Good Morning Thinkers!

Love and Fear

There are only two forces at work in the world--Love and Fear.
One opens, the other closes
One opens, the other grasps
One hopes, the other despairs
One grows, the other shrinks
Love and Fear
We live in both
But we can choose which one we call home.

By Douglas D. Germann, Sr. c Copyright 2004, Learning Works,
Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions:
Doug@FootprintsintheWind.com or 574/291-0022,
or P. O. Box 2796, South Bend, IN 46680-2796.
Archived at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

5 Balls

This gem comes from bblog: the sales, marketing and business weblog

5 Balls | “Each of us is given five balls. One is rubber and four are glass. The rubber ball is work. If you drop it, it will always bounce back. The other four glass balls are family, friends, health and integrity. If you drop them, they are shattered. They won’t bounce back.”

Four Agreements & Work

Last week I was the new kid in a new environment, completely out of my element. I was sitting in a meeting of the local gem and mineral club and was looking through a hand lens at a rock specimen. A woman at the front of the room said, "Put the lens up to your eye and bring the rock up to it." Suddenly a flash of anger shocked through my body and, while I managed to shut my mouth, I'm sure my body language telegraphed my negative reaction.

I was shocked at the intensity of my feeling ... like standing at the blackboard in the second grade with the teacher scolding me for my wrong answer to a math question. As I thought about it later, I heard a little genie sitting on my shoulder asking, "Perhaps it's time to do a little self-examination?" So, when I received the latest issue of the New and Improved newsletter with its article about the Four Agreements, I particularly homed in on "Don't take anything personally." What I had felt was a personal attack, a reminder of my incompetencies, was simply one person trying to help another and my insecurities got in the way of building a relationship.

Mary Bartlett has generously allowed us to reprint her article. You can subscribe to the newsletter at
http://www/newandimproved.com.

The Art of Seeing

Photo by Harvey Lloyd

From Harvey Lloyd's website: I beg your indulgence. Your eye does not see anymore than your computer thinks. Your eye is a marvelous tool for recording and transmitting photons of light to your brain in the form of electrical signals. Beginning at the retina, a series of computer like programs analyze, censor, delete and send certain amounts of information to various parts of the brain. This is not widely understood. Most of us were raised and taught to think that our eyes see. Recent studies of how the eye and brain work together bring to light the uncanny fact that our brains, not our eyes "see" and control our vision. The Art of Seeing reveals how early conditioning and genetic inheritance determines how and what we see. We come to understand that we can learn to truly see the world in all of its miraculous beauty only after hard work and deep insights. We observe the processes of seeing and creating our world vision. We examine the strange phenomenon of artist's works which often do not resemble the way we see the world.

I celebrate the art of true vision. It is the key to becoming one in heart and spirit with the Gaea, the earth. Light, holy light, makes vision possible. Light and its bizarre behavior is another of the mysteries which still baffle physicists and mathematicians. Light gives vision. How that process works is a visit to a strange new land. To truly see is to enhance one's life and make visible the hidden universe of wonders that surround us.

"Genuine art, we say, has “vision,” and good poetry and good seeing quite literally go together almost always. Yet before the more literal seeing can liberate itself into that other vision we speak of, a transfiguration is needed: the eye must learn to abandon its long habit of useful serving and take up instead an active delight in its own ends." —JANE HIRSHFIELD: excerpt from Kingfishers Catching Fire: Seeing with Poetry’s Eyes