

Will political polarization inevitably lead to violence in the United States?
A recent New York Times article explored this possibility: As Trump prosecutions move forward, increasingly heated rhetoric could morph into violence across the United States:
“’In April,” the article reads, “before federal prosecutors indicted Mr. Trump, one survey showed that 4.5 percent of American adults agreed with the idea that the use of force was “justified to restore Donald Trump to the presidency.’ Just two months later, after the first federal indictment of Mr. Trump, that figure surged to 7 percent.”
Just recently, I returned from a few weeks visiting Ireland. While in the cities of Belfast and Londonderry (aka Derry), a guide took our group on tour of neighborhoods ravaged by 1970s and 80s sectarian warfare between Catholics and Protestants.
During the Troubles in Northern Ireland, a period of sectarian conflict and political violence from the late 1960s to 1998, over 3,500 people were killed. Tens of thousands more suffered injuries. The conflict also led to significant population displacements, with another estimated tens of thousands of individuals and families leaving their homes due to threats, intimidation, or violence.
Our Irish guide recounted stories of metathesizing attacks and reprisals – tit for tat incidents. He left us with an admonition: “Violence Spreads Like a Virus.” I couldn’t help thinking: What if the Troubles come here, to the US?
It took over 30 years of bombing, killing, and mayhem before the people of Northern Ireland were ready for The Troubles to end. With the help of President Bill Clinton and his envoy George Mitchell, a peace process began. The Good Friday Agreement of 1998 helped bring an end to the violence and paved the way for a more peaceful and stable Northern Ireland.
Being at a much earlier stage in our Troubles – and with an estimated 393 million firearms in civilian hands as of 2017 – how can we get in front of the situation before it gets much worse?
An opportunity exists. Unlike so many articles that seem to focus only on bad news, the NY Times article ended on a hopeful tone. “Professor Pape, of the University of Chicago, said that while the numbers of people who felt violence was justified to support Mr. Trump were concerning, he would rather focus on a different group identified in his survey: the 80 percent of American adults who said they supported a bipartisan effort to reduce the possibility of political violence.
‘This indicates a vast, if untapped, potential to mobilize widespread opposition to political violence against democratic institutions,’ he said, ‘and to unify Americans around the commitment to a peaceful democracy.’”
How do we tap into the common ground, the potential Professor Pape sees?
According to ChatGPT, “The Northern Ireland peace process achieved success through a combination of patient diplomacy, inclusivity, and international mediation. George Mitchell’s impartiality as a mediator, his commitment to building trust among the conflicting parties, and his persistence in keeping negotiations going, even in the face of setbacks, played a crucial role. President Clinton’s strong support, both politically and diplomatically, added significant weight to the process. The Good Friday Agreement, reached in 1998, laid the foundation for power-sharing and addressing key issues. The process also benefited from international involvement and grassroots efforts to promote reconciliation.”
Here in the U.S. today, some leaders attempt to promote unity and bipartisanship, but the success of such efforts varies. Achieving the level of reconciliation seen in the Northern Ireland peace process led by George Mitchell would be a complex and challenging task in the context of U.S. politics. On the other hand, we we’re not nearly as far into the maelstrom yet on this side on the ocean, in this century. As citizens, as influencers and campaign contributors, we must support leaders willing to seek the common ground and take the high road in politics. As of late 2023, we’re more likely to find such leaders at local grass roots levels, or in third parties.
We must also promote a peace process with those we know or meet and disagree with. The first place to seek peace is inside. For me, and likely for most of us, it is only when in the grip of fear that we imagine fighting in the streets, or civil war. In reality, we still live in relatively peaceful communities. There is no Belfast here.
But I woke up early this morning with a knot of anxiety from thinking of the Trump trials, the Ukraine, and now Hamas. I had to turn the problem over to God, and a little voice in head said, “Focus on your Peace Consciousness.”
Meditation and prayer are ways to feel more peaceful and hopeful, to be the change you’d like to see. One’s peaceful inner energy promotes better understanding, dialogue, and outcomes with others. Perhaps peace too could spread like a virus. Perhaps we can start to make connections with fellow pacifists and identify the leaders we need to take us through the coming years. And I’ve probably got the title for my next post – Peace Consciousness.
“Where’s my damn rehab?” transformational coach Libby Adams remembers asking on the third day of her husband’s stint in an inpatient substance abuse program, “Why do you have to be a drug addict or alcoholic to get a good 28-day program?”
Growing up in California in the 1960s, Libby wanted to help people. She was interested in and began studying psychology, but didn’t care for the subjects of mental illness and abnormal psychology. After earning degrees in education and educational psychology, she became a middle school Spanish teacher.
Libby stopped teaching at public schools in 1980. Some of her moments of greatest challenge came thereafter while raising three children and living through her husband Richard’s substance abuse problems. Richard went through a drug and alcohol program and the family through divorce. Eventually, Libby, Richard, and the kids were all right, but Libby remembered her question: “Where’s my damn rehab?”
Libby found a new home for her interests in psychology and education – the personal development industry. In search for…something…Libby took est training in 1974. She moved on to attend numerous transformational psychology conferences throughout the decade, and to work with some the top names in the field.
Libby came to understand that rapid transformation is possible at the weekend immersive Date with Destiny conference. Libby next did the Anthony Robbins’ Firewalk. Robbins also helped her on the spot with neurolinguistic programming (NLP) exercises to help to eliminate fear of asking people for money. That very day, she raised over $7,000 for her employer, a company helping hearing impaired children.
Inspired, Libby obtained a certification as a Master Practitioner of NLP from Tad James. She also studied with Jim Rohn, Tony Robbins’ mentor. At different times throughout the coming years, she worked as volunteer staff in the Robbins, Deepak Chopra, and the NLP Organization.
Through the work in NLP, Libby met Dr. Van Tharp (a trading coach with a strong interest in how to use NLP to help traders overcome psychological issues in the market). Not unlike alcoholics or gamblers, traders often struggle with addictive impulses. Many blow up their entire financial account or portfolio. As Libby and Van continued on separate paths seeking to help themselves and others, their professional association developed slowly over the next decade.
Working for Anthony Robbins and Deepak Chopra helping clients with personal development was all very well but at some point, Libby decided: “I can do this myself!”
In 1994, she started the International Academy for Self-Knowledge (IASK). IASK provided personal development training or coaching sessions for her early clients, many of whom came through the Long Beach Chamber of Commerce.
During IASK’s beginnings, both Libby Adams and Van Tharp used a therapeutic coaching method they called “parts negotiation.” The idea is that our personalities are made up of multiple parts operating at a subconscious level. Thus, a “successful professional” may also be saddled with a “child” part or a “father” part that sabotages his trading (or other goal-oriented activity). The facilitator works with the client to release the non-useful beliefs of hidden or shadow parts. Or, to negotiate between useful parts with conflicting objectives (such as the “trader” and the “husband”) to ensure improved performance and work-life balance.
However, Libby felt that parts negotiation was not getting her clients the best results. She felt that a spiritual component to coaching and self-healing was essential. What if – like participants in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) – participants could accelerate their results by turning to a “higher power” for help?
Libby took the idea of parts negotiation – in which the client visualizes one part in each hand and brokers an internal discussion with the parts – and replaced it with her own unique Transformational MeditationTM (TfM) process involving the client’s higher power (aka God, Universal Mind, Infinite Intelligence, depending on the client’s preference or beliefs).
With TfM, Libby discovered that by invoking higher levels of consciousness we can quickly – almost miraculously – resolve our most intense inner conflicts. And according to Michael Hall’s NLP book “Meta-States: Mastering the Higher Levels of Your Mind” (1995), we can experience our most powerful feelings of love, gratitude, wonder, and awe when we reach a “systemic” or “spiritual” level of consciousness.
Hence the spiritual connection. Libby considers a spiritual belief to be one that concerns core questions of identity and the meaning of life: Who am I? Why am I here? Who or what is God and how do I connect? We answer these questions for ourselves with spiritual beliefs that can’t be proven or disproven. And it is more important that a belief is useful, or empowering, than that it is provably true. It is more important that we do get to a higher level of consciousness than how we get there.
Libby and her clients found TfM to be effective at dissolving internal conflicts and non-useful psychological parts to increase peace of mind and performance. I can personally attest to this from my own experience with TfM after taking the Peak Performance 202: The Trader Reinvention Workshop co-taught by Libby Adams and Van Tharp! Simply put, TfM changed my life.
By the early 1990s, Libby’s clients were achieving life changing results through TfM. But, as Libby likes to say, “Parts are like clusters of grapes. There could be thousands of them. A “separated self” (or little i) is created every time we encounter a challenging experience and believe something about it or ourselves that isn’t true.”
Once the treatment is over and additional psychological issues get triggered down the road, how can clients take care of themselves? How can they sustain the benefits of their initial IASK results? It would take an uncomfortable visitation from the past, and a journey halfway around the world for Libby to find the answer.
In 2001, ex-husband Richard asked Libby to help him put together a program for drug and alcohol users so people wouldn’t have to go through 13 detoxes and rehabs like he had. Though Libby was initially reluctant, they developed the structure and curriculum for a substance abuse treatment program powered by TfM. The program got good results, enabling clients to resolve their issues and giving them skills and tools for the future.
At the end of 2 years Libby had trained coaches to replace her in Richard’s program. She was able to bow out of it, but the idea of a 28-day therapeutic structure divided into 4 weeks using one on one mentoring stuck with her.
Remembering “Where’s my damn rehab?” she thought “This is it! I could adapt the drug and alcohol rehab program for the rest of us.”
After completing her work on the substance abuse rehab program, and in search of new ideas for IASK, Libby traveled to India. There, she stayed in Ashram for three weeks at a site near the Himalayas on the Ganges River made famous by the Beatles’ study with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in 1968. During this trip, Libby was able to deepen her knowledge of spirituality and meditation.
The pivotal moment came in a bookstore as the seller approached and handed her a copy of “Living with the Himalayan Masters” by Swami Rama, saying: “You will want this book.” She bought two copies!
Swami Rama imparted many new personal development concepts including non-resistance, non-attachment, selflessness, cheerfulness, and fearlessness. With them, Libby found the content she needed to take IASK’s programs to the next level.
And so, the 28-day program for the rest of us was born. Each of Swami Rama’s concepts gets a day of its own in the program – concepts such as such as love, forgiveness, and gratitude. Libby came back from India, created the curriculum, and tried it with a pilot group and increasing numbers of clients.
Karen – another of Libby’s clients – provides a good testimonial. Paraphrasing from her video: “I was stuck and didn’t even know it. I didn’t know what I wanted. I was like “machete girl”, trying to hack through everything when there were easy well-trodden paths right beside me.
My biggest benefit from the 28-day program was finding my true self by peeling off whole layers of beliefs – which I visualized as a ‘posse of bandits’ – that led me into resistance. Once I did this, I discovered my purpose and felt much more peaceful. People noticed the change and started becoming more attracted to me – family, friends, in business – everywhere I go.
After many other self-development programs this was the most beneficial thing I’ve ever done and required the least amount of time.”
One of Libby’s early 28-day program trial users was none other than Dr. Van Tharp, who had previously learned TfM from Libby. With that, a strong Van Tharp Institute + IASK partnership was born. As a trading coach, Van believed that psychology, or having a healthy mindset coupled with resourceful beliefs about money and the market, is the critical success factor for traders. And like Libby his spiritual journey took him to India where he discovered the Oneness movement.
Finding themselves on parallel tracks, Libby and the Van Tharp Institute (VTI) formed a partnership that has been running smoothly for 20 years. IASK and VTI market it as a “Psychology Rehab for Traders” mentorship program that helps clients improve performance by mapping true, fulfilling desires to specific goals; manage stress through self-mastery skills; and change any unconscious beliefs or attitudes that may be sabotaging their own efforts. The figure below describes these program concepts in terms of four pillars.
As a student with the Van Tharp Institute’s Supertrader program, I became eligible for Libby’s “Self-Mastery: 28-Day Intensive” program. I worked with Libby myself in November 2022 and went through the program. For each of 28 days, I watched one of Libby’s videos, related the day’s personal development or spiritual concept to my daily To Do list, talked to Libby for 45 minutes, and closed the day with a nightly reflection and Libby’s audio track on an MP3.
I found this to be a fantastic experience, which helped me grow and improve my results and personal fulfillment both in trading and in life. I’ve continued in Libby’s post-28-day graduate group coaching programs that help maintain the life skills and mindsets learned initially. As Libby says: “Once the dentist tells you ‘No cavities!’ you don’t want to stop brushing your teeth. There must be some spiritual law about maintenance that applies to mental as well as dental health!”
Traders constitute about 75% of Libby’s clients with others being clients that predate the partnership with VTI, or are family members of trader clients. There is something about the trader audience – perhaps above average stress and above average net worth compared to other occupational groups – that make them willing and able to invest in psychological services. Libby also works with entrepreneurs, business executives, and other target audiences.
At the end of the day, however, I feel that Libby just wants to help people. At this point in her life, she is a woman with everything she needs in the material realm, could retire if she wanted, but just wants to keep on coaching!
“I got what I asked for, and love what I do,” Libby confirmed when we discussed the future. But when I asked what would happen next in her vision of perfection, she shared one more challenge:
How do I scale coaching?
Libby strongly believes that personal development coaching should be one-on-one. Libby has been able to expand the 28-day program by training and certifying more than 20 coaches, but even so, by her estimate IASK can only take on about forty five (45) 28-day clients at a time. “You have to have the focus (on the client) and the trust. None of us could handle more than 5 28-day clients at a time.”
“In my dream life,” Libby continued, “I would have 100,000 coaches out there getting this program to anyone who wanted it.”
You don’t have to be “Supertrader” to take – and benefit from – the 28-day Psychology Rehab Program. Most people have some “rehabbing” of the past to do, areas where things could be better or improved. Libby’s tag line is “We ALL need to rehab something…”
Libby and the IASK team offer a free Success Mindset Scorecard Assessment. After taking it, you get an offer for a free 30-minute call. The Assessment followed by an optional 2-hour introductory course is a great place to begin.
There are many myths about creativity and it may not be what you think.
As I wrote in Retirement and Intellectual Challenge, I’ve been doing my own (sort of) PHD on Creativity in pursuit of a larger goal for financial freedom. So I have been fortunate to participate in an online course called “Creativity 202” that combines concepts of creativity with investing and trading.
The lesson I’m doing this week for Creativity 202 is on the myths and it uses some content that is freely available in a Field Guide on Creative Thinking, written for the US Army by Dr. Angus Fletcher, PhD Professor, The Ohio State University. The headings for the ten myths, and any quoted test within my little discussions about them, are from the field guide. Here goes.
Myth One: Creativity Comes from Genius
Myth Two: Some Original Ideas Are Obviously Better Than Others
Myth Three: Creative People Are Flighty and/or Emotional
Myth Four: Creative People Are Born That Way
Myth Five: Creativity Comes From Chilling Out
Myth Six: Creativity is Harmonious
Myth Seven: Creativity is Going Rogue
Myth Eight: Creativity is Totally Original
Myth Nine: Creativity Comes From Within
Myth Ten: Creativity is Optional
This could be famous last words, but I’m cautiously optimistic that even as the media blathers on about the latest variant I’ll be ok and hope this is true for most others. At the least, perhaps reading this will help you feel better!
I believe I’m probably immune for the following reasons; please consider this yourself:
1) Choose to believe you’re immune to COVID and that that your amazing mind/body tends to manifest whatever you believe.
2) Maintain your amazing mind/body in optimal condition by holding a grateful, loving, and joyful state as much as possible and nurturing the body with exercise, sleep, and healthy diet.
3) Get vaccinated, get boosted.
4) Live with as much solitude or gregariousness as you wish.
For me, I like to live my life free of fear and constraint and have been out and about a lot. Either the latest variant is not really as contagious as they say, or else I’m as immune to it as I am to the common cold, which I’ve only experienced one mild case of in the last three years.
On a beautiful afternoon on the shore of Lake Ossipee I was thinking about retirement.
It wasn’t for the first time, and it made me wonder: “What would I do?”
My concern was that retiring now wouldn’t be fulfilling. As a foretaste, I thought, whenever my schedule isn’t busy I end up sitting around the office staring at the computer screen reading email. A lot like my real job as a consultant!
So on that day, leaning back in the lawn chair by the lake I asked Gary (fellow vacation camper and former engineer who retired a few years ahead of me): “Gary –How did you make your retirement transition?”
Gary replied: “After I retired, I planned on doing a lot of hiking and boating. And it was good. But I found I needed a CHALLENGE. Decided on taking a “Liberal Arts” degree at Wesleyan – this program allowed me to take any courses I could justify as being aligned with my thesis (about “Creativity”) to my academic advisers.
Gary’s story resonated with me, but I didn’t like the idea of actually going back to school. I wondered if instead one could do a self-directed program of Great Courses and end it by writing a book (my fourth!). While writing the book I could get accountability partners, or editors, to provide feedback much like academic advisers would do.
Then it occurred to me that I’m already basically doing a post-graduate education program with Van Tharp Institute’s Super Trader Program. This program is premised on Van Tharp’s radical notion that trading (and investing) = psychology. One of Van’s major quotes was “You do not trade the markets. You can only trade your beliefs about the markets.”
With the Super Trader program, one works through a series of lessons on trading, psychology, and other topics. The VTI coach approves your answers or essays for each lesson – much like a thesis adviser.
But what would my thesis be about then? It obvious: Financial Freedom!
Isn’t it funny how we can disagree on the particulars of a question but still come down in a similar place on the big picture?It seems like it all comes down to the usefulness question. We know that a lot of our thoughts are wildly inaccurate corresponding neither particularly well to physical reality or to social consensus reality.
And for both of these there are infinite ways that something as complex as the human mind can project them.
But again as the Student I’ve learned a lot from the Master such as… How to identify my roles in life and some outstanding outcomes for them, how to examine my beliefs, how to understand my mental meta-programs and how to change non-useful beliefs into useful ones.
Does it matter if I don’t believe that my thoughts are illusions but just projections that are veal though they may not always correspond to physical reality or social consensus?
It’s just semantics in the end. To be continued…
Been too long since we posted anything. Oh yes, inspired ideas come but somehow we just never post time and then they’re gone, like the slippery fish they are.
Time to break the ice! Just post something. And since we’re doing Exercise #3 from Chapter 10 of Van Tharp’s Moti-Maps book, let’s relate what we learned about…
Van: “What activity do you want to do, but you always seem to have excuses not to do it? Are your excuses over something you really value? If this is so, then what you procrastinate about is something important to you?“
Ok, we want to post inspiring ideas on the site for a like-minded community of people to read. But these excuses seem to be holding us back:
What we value about these excuses are:
But letting these excuses win doesn’t serve us. Mainly they’re about inhibiting fears. Fear as in false evidence appearing real.
We can preserve our ability to manage time through our existing time management systems. And we’ve already built harmony and civility into our core principles at this site.
Van: “Think about how you would react to eating a bowl of live worms or setting a baby kittle on fire. Hopefully your reaction to this is something like ‘HELL, NO’ So get that sense of Hell No and then anchor it in a spot on the floor. That’s your ‘Hell NO’ spot. When you’ve anchored that spot sufficiently, then take each excuse there and give it a strong ‘hell no.’ You should be able to convince anyone around you by your expressions that you no longer want that excuse.“
Van: “Imagine this desired activity, being sure that it’s ecological for you, and notice how you feel about moving toward it? Are you propelled? How do you feel? What comes to mind when you think about it? Can anything stop you from doing it now?”
We can do better than imagine. We just did this post live-blogging the completion of Van’s exercise.
Pretty inspiring to think we can actually over-ride our excuses when our best self wants to.
If you’re got something you’d like to do but have been stymied by lame excuses, try repeating the exercise the way you see it done here, or buy Van’s book for the full MOTI-MAPS: The Definite Guide to Self-Propulsion and Getting your Dream Life.
“Third Ways” has yet another amazing meaning as the next level of transformation per Gay Hendricks’ “Conscious Living: How to Create a Live of Your Own Design” book.
Conscious Living is the latest heart-centered coaching method that I’ve read about. With this post, I’m adding it to my canon of Technologies of the Mind. It is Gay Hendrik’s authentic journey of self-discovery and evolution as a therapist and life coach.
The “third way” is the the third level of transformation that Hendicks identifies. It is perhaps fortuitous that I read about it when my “thirdways.net” came up for renewal at GoDaddy. This eery coincidence gives me inspiration to continue blogging on the site after a bit of a hiatus.
In Hendricks’ taxonomy of transformation the first level the we’ve known is the Newtonian level (in an interesting analogy to physics). Newtonian self-improvement is what many have been learning from Napoleon Hill, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Wallace Wattles, Mary Morrissey, and may other transformation teachers based on the Law of Attraction. At this level we visualize our dreams, say affirmations, and take action to attract the life we would love.
The next level is the Einsteinian level, where you identify and transform what life coach Mary Morrisey calls your paradigms. The obstacle is the way. This is also the therapists perspective. But Morrisey and her master coach Kirsten Wells are decidedly bent on “therapy light”, an Occam’s razor of therapy in which it is enough to just be aware of the paradigm, not deeply examine it.
Hendrick’s third way is where life starts to just flow because you are focusing on what you want and you are releasing your paradigms and you’re able to operate without undue attachment or push. Therefore most the time what happens is what you’re focusing on and when it doesn’t you let whatever happens be okay.
Finally, here’s a more thorough book review of Hendrick’s Conscious Living book.
The Book Factfulness by “possibilist” Hans Rosling can be a balm for our over-dramatic, stressed brains. Why is this? Rosling made a lifelong study of the gap between the way the world really is and the way we think of it. Through this study, Rosling finally came to understand the mental instincts we have evolved to think of the world as much more violent, poor, and endangered than it actually is.
Finding Factfulness has been a Godsend for me. Since the 2016 election I have felt that the level of bad feeling between partisans and countries about many things is out of proportion to a world in which I also see so much that is good. If only we could focus on what is going well, and on the things we can agree on! Factfulness provides the data to support a more hopeful world view.
About Rosling
Rosling was a medical doctor, professor of international health, and renowned public educator who passed away just last year in the final stages of writing Factfulness. He was an adviser to the World Health Organization and UNICEF, and he confounded [Doctors Without Borders] in Sweden. The Gapminder Foundation that Rosling founded with his son Ola and daughter-in-law Anna Rosslund continues to promote the dissemination of fact-based world views. Rosling’s TED talks have reached more than thirty-five million viewers so far, and he was listed as one of Time magazine’s one hundred most influential people in the world. Hans described Factfulness as his “last battle in my lifelong mission to fight devastating ignorance.”
Good News and Best Kept Secrets
I thought I knew the world well. I’ve lived for 61 years, traveled to 4 continents, read many, many books and studies as well as news articles. Yet in the little test at the beginning of the book, I only got 8 out of 13 questions correct. Although I knew that extreme poverty has been cut in half over the last 20 years, I did not know that 80% of children across the globe are vaccinated, or that the average girl has nine years of schooling. Judging from a plethora of tests Rosling conducted, the average person gets less than 20% of the answers correct – and that figure also applies to groups of professors, politicians, doctors, and journalists that one would think should know better.
The vast majority of us believe the world is getting worse. But in fact, based on almost every vital statistic of global health, income, and safety world trends are getting better. When tested on our knowledge of these vital statistics we score much worse than chimpanzees would do if given the ability to answer the same questions at random. We are biased toward the negative and the dramatic. To be this way is to ignore “the secret silent miracle of human progress.” Is the world in your head still getting worse? Then get ready for a challenging data encounter: Take the same test online and see!
Are We Escaping Hell?
News, activism, and politics is all about the drama, but perhaps we should take a more nuanced view. For example, Factfulness and Gapminder models 4 global income levels, as shown below.
Each person icon in the figure above represents approximately 1 billion people, and the income levels shown are in thousands of dollars. Now, look at the figure below. How things have changed!
Extreme poverty numbers and rates are perhaps the most controversial statistic Rosling cited, leading some of his few critics to post “The Confused Statistician.”
Bad AND Better
The ability to hold and balance two conflicting viewpoints in one’s mind is a sign of intelligence, not confusion. Is the glass half full, or half empty? Rosling described himself not as an optimist, or a pessimist. Instead he invented a new word, saying: “I’m a Possibilist.” Rosling urged us to see the world as still bad (in some ways), but getting much better.
Beautiful Data
Pages 64 through 67 in Factfulness list some amazing graphs of bad things decreasing and good things increasing. “Humanity,” Rosling wrote, “Should throw a freaking party!”
Everything is Not Fine
For all the great trending stats, everything is not fine. Rosling: “We should still be very concerned. As long as there still are any plane crashes, preventable child deaths, endangered species, climate change deniers, male chauvinists, crazy dictators, journalists in prison, toxic waste, and girls not getting an education because of their gender…as long as any of these terrible things exist, we cannot relax.”
Why Being Factful is Still Important
But it is just as ridiculous, and certainly more stressful for us to ignore the progress that has been made. Rosling: “People often call me an optimist, because I show them…progress they didn’t know about. That makes me angry. I’m not an optimist. That makes me sound naïve. I’m a very serious ‘possibilist.’
As a possibilist, I see all this progress and it fills me conviction and hope that further progress is possible. That is not optimistic. It is having a clear and reasonable idea about how things are. It is having a worldview that is constructive and useful. When people wrongly believe that nothing is improving, they may conclude that nothing we have tried so far is working and lose confidence in measures that actually work. I have met many such people, who told me they have lost all hope for humanity. Or they may [become] radicals supporting drastic measures that are counterproductive...”
What We Can Do
I believe we need to get the Factfulness message out there as a call for everyone to take heart, regain hope, and turn with new energy to exercise critical thinking, stay up to date, and be a positive influence in the world.
In my next post on Factfulness, I’ll summarize Rosling’s theories on why we tend to be wrong about the world. It’s not just the news, it is our psychology, our ways of thinking.
In the meantime I hope you’ll read Factfulness and/or explore the Gapminder site some of the videos and infographic tools there. And spread this good news to others!
The last Summer Rhythm Renewal ever at Saint Francis University in June 2018 was a powerhouse of creative expression, spiritual healing, and community. Gone but not forgotten, the Renewal left an indelible impression on all who were there.
Many participants’ paths to the Renewal came through the event organizer Jim Donovan, who is also a rock star, philosopher and healer of Rusted Root and Sun King Warrior bands fame.
Like many, I reached the Renewal through my connection with Jim, which was made in a health and mindfulness workshop at a larger conference last January. I came away powerfully impressed with Jim’s practice of brain humming, and wrote Music is Sound Healing based on a followup interview.
Focusing mostly on the science of brain humming, the sound healing post left drum circles and music as unfinished business. Jim had lauded the power of musical events as a way to reach and influence the multitudes, and discussed plans for the Sun King Warriors band to become a platform for getting his message out on the healing powers of sound. I just knew I had more to learn from Jim.
Drumming, Humming, Healing, and Connecting
Each day of the event began with a drum circle in the SFU Boileroom building, hung with posters and tapestries on Eastern and New Age religious and spiritual themes as shown in the photo below.
In the first sessions, Jim described the basics of drumming for beginners and gave a brief description of the benefits of using sound for the health of the mind, spirit, body, and community:
Jim taught us the proper technique to beat patterns with the event’s Djembe drums, which are held between the knees. “Play the beat you hear, but vary the pattern. Randomly strike the side or the center of the drum with your hands. Try not to think about how you’re doing this. By playing different patterns, you are energizing different pathways in the mind. This is great for the memory and for brain health.”
We also learned the rudiments of brain humming as Jim instructed us in touching various areas of the head and body whilst humming different tones: “EEEEEM,” “OOOOM”, “AMMMM”, “UMMMM.” Then he asked new participants to share what they were feeling. Some reported a sense or sleepiness, or feeling a pleasant buzz in the head, as if they were getting high. Jim joked that sometimes he asks participants at substance abuse therapy sessions: “Would you like to learn how to create a natural euphoria for yourself?”
Finding Flow
Outside of drumming, I spent most of my time in painting and writing workshops, including “Wild Writes Nature Writing” by Kim McElhatten and “Transformative Writing by Matthew Adams.” At one writing workshop I wrote:
“During the drum circle we can barely hear our individual notes over the din of others, but we can always pick out the dominant beat. Pound out your own pattern, and if it feels good, just keep going. If not, just listen for the beat and accompany it with one stroke every few seconds. Then resume your pattern. During the morning exercise for bringing randomness and spontaneity to the playing, Jim said to ‘Try to play without thinking about it’ and that seemed to work for me!
Jim had also talked about flow – that state of complete immersion in an activity during which ego suspends, time flies, and all your skills effortlessly engage. I found flow in the rhythm. What if I could bring that same confidence and exhilaration vividly into writing?”
Later in the Meditative Painting workshop, instructor Sandra Sabene encouraged us to take a walk on the wild side of art. She demonstrated slathering paint over the canvas while declaring “I just don’t care.” The purpose of this exercise is to evoke a pure subconscious artistic creativity. For this, one should have no attachment to the painted outcome, just be in the moment.
Although I could not quite let go like Sandra, I began the painting shown above with minimal structure – just the eyes in the circle and the lines radiating out diagonally from it. After a few of the songs in Sandra’s playlist, I became quite relaxed. I noticed the white circle around the eyes was actually coming out pinkish due to the mixing of colors on the brush; instead of trying to “fix it”, I went with the light pink. It evoked thoughts of strawberry ice cream. Almost spontaneously, I drew seven ice cream cones, and the picture felt complete. Well, you have to understand I’m very much a beginner 🙂
I’d found flow again, this time in painting.
Finding Healing
Others in the audience found healing in the sense of community and sharing present in all renewal workshop activities. One woman and repeat renewer shared: “I’ve always felt like a square peg in a round hole. I’m tired of having to be ‘so fucking nice.’ My first Renewal put me into a defensive crouch, wanting to yell ‘Why are you getting your feelings all over me!’ Then I had an epiphany: We who are dark make the light possible. This is a rare place where I can participate as myself and still find wholeness. It didn’t happen overnight, but I’d found my tribe.”
Change the World?
On the final day of the Renewal, first timers such as myself experienced the full power of the event as Jim unpacked more of his thinking on the power of vibration, and participants shared what it means to them during an extended “open mike” session.
Jim began the last drumming sessions on Sunday by recalling his challenges of standing up and speaking in public, of feeling vulnerable without the protective barrier of drums between himself and an audience. He said “I had to throw myself into the fire and just do it, do it, do it.” He urged us all to: “Do things differently, regularly. Things that are hard for us expand the mind, build new pathways. Use sound to put yourself regularly in the healing condition.”
He continued: “This morning we’ll ramp up into the macro view. Think of what we’re doing in drum circles as a sound formula to deepen our understanding of life, to move energy, to open the body. The vibration we’re in together reminds us that although we appear separate, we share the same energy and are made of the same subatomic stuff. Physics tell us that 99% of our bodies are empty space. We can see each other and can hear each other, but we’re made mostly out of emptiness and energy.
“This ideas has been lost from our culture. There is a lack of understanding of how interconnected we really are. But now we’re shifting our frequency and vibration.”
Jim then led us in a long drumming and chanting session to the mantra Ra Ma Da Sa Sa Say So Hung, which he translated as: “The Sun, The Moon, the Earth. All of Everything. I am That.” The effect was palpable, leaving us buzzing with a feeling of connectedness and energy to the room.
Finally: “We are all part of one vibration and raising your vibration has an effect. It is one the most important things we can be doing. If I can’t create my own peace I can’t do anything for others. That feeling we all seek that everything is right in our world is not ‘out there,’ it is ‘in here.’ There’s nothing you can buy, nowhere you can go to get that feeling, but you can find it through sound. Sound is the companion that you were built with. It is the power through which we can communicate and also center our own vibration. And it’s power increases with repeated use.”
Leaving Renewal
Towards the end, there was an open mic sharing session almost too poignant for words. Participant after participant recollected their experiences at this and prior events. A few struggled with tears or broke down because the Renewal has been so important to them; a few had even met their husband or wife-to-be there. So many related their feelings of belonging in this event, of being taken to a higher level of awareness, or of finding a dream they didn’t know they had, All thanked Jim for giving us so much, and for closing down the Renewal with such loving care and transparency when the time came. In many ways, this part of the closing ceremony felt more like a graduation than an ending.
And Jim sent us off with a few final thoughts: “Don’t get the idea your car can fly. What we have created here is an altered state of consciousness on a higher frequency, but not all others are ready for it. This is not the week to quit your job or get a divorce. Give yourself a week to settle down and see if you still feel the same way. Believe and hope that by getting together here we can help to co create a world in which people of all kinds can disagree, like many of us actually do, but still work together to create love and abundance.”
To Be Continued
After the event formally ended with a giant group hug, some drifted off and others lingered to talk on. I made my way to the car without further leave-taking. In parting, I must caveat that I’m (obviously 🙂 not prescient in all things, nor do I have an eidetic memory. I missed things that were going on in other rooms, may have misunderstood much that was going on before my very eyes, and many of the quotes herein are probably poor paraphrases. Yet I hope this post shows how the event touched me too, and gives something back to those of this community that find the link to it on the Renewal participants’ Facebook group.
I’m not great at goodbyes, but I’ll close with what I was able to share during my own minute on the open mic:
“As a first timer, I found this fantastic! Thank you all so much for accepting and welcoming me into your community. What you and Jim have created here is indescribable. There’s a line from a song that goes: ‘Every new beginning is some other beginning’s end.’ Don’t let this be the end of your awakening and transformation. Go out into the world like stardust, bringing light and love to other events and places. Don’t say ‘goodbye,’ say ‘to be continued.'”
Opportunities to continue abound. I hope to see many of my new Renewal friends next year at the Renewals’ parallel Summer Rhythm Revival event in Western New York, and at other drum circles in our Great Northeast.