When looking around the Grand Canyon with a gas station folded map in your hand it is plain to see that the map is not the territory. If the map is a good one, there will be scribbly-scrawly things indicating roads, mountains, canyons, rivers, and what not. But a little blue line wiggling across a cellulose sheet of paper is not the same thing as a river. The map will work for navigation purposes. But, for the real thing, you need to look to the territory.

Something that is not so obvious is the fact that as  you stand admiring the landscape you are also looking at a map — not the territory. Because of how our perceptions work, because of the mechanics of our brains, we are never looking at the territory. We are always looking at a map. Continue reading →

The world seems so big, and there seem to be so many excellent voices saying exactly what you would be saying — if only you were saying it. And, they seem to say it so much better than you imagine you would say it. That’s not actually how it is.

You may have noticed that not everyone is the same. People have different tastes, different likes and dislikes, different perspectives, different ways of being in the world. We don’t all experience the world in the same way. Continue reading →

“If you continue to do only what you are currently doing, then you will continue to see only from your current perspectives.”

The English walnut tree has a bumper crop of nuts this year. Yay! I was out and about the other day picking nuts from the lower limbs.

English walnuts on the tree are hidden away inside a green husk.  They look nice and big and round. The husks are sufficiently different from leaves that one would think it would be easy to distinguish a husk from a leave.

Something I quickly discovered was that in order to find all the nuts on the limb it was necessary to approach the limb from many different angles. Coming at the limb from different angles would reveal tons of nuts that were not visible from other views.

This simple walnut hide and seek served as a resounding reminder that no matter how apparently straightforward something is looking at it from different perspectives is sure to reveal previously missed aspects.

Glass or Water? That was the question.

In the analogy, a glass  represented the human biological machine and the water corresponds to the being or inner nature which transcends a single incarnation.

So which are you — the glass or the water?

Before you answer, let me apologize — that was a trick question. By the nature of the question it is implied that you can be only one or the other.

As water it is possible to be in many different glasses — one at a time.

Since my water nature exists apart from this particular glass in which I currently find myself, and since this water will exist long after the glass is turned to dust, then surely I am the water.

Okay, I am water. But, wait….. Continue reading →

Consider water in a glass.

A short glass, a straight glass, and a shapely glass.

Pour the water from glass to glass.

Whichever glass the water fills — fill it, it will.

Paint the glass, decorate, or mar — when the water leaves, such superficialities  are as if they never were.

Are you the water or are you the glass?

There is “now”.

When I fill “now” with attention, I experience “now”.

As I stay with “now” I also experience other nows poking through the pixels of the present.

Sometimes those other nows are faint, and sometimes they are not so faint.

Continue reading →

Take any game, strip away technology and format and you will be left with the same four elements. These four elements are common to all games: a goal, rules, feedback, and a sense of voluntary participation.

I propose to you that if you take any life activity, tweak the four above elements into place you will have a game.

Sometimes (meaning pretty much all the time) we find ourselves involved in life activities for which (come hell or high water) you gotta do it. That’s not what I call voluntary participation.

The “omg that’s awfully straight-forward” method of transforming a required activity into one with a sense of voluntary participation is to just change your attitude. You want a sense of voluntary participation while involved in a required life activity, well assume an attitude of voluntary participation.

Another method for adding a sense of voluntary participation to an activity is modify the rules,  then voluntarily participate in the modified rules.

Example: You just gotta do the dinner dishes. Whether you like it or not, the dishes in the sink gotta get cleaned. Nothing voluntary about it.

How about adding the rule that all the dishes need to be scrubbed counterclockwise — not clockwise, not up-down, not side to side. They have to be scrubbed in a counterclockwise motion. You may not have a choice about whether or not you do the dishes. But you do have a choice about whether or not you follow the newly contrived rule.

This new sense of voluntary participation transforms the activity into a game. By changing the rules (even making it harder) then voluntarily participating in the new rules drudgery is turned into fun.

[Note: In follow-up blogs we will look at how playing with the goal and/or feedback can make a life activity into a game.]

Le me give you an example:

A dear friend was helping out by picking up a few items from the grocery store while out doing her own shop. The willingness to help and the actual helping was much appreciated.

One of the items on the short list was 12 oz hot cups. Well, the store was out of 12 oz hot cups. They had 8 oz and 16 oz hot cups — but not 12 oz. Making a decision on which to substitute, she purchased the 8 oz cups.

To me the obvious solution would have been the 16 oz cups.  One could fill the 16 oz cup with 12 oz of fluid (or more) and thus fulfill whatever function the 12 oz cups were intended for.

I’m sure my friend had equally compelling reasoning for choosing the 8 oz cups. This blog is not intended as a discussion of appropriate cup substitutions.

The point is: in that moment when the cups arrived the nature of the substitution served as a shining example that others don’t think the same as I do. This shocking thing is not that fact that others don’t think the same way we do. The shocking thing is that this comes as a surprise.

As we go through the day operating under the tacit assumption that the inner world of others is governed by the same laws and conditions as our own inner world, we have ample opportunity for misunderstanding and confusion.

If you could manage to suppress your rampant xenophobia, you would do for better to assume that you have no clue who or what the people you see are — a stranger in a strange land. You’d be far closer to the truth.