It would be so great if the voices in our head were encouraging ones like a crowd in a stadium cheering for you or a friend reminding you of all of your positive virtues. The reality for almost everyone, however, is that that critical voices in our heads are the dominant ones. They can be …
For the most part men are still stuck in the Neolithic period acting like Neanderthals. I am really sorry to say, but it is true. Men have a code. Don’t talk about how you are feeling. Endure all pain without complaint. Go to war. Not everyman carries a machine gun, but when they leave their …
For the most part our minds are geared to taking the easy way out of life and in the modern world we seem to have taken the easy way out to an extreme. The cultural learning is that a physical pleasure gives you a non-material or permanent quality. Look at this ad. This ad teaches …
Early this week Debby and I spent 3 days among the aboriginal people of Malaysia, the Orang Asli. In Malay the word orang means people and asli which original. An orangutan literally translated means a person of the forest. Many of the Orang Asli live in an area known as the Cameron Highlands which is …
“So far as ye are able, ignite a candle of love in every meeting, and with tenderness rejoice and cheer ye every heart. Care for the stranger as for one of your own; show to alien souls the same loving kindness ye bestow upon your faithful friends.” Abdu’l Baha (Baha’i Writings) So in my …
Someone asked the other day when I was doing a presentation on dreams to some young people if I thought that the books about dreams that tell you what each thing means are worth buying. I told her that it can be problematic because most books don’t teach you how to read a dream and …
“I was going down stairs to get some water. On the way down a statue of cats came alive and were staring at me. Down stairs there were two purple jaguars circling around me. Om my chair there was a sleeping lady with Ron from Harry Potter. wrapped around her arms and Ron said, “If …
Last week, our 4th grandchild, Will Shoghi Heins-Hastings, made his transition from the world of the womb to the outside world. I wrote about this in the last posting. Being there at Will’s birth made an impression on me that I cannot put to words because there is nothing quite like holding a newborn. Right …
Sabah is a federal territory of Malaysia, not a state in its own right. It is like the Yukon or the how the Northwest Territories used to be in Canada. It, like Sarawak is located on the northern part of the island of Borneo which Malaysia shares with Indonesia. We arrive in Kota Kinabalu, K.K. …
If you go to almost any school in any place on the planet and ask teachers what virtues they would like to see their students have more of, they will inevitably say self-discipline, respect, and responsibility. If you ask a group of youth to identify areas in life where they are the weakest, they will …
Over the years Maria Montessori’s worked has received a certain amount criticism for the lack of inclusion of creative play and fantasy. If you are in a very strict Montessori program, even the personification of animals is deemed inappropriate. Well, yesterday I was working with a group of young children on the climbing wall at …
“About a week ago I dreamt that I was flying and then I went on an amazing adventure and it was so wonderful. And then suddenly, in my dream, I went back home and something terrible happened. It woke me up and when I tried to go back to sleep and remember the great adventure, …
I was all set to do a great unit on cooperation with my kindergarten students. They passed through some great work earlier in the semester with courage and determination and attention. It seemed so right. Then one day they came in bouncing way off the walls and the sequence of cooperative activities became a sequence …
I have a theory about parenting based upon much of the work that I have done with dreams that the issues that first children face have a great deal to do with changing the way things are in one’s family, and that the last children’s issue are designed to change the culture around them. I …
Take this “Good” Parent Test to see if you are living up to the expectations of your culture. 1. I believe that it is the first impression that counts the most. Y or N 2. When I go to the playground, I think more about how my children are going to get hurt so I …
Last night in my sleep I dreamt that I was on a path in an unknown place trying to get somewhere. I don’t quite remember where I was going, but it was a social event. Along the way I ran into an abandoned 5 year old who was drinking beer and begging for money from …
Earlier this week I had a dream that goes to the heart of what my blog is all about and what the book I am writing is hoping to communicate that really truly radical change is an evolutionary process of working hard every single day to change my life for the better. In the dream …
It is not surprising to me that after I wrote my last post about Godzilla and the principle of opposition that, without having read the post, someone sent me an account of their 3 year old child’s nightmare with a dinosaur. The dream is as follows. “I dreamed that a dinosaur was chasing me – …
In Chapter 11 of Dreams for Peace, (see Hastings) Godzilla comes into someone’s house causing panic and huge fear where everyone ends up fleeing for their lives. Some don’t make it. It is easy enough when you are doing the initial dream analysis to see that the dreamer is running away from a perceived fear …
If you have ever walked around with labels like very creative but extremely disorganized, dyslexic, distracted, hyper, or ADD, this little tool may help you out. You first have to realize that most people with such labels organize on the basis of space, not on time. This is a big key. All of the courses …
There used to be a popular notion in the practice of psychology that you could give criticism to a person by separating the behavior that someone is doing from who they are as a whole person. The theory evidently is that by doing this you preserve the person’s self esteem, that is, they won’t feel …
I was very inspired when I read my daughter’s blog about sorting beans with Olee, our grandson the other day. See http://hoogliart.wordpress.com. I think Maria Montessori was one of the first educator’s to see how organization of space really gives children a great deal of freedom to play and explore. Yesterday, I had the great …
I am not sure if many people have reflected on this question on where God is, so I decided to throw out a few thoughts to share some of my observations. What I have observed is that the location of God seems to move around according to the cultural context. In the Judeo-Christian culture that …
In my last post I was writing about a 5 year old boy whose primary presenting negative emotion is frustration. Frustration is what you feel when you are trying to accomplish something, but you are not making the progress you were hoping. It is different than disappointment which is feeling you get after the experience …
Last week during one of my physical education classes with my 5 year olds I witnessed and incredible act of leadership that left me with a great feeling of hope. I have a young boy in one class whose frustration tolerance on a scale from 1-10 is minus 6 or 7. He has had a …
Warning to North Americans and Europeans: This posting may create some negative side effects to your cultural selves. This morning I did something interesting. I actually listened to my own advice. I had invited a few colleagues from other schools to a planning meeting to schedule games and other sports events. The meeting was to …
My mother turned 86 this year. By all accounts you would think that her life would be on the downswing. Not so. After having painted in oils for a number of years, followed by the less forgiving medium of watercolors, she recently began the most difficult of them all, Chinese brush painting. It requires a …
There are 3 things that I look for when I am listening to a dream especially my own, the actual story or content of the dream, the structure of the dream which is like the syntax, and the feelings that accompany dreams. In almost every dream meeting that I have done in various parts of …
Last night I dreamt that my son-in-laws and I were behind the lines in pre-World War 2 Germany doing undercover work against the Nazis. At every turn we were nearly brutally murdered, but somehow we managed to escape only to find more threats more numerously as the dream progressed. When I awoke from the dream, …
Yesterday while our family was hiking in Lynn Canyon with our three grandchildren, I received some really great lessons about life. It was obvious to Chris, my son-in-law, and I that the purpose of the trip was to get to Lynn Canyon as fast as possible in our cars and get to the end of …
Richard Hastings is an expert in change work and dream work and author of Dreams for Peace. He is a Baha'i and currently lives in Vancouver, BC. Read more...
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