Tuesday, January 17, 2012

From Where Do New Ideas Come? A Taoist View

Copied from an email by coach Michael Neill www.supercoach.com

1. Get quiet

If you flick through the stations on your radio, you'll notice that there are certain frequencies at which you are receiving multiple stations, with the result that you can't really hear much of anything but static and noise. When it comes to the human mind, the static is the competing frequency of our own thoughts. When our own personal thinking gets quiet, it's easier for the possibility thoughts to be heard clearly.

2. Hang out in the unknown

"I don't know" is neither a badge of shame nor a badge of honor - it's the gateway to new possibilities. But because many of us get uncomfortable hanging out in the "I don't know" place, we start making believe that we know, which is, as a point of interest, how we make beliefs. These "make beliefs" fill up the possibility space in our minds. The more beliefs we fill our minds with, be they positive or negative, the less room their is for a new possibility to emerge.

3. Look where you don't know where to look

One of my mentors, the lovely Leslie Miller, told me the story of suggesting to one of her clients that if he wanted to see new possibilities, he should look to their source - that field of pure potential out of which all things arise. "I don't know where the source is", he said to her with some frustration. After a few moments reflection, she told him to "look where you don't know where to look". And while that may be a little bit zen for some people, it makes a lot of sense to me.

If a new possibility is invisible to us until we see it, then the one thing we know is we won't find it by looking at what we already can see. And while looking to the invisible may feel a lot like looking at nothing, everything arises out of that no-thing.

As it says in the Tao Te Ching:

Look, and it can't be seen.
Listen, and it can't be heard.
Reach, and it can't be grasped.

Above, it isn't bright.
Below, it isn't dark.
Seamless, unnamable,
it returns to the realm of nothing.
Form that includes all forms,
image without an image,
subtle, beyond all conception.

Approach it and there is no beginning;
follow it and there is no end.
You can't know it, but you can be it,
at ease in your own life.
Just realize where you come from:
this is the essence of wisdom.

My third book, Pocket Guide to Fitness, is available on http://www.Authorhouse.com and http://www.Amazon.com. If you look up my name on those Web sites, you will find my other books The Boy in a Wheelchair and Life, Work and Play: Poems and Short Stories. These two books are on my Web site http://www.LouizaPatsis.com.Visit and like, if you so see fit, my book page at www.facebook.com/PocketGuidetoFitness.

Monday, January 9, 2012

Hugs Go a Long Way, Even in Poverty

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/opinion/sunday/kristof-a-poverty-solution-that-starts-with-a-hug.html

My third book, Pocket Guide to Fitness, is available on http://www.Authorhouse.com and http://www.Amazon.com. If you look up my name on those Web sites, you will find my other books The Boy in a Wheelchair and Life, Work and Play: Poems and Short Stories. These two books are on my Web site http://www.LouizaPatsis.com.Visit and like, if you so see fit, my book page at www.facebook.com/PocketGuidetoFitness.