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Serving a community of private individuals and professionals
who have the desire to cultivate a life of clarity, compassion,
and creativity. Your feedback is encouraged. Please
contact us at seishindo@seishindo.org.
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Workshop Announcement
"Balanced
Structure, Dynamic Movement, Endless Flow"
The heartfelt expression of thoughts, emotions, and
actions
Washington D.C.: October 31 - November 2, 2003
This workshop will offer you significant value if...
- You desire a deeper sense of calmness and meaning
in your life.
- You seek a heartfelt understanding of who you
really are, once you take away the stories about
your life.
- You are a therapist, coach, social worker, physical
therapist, or bodyworker, looking to add to your
current professional skills.
- You want to help others live a more fulfilling
life.
Learn how to identify and shift the somatic underpinnings
of limiting beliefs, health concerns, and debilitating
habits.
Please click on the title to find out more.
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1. Starting Line
Last issue I talked about how we can spur innovative processes
when working as part of a group, community, or organization.
This time around I would like to take a look at how innovation
is a co-evolutionary process. Another way to say this is,
that no one organism or environment evolves on its own. All
change and adaptations that take place in the world depend
on other changes and adaptations being carried out by other
life forms. All of life spurs on the innovative processes
of all of the rest of life. Many of the creative acts we are
involved in on a daily basis can be taken for granted and
easily go unnoticed if we fail to realize the synergy in the
co-innovation of all of life. Innovation is an integral part
of evolution, an integral part of adaptation, an integral
part of you and me, and an integral part of the relationships
we share with other life forms.
Rather than looking for signs of innovation and adaptation
in car designs, fashion, or a new invention, look for the
signs of innovation and adaption that show up all around you
like multicolored wild flowers popping up in a mountain valley
in early spring. Rather than thinking of innovation as a skill
or a quality of positive thinking that you need to develop,
notice how innovation and adaptation are part of the fabric
of life. Notice how every innovative act we each take part
in is very much driven by our total surroundings. Our acts
of innovation are instigated by our environment, and our acts
of innovation need to fit into our environment or the adaptations
we create will not take hold or be of lasting value. Innovation
and adaptation are acts of co-evolution. We cannot innovate
in a vacuum. We need to innovate in relationship with our
surroundings.
* * *
Todays Practice as discussed later in the newsletter, will
help you to nurture your creative spirit, by assisting you
in looking at yourself with fresh eyes, and feeling just how
alive you really are. I urge you to "play with"
today's Practice, in the same way that a child will often
approach something new. With wonder and curiosity.
2. Main course
In his book "A Sacred Unity" Gregory Bateson suggests
that we can get a very different understanding of the integrative
nature of evolution, when we look at evolution as taking place
in relationship with our environment, and all those that we
interact with. Bateson has a lovely story about how horses
and grassy plains, and man, have co-evolved over the years.
By looking at the relationship between horses and grassy plains
and man we can get a truly fresh perspective on just how creative
and interactive all of life is. What follows, is my version
of Bateson's story. My version of how easy it can be to forget
that as we do away with nature to build more cities, our need
for nature in many ways becomes stronger. Man has adapted
in many ways by becoming more like the very animals that we
are seeing less and less of in the world. What follows is
a light hearted story, but I believe it to be a profound story
nonetheless.
If you look most anywhere in the industrialized world, you
will soon discover that man has decimated grassy plains, in
order to build cities and urban sprawl. A major decrease in
grassy plains leads to a major decrease in horse populations,
since they have less plains to roam over, and the trails that
they are building these days are better fitted to cars than
to horses. Less grassy plains and less horses leads man to
a very interesting form of adaptation. Can we call this adaptation
evolution or devolution? I leave that decision up to you.
As we decimate our natural surroundings to build our cities,
people look to somehow bring a bit of nature into their life.
If you live in suburbia in particular, you might consider
your entire yard to be a bonsai version of nature. You can
think of a suburban lawn to be the bonsai equivalent of the
"grassy plains" that were stripped away to build
your suburban neighborhood. When first creating your grassy
plain, if you would like it to be firm so that you can walk
on it as well as look at it, you will need to rent one of
those heavy rollers at the rental shop and fill the roller
with water. As you push the heavy roller around, the weight
of the roller will press the grass and the earth below it,
and make it firm. If instead, you took the water that you
used to fill the roller, and fed it to a thirsty horse, the
horse would roam over your suburban grassy plain, and the
horse's hooves would press the earth and the grass until it
was firm and save you a lot of work, plus the fee for renting
the roller. Interesting to think how by creating a grassy
plain in your front yard, you have been forced to take over
one of the roles of a horse.
Next, in order to maintain your man made grassy plain, you
will need to go out and buy a lawn mower, and over the course
of many Saturday afternoons you will spend many long hours
walking the lawn mower around your yard. Since you have to
often perform this menial task in the heat of summer, you
will likely find that this is one of the least liked tasks
that you have to perform every week. Unless of course you
enjoy being out in the heat of the day, sweating like crazy
instead of being inside your air conditioned house watching
your favorite TV program. If instead of a lawn mower you had
a horse, the horse's teeth would perform the very same function
as the lawn mower, and the horse, being more intelligent than
a lawn mower, walks itself around your property, without needing
you to push it and direct it as to where to go. The horse
could be maintaining the grassy plain, while you are in the
house relaxing. Interesting to think how by creating a grassy
plain in your front yard , you have been forced to take over
one of the roles of a horse. What the horse does at its leisure
(trimming the grassy plain) you do only with a great deal
of effort.
But not to worry, for you are proud of your lawn and perhaps
at times even happy to maintain it. And in order to do the
best possible job of keeping your lawn happy and healthy,
you discover that you have to fulfill one more function that
the horse fulfills for the grassy plain. You need to substitute
the lawn food that comes out of the rear end of the horse,
by going out and buying a bag of fertilizer. What the horse
gives freely and amply, you wind up having to pay for, and
work to spread around. Interesting to think how by creating
a grassy plain in your front yard, you have been forced to
take over one of the most basic of functions that a horse
naturally supplies to nature.
So, in one way or another, without realizing it, the decimation
of grassy plains and the concurrent sharp decline in horse
populations, has forced man to co-evolve "along with"
grassy plains and horses. And in the process, man has had
to innovate many different tools and products to take over
for the declining horse population, and you have had to adapt
by performing awkwardly and unwillingly, many of the functions
that a horse carries out naturally and willingly. I think
we will do well to think about the purposes we use our innovative
powers for, and how we could often serve ourselves much more
by being less innovative. Or perhaps we need to pay a lot
more attention to how all of our innovations impact all of
the rest of life. Certainly, as far as I am concerned, I would
prefer a lot less innovation in regard to new tools and products
that will assist me in taking over the various roles of a
horse, and a lot more innovation in regard to how we can preserve
nature and spread the workload around a bit. What is good
for the grassy plains and the horses, makes for a lot less
work by me in the long run. Somehow now that I think of it,
I can't help but feel that grassy plains prefer to grow naturally,
with the horse as the caretaker, rather than man with his
machines and chemicals.
3. Practice
"Two
of Everything" is the name of today's exercise. Most
people find it to be a great warm-up for getting their creative
juices flowing. Please take a few minutes and check this exercise
out.
4. Links
Today I want to introduce you to my dear friend and colleague
Cindy Franklin. Cindy's
resume says that she is "an executive coach and organizational
consultant who specializes in change management and leadership
development. Her focus is on fostering embodied learning
that leads to greater fulfillment as well as effectiveness."
I would add to her resume description by saying that Cindy
is wise, sensitive, compassionate, and highly intelligent.
She is also a loyal and caring friend. Cindy and I have
taught numerous workshops together and we also collaborate
on corporate consulting projects. As I sometimes lightly
say, "She often understands my own thinking better
than I do!"
I am introducing Cindy in this issue for two reasons:
1. Because I would like
more and more people to know what a wonderful coach and
consultant she is.
2. Because Cindy is going
to be writing book recommendations for the newsletter on
a regular basis from here on out, and thus I wanted you
to know a bit about her.
If you think that you might possibly be interested in Cindy's
services, please e-mail
her.
5. Suggested Books and Music
Book: "Strangers to Ourselves" by Timothy Wilson
This book is highly recommended as a fascinating description
of the way in which so much of our behavior is directed by
our "adaptive unconscious", which in Seishindo we
would also sometimes speak about as our "somatic intelligence."
The author of this book defines "unconscious" as
"processes that are inaccessible to our consciousness
but that influence our judgements, feelings and/or behavior."
He describes many fascinating social psychology experiments
relevant to this subject, and draws some provocative conclusions.
Some of the implications of the research which underscore
some of the theories of Seishindo are:
1. We can perform many activities
more skillfully with little to no involvement of our conscious
mind.
2. We make up stories about
why we do many things, but these stories often correspond
minimally to what is actually driving our behavior. Our conscious
and nonconscious goals very often do not match.
3. Studies show that Individuals
whose nonconscious and conscious motives correspond more closely
show greater emotional well-being than people whose goals
are out of sync.
4. "Introspection"
as it is usually practiced often gets us further away from
having our conscious self construct match our adaptive unconscious...having
our conscious and nonconscious goals match.
Timothy Wilson proposes what we propose here:
If we want to truly know and live in harmony with ourselves,
and if we want to change our behavior, we have to often employ
very different strategies than the familiar introspective
approach.
CD: "Shaman" by David Parsons
I have mentioned David Parsons previously. He is a great ambient
musician. "Shaman" is very nice up tempo ambient
groove music. Well worth listening to.
6. Endnote and Invitation
Community building
If you are reading our newsletter and you have a website of
your own, then send our webmaster and site co-developer Inessa
the URL and a three or four sentence description of your site
or service, and we will place it in a special subscribers
section, for all who visit our site to read. Welcome!
7. Copyright
Unless otherwise attributed, all material for the newsletter
"Pure Heart, Simple Mind"(tm) is written and edited by
Charlie Badenhop ©. All rights reserved.
You may reprint, copy, or distribute "Pure Heart, Simple
Mind” (tm) provided you: a. Receive our written permission
(which is likely). b. Attach the above copyright notice
to our material. c. Do not sell our material to others.
d. Keep the content of our material intact without any
editing whatsoever.
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