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Learning Not to Be Afraid Of Things That Are Real

Learning Not to Be Afraid of Things That Are Real - Thanissaro Bhikkhu

 

Recently I've been looking through a field guide on nature observation. The author, when he was a child, was trained by an old Native American. One day the child asked the old man, "Why is it that you're not afraid of heat and cold?"

 

The old man looked at him for a while and finally said, "Because they're real."

 

And this is our job as meditators: to try to learn not to be afraid of things that are real.

 

Ultimately, we discover that things that are real pose no danger to the mind. The real dangers in the mind are our delusions, the things we make up, the things we use to cover up reality, the stories, the preconceived notions we impose on things. When we're trying to live in those stories and notions, reality is threatening. It's always exposing the cracks in our ideas, the cracks in our ignorance, the cracks in our desires. As long as we identify with those make-believe desires, we find that threatening. But if we learn to become real people ourselves, then reality poses no dangers.

 

This is what the meditation is for, teaching yourself how to be real, to get in touch with what's really going on, to look at your sense of who you are and take it apart in terms of what it really is, to look at the things that you find threatening in your life and see what they really are. When you really look, you see the truth. If you're true in your looking, the truth appears.

 

This is an important principle in the practice. [...] Only people who are true can see the truth. Truth is a quality of the mind that doesn't depend on figuring things out or being clever. It depends on having integrity in your actions and in your powers of observation, accepting the truth as it is. It means accepting the fact that you play a role in shaping that truth, so you have to be responsible. You have to be sensitive both to what you're doing and to the results you get, so that you can learn to be more and more skilful.

About the Author: Excerpted from Thanissaro Bhikkhu's Dhamma Talk: Get Real 

Some picture quotes ... 0165

Writing humbles us in a way that is vital for our character growth, by reminding us about the limits of the self and our appropriate place in the vast flow of life. --Homaira Kabir

Finding Meaning in a Digital Age

--by Homaira Kabir, syndicated from huffingtonpost.com, May 23, 2016

“Had I been blessed with even limited access to my own mind, there would have been no reason to write”. ~ Joan Didion

I was at my parent’s dinner table. Before me was a worn journal of thin and discolored pages and a neat script that was gently fading away.

It was my grand fathers journal and now belonged to my father. I never knew my grandfather. He had died in the months leading up to my birth, and had named me in his final days even though there was no proof that the baby to come would be a girl. In the expat life I grew up in, I never got to visit the home he had lived in, the places he had frequented and the people who had been a part of his life’s journey.

I was now about to enter his world, through the words that he had left behind. I smelled the mold of decades of wear and tear and touched the softness of the paper that had grown smooth with time. And within minutes, I was captivated by the power of the written word. It plays on the human’s mind’s capacity to time travel and carries us back and forth in a remarkable interplay of past, present and future. In the magical script before me, I was transported to another era, where guests arrived for no reason but to connect, and were forced to stay for dinner. An age where food was an everyday art, planned, prepared and enjoyed in the company of others. A time where people had the heart to pause their own lives in order to embrace each other’s struggles. All this was conveyed to me in the beauty of the words that flowed together to connect with the writer’s mind and understand the world they lived in. Reading the very words that my grand father had penned eons ago, I felt a strange kinship with him that stories about him had failed to impress.

That kind of writing seems to be lost on us today. The love for words, the agonizing over sentences and the ethical component of good writing that obliged us to pay certain kinds of attention to our experiences, seems to have succumbed to the speed of our times. We have gotten used to writing in bite-sized pieces for a public looking for ease and entertainment, and hungry for information. No wonder, there are nearly 200 million bloggers on the internet and a new blog is created somewhere in the world every half a second. Instead of adding to our collective wisdom, these writings are largely saturated with the vulgarities of human nature and the superficiality and impatience of our day and age. There are “3 easy steps” to whatever your imagination can conjure up, and endless trivial newsfeeds that shift miles in minutes and delude us into confusing meaning with information.

This deprives us not only of the skill of writing eloquent prose, it also inhibits us from delving deeper into what is truly important. Writing humbles us in a way that is vital for our character growth, by reminding us about the limits of the self and our appropriate place in the vast flow of life. Writing frees us from the tyranny of the ego, by helping us wade deeper into the unknown and making us comfortable with the unease of being stupid. For it is then that we let go of perceptions and beliefs that rein us in and truly open up to the magic of the world around us.

Writing also provides us with the courage to face what is happening while keeping our heart in the room. It allows us to choose suffering over safety like C.S Lewis in Shadowlands. Because suffering is not suffering when it is helps us find meaning in our experiences and make sense of our world. It is in staying with the pain of unexplainable circumstances and asking the questions that seem to have no answers, that we often arrive at the best possible response. After all life happens in living it, and meaning emerges not in our heads but in our journeys.

I saw all of this in the writings of my grandfather. His inner journey as he survived the partition of the Indian subcontinent, suffered the consequences of broken trust more than once, and yet never lost hope in the goodness of the human spirit. And I’ve seen it again and again in the writings of the greatest thinkers of humanity, whose wisdom is largely off the very internet that we see as our sole source of information. Their writing reflects deep thought on issues of human importance, such that T.S Eliot wrote no more than 150 pages of poetry in his entire career and James Joyce wrote Ulysses at the rate of a hundred words a day.

By undertaking an inner journey and understanding our own inner worlds, we are reminded that beneath all the layers of psychosocial patina lies a common humanity that shares the same pains, delights in the same joys, and lives for the same purpose. As Sherwin Nuland remarked in How We Die, “the more personal you are willing to be around the details of your own life, the more universal you are”.

And we are reminded too of the wonders of the inner world. For when we spend time contemplating on it, we find that we are all here to do good. It is what ensures our biological survival and brings us spiritual pleasure, if only we were to stop and consider it amongst all our worldly distractions.

It is not a privilege, reserved for a certain population amongst us. After all, the search for meaning is a universal human quest. Luckily life is difficult, mysterious and hard to understand. Andre Gide won the Nobel Prize in Literature for his “fearless love of truth and keen psychological insight”. We may never win the Nobel Prize. But by reflecting upon our experiences with intensity and writing about them with integrity, we can answer the call of the soul with the best possible response.

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Syndicated from the Huffington Post. Homaira Kabir is a Positive psychology practitioner, coach and writer. You can follow her on Twitter @HomairaKabir

Be The Change: Take a moment to ponder an important interaction in your day and write down your deeper thoughts about it in a journal

Sourced From www.dailygood.org

Some Soulful Quotes ...

Some Soulful Quotes ...

• Being a good person is like being a goal keeper. No matter how many goals we save, people will remember only the one that we missed.
• Though we cannot see electricity, we can feel its presence through the appliances it powers. Similarly though our character is physically not visible, others can realise it by our good thoughts and deeds.
• A good relation is like one of the wonders of the world. "Everyone sees how beautiful it is but... few see the sacrifices and efforts taken to build it." Its easy to give example, but its difficult to become an example.
• Communication is like lifeline of any relation. When you stop communicating, you start losing your valuable relations.
• फिर नहीं बसते वो दिल, जो एक बार उजड़ जाते हैं, कब्रें चाहे जितनी भी सजा लो पर कोई ज़िंदा नहीं होता..."वो गलतियां बहुत 'दर्द' देती है, जिनकी 'माफ़ी' मांगने का 'वक़्त' निकल चुका हो..
• जो अच्छा लगता है उसे गौर से मत देखो... ऐसा न हो कोई बुराई निकल आए... जो बुरा लगता है उसे गौर से देखो... मुमकिन है... कोई अच्छाई नजर आ जाए...     
• Eyes Express the Real feelings better than Touch. Touch Shows the Care better than Words. But Words, if used properly can Wet the Eyes and Touch the Heart.
• Distance never Separates any Relation and Closeness never Builds any Relation. If Feelings are True and Honest then Relations will always Remain.
• No and Yes are two short words.. But which needs a long thought...Most of the things we miss in life are because of saying... No, too early... and Yes too late...
• Smile indicates the Sweetness of Heart And Calmness indicates the Maturity of Mind. Having both in challenging situations indicate completeness of being human.
• I find it really Beautfiul when Someone Prays for you without you Knowing. I do not think there is any Form of Deeper and Purer Love!

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. --Mahatma Gandhi

The Best Leaders are Insatiable Learners

--by Bill Taylor, syndicated from hbr.org, Jan 13, 2016

Nearly a quarter century ago, at a gathering in Phoenix, Arizona, John W. Gardner delivered a speech that may be one of the most quietly influential speeches in the history of American business — a text that has been photocopied, passed along, underlined, and linked to by senior executives in some of the most important companies and organizations in the world. I wonder, though, how many of these leaders (and the business world more broadly) have truly embraced the lessons he shared that day.

Gardner, who died in 2002 at the age of 89, was a legendary public intellectual and civic reformer — a celebrated Stanford professor, an architect of the Great Society under Lyndon Johnson, founder of Common Cause and Independent Sector. His speech on November 10, 1990, was delivered to a meeting of McKinsey & Co., the consulting firm whose advice has shaped the fortunes of the world’s richest and most powerful companies. But his focus that day was on neither money nor power. It was on what he called “Personal Renewal,” the urgent need for leaders who wish to make a difference and stay effective to commit themselves to continue learning and growing. Gardner was so serious about this learning imperative, so determined that the message would get through, that he wrote the speech out in advance because he wanted “every sentence to hit its target.”

What was his message? “We have to face the fact that most men and women out there in the world of work are more stale than they know, more bored than they would care to admit,” he said. “Boredom is the secret ailment of large-scale organizations. Someone said to me the other day ‘How can I be so bored when I’m so busy?’ I said ‘Let me count the ways.’ Look around you. How many people whom you know well — people even younger than yourselves—are already trapped in fixed attitudes and habits?”

So what is the opposite of boredom, the personal attribute that allows individuals to keep learning, growing, and changing, to escape their fixed attitudes and habits? “Not anything as narrow as ambition,” Gardner told the ambitious McKinsey strategists. “After all, ambition eventually wears out and probably should. But you can keep your zest until the day you die.” He then offered a simple maxim to guide the accomplished leaders in the room. “Be interested,” he urged them. “Everyone wants to be interesting, but the vitalizing thing is to be interested…As the proverb says, ‘It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.’”

In these head-spinning times, even more so than when John Gardner offered his timeless advice, the challenge for leaders is not to out-hustle, out-muscle, or out-maneuver the competition. It is to out-think the competition in ways big and small, to develop a unique point of view about the future and get there before anyone else does. The best leaders I’ve gotten to know aren’t just the boldest thinkers; they are the most insatiable learners.

Roy Spence, perhaps the most interested (and interesting) advertising executive I’ve ever met, recently published a book called The 10 Essential Hugs of Life, a funny and moving take on the roots of success. Among his wise and folksy pieces of advice (“Hug your failures,” “Hug your fears,” “Hug yourself”) is a call to “Hug your firsts” — to seek out new sources of inspiration, to visit a lab whose work you don’t really understand, to attend a conference you shouldn’t be at. “When you’re a kid,” he says, “every day is full of firsts, full of new experiences. As you get older, your firsts become fewer and fewer. If you want to stay young, you have to work to keep trying new things.”

Spence cites as one of his inspirations management guru Jim Collins, who, as a young Stanford professor, sought advice and counsel from his learned colleague John Gardner. What did Spence learn from Collins? “You’re only as young as the new things you do,” he writes, “the number of ‘firsts’ in your days and weeks.” Ask any educator and they’ll agree: We learn the most when we encounter people who are the least like us. Then ask yourself: Don’t you spend most of your time with people who are exactly like you? Colleagues from the same company, peers from the same industry, friends from the same profession and neighborhood?

It takes a real sense of personal commitment, especially after you’ve arrived at a position of power and responsibility, to push yourself to grow and challenge conventional wisdom. Which is why two of the most important questions leaders face are as simple as they are profound: Are you learning, as an organization and as an individual, as fast as the world is changing? Are you as determined to stay interested as to be interesting? Remember, it’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.

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William C. Taylor is co-founder of Fast Company magazine and author of Practically Radical: Not-So-Crazy Ways to Transform Your Company, Shake Up Your Industry, and Challenge Yourself.

Be The Change: Reflect on a habitual way of doing or thinking that you would like to change.

 

Sourced From www.dailygood.org

The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace --Mahatma Gandhi

How to Avoid Abusing Power

--by Dacher Keltner, May 17, 2016

In an adaptation from his new book, Dacher Keltner explains the secret to gaining and keeping power: focus on the good of others.

For the past twenty years, I have been carrying out experiments to find out how power is distributed in groups. I have infiltrated college dorms and children's summer camps to document who rises in power. I have brought entire sororities and fraternities into the lab, capturing the substance and spread of individual's reputations within their social networks. I have surreptitiously identified which members of groups are gossiped about, and who receive gossip. To chart the experience of power, I have studied what it feels like to be placed in positions of authority.

Findings from this research converge on an organizing idea: Whereas the Machiavellian approach to power assumes that individuals grab it through coercive force, strategic deception, and the undermining of others, the science finds that power is not grabbed but is given to individuals by groups. What this means is that your ability to make a difference in the world—your power, as I define it—is shaped by what other people think of you. Your capacity to alter the state of others depends on their trust in you. Your ability to empower others depends on their willingness to be influenced by you. Your power is constructed in the judgments and actions of others. When they grant you power, they increase your ability to make their lives better—or worse. Throughout history, making a difference in the world has been seen as one of the most crucial and meaningful aspects of human life. Polynesians called this sacred force mana. The tribes on the North American plains referred to it as x'iopini. Today we might call it purpose, mission, or calling—but perhaps the best name would be power. Our purpose in life, the specific difference in the world that we are best suited to make, is expressed in this universal experience of power.

When we receive power, it feels like a vital force. It surges through the body, propelling the individual forward in pursuit of goals. When an individual feels powerful, he or she experiences higher levels of excitement, inspiration, joy, and euphoria, all of which enable purposeful, goal-directed action. Feeling powerful, the individual becomes sharply attuned to rewards in the environment and quickly grasps what goals define any situation. At the same time, surges of power make him or her less aware of the risks that attend any course of action. This experience of power propels the individual forward in one of two directions: toward the abuse of power and impulsive and unethical actions, or toward benevolent behavior that advances the greater good.

Power makes us feel less dependent upon others, freeing us to shift our focus away from others to our own goals and desires. Power corrupts in four ways:

Power leads to empathy deficits and diminished moral sentiments.

Power leads to self-serving impulsivity.

Power leads to incivility and disrespect.

Power leads to narratives of exceptionalism.

The abuse of power is costly in every imaginable way, from declining trust in the community to compromised performance at work to poor health. By contrast, when individuals use their power to advance the greater good, they and the people whom they empower will be happier, healthier, and more productive.

In my experiments, individuals who were kind and focused on others enjoyed enduring power in schools, workplaces, and military units, avoiding the fall from power that is so common in human social life. That enduring power drives from a steadfast focus on others makes sense in light of what we know: groups give power to individuals who advance the greater good, and they diminish the standing of those who stray from this principle.

How can we stop ourselves from abusing power? What insights can we glean from science so that we avoid mistakes of the past and make the most of our power? The ethical principles that follow are one approach to enabling people to pursue this aspiration.

1. Be aware of your feelings of power. The feeling of power is like a vital force moving through your body, involving the acute sense of purpose that results when we stir others to effective action. This feeling will guide you to the thrill of making a difference in the world. People who excel in their power-- the physician who improves the health of dozens of people a day, the high school teacher who inches her students toward academic success, the writer whose piece of fiction stirs others' imaginations-- they all know this. They feel the rush of dopamine and vagus nerve activation in the purest moments of empowering others and lifting up the greater good. If you remain aware of this feeling and its context, you will not be entrapped by myths that power is money, or fame, or social class, or a fancy title. Real power means enhancing the greater good, and your feelings of power will direct you to the exact way you are best equipped to do this.

2. Practice Humility. Power is a gift-- the chance to make a difference in the world. People who enact their power with humility enjoy more enduring power. Ironically, the more we approach our power, our capacity to influence others, with humility, the greater our power is. Don't be impressed by your own work-- stay critical of it. Accept and encourage the skepticism and the push-back of others that have enabled you to make a difference in the world. Remember that others have enabled you to make a difference in the world, and there is always more work to do.

3. Stay focused on others, and give. The most direct path to enduring power is through generosity. Give resources, money, time, respect, and power to others. In these acts of giving we empower others in our social networks, enhancing our own ability to make a difference in the world. Such acts of generosity are critical to strong societies, and empowered individuals are happier. The mores we empower others, the greater good is increased. So give in many ways. This will prove to be the most important foundation not only of your making a lasting difference in the world but of your own sense of happiness and meaning in life.

4. Practice respect. By directing respect to others, we dignify them. We elevate their standing. We empower them. That all members of a social collective deserve some basic form of dignity is an ancient basis of equality, and it is expressed in our day-to- day lives through respect. Practicing respect requires work. There is no reward people value more than being esteemed and respected. Ask questions. Listen with intent. Be curious about others. Acknowledge them. Compliment and praise with gusto. Express gratitude.

5. Change the psychological context of powerlessness. We can minimize the tendency of some people to feel below others, so toxic to health and well-being, by practicing the first four principles listed above. We can do more, though. Pick one aspect of powerlessness in the world and change it for the better. The rise in inequality and the persistence of poverty give us many opportunities for such work. Attack the stigma that devalues women. Confront racism. Call into question elements of society—solitary confinement, underfunded schools, police brutality—that devalue people. Create opportunities within your community and workplace that empower those who have suffered disempowerment due to moral mistakes of the past. 

Such steps may not feel like the game-changing social revolutions of earlier times, but they are quiet revolutions just the same. In every interaction, we have the opportunity to practice empathy, to give, to express gratitude, and to tell unifying stories. These practices make for social interactions among strangers, friends, work colleagues, families, and community members that are defined by commitment to the greater good, where the benefits people provide one another outweigh the harms they cause.

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Excerpted with permission from The Power Paradox: How We Gain and Lose Influence, Penguin Press May 2016. Dacher Keltner is the founding faculty director of the Greater Good Science Center and a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley.

Be The Change: Examine your relationship to power, and experiment with implementing some of the insights from the above article in your own life.

 

Sourced From www.dailygood.org

What Would A Slow School Movement Look Like?

Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel. -- Socrates

The Nature And Purpose Of Education

BY: Maurice Holt

A Slow School would emphasize how ideas are conceptualized, just as Slow Food emphasizes ingredients' innate qualities.

In her celebrated The Classic Italian Cookbook, Marcella Hazan wrote: "What people do with food is an act that reveals how they construe the world."

At the time — 30 years ago — it was a sentiment that needed a word of explanation; the Japanese meal respects aesthetics, the French cuisine respects subtlety, Italian food respects its ingredients.

We now take what we eat much more seriously, and it is timely to ask: What does a school lunch of reheated burger and chips have to say about how we construe the world? For that matter, what does it say about how we construe the nature and purpose of education?

Pausing to ponder the nature and consequences of a burger bar in the center of Rome was how a major eating revolution began. Carlo Petrini, a prominent Italian journalist, was walking past a newly opened McDonald's franchise when he stopped and said: If this is fast food, why not have Slow Food? In much the same way, I was thinking about the standards-based school curriculum, with its emphasis on regurgitated gobbets of knowledge, when I recognized the analogy with fast food. What we have created, with our tests and targets, is the fast school, driven by standardized products. So why not devise a Slow School, driven by an emphasis on how ideas are conceptualized, just as Slow Food is driven by how the innate qualities of ingredients can be realized?

The concept of Slow, as it has emerged from the Slow Food movement, derives its power as a metaphor from its moral force. It is about what it is good to do; to enjoy "quiet material pleasure," as Carlo Petrini has put it, which entails making judgments about conduct, virtue, and balance. In the Slow City, for example, the virtue of courage emboldens citizens to restrict the growth of hypermarkets so that specialist providers are not put out of business. As a result, people can conduct themselves thoughtfully in a society that values personal experience.

Since education is essentially about equipping our children with the ability to act responsibly in a complex society, the idea of a Slow School follows very readily from the metaphor of Slow. It brings to mind an institution where students have time to discuss, argue, and reflect upon knowledge and ideas, and so come to understand themselves and the culture they will inherit. It would be a school that esteems the professional judgment of teachers, that recognizes the differing interests and talents of its pupils, and works with its community to provide a rich variety of learning experiences.

Unfortunately, schools in a number of countries are obliged, by political decisions, to conduct their affairs in a totally different manner. This is particularly the case in England and the United States, where public education has taken as its model not the moral character of Slow Food but the commercial character of fast food.

What matters in fast food is not the process of preparing or educating, but the outcome. And the product itself is so worthless: a burger has little nutritional value, and schooling based on standardized tests and targets treats students as vessels to be filled rather than people who want to understand, to be inspired, to make something of themselves.

These "fast schools" do little to prepare students for the world of tomorrow, based as they are on the idea of "standards," which in practice means comparing performance on content-based tests. If we want our students to look ahead rather than in the rearview mirror, the metaphor of the standards-based school has to be replaced by the metaphor of the Slow School. The metaphor of standards conjures up a folk memory of fighting battles and winning wars, of steadfast purpose and reliable automobiles. It's a powerful image, but it's completely wrong-headed.

The underlying assumption is that if we can make car engines to a high standard, why not turn out students to a high standard? The answer is simple: manufacturing crankshafts is a technical problem, while educating pupils is a moral problem. As Aristotle recognized, different kinds of problems need different methods of solution.

In the case of the Slow School, we have to solve complex, practical problems of a moral nature. So at the heart of the Slow School is the idea of bringing together, when new proposals are to be discussed, the responses of its students, parents, teachers, and other stakeholders. In this way the school renders a continuous account of what it is doing to those with a real interest in its work. Accountability is built into the process of curriculum — it's part of a continuing narrative that has real meaning for pupils and parents.

This is much better than the summative form of accountability generated by standards-led schooling. Parents are confronted with tables of comparative performance on tests which baffle rather than illuminate. Numbers alone tell us very little. Who benefits from this emphasis on standards? Certainly not students, who find such a curriculum boring; nor parents, who are totally excluded from real judgments about their children's school. As for teachers, the effect is to lower their morale and undermine their professionalism. Only the politicians benefit; when the numbers go up, they take the credit, and when they go down they blame the schools.

Support is growing for the Slow School movement. Some schools, already on the right track, are beginning to discover that they are really Slow Schools! And an inspired way to get the Slow metaphor into schools is to confront the burger-based lunch and show students how to devise their own, home-grown, slow lunch. At a stroke, they have to challenge received opinion, think about fundamentals, and devise alternative strategies. It's a good recipe for learning how to build a Slow School curriculum.

Be The Change: What keeps your own sense of curiosity and thirst for knowledge alive? Today, make an effort to discover something new about the world that we live in.

Sourced From www.dailygood.org

Beauty Of The Mosaic

Beauty Of The Mosaic - Rosalina Chai

For as long as I recall having memory, I've found mosaic incredibly mesmerising. Alongside the increasing presence of grey hair on my head grew my awareness of how aptly the mosaic can serve as a metaphor for perceiving and understanding the human condition.

Mosaic is at once intricate yet majestic. And it is precisely its brokenness that lends mosaic its perception of fragile beauty - the space between the tiles is as much an intricate part of its language of beauty as the mosaic tile itself. And isn't this true too of our humanity?

Whilst there are numerous titles out there extolling the necessity, power and beauty of our essential brokenness, more often that not, our daily interactions with our fellow human beings appears to be motivated by unconscious "should-ism" that demands perfection of one another. What is it about brokenness that we find so offensive?

What would happen when we accept and embrace that being broken is an essential part of humanity's be-ing? What would happen when we cease to label brokenness as bad? What would it take for us to cease labelling brokenness as bad? I can imagine one certainty ... more peace.

Accepting and embracing brokenness is not the same as using another's brokenness to feel better about ourselves. Rather, it is an acknowledgement of our common humanity. When I accept my own brokenness, and do not judge myself harshly because of it, I find myself capable of more compassion towards others regardless of whether I am aware of the form of brokenness they've experienced.

Finally, it is the coming together of many many many mosaic tiles that the meaning of its language of beauty is expressed. We were not meant to be alone in our brokenness. We were meant to come together, so that another form of beauty may be birthed through the collective.

I would like to leave you with this story.

At the beginning and end of time, Truth was a beautiful glowing orb. One day, the orb was shattered into shards that outnumbered the stars in the universe by one to infinity. These shards became souls. Thus it is that each soul represented one part of Truth. But Life intervened, and many souls believed that they were Truth, and so Hatred was bred. But some souls held onto the memory, and attempted to remind the souls who've forgotten.

I do not know the end of the story as it is yet to be written. But I do know that when all the souls are reunited, the space between the shards would be where the light shines through. And that Truth's beauty would then take another form.

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you,  And though they are with you yet they belong not to you. --Kahlil Gibran

5 Life Lessons from My Specially-Abled Son

--by V.R. Ferose, syndicated from swarajyamag.com, May 02, 2016

My journey as a parent of a specially-abled son has been one of extreme emotions – from disappointment to hope; from pain to joy; from love to anguish – it’s been a journey like never before.

When Vivaan was born, one of my close friends sent me Kahlil Gibran’s famous poem On Children. The first verse in the poem is often quoted, but I would still like to share it here.

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

My journey as a parent of a differently abled son has been one of extreme emotions – from disappointment to hope, from pain to joy, from love to anguish – it’s been a journey like never before (and will continue till the very end). As with the arrival of a child anywhere, ours was a source of immense joy. He was the first grandchild and first boy on my wife’s side of the family. The first year was spent worrying about every small thing and at times taking a perfectly healthy baby to a surprised doctor! In those times of unfounded worry that plague every new parent, the presence of my in-laws and parents was the biggest source of comfort. Experience, I realized was priceless!

I enjoyed the attention of onlookers who stopped to admire my son’s chubby cheeks, much to the discomfort of my wife! Things changed around the time he completed 15 months, when there seemed to be early signs of different behavior. Any of the early symptoms could be easily ignored as growing up pains – lack of social interaction, not responding to name, interest in spinning objects etc. However, a chance meeting with a friend (who had a son on the Autism spectrum) forced us to go to a specialist – just to rule out any abnormalities.

After multiple visits to various doctors and scores of questionnaires, Vivaan was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum disorder – at that moment we were not aware of what hit us.

The magnitude of the pain was dissolved by the false hope that the diagnosis could be wrong. Vivaan looked fine, like any other child of his age. But somewhere deep inside, we also knew that the diagnosis could be right and just hoped that he would turn out to be highly functional. Since that day onwards, our lives have revolved around Vivaan’s condition. From visiting numerous doctors, therapists and experts, to reading every possible book on Autism, watching every possible TED talk on the subject, I have probably researched more about Autism than any other topic related to my profession.

Vivaan continues to surprise us every day by the little things he does, by how much he understands without ever being able to express himself, by how much love he has, without ever giving a hug, by how much patience he has without every complaining about the long and boring therapies he undergoes. It’s been a journey like never before. Its taught me more than any business school can ever teach. Listed below are some of my greatest life lessons!

1. If you search for a cure, you will find disappointment; if you look for uniqueness, you will find happiness.

Like every parent with a child with Autism, I had spent a significant time trying to find a cure for Vivaan’s condition. I read books which spoke about a complete cure and triumph over autism, and I hoped it would magically cure Vivaan too. I believed Autism was a problem and I had to solve it. The more I was unable to, the more frustrated I got.

Soon I realized that I was chasing the wrong goal. If I started looking at Vivaan as unique and enjoy him for what he is, life was fun. Not comparing Vivaan with others was key. At times, we had to overcome the social compulsions of throwing a birthday party like every other family did. We realized Vivaan enjoyed the solitude of the family and cutting birthday cakes socially made him more anxious. So we started celebrating birthday by pampering Vivaan and giving him a free day – no therapies and unlimited access to his favorite object, an iPAD!

2. Time and chance happeneth to them all.

The true source of disappointment was a feeling that life has been unfair. Why did it happen to us? I felt like life had dealt us with a wrong card. Sometimes, we even compared the level of disability and wondered if it was better to have a child with physical disability than a mental one.

However, over a period of time, we realized that every child comes with his own set of challenges (even the perfectly healthy ones). We tend to overestimate our pain and underestimate others’ pain. As soon as we are able to detach ourselves from the expectations of the society, and stop comparing, life become easier.

One of my realizations was, since Vivaan needed so much time and attention, worrying about others meant that much less time we spent on Vivaan. Hence we benchmarked Vivaan as normal (btw, who decides who is normal and who is not?) and started doing everything every other parent would do – go for dinners, watch movies and take vacations!

3. However difficult the journey may look like, Celebrate dancing in the rain and feel the raindrops on your skin

Initially, we worried about all the milestones that Vivaan missed. The fact that he was unable to talk, he was not able to learn the alphabets, he was unable to count, he was unable to clean himself, unable to feed himself, the list seemed endless.

We then decided to celebrate the small milestones instead – the first word he mentioned (No, it was not MA-MA…but iPAD!), the 1st time he rode on a school bus on his own, the 1st time he got a prize (as the most tech-savvy child in his class), the days where there were no tantrums – life was all about celebrating the small things, not the big ones! I framed the first picture he drew. It was just some scribbles.

4. Every disability is a perspective. What looks like a weed can also be a herb

My friend Thorkil Sonne (Founder, Specialisterne), explained to me about the dandelion (a flower, native to Eurasia, and North and South America). Most of us don’t want dandelions in our lawns – they don’t fit there. But if we place a dandelion plant in our kitchen garden, and cultivate it, it can turn out to be one of our most valuable plants.

Dandelions are used to make beer, wine, salads, and natural medicines. Simply put, if we choose to cultivate dandelions, we will reap rewards. The same can be said for individuals with autism. The value of what you see depends on what your level of understanding and accommodation is. So, is a dandelion a weed or a herb? Is Autism a disability or a special ability? It’s all in the perspective.

5. People spend their entire lifetime searching for their purpose; you are lucky – the purpose found you

That was what Dr Kiran Bedi, my mentor, told me when I explained to her about Vivaan’s condition. Vivaan has been the biggest source of inspiration for me. I have realized that “Hope is not a course of action”. Life is too short to leave the problem to someone else.

So I hit the ground running with the help of some of my dear friends and family, many of whom found their purpose through Vivaan. The last five years have been the most significant and fruitful period of my life. I never imagined, that my working in the field of Autism will get me: an invite to the United Nations, a speaking opportunity at the World Economic Forum in Davos, multiple Board positions and meeting with various world leaders. My efforts to create jobs for autistic individuals became the subject of a Harvard Case Study. I am part of the mission to create a million jobs for people on the Autism spectrum.

In the words of our former President Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, “I have a worthwhile mission for a lifetime!”

On Vivaan’s sixth birthday, my wife shared this on her Facebook page:

“There is more to a boy than what a mother sees. There is more to a boy than what his father dreams. Inside every boy lies a heart that beats. And sometimes it screams, refusing to take defeat. And sometimes his father’s dreams aren’t big enough, and sometimes his mother’s vision isn’t long enough. And sometimes the boy has to dream his own dreams and break through the clouds with his sun beans” – from the book Remembering Isaac: The Wise and Joyful Potter of Niederbipp. 

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Syndicated with permission from Swarajyamag.com. For more on VR Ferose's inspiring story check out: Everybody is Good at Something    

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Sometimes I think there are only two instructions we need to follow to develop and deepen our spiritual life: slow down and let go. -- Oriah Mountain Dreamer

Slow Down to Get Ahead

Mistakes can be costly, and can trap you in a cycle of having to rush even more to make up for wasted effort, amplifying stress. Mindfulness can help you get clear on your purpose and do it right once.

By Dawa Tarchin Phillips | April 27, 2016

Time. It’s our most coveted resource because of its scarcity. In an effort to falsely gain time during the day we rush through tasks, projects, and our lives. But we cannot be fully present to life or to our craft when we rush. We can lose our vision and clarity for success. In reactive mindsets, goals blur. We get sloppy.

Rushing hinders our capacity to be intellectually and emotionally available, and capture the opportunities that surface in the present moment. When we slow down and move through our activity with greater mindfulness we are more likely to act with the full power available to us in the present moment.

The Cost of Rushing

Chronic rushing through a never ending to-do list feeds anxiety and heightens stress levels. Due to the epinephrine, also known as adrenaline, released in the brain during stressful periods, our brains get “hooked” on the stimulation of activity. Our bodies become addicted to rushing and our minds switch into autopilot with everything of high importance and needing to get accomplished quickly. We start rushing when rushing is not necessary, or multitasking ourselves into ineffectiveness. This is particularly true for type A executives and leaders who tend to get caught in the cost of time ideal, making everything time-sensitive and urgent, when in fact, only a few matters at hand take true priority.

Research from a publication in 2015 titled “To Multitask or Not, That is the Question” notes that multitasking can reduce effectiveness of even the most refined brains. According to Dr. John Medina, author of the New York Times bestseller “Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School,” being interrupted during a task can lead to 50 percent or more errors. Juggling multiple tasks at once is ineffective compared to immersing yourself mindfully and cultivating solutions strategically and efficiently.

When you need to do work two or three times over because you did not do it right the first time, you begin to see the value of patience and the cost of rushing. Mistakes can be costly, and can trap you in a cycle of having to rush even more to make up for wasted effort, causing even greater stress. The answer? Slow down and do it right once. As a leader in your field, you are not only being paid to do things quickly, you are being paid to do things well. And if well means patiently, then you owe it to yourself and others to stay focused.

Being Gets Lost in Becoming

As a culture, we tend to value doing over being. This is especially true when we have multiple tasks to complete under pressure. Yet, while there are some things that take priority to reach our goals, there are those things we simply do to feel or be perceived as productive. Watch for these traps, triggers, and time wasters:

• excessive multi-tasking
• trying to look busy
• worrying about being judged by those engaging in office gossip and negativity
• measuring your progress simply in deadlines met
• regularly working through your lunch break

When we rush through tasks in order to feel busy or to impress, it’s easy to lose sense of why we are doing them in the first place and their importance to the direction of our lives.

Transactional versus Transformational

Some tasks that keep you busy on a daily basis are purely transactional, keeping you active so that internally you feel you are moving closer to your goals, when in reality, you get caught in an endless cycle of task completion without any real developmental progress. When you confuse task completion with value creation—or worse personal transformation—and commit to busying yourself, it is easy to neglect the importance of transformation to achieve the results you desire.

In recent years, HR departments have tried to refocus organizations and employees to engage in more transformational activities, such as mindfulness and awareness-based practices. While still results-oriented, mindfulness can help move ideas, projects, careers, and lives forward. When individuals engage in transformational activities even around strategy and goal attainment they tend to self-direct and reach goals with greater ease and more mindful effort. In my Mindful Leadership Breakthrough System, we cover important activities such as clarifying personal purpose, mindset inquiry, mental contrasting, or building trust that can all help with the urge to rush.

Using Mindfulness to Get Clear on Your Purpose

If greater and faster effort expended no longer yields improvement in results, and you find yourself rushing constantly, it’s time to slow down, reevaluate, and re-route. Instead of rushing on, create a strategy and think things through. Try these five mindful steps to keep you focused while creating a plan for success that re-aligns your activity with your desired results.

1. What’s the ideal outcome for today and for the future. Think about your ideal outcome and get clear on your vision of the life you wish to lead. Ask yourself “What does my ideal life look like? What does it feel like? Am I acting in alignment with that?” Often we chase after job titles or companies to work for because we think that’s what weshould or ought to do. We don’t reflect on whether or not the details of the position or company culture are in alignment with our personalities, ethics, or life goals. We jump in at the deep end with narrow expectations: more money, more prestige, more power. Remember, the result of your uninformed decision could be your life five months from now, or five years from now. No matter the time frame, time is precious. Get clear on the result you want to accomplish, your ideal outcome, so that you can take necessary and more aligned actions to reach it.

2. What does success mean to you? Each of us has a different definition of success. For some, success is defined monetarily: I am successful because I earn a six-figure annual salary. For others success means having freedom, or having an abundance of relationships that bring happiness: I am successful because I foster close relationships and maintain a strong community of friends and family. If you don’t define success for yourself, you are more likely to rush in the race toward someone else’s version of it.

3. Identify your lack of congruence. Pay attention to the actions you take each day that either help or hinder the path to your ideal life. Try to mindfully observe and reflect on your behaviors without judging them. And don’t beat yourself up if your actions do not align with your goals just yet. It just means it’s time to start shifting your focus and re-strategize so that your actions align with the results you want.

4. Identify the strengths needed for success. What are the skills necessary to actualize your vision of success? What strengths do you already possess that you can tap into and build on? Once you break down the factors necessary to help you achieve your vision you also become more clear on the direction to take in order to acquire the new skills and behaviors you need, or further hone the skills you already have.

5. Expand those strengths in the present. Do not abandon the skills and strengths you already have for those you don’t as they can help actualize what you wish to achieve. Focus on them, nurture them, and expand them. Your mental and emotional bandwidth is correlated to your ability for refined action. Remember that all qualities you need to succeed reside in the present with you, and whoever gets to the present moment first and fully, wins.

When you consistently rush from point A to point B you miss the subtle nuances of the present moment that bring us joy, build connections, cultivate strengths, provide opportunities, and keep you focused to achieve the vision of our ideal life. Instead of getting caught rushing to nowhere devote some mindful time to slowing down and outgrowing personal habits and limitations to achieve better results.

Be The Change: Take time to slow down today.

 

For extra refreshment read this poem by the wonderful John O'Donohue: 'A Blessing for One Who is Exhausted'.

 

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