a blog by John P. Schuster
Loving activism has a neurological base. I was in the audience for a set of short lectures by notable personalities earlier this year, the ones that end up on YouTube: Krista Tippet, George W Bush, The Dalai Lama, and Mahatma Gandhi. They all gave good talks and I liked Gandhi’s the most. (Well, ok, this only happened in my mind. But I do think if Gandhi gave a mini-lecture today it would sound something like[…]
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Out beyond rightdoing and wrongdoing there is a field. I will meet you there. Rumi Summary: We extend beyond ourselves often, going under, over and past our normal thought pattern boundaries. Practice 3 is about going beyond regularly, on purpose, and staying there longer when we do. There are many avenues to the expanded space and time of the peace-engendering dimensions beyond our normal crowded thought streams. We will touch upon four of them—the arts,[…]
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All the world’s a stage; And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts …Shakespeare’s As You Like It Summary: We are the chief actor in our life play. At some point we find that we can be the director of the play too. And we can keep going: we can more knowingly become the playwright as we mature, self-authoring[…]
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There is another world and it is this one. Paul Eluard Summary: a small step, but a powerful shift in where we put our attention, is available to us at all times. By practicing this step often during the day, especially as we go about our daily tasks, our awareness broadens, our mindsets are more flexible and resourceful. This shift enables us to live increasing blocks of our days, however busy, with more awareness and[…]
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An introduction This is the intro to a series of short reads on practices we can develop to foster habits of mind and a useful mindset, one that can both exist alongside and amplify the ones that already serve us. My goal is to provide a means to grow and enhance our patterns of attention, and make the world a better place by doing so. Leaders of all kinds, from all human enterprise settings and[…]
Read more“I will take the ring, though I do not know the way.” Frodo Wisdom from Frodo, Michael Jackson and George Vaillant In No Ordinary Time, What is Our Job? We citizens of The Excited States of America have to keep up our pace, do we not? So even our holidays are busyness plus, and yet they provide rest and regeneration, for many of us. In spite of holiday reminders that many beautiful things happen all[…]
Read moreCustomers hear it often…” What are you having today?” The order is placed… The brew begins…click, click, click, the expresso drops into the handled machine cup…pfsst, pfsst, the steam cuts through milk & its evolving substitutes…. sounds that could come from a steel stamping factory 50 years ago. But this is now as the baristas of the 2020’s serves up brew and lots more in the daily lives of the parade of seeker-customers, looking for[…]
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We all have a hidden job. [Note: In 1957. Ayn Rand wrote a novel with mythic staying power—Atlas Shrugged. It is the story of the innovators and productive leaders of the industrialist world prepare to go into hiding as the masses of moochers, or “looters”, in the world live off and keep taking from the leaders without understanding the leaders’ crucial role. Below is a different version and vision.] Keep Pulling Our Weight for the[…]
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