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Thought of the Week Archives
February 1999
February 1
Basically, disappointment, embarrassment, and all these places where
we just cannot feel good are a sort of death. We've just lost our ground
completely; we are unable to hold it together and feel that we're on top
of things. Rather than realizing that it takes death for there to be birth,
we just fight against the fear of death.
Reaching our limit is not some kind of punishment. It's actually a
sign of health that, when we meet the place where we are about to die,
we feel fear and trembling. A further sign of health is that we don't
become undone by fear and trembling, but we take it as a message that
it's time to stop sturggling and look directly at what's threatening us.
Things like disappointment and anxiety are messengers telling us that
we're about to go into unknown territory.
- Pema Chodron
- When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times
February 8
The hero's journey, then, is one of spiritual transformation. Whether
we are talking about resolving the specific challenges in your life, or
about the nature of the creative process, you can think of yourself as
a kind of heroic alchemist finding a way to bring something rich and valuable
out of what appears to be base. As the grandfather of psychology, William
James, has said, "Believe that life is worth living and your belief will
help create the fact." You may be able to do this simply by weaving your
metaphorical magic wand and changing your outlook so you see and experience
an old situation in a different way. Or it may require a full frontal
attack and a search through dangerous foreign lands. You may be conscious
of your yearning for this transformation, or you may accidentally fall
into it.
- Lorna Catford, Ph.D. and Michael Ray, Ph.D.
- The Path of the Everyday Hero
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February 15
- There are, nevertheless, significant drawbacks to heavy use of video
games that, in our opinion, can easily offset those modest benefits:
[Psychologist Patricia] Greenfield's team found that video
games don't train children in the same process of inductive
discovery through observation" that adults often apply when
learning to use new software. Instead, they merely give children
practice in recognizing the basic icons or orienting symbols
that grace so many computer screens.
The benefits to spatial intelligence [from playing video
games] could apply equally to boys and girls. In reality, though,
they don't, because girls tend to be turned off by the violent
content of most video games and so spend only a fraction of
the hours boys spend with a joystick in hand.
Brain researchers have found that action video games tend to stimulate
the brain's visual cortex but to leave unstimulated or actually depress
the activity of the prefontal cortex, with its role in practically
all thinking, reading, planning, and organizing.
And teenagers who play violent video games employing virtual reality
experience physiologically arousal (faster heartbeat, perspirtation,
etc.) and more aggressive thoughts than control subjects not playing
the games or observers simply watching the players.
Marian Diamond, Ph.D, and Janet Hopson
Magic Trees of the Mind
[Note: I think this book should be required reading for every parent
and teacher. -- R.H.]
February 22
[The problem of living my life instead of letting my life live me is]
resolved deep down, where you will the life you have, where you choose
the life you're given. You occupy life with an inner freedom that doesn't
have mush to do with changing this or that event. I was born as this person,
I have these activities and this partner, these parents, this house I'm
living in, this profession. My conditioning, my life, my karma--all kinds
of things have brought me to this. For all practical purposes I just have
been pushed along by accident, by fate, or what have you.
But I can still choose my attitude toward it, and if I relate to it
in a conscious way and intentinally occupy this life that I'm living,
with an active awareness and feeling, life may change in ways I can't
explain.
I think we locate freedom in the wrong place. We say things like, "Instead
of becoming an engineer, I'm going to be a doctor." But freedom is the
choice to be aware of the life you're living and the self that's living
it. And therefore freedom is the act of consciously serving something
greater. Then I think you come under different laws. And great changes
can take place that you could never have predicted.
- Jacob Needleman
- "The Time of Your Life," Holly Hammond and Gaylon Ferguson (Yoga
Journal, July/August, 1998)
- [Note: Philosopher Jacob Needleman is the author of Time and the
Soul (Doubleday, New York, NY)]
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