There is a proliferation of online interactive technologies like blogs, discussion boards, online communities, real time updates, and social network websites. They seem to attract people who like simulating relational activities without actual relationships. In the best cases, people accustomed to the small views of small worlds now see larger views and worlds. Even early on in the (r)evolution, all good news.

Consider first impressions
as facts, not truth.
The whole of truth
is a far larger space
than any set of facts.

Look beneath masks,
be in wonderment
beyond stories tendered.

Friends refuse
to deceive each other,
their legacy together
too rich to squander
in hiding.

Urban shaman bioneer, Maurice Small, yesterday reminded me of the vitality of the invisible. These are the unseen energies within and around us that animate everything that is, challenging the Cartesian myth dividing the world into living and non-living things.

In a conscious world, everything is alive. We are clear on the quantum truth that all form is vibrating energy; we live in a world that is the concrescence of energy vibrations.

The NY Times recently reported on the latest research that men are now apparently happier than women, a shift from a generation ago when women had the upper hand on inner contentment. Perhaps it’s a call to accept that someone will always be on top of the happiness curve more than their gender mates and that things will, like all things, cycle from one side to the other of the emotional seesaw.

Parity in happiness is likely the more worthy possibility. In conscious relationships of course, the happiness of the other is as important as our own. The key and challenge at times is supporting the ways in which they, not we, want their happiness sourced and expressed.

Gave a talk today here in Columbus (OH) to health care leaders on appreciative leadership. The room was packed with people eager for the message, obviously engaged with more questions than we had time for. It’s interesting to see how people have an natural affinity and appetite for positive energy. At first exposure, people are as attracted to it as they are suspicious of it, skeptical of the power of positive energy in the growth of people, teams, and organizations. It is simply a reflection of tribal myths about the necessity of negative energy is the transformation of living systems.

Fabulous talk today by biomimicry guru, Janine Benyus. Biomimicry is the study and application of functions in nature to design problems. Like Japan’s bullet train redesign mimicking the unusual shape of the head of an unknown bird species, giving the train substantially more quiet and speed than any traditional engineering could achieve. She gave countless examples of natural ways of creating materials from the simplest of natural elements that far exceed design and performance specs.

One of the more elegant bits of wisdom: nature designs in ways that eliminate friction.

I suspect that the literacy of story telling declines with the emergence of public media. I saw this with my grandfather, 19th century born Italian shepherd, whose story telling diminished in direct proportion to the amount of TV he watched. Growing up, the culture of porches and kitchens where no TV lived was always richer than the story wasteland of the room where TV dominated and made live stories irrelevant by replacing them with strings of facts simulating stories.

Today, when I tease people I meet with, “So, what’s your story?”, I often get the string of facts that lack the emotional power of stories. When we regain a deep love of emotions, we will regain our love of stories.

When we are conscious, everything is teacher, and there is only one lesson learned, the difference between truth and lie, reality and illusion.

Part of being conscious is becoming more aware of ourselves and each others as the vibrant dynamic fields of energy that we are. Everything we do and say to and with each other adds to the continuum of high vibrational (positive) and lower vibrational (negative) energy. This is multiplied by the energy of groups. This awareness inspires greater sensitivity and sense of responsibility about what kind of energy we bring to the table.

My friend Monica teaches dance and is now reading “Conscious Becoming“, loving especially the 4th truth that we don’t need a different reality to do what else is possible right now. Before enlightenment, dance students on some days show up without the body they want, lacking the sense of balance they expect and desire. They proceed to not find their sense of balance when they lie to themselves about needing a different body that day to do what else is possible.

After enlightenment, they do what else is possible with the reality of an unbalanced body, and in the process naturally rediscover balance and grace in the truth of possibility.