General Learning • Tenneson Woolf

January 25, 2017

Still Mind

I continue to learn that the power of a still mind is geologic. It’s big. It’s the power of an earthquake. Or a hurricane. You can’t argue with geologic power. It just is. Yet the practices of a still mind are often quite minuscule and small. A seemingly tiny decision to simply sit quietly for a few minutes.

One of the ways that I experience still mind, even for a precious moment, is when I give myself permission to not pay attention to a very big category in my life — time. I’m sometimes guffawed by the unceasing watch I give to time. Me, my brain, habitually chunks out small increments. Fifteen minutes to do the dishes. Twenty minutes to meditate. Ten minutes to ride the exercise bike. One hour for a phone meeting. Thirty minutes after that for todos. Another hour for the next call. Twenty-five minutes for lunch. One hour for email.

Clocks are positioned all around me without my trying. A bit like prison guards in watch towers. On my phone. On my watch (that I recently got so that I would spend less time looking at my phone). On the microwave. On the stove. On my computer. On my Kindle. In the car.

It starts to feel like time owns me. The construct of time. Geesh!

One of those simple, freeing, still-mind practices for me is calling for a timeout with time. I still do all of the time chunking above. But I also give myself permission to simply “do something until I’m not doing it.” It’s gorgeous. Those tower guards are no longer on the job. The walls that confine or contain are now open passages to come and go as I please. Wow, prison imagery. More to explore there on another day.

To be clear, I’m not against time. It’s helpful in an intended discipline of the day and for coordinating with others. I’m OK setting an alarm or two, a gentle reminder of what time it is and when I need to shift my efforts.

But what I love, is releasing my attention on a managed system of measurement to a far more fluid form and feeling that is being. That is uncluttered. That is simple. That is deliciously still. In that stillness, it seems that I can almost hear the wind over the eagle’s feathers as it glides in blue sky. Still mind is not superfluous. It is central. Not hobby. Essential practice.

And that makes a big difference.

January 24, 2017

Clear Leadership

I had a dream a couple of days ago. In it, I was working with a small group of other people. We were trying to name the event that we were creating. In the dream it was a few days later that it was coming to us. It had to arrive for us, rather than being forced on the spot. “Clear Leadership” is what I shared with the group in my dream. “Yes, Clear Leadership.”

From night time dreams to the waking dream that is day to day life, I find myself thinking a lot about leadership. In myself. In others. In people that I work with that come from many walks of life — ministers, educators, health and wellness professionals, corporate managers, and a whole host of people that are just trying to improve the kind of humans they are. As individuals. As groups, teams, and communities.

In my dream, “clear” had a connotation of depth and simplicity. It wasn’t more management and control of people and circumstance, though that can be important. It was clear story. It was clear commitment to human beings evolving a sense of who we are together and why we do what we do together. It’s one thing to produce widgets. Great. Thank you. It’s another thing (and to be fair, even part of producing widgets) to open ourselves to a broader purpose of being human together and in continuous wonder.

You know, I was in a workshop this weekend, in which one of the fundamental premises was that there is nothing to fix in self or other. Improve, yes. Evolve, yes. Grow, yes. Let go of, yes. Lament, yes. Human learning has full range, doesn’t it. But fundamentally, these are all perfectly normal things. In a Buddhist way, as Pema Chodron shares, “This very moment is the perfect teacher.”

Clear leadership, to me, when it comes to evolving souls, is very much about waking up (and perhaps removing distractions, habits that numb us, or even comforts) to a different story. The story isn’t “more, more, more.” It has a quality of “less is more.” It’s not blame (or concession) for all that is “out there.” It has attention to the intimately nuanced layers of what is “in here” and how the “in here” is in fact shaping so much of the “out there.”

“Clear leadership.” Hmmm… Clarity of soul. Clarity of purpose. Clarity of essence, that perhaps can only be found together and in the company of others that amplify energy, spirit, and memory of what we already know, deeply, and simply.

Here’s to more dreams, and clarity, in all of us.

January 23, 2017October 9, 2021

Truth

This weekend I was a participant in a class (Friday – Sunday) that helped to stir the pot of “truth” a bit. It sparked this narrative for me (the narrative matters a ton — it’s what we then build experience and perception around).

There is more unseen than there is seen. Always. It’s liberating, I find. And sometimes scary shit.
The external reality comes from an internal perception. It ain’t objective out there. Or at least not completely, which is what many of us have been taught to believe.
The internal appears as rigid, when in fact it is malleable. Thank you neuroscience through which I learn that plasticity is possible. Even deeply held emotions (and fear and trauma) that neurally entrain all kinds of stuff.
The charge of the internal can be changed. There’s no wrong here. There’s no fixing. Just alternative “truths” for making sense of things. Sometimes as simple as more fruitful make-believe.
People can change but don’t have to. Let’s be real. None of us pick up every opportunity for change and growth. Many of us don’t live in a privilege opportunity to live with such luxury. Feeding the kids is all that matters.

My favorite movies, books, and experiences have consistently been around themes of challenging what is real. Every spidey sense I have points to a need to be willing to explore what truth is. And perhaps laugh. Or cry.

January 19, 2017

Important Planning Questions

The Chaordic Stepping Stones is a planning tool that I really love and is widely used in The Art of Hosting community of practitioners. It’s the tool that I most go to to help make sense of complex thinking that needs to be moved into the specificity of planning. It is also the tool that I use to create a longer arc for the way that a team honors its work together.

This version is an adaptation from Chris Corrigan that shapes some of the questions and description to work with people in faith communities. And it is a version that originally appeared in a larger resource book, that I wrote with Kathleen Masters for Global Ministries of The United Methodist Church.