Full Spectrum Human Development

11.01.2010 By
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"Practices" have accompanied humans from our first steps up from Eden to now. A practice entails some form of disciplined action, custom, or regular exercise performed with intention. Spurred by the irresistible desire to improve oneself and the world, human beings has never ceased to invent practices for growth. Two special circumstances coexist to allow this historical period to birth a new breed of practice. First, thanks to the globalization of knowledge, a person can access the world’s entire collection of growth techniques—across cultures and through time. The diversity of transformative practices is truly astounding, from the complex to the simple, the mainstream to the obscure, the scientific to the artistic, the traditional to the outrageous. All of these are available to us right now. Second, a comprehensive vision of reality—an Integral vision—is taking form through the efforts of pioneers around the world. Integral mapmakers chart the many dimensions and waves … [Read more...]

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Freedom and Responsibility

10.28.2010 By
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Freedom without responsibility is often lazy, and responsibility without freedom is often mindless obligation. Freedom doesn’t exist just for its own pleasure. Freedom is the basis for responsibility. Did you know that there is a project underway to build a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast? In order to balance the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast, a group is attempting to build a three hundred foot high monument to freedom’s close cousin, responsibility. The vision came from famous psychologist and Holocaust survivor Victor Frankl. Frankl said, “Freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness. How can our lives mean anything if we don’t take responsibility for our actions?” Responsibility is your ability to respond. Your life to this point is what it is. But you choose what happens next. You craft your own worldview, and choose your responses in each moment. The other side of that freedom coin is … [Read more...]

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One With the Sun—Taking an Evolutionary Perspective

10.27.2010 By
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“After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn't it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it?” The above quote, from Richard Dawkins, invites thoughtful readers to take a very long-term view of time. It occurs to me that you know you’re getting a little long in the tooth when you describe your life in decades. “I did such and such in the 80s, the 90s were a blur and the noughties were all diapers and Hop on Pop.” A decade feels like a long time. But when you think about time from an evolutionary perspective, a decade is a blink of an eye. As mortal human beings, we have only brief decades on this Earth. How do we make them meaningful? Is there a meaning in life or is there only the meaning that we make? The cranky Old … [Read more...]

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