This week, the two groups become one. During the past year much has been done to create the structure of the organization—pulling from each of the current groups the best ideas, the best processes, to create a new way of being together. I have been honored to have been involved with a lot of this. When we leave Louisiana, we will have one leadership, one headquarters, one community! People who teach oneness will be one.

So, I am excited…..excited that all of the hard work of the past years is finally reaching this major milestone….excited that now we will be able to turn our attention out to the world in a more coordinated way to bring these empowering teachings to more and more people who could benefit from them…and excited that the example of a group of people who split in two coming back to unify might serve as an example of unity for the world. May we all live as One!

Mark

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Michael Adelberg and I worked together at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services – he in the DC area, myself from Denver.  I retired from the government a few years ago to pursue my spiritual teaching.  Mike continues on in what he describes as his “health policy wonk” role but he’s pursuing a broader path as well.  In addition to authoring historical pieces, he’s now published his first work of fiction – A Thinking Man’s Bully.

I recently read Mike’s book.  If Mike and I were not friends, I probably would not have read it being very selective on spending any time on fiction.  I generally only read two or three pieces a year.  Mike’s book is remarkably good and I highly recommend it.

He tells the tale of a middle-aged man in crisis, Matt.  In his younger days, Matt was a bully among other bully buddies, one of whom committed suicide.  Matt now deals with the realization that his son, Jack, is a bully.  Jack also attempted suicide.  By writing self confessional biographical pieces for his therapist (which are shared with us), we then sit in on his therapy sessions to discuss them.  This back-and-forth pattern brings us from Matt’s youth to present-day.  Along the way we experience Matt’s evolution in understanding how his unhealed youth contributed to the behaviors exhibited in his son.  There’s also a ton of cringe worthy humor in the tale – you know the kind – you laugh and grit your teeth simultaneously.

Although I wasn’t a bully, Mike’s book certainly called forth from the recesses of my memory deep recollections of youthful interactions long forgotten.  Mike has an eye for detail in past memories that’s a true gift.  I’ve always admired friends of mine who can recall at will details of events from our youth that I don’t have access to until their recollections allow the memories to come streaming forth from some hidden place within me.

The book’s jacket says Mike is a reformed high school troublemaker.  I do have a lot of memories of Mr. Adelberg but none that come anywhere close to such a description.  For example, back at the turn of the millennium I spent a long four-month detail on the east coast working long days at Medicare and lonely nights holed up in the condominium rented for me.  Mike invited me to join he and his poker buddies on a couple of their game nights while I was on my detail.  The games, camaraderie and outrageous laughter late into the night were highlights from my time there.  I remember wishing I could re-create a similar group of buddies back home.  There’s something truly special about connecting on a deep friend level where belly laughs are involved.

Right after reading the book, I was in a group process where we each identified via meditation a particular outcome to a group situation that we feared would happen.  My fear was that the ultimate outcome might be conflict.  We were then taken back individually in our imaginations to recall an early incident where that outcome occurred.  Ironically, my early memory of conflict was of being bullied on the playground in second grade.  It was fascinating to realize that certain present-day fears and patterns were still being influenced by long forgotten incidents from decades ago.  It was the same realization Mike’s character Matt experienced.

It’s interesting how everything appears to be connected, isn’t it?

Mark

Case in point – many of our TV programs, movies and video games contain excessive violence.  Sometimes I wonder how we might be getting acclimated to violence based on our continuous exposure to it by these arts.  There have been studies showing that the viewing of violence programs correlates to a degree in higher violence by the viewers.  Yet, the producers may say they are only making art forms which mirror back the reality of the world.  And, there is a supply and demand aspect to the arts – the producers give us what we buy.  Obviously we have a chicken and egg scenario, and it’s hard to determine which came first.

Question really becomes how are we going to break this cycle?  If what we look at grows in our lives – and I believe that it does – then the more we look at violence, the more we are going to see it – whether in our arts or in our lives.

Film critic Peter Rainer recently wrote about a new trend in movies – stories that he described as being a “metaphysical mumbo-jumbo gumbo”, films charged with an “otherworldly dread” linked to attempts to make sense of life.  Sometimes the dread is linked to catastrophic events such as in the movies “Contagion” or “Take Shelter”.  Sometimes the source of the dread is less clearly focused but plays more of a background role as the characters attempt to change “reality” and in Rainer’s words, “make it all turn out right this time.”  Films such as “The Adjustment Bureau”, “In Time” and “Source Code” fall into this interesting genre.

So are these movies feeding back to us a sort of barometer of our cultural consciousness?  Have the producers tapped into a 21st century post-9/11 malaise and are mirroring it back to us?  Is there really an underlying generalized sense of dread within us coupled with a desire to somehow change how the world turns out?  Or – are these movies presenting us a state of consciousness that we are now creating within ourselves?  Do you have an opinion on this?  Feel free to leave a comment if you do.

Of course, again, does it really matter which came first and caused the other?  Is it another cycle of life imitating art imitating life imitating art?  Yes.

So how do we break the cycle of dread and dissatisfaction and melancholy feeding a sense that the world has somehow gone awry and we are powerless to change it question it?  As long as we continue to focus our attention on our displeasure over the state of the world, the more we will see worldly events reinforcing our sense of displeasure.

We need a new cycle of art and life.  Our lives and our arts need to dance a new dance – one of love and peace and acceptance where we value one another.  Violence dissipates in that whirling pattern of care and concern.  Our lives and arts need to twirl in the energy of hope and personal assurance that things are always getting better.  Life is truly good.  May your life imitate that goodness until the imitation becomes the reality everywhere.

Mark Gilbert

The world really is full of good news if you set your intentions on seeing it—-here are some life affirming stories that came into my awareness recently:

This first one is from one of my favorite publications, the Christian Science Monitor—one of the best news weekly publications on the market—their December 26, 2011 issue contained a cover story on “The (surprisingly upbeat) state of the world “.  Click the link to read the online version, a reassuring take on the state of the planet….that in spite of the negative news we get each day, we are making great strides in reducing poverty, bringing equality of opportunities to the sexes, experiencing a boom in democratic governance around the world, and–believe it or not—seeing reductions in war and violence.  It is worth a read.

Here’s another cool story from a recent USA Today that I liked: “Man finds $10K cash at Las Vegas airport, returns it to owner”. I am not related to Mitch Gilbert, by the way, but he sounds like someone I would like.

Or how about this one from the Wall Street Journal—“Violence Vanquished” Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker gives his evidence for how the world is becoming less violent.

Or how about a constant source of good news:

Good News Network or Happy News

So what good news are you going to create in your life in 2012?

I don’t stress resolution setting as a January 1 only kind of thing……I think we can and are called to set intentions every day of our life.  Yet, I do find the time of closing out one year and moving into another one is a good time to stop and reflect and consider if our life is headed in the right direction.  I wrote about this last year with an article entitled “Questions to Jump Start the New Year”"> .  Click the link to read….the questions are still valid as we move into 2012….

And a quick word on that Mayan calendar thing—who knows why their calendar ends this year….it certainly is not an end of times thing….if anything we can use this hype (which I suspect is going to ramp up later this year) as an opportunity to make a break through in our human consciousness to take ourselves to even higher levels of living our full potential.

2012 is going to be a great year!  You and I are going to make some good news……let’s get it started!

Happy new year!

Mark

A quick disclaimer or two – I live in the Denver area and have long been a Bronco fan.  I obviously like Tebow and want to see him succeed.  Also, I am spiritual (after all, I am a minister in a nontraditional faith!)  but my take on spirituality is obviously different from Tebow’s  faith.

I have been curiously following what people have been writing about Tebow online and saying about him in the media.  I have been surprised by how extremely negative some people have been in their criticism, more so than is truly called for based upon his performance or his religious statements.  The critics need to realize that their public proclamations and negative judgments really are a statement about themselves.  “Judge not least ye be judged” really is a warning that when we judge others we are really making a statement about who we are.  These critics need to take that to heart.

In my opinion, much of the support and vitriolic criticism of Tebow speaks volumes about the worldviews of these people.  Our modern culture has three predominant worldviews which have been clashing violently in recent years – the traditional viewpoint from which Christian fundamentalism springs, the modern viewpoint which denies the existence of the traditional God and places its value in science and materialism, and the postmodern or “cultural creative” viewpoint which seeks to understand humanity’s unique role in the world and recognizes the limitations in the “either or” thinking brought about by the other two worldviews.

A lot of criticism has centered around Tebow’s style of play.  His passing is erratic.  The Broncos use of a option style offense in the NFL is criticized for being gimmicky and doomed to failure.  Tebow seems ineffective until the final minutes of the fourth quarter.  As a Bronco fan, I have had my moments of frustration with some of Tebow’s passes and an ineffective  offense for long stretches of the games.  And, the Broncos use of the option has looked great at times and weak at others.  Yet no one can criticize that the games have been exciting and their recent win streak jaw-dropping.

Will it go on forever? Of course not – nothing does in professional sports.  No matter how far the Broncos go this season, they have already far outperformed anyone’s expectations.  Criticism of their play can be warranted obviously.  However I suspect we are going to see a lot of people saying “I told you so” when the Broncos eventually lose – smugly reveling in their self-proclaimed wisdom about Tebow’s ineffectiveness and the Broncos poor play calling.  Lost in their smugness will be that the Broncos and Tebow are already winners no matter what happens the rest of the season.

A lot of criticism has centered around Tebow’s display of his Christian faith.  When he vocally “thanks the Lord” or makes statements such as “I want to thank Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior” in media interviews, this obviously upsets some people.  Sure, it may be that were just not used to it being so overt in sports interviews, but the degree of anger displayed by some people in response to the most statements is downright scary.

Some people say that football and sports are not the venues for displaying your religious beliefs.  Why?  It’s okay to believe differently.  Someone can say that they are a Raider fan and  although I might question their judgment, ultimately I realize it’s okay for us to believe different things and I don’t have to attack them for believing differently!  So what if someone’s a Christian and says so?  So what if someone’s Jewish or a Muslim or atheist?  Does their professing their belief take anything away from me?  No, of course not.

However, if we realize that many people with a modern worldview have had to grow into that viewpoint by moving beyond the traditional viewpoint.  That is, as a part of that process they have had to look at religious proselytizing in a way so that they distanced themselves from it.  In other words, some religious zealots in their attempts to convince them to believe as they do have raised emotional responses in those with modern viewpoints who have run from the zealots.  I know a lot of people who have been wounded emotionally by traditional religions and their use of guilt to force their conformity.  Calls for individuals to believe as we do or you are “going to hell” has harmed a lot of people.  Buried within the psyche of these people are unhealed wounds emotionally linked to words and phrases like the ones that Tebow uses.  In my opinion when he says that “Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior”, these unhealed wounds are
invisibly rubbed open and the pain comes out in overly harsh attacks towards Tebow.  Again, their criticisms say more about themselves than they do about Tebow.  If they let go of their resentment towards traditional religions, they would realize that letting Tebow express his faith really causes no harm to their world.  Greater harm, in my opinion, would come in a world where we are not free to express our beliefs so long as they harm no one else.

Also interesting is this repeated asking of whether or not the Broncos are experiencing in their win streak “divine intervention”.  Is God helping the Broncos win?  The short answer is, of  course, no.  But even in the asking of the question comes a telling display of the worldview of the one asking.  When someone asks me a question and uses the word “God”, I stop and ask them to define what they mean by God.  The traditional viewpoint sees an old man in the sky – an external being who can intercede in people’s lives and possibly football games.  The  modern viewpoint denies that God exists, everything is statistical chance and luck – there is no old man in the sky who can intercede in lives or games.  The postmodern viewpoint recognizes the power of thoughts and belief to influence our actions – there are powers at play in our lives that are currently beyond the bounds of scientific knowledge which we are just now discovering – however there is no old man in the sky looking in on football games.

Simply stated – A traditionalist might wonder about if an external God is involving himself in the NFL because of Tebow’s visibility and success.  God is using Tebow and this moment to bring people “back to him”.  A modern materialist will either scoff at all of this talk of God or if they have unhealed wounds around religion might strongly attack such statements.  A postmodern cultural creative will wonder about how the individual thoughts of Tebow and the Broncos – the power of their positive thinking – might be upping their game or how our public collective consciousness and the power of all of our attention focused upon Tebow and the Broncos might be lifting them up to greater levels.

The bottom line – this entire story has been exciting to watch.  It’s an ongoing dialogue not only on the beliefs and faith of Tim Tebow but also each and every one of us.

Mark Gilbert

“He who is not busy being born is busy dying” (Bob Dylan)

It’s only natural that “Conscious Bridge”, a website which is about the evolution of our consciousness, would itself evolve.  Today, I am making a couple of major changes.

As a web site, we’ve been around almost 2 years, but for the last 2 months I have not posted any articles.  It’s not because I haven’t been writing!  I have been working on a book which deals with a lot of the themes covered on the “bridge”, but more on that at another time.  I will only say that my writing focus has been ”the book” and not the web site.  But the first draft of ”the book” is done as of a week ago and as I move into the editing process with it…..so today, the web site returns!….but it’s evolving… just as you and I are every day.

The first change—a new simple look—minimalist in appearance.  This will be easier for y’all to read.  This will be easier for me to post content.  Take a look, let me know what you think…I’m still playing with it… 

The second change—shorter postings.  I have a lot of thoughts that come up that I want to share with you, but the past format had “evolved” into longer feature pieces with an accompanying picture and so forth….I will still post a longer feature from time to time, but I want to shift my focus for the moment to shorter notes so as to give you some quick thoughts, to comment on the events of the day, to share books and resources that I discover and the like.

So shorter, more to the point posts, fewer pictures, minimalist website….but all of this will evolve too….would love your feedback along the way as I shift and bob and weave with life.  Thanks for reading the Bridge….and let’s all keep truckin’ and growin’.

Happy Re-Birthday!

Mark

Much has changed in our world since that day….there are aspects of life where humanity has come together in its love and concern for one another……and, there are many things that we may not have chosen to experience as a part of modern 21st century life ….but even in those experiences we can affirm that there is growth and learning for humanity–moving us to higher and higher turns in our evolutionary spiral to a world that works for everyone.

Last year in the midst of the “Ground Zero Mosque controversy”, I wrote a 2 part series on “Where Were You on 9/11?”  As everyday I am blessed with more readers of Conscious Bridge, I thought I might link back to my 2010 articles for those who may have missed them:

Part One

Part Two

It seems as if we have made great strides in the past year in moving beyond that so-called “controversy” as well as in coming together on the progress of the memorial that will commemorate the loss of life 10 years ago.  Maybe that is just me….choosing to see good and more good whenever I can.

But today–won’t you join me?  Please take a moment and feel deeply into your heart and sense your love and connectedness to those who lost their lives on 9/11 as well as to those individuals who were left to deal with the loss of their friends and family.  And though we are all saddened by those events of 10 years ago, may we also see the good that is coming forth on the planet….and may we affirm our continued positive evolution for all people so that we shall all know that those who lost their lives did not die in vain.

Love to all.

Mark

I didn’t really think about any of this much back in the day when I was young.  Those bigger questions just weren’t on my mind.  Oh yeah, I recall some moments lying in the grass as a kid and looking up at clouds and wondering where God was or how high up you had to go to get to see heaven.  Most of the time I was more concerned with fitting in with my group of buddies or trying to get some girl to like me.  Turns out that’s kind of normal – Piaget mapped out the stages of childhood development and said we don’t develop the kind of abstract thinking necessary for asking for such questions until late childhood or even sometimes adulthood.

I was 18 and had just arrived at college when I recall the first inklings of trying to figure out who I was and why I thought the way I did.  I recall taking an introduction to psychology class in my first semester and discovering I had all the symptoms of every type of abnormal psychological diagnosis in my textbook.  I ended up majoring in psychology partly as an attempt to cure myself.

Now I have to admit that a lot of the psychological theories I read about at that time were either over my head or just didn’t seem to have much applicability in the real world.  My university psychology department was very much into BF Skinner and behavioralism, so I read a lot about that subject.  I even ended up working for one of the professors doing implants in rats’ skulls and running experiments on the  effects of electrical stimulation on parts of their brain.  It was all a lot of stimulus-response stuff that didn’t seem to apply to me.

Then I discovered the work of Abraham Maslow and his “hierarchy of needs”.  Finally, here was a theory that answered many of the  questions I had been asking about myself.  The first thing I liked about Maslow was that instead of focusing on humans performing abnormally, he sought out and studied high performers and asked “what motivated them?”  More importantly, I saw how his theory could  be applied in the real world.

Of all my college psychological studies, Maslow and his hierarchy along with Robert Ornstein and his book “The Psychology of Consciousness” were some of the only concepts that stayed with me long after college.  Ornstein’s book looked at the specialized functioning of the hemispheres of our brain.  Yet in doing so, he also posed questions about what this thing called consciousness really is and how it related to our physical brain.  I have wondered about that ever sense!  One interesting side note – I wrote a paper for one of my classes attempting to integrate Ornstein’s book with Maslow’s hierarchy.  I was interested in integrating theories back in the early 70s before there was a well-known integral theory!

Let’s consider Maslow for a moment – As a college professor at Brooklyn College in New York in the late 1930s and into the 1940s,  Maslow was in the perfect place to study those who were exhibiting high mental health.  He began observing and noting the characteristics of fellow professors and mentors, looking for the common denominator’s of these individuals.  This process started a lifelong pursuit of seeking those universal human indicators of self-actualizing performance.  One of the most famous subjects that Maslow observed was Albert Einstein.

As Maslow stated, “All the evidence that we have indicates that it is reasonable to assume in practically every human being, and certainly in almost every newborn baby, that there is an active will toward health, an impulse towards growth, or towards the actualization.”  You have to like that attitude!

As Maslow tracked the characteristics of these high-performing humans, he noted there was a trend or direction in their traits and their motivators that could be mapped out.  Ultimately, he created his basic theory which he outlined in 1943 paper entitled “A Theory of Human Motivation”.  His theory detailed five basic categories of human motivators or needs.  Only later was the visual of a pyramid was employed to show the hierarchical nature.

According to the theory, each of these five levels of motivators can be stacked so that one is on top of one another, with our lower or basic needs on the bottom and our higher needs on the top.  The theory says that fulfilling one level allows us to move up to the next.   And,  if at any time any lower-level need became unmet, we are plunged back down to the lower need and it must be met again before we can return to being concerned about the higher need.

Here then, is a brief summary of the five levels of Maslow’s original hierarchy of needs:

Our basic primary motivator are our physiological needs – water, air, food, sleep – things essential for our bodily survival.  Maslow stated that once these needs were met we could be concern with our security needs – shelter from the elements, a steady job, a sense that life around us was stable and secure.  Meeting these needs allowed us to focus next on our social needs – feeling that we are loved, that we belong to our group, that we have secure relationships, that we feel accepted.  Again, meeting our social needs allowed us to focus on what Maslow termed self-esteem needs – a feeling of importance, social recognition, being worthy.  Finally, at the pentacle of Maslow’s pyramid was what he called our desire for “self-actualization” – that is fulfilling our highest potential, seeking personal growth for its own  sake, moving beyond being concerned with the opinions of others.

Although Maslow’s model appears nice and neat, life is not always that way – and our needs motivating our actions in a particular moment can be dynamic and shift between levels so quickly that it may be hard to determine which level is actual driving us.  Yet from the moment I first encountered Maslow and his pyramid, it has always resonated with me – it rings true from my experience both in college and throughout my life.

A couple of interesting additions to these basics about Maslow’s theory –one, he later divided his need levels into two groups –  “deficiency” needs and “being” needs.  Deficiency needs are driven by a sense of “lack” in our lives.  When we are lacking something, it  places us in survival mode.  We have to get it.  If we have it, and someone tries to take it away from us, we will fight for it.  Being needs arise not from lack but from a desire to grow in our lives.  Instead of living with a sense of lack, we sense that we have more than enough of what we need and we want to give from our abundance.  Our being needs are about growing and thriving and moving into the highest possibility of who we can be.

The second additional point about Maslow’s theory was that later he added on three more needs which he had identified.  Between self-esteem and self-actualization, he added the needs levels of a desire to understand and a desire for aesthetic beauty.  He also divided self-actualization into two levels, his original self-actualizing and a higher need which he termed a desire for “transcendence” – an inner pull to move beyond the physical human.  More on this later on.

Hence, I offer the model here not because I believe it explains all of our motivations.  Rather it gives us a good map for understanding potentially why humans think and act the way they do.  It puts things in an easy to understand manner – if our “lower needs” are not  being met, they are going to drive our decisions and actions.  It’s only when we can move beyond our lower needs that we are able to focus on bigger issues and advanced concerns.

So let’s look at Maslow’s hierarchy or map from three different directions and see what insights it might offer us.

First, let’s go back in time and consider what our primary motivators were at different points in our life.  Right after birth, although I  don’t really remember it, I suspect that my physiological needs were primary.  I cried for food, I cried to have my diaper changed.  Back in the day when I was young that I can remember, when I was being motivated by my buddies and attractive girls, central to my needs were survival as well as love and belongingness.  Later as an adult, many of my actions to seek success at work were probably driven by a need for self-esteem.  Only much later in life do I have a sense that my primary motivation became a drive towards self-actualization.

Doing this kind of life review to recognize how I had different motivations at different stages of my timeline gives me a sense of how I have evolved in my awareness and consciousness throughout my life.  It reinforces the fact that my life and all life is growing and  evolving, strengthening that evolutionary viewpoint I have been discussing.  It also shows me that earlier in life I was driven by a sense of lack which I have been blessed to let go of for the most part in recent years.

Second, rather than going back in the day, let’s look at just today – let’s look at our life in this moment and consider what is currently motivating us.  When you get up each day do you take time to “create your day” or write down a to do list?  If so, what’s filling your daily  planner?

We have to realize that we have different needs driving different actions every day.  We don’t live our day totally in one of Maslow’s levels.  We breathe, drink, eat, eliminate waste and perform other physiological functions.  Most likely we have a roof over our head and are not spending a lot of time concerned about it going away.  We are blessed in our Western society to be living in a stable environment.  Although we may not be consciously focused upon it, there are probably some things we do each day to support this underlying level of safety and security.  But above these two basic levels, things can get tricky.

We may or may not feel a degree of love and belongingness being met in our life based on whether or not we have a healthy primary love relationship or a close circle of friends.  We may or may not have a healthy sense of  self-esteem depending upon factors in our  relationships, our work, our feelings about our appearance, our health and so on.

As we think about what motivates us each day in all the various aspects of our life – we might consider asking ourselves if our primary motivators come from a sense of lack that we are trying to fill – or whether they come from a sense that we have enough or we are good enough and we are simply trying to give from our abundance and share our unique talents.  Which is it for you?  The point, of course, is to evaluate the motivations of our day so we can release our attachments to certain deficiency needs and spend more time working on  higher needs.

A third way of using Maslow’s theory is to lay the hierarchy against our actions out in the world in relationships with others in specific situations and see if it offers us any guidance in how we relate to others and in guiding our own personal evolution.  Let’s look at a couple of examples.

Let’s consider what is underlying your motivation in your interactions with your primary love life (either in your relationship with a specific person or in your approach to creating such a relationship)?  Now it’s easy when first considering Maslow to think that any time you are motivated to create or maintain a loving relationship with a significant other that your motivation comes from his “love and belongingness” needs level.  But that’s not necessarily so.

In reality, there are generally multiple needs levels at play.  You may be seeking or staying in a relationship because you want access to sexual pleasure – a physiological need.  You may feel you need the other person’s income to survive – a safety and security need.  You may believe your friends and family expect you to be in a serious relationship and would think less of you if you’re not – a love and belongingness need.  You may believe your sense of worthiness relates to being in a relationship, that you would be a failure if you were not – a self-esteem need.

In each case, one is motivated to be in a significant loving relationship – and the underlying need is coming from different levels.  There is one similarity though – no matter what the level, you desire the relationship because you believe it will fill a lack in you.  It’s the old Jerry Maguire “you complete me” thing.  That belief is flat out wrong!

So what happens if I have a lack which you’re supposed to be filling and all of a sudden you don’t?  What if you grow and change?  What if you decide to leave me?  If you threaten my survival by withholding the meeting of my needs, I might just lash out at you.  How dare you try to leave me?  I need you.  Of course, when I think I need you in order to be okay with myself, I am coming from a sense of deficiency and lack.

The interesting thing is that the most healthy relationships are based on when the underlying motivation comes from a desire for self-actualization.  Here, we have moved into “being” needs.  We don’t sense any lack within ourselves.  We don’t need the other person to meet any deficiency within us.  We are whole and complete just as we are.  Rather at this stage, our motivation is not to get something from someone but rather to give of ourselves to another.  We love the other person and want them to live the highest possible life that they can.  We are there to support them and encourage them and to love them.  We are not there to cling to them or limit them in any way.  Paradoxically, we have to be okay if they decide they don’t want to be with us anymore, because even though it may emotionally hurt us, what is more important is that they are happy and living their dreams.  We want them live a self-actualized life even if apart from us more than we want them to live a limited life with us.

Let’s look at another example – people seek out and join social groups such as clubs, organizations, churches and spiritual centers  based on different needs.  If you’re in such a group, consider for a moment what need the people meet by participating in it.  I know some people who attend a traditional Christian church out of the old-fashioned fear if they don’t, they will go to hell – sounds like safety and security to me.  I know a lot of people who attend churches and spiritual centers because they want to belong to a group where people hold the same spiritual beliefs – love and belongingness.  I know people who have gotten involved with the leadership of an organization because it makes them feel important – self-esteem needs.

Although there’s nothing wrong with using these social organizations as a means of meeting your deficiency needs, it is helpful to understand what is motivating your involvement.  It can also offer some insights when members of these groups begin disagreeing on what activities they should be doing together.

I’ve heard plenty of stories of leaders of social organizations and ministers of churches who come in to express their being needs through a desire to grow their group so they can do more good in the world and find that they are pushing up against individuals resisting them.  If these members joined the group to meet their love and belongingness needs and they sense that their new leader is minimizing the meeting of those needs in their desire to serve others out in the world, they move into survival mode whether they know it or not and are going to push back!  Realizing that members of their group may have different reasons for being there is useful knowledge for the leader if they want to maintain their group.

Which brings us finally to a consideration of how Maslow’s theory can assist us if we are trying to move across that metaphorical  bridge where we are going from a world where we sense that we are separate from one another and in competition – where we think in terms of win-lose – to a world where we know that we are all connected and our highest calling is to be in service to one another-where we think in terms of win-win.  Using Maslow we gain clarity that our old world is based on a sense of lack and deficiency, where everyone is focused on these lower needs.  In the new world of higher possibilities everyone is focused on being needs – on self-actualization and  self transcendence (a topic we will come back to later).

So how can we move everyone into focusing on the pull for self-actualization or self transcendence – that is moving from surviving into thriving? The primary step is to begin with ourselves.  How can we be focused upon higher needs when we are worried about what others may think of us, we are feeling unloved, or we are experiencing a general sense of unworthiness and low self-esteem?  The key to our personal thriving is moving beyond whatever makes us believe we are less than whole, perfect and complete.

How do we do that?  We start by expanding the time we spend each day knowing and stating this wholeness as the truth of our being.  We spend less and less time looking at things in our life that we have used in the past to convince us their lives are not perfect.  We focus on the gifts and goodness in our life.  We see perfection everywhere we look. We release attachments to people, things, experiences or our sense of how things are supposed to be.  As long as we are emotionally attached to stuff  ”out there”, we will sense a deficiency in our lives when we don’t have them.  As the Buddha said in the “Four Noble Truths”, the root of all are suffering is attachment to these external  things.  Awareness of the attachment is the first step in releasing it.

Releasing our attachments and focusing on our perfection allows us to know that we always have more than enough.  From this  abundance we are called to give.  Within us a special talent or ability seeks expression in the world.  Living our passion and sharing it with others allows us to move to that higher world in our own lives.

And what about all the people out there in the world who are still stuck focused upon deficiency needs?  What can any one of us do to assist them?  How can we be a change agent that allows people around the world to meet their basic needs, release their attachment to  lower needs and free them to live a life of self-actualization and ultimately self transcendence?  What can you do?

Mark

I don’t like to dwell on negativity, but sometimes we have to look at things we don’t like so we can learn from them. The contrast between what we desire and any negative experience creates a gap that we need to transcend.  The first step in moving across the gap is to bring its existence into our awareness.

Humanity is currently experiencing such a gap.  As we look out of the world, we see evidence of a major crisis brewing around us.  There are growing conflicts between different ideologies, growing economic disparity, competition over converts to our way of thinking and battles for control of our social systems.  All of these conflicts move between battling for our minds and battling for our possessions.

As  we experience all of this conflict and competition, we simultaneously sense a  better path – a higher way – a greater vision of how humanity can live  together.  We are at a major choice  point.  Can we come together as a species  and collectively make the choices that will bridge us from our current level of  divergence in our beliefs and possessions to a world that values diversity and  offers equal opportunity?

As  we ponder moving across that gap, let’s also hold in our minds the metaphysical  map we explored recently.  Individually and collectively we are evolving up the evolutionary spiral of life to a higher  and better place.  Our choices in each  moment impact whether we individually and collectively move up or down the  spiral or swirl around in place.

Maintaining  that image – consider the impact of conflict and competition, differences in  opinion as to our highest choice, variance in our vision as to where humanity  is going.  It’s like a mental tug-of-war  with each of us attempting to direct human kind in different directions.  The result – two steps up, two steps back,  swing around right where we are.

Can  you imagine the progress we would collectively experience if the vast majority  of us were aware of our evolutionary journey, agreed upon the basic tenets of  our collective vision for our future and all acted in a manner that was in  alignment with that vision?  Such a situation would see a major leap in our collective unfoldment.

Just  to be clear here, I am not suggesting that we all have to think alike.  In fact, there is great value in diversity of  opinion and great vulnerability when too many march together lockstep.  It is the melding of diverse ideas and beliefs  that has driven the engine of humanity’s creative growth.  When we all think alike, the creative  fertilizer of a new idea can get discarded without proper consideration.  Too much sameness coupled with unhealed  aspects of our shadow can lead to group behavior that is destructive rather  than constructive.  Consider Nazi Germany  or misguided cult leaders like Jim Jones and their followers.

Yet  when humanity is inspired by its highest idea of what it can become and a critical  mass of people move towards that lofty vision while allowing for diversity of  ideas to seed the possibility of an even superior vision, evolutionary soaring  can occur.  Such great gains often follow  periods of great pains – if we can move through the pain and learn its lessons.

We  are in a period of such pain.  We live in  a world that is faced with many challenges – war and violence, climate change,  overpopulation, increasing income gaps between the haves and have-nots, battles  over religion, arguments between religion and science and more.  Instantaneous worldwide media delivers these  struggles to our awareness continuously as they happen.  Our consciousness is inundated with conflicts  that are occurring while simultaneously we are bombarded with messages about  our dire situation.  It can certainly seem overwhelming.  Behind all this is a  growing sense that if we don’t do something soon to solve our problems, we will pass a point of no return where humanity will move into some type of  apocalyptic future.  Although I suppose  that’s possible, my optimism sees us coming together and moving forward.  We will choose a life of “heaven” over  a life of “hell”.  Making that choice is the subject of both my upcoming book and this blog obviously.

So  let’s take a moment and look at some of the challenges facing us.  In doing so, I want to borrow another “map”  which I think will be useful – Ken Wilber’s “quadrants”.  As a bit of background, Wilber in creating  his integral theory sought to outline the connections between various truths  discovered in different scientific, spiritual and philosophical models.  By charting the wisdom from these different  sources into one map, we gain new insights.   He calls his map the “AQAL” model.  AQAL stands for “all quadrants, all levels, all lines, all types”.  Later on will look at more aspects of this map, but for right now I  would like to borrow his concept of quadrants to categorize human kinds current  crisis in ethics and behavior.

In  the quadrant aspect of Wilber’s map, we have a box that contains two columns and two rows. The first column represents our interior or inner consciousness while the second column represents the world of the exterior or physical matter. The first row represents the individual or singular aspect of something while the second row represents the collective (click here to view a chart).   So now let’s take these four quadrants and map out some of the current crises facing us.

In the upper left quadrant of the world of the individual’s interior, one of the problems we experience are people who believe that their beliefs and values are better than everyone else’s.  They believe they are right and other people are wrong.  They believe that if everyone thought like they do, then the world would be a better place.

Although it certainly natural to have discernment so that we can hold that one idea or belief is more valid than another and to therefore disagree with other people, we are vulnerable to crossing over into the world of our shadow when we seek to make others believe as we do.  When we move to a place where we sense there is a battle of right and wrong occurring in our minds versus the minds of others, then we sense that it is important that we “win” this battle of ideas while you “lose”.  Discussion and debate is healthy when we’re not attached to winning.  It becomes unhealthy when it becomes important for us to prove the other person wrong.  In such cases, our words can turn vitriolic and violent.

In the lower left quadrant of the world of the collective interior, we experience these people who believe that their personal ideas must win out over the ideas of others seeking to grow their base of supporters.  Now it is natural for us to band together with like-minded individuals for the sharing of ideas and the gaining of political clout.  But again, there is a subtle shift into the shadow when we sense that “our group” has to “win” at the expense of other groups “losing”.  Tolerance of groups who believe differently from ourselves should be a higher aspiration for humanity than the belief that our groups ability to generate more converts than other groups is more primary.

Consider for a moment the shift in public discourse in the past 10 years or so.  Whereas the media and political debate used to acknowledge areas of agreement while allowing the space for differences of opinion, there now appears to be a greater focus upon the extreme differences around and issue with less acknowledgment of any points of commonality.  It’s almost like the media recognizing that we have so many choices and so much information coming at us they have to create a controversy to gain our attention. Unfortunately they do this by pitting the far fringe differences of an issue against each other and ignoring the middle ground.  They invite to their programs the most controversial speakers and then feed them questions designed to stir the pot.

Personally, I find it hard not to feel frustration when I’m watching the speakers trying to out duel one another – attacking the other’s position, interrupting the other speaker, talking over one another and treating each other disrespectfully.  It’s like they’ve been thrown in a cage for a few minutes to verbally spar.  It’s frequently less a dialogue to inform us than it is a fight to entertain us.  The one with the most sound bites or makes the better points is the winner.

Seems like almost every aspect of our culture gets thrown into this battle for supremacy.  The middle ground in our political discourse, that fertile area of give-and-take that led to higher political solutions, has all but disappeared in recent years.  In some people’s minds, compromise has become a dirty word.  Seeking common ground in some circles is seen as a sign of weakness, failure and losing.

There are religions whose focus has shifted from offering their teachings to a forceful proselytizing.  Instead of allowing individuals to seek out a faith that resonates with them, there are some religions who seek to pressure individuals into converting.  Again it’s a subtle shift from offering what you believe in to a place where you judge and attack others for believing differently.  All major faiths have some fundamentalist groups who have unfortunately slipped into seeing their spirituality as a battle to be fought – with winners and losers.

The purity of science has not been immune from the slip away from simply seeking the empirical truth and into the battle for whose “truth” is right.  In some cases, these battles pit scientists against scientist.  In others, it turns scientists and religious leaders against one another.  And in still other cases, some scientist can be seen moving into a sort of scientific fundamentalism rather than keeping a healthy open mind – which is a basic component of vigorous scientific discovery.

Consider how some aspects of science have been co-opted into the political arena for debate.  The scientific reality of climate change ontinues to be debated. The well proven theory of evolution continues to come under attack by religious fundamentalist.  There is been the rise of the so-called “skeptics” such as Richard Dawkins and others who frequently move beyond the bounds of simply presenting pure science and into the realm of attacking those who don’t believe as they do.  Everything and every topic at some point seems to get dragged down into a battle – with winners and losers.

In the upper right quadrant of the individual’s exterior, one of the problems we experience is where people in their attempt to gain a degree of safety and security through the accumulation of possessions move into the shadow aspects as seeing the never-ending growth of their personal wealth as the prime purpose of life.  Again, to be clear, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with being prosperous.  Creating abundance and wealth and enjoying a life of affluence certainly one of the gifts of living life. It’s one thing to want a certain standard of living and to have a prosperous life – but again there is a subtle shift that occurs when we move to the place where our gaining more wealth is seen as primary over anything else.  We must win more “stuff” even if it’s at your expense – that is you lose.

The Wall Street greediness of recent years is a symptom of this shadow.  The growing division in the distribution of wealth – between the small number of haves and the growing number of have-nots – is another indication of our problem. Whenever a person bends the rules of ethics to successfully make more money, then it becomes increasingly easier for others around them to bend those same rules.  As it says in the Bible “For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil (1 Timothy 6:10).”  This love has created an ethical crisis of great proportions.

In the lower right quadrant of the collective exterior, one problem we experience are attempts to control our social systems by individuals who are driven by selfish greed or ideology.  Healthy debate leading to the creation of systems that work for everyone’s highest benefit is a good thing.  We need strong and effective governments.  Religions that offer personal meaning, comfort in times of challenge and the like are beneficial.  Maintaining an educational system that assists each person to develop the tools and opportunity to live a healthy and successful life is something we should all support.

Yet again there is plenty of evidence of attempts to co-opt our social systems by individuals and groups who seek to win at the expense of others.  The externally driven greediness of some of our financial institutions and corporations uses their wealth to lobby Congress to maintain rules and regulations better to their benefit even at the expense of the rest of the country.  They seek limits on the government to oversee their business dealings or the safety and security of the products they produce. They seek to pay less in taxes than others or to get government subsidies to support their corporate activities.  They want to win, even if others lose.

The internally driven desire to force a belief system on others who think differently has led into vicious political battles in recent years.  Those whose religious beliefs cause them to abhor abortion seek to institutionalize eliminating its availability even on those who believe differently.  Those whose religious beliefs deny the scientific validity of evolution attempt to force nonscientific options into our classrooms over the objections of those who believe differently.  In their eyes it is seen that forcing their beliefs on others – winning – is more important than allowing others the freedom to believe and do as they choose.

I could probably go on, but you probably get the point.  You could probably create your own list of frustrating experiences where individuals have shifted into the place of materialistic greediness or ideologically driven righteousness such that they have turned the world into a battle of winners and losers.  But my point here isn’t to dwell on the negative.  Rather my intent is twofold – One desire is for us to notice and acknowledge that there is this growing gap between our highest vision of humanity and what we are experiencing in the world, and that this gap is reaching a critical point where we must do something now if we are going to bridge it.  My second hope is that by holding up the experiences that are less than what we are capable of creating, through its contrast we can create a vision what we would like to experience instead.

Even though I have mapped these challenges out into four quadrants which I hope you have found helpful, I now want to collapse them into one underlying commonality.  In all these negative behaviors, they have at their root a belief in duality and separation. What do I mean?  I mean that  in each case, central to a belief and behavior that is focused upon my winning your losing is an acceptance that you and I are separate beings who are unrelated and unconnected, living our lives apart from one another.  As long as there is a “me” and a “you” and a “my group” and “your group” and my focus is upon our differences, then it’s easy for me to want to win even if your expense.  It doesn’t affect me if you lose.

As long as you or I choose to focus on our being different, we grow in our awareness our sense of being different. Competition and conflict are natural byproducts in a world where our attention is on the different.

Yet, as I have mentioned, we are on an evolutionary journey.  Our experience of duality and separation has actually served us up to this point in our history.  We will explore that more in later articles.  For now, simply consider that these negative experiences, the subtle shifts in the interior world of our thoughts and the exterior world of our actions towards an worsening state of divisiveness and conflict are a natural byproduct of our evolutionary history.  The feeling within more and more of us to transcend these negative experiences is a pull towards a higher future.

What is that higher future?  That is the vision of a possible future, a world that works for everyone, a topic on which we frequently write and you will hear more from me in the upcoming future.

Mark

“Wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving.”

Have you ever considered just exactly how lucky you  are?  You and I are both very fortunate  indeed.  We happen to live on a planet  where the conditions were just right so as to evolve life – including you and I.

This is the so-called “Goldilocks effect”.  A planet has to be just the right distance  from its star so that it receives just the right amount of energy – not too  much, not too little – so that it allows liquid water to exist, an atmosphere to  form, and a number of other conditions to exist so that life may emerge and  evolve.  Recently, scientists have been discovering more and more planets out in the universe that appear to be in this opportune position.  The vast majority of planets are not.

When one stops to consider all the multitude of things that had to go just right in order for our earth to be in the right spot for the potential of life, followed by all the various events that had to happen just the way they did so that life actually sprang forth and evolved and then for the process of evolution to bring forth humans with their ability to have self-awareness to consider this chain of events – it’s mind-boggling!  Just consider the fact that even after life and evolved such that dinosaurs ruled, it was only a devastating asteroid plunging into the earth causing the dinosaurs’ extinction that allowed small furry mammals to flourish.  Our distant mammalian ancestors thrived and evolved ultimately into all the variety of mammals that exist today – including humans – thanks to that chance asteroid collision.

The fact that humans evolved and that you and I can consider that evolutionary path in this moment owes a lot to an infinite string of good luck.  Now, you might believe that somewhere along the way this luck was aided by a God or alien beings, but even if we were – I call that good luck too! Either way, you and I are really lucky to be here.

Yet, our luck continues! Even beyond all the chance events that led to the evolution of humanity, consider all of the actions that had to line up just perfectly for you and I to be where we are right in this moment. All of the relationships that brought all of our ancestors together to allow our parents to exist had to occur just as they did.  Our parents had to meet – well at least there had to be a meeting of their sperm and egg at some point no matter how it occurred.  The pregnancy had to go well.  You had to survive childhood.  Illnesses came and went, yet you healed and continued.  Various close encounters occurred along the path of your life which if they had gone another way, you wouldn’t be here.  Consider how you feel when you hear about others dying in accidents or with illnesses and realize that could’ve been you–but it wasn’t!

Yes, you and I are pretty fortunate indeed.  Now that’s not to say we haven’t had life events which were less than what we would’ve chosen.  We have all had some pain, some challenge, some struggle along the way.  There may be things going on in your life right now which are not what you want to be experiencing.  Losses of jobs, decreases in income, ending of relationships, illnesses and disease, deaths of pets and loved ones and similar events occur to all of us.  There are certainly a lot of things going on in our collective world–war, poverty, climate change, population issues, and so on that may cause us consternation.  Yet these experiences don’t negate how privileged our lives ultimately are.

I admit that when we are in the middle of one of life’s downturns, they can be depressing.  It’s hard to feel lucky when you’re in the midst of one of these experiences.  However, if we’re honest with ourselves, when we look back upon those events with some passage of time and some personal growth, we can usually see that there was a gift we received in the midst of the challenge.  The bad has good when we can ultimately see it.

I recall a number of years ago my feelings when my first marriage ended.  I was upset and depressed.  I felt like a failure.  I was embarrassed.  After selling the new home that my first wife and I had built together with all its luxury features and then finding myself in a small, old rented duplex, I remember lying on the bed crying my eyes out over the pain I felt.  How could I be living in this crummy place all by myself?  I could see no gift in that moment.  Yet a year later, I remember looking at my duplex with a sense of joy – how close it was to the park, how quickly I could get to work, how easy it was to clean, how much freedom I had to do as I chose each day.  In that moment, I was realizing the gift from the same experiences that a year before I had pointed to as evidence of my pain.

Now, years removed from these experiences – with a new home and new relationship and other life changes that have brought other gifts that could’ve only occurred by my moving through the pain of divorce, including writing this– I see what a gift that time was. So much goodness in the present has sprung up directly because of the pain of the past.  Yes, I’m lucky.  You are too. It’s all in how you look at it.

How do you choose to look at life?  As the joke goes, are you a half glass full or half glass empty kind of person?  Do you see things as going from bad to worse or do you continuously have a feeling of optimism?  Somehow or another, each of us – in spite of any negative current situation – would be served by living with a sense of gratitude for life.

There are many ways to build more thankfulness into our lives.  Most of us are familiar with the technique of keeping a gratitude journal – take 10 minutes each night before you go to bed and write down everything you can think of that you are grateful for.  When you awake in the morning and before you get out of bed, stop and take a few minutes to feel and sense gratitude for this day.  Throughout your day, step outside of the busyness of the moment and reflect upon what you’re thankful for right then.  The technique is unimportant.  It’s the direction of your attention that is.

As Oprah Winfrey said, ” What you focus on expands, and when you focus on the goodness in your life, you create more of it. Opportunities, relationships, even money flowed my way when I learned to be grateful no matter what happened in my life.”  I know this may sound very strange to you – airy fairy kind of stuff, but no matter…it’s true and the benefits of developing gratitude are being recognized in more mainstream ways.

Srikumar Rao has taught for the Columbia business school in New York and the London business school in England.  The college professor still recalls his frustration one day with a student’s question and his judging the student’s abilities.  When he later discovered that the student was working two jobs while attending classes, Rao’s heart opened in compassion.  He later stated, “I should be grateful.”  He realized in that moment that one of the purposes in his role as professor was to ignite the passion of his students.  This shift ultimately resulted in a class Rao developed around creativity and mastery where he focuses on the importance of fostering gratitude and authoring books like “Happiness at Work”.  He also found a renewed sense of purpose in his own life.

As Rao writes, ” Life is short. And uncertain. It is like a drop of water skittering around on a lotus leaf. You never know when it will drop off the edge and disappear. So each day is far too precious to waste. And each day that you are not radiantly alive and brimming with cheer is a day wasted.”

So are you radiantly alive and brimming with cheer?  Do you see the gift of your life every day?  I love my life.  I love living in this world with all the great experiences that it brings me.  I love my family and friends.  I love my physical comforts.  I love the beauty of the earth.  I love my personal freedoms.  I love my country and I love the world.

The bottom line is this – you are “at choice” in every moment of your life.  You get to choose whether you see life is a struggle or as a gift.  You get to choose how you react to every experience in your life.  You are not a billiard ball getting whacked by a cue ball and having to go in a specific direction.  You get to choose your reaction–how you see your life in every moment.  And then, that choice reflects back to you the future events in your life.  Maybe not immediately, but it does bring them about eventually if you stay focused on seeing the goodness. Yes, your consciousness creates your reality.

You’re going to read a lot here about directing your thoughts, words and actions in the direction in which you would like to move your personal life.  You will also hear me mentioning frequently that we all play a role in the manifestation of the vision for our highest collective life on planet Earth.  I recognize that your worldview may cause you to argue against your thoughts having such power.  You may have read about the “law of attraction” and considered it a bunch of bull.  After all, haven’t we all thought about something really hard and then not experiencing what we thought about?  Each of us can probably come up with plenty of personal examples about how this can’t be a “law” because you’ve seen it apparently broken many times. Gravity is a law, you think.  It always works.

Maybe it would be better if the “law of attraction” had been called the “theory of the power of consciousness” or something similar. Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson likes to point out that back before the 20th century, many would use the word “law” for what we now term a “theory”.  It could be that the distant origins of the recognition of the power of our thoughts may be why it became labeled a “law”.  Tyson also points out that by something being labeled a theory, it calls us to continuously check its validity as the best explanation for what we are experiencing.  We still call evolution a theory even though the evidence is overwhelming that the theory is correct.  Using the word theory allows us to be open to the possibility that our current understanding will be enveloped by an even greater understanding in the future.

Now I happen to believe that there’s overwhelming evidence in support of the creative power of our thoughts.  If you don’t believe that there is, go stop and read about the placebo effect and really consider  what is happening.  Every time a new drug is tested before coming to market, that drug test has to take into account the power of the individual’s mind to affect change in the body absence of any real medicine.  Every drug test recognizes that some people will effectuate healings and physical changes simply because they think they will based on taking something–including the sugar pill which one group gets.  Drugs have to be found statistically more effective than placebos to come to market.  Scientists like to explain this healing power away by labeling it the “placebo effect”.  It’s like if we label it, we put it in a box and think we understand it.  The fact is science really does not understand how it works.  Yet any scientist who’s truly honest about it, will admit that there is some power in our thoughts that can direct changes in our physical body.

Even beyond the placebo effect, there have been a number of other scientific tests such as on the power of prayer in healing that have indicated positive results.  Yes, I realize there are some that have not.  But like any good scientific theory being approached by a good scientifically open mind, there should be continuous testing on the theory’s validity.  Unfortunately, the potential truth of the power of the mind challenges some scientists’ view of the world so much that giving any credence to the theory would place a crack in their belief system that they simply cannot accept.  The result is a closed mind.

For now, I simply ask you to consider having an open mind – what if it’s true?  What if my thoughts have power?  How can I check it in my own life?  On the outside chance that the effect is real, wouldn’t it be better to focus my thoughts and intentions on positive things – on how I would like to see life?  Once again, you’re at choice.

Whether you believe that your thoughts have power or not, we still are at choice as to how you’re going to show up in life.  Are you going to be focusing on the negative or the positive?  Are you going to be seeing yourself as a victim of negative circumstances or someone who is living an extremely fortunate life in spite of certain circumstances?  Have you ever considered how lucky you really are?  You are, you know.

Personal exercise: Stop reading for a moment – look up and gaze around the room.  Consider your life in this moment – your health, relationships, possessions, intelligence and so on.  What are you grateful for?  Where you see the gifts in your life?  Take a couple minutes to reflect upon that and then return to your regularly scheduled life.

Mark