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Thought of the Week Archives
November 2000
November 6, 2000
No other part of our personality reveals our basic temperament, our
fundamental way of working, more than does our dark side -- the part of
ourselves which illogically unfolds at its own time and which has its
own requirements. I'm referring to our uncontrollable impulses, the habits
we simply can't break; the unacceptable, contradictory tendencies moving
us in opposition to the way we intended to go. These are the opposing
thrusts that give our life richness and mystery. These impulses, habits
and contradictions even supply the dynamic energy that gives our lives
distinction and drive.
- Marsha Sinetar
Do What You Love, the Money Will Follow (34)
Comment:
- ...and it is, of course, one aspect of our life's journey to acknowledge
and reassimilate these energies back into our personality, where they
can provide the passion and drive to fuel our creativity and exploration.
November 13, 2000
If we accept that persons organize and give meaning to their experience
through the storying of experience, and that in the performance of these
stories they express selected aspects of their lived experience, then
it follows that these stories are constitutive -- shaping lives and relationships:
It is in the performance of an expression that we re-experience, re-live,
re-create, re-tell, re-construct, and re-fashion our culture. The performance
does not release a pre-existing meaning that lies dormant in the text.
. . . Rather the performance itself is constitutive [giving meaning].
(E. Bruner, 1986)
From this it can be seen that the text analogy [to how we structure
and give meaning to our lives] advances the idea that stories or narratives
that persons live through determine their interaction and organization,
and that the evolution of lives and relationships occurs through the performance
of such stories or narratives....
...
Stories are full of gaps which persons must fill in order for the story
to be performed. These gaps recruit the lived experience and the imagination
of persons. With every performance, persons are reauthoring their lives.
The evolution of lives is akin to the process of reauthoring, the process
of persons entering into stories, taking them over and making them their
own.
White, Michael, and Epston, David
Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends (p. 12-13)
Comment:
Viewing our lives as a constant reauthoring of our own personal narrative
also fits the hero's journey model for human growth. We live comfortably
in our current narrative (known world) until something happens (internally
or externally) which tells us that our current narrative no longer fits
our lived experience. At that point we either reject the call and reinforce
our old story, buttressing it against the reality of our lived experience,
or we accept the call and begin the process of deconstructing our current
narrative (entering the Unknown). The journey is this process. Through
the challenges of the journey, our ineffective or constricted narrative
is broken down. We assimilate the new experience and construct a new narrative
which is more encompassing and fulfilling (growth). The revelation is
the seed for this new narrative. When the narrative is complete and we
are living fully in it (atonement), we return to the known world with
the give of our new perspective and insight.
- Reg Harris
November 20, 2000
We all have the capacity for...responsiveness and awareness, but most
of us have not been taught to develop it. Traditionally, education has
been the process of learning both the knowledge and skills to take a truly
responsible place in the world. But today, education usually provides
only information and fails to teach us to use it well in our lives. We
do not know the true nature and extent of our responsiblity as human beings.
- Tarthang Tulku
- Skillful Means: Patterns for Success (118)
-
November 27, 2000
...the ambiguity of knowing right from wrong when neither can be clearly
seen suggests the daunting responsibility of moral choice. We can never
be sure -- nor should we be. The ambiguity hints at the individual responsibility
to examine one's own heart and one's own motivations. How else can one
know how to act when there are no outward clues? If we give our whole
allegiance to a theory or a teacher or an institution, we give away our
power to trust in our intuition, our right to struggle with inward complexity,
and our ability to recognize when something that may in fact have been
appropriate once no longer is...
- Alan Briskin
The Stirring of Soul in the Workplace (37)
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