What Is Meditation?

What is Meditation? - Vimala Thakar

"This awareness of the so called outward and the inward movements of life, is meditation. The simultaneous awareness of the total movement is meditation. If I am aware of the nature of my reactions, and movement of my reactions, naturally that awareness will result in freedom from the reaction. I cannot stop the reaction, because the reactions have been rooted in the subconscious, in the unconscious. I cannot prevent, I cannot renounce, I cannot check them. But if I am aware, simultaneously of the objective challenge, the subjective reactions and the causes of these reactions, then it results in freedom. Then the momentum of reaction will not carry me over with it, but I will be ahead of my reactions. I will not be a victim of my reactions, but I will see them as I see the objective challenge. That for me is meditation. All inclusive attention while moving in life. Meditation does not involve any mental activity at all."

"Minimizing in daily life the frequency, the duration and the field of mental activity and living in silence, acting out of that silence is meditation. This meditation, this silence, has got a tremendous momentum of its own…You do not have to do a thing. You are not there: the ego, the mind, is not there. What happens in that silence? How does that silence move? It is something to be experimented with."

"Meditation is watching the movement of mind in relationship. If you try to force the mind into silence by withdrawing from activity, you will never understand what silence is…There is a great beauty when one discovers what silence in action is. Meditation is a new approach to total life, it does not demand of you any isolation."

"Meditation is a state of total freedom from movement, to be there, and then to move into time and space, words and speech, feelings and emotions, to move into them out of the totality, out of the wholeness."

"Freedom or liberation is not something to be cultivated. It is not different. It is not different from the bondage. One has to look at it, understand it and that very understanding explodes into freedom. They are not two different events, and we have to look at these not in isolation, not sitting somewhere in the corner of a room, but from morning till night to be in the state of watchfulness, in the state of observation, without condemning what is coming up or without accepting what is coming up. Just observing it, seeing the speed, the momentum, the electronic speed with which thoughts come, watching the intervals between the two thoughts."

"Meditation is something pertaining to the whole being and the whole life. Either you live in it or you do not live in it. In other words, it is related to everything physical and psychological… Thus, from the small area of mental activity, we have brought meditation to a vast field of consciousness, where it gets related to the way you sit or stand, the way you gesticulate or articulate throughout the day. Whether you want it or not, the inner state of your being gets expressed in your behaviour. This co-relation of meditation to the total way of living is the first requirement on the path of total transformation."

About the Author: Excerpted from "Mutation of Mind" by Vimala Thakar.

Love Needs To Be Constantly Cleansed

Love Needs to be Constantly Cleansed - Ajahn Jayasaro

In the stories that I cherished in my youth, happy endings almost always involved some kind of love, and I began to observe that in “real life” love is not always a guarantee of happiness and it rarely resolves anything for very long. One of the slogans of the day which impressed me the most as a teenager was the one that asked whether you were part of the problem or part of the solution. I think that this is a question we might ask about love. Is it truly part of the solution to our suffering in life or does it merely compound it? My short answer to this question is that it depends. On what? On the kind of love and how you care for it. Even the purest love needs to be constantly cleansed.

Why is it necessary to keep cleansing love? The easy answer is that it tends to get soiled. And the dirt that soils it is suffering and the cause of suffering: craving. Since we human beings do not desire even a shred of suffering and gladly accept every little bit of happiness that comes our way, it makes sense for us to ensure that all the various aspects of our life, including love, be as conducive to happiness and as safe from suffering as possible. Love is a part of life which we need to imbue with wisdom and understanding.

Love tends to get intertwined with other emotions, making those who have never considered it closely mistake the emotions associated with love for a part of, or indeed expressions of, love itself. Usually, for example, rather than considering worries and jealousy to be impurities of love, we take them to be a proof of it, and thus gladly harbor such feelings. We tend to blind ourselves to love’s impurities. It is alarming how easily the defilements (i.e. negative mental states such as greed, hatred and delusion), which can destroy love, sneak inside a heart. Most people are like the owner of a home with a wide opening instead of a door. Anyone is free to enter or exit such a house and it is no surprise that thieves abound.

It is intelligent to learn about love because knowing and understanding our own nature is the only way to the peace and happiness that we human beings can and should aspire to.

About the Author: excerpted from Ajahn Jayasaro's book, On Love.

The Power Of Forgiveness At Work

If we really want to love, we must learn how to forgive. --Mother Teresa

The Power of Forgiveness at Work

--by Brooke Deterline, syndicated from Greater Good, Sep 15, 2016

Over the last two decades, much research has been published about the positive impact of forgiveness, particularly on the forgiver and in relationships. Now, a new study—building on a smaller but growing body of research in the workplace—supports the power of forgiveness to potentially improve well-being and productivity in professional settings.

Conflict among colleagues is inevitable, and—left unheeded—associated with significant stress, health problems (both mental and physical), and poor productivity.  Researchers set out to explore the role of forgiveness in ameliorating these negative impacts.

The participants—more than 200 employees working in office jobs in Washington, DC, or manufacturing jobs in the Midwest—responded to questionnaires about their levels of forgiveness, productivity, and well-being.

The first survey asked respondents to focus on a specific offense, and how they believed it affected them. The second study looked at participants’ general tendency to be forgiving and their general state of mind and work habits over the previous month.

In both cases, forgiveness was linked to increased productivity, decreased absenteeism (fewer days missing work), and fewer mental and physical health problems, such as sadness and headaches. In the second study, these benefits were partly explained by reductions in interpersonal stress that went along with a forgiving disposition.

This new research is important to employees and employers alike, as a lack of forgivenessnegativelyaffects the individuals involved and organizations as a whole. Holding on to negative feelings after a conflict may lead to disengagement at work, a lack of collaboration, and aggressive behavior. Carrying a grudge is also associated with increased stress and a host of negative emotions, including anger, hostility, and vengeful rumination.

Since many people who have been in conflict need to continue to work together, forgiveness can be an effective coping tool, and a way to repair relationships and restore trust—both of which are key to effective work cultures.

More evidence of the power of forgiveness

In 2012, my team at Courageous Leadership LLC worked with employees at Google to build a more courageous culture, including the courage to forgive (one of the keys to healthy ongoing work relationships). We had employees share times when they failed to act on their values at work, to admit they didn’t understand something, or to speak up when they thought they had a better idea. This was designed to remind everyone how easy it is to act outside of our values in stressful situations—to do something that might merit forgiveness.

Participants then practiced taking courageous action. We had them use the REACH model(developed by Everett L. Worthington, one of the coauthors of the new workplace study) to practice forgiveness by identifying current grudges and work on forgiving (not condoning) the behavior. Participants also remembered and shared when others had forgiven them.

Our program also showed positive impact. Participants reported a greater understanding of the power of stressful situations to negatively affect behavior. They also reported feeling better and more connected afterward; as one noted: “I had a deepened sense of lightening inside, like letting go of heavy weights. I feel the forgiveness exercise for me was very powerful.” Participants also took more social risks, like offering new ideas, admitting fears or concerns, and asking for or offering help.

Research shows that this kind of forgiveness can even impact employees who aren’t involved in the conflict. When people see others practicing forgiveness (and other virtuous behaviors) at work, it often fosters positive emotions that can improve decision-making, cognitive functioning, and the quality of relationships.

How to foster forgiveness at work

Unresolved stress from interpersonal conflict often dampens our cognitive and compassionate capacities, making it hard to find a way to forgive. Drawing on the implications of their study, the researchers offer individuals and organizations some suggestions to foster forgiveness at work: 


Model forgiveness at work, particularly if you’re a leader. Leaders’ behavior often has the greatest impact on organizational culture, a kind of contagion effect. Leaders who model forgiveness on a regular basis are cueing similar behavior in others.

Apologize and attempt to make restitutions. If we don’t take responsibility for our mistakes, distrust grows and the fear of something happening again can be worse than the original incident.

Rebuild trust by working on a common task, creating new experiences and memories of cooperation.

Conduct interventions (sometimes best done by third parties) to address conflict and foster forgiveness. Invest in programs to build understanding and teach evidence-based tools for ongoing forgiveness in the workplace.

There’s an old saying (attributed to everyone from the Buddha to Carrie Fisher) that goes, “Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.” If you’re holding onto a grudge at work, you could be sharing the poison with your colleagues.

Forgiveness, of course, does not mean we condone or ignore bad behavior. Every workplace should have policies and procedures for dealing quickly with serious transgressions. However, if you do feel ready and the situation warrants it, give forgiveness a try. It could help you, your colleagues, and your workplace.

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This article is printed here with permission. It originally appeared on Greater Good, the online magazine of the Greater Good Science Center (GGSC). Based at UC Berkeley, the GGSC studies the psychology, sociology, and neuroscience of well-being, and teaches skills that foster a thriving, resilient, and compassionate society. 

Be The Change: In what ways can you use the power of forgiveness in your workplace today?

Sourced From www.dailygood.org

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare. -- Mark Twain

How to Cultivate Ethical Courage

--by Brooke Deterline, syndicated from Greater Good, Oct 01, 2016

Sometimes we only realize our deepest values once we’ve contradicted them.

For Tina, an up-and-coming African-American woman and associate professor at a prestigious private university, one of those moments came just after she had earned a coveted administrative post. 

I met Tina at a five-day Multi-Cultural Competence workshop. Tina was the one who skillfully voiced the racial and gender bias that was occurring in the room, most challengingly by the famous founder and facilitator of the workshop. 

As one of the most courageous women I know, she’s a perfect example of how easy it is for any of us to betray important values in challenging situations at work. And paradoxically (but not uncommonly), it was Tina’s drive and aspiration to be of service that ended up undermining her.

Tina had pursued that university position because of her deep desire to help students, especially those of color, navigate a new, unfamiliar, and often predominantly white environment. 

With one student in particular, Tina says, “I was so excited to help her have a better experience than I and so many other students of color have had.”

Tina was asked by the student to attend an important meeting to help facilitate and provide moral support but was ultimately blocked by…her boss, who said, “It’s not your place in the hierarchy to address this. You have to realize how we do things here if you want to proceed to a permanent administrative role.” (Achieving that status would make Tina the first woman of color in that role, and position her to have much greater influence.)

Tina went along to get along. “I know I didn’t advocate for that student the way I should have. I was worried my actions would negatively impact my ability to move up—I wanted to be seen by others as a ‘worthy’ applicant.” 

Sound familiar? Sadly, it happens all the time. And if you have a pulse, something like this has happened to you, and could happen again. But it’s possible to reframe the situation so that we’re less likely to “go along to get along,” and more likely to take courageous action. Below are three ways to stay true to your values and find the courage to stand up for them.

1. Learn your patterns

Four phenomena were working against Tina in this situation: two very common behaviors and two highly destructive structural impediments:

We all have a natural human instinct to go along with a group or leader—even if we don’t feel right about it—for a sense of safety, status, and belonging (the “bystander effect”).

When we’re focused on an objective and under pressure, the ethical implications of our acts can easily recede from our attention (“ethical fading”). When organizations bring in new people with fresh ideas and perspectives, and then dictate the way the new people are allowed to engage, they often douse the creativity and passion they’ve said they want to support.

The erosion of organizational integrity and effectiveness is a typical outcome in organizations with a steep hierarchy, where a small number of people hold large amounts of power.

That’s the bad news—but there’s good news, too. According to Ann Tenbrunsel, professor of business administration at Notre Dame and research director of the Institute for Ethical Business Worldwide, “Our research shows that if you frame your decision to include values, you’re much more likely to act in accordance with them.”

In other words, ask yourself, “What’s the ethical thing to do here?” In Tenbrunsel’s study, participants were more likely to lie and cheat when they framed their decision as a business choice, rather than an ethical problem. Tenbrunsel’s research suggests that an ethical framing greatly increases the probability we’ll act within our values.

Although Tina wasn’t acting “unethically,” she does say that she lost sight of her core values and her goal of helping students. Tenbrunsel points out that this is also common.  “When we move to ‘operationalize’ our values and goals, we trigger concrete thinking, which has less access to our values than does more abstract thinking,” she says.  For example, when Tina focused on “how” (operational/concrete thinking) to follow the rules and cultural norms to win the position, she lost sight of “why” (values/abstract thinking) she was ultimately going after the role.

Sixty-plus years of social psychology show us that we all have areas of strength and vulnerability when it comes to acting on our values in social settings, like work. Some of us will readily speak up for a colleague who’s being mistreated, but not for ourselves. Others can more easily stand up to unjust or unwise authority, but hide mistakes from people whom we deeply respect. Recognizing these vulnerabilities as they arise can be the key to making better choices.

 

2. Listen to your body

Often ignoring our values comes at a cost, initially a physical one. “Whenever I go against my own soul, it has physical effects. I literally get sick,” says Tina.

Our physical sensations are often our first alarm, and can be our guide. 

Tina says of that moment when she agreed to go along with her boss, “It shook me to the core. I felt like a sellout.”

Not acting on or contradicting our values can trigger shame. Although we may feel the urge to run from them, emotions like guilt and shame can be a useful signal that we are not acting in line with the things we care most about. This signal can help us to consider and adjust our behavior if necessary.

To listen to shame, we need to use it as a compass rather than a straitjacket. We want to avoid the impulse to label ourselves as “cowards” or “sellouts,” which only makes us feel more shameful and unable to act.

“The trick is to see difficult thoughts and emotions as information, something to step back from and be curious about, rather than something to run from. From this point, it is easier to be compassionate to ourselves and use our values to courageously navigate forwards,” says Rob Archer, Ph.D., who uses applied psychology to help organizations improve well-being in the workplace.

One way to do this is to talk to ourselves as we would a dear friend: “I get this is hard; and I see that it matters a lot to you to speak up to help students,” Tina might have told herself.

Eventually, Tina was able to use her negative feelings about the incident to spur her onward. As she says, “I took a step back and saw that I lost something. It was the start of a real effort to be reflective, intentional, and courageous.”

 

3. Use the power of commitment

Once she had set her internal compass, Tina could turn her full energy to figuring out a way forward: “I made a commitment: Going forward I will be bold to support the values that truly matter to me.”

When we commit, we can get creative. We don’t have to waste time trying to rationalize why we don’t have to speak up. We use all our energy on “how,” not “if.” 

At my company, Courageous Leadership, LLC, we always counsel: Practice every courageous conversation you plan on having to get a better sense of what you want to say, what’s wise to cover in this first exchange, and who is a likely ally who can help provide leverage to change a systemic issue.

Commitments also help us stick with it when it’s hard. It’s rarely just one courageous conversation; our work environment may require repeated and long-term courage. And while there can be consequences, there are usually positive effects, too—especially in terms of learning and building our sense of courage and resilience.

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This article is printed here with permission. It originally appeared on Greater Good, the online magazine of the Greater Good Science Center (GGSC). Based at UC Berkeley, the GGSC studies the psychology, sociology, and neuroscience of well-being, and teaches skills that foster a thriving, resilient, and compassionate society. 

Be The Change: The next time you are faced with a tough decision, make an effort to ask yourself, "What is the ethical thing to do here?"

Sourced From www.dailygood.org

Leadership & Authentic Self Esteem

You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop. -- Rumi

Why Leaders Need to Grow Authentic Self Esteem

--by Homaira Kabir, syndicated from wearesalt.org, Oct 18, 2016

Over the years, we’ve had a love-hate relationship with self-esteem, writes Homaira Kabir. There was a time when we believed self-esteem to be the royal road to flourishing. We had Stuart Smalley on Saturday Night Live provide us with Daily Affirmations to make us feel special. We tried to reinforce it in our children by letting them know how exceptional they were when they failed.

However, later studies showed that such increases in self-esteem did little for our happiness or performance, but ample for our egos. Professor Roy Baumeister’s work with self-esteem showed that we’d been raising a generation of narcissists who went on to wreck havoc in their lives and in their workplaces.

It now appears that we’d been building the wrong kind of self-esteem – the kind that is contingent on external factors such as social approval, success or attractiveness. And as Professor Kristen Neff has shown, this comes at a price. Feeling better about ourselves as a result of social comparison ensures that our self-esteem takes a nose dive every time someone more popular, successful or attractive crosses our path. And in the global and competitive world we live in, it also sets us up for negative competition, unethical behaviors and a dearth of empathy.

However, authentic self-esteem is different. It’s a feeling of worth in our abilities and qualities. As such, its not conditional upon external evaluations – instead its an inner security that provides us with the courage to step out into the world and do the right thing. And research shows that people with this form of self-esteem go on to live happy and productive lives where they are able to cope effectively with challenges and rise to their full potential.

This is especially important for leaders of today. In an increasingly uncertain world, having a sense of self-worth that stems from being a human worthy of respect, leads to courageous decisions that may not always win other people’s approval. It also leads to investing energy in people and their growth, rather than in feeling superior and infallible, and safeguarding a faltering sense of self-worth.

A Skill of Resilience

Leaders with authentic self-worth come from a place of congruence where their daily activities are tied to long-term meaningful goals. Momentary failures are taken in stride as they encourage their people to continue striving towards a higher purpose that brings them hope and meaning. Dr. Richard Davidson’s work in neuroscience shows that the ability to recover from adversity through a positive outlook builds the neural structure of resilience and leads to wellbeing.

A Culture of Compassion

Authentic self-worth and self-compassion go hand in hand. People who compassionately accept their imperfections are tolerant of those of others. As such, they recognize a common humanity and feel connected with others in the experience of life, rather than critical of their failings. This instills an environment where employees are motivated to do what they do best rather than push themselves beyond their window of tolerance and become disengaged at work.

A Practice of Mindfulness

Leaders with high self-esteem are able to be present in the moment rather than preoccupied with perceived personal slights, the need to be right all the time and other unhealthy behaviors to protect an inflated ego. They are also able to appreciate the vast flow of life and take perspective every so often to return to a state of homeostasis when caught in the stress response. Research shows that these skills are what integrate the neural fibers of the brain towards greater wisdom.

There is one caveat though. For better or for worse, authentic self-esteem grows in our very early years through the interactions we have with our primary caregivers. When those interactions are not attuned with our inner worlds, we grow up with feelings of self-worth that are contingent upon whatever external influences we grow up with. And studies over the past 30 years that led to the attachment theory have shown that sadly, that makes up more than half of us.

The good news is that the three qualities of self-esteem also build self-esteem. When we practice the skills of resilience, compassion and mindfulness, we step out of what Professor Jennifer Crocker, who researches this construct, calls the “ego-system” of contingent self-esteem into the “eco-system” of authentic self-worth.

And there is more. In their book Resonant Leadership, professors Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee show how these three traits are also indispensible for compassionate leadership. They not only bring out the best in employees, but also allow leaders to sustain themselves through the relentless demands of work and life and renew themselves physically, mentally and emotionally.

Now that’s an upward spiral worth aiming for!

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This article originally appeared in Salt. Homaira Kabir is a positive psychology coach, a cognitive behavioral therapist and a writer. For more, please visit her website, or follow her on Facebook and Twitter @HomairaKabir

Be The Change: What is one inner quality that you value about yourself? Spend some time appreciating and honoring that quality and how it gives you strength and shapes who you are.

Sourced From www.dailygood.org

The Glass Is Already Broken

The Glass is Already Broken - Stephen and Ondrea Levine

Once someone asked a well-known Thai meditation master, "In this world where everything changes, where nothing remains the same, where loss and grief are inherent in our very coming into existence, how can there be any happiness? How can we find security when we see that we can't count on anything being the way we want it to be?" The teacher, looking compassionately at this fellow, held up a drinking glass that had been given to him earlier in the morning and said, "You see this goblet? For me this glass is already broken. I enjoy it. I drink out of it. It holds my water admirably, sometimes even reflecting the sun in beautiful patterns. If I should tap it, it has a lovely ring to it. But when I put this glass on a shelf and the wind knocks it over, or my elbow brushes it off the table and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say, 'Of course.' When I understand that this glass is already broken, every moment with it is precious. Every moment is just as it is, and nothing need be otherwise."

When we recognize that, just like the glass, our body is already broken, that indeed we are already dead, then life becomes precious, and we open to it just as it is, in the moment it is occurring. When we understand that all our loved ones are already dead — our children, our mates, our friends — how precious they become. How little fear can interpose; how little doubt can estrange us. When you live your life as though you're already dead, life takes on new meaning. Each moment becomes a whole lifetime, a universe unto itself.

When we realize we are already dead, our priorities change, our heart opens, and our mind begins to clear of the fog of old holdings and pretendings. We watch all life in transit, and what matters becomes instantly apparent: the transmission of love; the letting go of obstacles to understanding; the relinquishment of our grasping, of our hiding from ourselves. Seeing the mercilessness of our self-strangulation, we begin to come gently into the light we share with all beings. If we take each teaching, each loss, each gain, each fear, each joy as it arises and experience it fully, life becomes workable. We are no longer a "victim of life." And then every experience, even the loss of our dearest one, becomes another opportunity for awakening.

If our only spiritual practice were to live as though we were already dead, relating to all we meet, to all we do, as though it were our final moments in the world, what time would there be for old games or falsehoods or posturing? If we lived our life as though we were already dead, as though our children were already dead, how much time would there be for self-protection and the re-creation of ancient mirages? Only love would be appropriate, only the truth.

About the Author: Excerpted from Stephen and Ondrea Levine's book, Who Dies?: An Investigation of Conscious Living and Conscious Dying. 

Three Millimeters of the Universe

Three Millimeters of the Universe - Daniel Gottlieb

Dear Sam,

One night in the hospital, a friend came to visit me. I told her I didn't think I could go on anymore. What I was feeling went beyond despair. It was a loss of hope — of everything I valued, trusted, and loved. The pain had become simply unbearable.

My friend held my hand and said, 'Dan, what you are about is more important than who you are.'

That night, I had a dream. I dreamed that God came to me. This was not the God I believe in, the one you read about in the Bible. It was some other God, and when He spoke, he said, 'I'm going to give you a piece of the universe. Your job is to take care of it. Not make it bigger or better — just take care of it. And when I'm ready, I'll take it back, and your life will be over.'

I looked at the piece of the universe that God was showing me, and I saw that it was just three millimeters! Was that all? I could feel my ego begin to rail against this indignity. I'm a psychologist! I am an author! I have a radio show! Aren't these things important?

Of course, no matter how much I protested, it wouldn't make any difference. My allotment was still — and would always be — just three millimeters of the entire universe. That was it!

But in this dream I also saw that caring for three millimeters of the universe was an awesome responsibility. A God-given responsibility. Though I had felt I couldn't go on, finally I had to acknowledge that I would have to give back my three millimeters before I was ready. And because, at the time of the dream, I had a wound that was healing in millimeters, I knew that my job was to help heal my three millimeters of the universe.

Sam, part of the reason I'm at peace with my life is that I take care of the part of the universe I'm responsible for. I haven't made it bigger or better. I haven't changed it. But I have cared for it. Writing these letters to you is just one of many ways of tending my three millimeters.

What I wish for you, Sam, is what I wish for everybody — to get as clear a sense of what your life is about as I got in that dream. Your three millimeters is not much in terms of area. But I hope you will feel the gratitude and joy that I feel, having been given that much to tend.

Love,

Pop

About the Author: Daniel Gottlieb is a quadriplegic, and when his grandson was 14 months, he was diagnosed with autism.  He started writing him letters that were complied in 'Letters to Sam'.  Above is an excerpt from that book. 

Teen Creates App So Bullied Kids Never Have To Eat Alone

No one must shut his eyes and regard as non-existent the suffering of which he spared himself the sight. -- Albert Schweitzer

Teen Creates App So Bullied Kids Never Have To Eat Alone

You're at a cafeteria, you've got your lunch ... and then you just don't know where to sit. You don't want to sit alone, but you also don't know who would be friendly and let you sit with them. Sixteen-year-old Natalie Hampton has been there. She's an 11th-grader from Sherman Oaks, Calif., and the creator of a new app called Sit With Us.

Hampton recently spoke about the app with All Things Considered host Audie Cornish. A transcript of their conversation follows, edited for clarity.

This is a great idea, but I understand it kind of comes from a sad place, right? I mean, essentially because you had a pretty lonely experience at lunchtime.

Yeah, I did. At my old school, I was completely ostracized by all of my classmates, and so I had to eat lunch alone every day. When you walk into the lunchroom and you see all the tables of everyone sitting there and you know that going up to them would only end in rejection, you feel extremely alone and extremely isolated, and your stomach drops. And you are searching for a place to eat, but you know that if you sit by yourself, there'll be so much embarrassment that comes with it because people will know and they'll see you as the girl who has nowhere to sit. So there's so many awful feelings that come along with it.

You eventually changed schools, and you did make friends in this new school. But it sounds like you couldn't shake that feeling, right — that experience.

Well, I felt that if I was thriving in a new school but didn't do anything about the people who feel like this every single day, then I'm just as bad as the people who watched me eat alone. I felt like, with my story, it was my job to stand up and do something about all the kids who feel like this every day. And I wanted to create something that would address bullying, but in a positive way.

So you get this idea for an app, and how did you want it to work?

The way that it works is it's a free lunch-planning app where kids can find lunch tables if they feel like they have nowhere to go. Pretty much, kids can sign up as ambassadors for a Sit With Us club and agree to post open lunches so that anyone who has the app and has nowhere to go can find a table and, hopefully, make some new friends.

Now, it seems like the kind of kid who would do that would be the kind of person you could walk up to and say, "Hey, can I sit with you?" So why have an app? Why not the low-tech version, which is just ask to sit down?

Because the way it was at my old school, I tried many times to reach out to someone, but I was rejected many times. And you feel like you're labeling yourself as an outcast when you ask to join a table with someone you don't know. This way, it's very private. It's through the phone. No one else has to know. And you know that you're not going to be rejected once you get to the table.

So your app launched [last] week. Have you had a chance to see the app in action just yet?

So far, the results have been very, very positive. I had my first club meeting the other day, and everyone was very excited. And people are already posting open lunches at my school. So I'm very excited that things are already kicking off with a great start.

Be The Change: How many kindness-encouraging apps do you have on your device? There are plenty out there. Consider downloading one if you haven't already.

Sourced From www.dailygood.org

Why I Make Movies

Why I Make Movies - Mickey Lemle

All movies are an illusion. We think we are seeing motion but in fact we are seeing twenty-four still pictures every second. Half the time the screen is actually black. Yet movies seem so real, and some have the potential to reveal great truth. In the Hindu tradition, what we perceive of the outside world is called maya, or illusion. It is described as a veil that obscures the truth. But maya also has another aspect, which is the power to reveal the truth. Film and other art forms can embody both aspects of maya.

“What kinds of films do you make?” people often ask me, after I’ve told them that I am a filmmaker. “Documentaries,” I tell them. “Oh, movies about reality,” they say. “True stories.”

The issue of “truth” versus “reality” is a constant tension in creation of any film, especially documentaries. Filmmakers know that every time we make a choice of where to put the camera or when to turn it on or off, we are making choices about subjective perceptions of reality. When we edit, as I did in my latest film, ninety hours of footage down to ninety minutes, we are clearly manipulating reality, or truth.

Like the best storytellers, I don’t let facts get in the way of the truth. This might sound like heresy to some, but it is the nature of art. My motivation is to move audiences: first and foremost, to tell them a great story that holds their interest and attention, and then to put them in touch with some deep truth, to the best of my ability to perceive it and communicate about it. In that way, if the viewer is ready, the film has the potential to transform the way one sees the world and oneself. Paradoxically, to accomplish this I must manipulate reality.

As an artist, one is always playing with perception. Most of us believe that what we perceive is the truth. “Seeing is believing,” as the expression goes. For instance, have you seen a beautiful sunset recently? Here we are hundreds of years after Copernicus and Galileo, and we are still seeing the sunset. The sun doesn’t set. The earth rotates and eclipses the sun.

Back in the days of Newton, there were absolute laws of nature. Einstein explained that everything is relative.

How we perceive the truth is often influenced by our belief systems. In closed systems of belief, in any orthodoxy, there can be absolute truth. True believers believe that they—and their specific belief system—have a lock on the Truth.

Mahatma Gandhi was once leading a large protest march across India. A few days into the march, he found out that there was to be a great deal of violence, and he abruptly announced that he was ending the march. Some of his followers and supporters said, “But Gandhiji, you can’t call off this march. Many people, from all over India, left their jobs and came great distances to be on this march.” Gandhi replied, “Only God knows absolute truth. I just know relative truth. My allegiance must be to truth, not to consistency.”

Perhaps one of the reasons we feel in the presence of Truth in front of great art is that it takes us out of our belief system and opens us up to deeper possibilities. I believe that each one of us has an honest witness deep inside that tingles when we are in the presence of the Truth. It resonates, just as when one experiences the presence of the divine in nature, in witnessing a birth, a flower, an ocean storm, a volcano, or a tornado. One experiences awe and aesthetic arrest. As James Joyce says, we are put in touch with the Primal Cause of all things, with the Mystery. I’m with Joyce. That is what we strive for. On really good days, we can get close.

About the Author: Mickey Lemle is a filmmaker who has profiled the Dalai Lama, Ram Dass and many others.  This excerpt was taken from his article in Parabola.

What Do You Do When Somebody Pushes You?

If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner. -- Nelson Mandela

The Way of Aikido: Life Lessons from an American Sensei

--by George Leonard, Nov 08, 2016

The following is an excerpt from 'The Way of Aikido: LifeLessons from an American Sensei' by George Leonard.

 "What do you do when somebody pushes you?”

"Over the past twenty-five years, I've posed this question to groups totaling more than fifty thousand people in workshop sessions, and the first answer in every case has been 'Push back.' I've heard 'Push back,' as a matter of fact, in four languages: English, French, German, and Spanish. From this experience, I've concluded that the practice of pushing back whenever pushed is ubiquitous in Western culture — and, I suspect, in other cultures as well.

"And here, of course, we're not just talking about a physical push. It's unlikely you'll be pushed physically between now and this time next week. But the odds are pretty good that someone will push you verbally or psychologically. And if you're like most people, you're quite likely to push back verbally or psychologically. So let's see what options you have, what outcomes you can expect, in case you do. It's simple: You can win, you can lose, or there can be a stalemate — none of which is conductive to harmony and mutual satisfaction. If you win, somebody else has to lose. If you lose, it doesn't feel very good. And a stalemate's a big waste of time.

"It could be said that the health of an individual or an organization is generally directly proportionate to the number of perceived options at its command. The converse is also true. When an individual or an organization moves toward breakdown, that move is generally accompanied by the perception of fewer and fewer options. Isn't it strange, then, that when we're being pushed, we've limited ourselves to a response that results in only three options, none of them particularly good?

"What's the alternative? To deal with any kind of push, whether a shove or strike or kick, the aikidoist generally moves toward the attacker and slightly off the line of attack, simultaneously making a turning maneuver that leaves him or her next to the attacker and facing in the same direction. In this position, the aikidoist is looking at the situation from the attacker's viewpoint. It's important here to add one more phrase to that statement. The aikidoist is looking at the situation from the attacker's viewpoint without giving up his or her own viewpoint.

"This entering and blending maneuver immediately multiplies your options. Thousands of techniques and variations have been identified in aikido, all of which become possible once you've blended. The same thing is true when you blend verbally, when instead of meeting a verbal attack with a verbal counterattack you respond first by coming around to your attacker's point of view, seeing the situation from his or her viewpoint. This response, whether physical or verbal, is quite disarming, leaving the attacker with no target to focus on. At that point, numerous options present themselves, including, best of all, the clear possibility of a reconciliation that meets the needs of both parties.

"This isn't to say that we should always blend. In some cases, pushing back, standing your ground, and striking out forcefully is necessary or appropriate. It would have been difficult, probably impossible, to blend with Hitler. Diplomats of the 1930s tried and failed. But we could also say that, in trying to appease the dictator, the Western democracies failed to maintain their own points of view, which is essential to the successful practice of this option. In any case, blending isn't the answer for every situation; it's a means by which you can multiply your options in responding to any kind of attack.

"Then, too, it's possible to strike effectively after blending. In physical aikido, as a matter of fact, a successful blend almost always creates an opening for a throw or a pin.

"Yes, sometimes I fail to blend when I should have blended, and I'm almost always sorry for it. Radio talk shows offer a marvelous opportunity to practice this skill and sometimes, just as a reminder, I write the word BLEND in large letters on a card placed near the microphone. Again and again blending and other skills learned in aikido have produced outcomes that would seem unlikely if not miraculous, as we'll see later. For now, let me sum up with a few guidelines on the art of blending.

"Blend from a grounded and centered stance. Whether the attack is physical or verbal, it's important that you be firmly connected to the earth with your energy concentrated in your 'center,' or hara (the Japanese word for belly), as you blend. It's difficult to blend with your energy concentrated in your head, shoulders, or chest. Since energy follows attention, put your attention on the soles of your feet and on a point an inch or two below your navel. You might touch this point as a reminder. If you receive a verbal attack while seated, put your attention on your buttocks and the small of your back as well as on the soles of your feet. Sink into your chair. Feel the small of your back on the backrest. Let your shoulders remain relaxed and supple and make sure your breath doesn't rise into your upper chest. Let your breath expand your hara, and if the attack is verbal, speak slowly and with genuine feeling as you respond.

"Don't overblend. Responding to a verbal attack by saying something on the order of 'Yes, you're right and I'm wrong and I'm a bad person,' isn't blending. By saying anything along the lines of 'I'm a bad person,' you bring the attention back to yourself rather than truly looking at the situation from your attacker's viewpoint. Stay grounded and centered. Honor your viewpoint while seeing the situation from your attacker's viewpoint. Sometimes a blend involves an apology, but blending isn't just giving in or denigrating yourself. It's seeking harmony through a reconciliation that honors both viewpoints.

"Avoid the overuse of blending with your mate, family, and close friends.Blending is extremely powerful. Using it all the time can drive people close to you crazy. There are times when people want to and need to grapple with one another verbally, to have an old-fashioned give-and-take. Again, let me stress that blending is a valuable and often surprisingly effective option, but it isn't the only way to deal with incoming energy.

"If you're going to blend, do it wholeheartedly. The inadequacy of a less-than-wholehearted physical blend is dramatically revealed in aikido. When an aikidoist makes a halfhearted attempt at blending while hurrying to pull off a technique, the technique is almost sure to fail. The same thing is true in verbal blending. The blend isn't just a trick with which to fool and adversary. It involves true understanding of the other person's intentions and feelings. Ideally, a verbal blend conveys this understanding. It involves empathy. It comes from the heart.

"Practice! Blending is one of those rare skills that sometimes produces immediate good results. But to blend consistently and to do so under pressure requires a great deal of practice. Start simply by listening carefully and sympathetically to everything people say to you. (Remember, this doesn't necessarily mean agreeing.) When you get really good at this, you might be surprised at how successfully you can blend under pressure. After attending one of my weekend workshops that stressed blending, a leading San Francisco public advocacy lawyer was opposed by eleven corporate lawyers in a meeting wth a judge in chambers. 'I decided to see if this stuff works,' he told me later. 'I blended with everything they said for an hour, after which they conceded to my point.'

"Realize that harmony can spring from the meeting of opposites. To blend is to move toward the attack, creating a dance that joins attacker and defender and opens the way to reconciliation. It yields reliable good results, but it really isn't about winning. Blending is an expression of love, of a willingness to embrace even the strongest attack and bring it into a circle of concord that somehow connects each individual to the essential unity and harmony of the universe."

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Excerpted from 'The Way of Aikido: Life Lessons from an American Sensei' by George Leonard.

Be The Change: When you're in a discussion today, make an effort to see the other person's point of view and let them know you are trying to understand them.

Sourced From www.dailygood.org

We build too many walls and not enough bridges. -- Sir Isaac Newton

Why We Shut People Out and What To Do Instead

--by Robert Waldinger, syndicated from ideas.ted.com, Oct 20, 2016

Remember the thrill of building walls as a kid? Forts made from snow, or a giant cardboard box. Burying ourselves in blankets and pillows. Walling ourselves off from our enemies — real or imagined — to fight heroic battles until it was time for dinner.

Even as adults, we swear undying loyalty to our local sports teams and hate their rivals. While the athletes themselves flit from one team to another in search of bigger contracts, we’re sure our home team is special. We’re passionate, sometimes to the point of violence, even though we know it’s only a game.

We make artificial divisions everywhere: Democrats and Republicans, black and white, millennials and baby boomers. Even those of us who are against building walls find ourselves pointing accusing fingers at those wall-builders.

Being human means there’s a wall-builder in each of us. Our minds naturally divide the world into me and not-me, us and them. For thousands of years, our sages have taught that we’re all one, yet we still divide wherever we look.

Why are we this way, what are the costs of being like this — and what, if anything, can we do about it?

Why are we this way?

We evolved this way. Sebastian Junger points out that we evolved as a species to survive in harsh environments. For thousands of years, our ability to band together against a common enemy (weather, wild beasts, other tribes) was life-saving. Those who were most inclined to join forces were more likely to survive and pass along their genes. Facing a common danger makes us feel close and cooperative. In fact, it can be so exhilarating that many soldiers actually miss combat when they come home.

Knowing who we are makes us feel secure. As we grow up, we’re constantly defining ourselves. In my case: Caucasian, male, born in Iowa, live in Boston, Zen Buddhist, good at learning languages. With countless labels, I build up this creation I call my self. Psychologist Erik Erikson wrote, “there is no feeling of being alive without a sense of identity.” It’s easy to ignore things I don’t like about myself and even easier to locate those qualities in others. (“I’m fine, but those people over there are the ones who are weak/lazy/ignorant.”)

(False) certainty about others is reassuring. Putting labels on entire groups of people makes things much simpler. If all New Yorkers are pushy, or all politicians are dishonest, we don’t have to do the hard work of figuring out who’s who. George Orwell, whose book 1984 depicts this with terrifying accuracy, defined nationalism as “the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labeled ‘good’ or ‘bad.”‘

 

What are the costs of walling ourselves off?

Once we slap a label on others, we don’t bother to look more closely, and our fears grow. With social mixers like the military draft long disappeared, and news media like Fox and MSNBC growing ever more partisan, it’s easy to restrict ourselves — without even realizing it — to people like us and to views we agree with. The result is that we’re mystified by the beliefs of those on the other side of social and economic divides: “those Trump supporters”; “those Hillary supporters”; “those Brexit voters.” Our fears about others increase, with no chance to see how much of our basic humanness we share.

We are actually less safe. Labeling entire groups of people as good guys or bad guys is dangerous, because we end up accidentally putting white hats on bad guys and black hats on good guys. If all Muslims are terrorists, we don’t pay attention to exactly who it is who’s heading toward extremism — whether Muslim, Christian, vegan, or carnivore. And calling millions of people terrorists pushes them away just when we need them most.

We waste precious resources. Trying to wall ourselves off from entire groups of people is exhausting and inefficient. We’ve spent a trillion dollars protecting the United States since 9/11, and Steven Brill notes that we are arguably no safer than we were 15 years ago.

 

Help! What can we do about this?

Embrace our inner wall-builder. The more we know about our own impulses to find enemies, the sooner we’ll recognize it when people are trying to manipulate us for their selfish ends.

Give our wall-builder a place to play. Whether it’s barricading ourselves off in snow forts or rooting for the Red Sox, we can channel the urge to find heroes and enemies into healthy competition.

Choose our real-life villains wisely. We can target bad actors and real social problems, instead of indulging in the dangerous temptation to paint whole groups of people with the same tarring brush. This means targeting terrorists, not Muslims. Poverty, not poor people. Brutality and racism, not police officers.

Find ways to know the people who seem alien. This may be the hardest task. Immediately following the Brexit vote, Oxford professor Alexander Betts gave a talk in which he showed a map of Britain highlighting all the counties that voted in favor of leaving the European Union. He realized he’d spent less than four days of his life in any of the top 50 of those counties, pointing out how little he knew about the people who were on the other side of a growing social and economic chasm. Robert Putnam writes about a similar class divide in America.

Perhaps we need something like the great social mixer we experienced during WWII — not war, but a kind of universal national service where young women and men from all corners of society work together to fight real common enemies like homelessness, poverty, illiteracy — and in the process get to know the best of our shared humanness.

There is tremendous energy behind our dissatisfaction and desire for change. Energy we can harness in ways that either make us feel more isolated and afraid, or make us feel more connected and engaged. We have the freedom to choose. And our choices could not matter more.

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Syndicated from ideas.ted.com. Robert Waldinger is a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and Zen priest. He is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and directs the Harvard Study of Adult Development, one of the longest-running studies of adult life ever done.

Be The Change: As you meet with friends or strangers today, note any tendency in yourself to create a barrier. Embrace your inner wall-builder, then find a way to get to know them better.

Sourced From www.dailygood.org