Dreams For Peace

$Some of the Baha\'is at the Dream meeting$

Posted on April 7, 2008 by dreamsforpeace

Journey to the Mountain Top in Sabah

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. to the locals, on Monday. I had just done a half marathon they day before in KL and the with the marathon of a school year coming to the final months, you can say that Debby and I are close to the wall and tired. Our plane is delayed a couple of hours so by the time we check into the Beringgis Beach Resort it is already 11:00 pm..

Beringgis has a long beautiful flat beach and even though my legs are still recovering from the half, the sand and surf invite me in for a run along the empty beach with the jungle on one side and the South China Sea on the other. It is a relaxing way to begin another adventure holiday.

Debby wants a day to relax at the beach, so I give her 2 hours before we are off on first adventure to the Garama River to see three different species of monkeys in the lush rain forest that covers the island. Our guide is a 3:15 marathon runner and because he sees my KL half t-shirt we spend quite of bit of time talking about races in Malaysia, the most famous of which is the climbathon up to 4,100 meters a top Mt. Kinabalu.

Later in the journey we will climb the mountain, but now we are in boat for a few hours along another beautiful river in Southeast Asia. It doesn’t get much better than this as they say. Along the way we see proboscus and silver-tipped monkeys as well as macaques. Sabah is a wonderland. It has some of the greatest wildlife adventures on the planet including some of the best scuba diving, which we will have to put aside for another holiday.

The river trip is quite relaxing and the dinner afterwards looking over the wetlands at sunset fills us with the kind of emotion one hopes to find on a holiday. Quite magical.

The next morning we are off early for a three day adventure which will take us to the highest spot in Southeast Asia. We stop at one of the local handicraft markets. Debby finds a great bag to carry more things made from the local native people. In the mainland of Malaysia the mix of cultures is Malay, Chinese, and Indian, but in Sabah the majority of people are a mixture of native tribes, like in Sarawak, followed by Chinese, Malay, and Indian. It gives Sabah a different feel, a bit more laid back. The lines between the cultures seem more blurred here and model of integration much further along. Later on, when I am interviewed at a local newspaper, my eye is struck by the interest in integration in America, which moves me, but for now Mt. Kinabalu lies ahead.

Later we have a great nature hike done by a local Chinese botanist who describes the science in the rain forest. Many of the ferns mirror the rain forest of BC and because we are at about 1500 meters now the cooler air begins to resemble our west coast of Canada. We follow the ecology walk with another great lunch, a trip to Poring Hot Springs where we leisure in the healing waters and walk along the canopy of the jungle.

You may notice or not that Debby is quite joyful and relaxed on the canopy and I am not.

It is just one of those fears that sneaks up on me so I tell myself that no one is dying and that makes it a wee bit easier. That night we stay in dormitory-like hostel at the foot of the peak in preparation for the next morning up the slope of the mountain. We have a chance to visit with a couple living in Mongolia working for the Peace Corps and then are off to bed.

By 6 am we are awake, 6:30 packed up, and by 7:00 am we are eating breakfast. At 8:00 am we register for the hike and meet our guide.

His name is Andrew, 42 years old, he has two teenage boys, and is a member of the local native tribe of which most of the guides are. He is more like an angel sent to help us every step of the way. In three years he has been up the mountain more than 110 times so he keeps telling us in Malay slow and steady, slow and steady. The first day up the mountain peak begins at the Timphonon Gate which is about 1800 meters and climbs to 3100 which is 6 kilometers from the starting pointing.

Difficult, tiring, grueling, never-ending, painful, excrutiating, continuously upward. These are just a few of the adjectives to describe the first day. Mt. Kinabalu is impressive because like other high places where native people live, it is regarded as a sacred place, and so it doesn’t surprise me when I am with the Baha’i community in KK doing a presentation on dreams that several people share dreams with the mountain in it. The trail is well kept up with covered rest stops every kilometer, not like the snow-covered trail up Crown Mountain in Vancouver, but most of the way up I am thinking of my climbing partners, my son-in-laws, Chris and Shane, and how much they would love to be ascending the Mt. K.. Debby was not feeling very well in the morning and the climb proves more difficult than she had hoped, but in her true character, she musters up every bit of self discipline and determination to reach Laban Rata, the hostel 6 km up from the start. Notice the woman carrying the 20 kilos on her back and passing right by us.

Because she has had diarrhea and a quezy stomach she is not able to replace the glycogen stores along the way so makes the decision, wisely not to do the summit the next day. By the time we reach the first day’s end we have already made several new friends including a young English couple, a couple for Holland, and a brother and sister from California.

Of course everyone is about the age of our children. People our age usually don’t do this kind of thing. Well there is one man and woman other than us who have some gray hair. We must be crazy, but the fellowship of pain is quite comforting and the dinner quite a welcome. At 7:30 pm we are all in bed because we have to wake up at 2:00 am to make the final 2.5 hour climb of 1000 meters to the summit. Sleeping at 3000 meters is fitful because of the lack of oxygen and many people already have headaches and are feeling nauseous. Debby shivers for awhile and then finally gets to sleep. I know that I have slept because I have a few dreams, but it is not without a lot of tossing and turning. The wake-up call comes and I am nervous but also excited.

Now it is just Andrew and myself and every step of the way I am thankful for his help. I keep thinking of Shane and Chris and hoping they get the chance that I have. Climbing at night with a flashlight is a bit of blessing because you don’t have to see how high things are. The first 40 minutes are quite vertical and I am thinking that if I have to do this for another 2 hours that I am going to be spent, but by the time you reach 7 kilometers of the 8.7 things begin to level out and the hike changes from grueling to joyous. I keep thinking to myself how joyful I feel and how wonderful it is.

At 5:30 am, 30 minutes before sunrise we reach the summit. I will let the pictures do the talking because I think they say it all.

Climbing down a mountain always seems like a piece of cake but after a couple of hours of descending one step after another, your thighs go wobbly and so by the end you end up with legs that say thank you, thank you, for stopping. Now 2 days later, the mountain is still a strong memory in the thighs. Every step on a staircase is felt. We have a great buffet waiting for us at the bottom, but I am entirely spent after it. I sleep for part of the trip back to KK.

When we arrive at the hotel downtown, we find that we only have a couple of hours before I am presenting on dreams to a group of Baha’is in the city. My mind and body say no, but the spirit beckons. Who am I to say no to it. Doing a presentation is a lot like climbing a mountain. Before the experience I always have nerves and wonder if things will go well, in the middle I just stay focused and keep presenting, and at the end have some moments of satisfaction. What is so interesting about this meeting is the openness of the people and how willing they are to go after the issues that are presented in the dreams.

My worry before a meeting is always about the resistance, but in this one, there is no resistance whatsoever. Since a great deal of the community is culturally Chinese, the dreams reveal the weaknesses of Chinese culture, which is mainly about looking for the negative in others rather than the positives to try to get more improvement and then making people fearful of something bad happening if they don’t follow the path that everyone else is on. They are extremely receptive. Fortunately Baha’u’llah’s teaching emphasize over and over and over the importance of inclusion so one of the leaders in the community encourages the native Baha’is to share their dreams, and as always happens their dreams are the solution to the Chinese problems. This is the great Baha’i teaching that including diversity solves the problems that any culture is having. By the time the meeting is finished it is 11:00 pm. So I have been up since 2:00 am the same day and I am buzzing from the meeting and the day’s hiking adventure. What a day! Am I dreaming this? The next morning I am up early again because Kang, one of the local Baha’is, has arranged two interviews with newspapers. So here I am, only 5 days earlier having set foot on Sabah with no plans to do any meetings and now because of Debby’s initiative in calling some of the local Baha’is, I am now doing interviews for feature articles in two newpapers. I must be dreaming. Well both interviews go really well. In the first one the reporter asks me about a dream of her mother who has passed away some time ago and when I explain my understanding her eyes fill with tears, which come to her unexpected especially as an objective reporter. Life continues to be an astonishment. While she leaves the room I notice a framed copy of the front page of an old newspaper with the name Kennedy on it. I ask myself if it could really by about JFK, but think it is probably about a Kennedy in Sabah. So as I approach I notice that the date is May, 1963, just a few months prior to his untimely death. The article is about him delivering anti-discrimination legislation to the Congress of the United States. Later , the reporter asks me about what I think about Obama becoming president. At first I am surprised by the question and I tell her that the Baha’i teaching is to not become involved in partisan politics because they tend to be divisive, but then say, with JFK hanging up in the background, that it is quite incredible that a man who is both black and white could reach the highest office in the U.S.. My eyes begin to well up and I cannot explain the emotion. I explain to her that I did not expect to be so emotional when she asked the question. A day later as I think of the Kennedy article on the wall, I realize how much hope the world had with JFK, that even on the island of Borneo, what he attempted to do is revered. We are truly one planet and I know I am living in a dream. The rest of the day I am meeting with several people about their dreams and difficult issues in life. I look forward to my return, climbing the mountain once again, and hoping that I can help people up the mountain peaks of their lives.

“Let each morn be better than its eve and each morrow richer than its yesterday.” (Baha’u’llah, Tablets of Baha’u’llah, p. 138)

Posted on March 31, 2008 by dreamsforpeace

What’s Missing In Self Discipline is Usually the Self

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 overwhelming say that they lack self discipline. It teachers and parents want it more from young people, why is it that it rates last on the energies that most people have? Why can’t young people have more self-discipline?

It seems to me that when you have discipline, you will do whatever it takes even to the point of experiencing pain to accomplishing a goal. When you are doing it for someone else, you can often have threats hanging over you or rewards in front of you to keep you disciplined, but as we all know that is not self-discipline. Self discipline has more to do with accomplishing goals that are set by your true self.

So it seems to me that what teachers and parents and managers most often leave out when asking for more self-discipline, is the other person’s self, the true self. I suppose it is a relatively new idea in the history of the world which accounts for our lack of success with it. I think that the historical model is that it is the higher ups on the authority ladder that set the goals, certainly not the young people and rarely from workers themselves.

Whenever I have had difficulties achieving my own goals, it always seems that I am in conflict with an authority figure. It is as if that person does not want me to have my own goal and then I have trouble seeing my true self achieving it. The discipline that is often demanded is for their goals, but there is a scarcity in the world of people who encourage others to achieve their own goals. When you do not have a vivid and clear image of your self achieving the goal, then the discipline mechanism does not seem to be able to work very well. We can be motivated and disciplined for the corporation’s goals, but not for our own.

It should come as no surprise that the goals of the true self would automatically come into conflict with most organizations at some point for the simple reason that the mess that the world is in right now is the hands a some pretty self-interested leaders. The problem with being in conflict with leadership or with others is that it tends to blur the image of the true self doing the goals. The problem with only doing their goals is that it also blurs your own goals. If you fight, you lose, and if you give in, you also lose.

It isn’t so much that being disciplined for another person’s goals is such a bad thing especially if it has to be with the well-being of your family, but it should be clear that it does not come under the same heading as self-discipline. And it isn’t self discipline if your own goal is motivated by the ego such as greed or envy or power. Hitler never had self discipline because he was a slave to his own greed and power. The image of his self out there was an illusion. The difference between an image that comes from the true self versus the one from the ego is that the if you stay disciplined for a long period of time toward a true self goal, the goals that you set tend to have lasting results. The ego goals are always short-lived.

So it turns out that having self discipline requires removing the fear of authority on the one hand and removing self-interest on the other. When this happens, the way becomes clear to see the true self as you wish it to be. Then action in disciplined manner follows.

So first I can do a clearing to see the true self and where it wants to go and then I can for it with a great deal of disciplined action.

Posted on March 27, 2008 by dreamsforpeace

Self Discipline Calling

I have to admit that when I started to feel the inner whispers that my being was calling forth the virtue of self discipline, it wasn’t something that I necessarily wanted to hear. After all, I mean let’s face it. Self discipline is not sexy like some other energies. When I pick self discipline out of a virtues pile, my response is to put it right back again. It is like looking for apple pie and getting cod liver oil. So here I am struggling to accept what is without one shadow of a doubt the perfect answer to my current situation, but having a degree of resistance associated with it.

Ok, I know the issue. This is my 30 year recurring nightmare. I have had this dream 100 times easily where I go back and reenter the Air Force Academy hoping to complete what plays in the back of my mind as failure. Everything seems to be going well, but then I wake up after awhile and say to myself, “what am I thinking?” The Air Force Academy is a military university which prides itself on training people to have huge self discipline, but really is a system of making you fearful of authority so that you will allow yourself to be killed in battle. Maybe that is a bit simple, but the self never comes into self discipline in the academies because thinking for yourself and going after your own goals in a systematic, disciplined manner is certainly not the goal. So when I think of self discipline, my mind goes back to the AFA and to the rhetoric and I wonder if I missed something. “If I were to only go back there and finish,” my mind thinks, “then I would have what I need.” Fortunately I usually wake up and realize that they are about as far from self discipline as an organization could possibly get. Putting them aside I look around for other models.

Model #1 My Mother

When my mother had back surgery a few decades ago, the doctors told her that she would be in wheel chair within 10 years. Well she decided that they were wrong and then she set out on a daily routine of various exercises to strengthen all the muscles around her back. She is now 86 and walks so fast that it is hard to keep up with her. She never misses a day of exercise. She is a marvel of self-discipline.

Model #2 My Wife

Debby was diagnosed with a torn meniscus, recommended for surgery, but went through one year of a disciplined regime of taking herbs and homeopathic remedies which cleared her of the need for surgery. Next she lifted a heavy box one day and ruptured a disc in her back. The orthopedic doctors recommended surgery, but she went through a series of exercise routines that she still does daily. Her back is fine because of having the virtue of self discipline. My guess is that not many doctors have run into the likes of my mother and my wife so they recommend surgery and make weak predictions. If there were more self disciplined people in the world, there would certainly be less surgeries.

Model #3 My Eldest Daughter

When Erika did her master’s thesis, she used to wake up in the morning, eat breakfast, and then write all day long. She did this continually for several months. The product of her work was amazing. As a youth she used to wake up at 5:30 am several days a week to do skating practice before school.

Model #4 My Son-in-Law, Chris

Everyone knows that my other son-in-law, Shane is hard wired with self discipline, but Chris decided one day that he was lacking self discipline and dedicated a whole year to developing it mainly through an exercise program several mornings a week. His transformation is an inspiration to me because for the other 3 women, self discipline is runs through their veins. Chris has come to it through struggle.

What I understand from the 4 of them is that self discipline is daily and while the goal is ever present, the expectation of immediate results is not. The results come from repetition of acts over long periods of time. It isn’t self discipline when performance is inconsistent. It seems to be self discipline when the tasks are done almost like breathing.

I am looking forward to making self discipline a friend. I am glad that it has come calling.

Posted on March 26, 2008 by dreamsforpeace

The Myth of Ownership: Who Really Owns Space

I am writing this post because I had an interesting phenomenon happen to me today as I was working. When I began thinking about being creative and spirited in my job, I kept getting a negative image in my brain of one of the administrators and what that person might say or do to hinder the creativity. As I began to meditate why he was their in mind, I realized that I believed what most people must certainly believe, that the space belongs to the owners or people who are designated authority so whatever they think is what I have to overcome.

This puzzled me a great deal because I just thought that there must be a different solution. How do I get him out of my mind and still have a certain amount of respect for property rights? Well, this is a difficult challenge for me because it seems like whatever I do, he is there. It turns out that what this person really cares about is rules and order and people following procedures. He seems to spend every waking moment getting people to do things they way he wants. So if I don’t get something in right on time, he is all over it.

What he doesn’t seem to care too much about at all are the actual creative things I do with the students. This means that if I get things in on time and do fire drills correctly, then everything else is free and open. I think I can live with that. I can give him the 5% attention that will make him not have a heart attack so that I can spend 95% on the students doing interesting things.

I think that maybe the hang-up is wanting him to care more about some other things rather than mere organization, but then maybe that is the best he can do. I seem to be able to drop him out of my mind by letting him have his control issues, accept that that is where he is at, and realize that he has left open the door of creativity wide open to do whatever I wish.

Another way to say this is that he has chosen to own the way everyone lines up and how to turn in forms, but he has left the ownership of creativity to everyone else. I own the creativity.

If I enter someone else’s house, I can respect their property and level of noise, etc., but they are probably going to give over to me certain things that I can own. They can own the noise level and the order in the house, but they usually will share certain aspects like friendship and helpfulness. I can own the friendship and helpfulness and then use it freely to make the space much more enjoyable. I can own courtesy and I can own kindness and generosity. These things I can bring freely into the house as if the house were mine and then the house is mine while still belonging to them.

When I bring in bad manners and negativity, I am usually not invited back because the owner doesn’t allow that in the house. It is no longer mine. In Latin America there is a saying, “mi casa es su casa”(my house is your house), which implies mutual ownership, but it is all predicated on the visitor having a great deal of courtesy and respect for the owner. The owner agrees to share the ownership because the qualities of friendship and love and warmth that can exist are much better than living in loneliness.

I find it very interesting that the great prophets of God that founded huge religions like Buddha and Jesus and Muhammad were never interested in owning things or property. They only ever seemed to concern themselves with bettering the space where others were. Jesus told His followers to give Caesar his due. They were then allowed to pay attention to the hearts of others. This seems to be where the real ownership lies.

Who occupies my heart? I think I will meditate on that.

Posted on March 22, 2008 by dreamsforpeace

Maria Montessori Was Right!

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 my school when her idea of having children do real work instead of fantasy showed itself to me very clearly.

One of the children has been bringing small leaves and flower petals to class for about a week now. What I noticed was that every time that he was supposed to climb, he began obsessing on the flower petals and then making up stories about their magical powers. The result is that his muscle development and risk taking abilities are extremely weak. Besides the fantasy, he also uses blaming others if the slightest thing goes wrong like someone else going before him in line.

Yesterday I took away his magical leaf, told him that the magic was in his limbs, and that he was going to climb. So during the climb I went with him every step of the way giving him a certain amount of physical support, but I was there mostly to make sure he stayed on the wall rather than bailing. The result was what Maria Montessori must have often observed. When this young boy was faced with fear on the wall, he wanted to jump off the wall and begged me to let him stop many times. His dialogue with me was about how scary climbing was, but every time he made it to new rocks his dialogue changed from fear to achievement. It is as if he had two voices going in his head, a fear voice and a courage voice. When I was there making him do the experiences, the voice of courage was allowed to start coming out even when the fear was very great. The more he climbed the greater the voice of courage. Given the choice, however, the magic leaves are a much easier route for him because they provide some mild comfort to ease the fearful thoughts. As Montessori put it, the fantasy becomes a defense, a coping mechanism for dealing with the real issue.

Children and adults learn best from real life experiences. Facing fear is an important part of life no matter what age we are. Besides this boy I have had several children begin to cry when the fear was extremely strong on the climbing wall. By keeping them on the wall they push through the fear and then develop strength and courage so that the next times they can do the tasks independently. While they are in the fear it is as if they become different people, but they all love it so much when they get to the achievement and happy that they went through it.

So many adults have just seemed to give into their fears these days and then allowed their children to follow. Of course with adults the fantasy is a whole way of life which includes all kinds of sophisticated strategies of avoidance which people call living. The center of the fantasy seems to be anchored by alcohol and sex. Women also seem to go for shopping and men seem to go for obsessing on their teams winning to get away from facing life. Children have TV and video games, but the real life story of the boy on the climbing wall shows that the fantasy life is a way of coping with fear that is very temporary at best. Maria Montessori was right. Let’s get real and go after our fears. We just need some support to stay in the experience.

Posted on March 14, 2008 by dreamsforpeace

Magic of Children’s Dreams

“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 could only remember the terrible thing.”

This dream was told to me this morning by an 8 year old girl in my wife’s grade 3 class. Debby invited me in to speak about dreams to her children for about an hour today. They just kept telling one dream after another mostly nightmares the whole time and when I had to leave, they just begged me to stay longer so that they could share a few more dreams.

I started the post with the adventure dream because it happens to so many children and so many people. It is really worth writing about. When I explained it to the them, I told the girl that flying and having an adventure meant that inside of her, the part of her that relates to the future is very strong. Flying and adventure are symbols that relate to the future. Lots of children fly in their dreams and they love going on adventures, but what happens to her is what happens to a lot of real life dreams that children have.

When she goes back to her home, something terrible happens. If I would have had the time, I would have taken her aside and asked her about the bad thing in real life. She almost told me in front of her friends, but it is easy enough to guess. Most likely it is the terrible thing that happens to many children, the separation of their parents. In her true self she is a strong adventurer, but like most children, what she needs to keep adventuring is a strong support and encouragement system at home so she can be that way. When something terrible happens, then children get stuck in the past, in the memory of the terrible thing, and then they fear it happening more, and then they can’t venture forth very well.

A positive future works well when the past is supportive. Parents and grandparents represent the past for a child so when they are supportive, then the child can move freely into the future as if it were a great adventure.

This dream shows the difficulty of childhood. The only thing that really holds her back is the bad memory of the terrible thing because she believes that the terrible event will keep her from going forward in life. It doesn’t have to prevent it, but it is difficult to convince a child that. What she needs is adventures, as do most children, because that is where they get all of their new learning. If you know children who have had bad things happen to them, all you really have to do is be there with them to take them into wonderful places in the future. The more they do in the future, the more that they can understand and be told that bad things happen all around, but they can be left behind and then they can move forward in really positive ways.

That is a great lesson for me also. Ok I am off to an adventure tomorrow, but first I am going to leave a bad memory behind.

Posted on March 14, 2008 by dreamsforpeace

Raising the Bar Means Raising the Participation

On the playground at my school we have a set of monkey bars and rows of rings that students can play on to develop their upper body strength. This year I set the goal for all of my kindergarten students to be able to do the rings and monkey bars. Since they are both suspended off the ground, the students always have to face the threat of falling, which happens all the time. It is about a two foot drop so it is very rare that anyone feels hurt. Nonetheless, the fear factor has kept a certain percentage of the children from really going after the goal. Today something really great happened. In one of the classes, a group of girls decided that this was their day. All 5 of them made it across the rings and then they came running over to me to announce their triumph.

There is nothing really all that technical or difficult about the teaching. First I have the belief that all of my 5 year olds want to make it across the bars even if they say they don’t. When the students say they don’t, they are talking out of their fear or the messages inside already that say they can’t because of their size and lack of strength. I just say to myself everyone can do this and everyone wants to.

When people say no to activity like running or walking or trying a new sport, the no usually is coming from fear. Inwardly everyone wants to participate fully in life because this is what it means to human. What I am learning this year from my 5 year olds is that I can turn down the volume of the no or just not listen to it at all. When I am feeling fearful about doing something new which makes me hold back, I understand now that it is the fear in me that is doing the talking and not the active, participatory full of life part.

The fear has many names and voices like the fear of making a mistake and being laughed at, the fear of not being very good even though I put in a hard effort, the fear of being turned down by others, the fear of being injured physically or emotionally, the fear of being put down, or the fear of looking bad. What I realized recently was that the fear can have a strong voice in me and it can often win. So instead of listening to the strong voice of fear I can turn off the volume and instead see the part of me that loves to participate more and go for it in myself and others.

In the country that I live in right now, Malaysia, I find, that despite it being a democratic and pluralistic society, most people are not encouraged to give their opinions or express their creative ideas for the betterment of the group. In fact it seems to have been quite discouraged as it has in other parts of the world. Whenever I do a workshop in Malaysia and ask for opinions, they are not forthcoming immediately as they would be in North America because there is still a great deal of fear associated with participating in a democratic way. In authoritarian cultures people hold back their opinions to protect themselves from getting shot. Transitioning from an authoritarian form of culture to a participatory one is not without its challenges because when someone has a good idea, they keep it to themselves out of fear even if the authority figures are not so strong. The memory of the need to not participate can be so strong and be so loud that people just hide away. This was undoubtedly one of President Bush’s biggest mistakes and why the initial armed victory did not bring immediately results in Iraq. The inward fear that has been sustained through hundreds of years of authoritarian rule is slow to give way because the culture of participation is such a weak force. One tyrant just replaces another.

The great majority of leaders who find themselves in a position of power and recognition usually make the wrong decisions when it comes to participation. Instead of being an encouraging force they tend to a stifling force because when a culture in an organization or country moves toward more participation it automatically means that power is shared. This is much better for a culture because it means that more people can become more capable and do much more. It is simple when you think of it in terms of a running race. In an authoritarian culture the only runner is the leader. Everyone else sits around a watches and only does stuff to support that leader’s run. Well you end up with one person with a lot of ability and everyone else with very marginal abilities. In a participatory culture everyone runs and everyone’s running is valued and recognized even the last place person. The leaders do everything they can to mobilize everyone into running so that they can all become better. It is pretty simple.

If you are a leader and you are at a meeting to discuss the future of your organization, you can take a look around and see how many people are participating in the decision making and betterment of the organization and then you can just find ways to encourage more people to participate. Its easy.

Posted on March 7, 2008 by dreamsforpeace

Successful Events #3 Solving the Worst Problem

When I was a principal of an elementary school, I used to meet with individual teachers quite often. Inevitably the question that I would ask them to answer was to identify for me the worst problem that they were having in there class because I knew that if they solved the worst problem everything else would get better. No one gives much attention to the minor problems or puts much energy in them, and no one goes to therapy for relatively easy things to solve. We all want to have the big stuff dealt with. I learned that the best way to start working on the worst problem with teachers was to just ask them what it was. They always told me.

The logic for dealing with the worst problem is quite simple. The worst problem creates the greatest amount of negative energy in a group or event or meeting or in oneself. When you solve the worst problem, it automatically invigorates the environment of the meeting with positive energy. Most of us have the problem of having to attend meetings that are largely one-sided, that is, they are planned by leaders who have their own agenda to meet their own self interests. We are the ones excluded from the meeting because they are not thinking about us. They are not anxious to hear our most pressing issues because they are only interested in addressing their own issues related to their own desires. It is pretty sad, but that is the way most events are run.

If you are in charge of meeting, then the planning process is simple. For instance, some times I am asked to plan a meaningful event for a holy day. So I ask myself who is likely to be most excluded or have the most difficulty at the event. Usually it is children, but it could be someone who doesn’t speak the language very well. For some reason, as soon as I include the children by making the stories more visual or simpler or add a lot of activity in the event, then everyone loves the event because prior to that the children were the big problem that took focus away from having a meaningful experience.

The world’s worst problems seem to be connected with leaders who have nothing but self interest so that the ability to plan successfully is often usurped by their selfishness or undealt with fears. When I give into their fears, the events become diluted and lose the vitality necessary to make them successful. Most leaders don’t want to have to deal with the most difficult problems people are facing, and the further down you are on the economic or or social ladder, the less agenda time you will get. What leaders want is for recognition and resources to flow to them. What I found by asking teachers what their greatest problems were, was that most of the problems weren’t even in the classrooms, but at home or in a personal relationship. So then I would talk to them about their relationships outside of school and then suddenly their teaching would get a lot better. It is so simple. Positive energy is positive energy. When it is released, it affects everything in a positive manner.

My worst problem in my classes nowadays tends to be children who are trying to get undue attention. It is not surprising since that is the world’s model of behavior right now in shows like ______________Idol or Amazing Race or Fear Factor. When I give them a small amount of discipline so that they can refocus on tasks instead of trying to show off and get everyone’s attention, then the whole class suddenly works extremely hard. The positive energy goes to achievement rather than to “look at me”.

Well, it is pretty hard to discipline an out of control leader, but you can attend to areas where they are not. The world’s leadership doesn’t like to pay attention to people who have been the most excluded because the leaders are the ones who have made them that way. However, since the leaders are not paying attention to the most excluded, it means that the work there will improve the fastest when it is attended to and the benefits will generalize to all parts of society. Just ignore the leaders and go for the real issues. This seems to be the key to success these days!

Posted on March 5, 2008 by dreamsforpeace

Successful Events 2: Keep the Big Mouths Shut

A few years ago I attended a wonderful physical education conference in Rio de Janeiro. Besides myself and a couple of other people the entire conference participants were Brazilians. The wonderful thing about the conference was that it was highly participatory. We did outdoor problem solving courses, martial arts, and ultimate frisbee to name a few. However, part way into the conference someone gave a lecture on something that I can’t remember. During the lecture about 50% of the group was sleeping. I remember everything about the other workshops that were active, but I can’t even recall the subject in the lecture.

People rarely remember the words of even the greatest speeches and the most important ones that have ever been spoken are often very short. People remember the events where they were able to participate fully. If there is to be speaking, it is much more effective in small groups where everyone has an equal voice and where they are able to share personal things.

Last year I sent one of my volleyball teams to a local tournament. After about 30 minutes of play, the whole tournament stopped, some dignitary walked in and proceeded to speak for about 40 minutes. As hard as I try I cannot think of a more ridiculous way to plan an event. Who cares what he has to say? The players certainly don’t. Who was he speaking to? The air?

My rule is simply this. Very few speeches and lots of interaction and activity. I think about planning an event as if the group were 5 year olds. I have 5 minutes at the most for talking before they need to get involved in activity. How many times have you gone to boring events where people just get up and give speeches in order to self-glorify themselves? The days of long speeches are long gone. Let’s get over them.

One of my real pet peeves these days are the LCD projectors where people hook up what they are going to say to a computer and then project it for everyone to see and then they read it. What an abuse of good technology!!!! I think they were designed to show interesting pictures, not boring outlines.

The key to planning events is getting people involved and the best way to keep people from being involved is through a lot of speeches. It is how to put people to sleep. Let them have a real experience!!!!

Posted on March 2, 2008 by dreamsforpeace

How to Make Every Event Successful: part 1

A little over two years ago I started working in a new position as athletic director in an international school in Malaysia with students K-12. One of the first challenges I faced was with the elementary swim team. We had a relatively small team which practiced a couple of times per week so that students could participate in other activities as well such as martial arts and dance. Early on in the year the team was invited to participate in a triangular meet with schools twice our size and whose teams practiced 5 days a week. Some of our kids couldn’t even dive off the starting platforms.

Needless to say they didn’t perform that well in comparison to the other schools. A week later I had a number of parents entering my office and wanting me to make my program like the other schools. When I met with a whole group of them, I made the mistake of saying that I had never been in a school with a swimming program. You can imagine how they felt about that!! I let the season continue just observing without making any changes at all. When the season was over, another colleague and I got together to produce a new strategy that has since left everyone really excited and the parents extremely happy. Between the two of us we called our meets the Crappy Schools Swim Associated because we decided that during the following year we would only participate in meets that we planned and set the model for. We invited 3 other schools who were on or slightly above our level and then organized a new type of meet.

In the meet we gave awards to the first 3 places in every swimming heat which was something like 70 heats per meet. When we added relay events we ended up giving away almost 250 awards. Prior to that the only time that the swimmers got awards was during the annual city meet with 9 other schools where medals were only given to the top 3 in each event. In that year only 2 kids had won awards in the whole season. So what were our results? Almost instantly the parents thought we had a wonderful swimming program and since that day, I have not receive one complaint about the program. It turns out that parents and students really don’t care about who is first overall. They just love getting ribbons and when you make it much easier to win, the pressure just eases right off on the program. And what was even more gratifying is that the times of the swimmers just kept getting better and better with each meet, and they all began practicing a lot more on their own as well.

Now if we would have played the game that a lot of people play when they are planning, then we would have “shoulded” on ourselves. Shoulding on ourselves would have meant that we try to do what the other schools do by having a program like theirs, but we did something else that was a little more radical. Instead of reserving winning for the top we increased the ability to win at all levels. In the second year of the new program we added a swim carnival for every student from grade 2-5 in the school and did ribbons in the same way. It caused the team to grow from 25 the year before to almost 60 swimmers.

The principles that we used are not particular to swimming or sports. They can be applied to any situation to bring great success. Most people base the planning of a sporting event on the Olympic Games. They only give awards to the top three athletes, base all of their pride on whether or not one of the three awards are won, and try to copy their programs based upon those who are winning the top three awards. So a lot of effort goes into the few athletes at the top who are gifted athletes. The ones at the bottom drop out because early on they have decided that sport is not for them. The same thing happens in every other discipline in most schools as well. In American based schools the goal is to go to an Ivy League school like Harvard. The programs get designed to be one of the few at the top. The people in the middle or bottom are largely forgotten. The glory of the school is based upon how many of the few at that top make it to an Ivy League school.

But what makes you successful is the first principle of planning which is to be able to detach yourself from the way everyone else does things. This is not easy thing because everyone wants to be part of the gold medal winning team or filthy rich. But let’s face it, the world and everyone of its nations have failed completely in narrowing the gap between rich and poor. If you go into any bookstore in the world, most of the books are written by the one or two people who made it to the top. If you read the book and follow the prescriptions, you too can make it to the top.

The radical approach to making events successful is to plan for those at the bottom and the middle. If the event is like the Olympic Games where only top is awarded, then the event is not about change and growth. It is simply about recognition and glory. Sadly, most organizations and most events are still run this way. The problem is that the ones at the top get lots of recognition, and then can’t understand why others become disenfranchised and apathetic. They write books about how others can be like themselves, but the glaring fact that the discrepancy between the top and the bottom has grown so dramatically only shows the extent of their failure. I think that most of the people at the top really don’t want people in the middle recognized and rewarded because they have the false belief that they are going to lose some of their recognition by doing so. Our experience proves them absolutely wrong in their thinking.

The key to making an event successful and transformational is to think about how to reach the people who are normally the most excluded. In our swim program the athletes who were the most excluded were the ones that had made a lot of effort, but were never rewarded. We simply put them in races against others with similar ability and then awarded them in the same way that we recognized the top. The top swimmers all received the same number of awards that they normally would have received, but now everyone else also had more chances for the prizes. Even the slowest swimmers got awards. The result is that everyone stayed motivated and everyone improved.

So when you are planning something like a meeting to discuss the future of the company or the family vacation, the emphasis should be on how to include the ones who are normally the most excluded.

Posted on February 4, 2008 by dreamsforpeace

Who Do You Work for?

I just spent more than 30 hours during the weekend as a tournament director for a high school tennis tournament in which 9 schools from all over Southeast Asia participated. At the end of the day there were more than 200 sets played. We began our days at 6:00 AM and finished around 10:00 PM. We had just enough time to eat some dinner and hop into bed.

This morning is a school day, but I am way too tired to be in school so I decided to call in for a substitute for my classes. Before I called in I had some feelings of guilt as if I were so weak for being so tired and not being able to keep on going despite the exhausting days in +30 temperatures managing all kinds of variables including rain delays. The guilt of not being strong enough was haunting me so I began to do some reflection of where it was coming from.

The question that keeps resounding in my head is that of who I work for. During the tournament I kept feeling pressure from various people to shorten the tournament especially for those who did not qualify for the semifinals. As I felt the pressure I kept reminding myself that the games for 8th place are just as important for those players as the games for first. The tennis players just want to play lots of tennis. They love being on the court. After a rain delay on the first day we ended up playing two hours after the original schedule. At 8 PM all of the courts were full, the lights were on, but there were only 2 official matches left. Everyone just kept playing despite the fact that the schedule was over.

During the second day God stepped in as if to validate my feelings. Just when the final matches were to begin to decide champions and third place, it began to pour rain and didn’t stop for the next 6 hours. The third place matches got canceled and the first places ones went indoors and were shortened considerably so that we could finish the tournament. So in the end it was the 5th to 8th places that got the best court times and had the most matches. It was if God were saying to me that everyone is important, not just the champions. Everyone deserves and should get his time on the courts and when I am doing my job correctly, in His eyes, no one is singled out for more time than anyone else.

But why do I feel guilty about not going to work when I worked such ungodly hours so that everyone could play? It dawned on me that the pressure is to favor the people at the top. Be it the first place players, the director of the school, or whatever head of something, they tend to believe that they should have more time and the best resources and everyone else should serve that end. The lower down the ladder we are, the more we tend to serve whatever they want, hoping that that we will get our time on the courts. They usually don’t give it because they are more interested in their position on the ladder than on giving everyone a chance.

Part of me is working for all of the players including 8th place, but another is just serving the top and their selfish aims without realizing that they have no thought of mine. They just expect me to do whatever they wish.

At one point in the tournament one of the coaches of the top four teams became upset with me when I told him that we had moved the semifinal match up and they had to get on the court. If was as if he thought he should have special privileges and I should give the team more time. I held firm and the team did fine without special treatment. It just proved the point that all leaders should know. People at the top don’t perform better with special treatment. They do equal or better when they have the same privileges and resources as everyone else.

I just need to remind myself that I am working for the 8th place players just as much as the first place ones. I am very grateful that the rain came when the showcase games were supposed to happen. The tournament was a success because of how treated 8th place, not how we treated first.

Posted on January 26, 2008 by dreamsforpeace

How Dreams Reveal the Existence of a Spiritual Dimension

Not long ago I received this communication from someone who I have never met.

Hi, I am from Ohio. Something very strange happened to me…….I had various dreams last night and in one dream there was a guy named Richard Hastings(that’s me). Richard Hastings had told my husband the world was ending soon (“didn’t you see the two clouds of smoke? The world will be ending soon” )…I asked my husband (in the dream) who is this Richard Hastings and he pointed you out in a restaurant I remembered the face & name. This morning I told my husband, sister & house cleaner about this dream and the name thinking I probably saw the name & face on TV……my house cleaner said to google the name…….When I got to work I googled Richard Hastings….Thinking I would pull up a political anaylse because I watched the Iowa Cacusus last night before going to sleep. But low and behold I pulled up your bio and it was your face in my dream and your name. I was shocked to say the least. Have you ever been on TV??? How could your face & name be in a dream I had unless I saw you somewhere before………Is that possible??? I know this sounds really odd….

There was a factory explosion yesterday at ethanol plant in our town…….that still does not explain your face & your name in my dream.

And I also watched the discovery channel during lunch yesterday about clouds left behind by jets. So if you could clear up why your face and your name was so vivid in my dream……..that would be great.

I was pretty excited about receiving this dream because I’m a big unknown personality in the world of TV and politics, but in the dream world I seem to be quite well known. She expected that Richard Hastings was very renown, but she saw me in the dream and thanks to the technology, she could validate that the person in the dream was actually me. Her question is about how is it possible?

This is a relatively easy question to answer when you believe that the dream world is a spiritual phenomenon whose purpose is to awaken and release the positive potentialities that lay hidden in every human being. When you need a certain positive quality like being closer to the people in your life, the dream world sends you constant messages that give you vital understandings to develop the quality. If you heed the message in the dream, and then change your life accordingly, everything always gets better. If you can also believe that the spiritual force that controls the dreams is compassionate and all-knowing, then you can understand that dreams are perfectly suited to you and your situation in life.

When you try to explain the dream that this woman had in materialistic terms such as thinking that she would have already had to see me in the real world, then the dream world becomes rather meaningless. People who have become engulfed by believing only in material reality, because they can not understand an anomaly like this particular dream, tend to disregard dreams altogether. By believing that the dream world wants your very best and will always send you the messages that you need, you can make a great deal of accelerated growth.

How is it possible that she could have seen me in the dream world when she had never seen me in real life? It is very simple to answer when you understand that dreams are outside of the laws that govern time and space in the material world. You can go forward or backwards in time in a dream, and you can also travel without ever leaving your bed. If the dream world wants her to see me, it is fully capable of it because its powers and abilities are far beyond what any of us are capable of communicating or understanding. Last night I was flying in my dream and it felt so real that I was sure that I could do it, but when I awoke I am faced again with gravity.

In the dream she sees me in a restaurant and I tell her that the end of the world is coming. What she doesn’t understand when she awakens is that the end of the world in a dream does not mean the end of the entire human race, but I am telling her that the end of the world as she knows it is going to end. This means that a brand new world is ready to open up for her if she heeds the message in the dream.

The spiritual force that is in cooperation with her spirit simply uses me as a way for her to realize that there is a greater force that is capable of things that she has heretofore, not allowed herself to believe. When she can begin to contemplate the power behind the dream world, then her life as she knows it will be over. She will then, also be able to nourish herself in a new way that will benefit herself and others.

I am simply in the dream so that she understands that the power of the dream world is far beyond what she would have ever imagined and that you can not explain it by material means alone.

Many people have stopped relying on spiritual forces in favor of the material because of the way orthodox religious structures have so tried to control people’s minds by putting themselves in place of the spiritual world. They act as if they are the all-knowing ones and, in so doing, have turned millions of people toward materialistic beliefs. What is important to understand is the spiritual forces governing dreams are truly beneficent, wanting only the best for you. This is the key.

Posted on January 13, 2008 by dreamsforpeace

NLP/Anisa/Baha’i Inspired Technique for Changing Looking for Validation from Others and Then Getting All Depressed to Self Validating and Being Energized

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could have a really great technique that could change the depressive states that most of us get into when others do not give us the kind of validation we are seeking?

For the huge overwhelming majority of the world’s population, seeking validation from other’s is a pattern sewn right into the very fabric of our beings. I have yet to find a culture that teaches young people to see their own giftedness and then act on it in positive ways. Most of the world grows up in cultures of either high demands and criticism or low demands and abandonment. You can be living in the wealthiest family in the world or existing day to day on the street and still be plagued by the huge neediness of trying to get validated by others.

The principle of achievement is bolstered by being able to see an image of the self with positive qualities and doing positive things, but the world’s primary practice, aimed at increasing the level of growth, is to focus attention on negative aspects of the self through the use of criticism and fault finding. It goes completely against both science and religion but, nonetheless, has been adopted worldwide as the major tool in most schools, businesses, and families.

What happens to all people is that they are impelled by their very natures toward positive growth. Everyone desires to be changing because we all have an irrepressible force within us that seeks transcendence. What the cultures of the world have all colluded in is a process that corrupts the transcendent nature rather than nurturing it. This is done very early on by telling people that they are sinful, weak, undeserving, worthless, and a whole host of other adjectives. The techniques of doing this have been handed down from one generation to the next for quite some time now so that it has become quite unconscious and second natured for almost everyone to either abandon or actively criticize the self of others.

Inwardly, since we all want to grow, we secretly, meaning unknowingly, look for ways to be validated (give positive value to ourselves). The best way to be validated is through self-validation, a process that can be taught very early on to children. Self validation means being able to see or hear inwardly the positive characteristics that exist both in your immanence ( the indwellingness of the past) and your transcendence (the future). When we have a clarity of vision or audition about the qualities we already have, it allows us to enthusiastically go after the qualities in the future that are as-yet-to be manifested. For instance, you can tell yourself and see yourself with the positive qualities that musicians have despite the fact you have never played an instrument and then the image will allow you to increase energy so that you can become the image in the actual world.

The mistake that the world makes is that instead of seeing and hearing musicians playing beautiful harmonies, it perceives the opposites and then emphasizes them. It sees and hears noise, disruptions, indiscipline, and irresponsibilty and then lets everyone know that they see the negative. This has an extremely negative effect on others which leaves them unable to energize toward positives goals, reinforces the negative state, and in the end depresses the size of the goals set.

The best musicians, athletes, or craftsmen are those that are motivated inwardly by their own vision of their own selves performing at higher levels. One of the problems that most people get into is that they look for the validation from someone else like their boss or spouse or parents. When they don’t hear the praise or get the reward, then they fall into the cycle of depressing expectations because they have put someone else in the place of what should be self-validation.

When you see and hear your own positive qualities both in the past and in the future with a great deal of clarity, then you have a sustainable inward system for improvement that allows for the release of large amounts of energy. When you do the opposite which is to see the bad qualities or look for validation and not get it, then the system becomes depressed and there is a huge drain on energy. Below is a technique that maybe useful in the process of achievement. Try it.

Self- Validating Technique

Step 1: List several of the worst things you have been told about yourself or what you tell yourself all the time. (e.g. impatient, worried, sloppy, lazy, overbearing, greedy, shy, hurtful, etc.) In using this technique you don’t have to deny the bad qualities because they do have a usefulness in identifying the areas of growth so it is important to identify how you have been invalidated. What you don’t want to do is to hang out in the bad qualities and then become self-loathing or aggressive. In this step you are just bringing up the patterns to consciousness that are running your life right now in an unconscious manner so that you can change it.

Step 2: Make a list of all of the ways that you try to get validation from others. ( pleasing, asking for it, sitting around hoping for it, etc.)

Step 3: Make a list of at least 10 positive qualities or abilities that you already have. (organization, taking initiative, kindness, finishing what you start, joyfulness, calmness, etc.)

Step 4: Make a list of 10 positive qualities or abilities that you would like to develop in the next decade. (e.g. patience, peacefulness, perseverance, organization, compassion, fixing cars, using a computer)

Step 5: Prioritize the list of qualities that you want to develop in the next decade. ( 1 is most important 10 least important right now) Note: You can often work on more than one skill area at a time such as becoming better in computers or a better swimmer, but qualities such as patience are of a nature that you can only do one at a time. Qualities are generalizable so when you develop patience it will automatically transfer from one activity to another. We usually think about developing one quality each year because they are so complex and have such an infinitude of understandings that you don’t make enough progress in less time.

Step 6: Tell yourself (write it several times if you need to) that seeking validation from others always ends up in depressing your goals. “When I see or hear myself with positive qualities, I am energized and can achieve higher goals.” Decide who you seek validation from the most by realizing that this is the person who you are most likely to have a love-hate relationship with. Determine to let go of the practice of seeking validation from them. Just let it go.

Step 7: Take each one of the positive abilities or qualities you already have and then visualize them. If they are more auditory like music or speaking, hear yourself with the quality and if they are more physical like dance, see and feel yourself doing them. The clearer your mind is on the positives you already have, the more motivated you will be about adding to the list. You can repeat this step everyday until things are so clear that you are fired up with motivation.

Step 8: Changing belief in invalidation. Take the list of from step 1 and then decide which is the worst quality that you believe about yourself. If you are in the habit of seeking validation from others, then what will happen to you is that you will have a huge amount of tension to try to avoid looking at these things. This is because they are so painful or hurtful that you don’t want to go there. You can simple relax the tension and take a look at what you believe about yourself. It is ok.

The number one worst quality will match the number one positive quality in the future that you wish to develop. So if you are impatient, the quality that you are going for is probably patience, peacefulness or calm. If you don’t find a match, then you probably want to reprioritize one list or the other until you get them to match. If you feel like you are controlling, then it could be a match with creativity, with quitting you would probably need determination, etc..

Now you will have 2 realities. One is the negative quality in the present and the other is positive one in the future. Whatever the negative picture is like from the negative quality, change it to the positive characteristics in the future. If you are lazy, it maybe that you see yourself as inactive, dull, and lying around doing nothing or frivolous things. If the positive quality is to be more active and service-oriented, then you can see yourself that way with a lot of color and brightness.

Refine the image until it is exactly how you want it.

Step 9: In NLP this is called a swish. Basically what you will do is put the negative image up in your mind to the left and the positive image up in your mind to the right as if there were two images at once. You can swish them by first making the negative image large and the positive image small. Then you can swish them by instantly changing them so that negative one becomes small and then positive one large. You may need to practice this several times. The idea is to replace the negative image of yourself with a positive one.

Step 10: Look into the future and see what you want to accomplish in the next week and right it down. You should have the new energy turned on and it should allow for more achievement.

Posted on January 4, 2008 by dreamsforpeace

Cambodia: A Wayfarer’s Journey

It is hard to imagine another place in the world that has suffered as much since the 1970s as our neighbor to the North, Cambodia. Barely a decade has passed since the series of invasions and the horrific civil war have ended. As we are flying into Siem Reap (literally Siam Defeated) my expectation is once again altered as in every other new country that I have ever entered. The airport visa system is extremely well organized and efficient, the airport new and attractive, and the money exchange process quite easy.

We arrive on Christmas Eve, take our first adventure with a Muslim driver, in a country that is 90% Buddhist, and whose greatest attractions are largely Hindu. The gentleness, warmth, and togetherness of the people make it difficult to imagine the millions who were slaughtered by their own hands. Peace is a great blessing to a country and being in Cambodia on Christmas in a peaceful place is a great blessing for us. Santa couldn’t find reindeer in Cambodia so he came in an ox-cart.

Tonle Sap Lake is the home to floating villages. It is poor for sure, as we enter we pass house after house 3- 5 meters off the ground to protect from the rising waters in the rainy season. We are in the dry season but there is still enough water for the floating structures. Debby and I are the only passengers on boat designed for about 12. The young children are in school making the universal noises that they make everywhere in the world. What is different about these children is that there school house is floating in the water, buildings on barges. Even the basketball court is a floating structure. The houseboats are simple structures, the life even simpler, but Debby and I notice almost simultaneously, the bougainvillea and other flowers on the smallest of places. Beauty and its attraction does not belong to the rich. It is found in all classes. It is a lesson that will test me again.

I am writing this journal on leaving Siem Reap on our way to Battambang in a bus occupied by 80% Cambodian and a few gringos like us. The bus has just stopped by side of the rode adjacent to a rice field. The bus driver yells something out in Khmer and many get off the bus. They go out into the field men and woman alike and have a pee break. Debby follows. They all return to the bus and now we are on the bumpy road again. Life is still simple and uncomplicated. Wealth will no doubt come to Cambodia quickly as it has to the rest of Asia. It is easy to see. One day soon the buses will all have toilets and this part of life will disappear. I wonder if Isa and Olee and Diego, our grandchildren, will have this chance to pee by the side of the road. So I put this in my memory that simplicity has its place.

The Ruins at Angkor

We have two days to visit and study the vast temple complexes of around Siem Reap, the center of an empire that once covered most of Thailand and Vietnam. So as I am thinking about how to learn about the great empire, I am imagining myself walking through the ancient structures with a guide at my side who will answer every question of my inquisitive mind. And this is the plan. We have some contacts in Siem Reap through the Baha’i Community there and even a couple who we decide to hook up with on this journey to the past. But as fate would have it somewhere between leaving Siem Reap, getting our 3 day pass, and arriving at the first temple site, we lose the guide and the other couple. My inner process has a huge flare up because my expectations of how to proceed through the ruins quickly vanishes before my eyes. Debby asks me how long I am going to have my attitude. I tell her that I will deal with it somehow. Somewhere in the midst of my disappointment I pull a “Juliet”. (Juliet is our youngest daughter and pulling a Juliet to me means being aware that something out of the ordinary needs to happen). I say to myself that if I really needed a guide on that day, the guide would be there. As we leave the first temple and proceed to the next, my inner guide begins to awaken, but I still have a bit of the old expectations. The next stop is an ancient reservoir. My attitude says what do I want to see a reservoir for, but inwardly I begin to see the things that a guide could not show me. The place where water is stored is surrounded by beautiful sculptures and intricate carvings, and then I begin to see the real Angkor for the first time. Why would a culture, nearly 1000 years old build a place to store water as if it were a holy temple? It seems to me now that the organizing principle of the culture is beauty, an attempt to transform the ordinary into the sacred. The symbols around the reservoir make it clear to me that it is a place of healing, that the waters are sacred, and that the lure is beauty.

As we enter the next temple my attention is drawn to Apsara, the feminine divinity that is shared strongly in these ruins in both Hindu and Buddhist structures. Everywhere you go Apsara is with you. The masculine images pale in Angkor in comparison to the quantity of feminine ones, which reinforces the value placed on beauty and other feminine qualities. We end our first day with a visit to the temple where Lara Croft Tomb Raider was filmed. When the French colonized Cambodia in the 19th Century and then began to do archeological work. Much of the temple structure had been overrun by the jungle. That night, after having discovered some of the mysteries of the ancient past, we head to downtown Siem Reap, and eat burritos at a Mexican restaurant with some friends from KL. It reminds us that world has grown small.
After having gone through my crisis with the guides on the first day, I have decided that on day 2 that I will not force the hand of the inner world. We plan for a guide again on this day, he shows up, and remains with us the entire day. Life is mysterious. Visiting the sites of Angkor Thom and Angkor Wat with a guide to explain the history and significance was how I had imagined the first day. Although Angkor Wat is the most famous temple structure, our favorite by far is Angkor Thom, built by what seems to have been a very benevolent ruler. It is a Buddhist structure, whereas Angkor Wat is Hindu. The smiling Buddha seems to reflect our feeling here. To end the day we take a small hot air balloon ride, which gives us a panoramic view of the things we have taken in at ground level.

Battambang

Our purpose in visiting Battambang, the second largest city in Cambodia, is to meet some of the Baha’is in the area and do a couple of presentations. Our first experience happens on the back of motorcycle. It is not unusual to see a family of 5 riding on a motorcycle. What we would have been so judgmental about only a couple of days previously we are now doing. There are three interesting projects in this area, CORDE, UniEd, and Gems International School. CORDE is a development project that teaches people in the villages English classes combined with materials that are oriented toward positive values such as service to the community. Families donate part of their land to build a classroom structure and then funds are raised for the building. Except for the directors of each building all of the teachers are volunteers who have gone through the coursework previously. Even some of the Buddhist monks from the area are volunteers. They are all quite enthusiastic about doing the work. UniEd is a small university of about 70 students. One of the problems of Cambodia in its transitional period is that students have to pay a fee that is quite exorbitant in order to pass the high school exam. UniEd created a more open entrance policy that doesn’t require students passing the high school exam. It also teaches all of the classes in English, which allows Cambodians the students to take advantage of resource people and instructors from outside of the country who don’t speak Khmer. Gems Intl. School is a kindergarten, which is also English based. The topic about which I am speaking at UniEd is moral leadership, which means leadership that is more group oriented and based upon positive values and the development of capabilities. The night before the presentation I have a dream in which I am truck driver. In the midst of the dream a King Kong like character is brought into the truck, breaks free and then tries to cause lots of havoc. It takes me about an hour to go back to sleep after the dream because I realize that it is the history of leadership in Cambodia. During my presentation I use the metaphor of the dream for nearly the whole first hour. Later when we are in Phnom Penh, we hook up with one of the Baha’is who attended the talk. He is there to meet with other NGOs about some projects he is doing so we decide to have breakfast before he has to go off to his meetings. He tells us that he has to talk with us about his King Kong issues, which let me know that the metaphor presented in the dream really works. In the afternoon after my presentation at UniEd, Debby gives a presentation to parents at the Gems School about the Virtues Project. What she teaches is quite revolutionary for parents everywhere, but particularly in Asia, that when you name positive virtues in children and call them to those virtues, rather than belittling them with constant nagging and criticism, that they become those virtues. She gets them to begin making a commitment to that promise and promises them that she will return.

Our time in Battambang is mainly about making Cambodian friends. We have planned to leave the area on the 30th, but the Baha’i friends encourage us to stay for a wedding of a young couple. These pictures tell that story.

Phnom Penh
I wish that I could share more of Battambang, but my pen would die of exhaustion and so would you. When I was a young man in high school, I attended some Christian gatherings, one put on by an organization called Young Life or something like that. I loved the activities they did until it came to the part where they said that Jesus was the only way to God, that if you didn’t believe that He was the only way, that you would go to Hell. I remember quite clearly thinking that there were a large number of Buddhists in the world and that I couldn’t see how God could condemn them all to damnation. Cambodia is a country that is 90% Buddhist. The people are gentle, hard working, and family oriented. Being with them in friendship is a heavenly experience.

The air-conditioned bus to Phnom Penh is freezing. Debby has to put her feet in her day pack to keep them warm. We pee again by the side of the road and later stop for coconut rice served inside a bamboo stick. The prices in Cambodia for things are really quite unbelievable. For $2-3 you eat really well. The Khmer food is not so spicy like Indian or Thai food so if your palate or gut cannot take it, Cambodia is a great place for you.

We arrive around 2 pm in the afternoon, make our way in a tuk-tuk to the Burly Guesthouse, where for 13USD per day you can get air-conditioning and cable TV. I even see part of the Rose Bowl one night, but since it doesn’t begin until 10:30 PM local time, I fade after the first quarter almost like Illinois. We had met a couple, Sherif and Shaku Rushdy in Battambang, who had been living in Croatia and now Kyrgyzstan doing lots of development work throughout the world. They also know Shane quite well, so we spend New Year’s Eve with them. Phnom Penh is really vibrant for us. We walked along the riverfront, eat more burritos, enjoy the festive atmosphere. Jan. 1st is a national holiday so it seems as though everyone in the city is out to enjoy the New Year’s party. Fireworks begin at midnight but we are already in bed for an hour by the time the noise begins.

There are 2 big markets in Phnom Penh, the Central and the Russian where you can buy name brand clothes from the local factories that make them like Polo, Tommy Hilfiger, Adidas, Boss, Camel, and others for unbelievably low prices. A dry fit Tommy Hilfiger shirt is $5. Needless to say a certain member of our family is extremely excited during the times we are in the markets. The afternoon after we visit the Central Market I give a workshop again on the topic of personal transformation at the Baha’i Center. The woman in charge of the Center, Yvette, is a Cambodian who had to flee to Vietnam during the Pol Pot regime. Her uncle was a general in the Cambodian army before the Khmer Rouge so when the takeover happened in 1975 the new government invited all of the old leaders to join the new army and promised them positions. Instead they were all shot.

Debby and I didn’t visit war sites in Vietnam where we were last year because Vietnam is sewn into the fabric of our souls from when we were young. There are no words yet created to describe the horror of the Pol Pot Regime. Day 3 in Phnom Penh is our pilgrimage to one of the worst nightmares of the 20th century. It is difficult to experience, sobering, draining, and difficult to return to joy afterward. The Toul Sleung Museum is our first stop, which is school that was converted by Khmer Rouge into a prison where they brutally interrogated people to extract information and then later killed them. Our guide takes us through each room and explains the methods. There are hundreds of photos from small children to older persons who were all tortured and killed. The regime made a habit of photographing the victims so that everyone would believe that they were doing the killing. Such was their perversity. Pol Pot was so extreme and paranoid that even killed many of his own soldiers. At the end of the tour I ask our guide about what her experience was. She explains how she was only 14 that her father was a member of Parliament, her mother a French teacher. She is forced to walk from Phnom Penh to nearly the border in Vietnam, a journey of nearly two months. Her mother and father are murdered as are her grandparents. Only many years later does she find that her brother is in San Diego. In the commune where she is forced to do slave labour she is sick all the time, an illness that continues until today. The nightmares also continue so she takes medication each night to sleep. Debby and I are holding back our tears, but we are moved beyond that which we can explain. She calls her daughter and niece over to us who are both vibrant and enthusiastic young people. We share a few moments together and try to find a way for her to meet some of our new friends in the city.

During the meeting on personal transformation the day before I talk for several minutes about Debby’s story and some of her difficulties as a young woman. After the meeting I tell Debby that I was feeling the presence of her father, which I feel again in the prison.

After the prison we hire a tuk-tuk to take us out to one of the hundreds of Killing Fields in Cambodia. This one is located 15 km from the prison in a place that is strangely peaceful and serene with a beautiful lagoon, but what happened there is quite the opposite. Pol Pot only died in 1989 from natural causes because the only way to get peace in country after the Vietnamese left was to give amnesty to the Khmer Rouge. Many of the regime are in prominent positions and it is only within the last few weeks that some of the major players have been arrested and face trial for crimes against humanity. After the very sobering morning we wonder how we are going to get back to some measure of joyfulness and yet not forget what we have seen. I think about the all of the young boys who were forced to be soldiers and kill incessantly and what it will take for them to be rehabilitated. It is a staggering thought.

We eat lunch at a restaurant called Friends, which is a project to take young people off the street and give them meaningful work. Cambodia has become the land of NGOs, some positive and some not-so. The lunch is a good transition from the morning taking us from the worst degradation to the hope.

Afterwards we visit the huge royal palace and National Museum. In the evening we visit the Baha’i Center again and sing songs and play some cooperative games making more friends with our favorite age group, teenagers.

During our flight and taxi ride home we talk about how amazing the trip has been, how different than our other holidays, and how grateful we are. We are wondering and hoping for an early return.

Posted on December 20, 2007 by dreamsforpeace

Accelerating Change By Making Friends with Your Enemies

I have met with many people in recent weeks who seem to have the same brutal energy affecting them strongly when they are in the midst of trying to change their lives. They seem to be caught up in the cultural myth that says that if I get enough love, then suddenly my life will be somehow magically transformed into a blissful paradise where everything comes easy. I think it is something like being happy-ever-after.

There is only one problem with the strategy. It doesn’t work. Whenever I have tried to get love from someone else or in a relationship, the very best I ever have is a temporary feeling that feels great for a very short time not unlike a drug. As soon as the person is not there or has to deal with their own problems or is busy trying to get the same from you, then we both end up in a sea of negative emotions. This idea that someone else is going to somehow fulfill me or two halves make a whole, etc., etc., is so difficult to break out of because it is just so prevalent.

I am not sure how anyone ever makes it through this mire. The problem is that we try to grab some warmth or closeness from someone else because they may be very attractive. Everyone else does it so why don’t I do it too? That seems to be how most of us think. The other day I was thinking that if getting love from someone else is only a temporary thing which doesn’t end up working in the long run, then maybe the place we haven’t looked for true joy and happiness is in the process of dealing with our enemies.

Let’s face it. Our friends can’t be there all the time to give us our fix of love and support, but who always seems to be there rain or shine is our enemy. Our enemies are so faithful that even when they aren’t there, they are stuck in our minds. What do most people do when they are with their friends or come home from work? They complain about their enemies whether it be a colleague or a boss or our spouse or the leader of the country. In fact the more you think about it the more enemies act like how you want your loved ones to act. They stick to you like glue and are there rain or shine. Hmmm.

I have to say that my arch enemy for as long as I can remember is authority figures. Bad authority seems to follow me around like flies to …. you know what I am talking about. And I seem to love to keep them as the enemy. They are so convenient. I love to go after new ideas and make changes wherever I am, but the authority figures seem to love keeping things as they are evoking conservative strategies so that they can hold tightly to the reigns of power and control. Why won’t they just go away? Why do they show up wherever I am?

I know the answer. Not too hard to figure out actually. The answer is that inside of me I am a closet conservative right winged control freak at least there is an energy inside of me that acts that way even it is not a part of my identity. So if I am to change it, I can be, instead of an enemy who fights it, like its best friend who listens patiently, non-judgmentally, and shows unconditional love. After all, if I am holding onto not changing, trying to stay in one place, then I need the closest of companions to help me through this energy. It isn’t that being a control freak is acceptable to me, but it is more that being a friend to the energy will allow to do what it really wants to do which is to change into something that is wildly radical.

I think I get it. On to some reflection, deep process.

This quote really helps me out when I think of the process of change.

Recognize your enemies as friends, and consider those who wish you evil as the wishers of good. You must not see evil as evil and then compromise with your opinion, for to treat in a smooth, kindly way one whom you consider evil or an enemy is hypocrisy, and this is not worthy or allowable. You must consider your enemies as your friends, look upon your evil-wishers as your well-wishers and treat them accordingly. Act in such a way that your heart may be free from hatred. Let not your heart be offended with anyone. If some one commits an error and wrong toward you, you must instantly forgive him. Do not complain of others. Refrain from reprimanding them, and if you wish to give admonition or advice, let it be offered in such a way that it will not burden the bearer. Turn all your thoughts toward bringing joy to hearts. Beware! Beware! lest ye offend any heart. Assist the world of humanity as much as possible. Be the source of consolation to every sad one, assist every weak one, be helpful to every indigent one, care for every sick one, be the cause of glorification to every lowly one, and shelter those who are overshadowed by fear.

(Abdu’l-Baha, The Promulgation of Universal Peace)

Posted on December 15, 2007 by dreamsforpeace

When the Truth is Inconvenient

The other day I was having lunch with some of my Chinese Malaysian colleagues when one of them ask me an interesting question. “Do you believe in standing up for the truth?” one of them asked to me. It seems like such a straightforward kind of question, but it is often more about wisdom than courage

Baha’u’llah, the founder of the Baha’i Faith answers the question this way.

“Not everything that a man knoweth can be disclosed, nor can everything that he can disclose be regarded as timely, nor can every timely utterance be considered as suited to the capacity of those who hear it.”

In answering the question to my colleagues I told them that saying my version of what the truth is takes a lot of wisdom so, in most cases, I chose my battles where I think I may have a chance of affecting the outcome in a positive way. I usually don’t fight for something if I don’t think my actions are going to make a dent in the way people think.

Having said that to them I told them my stories of being fired when I acted counter to the normal wisdom I would usually display. I don’t think anyone can accuse me of playing politics by saying things that will please the leaders, but I do realize that there is value in holding things back at times. It is not easy to know when to use restraint when I want to let it rip. Most of the times I see that the leadership is very conservative or protective in certain areas so I don’t go to those areas to voice to many opinions. If they ask for an opinion or for consultation on an issue in a sincere manner, then I feel I have a responsibility as a part of the group to voice my opinion. Many leaders are comfortable and open and give a lot of autonomy in some areas and then very protective in others. Wisdom requires that I study a situation to understand which is which.

There are times when I have had to throw conventional wisdom out the window. It has happened to me when I am faced with a hostile takeover of the forward thinking philosophy I am working with by a more traditional one posing as forward thinking.

I have been in three different schools where hostile takeovers have occurred. These were all privately owned schools, but public ones run the same risk as in the U.S. with their “no child left behind” legislation. If you have a forward thinking philosophy in an organization, its very nature will mean that it makes mistakes in its efforts to pave new ground. The wannabes (those doing the hostile takeover) are lying in the wings ready to pounce because they are so envious of your success that they want a part of it even though they don’t want to do the work that you have done. They know exactly what to do. They criticize the mistakes, blow them up in such a way as to convince others that the organization is falling apart, and then walk in and take over.

The first time this happened to me I was sitting in a meeting after the school had already been dismantled behind our backs. I just stood up and told the leadership what I felt. It was so exhilarating, but I also knew at that point, that the takeover had already occurred. Fortunately I was able to find work to continue the philosophy in a different country. The hostile takeovers of the other two schools where I worked did not happen until about 6 years into those programs, but the patterns were all very similar. At the time that the take overs began to happen, was actually the time that I felt that I was doing my best work, but their untimely intrusion made me throw caution, restraint, and conventional wisdom to the wind so that others in the organization could begin to see what was happening and perhaps survive. As unqualified as the wannabes are in the new philosophy I have to give them a great deal of credit in how to manipulate opinion and use power and even sound like they are intelligent. They have the ability to fool many people, enough at least to get themselves into the leadership. I was forced out in a hostile manner twice because of the wannabes. I don’t regret my speaking out even for one second despite being fired and left without the possibility of work for a year afterwards in both cases. In all three cases the hostile takeovers allowed me to leave one country and then find work in another. I may not have had such rich experiences if it were not for the firings.

The schools and those who did the firing have not been as fortunate as me. Two of the schools have closed and the third is down 40% in enrollment. They turned their backs on the new philosophy and just lost their way. Their expediency was their own suicide note.

I can honestly say that I really didn’t know what I was doing when I spoke out against the hostile takeovers. I acted mostly on intuition. I think that my being fired was already calculated by those doing the takeover so I think that the speaking out may have been aimed more at those left behind than to the thieves who took over the organizations.

Strangely enough I now work in an organization whose philosophy and practice is quite traditional rather than being in one whose philosophy is different than the culture’s mode of operation. I don’t often feel compelled to fight or stand up for stuff because a hostile takeover would be an oxymoron in a traditionally based organization. It is not under threat because it doesn’t put itself out there in a culture-challenging way. So I try to operate here more with wisdom than with trying to save it from a takeover. Standing up and speaking out has its joyful moments. There is nothing quite as exhilarating as putting pressure on wannabes to admit what they are doing. Wisdom is more like having a mathematics teacher put a very difficult problem on the board and then giving you a semester to solve it. As you act with wisdom everything and everyone around you changes, but you are not the target of the deficiencies of those around you.

Baha’u’llah’s challenge to us in using wisdom may well be much more difficult than speaking out against an inconvenient negative truth.

Posted on December 15, 2007 by dreamsforpeace

Encouraging Growth Under Stress

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 of nagging and sitting kids out. “What happened to my great group of focused kids?”

It is the holiday season in school so I began to wonder why my kids are so acting the way that children under stress behave. Weird!! What is the stress that children feel during this season? I know that when anyone is under stress they regress to a previous stage so that is how I handle the situation. I take the pressure off the students and do things that require less focus. It is a temporary pain reliever; a tranquilizer.

I wish that I could say that this festive season was only positive for my students, but yesterday I had one group play a game that just two weeks ago they enjoyed in perfect harmony. Six children ended up crying and doing regressive behaviors like wanting to pull out of the game because it didn’t go their way. Is this really what Jesus had hoped for?

I don’t want to be critical of Christmas because, for most Christians, or even non-Christians living in a Christian country Christmas has a great way of bringing families together with a great deal of joy. I think that the stress that my students experience is based upon the idea that they are just going to get whatever material thing they ask for, so during the season when there is a lot of hype, they shift from finding their huge joy in play and activity, to the hope that some thing outside of themselves, is going to bring them joy which it may very well do for a few minutes at least.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not against presents. Bring them on, but it seems pretty clear to me from this experience that when young people think that they are going to find huge joy in material things, that they become stressed and then stop learning at an accelerated rate. It seems to me also, that they function better and learn more when the activities themselves are the reward and gifts are given in moderation.

So I think that the idea of Christmas should be to keep the gifts simple and have a great time with the activities so that children become a lot less stressed.

Posted on December 5, 2007 by dreamsforpeace

Children Are Created to Change the Future and Appreciate the Positives of the Past

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 am a last child and my mother and her mother were all last children. We just all seem to have a way of not going along with things.

My mother’s doctor told her, after her spinal surgery, that she wouldn’t be walking in 10 years. That was was more than 20 years ago. She is now 86 and can still out walk almost anyone. She just has a way of refusing to listen to what others believe. She calls it self discipline or having an iron will, but I think that she believes that things can be different than what the culture adheres to and then just goes and does what she wants. Last year at 85 she started doing Chinese brush painting for the first time and now works on it vigorously. That kind of quality is much more than self discipline. It is just looking the culture in the eye and saying, “Get out of my way. You have no business in my life.” I mean let’s face it. Medical school is supposed to be the pinnacle of western education. Thousands of students compete for very few openings in universities, but my mother just decided somehow that they didn’t know what they were talking about. She did let them operate on her which means that there are parts of the culture worth keeping, but she didn’t hand over her mind to the culture. You have to love that.

First children put their issues right in your face because their issues are your issues. The last children suffer for the weaknesses in the culture. It is extremely difficult for us, the last children, not to throw out the baby with the bath water. When I was 18 I was so unaware of this dynamic, that I went off to a military academy thinking that perhaps if I had more self discipline or something like that, that I my life would really be improved. It didn’t take me long before I started to wake up and see that what the culture had created wasn’t working very well and that self discipline was not the issue. What I had a much more difficult time with was how to sort out what was useful and working, and what needed overhauling. I had a huge desire to throw out everything having to do with an ordered life and restrictions because the academy didn’t have much room for things like creativity and expressing one’s opinions. Now I know that there is a great place for being organized and having rules and discipline, and they don’t exclude creativity, encouragement, and intimacy. I personally think that most of my events and classes work best when I spend the time in the organization and have restrictions on what students can and cannot do. When I add creativity and encouragement into the mix, the classes become magical.

What happened at the academy was that too much criticism and unbalanced order began to have a detrimental effect on my character. It forced me into understanding the role of encouragement and creativity, but the negative effects of the academy’s culture distorted how to integrate constructive opinions and order. I was just so compelled to not see their place because of the pain that I felt. This is the last child’s dilemma. I don’t see it that often in first children. They seem to survive the culture much better, but don’t survive their family very well.

The difficulty for us is being able to live and appreciate the positive things in the culture while at the same time trying to change it. We become so dysfunctional by the negative aspects of the culture that we go into a funk that keeps us from doing our part. I just always feel like screaming out about how bad my culture is/was, but I know it has some amazingly positive aspects to it which I can really appreciate. I just wanted to do to the academy what it did to me, criticize it.

Now I understand that changing the culture is much easier than I ever thought by first appreciating and acknowledging the positives around me, and then systematically going after a specific issue that is causing the greatest difficulty.

Juliet is my youngest daughter so I am now in the habit of seeing where she focuses to see what the culture needs to do. If you read her blog, (hoogliart) you can notice that in recent times she has shared with us a great deal about simplicity. So I think I will take her lead.

Posted on December 4, 2007 by dreamsforpeace

The “Good” Parent

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 can protect them than what capacities they are building.

Y or N

3. I believe that the university my children attend determines how successful they will be. Y or N

4. I believe that when my children make a mistake, that I should intervene and correct them immediately. Y or N

5. I believe that telling children about their positive characteristics has a detrimental effect on their character. Correcting faults is more important. Y or N

6. I am a good parent by being vigilant about my children’s faults and correcting as many of them I can. Y or N

7. When my children go out in public, my first thoughts are with how others will perceive them. Y or N

8. I prefer that my children go to Club Med rather than an experience in the wilderness or jungle. Y or N

9. My child can achieve a lot more success by being more outgoing than ingoing. Y or N

If you answered yes to many of the above questions, you are a “good” parent, at least in the norms that are practiced universally in the world. This is what most parents do most of the time and they don’t seem to be able to have an internal choice to do anything different. They aren’t all bad. Being outgoing, having a university education, making a good impression, correcting faults, and being safe are all meritorious.

The problem with this approach to parenting is that its locus of control is in the hands of some cultural idea that may or may not be useful anymore, if it ever was in the first place. The most telling aspect of whether you are being controlled by your own inner true self that has choice 0r by the culture around you is whether or not you feel compelled to correct faults all the time. If you are an obsessive corrector, you have given over all of your control to the culture. This can be extremely harmful to your child’s future.

When Erika, my eldest daughter, was 19 or 20 attending the University of Victoria, she called me up one day distraught and full of tears. When she thought about her own sense of the future and the university she was attending, she could not find a great match. Nothing about her experience was aligned with what she thought she might want to do in the future. She didn’t know what to do. Well when you are a parent and your children are distraught, the great tendency is to become just as dysfunctional and do silly things. Fortunately, at that moment, something inspirational happened between us. I told her that probably the kind of future that she wanted for herself doesn’t currently exist in the culture and that is why it isn’t in the university program, that she should just think of possibilities and not concern herself so much with the university program. It was enough to stop a few tears.

The next day her Spanish instructor spoke to her about the possibility of going to Mexico to study Spanish and also teach some English courses for several months. Then she figured out that the rest of the year she could study art in another part of Mexico. By breaking the cultural mode she was able to become extremely fluent in Spanish and study the style of art that has the most impact on her personal style. As a parent I was lucid enough for a few moments to encourage her to break out of the culture. I stopped being the “good” parent and it paid off.

There were no cultural rules for me to follow to help my children through their university educations. The “good” parent would say to just go along with the system and it will pay off in the end. It just didn’t work. Erika graduated from university with a masters degree and was invited to do her doctorate. It means that for her, there were parts of the university experience that worked, and parts that didn’t. For some children a university education is not the answer because the cultural system is so counterproductive to who they are that it completely stifles them.

When you do not make your own decisions, but allow the culture to decide your fate by following its pattern, you end up being like everyone else in the culture. Some of it is worth keeping, some is not. You try to correct your children when their thoughts do not match cultural ones rather than encouraging them to live out of their true selves.

Posted on November 29, 2007 by dreamsforpeace

On Watching a Badmintion Match in China

Playing badminton in Asia is much more than than setting up the equipment that you bought at a $10 K-Mart special and then hitting the birdie a few times during your family picnic. It is a major sport and is taken quite seriously. The dominant country is the one you would expect, the biggest, China. Almost all of the world’s #1s in each category come from China. Last week was the China Open and its matches played to pack arenas cheering wildly for the home team. All of this you would expect like watching the NBA or NHL in North America.

What I didn’t expect to see in China of all places was the rather prominent VIP section which the cameras seemed to show between during every break of play. When the the NBA plays on TV in LA or New York, the camera tries to find movie stars or other celebrities because that is what America has become which it finds no embarrassment in. At the China Badminton Open, the VIPs not only got the camera, but they also were sitting in luxury boxes and were served drinks and food with real dishes in plain view of everyone else.

Watching the badminton was thrilling especially when a young Malaysian woman ( I live in Malaysia) beat the #1 Chinese woman in singles, but it struck me as quite peculiar that in a country whose political doctrine is based upon having a classless society, that this kind of action is justified with no apparent shame. The theory of communism is based upon equity, that no one is seen as higher or better than anyone else. The VIP section makes it very apparent that the China does not believe its own rhetoric. In Malaysia there is no shame about VIPs because the country has a king and queen and sultans for each state. They give them an honored place at events because it fits with the country’s model, but in China the actions do not fit with the words. What the government is saying and what it is doing are two different things.

I don’t mean to single out China for this kind of behavior because the disconnection between words and actions is certainly not unique to China. Democratic countries like the U.S. have a great deal of rhetoric about people having an equal voice and equal opportunity, but if you have a voice of opposition toward your employer, you can bet that democratic values will be thrown out the window and so will you. We all know that in the western world money and position gives you more of a voice.

The badminton was magnificent, obviously the highest quality in the world. The mismatch between words and deeds is always settled on the court in sport, but you have to wonder about having a VIP section in China and what effect that has the people.

Posted on November 22, 2007 by dreamsforpeace

Dream: An Alcoholic 5 Year Old

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 me. It seemed to be something that he was doing often. It felt like he would have just kept pestering me for money had I stayed, kind of like a shop keeper who sees that you are eying and item and then chases you down the street to try to sell it to you, so I decided to leave him.

What is very interesting to me is that I teach 5 year olds physical education so I know a great deal about them and what allows them to thrive. They benefit a great deal from positive attention and chances to develop their abilities in an environment that is both playful and challenging, fun and demanding. What I couldn’t get over in the dream was the alcohol. I ended up abandoning the child because of the alcohol and the begging associated with it. I think I believe that the alcohol is a huge deal, that I can’t reach the child as long as the alcohol is around.

What I am understanding, right now as I am writing this post, is that the alcohol is just coping, that I can just ignore it and do what works, which is to provide environments with a great deal of warmth and energy. Many of my students who come from wealthy families fit into the category of abandoned alcoholics. Their parents work day and night, leave them with unqualified child care, and push them into activities that allow them to end up like themselves, overworked and inattentive. The warmth and involvement in their child’s life are just not present. The children become addicted to video games and TV and the wrong kinds of food and later alcohol to fill up the space in themselves left by the abandonment. As soon as you add positive activity and warmth, the addiction goes away.

It is a fairly simple process actually. The complicating factor is that the entire world culture has become the alcoholic 5 year old addicted to the things that temporarily help forget the abandonment which leads them begging for more money to be able to forget more. My process in all of this is a huge desire to avoid the alcoholic behavior which leaves me out there wandering and not being able to get where I want to go.

The message in the dream to me is that what works with 5 year olds should be the factors that work with the present stage of the world, warmth and positive activities that are both joyful and challenging. What I am having a hard time ignoring is the alcohol in the hands of a 5 year old.

Posted on November 20, 2007 by dreamsforpeace

Accelerating Change 3:Dispelling the Myth of Who Can Do Therapy

I have to admit that I have been so anxious to write about this subject for a long time. Sometime in the 20th century (it seems so long ago now) it was decided that as a professional you shouldn’t do therapy with a relative or with someone that you are in love with. Who were they trying to fool? It is in the same category of thinking that requires teachers to not get too close to their students less the students become disrespectful. Who invented this stuff? The very best coaches know how to get very close to their athletes and still work them very hard. Getting close to someone is more like a prerequisite for people working hard rather than a hindrance.

My wife and I have been married for 33 years. We are still in love with each other, but that love does not mean that we cannot be objective about our lives, where we are going and speak very frankly with each other. Love encourages frankness and openness. Everyone in our family does therapy together. We use all the same questions as a therapist, go very deep, and get great results. No one has a license.

The logic is easy enough to explain. Intimacy is a virtue. It simply means the ability to get closer to another. Problem solving is about being objective and detached which means putting distance between yourself and the problem. To be a therapist you need to be able to become intimate to people and keep the issues at a distance, and you can become extremely effective by doing them both at the same time. This is actually what science is all about also being in love with the search after truth and then doing the searching. It means bring the relationship in where it has a lot of warmth and keeping the problems far enough out so that you can see them.

So where does the myth of distancing oneself from a client come from. I am sure that it is not too far away from what owners do when they do restructuring so that they can fire a lot of employees but give themselves a big fat paycheck. If they are distant from their employees, then they can become self serving. If they are intimate with them, then they will be much more willing to sacrifice their own interests for the sake of others.

I am thinking that the clergy have an awful lot of do with our distorted ideas about what is ethical. What is a pulpit about anyone?

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Posted on November 17, 2007 by dreamsforpeace

Accelerating Change 2: The Myth of Self Discipline

It is June of 1968. I am on my way to the Air Force Academy in Colorado after having just graduated from high school in Inglewood, California. Not long after my arrival I am verbally assaulted by 19-21 year olds, who besides getting mad at me for one unshaved whisker, repeatedly let me know that their indoctrination was much harder than mine. Most of us who grew in the 50s-60s had already been used to hearing that kind of rhetoric from the cultural of our parents who grew up in the Great Depression. They prided themselves in telling us how soft and undisciplined we were and how much more discipline they had because they didn’t have TV or other things like that. Now that I am a grandparent I find that I often hear parents complaining about how soft their kids are because they play so many video games and have it so easy.

What my parents generation didn’t know about us growing up in the U.S. in the 60s was that we all had this huge cloud of fear hanging over our heads all the time of the threat of nuclear annihilation. I can distinctly remember, as a 12 year old, having the thought that our whole society was probably going to be blown up. My parent’s generation had lived through a huge depression where they faced a lot of hunger, and then a huge war where lots of people gave their lives. I can honor the sacrifices and difficulties that they endured, but I can never remember even one time where that generation honored my generation for the constant fear of instant annihilation that we faced. The words we heard were lazy and soft.

It is not surprising that the same thing is happening to the current generation. Parents and teachers still have the same complaint that the teachers and parents of my generation had, that this generation is undisciplined and soft. It is difficult to see the tests and difficulties of a child’s life growing up in a world with so much instability and chaos. What we see when we turn on the evening news and what a child sees are two completely different realities. The children carry all of the fears and anxieties that the parents have only much more magnified.

Whatever we fear, our children fear more. Parents and teachers judge their students quite readily for not having self-discipline, but I think that their perception is wrong. What they should see is that the retreat into endless hours of TV and video games is about fear and not the lack of self discipline. The Cold War and Vietnam made me grow up fearful of dying young. It hung over us and was always present, but no one ever acknowledged, or attempted to acknowledge my fear. The cultural message was that we were soft and undisciplined.

I have grown suspicious of the use of self discipline because the true meaning of self discipline is the ability to have a noble purpose and then to make efforts and sacrifices in order to reach it. Whenever someone uses self discipline as an accusation, I begin to ask myself what they are fearful of. What noble purpose are they fearful of pursuing, what have they given up on, and what is it inside of them that yearns to come out?

If parents can learn to acknowledge their own fears, and then to realize that their children’s fears are a magnification of their own, then all of the judgment can be replaced with honoring the challenges that we all face and deal with daily. I think we should have a period of silence about the idea of self-discipline until we learn to acknowledge the pressures and fears that we are all under. Let’s reawaken nobility of purpose before we accuse even one more person of being lazy.

Posted on November 13, 2007 by dreamsforpeace

Accelerating Change 1:Dispelling the Myth of Correction

There is a huge belief in the world sort of like a pandemic of human behavior that, no matter what the research says along with hundreds of books continues to exist virtually unchallenged and unabated. That myth is that when someone does something wrong, i.e. when they make a mistake, that it has to be corrected. A child could have scored the highest math score in the history of humankind, but the huge majority of parents in the world will spend far more time on teaching him why he should put the toothpaste cap on the toothpaste tube, than in analyzing how he has performed so well in mathematics.

What is it with us that we defy science in order to try to correct everything? What is it about a mistake that is so attractive and appealing that we just can’t leave it alone? Why do we have to take out our baseball bats and beat it into the ground until it gives up and says, “ok, I will fix it?”

Take the Apollo 13 failed space journey to the moon. Have you ever seen a group of more competent people working together to get the astronauts back to the planet after they started having problems? It was one of the most creative acts of engineering excellence one could ever imagine. Here they were acting together with a pile of things that would be in the space craft, and they brought them back. Amazing! After the landing I am sure that the whole emphasis on all investigations was to find the thing that went wrong, but what should be interesting to all of us is how they all worked together in harmony and incredible creativity and resourcefulness to bring the crew home safely. Now that is the thing that should have been studied because if NASA could have changed its way of operating so that there was more of that kind of process, then perhaps some of the other engineering disasters that were to come later would not have happened.

One thing is clear. The research says that when we pay attention to the processes that work and then acknowledge them often, people stay engaged in what they are doing much longer and more productively. What happens with correcting is that the words literally pass through as if they were never heard, and then the tones cause people to become fearful, tense, and more likely to quit.

Feeling like you have to correct mistakes all the time comes from a faulty belief about society and humankind. It comes from the idea that people are incompetent and the positions available in the world are limited. If one corrects enough, then there will be a much greater possibility of getting one of the few positions that are available because all of the incompetence will be taken out of them. So the belief goes.

A much more useful belief is that human beings have endless treasures inside of them that can be discovered, acknowledged and allowed to develop in the right environments. Accelerating change happens when you correct only very moderately, but spend most of your time discovering and acknowledging talents and gifts and then giving them an environment to develop.

The tone is always the give away for me. I used to always react when people corrected me like something was really wrong with me. What has changed, or is beginning to change, is knowing that when someone uses an angry or arrogant tone with me, they are the ones in need of the change and not me. When they are angry, they are trying to get me to change for their own self interest. The correction has nothing to do with me, my well-being or my future. It is only about them and what they are trying to get by having me change.

When a parent is angry at a child, the parent is trying to get the child to be what they are not. Positive correcting is not anger-driven. This is always the key because when I am free of anger, I usually have more choice. I can choose to correct or not to correct, but I am not compelled like when I have anger. If someone has a positive tone when they are correcting me, then the advice may be worth listening to , but when they are angry, I am thinking what is it that they want from me.

Posted on November 7, 2007 by dreamsforpeace

Trusting in God: What Does it Mean?

Last weekend at the Baha’i School in Kota Tinggi I went to a workshop on virtues and discovered that I needed the virtue of trusting more, especially trusting in God. So I am reflecting on it here to see what it means.

When I was teaching ethics classes in Brazil, I used to do a unit on how God is perceived according to the various religions in the world. One of the groups of students that interested me a great deal were the Marxists who claimed to be atheists. Their complaint about religion, which is quite valid, is that they saw a lot of people lighting candles and praying, but then just waiting and hoping for God to act rather than acting themselves to get things done. I think that the materialists have the same complaint as well. Marx saw organized religion as a drug which kept people from acting. His hope was that people could be stirred up and start acting rather than being victims of the class system. Unfortunately most of the movements of left proved to be failures because they never allowed people to act as he had envisioned. In countries like China or North Korea God was replaced by the leader of the country who people came to worship. Materialistic cultures, led by ideas from the right have had no shortage of initiative and action, but the lack of spiritual and ethical values, replaced God with things. People rely and trust in things.

Trusting in God for me seems to be the ability to see myself acting with virtue to achieve positive ends and then actually taking steps toward the vision. Trusting in God means trusting in virtue or trusting in the positive spiritual teachings like love. It seems to require a vision of a positive spiritual possibility combined with visualizing oneself with spiritual qualities and then acting energetically. It seems to me that at the moment that the three inner processes come together that there is also a simultaneous connection to the larger Spirit, which we often call the Holy Spirit. Since the Holy Spirit has its own will, which is far better than our own, it guides and directs as it pleases. The magical things that people often wait to have happen don’t seem to occur by praying and sitting around for things to happen, nor by reflecting and coming up with good solutions, nor by action alone.

There seems to be a great deal of power in the combination of the three. So for instance, I want to begin a new program, or start a project, or create a new institute. I first can get a glimpse of the program and its positive purpose, then I can see the picture of myself acting in the program with a specific quality like creativity, then I can begin to act vigorously to realize the vision. The moment that I act is the moment that the larger Spirit enters which begins to change everything in a fundamentally more positive way.

The trusting part is connected to the belief that God will assist all those who step into the arena of service. The most difficult part for me, which may not be for others, is the ability to see myself with the processes or the qualities that are required in project. Right now I am working on visualizing myself as having a lot of expressive qualities. What I am finding important, which you may wish to also try, is visualizing as a dissociated image, an image outside of myself or me acting positively.

The three steps are 1. creating a vision that is positive and spiritually oriented 2. seeing yourself with the initial qualities that make the vision work and 3. acting vigorously.

Posted on November 4, 2007 by dreamsforpeace

Flinging your Life Away

Debby and I just returned from the Singapore Baha’i Summer/Winter School in Kota Tinggi in the south of Malaysia at an eco resort called Kota Rainforest Resort. The chief organizer said you can call it winter or summer because if you know this part of the world, there is really no difference.

They asked me to do a presentation for 90 minutes each morning so one of the things I did was to choose the following quote and then have small groups reflect on it.

Now is the time, O ye beloved of the Lord, for ardent endeavour. Struggle ye, and strive. And since the Ancient Beauty was exposed by day and night on the field of martyrdom, let us in our turn labour hard, and hear and ponder the counsels of God; let us fling away our lives, and renounce our brief and numbered days .

The struggle and the striving is, of course, for a better world, for the coming together of the entire human race as one family, for the elimination of prejudice of all kinds, for the equality of men and women, and for universal education to name a few.

So I had everyone reflect on the following questions and experiences.

What does it mean to fling your life away?

Remember a time when you flung your life away. What was the positive outcome?

What is keeping you from flinging your life away?

If you could fling your life away, what would you do?

Of course, flinging your life away does not mean committing suicide or doing things that are irresponsible. It simple means to fling away the life that we are all attracted to of false promises that has been created by the negative culture of those with self interest and greed and instead live the life that will cause the uplifting of humanity. This is the great desire of most of us, but it is very easy to be caught up in the mundane and the pursuit of transient reality. We were especially happy to meet some of the Baha’is from Vietnam and Iran because of our history with Vietnam and because of the constant persecution of the Baha’is in Iran who still have no rights.

These questions aroused a great deal of thought amongst the participants because most of us find ourselves wishing we could do more to further the cause of the coming together of humanity into one family. I leave them for you here should be interested in a doing some flinging.

Posted on October 29, 2007 by dreamsforpeace

Attending to the True Self instead of Hurt

I have been working with a couple of people in the past few weeks who have issues about how to deal with the hurtful things that have been said to them. Most people think that they are justified in getting angry and then letting the other person know how bad they feel, but, in my experience, it doesn’t seem to have much of a long term effect on the person they are attempting to change nor more than a few moments of relief to get it off their own chests.

So I invented this little exercise that is easy enough to do that really helps to attend to who you are rather than to the hurt inside or how bad the others around you are. Here it is.

Take a sheet of paper and divide it half. On the left side with a regular pencil, write down the worst thing anyone has ever said to you. Then on the right side, with colored pencils, write the best thing that you ever did including the positive qualities that you demonstrated. When you have finished, read the left side in color and then say, “This is who I really am.” Do this about 5-7 times, then read it each morning. It has a very powerful effect.

Here is an example.

Example of a worst thing someone has said

Did your brother do that art work for you? (Quote from a third grade teacher on showing my art work to the class. My brother had helped me, but most of it was mine.)

Example of a best thing I ever did

I organized, along with my physical education team, an interchange with a school for street kids where we played cooperative games, competitive games, and arts together in the park followed by a big barbeque. Many people were worried about drugs, stealing, etc., but we taught our students that we had more to learn from street kids, than they had to learn from us, and that wealth did not mean that we were better than them. The virtues I used were courage, creativity, organizational detail, joy, and team work.

Try this. It is great. The photo is another example only this one was getting a lot of kids together to jump for a worthy cause.

Posted on October 22, 2007 by dreamsforpeace

Reflections on Bali

Flying into Kuala Lumpur after my third trip to Bali, the plane makes it final glide. It is nearly midnight with one more hour’s taxi ride home. My mind drifts in and out of sleep on the well lit freeways of KL mostly in remembrance of a week in paradise. Paradise is a cliche in Bali. It is so rare to find such a rich blend of culture, spirituality, art, ocean and river sports, natural beauty, and warmth in one place.

Bali is not without its problems, but things just have a good way of working themselves out in a positive way. Maybe it is because the people seem to be in a constant state of prayer because of their ceremonial way of life. The unique style of Hinduism, influenced by mother nature, herself, although to my western mind seems superstitious at times, still seems to have the effect of people being in a constant state of prayer which gives a certain peacefulness and tranquility to life to those of us who travel there. It reminds me of the many experiences we have had living and working with the Crees in Alberta.

We arrive at our first hotel shortly past midnight only to find that they don’t have a record of our reservation even though the paper I am holding says that my reservation is confirmed. There is a warm wind from the sea that despite the confusion gives a certain amount of patience. The night clerks, who speak almost no English, along with the taxi driver, spend the next 20 minutes trying to find us another hotel. Nothing is successful by phone so all of us enter the taxi and go on a late night room hunt. We settle on a 30 USD homestay which is quite comfortable. We are quite tired. Early the next morning, 5 am, the roosters sound their morning alarms which awakens us slightly by not enough for the final stirring.

The scuba shop which is located in the homestay is manned by friendly Balinese who give us great information and ideas for possible dives the next day. They lend us some snorkeling gear so that we can check out the local reef near some other hotels. We are still thinking of returning to where we had the original booking, but as we turn into the villas where the coral reef is, we drop all plans, find what we really need in the next 3 days, pay more than we anticipated, and allow our bodies and souls to soak up all that the area has to offer. The Persians have a saying that if you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans. Another way I have heard it said is that man has his plans and God has His plans, but God’s are much better. What has happened to us can only be described as the mercy of God. What we needed was a calm, relaxing place surrounded by beauty, but still active and fun. We stumbled into it, or was it that God knew what we needed and had us stumble to find it? I am sure that the Balinese would answer the latter.

Scuba diving is an interesting activity. It is like taking a leisurely walk through the forest, only instead of greenery, and birds and insects, with the occasional larger animal, you see coral and fish and other creatures as you make your way through the beautiful waters. Every once in awhile you see a big turtle or a ray or a shark. 4 dives in two days gives me a chance to learn to relax underwater and take in the rich beauty of the underwater world. The Balinese divemasters are patient, encouraging, helpful, and observant. I always feel secure with them.

After several days of the ocean, we pack our bags and head to the center of the island to one of Bali’s volcanos that still steams and has erupted in 1929. We sign for a morning adventure up the mountain and find that we are being awakened at 3:00 am, fed a light breakfast in the hotel, taken to the trail’s head and then exerting our feet and legs for more than 2 hours to reach the summit by 6 am to watch the sunrise. The hike is cloudy, dark, and difficult. With flashlights in hand we take frequent breaks. After an hour the trail steepens making the last hour more sweaty and more tiring. Still foggy at the summit, we sit and wait for the clouds to part, sipping hot coffee and tea, nibbling on another light breakfast, watching the monkeys waiting for a handout. We are mostly happy to have made it to the top, but then after nearly 20 minutes, the clouds suddenly scatter, and the sun’s reflection shines brightly on the lake below. It is a magical moment of which one becomes accustomed in Bali.

The hot springs give our muscles a deserved break after the morning climb, and then a great buffet finishes our stay in Bali. We are fortunate that Bali is only 3 hours from our home a blessing that we cherish not knowing how long our stay in Asia will be. I am reflecting on the three trips to Thailand, the trip to Vietnam, Jakarta, Sarawak, the Perhentian Islands in Malaysia.

I feel as the Chinese all hope for, lucky.