Sometimes the most obvious solutions take the longest to find.
I feel a little embarrassed that this introduction may come across as rather self-indulgent; I don’t intend that.
My purpose is to offer an introduction to a recent blogpost from Sue Dreamwalker that explains why her post really ‘spoke’ to me and why it felt important to share Sue’s post with all you good people.
Subsequently, I left a follow-up to my first comment, replying to a comment from Diane Husic. This is what Diane wrote:
Many of us realize what a critical junction the country faces in this election cycle. As an academic, I am trying to figure out the appropriate role I should play. We need to teach students to be respectful of difference, to be tolerant, to be problem solvers, and to be civically engaged, but we aren’t supposed to use our positions to “force” our political views on them. But given the magnitude of issues confronting the planet and humanity and the importance of having leadership that “gets it” (and displays compassion and empathy), this is a tough balance to try to find.
and this was my reply to Diane:
Diane, as someone who previously has run his own business and then, after selling it in 1986, spent a number of years as a mentor with the Prince’s Youth Business Trust in the UK, I have come to the conclusion that the best role model we adults can offer our ‘students’ is this: “Be the best you can be!” That flows from being fully aware of the person that one is. For self-awareness is the key to understanding oneself and, consequently, of understanding others. Understanding why people think and behave the way they do, for good and bad, is the only effective way of engaging with others and seeking that ‘civic engagement’ so critically important.
Apologies, that paragraph sounds like a damn speech! I didn’t intend it to be so. Plus, my own journey of self-awareness has been a long and tortuous one – but that doesn’t change my view just expressed.
Her recently released book on the effectiveness of Role Montage in building leadership skills is highly relevant to today’s students. In Jan’s words (and I have no commercial or financial link with Jan):
Role Montage: A Creative New Way to Discover the Leader Within You is written from Jan’s experience with her client work and her research. It helps leaders explore self-awareness and leadership using the role montage process.
I’ll creep back into my hole!
You can see why I offered a warning about coming across as self-indulgent!
But if you have stayed with me so far (and thank you) you will now understand why Sue’s post spoke so clearly to me. Republished here with Sue’s very kind permission.
ooOOoo
Set Yourself Free..
by Sue Dreamwalker. July 28th, 2016.
This morning I switched on the radio and the first record I heard was this one.. It was the very first time I had listened to this recording, never hearing it before.. It made me smile.. Especially when it mentioned taking Calcium and taking care of our knees.. So I decided to YouTube it to listen to again and to my delight found several versions..
Life has been busy within the Dreamwalker’s Domain this last week.. Last night I was so tired I went to bed at 7pm and slept for 12 hours.
Today the Universe thought to allow me to cool down in the showers of rain, so I thought I would share about my Busy time in the Sun on my Gardening Blog. And to share what brought such a smile to my face first thing this morning..
I particularly enjoyed the lyrics in the middle of this narrative of the inclusion of Rozalla’s Song Everybody’s Free to Feel Good, which is an old favourite of mine..
So Go On FEEL GOOD and DANCE.. LAUGH and SING..
And SHARE THE FEEL GOOD FACTOR
Sending Love and Blessings
Next time I will share with you the village I grew up in as we went back to see the Well Dressings.. Along with some of my thoughts..
Sue
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Feeling good about ourselves is the result of knowing and liking who we are. The foundation stone of knowing and liking all the many good people we interact with throughout our lives.
A reposting of an item from this place some three years ago.
On Sunday, in recognition of Valentine’s Day, I posted a selection of articles under the post title of Loving Relationships.
Then yesterday my day that should have been quiet and uneventful turned out to be anything other than that! So it was well after 3pm that I sat down in front of my PC wondering what to publish today. I thought that as there had been a steady flow of new readers signing up to follow this place (and a huge thank you – it really does mean a lot to me) I might see what I published three years ago.
To my surprise it was a post about the most important relationship of all; the one with ourself.
So please do enjoy what was published on February 15th, 2012.
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Do you or I really know who we are?
The strangeness of this species Homo sapiens.
My writings of the previous three days have explored the nature of man. The many ways that we struggle to understand so many issues in our lives. In particular the biggest issue of them all since we abandoned the life of the hunter-gatherer. Our very survival.
It would be so easy to beat oneself up. To stare in the mirror and despair at all the unfinished ideas that one has about being ‘sustainable’ shortly before jumping on one’s shiny new tractor, yet another symbol of our industrial civilisation. The hypocrisy, the double standards!
New tractor delivered last December.
But the mistake in any attempt at self-awareness is the assumption that you know who you are! Therein lays the problem.!
Marcus Peter Francis du Sautoy is a very smart person. This is how WikiPedia describes him.
Prof. Sautoy came to the realisation that the thoughts that make us feel as though we know ourselves are easy to experience. But where do those thoughts come from? Marcus Sautoy acknowledged that they are notoriously difficult to explain.
So, in order to find out where they come from Marcus subjects himself to a series of probing experiments. With the help of a hammer-wielding scientist, Jennifer Aniston and a general anaesthetic, Professor Marcus du Sautoy goes in search of answers to one of science’s greatest mysteries: how do we know who we are?
He learns at what age our self-awareness emerges and whether other species share this trait.
Next, he has his mind scrambled by a cutting-edge experiment in anaesthesia. Having survived that ordeal, Marcus is given an out-of-body experience in a bid to locate his true self. And in Hollywood, he learns how celebrities are helping scientists understand the microscopic activities of our brain.
Finally, he takes part in a mind-reading experiment that both helps explain and radically alters his understanding of who he is.
All of this is covered in a fabulously interesting episode from Horizon, the excellent and long-running BBC TV science and philosophy series. Thankfully, it made its way onto YouTube.
(NB: In the intervening period, that BBC Horizon programme has been removed from YouTube for copyright reasons. That’s a great shame. However, the following documentary from the good Professor will, I am sure, be equally fascinating.)
Without us noticing, modern life has been taken over. Algorithms run everything from search engines on the internet to satnavs and credit card data security – they even help us travel the world, find love and save lives.
Mathematician Professor Marcus du Sautoy demystifies the hidden world of algorithms. By showing us some of the algorithms most essential to our lives, he reveals where these 2,000-year-old problem solvers came from, how they work, what they have achieved and how they are now so advanced they can even programme themselves.
As Confucius reportedly wrote: Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.
Last Friday I offered a post under the title of The power of stillness. It was founded on a recent essay seen in the newsletter called Just One Thing published, freely, by Dr. Rick Hanson. Here’s the closing paragraph of that essay:
Wherever you find it, enjoy stillness and let it feed you. It’s a relief from the noise and bustle, a source of clarity and peace. Give yourself the space, the permission, to be still – at least in your mind – amidst those who are busy. To use a traditional saying:
May that which is still be that in which your mind delights.
There’s a very strong correlation between finding that stillness within and having the self-awareness and peace that comes from knowing who one is. Seems such an easy ‘walk in the park’ to know ourselves but most times it is far from that. Many are the ways that we hide who we really are! 😉
However the rewards are everything. Knowing and liking oneself offers the richest scenery of any journey.
All of which constitutes my way of introducing a truly wonderful poem from Sue Dreamwalker, a great friend of this blog.
ooOOoo
Vicar’s Water. A Sanctuary for wild life.
Journey Within..
Come with me on a journey it starts inside my head
Create a place to dwell from all the Fear and dread
Close your eyes and behind them create a perfect vision
Build a garden full of beauty get ready for your transition
~
Sit upon the grass as sky lark sings above
Hold out your hand to feed the many cooing Doves
See the babbling stream as the young fawn drinks her fill
And listen to the Woodpecker’s distant woodland drill
~
Watch the tiny fishes as the light glistens from their scales
You’re now adrift in the ocean, as you watch the Humpback Whales
You listen to their song a lament as old as time
Each breath takes you deeper as your Spirit begins to climb
~
Now you are on a mountain its top all crisp and white
You fly among the Eagles suspended in effortless flight
Thermals take you higher as you travel within its ring
Higher yet you travel, more peace to feel and bring
~
Through the clouds you break into outer-space you speed
Looking back at a Blue Planet which provided all your needs
Weightless and suspended no longer feeling Form
You fly around the heavens exploring each star born.
~
Filled up now with knowledge no mortal Words could speak
You return back to your garden upon your grassy seat
A new sense of Peace surrounds you as you open up your eyes
You can return in an instant, just open up your mind.
We can travel anywhere we wish when we just close our eyes and allow our mind to relax in a meditation.. Breathe deep and create your perfect space…. The above poem I wrote last week as I recollected part of a meditation.. The view I have included is one taken on a regular walk we often take..Have a fabulous week.
Thank you for Reading
Sue
ooOOoo
What can one say? All that comes to mind is stay on your own journey and never stop enjoying the views.
This may seem like a bit of an ‘odd-ball’ after Celebrating Ben and Ranger on Monday and Celebrating Pharaoh yesterday. Indeed, when I had in mind those two posts, writing about self-awareness was nowhere on my mental horizon. Then along came Shakti Ghosal after Monday’s post who left this comment:
Hi Paul,
Just came a visiting and was halted by these glorious photographs. Horses embody such great qualities of trust, grace and power don’t they? What is it that makes them such a great friend of Man, I wonder? Specially when the latter species, as we know it (and we should know!), can choose to behave quite contrary to those Equine qualities above….
Shakti
As Shakti was a new visitor inevitably I went across to his blog site, ESGEE musings, and then to the About page. Where I read, in part,
About Shakti Ghosal
Born in New Delhi, India, Shakti Ghosal is an Engineer and Management Post Graduate from IIM, Bangalore. Apart from Management theory, Shakti remains fascinated with diverse areas ranging from World History, Global trends to Human Psychology & Development.
I was intrigued and starting reading some of Shakti’s posts. That is how I came across The Audacity of Who I am and a day later had been offered permission to republish it.
However, before going on to Shakti’s post let me recap a little from yesterday’s post Celebrating Pharaoh. This section:
The biggest, single reward of having Pharaoh as my friend goes back a few years. Back to my Devon days and the time when Jon Lavin and I used to spend hours talking together. Pharaoh always contentedly asleep in the same room as the two of us. It was Jon who introduced me to Dr. David Hawkins and his Map of Consciousness. It was Jon one day who looking down at the sleeping Pharaoh pointed out that Dr. Hawkins offered evidence that dogs are integrous creatures with a ‘score’ on that Map of between 205 and 210. (Background story is here.)
So this blog, Learning from Dogs, and my attempt to write a book of the same name flow from that awareness of what dogs mean to human consciousness and what Pharaoh means to me. No, more than that! From that mix of Jon, Dr. David Hawkins, and experiencing the power of unconditional love from an animal living with me day-in, day-out, came a journey into my self. Came the self-awareness that allowed me to like who I was, be openly loved by this dog of mine, and be able to love in return. As is said: “You cannot love another until you love yourself.“
I will speak a little more about this but, first, to Shakti’s post.
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The Audacity of Who I am
“High above the noise and fear mongering of critics and cynics softly speaks your true self.”
– Mollie Marti, Psychologist, Lawyer & Coach, USA
The other day, I watched the Bollywood movie Queen. In it Rani, a girl from Delhi, travels to Europe after being spurned by her fiancé. The movie then goes on to explore Rani’s ‘World view’ as dictated by her Indian middle class values and how that alters, as her biases and prejudices fall away, as she is confronted by radically different value systems and perspectives. A journey of self discovery in surroundings where she is no longer weighed down by others’ expectations and diktats. As she morphs, she confuses and pisses off many people including herself. Rani emerges from this crucible of experience as a more authentic human being. As she chooses to be ‘who she is for herself and for others’, she symbolises courage as well as resistance. Walking out of the theatre, I could not help but acknowledge how Rani’s awareness and acceptance of ‘who she is for herself and for others’ left her more empowered and in control of her destiny.
Kangana Ranaut in Queen
Who I am for myself and for others? How many of us are willing to make this query a daily practice as we loosen the constraints imposed by our world-view, let go of who we believe we should show up as and embrace who we really are?
What is it that makes me avoid being who I am for myself and for others? I can see this stemming from my desperation to be admired, liked and looking good. My life experiences have conditioned me to avoid being straightforward and veer towards being diplomatic if I perceive it is the latter which makes me look good. I have also been guilty of the corporate lie. On occasions I have stretched the truth about my company and its services, hidden what could have been embarrassing. On other occasions I have manipulated situations and people. All this to succeed, be admired, look good.
I muse. Have my efforts to gain admiration and look good empowered me to greater heights? Have I succeeded in engaging in my life from a place of worthiness? I remain increasingly unsure.
So if avoiding ‘who I am for myself and for others’ has not worked for me, how could I embrace it? As I think of this, I begin to see what being who I am for myself and for others could mean for me.
It would mean the audacity to show up as the ‘imperfect me’ that I am and the willingness to be vulnerable.
It would mean the audacity to let my hair down and allow myself to truly belong with the folks I choose.
It would mean the audacity to be compassionate and loving even when I hold the fear of not being good enough.
It would mean the audacity to be authentic about my own inauthenticities.
Am I committed to being this audacious?
***
“Real isn’t how you are made,’ said the Skin Horse.’ It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.’
‘Does it hurt?’ asked the Rabbit.
‘Sometimes,’ said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. ‘When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.’
‘Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,’ he asked, ‘or bit by bit?’
‘It doesn’t happen all at once,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
Excerpt from ‘The Velveteen Rabbit’ by Margery Williams
In Learning….. Shakti Ghosal
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Now Shatki’s post is spot on. But it assumes one thing. That is that each of us has sufficient self-awareness “to show up as the ‘imperfect me’”. Sometimes, as in my case, that ‘imperfect me’ was well-hidden from the self. Stay with me a little longer.
My father died of cancer in 1956. Just 5 days before Christmas, 1956. He was 55 and I had turned 12 just 6 weeks previously. I had completed my first term at the local (Preston Road, Wembley) grammar school.
For many reasons that do not need to be shared here, the effect of my father’s death and my subsequent decline in my school performance, left me with a long-term psychological ‘dysfunction’; namely a feeling that I had been emotionally rejected. But that feeling was deeply hidden from me. In fact, that hidden belief remained with me until 2007 when Jon Lavin brought it to the surface. (Jon is a UKCP accredited therapist and NLP Practitioner).
Reflect on that for just a moment. For the thick end of fifty years, this psychological characteristic remained totally below my consciousness yet, nonetheless, influenced me in very real and tangible ways.
The negative influence was that I was drawn to any woman who offered me love and affection and, therefore, was emotionally unable to understand how good a partner she might or might not be for me. (Jean is my fourth wife!)
The positive influence was that I tried very hard to please others, to avoid their rejection, and had successful careers in selling for IBM UK, starting and building a successful business in the early days of personal computing and, later, when my company was sold in 1986 becoming a freelance journalist and business coach.
So back to Shakti’s essay.
I agree one-hundred-percent with what he says. With the proviso that in certain cases, spending time with a qualified counsellor could be your best investment ever.
How to round this off.
If you have been influenced by any of this then do give yourself time and space to counsel yourself. Let your inner person reach out in peace to your outer person.
If that inner person suggests you could be a happier, more peaceful person then reach out to someone properly qualified to hold your hand as you open up to your inner feelings.
Which is why loving a dog and being loved in return by that beautiful creature means so much. For in that private bond that animals offer us lays the truth.
I can do no better than offer this personal reason why being audacious about who you are is the supreme ‘investment’ of all in yourself.
A few months after Jon Lavin brought my fear of emotional rejection to my conscious surface, I met Jean in Mexico, Christmas 2007. I have never loved a person as I love Jean. I have never been loved by a person as Jean loves me.
Jean, Father Dan and yours truly. St Paul’s Episcopal Church, Payson, AZ. November 20th, 2010.
Being at peace with who you are is the most important celebration.
My writings of the previous three days have explored the nature of man. The many ways that we struggle to understand so many issues in our lives. In particular the biggest issue of them all since we abandoned the life of the hunter-gatherer. Our very survival.
It would be so easy to beat oneself up. To stare in the mirror and despair at all the unfinished ideas that one has about being ‘sustainable’ shortly before jumping on one’s shiny new tractor, yet another symbol of our industrial civilisation. The hypocrisy, the double standards!
New tractor delivered last December.
But the mistake in any attempt at self-awareness is the assumption that you know who you are! Therein lays the problem.!
Marcus Peter Francis du Sautoy is a very smart person. This is how WikiPedia describes him.
Prof. Sautoy came to the realisation that the thoughts that make us feel as though we know ourselves are easy to experience. But where do those thoughts come from? Marcus Sautoy acknowledged that they are notoriously difficult to explain.
So, in order to find out where they come from Marcus subjects himself to a series of probing experiments. With the help of a hammer-wielding scientist, Jennifer Aniston and a general anaesthetic, Professor Marcus du Sautoy goes in search of answers to one of science’s greatest mysteries: how do we know who we are? ,
He learns at what age our self-awareness emerges and whether other species share this trait.
Next, he has his mind scrambled by a cutting-edge experiment in anaesthesia. Having survived that ordeal, Marcus is given an out-of-body experience in a bid to locate his true self. And in Hollywood, he learns how celebrities are helping scientists understand the microscopic activities of our brain.
Finally, he takes part in a mind-reading experiment that both helps explain and radically alters his understanding of who he is.
All of this is covered in a fabulously interesting episode from Horizon, the excellent and long-running BBC TV science and philosophy series. Thankfully, it made its way onto YouTube.
It is just under an hour long but I promise you it will capture you from the very first moment.
Enjoy. Even if you end up realising, as I did, what a strange person you are!
As Confucius reportedly wrote: Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.
There’s no question that when one stays very still and closely watches a dog’s behaviour you see an amazing level of awareness. Even when they appear to be deeply asleep anything sensed by their ‘being’ is registered immediately. A small tale, by way of example. Many years ago when Pharaoh and I lived in the Devon village of Harberton, we frequently shopped in the town of Totnes, just 3 miles away. Many times, I would be walking up the High Street with Pharaoh nicely to heel being passed by many people walking the opposite way on the same pavement.
Totnes High Street
Every once in a while, during the fraction of time that it took for someone to pass us by, Pharaoh would utter a low, throatal growl without even slowing his pace. I always presumed that something, way beyond my level of consciousness, had disturbed Pharaoh during that instant of time.
Real awareness, or if you prefer, consciousness is not some touchy/feely concept but a true understanding about just what the heck is going on.
So do watch the following video of Peter Russell discussing Rediscovering Ourselves; it’s very relevant.
Then have a read of a couple of items on Peter’s website. The first is about runaway climate change, and here’s an extract,
Runaway Climate Change
The most dangerous aspect of global warming.
Global Warming is bad enough. Over the last hundred years, average global temperatures have increased by 0.75°C, one third of that rise occurring in the last twenty years. The 2007 report by The Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) forecast that, by 2090, temperatures will have risen between 2 and 6 degrees.
Even a two degree rise in temperature would be disastrous. Changes in climate will lead to more intense storms, longer periods of drought, crop failures in many developing countries, the destruction of nearly all the coral reefs, the melting of much of the polar ice, the flooding of many low-lying urban areas, the possible collapse of the Amazonian rain forest, and the extinction of 20-30% of the planet’s species. The IPCC projects that this could happen by 2050.
If the temperature were to rise by six degrees, the prognosis is extremely bleak. At this temperature, the entire planet will be ice-free. Sea levels will rise by 70 meters. Many species of tiny plankton will cease to exist, and the problem would echo up the food chain, bringing the extinction of many fish, sea mammals, and the largest whales. Much of the land will now be desert. Hurricanes of unimaginable ferocity will bring widespread ecological devastation. If, as is possible, the ozone layer were destroyed, the burning ultraviolet light could make life on land impossible. Evolution would have been set back a billion years. It would be a planetary catastrophe.
Read the rest of that essay here. Now on to the next extract, from here,
The Under-rated Approach to Carbon Reduction
As critical as it is to reduce future carbon emissions, it is equally critical, perhaps even more critical, to get much of the CO2 that as already been released—and which is responsible for the current warming—out of the atmosphere and back into the ground where it belongs.
This approach, known as carbon capture and sequestration, has until now been largely ignored, and for several reasons. The atmosphere is so huge, it would seem to be an impossible task. There are possible technologies, but they are not nearly so well-developed as alternative energy sources. Many are still only ideas on paper. Where technologies of carbon capture have been developed they are mostly for capturing CO2 from smokestacks. Valuable as this may be, it is still dealing with the problem of future carbon emissions. What we need are technologies that will remove from the atmosphere the carbon that we already emitted, and then sequestrate it (put it away) in a stable form.
It is to this end that Sir Richard Branson announced his $25 million prize (Virgin Earth Challenge) for technologies that could capture a billion tons of carbon a year from the atmosphere (about one tenth of what we now release each year). Nor is it just Richard Branson who believes we must make this an equally important approach to the problem. His team includes Al Gore, James Lovelock, Sir Crispin Tickell (former UK ambassador to the UN), and James Hansen, the head climate scientist at NASA).
Again, the full article, a ‘must-read, in my opinion, is here.
It is really about awareness! Dogs have so much to teach us!
Just wanted to add my best wishes to all Learning from Dog readers to those of Paul from yesterday.
Plus I did want to expand, just a touch, on what Paul wrote yesterday, more or less reflecting on an article by Leo Babauta. In that post, Paul quoted Leo writing:
The thing I’ve learned, and it’s not some new truth but an old one that took me much too long to learn, is that if you learn to be content with who you are and where you are in life, it changes everything.
In a very real sense what Leo is saying is that if you don’t love yourself you can’t possibly ‘love’ the world around you. Now this is incredibly easy to consider, too easy in fact, because the truth of loving oneself first is, for the vast majority of people, a complex, confusing and unclear journey, as in ‘self-journey’. Read that quote from Leo again and see how he writes, ‘an old one [as in truth] that took me much too long to learn‘.
I’m sure when Leo writes ‘too long to learn‘ he is, in effect, acknowledging the very individual circumstances that lead to a person developing the awareness that is expressed in that quote ‘if you learn to be content with who you are and where you are in life, it changes everything‘.
So if 2011 is going to be a challenging year then hang on to the only rock in your life – yourself! Embrace the reality that you, like all of us, do your best. Be good and kind to you.
Learning from Dogs 
Diane, as someone who previously has run his own business and then, after selling it in 1986, spent a number of years as a mentor with the Prince’s Youth Business Trust in the UK, I have come to the conclusion that the best role model we adults can offer our ‘students’ is this: “Be the best you can be!” That flows from being fully aware of the person that one is. For self-awareness is the key to understanding oneself and, consequently, of understanding others. Understanding why people think and behave the way they do, for good and bad, is the only effective way of engaging with others and seeking that ‘civic engagement’ so critically important.
Apologies, that paragraph sounds like a damn speech! I didn’t intend it to be so. Plus, my own journey of self-awareness has been a long and tortuous one – but that doesn’t change my view just expressed.
Coincidentally, I have been having some informal chats with Jan Schmuckle: http://www.janconsults.com/home
Her recently released book on the effectiveness of Role Montage in building leadership skills is highly relevant to today’s students. In Jan’s words (and I have no commercial or financial link with Jan):
Role Montage: A Creative New Way to Discover the
Leader Within You is written from Jan’s experience
with her client work and her research. It helps
leaders explore self-awareness and leadership using
the role montage process.
I’ll creep back into my hole!