In the 1970s, I belonged to The World Future Society. I even toyed with the idea of becoming a ‘futurist’. I vaguely recall that there was a magazine on the subject and various intellectuals were trying to get prediction raised to the status of a science. According to Wired magazine, the Society still exists and there are people who call themselves professional futurists, but the numbers are shrinking and their status seems to be less than in the past—primarily because the future
Tag Archives: control
If You Are Afraid
By Shae Hadden | Bio
Believers in the Law of Attraction, take heed! If you are afraid, don’t try to resist your fear. If you do, then you will give more power to it and end up attracting what you are afraid of. I know. I’ve just experienced my worst fear: of being very sick, alone, and uncertain about what is happening.
The interesting thing was that, when I was most afraid, immersed in physical pain and emotional stress, I decided to surrender my fear, my pain and my life to that ‘Higher
Fast Train
It seems appropriate on this Earth Day that I am scooting along the French countryside at about 180 mph on one of Eurostar’s fast trains on my way to Amsterdam. I decided that the chance to spend a few hours away from hotels and airports might be a refreshing change. I was right. The scenery is lovely and the ride comfortable. If governments and organizations could move this fast, there is no telling what could be accomplished.
I have been working a lot this trip with the question of how to get
Acceptance
I don’t think that age is personal. I know it feels like it is ‘me’ that is getting older, but I don’t experience myself as older. If anything, I experience my ‘self’ as being ‘better’ than at any time I can remember over the past 66 years. I feel more ‘alive’, more engaged, more present and more satisfied than ever. It is true that my body can’t run, wrestle or climb as easily as in the past. I make love more often than in the best
Alcoholism and the Canary
In the late 80s, Anne Wilson Schaef and Diane Fassel wrote a book called The Addictive Organization. While I have a very different experience and theory than what they were proposing, I think their metaphor was perfect. For me, the idea that an organization or society can become ‘addicted’ is not a metaphor. I believe, like Charles Horton Cooley, that “Individuals and organizations
Energy as a Way of Life III
By Charles E. Smith | Bio
During the second year in my transition from a static world to an
energetic-based point of view, I took a training program with a Mexican
teacher, Victor Sanchez, who had studied and lived with the Toltec
Indians in northern Mexico. Victor had developed a coherent conceptual
framework that was very much based on energy. Lorin Smith didn’t have a
lot of explanation for what he did. He just did it, and I saw that he
was working with
Emotional Maturity
I was in a discussion yesterday with a bunch of guys and we got onto the topic of emotional maturity. A bunch of middle-aged guys talking about emotional maturity is kind of like a bunch of ladies discussing jock straps—there is a probability that we don’t know what we’re talking about. Nonetheless, it was a great conversation because we all in different ways acknowledged that this area is a seriously neglected aspect of our development.
It isn’t that we aren’t aware of our emotions,
Wisdom and Fear
I heard someone remark that the best thing about getting older is they don’t have to be afraid anymore. While I think that is one of life’s ‘truisms’, it falls into the same category as your mother telling you “not to worry”—it doesn’t help much to know that when you are worried! From what I can see, most people get more fearful and anxious as they age. This anxiety takes various forms: fear of not having enough money, fear of being homeless, fear of being alone, fear of becoming
Surrender
If I could give one gift to my children, I think it would be “acceptance”. It isn’t too hard to understand intellectually that we should simply accept life on life’s terms and not try to control what we can’t really control. Yet, it’s a hard lesson to learn. I think not accepting may be the source of most, if not all, suffering. When we live with the view that reality ‘should be’ other than it is, we are living in a dream (at best) and a state of self-deception and denial (at worst).
Head-Smashed-In-Buffalo Jump
By Shae Hadden | Bio
There’s a place near Fort McLeod in Alberta that goes by this odd name…the Head-Smashed-In-Buffalo Jump world heritage site …where the indigenous peoples used to lead the buffalo to jump off a cliff. A place where there’s a very finite line between life and death…and where life comes from death. You see, for thousands of years, the native people would use this natural geographical formation to ‘harvest’ these wild animals and feed their tribes each winter.I’m
remembering this place today because I’ve been reminded—not so subtly
by being in a car accident—that life is the dash between birth and
death. The instant I knew my car was spinning out of control yesterday
morning, the only thought going through my head was “I surrender to
you, God, for I am not in control”. In that moment, I felt like the
buffalo must have felt—as if this was the last spurt in that great
dash. As