Ten pieces of interesting linkage for you collected over the last couple of weeks:
- An Interview with Martin Prechtel on indigenous soul indirectly via Jeff Aitken
- Very interesting work on measuring social capital in Northern Ireland
- Collaborative policy making resources from the Centre for Collaborative Policy via Happenings
- Youth as e-Citizens, a groundbreaking study on engaging youth activism online via Happenings
- Bruce Elkin’s resources to support coaching and personal, organizational and community success, including his book Simplicity and Success
- Nurturing a Faint Call in the Blood: A Linguist Encounters Languages of Ancient America via Jeff Aitken
- I’ve just spent the better part of an hour browsing tripping’s pictures of Toronto while listening to The Tragically Hip. Makes me want to go home, a little.
- Wicked Problems and Social Complexity: bringing collective intellegence to tough issues via Tesugen
- The Etiqutte of Improvisation also via Tesugen
- Black Elk Speaks online (along with others)
Great. I wrote a couple of days ago about how hard it is to facilitate in Canada during the hockey playoffs. Tomorrow I’m working with a group and tonight the Vancouver Canucks suffered a spectacular playoff-ending overtime defeat.
I was truly honoured yesterday to sit with 15,000 other people and listen to the Dalai Lame give a talk on Universal Responsibility yesterday in Vancouver. (You can view the video of the talk online) The Dalai Lama was introduced by Archbishop Desmond Tutu in a way that made it feel as if he was introducing a good friend to an audience of good friends. It was a wonderful afternoon.
There were many parts of the teaching that resonated, and it will take me a while to process the entire experience. Just being in the presence of these two great men, and 15,000 people who care enough about peace to have gathered to hear them, was an overwhelming experience in itself. At times, it simply made me hum being in the same physical space as the current manifestation of Avalokitesvara, the Buddha of Compassion.
There were some things that did stand out for me, especially in light of the other teachings that are flowing into my life at the moment.
The Dalai Lama had some very interesting comments about opening and closing energies. In speaking about emotional energy he said that positive energy is opening while negative energy is closing (see his comments starting at about the 45 minute point in the video). “Hatred must find an independent target. Positive emotions are helpful to see a holistic perspective; negative emotions are the opposite,” he said. The lesson here is that in order to exhibit negative emotions, you must collapse your world onto a specific target. It is a closing energy that inhibits compassion, inhibits a holistic view of the world, and inhibits the ability to transcend personal issues and problems in order to express compassion.
Compassion is about understanding that our personal interests and the interests of others are essentially the same. If we are able to do this, then we see that, as the Dalai Lama says “war is out of date…the destruction of your neighbour is the destruction of yourself.” The Dalai Lama advocates genuine dialogue to explore interests in a way which holds open the truth of all perspectives and refuses to collapse one in favour of another. In today’s world, where we are more and more connected in the concrete world through economics, communications and environment, it follows that a more transcendent acknowledgement of this connection is required for our collective well-being. Narrowing one’s focus of the world increases the potential of negative emotional energy because it ignores the reality that we are increasingly and deeply connected. Simplifying things gives rise to the simple, one dimensional targets that hate requires. Keeping the world open and complex allows for less opportunities for negative emotions to arise, and therefore preserves our field of practice for compassion and dealing with the world in real terms.
Elder Sonny Diabo, (Mohawk, Kahnawake)The group I was working with in Montreal this week is assisted by the man pictured above, Sonny Diabo, an Elder from Kahnewake, a First Nation across the river from Montreal. Sonny is a marvelous and generous teacher, and is invaluable to the group.
In the contemporary world, we don’t always get time to spend with Elders and so when I have the opportunity, I try to take advantage of it by asking about teachings in certain areas of my life that I am currently thinking about. Recently as evidenced here at the Parking Lot weblog, you will have noticed that I am preoccupied with how we know our truths, how we discover those things and what practices and teachings are out there that serve to instruct us in this subtle art of introspection.
I had a chance to speak with Sonny for about an hour on this and he related a teaching about wayfinding based on this diagram:
This represents how people move through their lives. The path is straight and true, and several Elders have related that there is an ideal life path that we attempt to follow. For those familiar with Eastern philosophy, think of the Tao.
One of the ways we know if we are on the path is by our rites of passage. Through rites of passage we engage in introspection on our lives and we also get community confirmation of our true path. In traditional communities, this might include things like naming, whereby an Elder confers on us a name that helps to set our path.
Sonny talked to me about two ways we deviate from this true path, and he described them as right side and left side paths, although he didn’t know why these specific terms are used. Evidently, this teaching is based on the patterns on a turtle shell (as is the I Ching by the way – more Taoist parallels), so the shape might be explained that way. Right side diversions are those, like addictions, which are so easy to take that one hardly knows one is out there until one’s life intersects with one’s true path again in an experience which can be as traumatic as it is healing. It is traumatic because it makes one realize how far one has strayed from the path, but it can be healing to finally “come home” to one’s true nature. Sonny used the example of a long time alcoholic who sobers up and who suddenly realizes how far he has strayed. This experience sometimes coincides with a rite of passage, such as becoming a parent or a grandparent, or perhaps grieving the death of one’s father. All of these situations throw one’s true nature into the light.
The left side diversions are, unlike addictions, full of obstacles that we are forced to struggle against. Sometimes we know we are off our path when we hit a wall and it seems impossible to move without introspection and retreat to find our path again. Shifting jobs from something you hate, with no prospects to something you love and is full of possibility is an example of these struggles and how they can return us to something truer if we take time to reflect on what they mean.
Sonny therefore advocates an approach to life that he calls “two steps forward and one step back.” There is an implicit distrust of easy progress, requiring one to ensure that one hasn’t strayed into a right hand side diversion. Building in periods of reflection serves to confirm progress and also make retreat easier, should that need to happen. It’s a prudent approach.
Sonny alludes to this in his openings to meetings, and also frequently during the meetings themselves. He invites people to work slowly and carefully and not to rush things. “Whatever we don’t finish today,” he says, “we can finish tomorrow or do another time.” This has the duel effect of focusing people on what is really important while at the same time seeming to expand the time available for completing tasks. This is even true in a situation like the one we are working together in, where there is a short deadline for the work to be completed. Especially in a situation like this, it pays to be sure that what you are doing is the right work, because there is no time to correct wildly divergent mistakes.
The approach is all about conserving energy, which of course is the secret to working with spirit. Elders and others who help us on the spirit and energy level are there to ensure that we spend our energy wisely, that we don’t burn out and that we stay focused on what really matters.
It’s a great teaching.
Montreal, Quebec
Lucky me, blogging from downton Montreal, where I have been working with a joint working group of First Nations and Inuit organizations and government.
I love this city, which is not something you hear every native born Torontonian say. This place is a treasure, a unique incubator of culture and difference that adds heaps of energy to this otherwise homogenous continent. It allows North America to hang around with Europe and African and Asia at all the parties for the cool continents. Without Montreal (and Quebec), NA is the neighbourhood geek with too much money and too much time on its hands.
As I type I am listening to the afternoon CBC show, and someone is talking about a major art event and assuring people that all Montreal Canadiens goals will be announced so people don’t miss all the action of tonight’s important playoff game. When the Habs are in the playoffs, everything seems to revolve around them.
In fact it is a work hazard, being a facilitator in Canada during the hockey playoffs. One year, back home in BC, I was working with a group in deep conflict, and they decided to go for dinner together and watch the Vancouver Canucks playoff game. Luckily, the Canucks won, putting everyone in a good mood the next day. I shudder to think what would have happened if there had been a loss that night. It kind of puts one’s role in a humbling perspective – to think that a bunch of hard process work can be undone by an overtime goal!
And that’s the mood here right now as the Habs lost an important game in overtime on Tuesday night, in a most bizarre fashion. Tonight, they must win to stay alive in the playoffs.
Luckily my meeting is done, and my flight home leaves early in the morning.