutions to which we give the power to set our priorities and our collective course. We might wonder how such injustice could happen in a world governed by democratically elected governments. The answer is simple and alarming.
Our world is not governed by democratically elected
In the 1970s, I belonged to The World Future Society. I even toyed with the idea of becoming a ‘futurist’. I vaguely recall that there was a magazine on the subject and various intellectuals were trying to get prediction raised to the status of a science. According to Wired magazine, the Society still exists and there are people who call themselves professional futurists, but the numbers are shrinking and their status seems to be less than in the past—primarily because the future
My dear friend Joanne Kellert. Ph.D., and Jack Gilbert, Ed. D., have launched a one-day, in-house workshop called Ethical Wisdom: The Heart of Leadership, Influence and Power. It is designed to support health care leaders and professionals who are on a quest to improve patient safety, quality of care, patient and employee satisfaction, and the financial health of their organizations. They promise a day full of insights and ways to strengthen the ethical health of your organization and an
By Zakia Carpenter | Unending Conversations of Hope blog
This article appeared in the April 20-26, 2008 issue of the Michigan Citizen and is reproduced here with the author’s permission. Please post your comments here.
I have noticed a breakdown in youth-adult functionality that I’m just beginning to articulate. From what I have read about the Millennial Generation (youth, like me, born between 1977 and 1998), experts predict it will be more separate from previous generations due to
I am more than happy to see Obama back on his game and in what looks like the homestretch in what has been a grueling horserace—for the candidates and the public. I am committed to Obama because I believe, along with a lot of other people, that he is sincere in his commitment to unite the nation and that he has demonstrated his capacity to stand for something beyond politics-as-usual. I have said on more than one occasion how sad it’s been to watch the fracture of our nation and our communities
By David Korten | Great Turning website
Read more posts in The World We Want series.
The second piece of the big picture of the human confrontation with the limits of our Mother Earth is an unraveling of the social fabric of civilization that is a consequence of extreme and growing inequality. A world divided between the profligate and the desperate cannot long endure. It intensifies competition for Earth’s resources, undermines the legitimacy of our institutions, and drives an unraveling
I remember having conversations about real estate prices 7 or 8 years ago, particularly on the West Coast. “How can prices keep rising and where does all the money come from to buy these properties?” A house I sold in 1997 resold in 2005 for four times what I sold it for! I am not an economist, but something didn’t seem right to me about this kind of never-ending upward spiral. My ex-wife sells homes and told me people were getting into million dollar properties with little or no down payment.
By Shae Hadden | Bio
Believers in the Law of Attraction, take heed! If you are afraid, don’t try to resist your fear. If you do, then you will give more power to it and end up attracting what you are afraid of. I know. I’ve just experienced my worst fear: of being very sick, alone, and uncertain about what is happening.
The interesting thing was that, when I was most afraid, immersed in physical pain and emotional stress, I decided to surrender my fear, my pain and my life to that ‘Higher