consciousness – Grow Mindfulness

On Being Deaf

Jessica Kirkness in her memoir, The House With All the Lights On, lets us see and hear what it is like to live with grandparents who are Deaf. Her story covers her experience of living under the one roof with her parents and grandparents and coming to understand the “language of light”. In the process, Jessica enlightens us about what it means to be deaf and how to interact with adults who are deaf.

Jessica’s grandfather spent a lot of time in and out of hospital. She highlighted the problem of a lack of understanding on the part of hospital staff despite being told of her grandfather’s deafness. She maintained that his hospital care was often compromised because “staff had no clue how to interact with him”. This was despite explicit instructions to get his attention before speaking to him, use pen and pad to enable him to understand their message and respond and ensure they actually looked at him when talking.

Jessica herself had studied Auslan (Australian Sign Language) to communicate with her grandparents, particularly with her Grandfather who refused to learn how to speak. She even had to use sign language to communicate to him in hospital that he was dying after a cardiac arrest. Jessica provides an enlightening insight into sign language and its accompanying “visual and spatial tactics” generated by the hands and body movement. She explains that movement serves to direct the viewer’s attention.

Being deaf

Jessica makes the point that, contrary to the general opinion in the community, her grandparents viewed their deafness as a “way of being in the world”, not a deficit (the focus on something missing). They were able to recognise nuances in facial expressions and insisted that everyone faced them directly when they talked to them. This enabled them to expertly read faces and attempt to lip read.

Jessica points out at one stage in her book about the lipreading traps inherent in the English language. She explains that this is the result of what is called “homophemes” – “words that sound different but involve identical movements of the speaker’s lips”. The words themselves have different meanings, leading to confusion and stress for the lip reader.

Discrimination

Jessica quotes Rachel Kolb’s TED Talk, Navigating Deafness in a Hearing World, when she discusses the “primacy of voice” in our hearing world and the fact that “mouths are not a prerequisite for speech”. Rachel makes the salient point that if you can’t hear, how can you learn to speak? She was born profoundly deaf and has become a Rhodes Scholar, writer and disability advocate.

Rachel knew that her speech was defective and had to come to terms with her difference. She spent 18 years in speech therapy to be able to talk, spending a lot of time learning speech through feeling the vibrations in the throat of her speech therapist. Still people thought that her difference in speech was due to a foreign accent.

Jessica highlights the discrimination experienced by her grandparents in what is a “hearing world”. People expect to be understood when they speak (“being heard”, “being listened to”). The distortions in the speech of many deaf people lead to misunderstandings and assumptions about “lack of intelligence” or dumbness. Jessica states that “deafness is the thing that we cannot look away from but cannot bear to face”.

The disruption and disorientation of deafness in a hearing world is not understood and sometimes feared. People lack an appreciation that a deaf person can have a heightened sense of sight and an enhanced peripheral vision (so that actions “behind their back” can sometimes be detected and seen as derogatory). People who are deaf often have a strong sense of touch and vibration. As Jessica remarks, “sound is received in the body in all sorts of ways” and people who are deaf can “hear” music through vibrations in the floor. I had personal experience of this in Melbourne when a group of us visited a school for deaf children and watched them dancing enthusiastically to music by sensing floor vibrations.

The language of light

Jessica’s Grandmother insisted that ‘the entire self is required for conversation”. She could not tolerate people turning away from her when listening to what she had to say. Jessica does point out, however, that the exception to this “whole-self rule” was when she was driving. She notes too that “touch and sight were always interwoven” for her grandparents. The world for them was “experienced through the interplay of the eyes and body”.

Consciousness of light was important because being in front of windows when communicating could create shadows that distort the images of hands and faces. The world of deaf people is “driven by sight” where looking is equivalent to knowing. Gerald Shea titled his book The Language of Light to express the role of light in sign language and the centrality of the visual for the deaf. When the lights go out there is no dialogue.

Reflection

Jesscia’s book helped me to understand how easy it is to unconsciously exclude a person who is fully or partially deaf. It reminded me that I have a friend in her eighties who is hard of hearing and I often overlook the need to face her when I talk. She points out that being able to speak multiple languages, she has developed a propensity for lipreading – something I deprive her of when I am not facing her. She often notes too that I “mumble”, failing to properly articulate my words which increases her sense of isolation.

By gaining an understanding of what it is like being deaf, we can learn to better include deaf people by more conscious speech and actions. As we grow in mindfulness, we can increase our awareness of people’s differences, our own limitations and biases and be more compassionate in our interactions with others.

Having been considerably moved by Jessica’s book, I wrote the following poem from the perspective of someone who is deaf:

Being Deaf

Being deaf is not a deficit
It’s a way of being in the world.
With refined senses of sight and touch
A reliance on light for meaning.

Face me so I can read your lips
Be in the light so I see the nuances in your facial expressions.
I am not dumb, I am deaf
I sense sound through vibrations.

While I can’t hear
I can see and feel things that you don’t notice.
My vision is not narrow
I can see my periphery clearly.

Don’t avoid me out of fear
Approach me out of curiosity.
Don’t judge me for my voice distortions
Listen intently for my message.

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Image by Ivana Tomášková from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Life After Death and Spirit Communication

Mark Anthony, JD, has written a landmark book covering life after death and spirit communication. The book draws on his research, personal experience, stories of other people and quantum physics. The stories that Mark reports in detail are drawn from people who recount their Near death Experience (NDE) or their Shared Death Experience (SDE) as well as the stories that arise in his work as a “spirit medium”. Mark is described as a “psychic explorer” and is known as the Psychic Lawyer®, being an experienced, Oxford-educated trial lawyer.

He conducts “spirit communication sessions” face-to-face around the world and live on television and radio. His goal is to enable people who have lost a loved one to better manage their grief through receiving assurances from the person’s spirit on the Other Side. Mark’s book incorporating the latest science and illustrative stories is titled, The Afterlife Frequency: The Scientific Proof of Spiritual Contact and How That Awareness Will Change Your Life.

Life after death – the survival of consciousness

Quantum physics has demonstrated that everything in our world, including our blood cells and beach sand, are made up of quanta, “subatomic particles of electromagnetic energy”. Einstein maintained that “everything is energy”. The Law of the Conservation of Energy states that “energy can neither be created or destroyed”. Since everything is made up of quanta, Mark contends that “everything is energetically connected”.

Consciousness, often referred to as the “soul” (our individuality shaped by our experiences, personality, knowledge and other attributes) is described by physicists as “the quantum electromagnetic field within the brain”. In his Afterlife Frequency book, Mark explains how he developed the concept of the electromagnetic soul, drawing on history ranging from 4,000 years old Hindu beliefs, through Leonardo Da Vinci’s scientific research, Buddhism beliefs, the work of Sir Isaac Newton and the present-day research of Dr. Gary Schwartz of the University of Arizona.

Given that energy cannot be destroyed but only “transformed from one form to another”, Mark and world leading scientists, contend that as we are energetic beings, “the energy of life transcends physical death”. The electromagnetic soul thus lives on after death and exists in another dimension at a higher energy frequency, no longer constrained by the limitations of the human body. Mark affirms that the electromagnetic soul is neither created by the brain nor extinguished on its death. He draws on an analogy developed by Professor Hans-Peter Durr of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics to argue that “at death the electromagnetic soul is uploaded to a higher frequency” and joins what he terms “collective consciousness”.

Spirit Communication

Mark makes the significant point that spirit communication does not come in a direct form like text messaging. Sometimes the message is received in the form of metaphors, feelings, images or symbols. This means that interpretation of the message may not be immediately available to the medium or to the person for whom the message is intended. Mark explains that the understanding of the message by the intended recipient may take hours, days or even years. Eventually, at an appropriate time, the meaning in the message becomes clear as the associations connected to the message are identified and understood. Mark gives examples of this time lapse in understanding by people for whom he has performed “readings”.

Mark contends that despite the fact that we are not all mediums like him (who is a fourth-generation medium), we are each able to communicate with spirits. He explains that the pineal gland in the body, also called the “psychic gland”, enables us to receive higher frequency transmissions. As Mark explains because we all have the same “physical apparatus”, “everybody has the ability to have a psychic experience”.

Barriers to spirit communication

In a chapter titled The No, No, No, Syndrome, Mark identifies a number of barriers that people create that effectively block spirit communication. He draws on many examples experienced during his spirit communication workshops or phone calls to explain the nature and impact of these barriers. For example, people may be so anxious or fearful that their thinking becomes clouded; they may be so emotive (wanting a communication desperately and subsumed by grief) that their emotional state acts as a “deflector” of the spirit communication; or they may overthink or “hyper-analyse” the message during the communication. Mark argues that feeling should predominate during the communication, analysis should come after the message is received. He suggests that inviting not demanding, and feeling not analysing, is the way to effectively receive spirit communication. Spirit communication also requires patience because messages received can have multiple levels of meaning.

How to become receptive to spirit communication

Mark maintains that we can each develop what he calls spiritual situation awareness so that we are “capable of getting in sync with afterlife frequency”. This awareness enables us to detect spirit communication in the form of “signs” and be able to interpret and act on them.

He suggests that one of the easiest ways to develop the requisite awareness is to begin by paying attention to our immediate world through our senses, what Jon Zabat-Kinn calls Coming to Our Senses. We can start by listening to sounds in our immediate environment and then expand our attention to take in sights, smells, tastes and touch. Through this process we can eventually develop natural awareness and what Mark calls situation awareness, a trait highly developed by emergency services personnel.

Mark contends that we can take our awareness to a higher level moving beyond awareness of our physical environment to awareness of “what is happening around us energetically”, what he terms spirit situational awareness. He proposes a 4-part technique that builds spiritual situational awareness over time. The technique he describes in his Afterlife Frequency book is called the RAFT Technique:

Recognize
Accept
Feel
Trust

Mark maintains that with practice we can develop unconscious competence in recognizing, accepting, feeling and trusting the signs and messages received through spirit communication. We can also progressively remove the blockages that would otherwise interfere with the communication and our understanding of what is being communicated. Mark explains that practice is necessary because we can unwittingly block the “energetic impulse” communicated by a spirit which would, without the blockage, create a connection to the electromagnetic field of our brain.

Reflection

As we grow in mindfulness, we can develop our natural awareness, our spirit situational awareness and our receptivity to spirit communication if we choose to do so. Mindfulness with its focus on paying attention purposefully, can enrich our lives on many dimensions – physical, psychological and spiritual. The benefits of mindfulness are far-reaching and encompass the totality of human experience.

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Image by Đức Tình Ngô from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site and the resources to support the blog.

Our Friend Kay: A Life of Openness and Curiosity

Recently we lost a long-standing friend with the death of Kay Dickie on 3 August 2023. My wife and I have known Kay for forty years – from both a work and a personal perspective. Her career was interlaced with both our work lives during her many interludes in the world of work. More recently, Kay has shared her love of music with us in the wonderful setting of Stradbroke Island. Her life was lived with a mindful curiosity that manifested her inquisitee mind and her deep appreciation of everything in life – life’s mysteries, nature, her friends and beloved dog, .

Exploring the world of work with Kay

I first met Kay when she was Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Coordinator in the Federal Department of Social Security and I was Director, Corporate Services reporting to the State Director. One particular case of sexual harassment stands out in my mind because it illustrates Kay’s commitment, compassion and dogged perseverance. She had been blocked by multiple levels of management when trying to investigate what proved to be a serious case of sexual harassment. Kay, through my agency, was able to act to unearth the issue, circumvent the power politics and prevent the harassment from continuing.

Kay’s inquisitive mind was not easily fobbed off by managerial intransigence – it only encouraged her to explore deeper and exhaust all avenues for a resolution. My current consulting colleague, Julie Cork, who was EEO Director at the Commonwealth Public Service Board in Brisbane at the time, commented that Kay had a profound understanding of the EEO Coordinator role and was able to articulate it clearly within her Department and in the broader Coordinator network.

Kay was a strong advocate of action learning and in her work and personal life she epitomised supportive challenge and asking fresh questions as encouraged by Reg Revans, the Father of Action Learning. From 1991 – 1994, Kay was the Project Manager for the University of Queensland Action Learning Program (ALP) which was judged Best Practice by the Committee for Quality Assurance in Higher Education. Kay and I wrote a report on the first two years of the Program which was published by the Tertiary Education Institute at the University of Queensland in 1993.

I was External Consultant and Mentor for the Program Team in the first five years of the ALP Program which eventually ran for 9 years. The program – its philosophy, processes and outcomes – was the subject of my PhD published in 1996, Action Learning for Professional and Organisation Development: An Action Research Case Study in Higher Education. The PALS Model developed as part of my PhD research was published in an article I wrote for The Learning Organisation Journal 2002, Creating innovation and synergy through a parallel action learning structure.

Kay was also Project Manager for the 1995 National Research Project, Action Learning in Vocational Education and Training. The project involved 9 researchers, including myself, and produced four major reports which became the foundation documentation for the nationally accredited Certificate 4 in Change Management – Action learning. As part of the project, Kay and I undertook a series of interviews of managers who had introduced action learning into their organisations. This research included an interview with the CEO of Kinney Shoes (Australia) that had nearly 500 stores throughout Australia. Kay and I collaborated with a number of other researchers on the project to produce Volume 3: Applied Principles for the national project. This volume incorporated cases studies developed through our interviews.

Curiosity about energy and consciousness

Kay was a prime mover in organising the ALAR National Conference in 1996, Energy Switch: the possibilities offered by action learning, action research, and process oriented methods. Dr. Bert Cunnington provided the plenary presentation on the topic, All you need is love: the loving, learning organisation. Bert maintained that organisations needed to move from “the negative energy of fear, doubt, and competition” to the “positive energy of love, faith, collaboration and creativity.” Bert referred to the research that highlighted the high incidence of illness and the related job dissatisfaction in organisations. He contended that the solution to dealing with the stresses of current organisational life lay in the 4 C’s – challenge, commitment, control and connection. The emphasis here is on stimulation through challenge, commitment to meaningful work, individual self-efficacy and agency and connection through social support (within and outside work and family). Bert’s presentation is documented in the ALAR Journal under the title, Dedication- to Dr. Bert Cunnington (Vol 2 No 2 – pages 3-17).

Kay was fascinated by consciousness and the relevant insights from quantum physics and frequently referred to energy as a key element of life. She cited Albert Einstein’s perspective, “What we call matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses”. Einstein’s perception that “everything is energy” that can only be changed, not destroyed, opened up Kay’s horizon on consciousness and spirituality. She agreed with Einstein’s statement, “We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us”. Kay reflected what Einstein said of himself, “I’m passionately curious”. On her 76^th birthday, three months before she died, Kay reflected, “the older I get, seeking is the only game in town”.

Reflection

Kay began exploring quantum physics and energy when she was undertaking a Masters Degree. Like Margaret Wheatley she was keen to learn what quantum physics meant for organisations and her own personal life. Margaret explored the writers in the area in her ground-breaking 1992 book, Leadership and the New Science: Learning about Organizations from an Orderly Universe. Margaret’s quest and challenging questions, mirrored Kay’s search for understanding.

Cliff Bunning, Kay’s supervisor, explored in depth how quantum physics relates to developing our spiritual life. In his 2011 book, The Direct Path to Self-Realisation and Beyond, he maintained that “all feelings good and bad are basically the same energy…flowing in the opposite direction”. He suggests that positive energy can be generated by expressing gratitude, being forgiving, giving positive vibes, having a pet, feeding your mind with positive information, connecting with nature regularly and “following your heart”.

Global leadership coach and biophysicist, Ginny Whitelaw, contends that leadership in organisations is about resonance. In her book, Resonate: Zen and the Way of Making a Difference, she maintains that the role of a leader is that of an “energy concentrator”, achieving “synchronous vibration” with followers through listening, mindfulness practices such as Tai Chi, connecting with the energy of nature and accessing our positive energy force through deep breathing.

Kay exhibited positive energy derived from her deep love of nature, her extended social network, and her positive outlook on life. She drew energy from everything around her and especially the waters and trees of Stradbroke Island. She once commented, “I need to be near water, otherwise I shrivel up”. Her life was a simple life that made a difference in the lives of the people she interacted with.

Diana Winston, Director of Mindfulness Education at UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC), defines mindfulness as paying attention to our present moment experiences with openness and curiosity and a willingness to be with what is. Kay epitomised mindful living. As we grow in mindfulness through our own connection with nature and all that is positive in our lives, we can also make a real difference through the positive energy and vibration that we emit.

While composing this blog post, I came across a song, Curiosity Abounds, by Modus Operandi. Their instrumental album that this song is drawn from, Organic Exploratorium, involves “Discovery backdrops and positive soundtracks filled with the promises of education, research, the future”. The album includes other songs like Curiosity in Planets, Inquisitive Minds, Reality Beckons, Explore the Unknown, Another Day to Explore – all of which resonate strongly with Kay’s outlook on life.

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Image by Sven Lachmann from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site and the resources to support the blog.

The Challenge of Mindfulness in the Digital Age

Jon Kabat-Zinn, mindfulness teacher and creator of MBSR, recently presented a workshop during the Mindfulness & Compassion Week (June 6- 13, 2021). Jon’s focus was on mindfulness in the digital age. He addressed both the downside and upside of digitisation and noted particularly the benefits accrued through online communication during pandemic-related lockdowns. In this post, I want to focus on the downside of the digital age – the challenge it poses to our ability to pay attention on purpose , non-judgmentally, in the present moment.

Jon was especially concerned about the manipulation of our minds and attention through social media and other online communication channels. He drew on the work of the Centre for Humane Technology to explore both the human costs of the digital age. He strongly encouraged exploration of this website and its podcasts along with the film, The Social Dilemma, which he suggested should be viewed multiple times.

The downside of the digital age – the loss of attention, consciousness, and awareness

Jon maintained that in the digital world it has become hard to discriminate between what is true and what is false, between what is fact and what is myth. He argued that we have “lost agency” and levels of decision making through social media and related digital technologies and the embedded “surveillance capitalism”. The language we encounter is manipulative and “propels us out of the moment” – we lose our grounding in the present moment. We are told that a video is “a must watch”, we are warned that we will “miss out” if we do not take a particular action and we are enticed to act to gain “rewards”, some of which are spurious. Jon points out that the incessant barrage of information/misinformation and constant attempt to capture our attention leads to dysregulation in our life, adversely affecting our breathing, eating and sleep.

He argued that the greatest need for humanity today is to address the “loss of awareness” – the lack of consciousness that we are losing control over our minds, destroying our environment, and wrecking the lives of people through perpetual, disruptive advertising that attempts to capture our attention and steel our focus. He encouraged us to increase our awareness of the impacts of the digital age so that we can live our life more fully in the present moment and not be caught up in the mainstream culture of acquisition (vs savouring), of form (vs substance), of envy (vs gratitude), and of self-absorption (vs compassion).

Our diverted attention

The Centre for Humane Technology works tirelessly to help us to develop the awareness of the downside of the digital age, especially through their insightful podcast series, Your Undivided Attention. One example of this powerful message is the podcast, When Attention Went on Sale, which features an interview with Tim Wu, author of The Attention Merchants: The Epic Struggle to Get Inside Our Heads.

Tim maintained that the “commodification of our attention” actually began with the introduction of ad-supported newspapers. The readers became the product, the focus shifted from a dissemination of the “truth model” to that of the “attention model” and we became the “puppets” of attention-grabbing advertising and media. The content focus shifted to what shocks (death and violence), what titillates (sexualisation) and what raises curiosity (misleading headings). The media exploited emotions of fear, scepticism, greed, and envy. Early on, advertising posters with the work of famous artists were deployed throughout Paris as a means to invade people’s attention. They were eventually removed when Parisians complained that they invaded their attention and were a blight on the landscape.

Commercial interests now drive the competition for our attention and television offers “precise marketing” through creating an “emotional resonance” with the viewer, heightened by the visual medium. Human attention is being harvested in the pursuit of “economic and attention power” – attention gained by TV stations leads to higher ratings which leads to more advertising and revenue. Wu describes this process as the “harvesting of human consciousness” in an environment that is scarily unrestrained and unregulated. We can observe the resultant imbalance in information dissemination when we notice that a TV Program designed to provide an “alternative perspective” on the news of the day devotes more time to advertisements (reinforcing mainstream culture) than to alternative commentary during a one-hour program. Viewers of ad-driven TV stations often engage in “channel surfing” to evade ads but this leads to what Jon calls “fragmented attention”.

Our attention is up for sale through Google ads where buyers of ad exposure in search results actually bid for the right to appear higher in the listed results. While quality (relevance, originality, and depth of content) is an espoused determinant of ranking, price plays a major role and advertisers are encouraged to “outbid” each other for our attention.

Social media has had a significant impact on attention distraction and distortion. This has accelerated with the emergence of “selfies” (obsession with self over being present to the moment and location), the commodification of bodies (via private membership of TikTok for example), and “follower ads” on LinkedIn and other online advertising media. The concept of “friends” (as per Facebook) has moved from “a bond of mutual affection” to that of a relatively disinterested follower and “friends” are purchased via online marketing organisations to boost one’s social presence. Positive product reviews by friends are harvested to build Google rankings – companies even pursue us relentlessly to gain our “review” (even when they have misled us about a product offering).

The game is all about grabbing “eyes on the page” (and Google, for example, measures pages visited, time spent on a page, and percentage of people who view only the “landing page” as they “surf”). There is now software available to track your eyes as they view a webpage (with eye movement displayed via a heatmap). We are becoming conditioned to providing those “eyes on the page” – “pop-ups” encourage us to register for continuous information/ad exposure and whenever we have to spend time waiting, our default action is to reach, unthinkingly, for our mobile phone.

The concept of “social influencers” has emerged to identify influential people who have the power to affect our buying decisions and who work in collaboration with brands who use their influence to persuade us to make purchases. The source of the influencer’s power (e.g., celebrity status, expertise, sexual appeal) and the relative extent of their power (how many followers) is variable. In consequence, influencers are viewed by brands as “social relationship assets” of variable worth.

Mobile phones are increasingly part of everyday life for people enabling constant access to the Internet, social media and to disruptive “notifications”. Some people become obsessed with “keeping up-to-date” via social media and constantly access their phones (even sleep with them). Others feast on the news with all its inherent biases, selective reporting and tailored reinforcement of the receiver’s views, perspectives, and politics.

Supermarkets employ email-based rewards systems built around receipt scanning and identification of individuals’ typical shopping basket. They also attempt to widen purchasing choices by introducing bonus-boosted products not normally purchased by an individual. Buyers can be “led” to purchase products they do not need or want. The rewards system works on the principle of intermittent reinforcement employed by gambling machines where ongoing “jackpots” are given to entice the gambler to continue spending.

In summary, in a digital world there are so many mechanisms at play to capture our attention and multiple drivers such as profit, profile enhancement and social influence to sustain these constant, concerted efforts to distract us and divert our attention. This makes it increasingly difficult to be mindful in our everyday life unless we take conscious steps to develop mindfulness to counteract the adverse impact of these online media.

Reflection

Jon also discussed the many benefits of the digital age and this will be the subject of a subsequent post. Whether we accrue these benefits or suffer the adverse effects of the digital age, comes down to our own choices and behaviour.

Jon emphasised the need to be very aware of the impact of digitisation on our behaviour. He suggested, for instance, that we should be particularly mindful of our mobile phone use and its potential adverse effects on our quality of life and our relationships.

Jon maintained that the discipline of daily mindfulness meditation can flow over into every aspect of our lives including our use of digital media. As we grow in mindfulness, we can develop increased self-awareness, improved self-regulation, and enhanced insight into the adverse impacts of our own behaviour with respect to digital media.

Self-reflection on our use of digital media and its impacts on our relationships, on our level of personal stress and on our ability to concentrate and be productive, can provide the impetus for behaviour change. The following reflective questions could serve as a starting point:

To what extent is your focus on social media reducing your span of attention?
How often is access to your mobile phone your default behaviour when you have to spend time waiting?
How often are you distracted by social media when in conversation with an individual or a group?
To what extent does social media determine the content of your conversations, e.g., how often do you share rumours, myths, scandals, and what “celebrities” are doing?
How much do you rely on social influencers for your purchase decisions?
To what extent does the time you spend on social media limit your time spent in nature, experiencing its numerous benefits?
Does your social media presence contribute to the quality of life of other people?

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Image by wei zhu from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.

Bringing Consciousness to Marketing

Richard Taubinger, CEO of Conscious Marketer, recently presented a video on the concept of the Conscious Marketing Code. Richard is one of the 30+ world-class faculty engaged for the Inner MBA to be launched in September, 2020. The program has been developed by Tami Simon and her team at Sounds True in collaboration with a number of other organisations including LinkedIn and New York University. The 9-month program will be provided online on a global basis and incorporates monthly video/audio training, facilitated online learning pods, a virtual curriculum for at-home learning and modelling of “practice skills”, including mindfulness.

Richard emphasised the need to bring consciousness to marketing. So much of what goes on in marketing is “product push”, not customer focused. He suggests that you have to bring full awareness to what you are marketing, who you are marketing to, why you are marketing and how you are going about the marketing process.

Awareness of what you are marketing and who you are marketing to

Richard maintains that the real breakthroughs in marketing occur when you are able to position yourself on an existing demand wave. He gave the example of Elon Musk who realised there was pent-up demand for an electric truck – truck sales were rising; electric car sales were increasing exponentially; but no one had put these two elements of the demand wave together. Musk made a presentation of his concept of an electric truck for two hours at an international conference and within 24 hours had received 250,000 pre-orders.

Richard pointed out that Toyota, on the other hand, had developed the requisite technology in their Prius hybrid car and were a top seller of trucks but failed to see, or respond to, the incredible growth in the demand for an electric truck. At this stage of the discussion, we could ask, “What is your “electric truck”? – “What pent-up demand, that you could service, are you overlooking?”

It requires a lot of thinking time, collaborative endeavour (two brains are better than one) and persistence to identify a demand wave that you can tap into. Laurence Boldt in his book, Zen and the Art of Making a Living, draws on Plato’s saying to emphasise the importance of the beginning of an endeavour, “The beginning is the most important part of the work”.

Richard points out that you should not be discouraged by the fact that a lot of other people are providing products and services to meet the needs reflected in a demand wave. He argues that this only confirms that there is real demand there. Richard encourages you to “find your place in the wave”, or the next wave following the first. He maintains that “demand waves come in sets” and it is possible to position yourself in front of the wave based on your unique set of experience, knowledge, skills and level of consciousness.

Richard points to two other examples of people positioning themselves and riding a demand wave. Tami Simon with her collaboratively developed Inner MBA, has positioned this program to meet the global wave of mindfulness and increased consciousness in business. The program addresses the gap in development of the “inner landscape” left unaddressed by traditional MBA’s.

Thomas Hübl, author of Healing Collective Trauma, realised that many people were addressing individual trauma, but the other side of this demand wave was the existence of collective trauma (which has now been compounded by the global pandemic). He developed a Collective Trauma Online Summit with the help of Richard’s team and attracted 52,000 people in 176 countries. Like Tami, he was able to find his own place in a wave and ride the wave to success. Awareness of what you are marketing is not unlike developing the skills of surfing – being able to read a wave, position yourself to catch its peak and successfully maintain your balance as you enjoy the ride.

Awareness of why you are marketing

Richard suggests that to tap into your “why” of marketing (and overcome internal resistance or fear), you can envisage yourself as a doctor or healer. Effective marketing is offering solution-based products and services to address a real need or hurt currently experienced by potential customers. He argues that if you have a “cure” or a solution to people’s pain, suffering or significant need, you have a moral obligation to make it available to them.

It takes a lot of sensitivity and strength to face up to the marketing challenges inherent in your life purpose if you are going to make a real difference in the world, drawing on your unique combination of experience, knowledge, skills and insight. Sometimes, it requires a progressive re-framing of what you are offering and why, to achieve a real alignment between your marketing and your life purpose.

I can offer here a personal example of reframing to achieve a better alignment with purpose. My colleague and I have been jointly facilitating a longitudinal action learning program for managers, called Confident People Management (CPM), for over 12 years. When I first joined my colleague in conducting the program, it was offered as a series of discrete principles, processes and practices designed to help managers develop a team that was “businesslike and professional”. Over time, we were able to reframe the program as offering a way to create “a mentally healthy and productive workplace” and developed an integrated, cultural model to reflect this reframing. In more recent times, riding the wave of mindfulness, we have been able to offer the program as a form of “consciousness raising” for managers who are attempting to achieve committed engagement of their staff (and their boss).

Awareness of how you are marketing

There is an established saying that “the medium is the message”. Richard points out that what is important is to decide on a “primary medium and platform” and maintain your focus on these to achieve a consistent and continuous message about what you are offering. He points out, for example, that you cannot be effective trying to market meditation through visuals and written content that generate fear.

Awareness of how you are marketing involves understanding the need for alignment amongst your offering, your unique skill set and your medium/platform. For example, if you are person who enjoys writing and are good at it, you might choose to write your own blog and/or produce books, booklets or magazines. If you are good at interviewing or presenting, like Tami Simon, you might develop a series of podcasts like Tami’s Insights at the Edge podcast series. If you are good at creating visuals and are comfortable being on video, you might develop a video podcast series. The primary platform you choose should then be aligned to your purpose and medium (oral, written or visual) – e.g. you could choose a media platform such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter or Zoom.

A key point that Richard makes is that you are very much a part of the message – and this takes both congruence (alignment of words and actions) and a preparedness to “stand in front of your brand”. This visibility on behalf of your brand is critical for success in conscious marketing. The way you achieve personal visibility has to be something that you are comfortable with – a medium/platform where you can share your purpose, values, “backstory” and fundamental marketing message. It could even take the form of introducing one of your consultants and explaining the background to their presentation at a breakfast seminar or personally making presentations at a conference.

Another aspect of personal visibility is supporting a cause that is close to you, consistent with your offerings and is a real focus of your energy and endeavours. McKinsey & Co., sharing their research and insights in a paper, Reimagining marketing in the next normal, maintain that one of the current trends is a growth in “social consciousness values” (accentuated by the global spread of the pandemic and the understanding that “we are all in this together”). They maintain that marketers must communicate a “strong sense of a brand’s purpose” and one way to do this is to promote a cause that the brand stands for and is seeking to make a difference in relation to that cause, e.g. mental health in the workplace. They stress that integrity is critical here – no posing but real action, projects and commitment, otherwise you undo all the conscious work and effort you have put into developing your marketing.

As a final point, I want to stress the need for persistence and discipline inherent in Richard’s message. He suggests that a conscious marketer develops content and publishes on a consistent basis. Consistent content creation and publishing reinforces your message about your products and services and keeps your offering in people’s sight (remember, “out of sight, out of mind”). He maintains that you need to also constantly (at least once a week) build your email list and/or subscriber list to expand your marketing reach.

Reflection

It is so easy to continue to do what we always did in marketing. Research and reflection enable us to keep abreast of the demand wave and anticipate the next wave. As we grow in mindfulness through meditation, reflection, mindfulness practices and active listening, we can increase our inner and outer awareness, achieve alignment with our life purpose, tap into our creativity and consciously develop our products/services and a congruent marketing strategy.

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Image by Kanenori from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Understanding Death and the Process of Dying

Rheanna Hoffmann recently interviewed Frank Ostaseski on healing grief through compassion and love. Frank founded the Metta Institute whose mission is to provide innovative educational approaches to developing skills in “mindful and compassionate end-of-life care”. Rheanna herself is the founder of The Whole Practitioner, dedicated to helping nurses move beyond frustration and burnout to “rediscover, health, balance and their core values”.

Frank and many other writers on the process of dying maintain that it is not just a medical event but is much broader and more holistic than this form of the mechanical model. Increasingly, research is confirming too that consciousness is more than our physical brains. Frank argues that the unwillingness in our culture to talk about death and the dying process is preventing us from learning the lessons that the dying can teach us and our children. He contends that if we learn about the dying process and face the reality of our inevitable death, we can better appreciate the “preciousness of life” and live our lives more fully and in alignment with our values and purpose.

The process of dying

Frank describes dying as a process of “stripping away”. It’s as if everything that is associated with our “ego” – our sense of self – is peeled away. Undoubtedly, our mental and physical capacities decline, and this begins with the aging process. But the stripping away is much more than that – it is losing attachment to everything including our spouse or partner, our home, our roles, our possessions, and the animals in our life. Frank also talks about dying as a “sacred process of transformation” through which we see things in a new light, have a deeper understanding of the meaning of life and the value and true purpose of our own life – in other words “an awakening”, no longer limited by our concept of a “small separate self”.

Peter Fenwick, when talking about What Really Happens When We Die, suggests that the more we hold on to our ego needs and refuse to let go, the more difficult is the dying process. Living our life in a selfless way – not totally self-centred — makes the process of dying easier because we are not absorbed in holding on to our attachments. Being “other-centred” in the pre-transition phase of our life makes dying easier and enables the final transformation that Peter describes as entering a “spiritual domain” where you lose your identity as a separate self and become identified with the total cosmos – the universal whole.

Peter discusses the change in our level of consciousness in the light of research into Near Death Experience (NDE). He maintains that consciousness research focused around NDE experiences confirm a “widening of consciousness” that manifests in:

Losing the self-narrative – the self-talk that we employ to boost or deflate our egos
Being just in the moment – not absorbed in the past or anxious about the future
Experiencing “unbelievable” happiness
Tending to be transcendent – losing a sense of duality (our self and others) and becoming merged with the cosmos.

Peter has co-authored The Art of Dying with Elizabeth Fenwick which provides personal accounts from those who have been dying and people (healthcare professionals, carers and family) who have been with them and supported them in the process of dying. The accounts discussed, as well as other research into NDE experiences, confirm that consciousness is much more than our physical brains. Monica Renz, author of Dying: A Transition, provides a process-oriented approach to end-of-life patient care that incorporates confirming the dignity of the patient, understanding the transition process of dying and being able to sensitively engage in the symbolic journey described by dying patients. Her observations and detailed accounts are based on attending 1,000 cancer patients during the process of dying. Monica describes the dying process as both an archetypal and a spiritual process and contends that, in the process of transition, patients move through fear into a “space of peace, acceptance, dignity and tranquillity characterised by connectedness and even luminosity”.

Reflection

Our cultural blinkers blind us to the reality of the dying process and the nature of our own inevitable death. As we become more aware of the dying process through our own research and study, we can learn to appreciate how precarious our life is and how precious is the process of both living and dying. As we grow in mindfulness through meditating on death and reflecting on its implications for how we live our life, we can progressively come into more alignment with our life force, our values and our life purpose.

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Image by Hans Braxmeier from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

How to Release Pain and Reduce Difficult Emotions

Deepak Chopra on discussing how to release pain and difficult emotions stressed the connection between our physical bodies and our emotions and also the interconnectedness of all living things. He maintained that “there is no mental event that doesn’t have a biological correlate” – that is to say, that our every thought and related emotion finds expression in some form in our body. He stressed that our brain serves to integrate everything we experience – our thoughts, feelings, emotions, social interactions and the ecosystems that surround us. Deepak talked too of our entanglement with each other – how we influence each other energetically and emotionally through “limbic resonance”.

In speaking of ways to reduce physical pain in another video presentation, Deepak strongly supported the idea of regular exercise to release endorphins, meditation to take us beyond our limiting perceptions, music to reduce stress and pain and social connection and interactions to provide support. He maintained that, contrary to popular belief, alcohol and smoking increase pain rather than reduce it. He also highlighted the powerful role of biofeedback, employed by various health professionals including the Chopra Center for Wellbeing.

A seven-step process for physical healing and emotional release

In his presentation for the You Can Heal Your Life Summit, Deepak offered a seven-step process for physical healing and emotional wellbeing. The seven steps serve as an integrated approach to individual mindfulness practices that we have previously discussed on this blog.

You begin by reflecting on an interaction that made you upset or left you having to deal with difficult emotions. Then you follow the following seven steps:

Accept responsibility: accept what you are feeling as your own, not blaming others for the way you are feeling. Without accepting responsibility, you cannot gain control over your feelings, nor can you wait for the other person to change so that you can be released from your feelings, because this will not happen.
Feel the feeling in your body: Deepak maintains that any feeling relates to one of the energetic centres of your body, one of the seven Chakras. The location of your pain is an indicator of the Chakra involved and the unfulfilled need finding expression in that Chakra, e.g. pain around the heart region (the Heart Chakra) can signal a need for love and belongingness, while pain in the stomach region (Solar Plexus Chakra) can indicate an unmet need for stability and strength. To feel the feeling you can close your eyes and focus on the area of your body where you feel pain – and bring your awareness to it without doing anything other than being with the pain wherever it is being felt in your body.
Name your feeling: Deepak describes this step as “labelling your feelings”. By naming your feelings accurately, you can learn to tame them. He calls accurate naming “labelling intelligently” – the more specific you can be about what you are feeling, e.g. resentment, anger, shame, the better you are able to deal with it.
Write it down – here the aim is to express what happened from three different perspectives – your own, the other person’s perspective and a third person’s perspective – the independent observer. Deepak maintains that using this 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd person approach reduces the emotional energy you have invested in the conflict, improves your immune system, and lightens your emotional load because “you are not weighed down by the emotion”.
Share it with someone: here you share both the process you used and the outcome for you with someone that you trust. It is important to accurately share the three perspectives that you have developed – avoid excusing your own behaviour and blaming the other person.
Use a ritual release: Deepak suggests that a ritual activity that symbolises “release” reinforces your new state of equilibrium and equanimity. It can take many forms but needs to be a personal way of expressing release, e.g. using a mantra meditation, scrunching up the paper you have written on or throwing it in the river.
Celebrate the release: again using something that is meaningful to you, e.g. a long forest walk, or mindful walking by the bay – some activity that manifests your joy and the realisation that you are moving on, no longer trapped physically or emotionally.

Reflection

The wisdom of this approach is the recognition throughout of the profound mind-body connection – In releasing our emotions, we can release pain in our bodies. It takes time to develop the self-intimacy and honesty required to defuse these emotions and the related physical pain. Persistence brings its own rewards in this endeavour as in many other endeavours. As we grow in mindfulness through mindfulness practices, meditation and reflection, we can achieve a level of consciousness that creates emotional freedom and physical ease. Deepak maintains that “all healing is consciousness”. To deepen our level of consciousness, we can make a habit of self-observation, naming our feelings and related unmet needs, and exploring creative ways to respond.

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Image by Nika Akin from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Leadership as Resonance

Ginny Whitelaw, biophysicist and global leadership coach, understandably frames leadership in terms of energy and resonance. She explains that as humans we are made up of matter and energy – matter in the form of blood, skin, bones and energy in the form of our mind. Ginny notes that the leadership function entails concentrating energy, your own and that of your followers, to create an organisational vision (capturing emotional as well as intellectual energy); develop the culture of a team (through energy alignment); and promote innovation (turning creative energy into new products, services and structures). She explains that energy is always on the move, in constant transformation and continuously vibrating. Her new book, Resonate, to be released in 2020 explores these concepts in depth and their many leadership applications.

Resonance – synchronous vibration

One way to define resonance is synchronous vibration. For example, a room or a musical instrument is described as resonant when it amplifies sound vibrations and extends them by vibrating at the same time. Ginny provides the example of making a loud sound over an open grand piano and noticing that some strings vibrate, and others do not – the strings that vibrate match the vibrations in your voice. When things operate synchronously, we say that they are “in synch”. So, in Ginny’s perspective, leadership is about creating real change and making a difference by achieving synchronisation of energy, our own and that of our followers – in other words, generating resonance. She describes a leader as an “energy concentrator”.

Blocks to leadership resonance

Through her study of biophysics and martial arts (5^th degree Aikido black belt), Ginny came to realise the very close connection between mind and body and the role vibration and energy play in human consciousness (the resonance theory of consciousness). Her role as a senior leader in NASA, coordinating the 40 groups that supported the International Space Station, enabled her to understand that coordination involved energy alignment and resonance (vibrating “in synch”).

Ginny’s experience with martial arts and Zen philosophy heightened her awareness of the mind-body connection. For example, she explains that fear holds back our achievements as leaders because it distorts our resonance – blocks our energy emission and reception. She suggests that as leaders we need to go beyond our triggers that create fear in our mind and body. The fears may have their origin in adverse childhood experiences or the negative self-stories that arise through our inner critic.

Ginny likens the effect of fear to the dampening of resonance created when several socks are placed inside a bell. Even a bell designed especially for resonance will sound dull and clunky when the socks are inside it. The socks are metaphors for our mental and physical blockages – the things that stop our personal resonance. Our challenge as leaders is to remove the blockages – so that our voice is “as clear as a bell”.

Removing the blocks to leadership resonance

Ginny discovered through the impact of deep breathing on her asthma that clearing blockages requires being still, mindful breathing, and other mindfulness practices such as meditation, Tai Chi and yoga. Reconnecting with nature and the multiple sources of energy in the environment also help to rebuild personal resonance. Ginny explores relevant practices and exercises in her book The Zen Leader.

When you can achieve a level of integration between your thoughts, emotions and body you free up yourself to become your more “resonant self’. Ginny explains that by achieving this integration we can emit a “clear signal” and “bring our one clear note to achieve our purpose” as a leader.

Reflection

I can relate fully to the concept of leadership as resonance having been involved in many minor and major change endeavours as a leader in organisations and in community. The concept of energy emission and reception resonates strongly with me. I also find that as I grow in mindfulness, I am better able to tap into my creative energy, enhance my ability to tune into others’ focus and energy and contribute to a purpose that is greater than myself. Removing the personal blockages to my “one clear note” is a lifetime pursuit – a journey into mindfulness through meditation, Tai Chi and other mindfulness practices.

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Image by Valiphotos from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

A Reflection Meditation to Access Your Inner Wisdom

Diana Winston provides a reflection meditation podcast to enable us to access our inner wisdom. We are so often absorbed with thinking our way through issues and challenges that we block access to our inner wisdom. She suggests that if we shut down our thinking and just listen to our inner wisdom, we will arrive at creative insights and a way to move forward, ideally in line with our life purpose. The reflection meditation is offered as one of the weekly meditation podcasts provided by the Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC) which aims through research and education to promote the practice and benefits of mindful awareness for people of all ages.

Reflection meditation for accessing inner wisdom

Diana’s 30-minute reflection meditation podcast basically has two phases – (1) relaxation and (2) opening to inner wisdom:

In the first phase, you are introduced to a light body scan followed by a focus on an anchor of your choice such as breath, touch or sound. You are encouraged to avoid entertaining distracting thoughts and to return to your meditation anchor once you are conscious of being distracted.
In the second phase, the emphasis is on listening to your inner wisdom while focusing on an aspect of your life that you want to improve, e.g. how to improve your relationship, how to enhance your well-being or develop your creativity. The challenge here is to avoid thinking about the question – avoid trying to resolve your question cognitively. This requires settling your mind, quieting your brain. You are attempting to access your intuition rather than your rational, logical thinking. Whenever your mind wanders, bring your focus back to your anchor and your inner wisdom.

To access the deeper levels of our inner wisdom takes time and lots of practice over a sustained period. Karen Brody maintains that a quicker way to access deeper levels of consciousness is by using the Yoga Nidra Meditation discussed previously.

Reflection

We spend so much of our time trying to think our way through issues and life challenges and ignore our intuition and inner wisdom. As we grow in mindfulness through various forms of meditation such as the reflection meditation, we can develop ways of accessing deeper levels of consciousness and bring our inner wisdom to bear on the questions that challenge us in our daily lives.

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Image by Eric Michelat from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Breathing with the Earth

Diana Winston, Director of Mindfulness Education at MARC (UCLA), offers a unique perspective on developing mindfulness through breathing. In her meditation podcast, she introduces the idea of breathing with the earth – expanding consciousness of our own breathing to connect with the earth’s breath. She encourages us to deepen inner awareness of our breathing and, from this foundation, expand our outer awareness to connecting with every living creature and the earth’s breath. The process develops a sense of connectedness, calm and wonder.

The earth’s breath

Diana begins her meditation podcast by playing a video from Chilean artist, Glenda Leon. The video artistically depicts (with an embedded breathing sound) the earth breathing. Glenda has titled the video Cada Respire (Tierra), which is Portuguese for every earth breath. Diana suggests that as you watch the video you attune your own breathing to the sound of the earth breathing as depicted in the video.

In an article titled, The Earth Has Lungs. Watch Them Breathe, Robert Krulwich (writing for the National Geographic) highlights the NASA time lapse video depicting an “unimaginably vast planetary breathing system” over the cycle of a year. As the seasons change around the world, the growth of trees and their leaves (numbered in their trillions) act as the lungs of the earth breathing in carbon dioxide and releasing life giving oxygen. Robert highlights the fact that every leaf on every tree has thousands of “little breathing tubes called stoma” which enable the leaf to take in air from the outside. He uses a photograph by Robert Dash to illustrate the stoma on the surface of a leaf which has been magnified 150 times.

John Denver in the song Tremble If You Must recalls that “the trees are just leaves on a big breathing globe”. Eva Cassidy, in her amazing rendition of the song What a Wonderful World, reminds us that as we reflect on the ordinary things in our life, we can experience wonder if we open our eyes and minds. As we expand our consciousness of our breathing to that of the earth’s breath, we can experience connectedness and calm through awareness of the reality that surrounds us.

Breathing with the earth

Diana’s guided meditation provides a way to focus on your own breathing that serves as a gateway to breathing with the earth. For a start, she suggests that you become aware of your own breathing, focusing on your in-breath and out-breath wherever you can experience the act of breathing in your own body. This may be the air passing through your nose or the undulations in your abdomen or chest as you breathe in and out. You can expand this inner awareness to lower-belly breathing with a little practice.

Diana guides you to explore your breathing further by doing two things, (1) focusing on other parts of your body as you breathe, and (2) exploring the path of a single breath. She suggests that this expanded awareness can begin with focusing on parts of your body other than your torso to observe the sensations that accompany your breathing to see if their movements are attuned to your breathing, e.g. tingling in your fingers or feet. This can then be followed by observing the movement of a single breath through your body (if you cannot capture the explicit sensation, you can imagine this flow).

If you find that you become distracted from your focus on your breathing, you can let the thoughts or feelings pass and return to your breath. This requires discipline but will increase your capacity to focus over time. Once you have become grounded in your own breathing you can expand your awareness to the earth’s breath.

One way to consciously breathe with the earth is to envisage the earth breathing (aided by the earth breath video introduced above). This will build a strong sense of connectedness to the earth. You can then expand your awareness to the breathing of other people and every living creature on the earth.

What can strengthen your capacity to connect with the breath of the earth is to stand on the ground outside your home and feel the sensation of the earth’s movement, being conscious of the trees and plants and their life-giving breathing.

As we grow in mindfulness through mindful breathing, we can develop our inner awareness, enhance our external awareness, learn to breathe with the earth and build a sense of calm and connection to every living thing.

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Image by skeeze on Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.