Open-Secrets

Month: May 2012

  • Personal Transformation

    The Point of Life is Transformation

    change transformationPain & Suffering – the ego likes to avoid as much of this as it can, unless, of course, our identity is one who suffers. Every time I encounter a person asking for spare change, I wonder how much change they really want in their life. How much “change” do any of us really want? How much change can God spare, probably a lot. How much can we endure, probably a lot less than opportunity offers.

    I read A Million Miles in a Thousand Days by Donald Miller yesterday on a flight home from San Francisco.

    We get robbed of the glory of life because we aren’t capable of remembering how we got here. When you are born, you wake up slowly to everything… God is slowly turning the lights on… The experience is so slow you could easily come to believe life isn’t that big of a deal, that life isn’t staggering… We all are like spoiled children no longer impressed with the gifts we’re given – it’s just another sunset, just another rainstorm, just another child born, just another funeral.

    This is a wonderful book for all kinds of reasons. I think it is one of the best self-help books ever written because it isn’t so much giving you advice on how to change as it is a revelation on how change is possible – and how it is possible to reawaken to the glory of life and get out of a life that is dull, boring, normal and familiar to the point of being inert.

    In a way, it reminded me of Michael Crichton’s book Travels.Crichton, too, talked about how pain, difficulty, struggle, suffering and confronting the known limits of ourselves is the crucible for transformation.

    As Donald Miller says:

    If the point of life is the same as the point of a story, the point of life is character transformation.

    A Million Miles in a Thousand Days – take the journey.

  • The Neuroscience of Enlightenment

    Is Neuroscience Unlocking the Doors to the Kingdom?

    neuroscience enlightenmentIs this a great time to be alive or what? Who is thinking this question? How is this sense of self generated? Are the thoughts of this self simply habits triggered by cues? How does the brain and all of those synaptic processes create an external and internal reality?

    Ah, questions! Are there really any answers? Have you read these four books?

    Each of these books use information and insight from neuroscience and what we are learning about the brain, cognition and perception to open our eyes to who/what/when we/reality really is – or they at least give us a very interesting lens to look at enlightenment & awareness through.

    Reading these books and the accumulated affect of them on my consciousness reminds me of “A Short History of Nearly Everything” by Bill Bryson.

    Here’s a quote from The Ego Tunnel:

    Presence is a necessary condition for the conscious experience. If the brain could solve the One-World Problem but not the Now Problem, a world could not appear to you. In a deep sense, appearance is simply presence, and the subjective sense of temporal immediacy is the definition of an internal space of time.

    Is it possible to transcend this subjective Now-ness, to escape the tunnel of presence?

    Is that great, or what?

    The debate over whether we are just a bunch of chemical & electrical reactions in the brain vs. are we something more subtle and eternal outside of space and time continues. For me, these books have just made things more exciting and mysterious – and that book on habit is actually a great owner’s manual on how to make those changes you always wished you could.

    The Evolution of Consciousness & Enlightenment

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  • Enneagram Character Traits Continue to Surface

    Enneagram Point 8 Characteristics Still Smiling at Me

    enneagram point 8A couple of recent Enneagram conversations with new friends resulted in me observing that some of the point 8 character traits are still functioning in my psyche.

    My first encounter was with someone who had attended an online webinar with David Daniels (an enneagram person I haven’t seen in 20 years or so). My conversation partner thinks they may be an 8 on the enneagram. We managed to spend several hours chatting about most things under the sun without resorting to arm wrestling or shouting – proving once again that 8’s aren’t all aggression all of the time.

    The point 8 enneagram trait that was first to jump into my conscious awareness was – we’d rather have bad news than no news.

    Those 8’s – are they a riot or what? Eights have this connection with truth, but that doesn’t always play out in a good way as they can be prone to “my way or the highway” and “might makes right.” The significance of which can lead to distorting the “truth” to a relative position or perception. In my case, it was simply a matter of wanting clear communication.

    In my first conversation, I made several references to how important communication is to me, especially in regards to friendship. Being forthright is an art to cultivate. Just blurting things out won’t do, but it’s one place to start if that’s all we have going for us. Developing sensitivity, steadfastness and a non-judgmental attitude are  essential – and it seems, a life-long endeavor on my part – that sensitivity thing, what a challenge! I may actually have to be more present in life – what’s up with that?

    The second encounter with the enenagram occurred at Roast & Toast, a local coffee shop. I was sitting down at a table when I noticed a gent next to me, had a copy of Richard Rohr’s book on the Enneagram. I hadn’t seen that book in years and I said so to the gent. As it turns out, I was speaking to a local minister who is using the book to help with research on his Ph. D.

    We had a long chat which ultimately left me feeling very sad. The conversation opened around the enneagram and the power of silence for transformation ( perspective on this can be found in The Void). The conversation turned toward a recent incident in the church… What was sad, was how entrenched & fixated some of the people involved were… leading to another member having to resign a position. All of this in the name of God & morality.

    Aha, that 8 thing – wanting to pick up the sword in defense of the underdog and take off a few of those sanctimonious heads! Alas, all that practicing presence seems to have taken a toll on me as I simply felt sweet sadness…

    I found it quite interesting to find myself in 2 enneagram conversations in one week with total strangers. Perhaps stranger things will happen.

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