Category: Field Notes

This is a ‘Bonus’ Field Note. I had intended to take a break until October. What follows is an academic journal article publication, for which my colleague and friend, Dr. Thomas Falkenberg (University of Manitoba), and I were interviewed by Dr. Heesoon Bai. The Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education is a new journal in the field, and our article is about inner work: a perennial topic for me, as you, my readers, would know. Read Field Note

As you no doubt know, a prologue is what comes before what is the main body of, what will follow, in this case, the June Field Note. I woke up this morning and had the thought that the core of what the Field Note is about, the unexpected, the unwanted, and the horrible, and on further reflection I new that it is about anything unexpected, even those happenings that I might prefer and like. Read Field Note

I will focus on two aspects of human communication in this Field Note: Content- the words and their collective meaning Process- All the non-verbal aspects of human communication. I will describe these two aspects with my major focus being on what I am calling the process aspect of communication. This is the non-verbal dimensions that include Read Field Note

If you are like me and I would suggest most other people (that you know), you may find, at least at times, taking up a practice and staying with it to be difficult. Presumably we get into a practice (whatever it is) because we are interested and feel that it offers something of value for us. But somehow, one way or another, we often enough find ourselves not doing the practice. Some familiar practice examples of this are diet, exercise programs, meditation, and the whole range of life and skill building practices that we are keen to adopt. Read Field Note

This Field Note is about educating and expanding intimacy in relationship and, by extension, your very sense of being: being alive, being real, being authentic, and being present. I will underline the importance of developing our capacity for feeling strong feelings, expressing them in a coherent and clear way, to be able to hear the strong feelings of others and understand them, and to enjoy the liberation into empowerment and wellbeing that such ability provides. Read Field Note

Welcome to my first Field Note for 2023. My very great good wishes to all of you for the coming year. May you discover yourself increasingly and experience ever deepening understanding of life—your life, and life as a whole. And perhaps, just as importantly, increasing discovery as to what you do not know, clues about what you may indeed never know, and how to live fully into the valuable experience of not knowing. Read Field Note

What I am offering you in this Field Note is a way of engaging the world: at least your personal and known world, and your creative and imaginal experience of life—your life. In the example that I am sharing with you here, the content is the dream that I shared with you last month (October Field Note, about eight paragraphs from the beginning, under the heading, “My Dream as I Recall It at This Moment”) in relation to my personal inner work on my own with that dream. Read Field Note

The purpose of this field note is to expand on the possibility of working on your own in your inner world, and hopefully to expand the horizon of generative and creative possibilities for your consciousness and ways of being, and which may imaginatively influence everything in your life. I have chosen to include this Field Note at this time, as I believe it shows a great deal about the philosophy and practices of inner work. While this particular piece of inner work is based on a dream, it is applicable to all life experiences. Read Field Note

I have been reflecting for decades on the role of the unconscious in our experience of being human, namely that which falls outside of our awareness, and my recognition that the unconscious plays an enormous part in our daily life. Indeed, it is a good thing that much of our daily lives is supported to run smoothly by that which is no longer in our awareness. Imagine having to figure out how to open up a tube of toothpaste every time you are about to brush your teeth! Or, even more dramatically, how to walk every time you are about to change locations. Read Field Note

The current Field Note arises out of some thoughts I have had over time and particularly arising from last month’s Field Note. I realized that there was a further conundrum that challenges all of us, and it goes something like the following: “Okay, I have done substantial inner work, and I am aware of and understand many of my egoic selves and their relationships. That is, how these have formed initially as a perceived survival, love-getting effort, which for very young children is an autonomic survival response to challenging situations that are encountered and that over time constitute and grow reified identities. Read Field Note