Dharma Bum

The Postmodern Executive - Entrepreneurs and The F-Word

I have a new post up over at the OC Metro where I take on fear and how to get out from under it. I even quote Stephen Madigan in this one. Narrative practice in corporate America. I think there's a book here somewhere...

  In my counseling practice I am currently working with two budding entrepreneurs. Both of these new business builders are starting companies in similar fields, and both of these talented individuals have often found themselves struggling with the F-word.

FEAR.

Read More Here.

We are as forlorn as children lost in the woods. When you stand in front of me and look at me, what do you know of the griefs that are in me and what do I know of yours? And if I were to cast myself down before you and weep and tell you, what more would you know about me than you know about Hell when someone tells you it is hot and dreadful? For that reason alone we human beings ought to stand before one another as reverently, as reflectively, as lovingly, as we would before the entrance to Hell.

— Franz Kafka

Remembering

And you wait. You wait for the one thing
that will change your life,
make it more than it is -
something wonderful, exceptional,
stones awakening, depths opening to you.

In the dusky bookstalls
old books glimmer gold and brown.
You think of lands you journeyed through,
of paintings and a dress once worn
by a woman you never found again.

And suddenly you know: that was enough.
You rise and there appears before you
in all its longings and hesitations
the shape of what you lived.
- Rainer Maria Rilke

The Epidemic of Mental Illness: Why?

It's nice to see that there is a growing counter movement to the current epidemic of mental illness, the exploding use of antidepressants, and the growing influence of the pharmaceutical industry. I highly recommend that all DB readers take a look at Marcia Angell's review of three new books that take on different aspects of the epidemic of mental illness. These new books question if antidepressants work, if psychoactive drugs create worse problems than they solve, and begin to detail how the psychiatric profession has allied itself with, and is manipulated by, the pharmaceutical industry.

The shift from “talk therapy” to drugs as the dominant mode of treatment coincides with the emergence over the past four decades of the theory that mental illness is caused primarily by chemical imbalances in the brain that can be corrected by specific drugs. - “It now seems beyond question that the traditional account of depression as a chemical imbalance in the brain is simply wrong.” - Read More Here

"If they cannot love and resist at the same time, they probably will not survive."

- Audre Lorde

Prayer

“I fell in love with Tibet because their essential mission was to keep a continual stream of prayer. To me they kept the world from spinning out of control just by being a civilization on the roof of the world in that continuous state of prayer. The prayers are etched on wheels, they feel them with their hands like braille and turn them. It’s spinning prayer like cloth. That was my perception as a young person. I didn’t quite understand the whole thing but I felt protected. We grew up at a time when nuclear war seemed imminent with air raid drills and lying on the floor under your school desk. To counterbalance that destruction was this civilization of monks living high in the Himalayas who were continuously praying for us, for the planet and for all of nature. That made me feel safe.”

—Patti Smith

Shiftless

02 Shiftless When Idle (Remastered V

Shiftless when Idle - The Replacements

Painter

Helen Frankenthaler, 1956 - Small Joys

 

Zen enriches no one. There is no body to be found. The birds may come and circle for a while in the place where it is thought to be. But they soon go elsewhere. When they are gone, the “nothing”, the “no-body” that was there, suddenly appears. That is Zen. It was there all the time but the scavengers missed it, because it was not their kind of prey. - Thomas Merton

The Narrative Project of Orange County now has a facebook page. Head on over and click like and stay up to date on what's happening in the OC narrative community.

My little private practice is growing. Your referrals are much appreciated. Thank you friends.

Ordinary

"You must understand . . . I am ordinary. Painfully ordinary. This is not modesty. This is fact. Maybe you're ordinary, too. If so, I honor your ordinariness, your humanness, your spirituality. I hope you will honor mine. That ordinariness is our bond, you and I. We are ordinary. We are human. The Creator made us this way. Imperfect. Inadequate. Ordinary. . .  We are not supposed to be perfect. We're supposed to be useful."

- leonard peltier

Via

The Original Psychedelic Rangers

This is what we pretty much talked about this morning...

Warning to the Reader - Robert Bly

Sometimes farm granaries become especially beautiful
when all the oats or wheat are gone, and the wind has
swept the rough floor clean. Standing inside, we see
around us, coming in through the cracks between shrunken
wall boards, bands or strips of sunlight. So in a poem
about imprisonment, one sees a little light.
But how many birds have died trapped in these
granaries. The bird, seeing the bands of light, flutters
up the walls and falls back again and again. The way out
is where the rats enter and leave; but the rat's hole is
low to the floor. Writers, be careful then by showing the
sunlight on the walls not to promise the anxious and
panicky blackbirds a way out.
I say to the reader, beware. Readers who love poems
of light may sit hunched in the corner with nothing in
their gizzards for four days, light failing, the eyes glazed....
They may end as a mound of feathers and a skull on the open
boardwood floor....

You can’t do it alone. As you navigate through the rest of your life, be open to collaboration. Other people and other people’s ideas are often better than your own. Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you. Spend a lot of time with them … and it will change your life. - Amy Poehler

To Begin and Begin Again

"As to those for whom to work hard, to begin and begin again, to attempt and be mistaken, to go back and rework everything from top to bottom, and still find reason to hesitate from one step to the next--as to those, in short, for whom to work in the midst of uncertainty and apprehension is tantamount to failure, all I can say is that clearly we are not from the same planet."
-Michel Foucault

The Postmodern Executive - Questions That Drive Innovation

I have a new post up over at the OC Metro where I show how experience near questioning can lead to innovation in teams, non-profits, or organizations. Please take a look.

Asking the right questions in your organization, non-profit, or team can change everything. The traditional questions that tend to be asked in organizations are diagnostic questions. These types of questions are deficit based and lead to a problem based, problem focused culture. The alternative to this type of focus is questions that are strength based and lead to engagement and positive energy...Read More Here