Allan G. Hunter's Blog, page 83

The Powerful Wisdom of the Heart

I was talking with Baptist De Pape about his movie "The Powerful Wisdom of the Heart", which he's aiming to complete next year. He has already gathered interviews with Deepak Chopra, Marianne Williamson, Jane Goodall, Desmond Tutu, John DeMartini and others, and it promises to be an exquisitely fine movie.

Its aim? All these good people (and others) will be telling us that we need to listen to our hearts to guide us through the maze that is our world. Listening to your head, with all the ego-centered chatter, will let you survive, of course. It just won't get you to a place of peace, beauty, or love. And it almost certainly won't get you to a place of holiness in which you are doing what feels authentic.

Working from the head will get you to a place a bit like Bernie Madoff's. Rich, famous, tortured, and inauthentic. It feels great, but only for a while.

Of course, listening to your heart — really listening and paying attention to it — isn't easy. But it's the only game in town.

The Site is Back

After my unsettling experience with being labeled an infected site, I'm pleased to relate it's safe to browse here.

Actually, it turns out it always was. The software had a glitch.

The amount of learning that resulted was enormous. And probably the biggest thing I learned is that such events offer opportunities. Opportunities included being able to ask for advice. Better yet was the whole experience allowed me to mobilize my patience about technical issues that normally I don't give my patience to. As such it opened up a whole series of new ways of responding to uncertainty….

Every cloud has a golden lining, dotted with diamonds.

Dancing Archaelogists: Ritual Moments

Today's Guardian UK contained a lovely article about the discovery of some ancient sacred Inca 'ancestor' stones in the high Andes. For the Inca, these stones represented, or perhaps actually were, the link between heaven and earth. Such finds, it turns out, are ultra rare, and the excavators 'danced a jig' of joy at what they had uncovered, we are told.

I find it rather charming to think of archaeologists, perhaps bearded, definitely grimy, breaking into a wee highland reel, or perhaps a hornpipe, way up on the deserted tip of an isolated mountain, kicking their heels up and waving their trowels with glee.

I'm sure they were happy at what they had found. I'm also aware, though, that they were at an ancient ceremonial site, one that celebrated the divine link of the earth and the heavens. It doesn't get much more important than that.

So perhaps their dance was, actually, not just a 'look-what-we've-found-now-we-can-get-another-grant' moment. Perhaps they really were, for a second or two, connected to the divine.

I'd like to think so.

Love

When we look at the world with love in our hearts we can't help speaking our truth. For the truth that emerges when we love others is very different from those heartless truths people blurt out in order to wound.

Both require courage. Yet one is going to be more useful than the other.

How will you use your courage today?

Letters; and the Crown Jewels

Every so often someone sends me a letter of appreciation about my writing. It gives me a bit of a boost. It's nice to know that the words are helpful. Lately I've started doing the same thing. If I read an author I think is truly excellent, I'll wing off a few words.

That's not as easy as it sounds, though, since most of the writers who make me feel that way have been dead for a long long time.

But on the rare occasions when I find a good live writer, I find the process of writing a 'thank you' peculiarly interesting. It means I have to work out, in detail, why I like the books concerned, and then I have to try and relay this feeling to the author, and do so in ways that are intelligent and intelligible. After all, one doesn't want to unintentionally insult the person, and one doesn't want to be boorish. Even a sincerely-felt piece of praise can come across as ignorant if one is not careful, a bit like a peasant congratulating a king on having a 'cool hat' when admiring the crown jewels.

Sharing one's pleasure in a book in this way sharpens one's awareness of what the book has been, and continues to be.

Art

A few months ago I wrote about Doug Kornfeld's magnificent installation at the Decordova Museum, 'Ozymandias'. Last night Doug and fellow artist Brian Knep presented a talk at the Watertown Arts Center, and I wish I could reproduce it all here, but I can't. The assembled crowd left totally gobsmacked, inspired, and moved. So I'll share just a bit of it. Here is Brian Knep's short video of one of his pieces.

I wouldn't be surprised to know that random acts of art and beauty were committed as the audience went home that night….

More to follow.

The Best Gift

This time of year we can still have beautiful days - and we know they won't last for long.

The breeze is often laden with sweet autumnal smells, and just a hint of the arctic lurking underneath. The air caresses the skin, yet it's a cool touch, now, unlike the warm enveloping urgency of summer. The wind in the trees whispers us love songs, lyrical, understated. Nature loves us at this time, but in a regretful way, as of parting from us soon.

The best gift we can give ourselves is to take the time to hear these messages. When we see beauty we know for certain, we are loved.

Work?

It takes up so much of our day, doesn't it? And not only do we work, we have to 'dress for work', commute to work, hold meetings about how to 'develop our careers' or 'grow our business', and then we have to decide what we're going to do with our savings so that, when we finally stop work, we won't have to work.

The productive part of work seems to diminish while the overlay of busy activity increases.

This is the real problem of 'work' - it persuades us to accept radical curtailments of our mental freedoms, and we willingly agree. I know I do, all too often.

I'd like to get back to the core of work, without the busy stuff. Do we even think this is possible? Rushing around may give us the illusion of life, but we know that is not the center of who we are.

Thank You

A former workshop participant, called Susan, who had been in Kansas for eleven years, wrote to me recently. Facebook, in its wisdom, won't allow me to reply to her message for reasons I cannot fathom. I just know I can't do it from there.

So this post is directed to Susan, and is to encourage you to persist in your writing as you face the transitions that time has brought. That you wrote to me at all is a good sign - things are clearly being processed and understood in new ways. I'd be happy to hear more. If you don't wish to respond that's fine. I'm not trying to intrude. I do, however, wish to acknowledge your kind message, and I don't know how else to do it. So, keep writing your thoughts. Miraculous things happen when we do.

My very best wishes, Allan

The Nature of Blogging

It may be just me - - but I suspect that the era of the long, thoughtful, carefully crafted blog is over. I regret this, because I spent a fair amount of time on many of my blogs. Yet the question that cannot be avoided is: do people read more than a few sentences on the web? Is twitter really the next wave or just a fad?

Of course, the Kindle and Nook are ways of reading on the same sort of technology, but in those instances we know we're reading a 'book' which is long and will require an investment of time. The blogosphere, and all who sail in her, are not set up with that expectation.

Like those old ads of the 1900s, that were all words and no pictures, the era is changing how we do things, even as we speak, or read….