I am just returning from my very first visit to India. I had the unbelievable privilege of participating in the first “Four Noble Truths Event” hosted by the Sarnath International Nyingma Institute. It was in Sarnath, at the “stupa” pictured here, that the Buddha offered his first sermon – 2500 years ago!
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May St Francis’ prayer be ours today and always.
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive.
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
Amen.
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The following post has been reblogged from Pinnacle Performance Improvement Worldwide e-newsletter. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did!
“We need to slow down; stop, look, listen and appreciate the talent around us.” — Sam Zell, Chairman, Equity Group International
“Is there room for our souls in this holy season?” — The Reverend Samuel T. Lloyd III, Priest-In-Charge, Trinity Church in the City of Boston
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David Peter Stroh hits the nail on the head with his recent post on the relationship between systems thinking and spiritual practice on the Leverage Points Blog. Our ways of seeing and ways of being are profoundly affected by our interior condition. Many aspects of systems thinking are deeply aligned with the wisdom of many spiritual traditions.
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I don’t usually find listening to public radio overly stressful, but this weekend’s edition of This American Life had me churning. The episode Red State Blue State featured a series of stories of relationships among friends, family members, neighbors and more that were damaged or severed over political affiliations and whom they intended to vote for. In a country where most people live in communities that are largely blue or red, people with minority political views in their community need increasing courage to speak their convictions, or even, sometimes just to live their lives. I found the story of a pair of sisters especially heartbreaking.
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I recently had the privilege of engaging in a public dialogue with Amy Edelstein, senior teacher of Evolutionary Enlightenment. We were brought together to talk about the relationship between active citizenship and active spirituality.
The very idea of citizenship emerges in the context of a trajectory, a movement from less freedom to more freedom. There is something aspirational in it, it is supposed to help us move towards an unfinished project – an ideal.
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If you’ve been reading Curtis’ blog posts this week, you might be considering what it means to be an evolutionary. If you live in or near Boston, you should join us as we deepen this conversation.
Our friends at EnlightenNext Boston are hosting a dialogue between Amy Edelstein, senior teacher of Evolutionary Enlightenment and myself this Friday, September 21, 7:15pm – 9:30pm at Samadhi Integral in Newton Centre.
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The following is a letter by Akaya Windwood, President of the Rockwood Leadership Institute and member of the IISC Board of Directors.
Summer. Hopefully a time to slow down, find a beach or hammock and read all of the trashy books on the list. Time for ice cream and late night walks and sleeping late. Time to wear only comfortable, old at-home clothes.
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|Photo by Martin Pettitt|http://www.flickr.com/photos/mdpettitt/454595511|
An old man is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he says to the boy.
“It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”
The old man simply replied, “The one you feed.” Read More
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I first met Kip Tiernan in 1970. Her reputation for no-nonsense, wise-cracking productivity had preceded her. We were all a little bit intimidated. She was older than we were and had already had a successful career as a pianist and an advertising executive. Still, she always treated us with the utmost respect…as if we, too, knew what we were doing.
We were organizing the first political sanctuary to ever have been held in a catholic church. The sanctuary was for our friend Paul Couming who was a conscientious objector and draft resister at the Paulist Center church in Boston. Kippy was handling the press, the FBI was outside the building and we were singing Amazing Grace. It was the beginning of my life-long admiration for Kip Tiernan, who died on Saturday. Kip went on to found the first homeless shelter for women and worked tirelessly with and on behalf of the poor of our city.
In her obituary, her wife Donna Pomponio is quoted as saying:
“The tragedies in the world continued to propel her to fix things and make them better. She knew that as human beings, we could do better for each other. There was a support and strength that came from that woman, and having her by your side and in your life, you knew that you could do it, too.’’
I’m keen on developmental theory. And I’m particularly interested in the implications of the Wilber-Combs Lattice. I don’t want to distract you with the esoteric, but I do think the picture is worth including.
The most important contribution of the Wilber-Combs Lattice is the distinction between states and stages. Stages (vertical axis) are developmental – they are sequential, you can’t skip through them and they progressively transcend and include each other. States (horizontal axis) on the other hand, are available to all stages.
What does this all mean? Read More
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Yesterday I was privileged to participate in a full day of learning about Climate Change and EcoJustice with the Boston’s Barr Fellows Network. Gopal Dayaneni of Movement Generation and Doyle Canning of SmartMeme, did a phenomenal job of painting a much richer picture about what is at stake for humanity than tends to be available in the sound-bite politics that pass for political discourse in our day. I expect to share more about what we learned, but I’m still doing a whole lot of processing.
Today I’m writing to make connection between the choices ahead and the practice of meditation. Read More
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