a blog by John P. Schuster
We got our kids presents this year again. We may be helping them apply for college or get to practices so they can keep advancing their sports performance. Let me ask you a question. Did you spend much time over the holiday helping them go deeper into the mystery of life and this season? Oughtn’t we put life’s mystery and meaning above cool presents and better times? So much mystery is in the air around[…]
Read moreGratitude is the wine of the soul. Go ahead and get drunk. Giving thanks for abundance is greater than the abundance itself. Rumi Summary: Humility and gratitude are fundamental. They are like blocking and tackling in football and throwing and catching in baseball– the basics. All psychological growth, loving relationships and spiritually tuning in depend on these two foundations: and they feed each other. They deserve our attention. Humility and gratitude sound like virtues in[…]
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Points of view, opinions: enough already “It is our deep attachment to this false or manufactured self that leads us into our greatest illusions. Most of us do not see things as they are; we see things as we are.” Richard Rohr Summary: Inside our heads mental traffic is playing out on the visual screen and in our chattering voice. This is all day, every day. One big segment of this traffic is our inner[…]
Read moreLoving 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[…]
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