Whatever our orientations, we can address the questions: What is the source of our life? Where is it coming from right now? How we think about this will have a direct impact on how we feel about our life. What’s key is that we honor the experience of our own answer, without feeling that another’s is particularly better or worse. If we want to “cheat off someone else’s paper”, fine. But how we think about this is significant.

The next step, once we gain any level of clarity on these questions, is the question: What does it mean to be one with our source?

Does your religion and politics, your world view and belief system support a world where we live as one? Do you have the imagination for a world where everyone lives as one?

Are you committed to the Truth and do you believe the Truth makes you free? Well, here’s the Truth. If you answer yes to either of the above, you’re contributing to a world where we all live as one. Thank you.

In a workshop on appreciative organizations yesterday, I started to ponder a vision for education 20 years from now. One scenario that inspires me: zero classrooms. All learning occurs in the context of actual community engagement. Kids learn reading, math, and science while working alongside people in construction, kitchens, and gardens. People would be paid to mentor, assess, and report on learning in communities of learning practice. Kids would have mentors who would guide them in self-organizing their learning pathways and competency demonstrations. At certain milestones, kids would start earning financial and other incentives for their productivity in the process.

Just one scenario.

Everybody experiences far more than they understand. Yet it is experience, rather than understanding, that influences behavior. Marshall McLuhan

When we approach life from the place of pain, or fear, or resistance, we stir the pond of consciousness to the point of zero visibility. Paying attention to that which brings joy, or peace, or service, we allow the pond to settle into its own unmistakeable clarity.

A milestone on the path toward enlightenment is when we get that we can direct the focus of our attention.

Reality grows in the garden of the mind. Our world is the fruit of our thoughts that sprout from the seeds of ideas. Let our gardens be cultivated in the Way. Ch’onsa Kim

Interesting skype chat tonight with Chris and George that got me thinking about the social responsibility of bloggers. This responsibility everyone must define for themselves, ideally in the context of dialogue within the community. Wisdom emerges from connectivity.

I’m reading Swami Rama’s Science of Breath, that points out that here in modern western culture, we see problems through the either-or lens of body or mind - sending us to either medicine or psychotherapy. This dualism is so ingrained that we don’t even have adequate mainstream language for people who work with healing the relationship between the two - the wholistic integrators, whose spirit and practice is rooted in thousands of years of eastern traditions.

In the healing space, integration would be a good example of a “disruptive technology.”

I was in a new client meeting yesterday, where they became interested in my reference to appreciative leadership (the practice) as an everyday application of Appreciative Inquiry (the program). Many people are naturally attracted to the focus on good and at the same time struggle to see how it could possibly be a valid moment-to-moment lens for improving performance in organizations, much less communities.

This struggle is nothing more than moving past the habit of belief that a focus on the bad is the royal road to the good. Put that way, most people wake up and smell the espresso.