Sanctuary. An Ongoing Training for Activists.

An activist is someone who takes action - in order to bring awareness to and to change situations of injustice.

An effective activist is someone who takes action while at the same time challenging their own limiting habits, expectations, judgments, and fears.

The ongoing commitment to transform the world and the ongoing commitment to transform ourselves is, in reality, the same thing. We can’t do either one effectively without the other.

We are called to be practical, adaptable, and open. A doctrinaire approach self limits. The time is over for rigid adherence to doctrines - Buddhism, Marxism etc. Such things are best used as filters, rather than articles of faith.

We are better off learning from multiple sources. To do so is not to dilute the truth of what we know. It is to go ever deeper into an understanding that works systemically. It is inclusive, and it is essentially creative. It includes those we may have thought we must oppose, it moves toward win-win solutions, it is rooted in basic human values of kindness and mutual co-operation. It is the essence of Anarchism in its original sense. Call it original anarchism. Eros out of Chaos . . .

Look for Kropotkin: Mutual Aid
and Alfred Wallace: The Malay Archipelago
Mix gently and simmer.
Season with Audre Lorde's essay on Uses of the Erotic.

Mmmmm delicious!

Shaking the Tree.

“What does not change is the will to change?” Who said that? Pindar perhaps.

The Buddha suggested that resistance to the natural process of change is a cause of unhappiness. Forcing change to happen can be equally problematic. Change is evolution. What I mean by change is a change in values and perspectives, rather than simply a change in outward circumstances.

Change means adaptation. It is the power to respond in new ways, to always re-evaluate. To be open - always. To listen, even when we are afraid.

As a teacher and a facilitator of change, if I am to help others change their lives, I must also know that some people will be impatient, while others will be left behind. Some will be disinterested, or even take the invitation to re-evaluate their assumptions and habits as a personal affront, others will embrace the challenge.

Leadership is very much about catalyzing appropriate change and then implementing it in an appropriate manner. You can’t make everyone happy all the time. To do so you would make you an enabler at best. It could make you complicit in preventing the best from emerging. The best emerges - in an individual, in a community, or in wherever context you work in - in its own time, catalyzed, in part, by what that person or community is willing to learn in the process.

I have noticed that the work towards personal change that I have facilitated for several years (Meditation and Mindfulness drawn from Buddhist traditions) has often been a way for people to feel better about things they have decided they can't change in themselves, rather than actually being a means of effecting genuine personal change.

I am aware that meditation practices that espouse change often do not really encourage people to change basic habits and perceptions. Is that sad or what? I have noticed that some practices actually anchor people into despair, dysfunction, and resistance to really questioning their ‘stuff’ and console them by encouraging them to believe that they are part of an elite community that understands things more deeply than other people.

It was that way with me too. There were times when I was stubbornly stuck. Am I a bad teacher and a bad student? Maybe. Though what I am describing is something I see in various chronic dysfunctional forms in Buddhist centers of different varieties (and in other 'spiritual' contexts too). It's a disease that infects religious thinking and institutions. Stasis. Denial. Dogmatism. Complacency. . .

But now I am excited about change. I am excited about person change that takes place outside of religious or political constructs (are they any different?) - dogmas, fixed systems, and rigid therapeutic modalities.

Therapy is ‘why’.

Buddhism is . . . . well, it's many things. Unfortunately it also can be,
'don't challenge authority'.
or 'practice more and harder and then you will understand'.
Although in essence it encourages us to 'keep asking questions, don’t take anything on faith.' In fact it's often 'don't question me'.

My own interest now is ‘how’ and ‘let’s do it!'

Now the combination of tools that I use to facilitate change, tools I have been given, over many years, adapted and honed, and which I continue to examine and refine and challenge are, if I say so myself, pretty exciting; and judging by the results I am getting from clients and students, pretty darn effective too!

Learn more at manzanitavillage.org and 5changescoaching.com

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From paper clip to $34,000 in less than an hour, or how I learned to ask for what I want.

Maui. Billionaire Boot Camp. The last of six seminars I attended with Christopher Howard and his folks. I am now officially a graduate of The Fast Track to Success. Over the past few months I have also drawn deeply from the teaching of several people I might not have been open to a very short time ago.

What I have learned is that we each choose our lives. I say ‘learn’ as though such a thing was not already obvious. I mean REALLY learned on some deeper-than-before level. . . . that we can be a 'cause' in our life, or we can be an 'effect.' In other words, we can remain stuck in existing conditions or we can ask, at ANY MOMENT, 'what can I learn here?' I say 'choose' because although some might say that things happen to us that we would never choose, we can always choose is how we respond. Some people are crushed by the same challenge that causes others to thrive and soar.

It’s as if the lessons that really matter can be learned over and over again, each time penetrating deeper, each time corresponding to our ability to challenge our own assumptions more and more. We CAN effect change in our lives, we CAN live with sustained awareness, we CAN be happy, we CAN feel essentially safe in the world. Joy is a natural state. Nothing new here! What is new is the idea that learning and living by these things does not have to be a struggle. Life is essentially fluid. “We live in constantly changing quantum sea of pure potentiality” is a phrase I've heard a lot recently.

Does that invalidate the hard realities of life in these times? Of course not. Does it dull us to contradiction and complexity? Quite the opposite! What it does do, for myself, is to help me recognize that I have a choice. I can feel oppressed (personally, emotionally) by what happens in my life, or I can simply ask, “What can I learn here?” Meaning, what can I learn here for my benefit and for the benefit of the work I do, which I believe to be valuable not only for myself but also for those who are my clients, students, colleagues, and friends.

THERE'S MORE. How can you turn a paperclip into $34,000 in less than an hour. I had heard of the man in Canada who traded up from a paperclip to house. The game we played was based on that.

I’ve won games before - relied on charm and cheek. This was different because it was real. Me, my team, and my phone. Amazing. I called a friend in San Francisco who offered me a couple of hours of his time as a financial consultant, worth $2200. Another friend traded these two hours of consulting for a lifetime membership of her network marketing consulting and leads site. She assumed I’d be around for the next seventy years and so the value worked out to around $34,000. Amazing, in less than an hour.

The next thing is to apply the same sort of attitudes and strategies on a daily basis. To just go for it!