Playing for Change: Peace Through Music

A friend of ours shared this incredible clip about a documentary called Playing for Change: Peace Through Music. Here is a link to a clip on Bill Moyer's program about the transformative power of music to connect us. There are actually two parts to the program, both important and interconnected. The part about music starts at about 3:45 minutes into the program. There is a button to watch it in full screen; it's in between the timer and the volume control at the bottom of the video.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/10242008/watch3.html

Thanks Mark!

Cassandra

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In Times of Change, Wild Magic is Afoot by Tama J. Kieves

Tama's Musings

(Note: This article originally appeared as the lead article in the Fall Catalog for the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health)

Change, in all shapes and sizes, can definitely bring out our deepest fears--but it also offers us vital encounters with the bountiful magic of life...

We live in crackling times. Change seems to electrify the air, in our individual lives and in the world. The media reports sad stories, dark messages, dire predictions and warnings. Hope is rarely broadcasted from the channels of the mainstream. Rowdy angels rattle our cubicles and turn our retirement accounts upside down—and they will get our attention. But the challenges of our time will spur new and remarkable solutions. The oyster produces its jewels in response to sand. Agitation gives birth to transformation.

I invite you to consider that in times of change, wild magic is afoot.

For most of us going through change, fear pounds on our door. Yet, this discomfort brings an invitation to awaken our passion and aliveness like never before. Something larger wants to express itself in our lives. Pain often nudges our growth or illuminates where we have been holding back on our true selves. Most of us seem to need a pinch of desperation to awaken our honesty and inspiration. As poet David Whyte says, "Absent the edge, we drown in numbness."

Still, when you hit your edge, numbness looks like Shangri-la. When it happened to me, I remember feeling as though I couldn't breathe. My whole world felt like one of those Salvador Dali paintings, where normal reality begins to drip and arc in unnatural ways. I had been a rising star in the litigation department of an elite, big-city law firm. I had graduated from Harvard Law School with honors and with grand expectations about my future security. I had consciously avoided the flimsy foot bridge of risk, but deep down, I knew I wanted to become a writer. I chose law instead because I wanted financial free dom, baubles, and safety—but I hadn't counted on the ruthless mercy of the soul. I didn't know that you can only avoid yourself for so long before the truth hits the fan.

I never imagined that my life could get so out of control (and I certainly never imagined that I'd eventually bless the day it did). But I found myself sitting at a beach in California, watching the waves and realizing I didn't want to live anymore. I couldn't bear to practice law in that office one more day. But I also refused to leave my job, my identity, my income, and everything I knew. Of course, I was fighting the inevitable. The soul's true desire has infinite strength. The creative part of me, the one I had always considered weak, frivolous, and negligible, had the power to bring about depression, rage, and even the willingness to die. I felt helpless and stripped of all my previous powers to function. In the end it was my vulnerability that gave rise to my greatest freedom and joy. I stopped defending the life that was caving in. I let the last precious scraps fall from my hands. Now I was available to spirit. Just a few weeks later, without a viable plan or income, I walked out of my safe career and into the next phase of my life.

I found it absolutely terrifying to walk into the unknown. I didn't care how many spiritual books said peace would come from letting go of control. I read every one of them with clenched white knuckles. "You will find your way," said my therapist. She clearly had me confused with someone lucid and resourceful. Still I came for more sessions. It felt important to hear these reassuring messages.

Gradually I found my way, or more accurately "the way" found me, breath by breath, as it always does. I wrote about this journey in my first book, This Time I Dance! Creating the Work You Love. The alchemy of change had tempered my fear into absolute wonder, and I wrote: "I've become someone who trusts that though I feel as fragile as a flaming leaf in autumn, I house the capacity of a tidal wave, a meteor shower, a white tornado of inspiration. I've become someone who believes that every human being has a tornado just beneath the skin and that we are meant to live our dreams so that we can discover that natural force within us that blows constriction away."

For years now, I've taught personal-growth seminars, stirred audiences, led retreats, and coached thousands. I have often witnessed this astounding alchemy in others. In unsettling periods, courageous individuals begin to discover that there is more to life than what they think they're losing. They turn to new ways of seeing, being, and relating to their experience. Uncertainty gives them permission and motivation to examine their present life and delve deeper into their own extraordinary mystical and creative reserves. In This Time I Dance!, I explained, "Because I had to search for a sense of safety beyond dollar, privilege, and approval, I inherited the ultimate trust fund. I learned to trust in my own resources and the startling generosity of life. You will, too. And, there is no other security."

Like many, I am still tempted to contract with fear during times of distress within our world, and within my personal circumstances. I find my mind whirring away with "What if this happens?" or "What if that happens?" I search for wisdom and strategy through the lens of limitation. But I know better. As Albert Einstein said, "One cannot solve a problem at the level of the problem." I know my distraught identity will recede into the night sky. To embody new answers and perspectives, I will grow new muscles, read new books, mend wounds and memories, ignite new fires, and take bold steps. Nietzsche says, "It takes chaos to give birth to a rising star." A different self will walk into that different life. Ultimately, that's the service provided by the challenge.

Here's what you need to know: There will be stepping stones, places of safety and clarity on which to stand. More than that, it's actually all solid ground, consistent safety appearing as terror in your imagination. It's solid ground upheld by a net. The net is woven with velvet, roses, and diamonds and governed by a band of mighty angels. The angels have support teams. And the support teams have backups and tech support in India. Love is always with you. Love helped you create that job or marriage or bank account in the first place. It will help you create whatever you need this time, too.

Yes, there is wild abundant magic afoot. The woods stir with howls. The world is restless. Part of me is now eager to witness the genius and healing that is evolving on the planet. Change will bring new responses. More of us will now give birth to the divine qualities within us that we ignored while answering e-mails. We are resourceful and beautiful beyond our imagination.

In her book The Gift of Change, Marianne Williamson says, "I think we stand between two historic ages, when a critical mass of the human race is trying to detach from its obedience to fear-based thought systems. We want to cross over to someplace new." Later, she writes, "As we cross the bridge to a more loving orientation, as we learn the lessons of spiritual transformation and apply them in our personal lives, we will become agents of change on a tremendous scale."

This is what I know: You have barely scratched the surface of your true strength. Your love is your light in shadow times. You have tremendous and unique gifts to offer us. Fear whispers to you about scarcity and guarding your limited resources. But you don't have limited resources. There are only finite assets in the known world. But now we are walking into the unknown. We have new abundance to discover and explore. It's not about clinging to the old sources of power that once sustained us. It's about launching into the inspired capacities, passions, and vitality we have always longed to express.

I'd like to offer you three helpful touchstones when facing the unknown:

Stay in the present moment: Your mind may torture you about choices you made in the past. The present moment can heal the past. Your mind may fly into agitations about the future. This present moment creates your future. Focus on this moment only. You are safe right now.

Do something you love: Write a song, work in the garden, or talk to a good friend. You activate different brain chemistry when having fun or expressing creativity. A loving and inspired mind bubbles with new perspectives and possibilities.

Strengthen your connection to the Divine: You are not alone on this journey. Remember a time when you felt loved, safe, or at peace in any way. That loving force that surrounded you then surrounds you now. Step up your commitment to meditate, pray, walk in nature, visit a spiritual mentor, or anything that feeds your experience of connection and guidance.

Finally, know that when you feel insecure and inadequate, all is well. You're right on track. Transformation defies your imagination. A mother doesn't have to understand or even trust the birth process to give birth. Your next expression wants to be born. Great and mighty forces marshal their strength around you. It's your time. You're one of the brave encountering the new frontier. Change may wear a wolf suit. Still, don't be fooled. It's wild, abundant magic knocking on your door.

With my love and blessings,





Tama

©Copyright 2008 Tama J. Kieves. All rights reserved.

Feel free to forward this copy to anyone you think might enjoy it.
Please keep the entire message intact, including contact, logo, and copyright information. Thank you.


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What neuroscience reveals about how to come up with new ideas

Neuroscience Sheds New Light on Creativity
By: Gregory Berns

Close your eyes and visualize the sun setting over a beach.
How detailed was your image? Did you envision a bland orb sinking below calm waters, or did you call up an image filled with activity -- palm trees swaying gently, waves lapping at your feet, perhaps a loved one holding your hand?

Now imagine you're standing on the surface of Pluto. What would a sunset look like from there? Notice how hard you had to work to imagine this
scene.

Did you picture a featureless ball of ice with the sun a speck of light barely brighter than a star along the horizon? Did you envision frozen lakes of exotic chemicals or icy fjords glimmering in the starlight?

What you conjured illuminates how our brains work, why it can be so hard to come up with new ideas -- and how you can rewire your mind to open up the holy grail of creativity. Recent advances in neuroscience, driven by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) that lets scientists watch brain activity as never before, have changed what we know about key attributes of creativity. These advances, for example, have swept away the idea that there is a pleasure center in the brain that somehow acts as an accelerator to the engine of human behavior. Rather, chemicals such as dopamine shuttle between neurons in ways that look remarkably like the calculations modern robots perform.

Creativity and imagination begin with perception. Neuroscientists have come to realize that how you perceive something isn't simply a product of what your eyes and ears transmit to your brain. It's a product of your brain itself. And iconoclasts, a class of people I define as those who do something that others say can't be done -- think Walt Disney, Steve Jobs, or Florence Nightingale -- see things differently. Literally. Some iconoclasts are born that way, but we all can learn how to see things not for what they are, but for what they might be.

Perception and imagination are linked because the brain uses the same neural circuits for both functions. Imagination is like running perception in reverse. The reason it's so difficult to imagine truly novel ideas has to do with how the brain interprets signals from your eyes. The images that strike your retina do not, by themselves, tell you with certainty what you are seeing. Visual perception is largely a result of statistical expectations, the brain's way of explaining ambiguous visual signals in the most likely way. And the likelihood of these explanations is a direct result of past experience.

Entire books have been written about learning, but the important elements for creative thinkers can be boiled down to this: Experience modifies the connections between neurons so that they become more efficient at processing information. Neuroscientists have observed that while an entire network of neurons might process a stimulus initially, by about the sixth presentation, the heavy lifting is performed by only a subset of neurons. Because fewer neurons are being used, the network becomes more efficient in carrying out its function.

The brain is fundamentally a lazy piece of meat. It doesn't want to waste energy. That's why there is a striking lack of imagination in most people's visualization of a beach sunset. It's an iconic image, so your brain simply takes the path of least resistance and reactivates neurons that have been optimized to process this sort of scene. If you imagine something that you have never actually seen, like a Pluto sunset, the possibilities for creative thinking become much greater because the brain can no longer rely on connections shaped by past experience.

In order to think creatively, you must develop new neural pathways and break out of the cycle of experience-dependent categorization. As Mark Twain said, "Education consists mainly in what we have unlearned." For most people, this does not come naturally. Often, the harder you try to think differently, the more rigid the categories become.

Most corporate off-sites, for example, are ineffective idea generators, because they're scheduled rather than organic; the brain has time to predict the future, which means the potential novelty will be diminished. Transplanting the same mix of people to a different location, even an exotic one, then dropping them into a conference room much like the one back home doesn't create an environment that leads to new insights. No, new insights come from new people and new environments -- any circumstance in which the brain has a hard time predicting what will happen next.

Fortunately, the networks that govern both perception and imagination can be reprogrammed. By deploying your attention differently, the frontal cortex, which contains rules for decision making, can reconfigure neural networks so that you can see things that you didn't see before. You need a novel stimulus -- either a new piece of information or an unfamiliar environment -- to jolt attentional systems awake. The more radical the change, the greater the likelihood of fresh insights.

Some of the most startling breakthroughs have had their origins in exactly these types of novel circumstances. Chemist Kary Mullis came up with the basic principle of the polymerase chain reaction, or PCR -- the fundamental technology that makes genetic tests possible -- not hunched over his lab bench, but on a spring evening while he was driving up the northern California coast. Walt Disney was a decent illustrator, but he didn't imagine the possibilities of animation until he saw his advertising illustrations projected onto the screen in a movie theater. In an extreme example, the preeminent glass artist Dale Chihuly didn't discover his sculptural genius until a car accident led to the loss of an eye and literally forced him to see the world differently. Only when the brain is confronted with stimuli that it has not encountered before does it start to reorganize perception. The surest way to provoke the imagination, then, is to seek out environments you have no experience with. They may have nothing to do with your area of expertise. It doesn't matter. Because the same systems in the brain carry out both perception and imagination, there will be cross talk.

Novel experiences are so effective at unleashing the imagination because they force the perceptual system out of categorization, the tendency of the brain to take shortcuts. You have to confront these categories directly. Try this: When your brain is categorizing a person or an idea, just jot down the categories that come to mind. Use analogies. You will find that you naturally fall back on the things you are familiar with. Then allow yourself the freedom to write down gut feelings, even if they're vague or visceral, such as "stupid" or "hot." Only when you consciously confront your brain's shortcuts will you be able to imagine outside of its boundaries.

Adapted from the book Iconoclast, by Gregory Berns, by permission of Harvard Business Press. Copyright 2008 Harvard Business School Publishing Corp. All Rights Reserved.


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Welcoming Challenges

Welcoming Challenges

If you want to transform your karma to a more desirable experience, look for the seed of opportunity within every adversity, and tie that seed of opportunity to your dharma or purpose in life. This will enable you to convert the adversity into a benefit, and transform the karma into a new expression.

Begin by asking yourself, "What message is the universe giving me? What can I learn from this experience, and how can I make it useful to my fellow human beings? Deepak Chopra The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success



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Which Level of Change are you Operating From?

7 Levels of Change from Rolf Smith’s The 7 Levels of Change

Level 1: Do the Right Things
• Set priorities
• Focus
• Do what’s important first
• Become more effective

Level 2: Do Things right
• Follow procedures
• Understand standards
• Clean up your mess
• Become more efficient

Level 3: Do Things Better
• Think about what you’re doing
• Find ways to improve things
• Listen to suggestions
• Help, coach, and mentor others

Level 4: Do Away With Things
• Ask “Why?”
• Use the 80:20 rule – Simplify
• Stop doing what doesn’t count
• Refocus continuously

Level 5: Do Things Other People Are Doing
• Notice and observe more
• Read about best practices
• Think before you think
• Copy!

Level 6: Do Things That Haven’t Been Done
• Think about Thinking
• Ask “Why not?”
• Combine new technologies
• Focus on different, not similar

Level 7: Do Things that Can’t be Done
• Question assumptions
• Defocus: Get a little crazy
• Break the rules!
• What’s impossible today, but …?
• Wouldn’t it be amazing if…”
• Where will it take pure magic?


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ALLOWING GENTLE ACTION

We exist within and are comprised of dynamical systems which are guided by ancient, innate, and collective wisdom that is expressed through self organization. Our job, to allow what WANTS to happen to be expressed through gentle action.


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Transitions and Transition Management

Worksheet on Transitions

Three stages of Transitions.

Stage 1 – An ending.
Stage 2 – The neutral zone.
Stage 3 – A new beginning.

Elements of Endings:
disengagement – external
dismantling – either external or internal
disidentification – internal
disenchantment – internal
disorientation - internal

Questions to ask
• What is ending?
• What is being lost – by who?
• What can be done to acknowledge the loss?
• What can be done to add something that will make a difference in the coping of the loss?
• What will be ending?
• What can be done to normalize?
• What do you need to let go of?


Elements of the Neutral Zone:
Surrender
Not knowing
Empty

• Accept your need for time in the neutral zone.
• Take the opportunity to discover what you want.

Questions to ask
• What behaviors, observations of self and others, would lead you to believe you and/or your organization is in the neutral zone in dealing with transition and ending?
• What temporary support structures are in place?
• What one thing could you do today to add a temporary support structure – that would make the biggest impact?
• What are you doing or could you do to optimize creativity?
• What changes can you hold off on?

A checklist for people in the neutral zone:
• Take your time
• Arrange temporary structures
• Don’t act for the sake of action
• Take care of yourself in little ways
• Explore the other side of change
• Find someone to talk to
• Think of transition as a process of leaving the status quo, living awhile in the a fertile “time out”, and then coming back with an answer.

New Beginnings
• What would it look and feel like if you were entering the new beginning?
• How would you know?
• Are there temporary support structures that need to be dropped?

Reference: Transitions by William Bridges

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