Merlin Mann found Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi’s secret to maintaining flow: “The only solution to achieve enduring happiness, therefore, is to keep finding new opportunities to refine one’s skills: do one’s job better or faster, or expand the tasks that comprise it; find a new set of challenges more appropriate to your stage of life. Paradoxically, the feeling of happiness is only realized after the event. To acknowledge it at the time would only serve as distraction.” This from an article in The Times called “The secrets of happiness.” Worth a read don’t you think? I have experienced intense happiness and flow …
A couple of stories about truth and stories. Yesterday on CBC Radio’s Sounds Like Canada, Shelagh Rogers interviewed Paul Rosen. Paul Rosen is the goaltender for Canada’s Sledge Hockey team, and is getting ready to head over to Turin to compete in the Paralympics. Rosen is an amputee, having lost his leg to a persistent bacterial infection. Very early on in his new life as a one legged man he adopted a very positive outlook. His doctors were suspicious and sent him to a psychiatrist for an evaluation. At that consultation, Rosen took some water and poured it on his …
Alan Watts Listening to some wonderful podcasts from Alan Watts. In the current series, Images of God, which is made up from talks given during his lifetime, he is delivering all kinds of angles on the divine. In the third installment of this series, he was talking about school, journeys and the dance. The point of a dance or a piece of music, is not the end, says Watts. If it was, then we would only have composers that wrote finales and audiences would only go to hear great final chords, or see people in their final positions. No, the …
Back home now. I’ll blog a little more on my learning from the Evolutionary Salon, especially with respect to the notions of the bodhisangha that was raised. For now here is a bit from an email sent by a friend who is a medical doctor, and who has been following along with the ideas raised in the Salon: As far as my comments on the subject of evolution of consciousness goes, I have to admit that my thoughts are not yet formed enough for me to make a coherent statement about them. The whole idea of raising humanity as a …
Some amazing conversations today about how to move forward from this gathering, which is including questions of sustainability of movements like this, in financial ways, energetic ways and in reflective, inquiry and learning ways. I have spent the morning in small groups, informally constituted thinking about how to move a gathering like this into a “bodhisangha” and enlightened community. One way we are thinking of doing this is harnessing the power of gifts, and today we are playing with three modalities of giving. There is the Buddhist dana, which is the gift given for the gratitude of teachings received. There …