Destabilization & the Frequency of Values

The first step to a transformed world (or a transformed life) is a tough one: we have to give up our ideas of what the transformation looks like. To surrender our visions of preferred outcomes. Trust me, whatever actual transformation comes out of living with Reality day by day, it’s going to be much better than whatever plans your current ego has ... See more

The number-one-by-a-mile way that people avoid living their values is by going out into the world and telling everyone else how important those values are and how everyone needs to be living them.

There's an idea I think I picked up from Robert Kegan, the idea of an "evolutionary balance" in your personality structure. Or maybe it was “evolutionary truce.” The idea, as I remember it, is that your personality is made of many different dynamic forces, all pulling and pushing in different ways. For most of your life, those forces find an equili... See more

The other problem is that as far as I can tell, everyone is given different values to live by. Different questions to live into. Different gods who live in their chest. Different combinations of natural concerns that balance out very differently. So no, western culture doesn't depend on a resurgence of masculine courage: if that feels important to ... See more

There's so little to be done except let go, follow one's nature, and unfold what needs to happen moment by moment, even in the midst of dissolution and Mystery. I am no longer talking about caterpillars.

as far as I can tell, everyone is given different values to live by. Different questions to live into. Different gods who live in their chest. Different combinations of natural concerns that balance out very differently.

Finding the values and principles you live by isn't always easy. Giving yourself opportunities to live by them and make them a default reflex can be brutally hard. But writing them down, sharing them with the people around you, having them do the same, and then all of you practicing coming together in loving, supportive presence, not to call each o... See more