My friend Norah Rendell is a traditional musician of the highest calibre. She is a beautiful singer and a gifted Irish flute player and a curious and lively human being. To be around her is a delight and to make music with her is to be carried away in a space of grace and beauty where we can find out what it means to be truly human. I’ve just spent the better part of last weekend visiting with her in St. Paul, Minnesota, making music and sharing lots of story. For me the social production of music is a deeply …
Listening to a nice talk by Gil Fronsdel tonight on intention. THis is intention from a Buddhist perspective, not from a new age perspective. the difference for me is that the former is intention that informs action, the later is a passive state that somehow manifests things. I practice the former. From his talk, a couple of useful observations… First, many people when they are asked to state their intention actually come up withe a negative intention: “To not repeat the mistakes of my parents, to be alone, to leave my job.” Such intentions are valid by don’t lead to …
Check this quote: Social scientist Herbert Simon wrote in 1971 IN an information rich world, the wealth of information means the death of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence the wealth of information creates a poverty of attention. via Green sandbox: Since 1971. It’s just plain obvious that information consumes attention, but it is not always apparent how it is working on us. Last night, I was at my weekly TaKeTiNa session with friends Brian Hoover and Shasta Martinuk, exploring what …
Was listening on the beach yesterday to a good talk by Joseph Goldstein about four reflections that bring the mind to dharma. These relections are used by Buddhists to become mindful in everyday life. Mindfulness – individual and collective – is a resource in short supply in the world. A lot of the hosting work I do is about bringing more mindful consciousness to what groups are doing. These four reflections are useful in that respect. From a dharma perspective, the four reflections are: Precious human birth Contemplation of impermanence The law of karma Defects of samsara On their own …
Over the past few years, I have enjoyed watching Otto Scharmer’s practice develop as he moves between the world of high level systems thinking and grounded facilitation practice. The first book he helped write, Presence, was a lovely distillation of his reasearch and I have been working a lot with his new book, Theory U, with its grounding in practice, to work with networks and communities who are trying to access the source of their collective futures. I have also appreciated his willingness to openly share the tools he and the presencing community have been developing at the Presencing Institute …