If you want peace, first Know Thyself.

When we think about what we want out of life, in life, we all have wants and goals, a need to love and be loved, to create. We need to express ourselves. Throughout history we have carved our names, symbols of our presence, of what we can see and what we, as a mind, are trying to understand.  We want to go beyond where we have been.

We start as an infant, pulling ourselves up.

During Thanksgiving I saw my four-year-old niece, who fancies herself a Cinderella for now – and she is a princess. She is charming, pretty, and has a presence, a sense of herself in the world as being entitled to all that is within her magical kingdom – everything she can imagine can be delightful and pleasing, exciting beyond description. She has her questions too. Shoes are not living things, she says with a big smile to her brother, Jack (13), when he tells her his shoes have names and talk to him.

We want life to make sense. As I listen to the news I hear the many ways we are trying to put the pieces of the puzzles of our collective lives together. Along with the heroes, large and small, there are shadows of princes and princesses, kings, queens, jesters, wannabes.  Sex abuse among young boys, kidnapping of girls, trying to pin down the “truth” of our affairs, integrity, character, harassment, courage, strength, love. Getting to a new true level of peace and understanding requires that we understand ourselves better, more deeply, more simply so that we can accept and acknowledge the complexity of our creation as we experience our physical lives.

I’ve been reading Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs. He quotes Jobs: “It takes a lot of hard work to make something simple, to truly understand the underlying challenges and come up with elegant solutions.” (343) Jobs’s self-described “spiritual partner,” Jony Ive, described his design philosophy this way: “Simplicity … involves digging through the depth of the complexity. To be truly simply, you have to go really deep. … The better way is to go deeper with the simplicity, to understand everything about it and how it’s manufactured. You have to deeply understand the essence of a product in order to be able to get rid of the parts that are not essential.”

Why don’t we do this more with our “human design”?  I’ve also been reading Paul Johnson’s book, Socrates: A Man for our Times. Socrates, as I relate to the personality shared, always operated using his intuition, as Jobs strived to do, yet also was inspired and guided to understand the philosophy of how men (especially, yet also women and children) thought, what motivated men to think, speak, act as they did. The delight of life is in the living. Creating as its own activity, the constant nature of us as human energy beings, began with thinking. Sharing our thoughts and feelings is one of our greatest gifts – as sensory beings, and also as a collective being. As a society we are most moved by the personal triumphs we experience – overcoming adversity to triumph through sharing love, in the form of food, listening, services, experience. This IS sharing the love and truth from our heart and the wisdom of our soul, beyond the sharing of physical possessions or needs. These gifts accumulate within us as love, as the Ethical Values which enhance every other experience we share as human beings.

I’ve been studying Spiritual Philosophy for most of my adult life. I was taught religious philosophy as a child, and encouraged to use my mind, to learn, to eagerly anticipate all of the opportunities life has to offer. I love to hear, to learn, how other minds respond to and create opportunities to live and learn (such as Steve Jobs). When I examine my life of 49 years, I can clearly see many of the cycles of complexity I’ve lived to get to the simplicity of “knowing thyself.” Knowing thyself continues to unfold its eternal beauty with each day that passes, as I am open to its exploration and discovery.  As I know myself, I am more open to others and how they experience life.

While at my brother’s family’s home for Thanksgiving dinner, they invited each of us at the table to share what we are thankful for. I had not been at their home for Thanksgiving dinner before, and I was happy to be there, to appreciate how they spent the day which has always been a day of happiness and being together for our family. I loved listening to each person express how they felt and thought in that moment of appreciation.  These moments go beyond our “everyday moments” to raise our consciousness of each other and the value of carving time in our busy lives to acknowledge the gifts of sharing life and love and how we learn.

The “instant gratification” concept that we are so accustomed to (such as the brawling seen by some in the black Friday rush) is what we know we must go beyond. Such chaos is not acceptable to a collective that consciously aims toward “peace, love, and understanding.”  Reading Kathy Oddenino’s Love, Truth &Perception this morning, I marked this: “Our soul and spirit seek acknowledgment.  We can only give and receive that which we are conscious of as real within ourself and our life.” The energies of love, nurturing, caring, support are an art unto themselves. I’ve taught my intellect to analyze life, experience, information. I understand how this teaching is only one level of learning. There is an end to that road, when the intellect is controlled by ego beliefs that have accumulated throughout my soul experience. Without love, we create conflict which leads to war, in the same way that roadblocks begin in our internal energy grid (nervous system) which can lead to disease. Then we must dig deeper, through the complexity to get to the simplicity of our design. Our design is the energy of Ethical Values – the courage to push on, the joy of sharing life and love in its minutiae, the laughter of a princess whose world is her pearl. To know thyself as I know another in the moment of truth – the best self invites the best self from another, and our best self, our spirit, is always loving. I’m grateful for learning, for all who teach me, every moment.


Reading Carl Zimmer's review of Steven Pinker's new book prompted me. The Better Angels of our Nature? Why not write a Ph.D. thesis on human nature? If we want to know peace, first Know Thyself.

The Long and Winding Road, it's Crazy.....

“Am I crazy?” It’s crazy how many times I’ve heard the word crazy in the last month – come to think of it, since “the shooting” in Tucson on January 8^th.  I’ve listened to the news a lot, to commentaries, updates, and different panelists and experts talking about mental health, gun laws, treatment options, breakdowns and loopholes. Should we have tighter gun control, should we enforce the laws we have more effectively; should we have a better screening process, should we encourage, require people to be more alert, aware, and ”take the next step” in putting others on alert for the sake of our collective and individual protection and self-defense?  Reading Jonah Lehrer’s book, How We Decide, about the pre-frontal cortex of our brain and its role in our perception and behavior fits right in with all of this discussion, as does my study of the Ethical Values. Lehrer identifies some of the “loopholes,” to me, in where our good intentions break down on their way to creating better understanding, better “self-defense,”  better behavior. As our brain evolves, he notes, we become more moral beings. Psychopaths use only what they might call reason. Their emotions are nondescript, or register on a different scale than the norm. Without loving emotions, we will not continue to evolve and become more loving (ethical) beings. What good is the intellect without love? What true value? We have to learn to explore our roots, our history of being, to begin to become aware of our internal energy universe and how this relates to our external energy universe (and all we “see” displayed in our experience, and therefore in the news). 

A few days ago, under the vivid pictures from “Liberation Square” in Cairo, ran a domestic headline which read, “Mother kills teenage children for being ‘mouthy.’”  I thought of my mother, my father, myself, my siblings, and all of the children and parents I’ve known in my life. I thought about what a “democracy of impulses” truly means. A “democracy of impulses” works well, is designed to work and be well, within our body. The body politic? I’m so glad we have historians and journalists, throughout time even if with other names – those who want to record and report events because they feel it is important to do so!  What would a life be without memory? Or a memory of only war? Only loss? Triumph? Thank you, all, for telling your stories.

Seeing a post from my high school English teacher (in Nigeria), now in Egypt, emphasizes the point to me. I was glad to read his post, the first since the protests began in the streets of Cairo. He is safe, sending prayers to all, a positive stamp to be read by “friends” around the world. I’m glad to remember him, his family, to have been his student, and I appreciate the many gifts which he and his wife share so freely. (And thanks, Facebook)

A Red Guitar, Tornado Remains, Leadership, and the Ocean of Knowledge

Sunday I went to Kathy Oddenino’s latest Spiritual Philosophy seminar on The Joy of Health. Last week I clicked a Facebook link to a lecture called Solitude and Leadership posted by William Deresiewicz. The lecture was delivered at West Point last October. I had read it a few times before going to the seminar. As we talked about the Ethical Values, how we have to get used to change as human beings, what makes us resist change, how we are eventually compelled to ask ourselves what our mind is going to do with change – I was reminded of this lecture.  During our dialogue we asked ourselves about our character, our personality, and our intentions. How much integrity are we living as we live our life? What is our physical condition? How do we care for ourself? Do we find joy in life?

I love that Spiritual Philosophy teaches me to keep thinking and exploring the infinite levels of energy that create us. As we do this, as a mind, we learn to consciously use the energy that makes us who we are and therefore expand our energy and our creations. I want more!  As I think about my experiences to date, now I “run through them” like a flip-book, with new energizing wafts of images and thoughts and feelings each time. There is full joy in learning and changing. Babies already know this! In the seminar we were asked about our self-perception. How we do perceive ourselves, who do we perceive ourselves to be and why? We talked about the many challenges happening on Earth now, and whether or not we are using our energy to support our spiritual self or our physical self. Are we still attached to negative (toxic) energy? If so, why? We can always find the answers to these questions if we want to know.  Think about this: Energy is the most real thing on Earth.

If we cannot maintain our momentum, we slide backwards. Think about riding a bike up a hill. I remember well the determination required to keep those wheels turning, even when my thighs were burning. Eyes on the prize! Movement, growth, reaching that particular point of destination requires commitment, determination, persistence, patience, strength, courage, endurance, motivation, all Ethical Values. And, first, the plan! Earlier in my life I did not think much about my role as a human being. For a long while, I was more self-centered and treading water.  Now I’ve found that “love of my life,” the internal knowledge that becomes wisdom as we grow and change, I’m more interested in momentum and the joy of the breeze, the healing that comes with freedom of thought and change. I appreciate this maturing of my mind as I age, and I understand more clearly what it means for us to “choose our role” as a human being.  During the seminar, Kathy exclaimed, Negative energies are going backwards, not forward. We have to care, to love seeing the human species grow and change! If we do not know we are energetic beings, we will not know how to truly live as spiritual beings. This is about knowing that we are creative energetic beings. Spiritual Philosophy teaches us The Ethical Values, as it has throughout time in the minds of those who earnestly seek to Know themselves with the utmost humility of this gift of life as Thinkers (what we once mistook perhaps as “gods”).

I have been a lover of literature, of Art, of words, of many “things” and people in my life, beginning with my family. I have had to grow into “loving myself” as loving life itself.  This has inevitably and beautifully led me into growing my love of humanity – the care and feeding of us as humans, just as I am.  I am not a scientist, I am not educated specifically in medicine and its science. I am educated (“formally” ) in the “Humanities.” I understand the wisdom of that choice, for me.  As my mother lay dying, with her amazing internal strength and the grace of counsel and care she received, I received another education in the “humanities” and the “science of medicine.”  

Lately, as Kathy has done Energy work with a friend’s daughter who has a brain tumor, I’m reminded of the absolute compassion and powerful care that true healers feel and always live. Healing,  the joy of health in all expressions, is primary.  Learning to focus our energies as a spiritual being is a great gift, not only to us but to all we know. As we think, so we create, and so we attract.  The Earth which supports our life is erupting and expressing itself (herself) very strongly right now, and we must pay attention. 

My grandmother was born in Yazoo City, Mississippi. As I watched the news reports of the city’s damage, and heard the slow drawl of those who experienced the wonder of such wind power, I mentally saved the image of the red guitar and its strings being plucked by the Delta dweller whose house was a big pile of boards behind them. When I talked to my Aunt in Memphis about the weather, I also told her about Kathy’s energy work and the friend’s daughter’s brain tumor. I said, I don’t know about you, but if it were me, I’d love to know someone who knows healing and the energy of us this way. I’d rather share this healing of support than to have my head cut open by the most well-meaning and skilled of surgeons. To some this sounds crazy, I know. I can only express my own growing compassion for what we create as human beings, and the infinite healing power we have as we begin to use our own energetic potential and Ethical spiritual design. 

In the “Solitude and Leadership” lecture is this quote: “That’s the first half of the lecture: the idea that true leadership means being able to think for yourself and act on your convictions. But how do you learn to do that? How do you learn to think? Let’s start with how you don’t learn to think….”  One way Deresiewicz defines thinking is: “concentrating on one thing long enough to develop an idea about it. Not learning other people’s ideas, or memorizing a body of information, however much those may sometimes be useful. Developing your own ideas. In short, thinking for yourself.” 

Recently someone asked me what I was reading. I told them a book about the Atlantic Ocean. They said, Oh, that’s too deep for me! Funny, yes – but not so funny that a book about the ocean is too much “work”! I’m reading a few pages at a time, and learning about the ocean’s life. The language is poetic, as is the ocean rhythm and change. Aren’t we excited to know about the “ocean of knowledge”? I’m fascinated with how we develop/ed our ideas and beliefs about “thinking.” Learning is fun, when a mind is fresh, eager, and not bogged down by the habits of feeling overwhelmed and used to “not thinking.” Spiritual Philosophy teaches the Joy of Health, because the joy of health is the essence of loving life.  Who doesn’t love love? What is love? This brings us back to our self-perception. Do we want to be leaders or slaves? Are these our only choices? In our world we’ve accepted, and we’re taught, that our power comes from our intellect. What part of us are we feeding?  Here is a quote from The Joy of Health: “What you do with your life, what you become in life, depends totally and completely upon the way that you relate to the self within. Graduating from Yale does not make you a good person. It does not make you a success in life. It does not make you happy. It makes you a graduate from Yale.” (74) I have an old friend who graduated from Princeton, and several other prestigious programs. He told me once that he was completely disillusioned as an undergraduate – he quickly realized that what he was being taught was not true to what he wanted to learn. He eventually changed programs, through much disagreement with one parent, and went on to jobs which didn’t fulfill much of his dreams of happiness either. As life continued, he chose changes that began to make him happier.

Spiritual Philosophy teaches that being a leader is being true to the “God self,” the Ethical Values which define us as spiritual energetic beings. One of my goals in life has been to gain wisdom. Somehow I knew deep inside that wisdom would lead me to happiness. I was right.  I knew that experience is our teacher, but I wasn’t always a willing student. I didn’t always appreciate the role of knowledge as it relates to experience. Knowledge about who we are as energetic beings is an eternal gift. Our crises of education, of our economy, of our personal, national, and international security, our health and our disease care system – all will benefit from a shift in our thinking to ask ourselves honestly, Do I want to be someone who helps Earth or destroys Earth? This is not a question of melodrama, though I know how tempting this dismissal is. 

It’s exciting to know we have a starring role in our own growth, that we are designed with infinite healing potential, and that knowledge truly can set us free.  The best leaders teach us to think. We must listen, support them, encourage them, learn from them, honor them. Accepting responsibility for our own growth is how we heal ourselves, and the most important way we begin and expand our role as human beings in saving ourselves and enjoying our world.

Ben Franklin, Socrates, and Me

"The greatest way to live with honor is to be what we pretend to be." - Socrates

Not an easy sell, ethics. Google "Ethical Values" and see what you come up with. I did, and what I came up with led me on a long and winding internet road.

I've been thinking a lot lately about "long and winding roads." A 79-year-old friend in Virginia called to give me an update on her life at the moment. Her unwinding story included details of detours, how she had felt so cooped up really, with her even older sister going into a nursing home, not having a good place to walk, to be out in the beautiful spring-into-summer – until her niece’s family in Florida had invited her to visit and she had finally gone. Her niece took an airplane ride to Virginia, then they drove together in my friend’s almost new comfortable car back to Florida, where her two-week stay turned into two months. She reveled in being there, walking in their garden – I haven’t been treated that well since 1953! She exclaimed. In her voice was the pleasure of unwinding all of those cooped-up feelings, being needed but more in ways of having to take care of everything because there was no one else. She was ready for another kind of life, at least expanding the old into more roses, appreciation, fresh air, walking in it.

Part of her urge to tell her tale was to tell me why it had taken her time to get to reading my book, which she had bought months ago. She had to have quiet, she said, and when she at last did, I took a profound journey along the roads in your mind! She exclaimed. We laughed – so did I! I said. Sometimes there were too many roads for me to follow, she said, so I had to let it sink in, and then go on. I thought about this phrase, “too many roads.” She spoke about her niece’s English husband, and how they are trading books, both being avid readers. They recently watched the television series on John Adams, and he had borrowed her copy of Adams’ most recently biography. John Adams had too many roads, too, she said. He is easier to read than Ben Franklin, though Franklin talks a lot about Socrates, she said. I love to read them.

She told me about asking her niece if they could drive her big, almost-new, comfortable car rather than riding in her smaller sportier car, which wasn’t easy for her to bend into and get out of. My friend is very tall and lanky, and a cane helps her keep her balance. She had not had the car long, it only had a handful of miles on it when she got it, and oh, she said, when I got on the highway, I could hardly keep from going 80 miles an hour! It was wonderful – I heard the exhilaration in her voice.

I keep thinking about her phrase, “too many roads,” and the exhilaration she felt as she drove her big comfortable car. As I hear the newscasters and others at the pump talk about gas prices, and as I fill my car between commutes,now I think about “too many roads” in new ways. I have another friend who is passionate about keeping things simple. I say I am too. Yet as I listen to the candidates speak about how to solve the issues facing us, our country, the “American people,” and I sit in the quiet of my own space and ask, What did they really say, often I don’t have the answer. Each enumerates physical details about what to do with which program – offer a tax rebate, tax relief offset by someone else paying it, lower prices and get the money from another source – sometimes I say to myself, too many roads to follow!

How accustomed we have grown to thinking only along the lines of the same maps that have already been drawn for us. Most of us no longer have the same urge to explore the way our pioneering ancestors did, those who ventured into the jungles, into the seas, to make maps for us, guessing at the locale of sea creatures, mountain ranges, riches. We have expanded into pioneering in many fields of learning, beyond just the physical jungles, roads, and waterways. Work goes on in labs around the world, including our ecosystems. A photographer I've met recently published a book in which he explored new techniques of dynamic imaging with digital tools, and new ways of using older tools that are very exciting for many in his field and image-lovers everywhere. Every day artists explore new media, or new ways to use old media, to capture their visions. Our internal biological, atomic pioneering, mapping our DNA genomes still seems mostly about planting the flags and noting the territory markers and what they mean.

What does it mean to us to explore our Ethical Values as human beings – what energy motivates us to create and why? What would Ben Franklin say? What would Socrates say? Lifehacker has an “oldie but goodie” on Franklin and his life plan which consisted of 13 guidelines. Franklin made the list when he was 20 and used it all his life to chart his daily progress. Beside humility he wrote “Imitate Jesus and Socrates.” I’ve been thinking about what it means to “make new use of old things.” I’m getting better at clarifying my goals, what I want, and updating them as I go. When I use Spiritual Philosophy’s list of Ethical Values beside my goals, I’m making a map for myself that I can follow. These are my kind of rules - now

Yesterday I was overcome with sadness – which had built up to overflowing. Tears seeped out all day long. I was sad because my mother and father felt less energy than they want to, though thrilled still about Life; sad because other friends’ mourn the loss of a young husband, brother, brother- and son-in-law, son, colleague, friend; sad for many losses. I was also encouraged by the energy I felt returning to me as I let the sadness live its day. The day was beautiful – crystal blue sky, white cotton clouds, colors and moods bright, but not mine. I felt the compassion of love as I cried, as a friend listened and just “let me be.” This brought back to me another day long ago, when I really felt the gift love is, though not as I do now. Now I appreciate Ben Franklin’s pragmatism in new ways, and his dictum, “Imitate Jesus and Socrates.” I’m making my goals of life, and what it means to me to live. Loss gives way to love, always. Simple.