Does a goat become a rabbi because he grows a beard?
Personal Development
The more one forgets himself…..
“By declaring that man is responsible and must actualize the potential meaning of his life, I wish to stress that the true meaning of life is to be discovered in the world rather than within man or his own psyche, as though it were a closed system. I have termed this constitutive characteristic “the self-transcendence of human existence.” Continue reading
I think you might want to try considering going nowhere….
display grace under pressure, a quality that brings out the best in others…
Our over-intellectualized modern culture has tended to forget connections between mind and body. We are nevertheless more likely to believe what we feel as a physical experience than what we think. And when we are in danger, or under pressure, or anxious, we often experience what Daniel Goleman calls an “amygdala hi-jack” where suddenly our emotions tend to crowd out rational thought.
Humility
Humility does not come easily for people brought up on bullet points and clear answers. For Americans in particular, who have raised pride and self-esteem to a high art, even the word ‘humility’ raises hackles. It is more acceptable – even expected – for Americans to sing their own praises. When Mohammad Ali was taken to task, chided for arrogance when he claimed he was “the greatest,” he said “It ain’t arrogant if you can do it!” Fifty years later, young Americans are still told this story by their sports coaches as they are encouraged to succeed. Maybe for winning at sports it’s not bad advice, but as a preparation for life in the messy uncertainties of the 21st century it has all the hallmarks of a neurotic response…..
Rules of Living by The Dalai Lama
Psychological Literacy
We have noted already that the default psychological protection against fear and anxiety is neurotic defense. It is a way of dealing with complexity by withdrawal from contact with the world and so not dealing with it at all. Persons of tomorrow, by contrast, embrace the world. They engage with their existential reality in a spirit of hope, courage, invention and play. Continue reading
Life reveals itself above us and below us
All spiritualities worthy of the name, stress the need to make a certain ascent, to grow beyond our immaturities, our laziness, our wounds, and the perennial hedonism and shallowness of our culture. The emphasis here is always to reach upward, beyond, towards the heavens, and towards all that is more noble, altruistic, compassionate, loving, admirable, and saintly. Much of classical Christian spirituality is a spirituality of the ascent, an invitation to something higher, an invitation to be true to what is deepest inside of us, namely, the Image and Likeness of God. Much of Jesus’ preaching invites us precisely to something higher. Confucius, one of the great moral teachers of all time, had a similar pedagogy, inviting people to look to beauty and goodness and to forever reach in that direction. In our own time, John Paul II used this very effectively in his appeal to young people, challenging them always to not settle for compromise or second-best, but to look always for something higher and more noble to give their lives to.
But the challenge to growth also needs a spirituality of descent, a vision and a set of disciplines that point us not just towards the rising sun, but also towards the setting sun. Continue reading
It takes some discipline and practice to access one’s ignorance, to stay focused on the other person.
ONE TUSK 