By Jim Selman | Bio
In “A Course in Miracles”, there is an aphorism at the beginning of the book that says “Nothing real can be threatened and nothing unreal exists.” Although I have never formally studied the program, I have read the book and it is a beautiful and compelling insight in the realm of spiritual wisdom. For millions, the Course has given access to a higher power or transformation of their relationship to the world. What I found for myself was a clarity and simplicity that
By Jim Selman | Bio
I saw the movie Elegy last night
starring Sir Ben Kingsley and Penèlope Cruz. It was an exceptionally
intense love story between a man and a much younger woman. He is a
professor and she his student. What begins for him as a casual romp is
true love for her and soon he too is in love, but is tortured and
insecure because of their age difference. Patricia Clarkson is his
stable ‘partner/wife’ who has her own career, is exceptionally
By Jim Selman | Bio
I think one of the saddest things I hear of as I grow older is when real friends become estranged. It isn’t that we can’t have strong disagreements and even periods of disengaging from regular conversations at any age. But when ‘falling outs’ become long-term estrangement, bitter memories, regrets and resentment people we once called friends become burdens or even foes. We pay a heavy price to hold onto whatever stories we tell ourselves to justify our position. Most
By Shae Hadden | Bio
Despite my intentions to stay focused on launching new materials into the world, the last couple of weeks have seen a flurry of activity around forming partnerships. When I look at the very real challenges we are facing today and the urgency with which they need to be addressed, establishing relationships might seem like the last thing we should spend time doing. However, I’m reminded of something Jim Selman often says: “Relationships are the foundation of success.”
By Jim Selman | Bio
Compassion is word that for me has special significance at Christmas, partly because it is the quality of “being love” embodied in the stories of Jesus and most of the great spiritual masters and reincarnations of God throughout the ages. It is also because it may be the ultimate gift we can give each other and ourselves during this special season of giving (as well as at every other time of year). When times are tough, compassion is sometimes all we have to give.Compassion is not ‘feeling’ bad for others. It is not sympathy.
Compassion is a deep emotional and spiritual connection and recognition of others and ourselves. It is the profound experience of ‘otherness’ and the nature of who we are. Compassion is, I think, love at its purest and most primal level. Compassion is the line between human beings and other animals. It is the choice to be alive and present and acknowledge that each of us is making or can exercise that choice
By Jim Selman | Bio
I got another shot of what has been a curiosity to me for a long time: the growing practice of ‘texting’. This practice was highlighted for me when I read that Barack Obama has to kick his Blackberry habit in his new job and again when I was at the theater earlier this week with an audience of mostly 20 and 30-year-olds. Both before the curtain and at the intermission, I counted about 30 folks fixated on their ‘mobile communication devices’. Several were even covertly ‘peeking’ during the performance.I don’t think I am a Luddite, yet somehow this seemed to me to be not only rude, but also a bit ludicrous. I watched myself falling into a kind of judgmental ‘old person’s’ conversation along the lines of “Don’t these kids know that they are missing the point of going out for a pleasant evening…blah blah blah.” I clearly had a point of view based on my experience of growing up and was looking down my nose at this new practice in much the same way my father probably
By Jim Selman | Bio
One
of my friends who is about my age has been in a period of deep
reflection and growth. He recently shared that he was moving into a new
space of awareness analogous to the transition from adolescence to
adulthood. He said he was becoming profoundly aware that he has
something valuable to say and that part of his growing older is coming
face to face with becoming responsible for creating a new
‘presentation’ in the world. He struggled
By Jim Selman | Bio
It occurs to me that in less than 36 hours about half of the nation and a good percentage of folks around the world will be disappointed and resentful that their candidate for the US Presidency will have lost. These are two of the most unproductive, in fact counter-productive moods we can have—especially resentment.Resentment kills relationship. It is a mood that has embedded in it an accusatory frame of mind that someone or something is ‘against’ what we believe or want and will continue to be a threat in the future. Resentment is a mixture of fear, anger, lack of responsibility and entitlement that the world be the way we want it to be. Disappointment is pretty much the same, without the anger and accusation. In both cases, we’re relating to the world as if the circumstance is
By Jim Selman | Bio
The word “Elder” is becoming the vogue term
for people over 60 or, in some cases, even younger. I think it is a
mistake as well as inaccurate to make “Elder” synonymous with having
reached a certain age. First of all, being an Elder is a role, not a
fact of biology. Moreover, it is a role that exists in the context of
community. The word itself distinguishes a relationship between the
Elder and members of their community. More than
By Jim Selman | Bio
I came across an extraordinary six-minute YouTube video called ‘The Shift’—a presentation that blows one’s mind with factoids about the rate of change in the world. The Shift they are talking about is a ‘paradigm shift’, meaning our entire worldview, indeed our whole reality, is being turned upside down and inside out by virtue of technology, population and the exponentially accelerating rate of change. Whether we like it or not, our ‘new reality’ challenges our commonsense and conventional wisdom with ideas like “Knowledge is becoming obsolete before you learn it”.Joel Barker sold a videotape in the 1980s called “Discovering the Future: The Business of Paradigms™” in which he showed that the world is always a function of our interpretation of it and that, from time to time, for a variety of reasons, the world transforms in ways that are difficult to impossible for people to fathom when it is happening. He is generally upbeat about these periods of dramatic change and asks