We finally caught up with author Matthew Fox, and last week’s long-awaited interview didn’t disappoint. As you probably know, Matthew Fox became an Episcopal priest after being expelled from the Catholic Church by Cardinal Ratzinger, who later became Pope Benedict XVI. He discussed his latest book “Meister Eckhart: A Mystic Warrior for Our Times, and he gave us some examples of the controversial viewpoints that put him at odds with the church hierarchy. You can hear the show by clicking on the BlogTalkRadio logo below.
Here are some of the talking points from the show:
The meaning of Christian Spirituality
Christian Spirituality and the scriptural story of creation
Meister Eckhart on the women’s movement of his time (the Beguines)
Matthew Fox’s expulsion from the Catholic Church
On the new Pope and chances of change in the church
Though he lived in the thirteenth century, Meister Eckhart’s deeply ecumenical teachings were in many ways modern. He taught about what we call ecology, championed artistic creativity, and advocated for social, economic, and gender justice. All these elements have inspired spiritual maverick Matthew Fox and influenced his Creation Spirituality. You can hear Matthew Fox on Chi For Yourself today at 4pm Eastern, 1pm Pacific at chiforyourself.com.
“Constructive wallowing” seems like an oxymoron. Constructive is a good thing, but wallowing is bad. Right?
But wait a minute; is it really so terrible to give ourselves a time-out to feel our feelings? Or is it possible that wallowing is an act of loving kindness, right when we need it most?
We’ll look at these questions and more on Chi For Yourself when we’re visited by Tina Gilbertson, author of Constructive Wallowing:How to Beat Bad Feelings by Letting Yourself Have Them.
Tina will be the guest on Thursday, September 11th at 4pm Eastern, 1pm Pacific time. You’ll be able to hear the interview at chiforyourself.com
No doubt you’ve noticed that Chi For Yourself has been rather quiet lately. That’s due to the fact that I’m spending some time on the East Coast (USA) helping my mother get through some difficult transitions in her life.
As a care-giver “newbie” I’ve got a lot to learn, and my patience can at times be tested. For that reason I’ve reached back to a past Chi For Yourself episode with Suzanne Scurlock-Durana for help. I thought I’d share that episode with you. Here’s a little background:
Many teachers stress the importance of living in the present moment. Few give the actual practices to make it attainable. This book teaches you how to return to the incredible navigational system of the body and more fully inhabit each moment.
For over twenty-five years, Suzanne Scurlock-Durana has taught her step-by-step practice of present moment awareness through her own combination of bodywork and CranioSacral therapy. The practices of her book Full Body Presence: Learning to Listen to Your Body’s Wisdom are intended to help you find a deeper awareness in the moment, even in the midst of chaos, family and work demands, or the pressure to perform. This deeper awareness also brings a fuller sense of trust and confidence in yourself and in the world.
Before I forget I want to tell you that in August Chi For Yourself will welcome back Matthew Fox. He’s bringing a new book and his always fresh approach to the old teachings! I’ll have details and dates later..
Listen to Suzanne Scurlock-Durana by clicking on the player:
When Zen teacher Karen Maezen Miller and her family land in a house with a hundred-year-old Japanese garden, she uses the paradise in her backyard to glean the living wisdom of our natural world. Through her eyes, rocks convey faith, ponds preach stillness, flowers give love, and leaves express the effortless ease of letting go.
Karen Maezen Miller is the author of Paradise in Plain Sight: Lessons from a Zen Garden.The book welcomes readers into the garden for Zen lessons in fearlessness, forgiveness, presence, acceptance, and contentment. Miller gathers inspiration from the ground beneath her feet to remind us that paradise is always here and now.
Karen Maezen Miller is our guest on Chi For Yourself. Hear the interview today at 4pm Eastern, 1pm Pacific at chiforyourself.com.
In yoga practice, mantra and kirtan (call-and-response devotional chanting) get short shrift in the West because they aren’t well understood, though they are an integral part of almost every Eastern spiritual practice. They are designed to provide access into the psyche while their underlying mythology helps us understand how our psychology affects daily life. Our guest on this show has written a book dealing with the myths behind the mantras and kirtans Alanna Kaivalya is the author of SACRED SOUND: Discovering the Myth & Meaning of Mantra & Kirtan, Her intention is to illuminate their meaning and to put their power and practicality within reach of every reader.
Alanna Kaivalya
Join us for today’s interview at 4pm Eastern..1pm Pacific at chiforyourself.com
Be with us for today’s Chi For Yourself and guest Daniel Parmeggiani. Daniel is the author of The Magnificent Truths of Our Existence: Unlocking the Deeper Reality of Permanent Happiness.
” Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared”
Buddha
Article: The Simplicity of Choosing Happiness
In our new age of spirituality, where east meets west in the modern labyrinth of mental and spiritual healing, two clear definitions to happiness remain; (1) that happiness is a value synonymous with well-being and thriving, and (2) as opposed to depression, it is something we as humans seek. In essence happiness itself remaining the primary goal – and more elusive.
Psychological research suggests that each individual has what is called a ‘Happiness Set-point’ (HSP) determining overall well-being; happier when things balance our inner HSP and quite unhappy (even miserable), when things go against us, or fall short of it. We alone draw that line and in so doing compound our intrinsic belief, that sentience has a right to happiness, no matter what. Even an animal (and our basic survival instincts) will seek comfort against pain, to find it.
Evidence from research shows that 40% of our happiness is within our control and a voluntary choice we make. Psychologist William James, adds that it is our attitude that hinders or helps us reach our HSP. It seems that it is a natural human reflex to alter our attitude to achieve it. We want to maintain our HSP at all costs. Ironically, the indifference of the depressed, is a matter of ongoing research on lower HSP levels as per socio-economic standards, environmental and chemical imbalance.
Biblical and Buddhist philosophy maintain that all happiness comes from seeking it, yet ironically, a principle point of Buddhism is that all striving is suffering. This would explain why realistic goals are paramount, as true happiness may only be achieved through the balance of effort and suffering, and not the eternal ‘good-time’ that modern pop-psychology would have us believe. Being happier takes effort, especially if it’s a choice we make and maintain with mindfulness. Without effort, one can argue that happiness is hollow and not happiness at all.
Transformation might well be as simple as ‘Seek and ye shall find’ and no matter your labour to your HSP (health, diet, supplements; yoga and exercise; meditation, gratitude, education, journals, self-help, new-age, and/or new-thought mindfulness); the bottom line is that you are still only partaking in the most natural human birth-right of our species. Best to keep it simple.
Growing up in a household traumatized by the violent death of his older brother, and caught between two radically different parental worldviews, young Daniel Parmeggiani often felt guilty, isolated and depressed. After years of trying to find freedom from this torment, Daniel had an epiphany. He realized that every human being shared the same desire – the desire to feel better. All the lofty, complex philosophies he had read boiled down to a simple, single Truth:
Our ONLY motivation in life is to be happy.
Seeing how this shift in understanding completely changed his own life from one of unhappiness to one filled with joy, Daniel Parmeggiani felt called to write his book, The Magnificent Truths of Our Existence: Unlocking the Deeper Reality of Permanent Happiness. Daniel’s book offers a new perspective for rational people looking for simple, clear and logical explanations for life’s most elusive mysteries.
Daniel will be the guest on Chi For Yourself this Thursday (May 29th) at 1pm Pacific time. Hear the interview at chiforyourself.com.
While I was posting this Friday’s Chi For Yourself/BlogTalkRadio episode with Michael Michalko (1pm Eastern) I got to thinking about, well, thinking. I was looking for some ideas for an upcoming project and I was feeling kinda scattered when up popped this article by Colin Bates. Synchronicity! I got it together and I’m feeling a lot better about the project. If your thought process is ‘all over the lot’ give this article a look. It’s a good warmup for Michael Michalko’s discussion of his book Creative Thinkering: Putting Your Imagination to Work.
Creative thinking can be learnt. And to do so it helps to understand the creative thinking process: the structure and steps that you need to take to generate (and sometime evaluate) creative ideas.
Here are 3 examples of the creative thinking process. They all start with a definition of the creative challenge, or creative goal. In my case, this is to ‘generate new ideas for a holiday’.
Information, Incubation, Ideation
This creative thinking process begins with gathering information. To generate ideas we need input, ideas won’t emerge from an empty vessel! In my case, looking for ideas for a holiday, I’d go online, talk to friends, look through the travel magazines… any relevant source of information!
Next, relax. Put the challenge to one side. Forget about it. Let the information incubate in your mind. This process is rooted in the belief that generating ideas should be natural, stress-free and almost effortless. Let the mind do it’s work in the subconscious.
The key thing is to make sure you’re ready to capture the ideas as they emerge. Because the final ideation stage is quite fluid you need to be ready to write down the ideas before they’re lost. Keep a notebook handly, especially on the bedside table, so that you can write down the ideas as soon as they emerge.
You’ll soon find you have plenty of great ideas!
Observe, combine, create
This process begins in a similar way: observation is a way of gathering information.
The key to this process is combine. It’s a technique of idea generation which involves taking existing ideas, and combining them to create something new.
This process is great for creating new products. As a very simple example, putting a camera into a mobile phone combined two existing products to create something new.
For my holiday, I might see a ‘foodies’ holiday in Italy, but chose to combine it with my original destination, Thailand. This inspiration could result in a tour around the gastronomic hotspots to sample Thai cuisine.
Dreamer, Realist, Critic
This final creative thinking process involves not just generating ideas, but also evaluating and improving them. It’s know as ‘The Disney Way’ as it was originally used by Walt Disney to generate ideas and evaluate ideas for his movies.
The Dreamer is free of all constraints, has infinite resources and anything they think of is guaranteed to succeed. This mindset is designed to overcome limitations, and generate the ‘free thinking’ required to come up with great and outrageous ideas.
The Realist is more practical: evaluating and refining ideas.
And finally, The Critic asks if the ideas are really good enough. If not, it’s back to The Dreamer!
As I search for a holiday, I might dream of going to the moon. Not possible, but as I become a realist it will trigger more thoughts. Perhaps I could visit NASA? Or try skydiving? Or visit Area 51?
In summary: Three Creative Thinking Processes
Next time you have a challenge that requires a creative solution, try using these techniques. You’ll soon be developing your creative thinking skills, and generating more and better ideas too!
This week on Chi For Yourself we get “creative”, with a look back on the 2011 interview with Michael Michalko, one of the most highly acclaimed creativity experts in the world. Michael talks about his book Creative Thinkering and ways we can synthesize dissimilar subjects, think paradoxically, and enlist the help of our subconscious minds. His intention? Liberate your thinking and literally expand your imagination!
The interview will air on BlogTalkRadio at 1pm Eastern, 10 am in the Pacific time zone.
Article:
The Long Arm of the Universe: You Can Run But You Can’t Hide From Natural Law
So there I am, enjoying a beautiful Saturday afternoon of shopping with my mate. She and I had picked up several items when I casually suggested how one of those items could be used and then returned to the store. Nothing unusual- it’s done all the time. Not against the law, I thought. In fact, people do it all the time and the store actually expects it.
As the week progressed I realized that I had slipped into a behavior that was common in my younger days. Get something for nothing, use it, bring it back in perfect condition, and be ahead of the game- no harm no foul! But even if society doesn’t police these actions you can be sure the Universe does. I felt I had been slapped “upside the head” with a classic scarcity lesson. And what’s that queasy feeling I have in the pit of my stomach? Why I believe it’s guilt!
from Wikipedia: Guilt is a cognitive or an emotional experience that occurs when a person realizes or believes—accurately or not—that he or she has compromised his or her own standards of conduct or has violated a moral standard, and bears significant responsibility for that violation.[1] It is closely related to the concept of remorse.
Hmmm. Remorse. Yeah, I’d say there was some of that, too. I wondered to myself why I felt that I had to resort to a mindset that I thought I had abandoned long ago. I’ve experienced such abundance in my life. Those store items were very affordable, but like a reversal of the well-known *Patanjali quote a “dormant force” had come back to make me feel otherwise. I had betrayed my Self. Not a shining example of genuine living.
“True guilt is guilt at the obligation one owes to oneself to be oneself. False guilt is guilt felt at not being what other people feel one ought to be.” (R. D. Laing)
I’ve since taken steps to balance the Universe’s “books.” And I’m doing that with great gratitude. I appreciate that I’m given the insight to see what I did and that I have the choice to answer that faint inner voice in the affirmative. In the words of author Marge Kennedy: “Hard though it may be to accept, remember that guilt is sometimes a friendly internal voice reminding you that you’re messing up.”
Messed up. My bad.
*“When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds: Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great, and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and your discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.”
-Patanjali
We finally caught up with author Matthew Fox, and last week’s long-awaited interview didn’t disappoint. As you probably know, Matthew Fox became an Episcopal priest after being expelled from the Catholic Church by Cardinal Ratzinger, who later became Pope Benedict XVI. He discussed his latest book “Meister Eckhart: A Mystic Warrior for Our Times, and he gave us some examples of the controversial viewpoints that put him at odds with the church hierarchy. You can hear the show by clicking on the BlogTalkRadio logo below.
Buddha
Creative thinking can be learnt. And to do so it helps to understand the creative thinking process: the structure and steps that you need to take to generate (and sometime evaluate) creative ideas.
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