Well if you hit this site periodically you will notice a new graphic to the right of this post. We are very excited about our new e-learning section of this website. We are a couple months out from launch but the site is under serious construction as we get ready for our initial offering.
We have been trying to figure out the best way to broker the work I do that is shared with the churches I work with monthly, the conference speaking and writing I do. There is a small body of growing work that we want to make more widely available and this seems like the perfect avenue to make it happen.
If you want to be aware of the details, special offerings and the contours our approach to e-learning please visit the Morph 2.0 page by clicking here or on the image to your right and submit your email address and go through the confirmation process. This is going to be a pretty incredible venue. Videos, pdfs, podcasts, forums, calls, free one day conferences… get ready for 21st century learning at it’s very best.
“How?” is not a question it is a series of questions that stall us and keep us in active. There are 6 sorry versions of this says Peter Block in his volume The Answer to How is Yes.
“By invoking the ‘how’ question, we define the debate about the changes we have in mind and thereby create a set of boundaries on how we approach the task.”
Here are the 6 variations…
1. How do you do it?
2. How long will it take?
3. How much does it cost?
4. How can we get those people to change?
5. How do we measure it?
6. Who has been successful doing this?
These are nice cul de sacs to get caught in and postpone the much harder questions of sacrifice when we have already decided the thing we are called, compelled, passionate or desire to do is something that MUST be done. How is a nice derailer. His detailed paragraphs on each of these how questions are excellent.
“we define our dialogue and, in a sense, our future through questions we choose to address. Asking the wrong questions puts us in the philosopher’s dilemma: we become the blind man looking in a dark room for a a black cat that is not there.”
So opens part one of Peter Block’s book The Answer to How is Yes.
This opening section Peter hammers away at how “how” is a deflector from acting. In other words it is an ego piece that prevents us, or allows us to hide behind acting. He says “choosing to act on ‘what matters’ is the choice to live a passionate existence, which is anything but controlled and predictable.” (p. 7)
He is interested in exploring how risk and adventure, which we all crave, we actually prefer to crave at a distance… and we keep distance by asking all sorts of questions that keep the pursuit impossibly at arms length. We like Man versus Wild on tv, we secretly hope we could do the same, and we verbalize if given the possibility we would…but really? Don’t we want to keep this stuff at a distance and isn’t that an illustration of how we feel about our deepest passions too?
He suggests the most common question we ask is ‘how?’ We as quickly as possible reduce the questions of purpose and meaning and passion and fire down to the practical considerations which in the grand scheme of things matter little if the passion, meaning and purpose are calling us forward. He gives six versions of the ‘hows’ we ask to keep acting at bay.
Do you ask how questions to stall risk engagment? What kind of how questions?
Acceptance of the grace and mystery of life means that because of our practice of letting go the core posture of our soul and pattern of our life is letting go….letting go of the need to make every thing fit, cohere. We just need to surrender to what arises and allow the mystery and grace of life to come to us uncensored and unedited
When I say surrender what do I mean?
In fact coming from the old Covey school of thought concerning goal setting, 5 year personal planning, life goal achievement the idea of surrender might seem oxymoronic.
This is a move from planning to preparedness.
Surrender is radical acceptance of our lives just as they are, it is the active turning of the mind from willfulness (resisting or trying to change what is) to willingness, (meeting what is or accepting life on life’s terms)
THIS DOESN’T imply becoming passive or condoning an unacceptable situation; instead radical acceptance is an active engagement with whatever is happening in the moment.
Radical acceptance is precisely what decreases pain. Our ability to receive and accept instead of fight and resist is what decreases pain and discomfort.
I not only read about this a lot in the larger wisdom traditions but have experienced this first hand.
When I try to control or fight circumstances in relationships or in certain church setting I work that very resistance is precisely what heightens pain and angst.
Furthermore it is in the mystery the parts that don’t initially makes sense that often God is up to something that we couldn’t see before, hadn’t planned or didn’t anticipate.
SYNCHRONICITY may be one of the greatest by products of accepting what is arising. One of the most important leadership books I have read of the several hundred on my shelf and the one I go back to over and over again is Synchronicity by Joe Jaworski. First used by Carl Jung, Synchronicity is serendipity with the “universe behind it.” In Christian language…God is involved in what might look like a coincidence.
What if we remained just as connected to the adventure of mystery and the questions of life as we did the answer seeking we are so driven by and end up in the process with these incredibly synchronicity moments?
My guess is this too is a function at some level of years and maturity.
Every once in a while a quick summary….for those that have been following skip to the “NEW MATERIAL” header half way down
transformation means a change in how you see the world and a shift in how you see yourself. Not just a shift in your point of view but a whole different perception what of what is possible.
DEFINITION- ongoing and integrated shifts in the way we see and make meaning of ourselves God others and the world.
Portals to Transformation
1 DEEP PERSONAL PAIN
jars us out of autopilot and causes us to ask deep questions and question the way things are supposed to be
2. Noetic Experiences…
3. The Right Resources, teacher, situations come on the scene
Choices that Cultivate Possible Transformative Moments – the gardeners metaphor we developed
1. Gardeners accommodate new experiences and resist assimilating them. [read more...]
This week we are going to prepare for the new year and will then resume our dialogue on practice….though this is in some ways a year end practice post
Each year end, I would guess, we all have some routines of review and anticipation. We look at goals from the last 12 months, assess our progress, reflect on strengths, learn from our missed marks and recalibrate for a new year ahead. For some of us these are very intentional, measured, specific and helpful. For others of us these are thought about in our head, sit in the background of self conversation and are even dreaded because this year end, like so many past, is another example or procrastination, and unmet hopes and dreams.
Ben Franklin said, “There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond and to know one’s self.” [read more...]
Neuroplasticity is the capacity of connections between neurons in the brain to change in response to experience and our environment. The good news? It isn’t age dependent. We have brain plasticity till we die if we exercise our brains.
I was just at a spirituality conference in South Africa where an expert on brain science talked about how up until just recently the medical community was convinced that our brains could be mapped showing where each of our abilities, for instance the ability to see, was located in the physical structure of the brain. In other words it was thought this map was the hardwired diagram of our brain. But not so. [read more...]
I said we would explore the notion found in almost every tradition, the renewing of the mind as a critical consideration for transformation. Unfortunately I think our love affair with the biblical text (not a good thing I might add, I think we are textually addicted) has clouded our reading of that very text.
When Paul says be transformed Romans (in 12.1-2) by the renewing of your mind I have yet to hear instruction on how this is to be done except by taking in more bible text, memorize more bible text, study more bible text, think about bible text. Maybe I was just exposed most of my life to one narrow strand of teaching. [read more...]
There are any number of ways to train our awareness which is why we are so big on centering prayer and the sources that can fund that practice like John Cassian’s Conferences, The Cloud of Unknowing, St Bonaventure’s Soul’s Journey to God, Thomas Keating’s work, Cynthia Borgeault, and Murchadh O’Madagain (Bourgeault’s Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening and O’Madagain’s Centering Prayer and the Healing of the Unconcious are the two best places to start if you are new to the practice.) [read more...]
Sunday I will speak in Cape Town to a large group that forms the core of a church plant that is a genuine attempt to think and be in different ways. The services are more facilitated conversations than preaching events, web 2.0 technology is increasingly informing the conversation creating a church 2.0 environment. I love their willing spirit and drive to be Jesus in the worlds in which they live in.
Here is the video to open the 2 week conversation I will be doing on doubt.
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About Velocity Culture
VelocityCulture.com is a web and conference based resource brokering the best leadership, cultural and theological resources. Through consulting, conference speaking, learning communities and e-learning all over the world and a redesigned seminary-like learning experience called III:TEXT, VelocityCulture.com is helping bring about deep shifts in the way people live, think and lead.
