Easily Amazed

A Gestalt Poem:

If I just do my thing and you do yours,
We stand in danger of losing each other
And ourselves.

I am not in this world to live up to your expectations;
But I am in this world to confirm you
As a unique human being,
And to be confirmed by you.

We are fully ourselves only in relation to each other;
The ‘I’ detached from a ‘Thou’ disintegrates.

I do not find you by chance; I find you by an active life
Of reaching out.

Rather than letting things passively happen to me,
I can act intentionally to make them happen.

I must begin with myself, true;
But I must not end with myself;
The truth begins with two.”

(Tubbs W. 1972. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, (12) 5 Beyond Perls)

This Gestalt poem was shared on the Open Space list.

At the Integral Education Forum, Mike (kang) and I have been dialoguing about “the active life of reaching out.” I asked Mike, What do you find as the most effective way to get straight to someone’s heart. . . and then invite change? Just some little questions!! To which he beautifully responded:

Getting into another’s heart is like walking slowly and gently on a foggy misty day…. it is a kinda slow dance in an attempt to truely understand another… we really only begin to understand ourselves in relation to others…

When I think of heart I think of soul… it is the realm of our most heartfelt purposes…. our calling is found here….as Fredrick Buecher says: “Our calling is where our deepest gladness and the world’s hunger meet.”

Christy blogs about “That which connects.” She shares a moment in a conversation between Ken Wilber and Reb Zalman Schacter-Shalomi

At one point Wilber says: “Buber talked about the I-Thou relationship–and the Big Mystery is that hyphen.”

How do you experience that hyphen? How do you connect with another’s heart? How do you connect with your own heart?

“Healing may not be so much about getting better, as about letting go of everything that isn’t you – all of the expectations, all of the beliefs – and becoming who you are.” — Rachel Naomi Remen

Brought to us by Rick at a new life emerging:

I want to live boldly and to my fullest, this is exactly why I must let go of everything that isn?t me and tap into the life that percolates in my inner core. When I can do this I can discover the hope that awaits me which is really what an expectation should be— the hope that awaits.

What are you carrying right at this moment that you know deep in your soul isn?t you? Why are you carrying it? What are the expectations that prevent you from letting go and becoming (or being) who you are?

May you free yourself from the binds of being anyone other than the precious soul that you really are. . .

Here’s a link for some quality Education Quotes.

Many things can wait. Children cannot. Today their bones are being formed, their blood is being made, their senses are being developed. To them we cannot say “tomorrow.” Their name is today. — Gabriela Mistral (Chilean teacher 1899 – 1957)

How much do we put off in our lives? How much do we save for tomorrow? What can’t wait? What needs your attention today? What do you want to give your attention to today? What’s stopping you?

I’ve just returned from a soul-full trip to the Pacific coast, LaPush, Washington … It was so gorgeous and revitalizing to feel the rhythm of the ocean where it meets the land… playing amongst whales, sea lions, eagles and chipmunks!

Hiking back from the last beach that we visited, Thomas asked me what I’ve learned during this trip to the ocean…. what I’m taking back with me.

I feel a growing relationship with a place of connection where change and emergence give way to freshness. The coast is a pure and raw example of an edge, a point where one way meets another. I was entranced by places where this merging or stark transition occurs…

• where streams make their entry into the ocean
• where the land comes crashing down in huge chunks
• trees that were once a part of a rich forest grip for life in solitude upon a cliff’s edge
• enormous trees and a plethora of driftwood washed ashore where new homes are created
• watching as the tide recedes and the life (anemonies, starfish, etc.) and surfaces once blanketed by the ocean’s waves now laid bare to the sun’s rays.

In each of these instances, there is deep change, something new emerges and I am awed by the bold freshness that echoes forth.

The ocean’s rhythm sings a song which centers new insight into my being. And now, back in the city, I invite that centered calmness to continue permeating through!

Do you have any stories or learnings from the ocean to share?

Every night my son would come running to my bed shaking beacause he had a bad dream. I asked him about the dream and he said that a tickle monster would chase after him and try to hurt him. So I asked if he would draw this tickle monster. He immediately jumped up and started to draw a picture of him. This monster was very scary with big sharp teeth, black eyes and knives and chain saws coming off of its body. It scared me too, so I asked him if he could think of a way to get rid of this monster from his dreams. He sat and thought for a moment and proceeded to go to the draw and he pulled out an envelope. He then folded the drawing in three making sure that the picture could not be seen, he put it in the envelope, sealed it and then went to his bedroom and put it in his top drawer and closed it. He looked at me and said “Mom, he’s trapped now”. That night he did not have the dream. The next morning he took the envelope out of the draw and took it to school. I asked him what he did with it and he told me that he gave it to another boy in his class. It’s been nearly a year ‘tickle monster’ free. I realized no matter what I said to him to try and make him realize that it was just a dream, to him it was real and HE was the only one who could fix it!

because in the end, each circumstance is a mirror of what is already in your heart.

Nipun and Guri’s words from The Inner-net have me thinking… How deep do I experience? How deep can I allow an experience to move through me, to travel through my many different channels of perception? How attentive to each flavor of my experience am I? How may I unwind so that I may experience deeper?

I highly recommend reading more about Nipun and Guri’s pilgrimage to India with the intention to use their hands to do crazy acts of kindness, use their heads to write good-news stories, and use their hearts to find Truth.