Working on the second draft of “Conscious Becoming.” It’s centered around 4 truths that characterize what I’m proposing that it means to be conscious.

1/ Reality is the only way it can be,
given all that came before

2/ The story we tell ourselves about reality
is only one possible story

3/ Whatever we’re doing right now
is only one possible thing to do

4/ We don’t need a different reality
to do what else is possible right now.

When we are unconscious, we experience life as a tense and self-limiting sense of conclusions. When we’re conscious, we experience life as a calm, curious sense of possibilities.

There is nothing more important than to recognize our own freedom and the freedom of others.

On some days, it’s a good thing to feel like a squirrel scampering past a zoo.

Some of the brightest people on the planet daily toil in relative obscurity. They grab no headlines and don’t show up in who’s-who photos. They simply work hard on innovations, driven only by the intrinsic rewards of discovery and dedication. If they were in it for fame or fortune, they would have given up a long time ago.

Without them, we would be without technical, science, and social innovations. The next time you benefit from or hear about any kind of breakthrough, thank someone you will never meet or hear of.

It’s the joy within us that causes us to notice beauty and drink in stories that inspire. It’s the joy within us that makes us curious about the good people are up to. It’s the joy within us that gives us uncanny faith in strangers. It’s the joy within us that gives us an appetite for harmony and confluence.

Working with an environmental leadership group in Washington DC where there is significant interest in the power of social networks. It’s very much a mindset, focusing on how personal value in networks is relational.

In a relational view, personal assets and attributes have no intrinsic value in themselves - skills, knowledge, degrees, expertise, resources. They have value in networks relative to variables like accessibility, supply, demand, and trust.

So when we’re assessing our personal value in our networks and communities, we need to consider questions like, “When and where are my gifts most valuable?” and “What can I do to make my gifts more known and engaged?”

Bush today announced closure on a long search for a “war czar” for the country. Interestingly, a Google search of “US Peace Czar” turns up two, as in 2, hits, both referencing the same Dallas newpaper article.

That’s where the US culture is at the moment. Good news: a lot of room for improvement - room the size of the universe, to be exact. The root cause is that the thought of peace annoys many people, not the least of whom make a living from war. Until a peace czar helps us retool whole industries and careers, peace will be a long road to journey, but worth every step.

In a recent conversation with urban garden innovator, Maurice Small, he suggests that he gets his energy from the earth. A beautiful realization, that by literally touching and nurturing the earth, we get a kind of energy not available through any other means. It’s an energy that cannot be boxed, bottled, or virtualized. It is only available when we drink it in as we work the land, rest on the grass, or lean against a tree.

As we have become a generation striving to reconnect with our earth, we must develop our brain receptors for the earth’s energy the same way we develop receptors for fine wine, art, music, and poetry.

The children who fight our wars for us today learned their war from their fathers, as they did from their fathers. It becomes an unquestioned belief that without war, no good is possible.

And now we have Ireland to add to the list of countries transformed, along with the Soviet Union and South Africa.

Only those who have faith in the goodness of their own hearts will choose words over swords as the means to the seemingly impossible.

According to research in a recent “Strategy + Business” magazine article, half of the venture capital dot-com startups in the late 90’s were still in business five years later. Yes, half.

In the entrepreneurial world, this is not an insignificant amount of success.

Supporting the case that successful innovation is a process that goes far beyond eureka moments and business plans. This also supports the best news, that flashy economic headlines are tabloids, not destiny.

In Tremont tonight, perfect weather intersected the monthly art walk with its usual continuum from international scale to folk art. Sidewalks teaming with bantering locals and wide eyed tourists trading in openings, Cleveland’s finest fares, and the surreal site of a thriving neighborhood in a city inked as in decline. The diversity of conversations are only matched by the cool night’s air tapestried with live street music in tempo with the most complex smells of spring blossoms and kitchens where award winning cooks toil in joy. Beneath the inauthenticity of economic generalizations, renaissance flourishes.