ALEX NOBLE - WRITING JOURNAL-2015

You Are A World Changer! - Bill Harvey

 

Start activating change where you are now

 

From Bill Harvey's Blog At:

www.mindmagicprogram.com

What’s my evidence that you’re a world changer? You read my stuff. That’s my evidence.

I get an interesting if fuzzy picture of who reads this blog from the people who thank me for it. And from some indirect measures, such as how rarely people leave public comments, instead emailing me; what does this tell us: private types who read in this blog information that is also kind of private. It’s about the inner life. Inner, not outer, means that it isn’t something people talk about. If they’re going to talk to me about it, they don’t want to do it publicly.

Aristotle considered the inner life the most important thing to Humanity. If he saw what Acceleritis has done to shrink the inner life down to the smallest part of one’s existence, he would become depressed.

Visionaries, Inc - Award Winning Public TV Series Since 1995

 

 

 

Full Information and Listing of Each Year's Programs Since 1995:

 

www.visionaries.org

 

Since 1995, Visionaries, Inc. has been producing Visionaries documentary series for public television. Hosted by Sam Waterston of Law & Order, the documentary series highlights the rarely told stories of nonprofit organizations all around the world that are working to make a positive difference in their community and beyond.

Visionaries' production crews have traveled across six continents and to more than 50 American cities to profile the extraordinary work of true philanthropists- people dedicating their lives and careers to the service of others. From Refugees International to the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill and art museums to humane societies, Visionaries tells the stories of individuals dedicated to changing the status quo in an effort to promote positive coexistence. The documentaries seek to inspire vast audiences, serve as catalysts for positive social change and promote philanthropy on a global level.

 

Our Vision: Rediscovering Humanity's Niche

It is time to create new stories, and rediscover our place in the global web of life!

Come visit A New Story Foundation:  www.anewstory.org

 

Envision the earth's life-sustaining processes as a beautiful and diverse web of interrelationships--a kaleidoscope of patterns, rhythms, and connections whose very complexity and multitude of possibilities remind us that cooperation, sharing, honesty, humility, and love should be the guidelines for our behavior toward one another and the earth. -- Ecosustainability student   Our Vision - Rediscovering Humanity's Niche: Following the lead of author Daniel Quinn, we believe that modern society has lost its way.  Humans have abandoned the tried and true survival mechanisms established over thousands of millennia, forgetting that they were once a fully-integrated member of the global ecosystem.  We believe that the tired old story modern society tells itself has seen its last days, and that the global self-deception is about to be exposed for what it is.  We believe it is time for new stories, stories that tell of the rediscovery of humanity's place in the global web of life.  We envision a time when these new stories depicting humans within nature, and not separate from it, will be the human story.

How to Write a Memoir - William Zinsser

 

 

Be yourself, speak freely, and think small

By William Zinsser

 

One of the saddest sentences I know is “I wish I had asked my mother about that.” Or my father. Or my grandmother. Or my grandfather. As every parent knows, our children are not as fascinated by our fascinating lives as we are. Only when they have children of their own—and feel the first twinges of their own advancing age—do they suddenly want to know more about their family heritage and all its accretions of anecdote and lore. “What exactly were those stories my dad used to tell about coming to America?” “Where exactly was that farm in the Midwest where my mother grew up?”

Writers are the custodians of memory, and that’s what you must become if you want to leave some kind of record of your life and of the family you were born into. That record can take many shapes. It can be a formal memoir—a careful act of literary construction. Or it can be an informal family history, written to tell your children and your grandchildren about the family they were born into. It can be the oral history that you extract by tape recorder from a parent or a grandparent too old or too sick to do any writing. Or it can be anything else you want it to be: some hybrid mixture of history and reminiscence. Whatever it is, it’s an important kind of writing. Too often memories die with their owner, and too often time surprises us by running out.

 

Visionary Jacques Fresco - Paradise or Oblivion: The Venus Project

Paradise or Oblivion: A New Documentary from Jacque Fresco’s Venus Project

From New Paradigm Digest:  www.newparadigmdigest.com

 

http://www.thevenusproject.com/

Paradise or Oblivion details the root causes of the systemic value disorders and detrimental symptoms caused by our current established system. This video presentation advocates a new socio-economic system, which is updated to present-day knowledge, featuring the life-long work of Social Engineer, Futurist, Inventor and Industrial Designer Jacque Fresco, which he calls a Resource-Based Economy.

The film details the need to outgrow the dated and inefficient methods of politics, law, business, or any other “establishment” notions of human affairs, and use the methods of science, combined with high technology, to provide for the needs of all the world’s people. It is not based on the opinions of the political and financial elite or on illusionary so-called democracies, but on maintaining a dynamic equilibrium with the planet that could ultimately provide abundance for all people.

Paradise or Oblivion, by The Venus Project, introduces the viewer to a more appropriate value system that would be required to enable this caring and holistic approach to benefit human civilization. This alternative surpasses the need for a monetary-based, controlled, and scarcity-oriented environment, which we find ourselves in today.

*This is NOT the “major motion picture” that The Venus Project is working towards but rather is a 52 min. documentary to introduce the aims and proposals to new people. Paradise or Oblivion will be released in March 2012 and we will post a link to the documentary as soon as it is released.

In the meantime, if you are not familiar with the work of Jacque Fresco and his Venus Project, here is a link to his highly informative newsletter and The Venus Project site. Fresco is one of the most brilliant minds of our time and his visionary proposals make total sense. He just raised funds to hire a screenwriter to develop a feature film that can inform the world that a solution exists to humanity’s challenges. This film cannot arrive too soon. Like Buckminster Fuller before him, the world is fortunate to have his brilliant mind and heart in service to life. NPD will continue to update readers on Jacque’s progress as it means our progress.

Epiphanies

 

Here are two definitions of "epiphany":

1.

a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience.

2.

a literary work or section of a work presenting, usually symbolically, such a moment of revelation and insight.

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Assignment:  Read the excerpts below from Richard Wright's novel, "Black Boy," from an article by Chet Raymo.  Let these moments liberate your memory and imagination to create some of your own epiphanies in your journal.  These can stand on their own, or be woven into a poem or short, short story. Write Now! GO!

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"There Was..."
by Chet Raymo

"Richard Wright's classic 1945 memoir "Black Boy" recounts his childhood in the racially charged South of the 1920s. It is a heartbreaking tale of poverty, hunger, prejudice- and triumph against all odds. Several times in the book, Wright breaks the traditional narrative to list, litany-like, remembered epiphanies:

    'There was the delight I caught in seeing long straight rows of red and green vegetables stretching away in the sun to the bright horizon.'

    'There was the faint, cool kiss of sensuality when dew came on to my cheeks and shins as I ran down the wet green garden paths in the early morning.'

    'There was the tantalizing melancholy in the tingling scent of burning hickory wood.'

The Local-Global Flip or "The Lanier Effect" (Edge)

 

 

A Conversation with Computer Visionary Jaron Lanier [8.29.11]

 

Source:  http://edge.org/conversation/the-local-global-flip

"If you aspire to use computer network power to become a global force through shaping the world instead of acting as a local player in an unfathomably large environment, when you make that global flip, you can no longer play the game of advantaging the design of the world to yourself and expect it to be sustainable. The great difficulty of becoming powerful and getting close to a computer network is: Can people learn to forego the temptations, the heroin-like rewards of being able to reform the world to your own advantage in order to instead make something sustainable?"

 

"I strongly urge you to read this truly epic interview with Jaron Lanier at Edge. ... It's an extraordinary interview, packed with insight and often grimly funny." Matt Zoller Seitz, Salon.com

"Fascinating conversation with Jaron Lanier, influential computer scientist. On economics of the Internet – implications of networked technology, destruction of middle class and dark side of new media". — Writing Worth Reading, The Browser.com

 

What is Your Favorite Deep, Elegant, or Beautiful Explanation ? (Edge)

"The World's Smartest Website."

— John Naughton, The Observer 

Scientists' greatest pleasure comes from theories that derive the solution to some deep puzzle from a small set of simple principles in a surprising way. These explanations are called "beautiful" or "elegant". Historical examples are Kepler's explanation of complex planetary motions as simple ellipses, Bohr's explanation of the periodic table of the elements in terms of electron shells, and Watson and Crick's double helix. Einstein famously said that he did not need experimental confirmation of his general theory of relativity because it "was so beautiful it had to be true."

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE DEEP, ELEGANT,
OR BEAUTIFUL EXPLANATION?

Since this question is about explanation, answers may embrace scientific thinking in the broadest sense: as the most reliable way of gaining knowledge about anything, including other fields of inquiry such as philosophy, mathematics, economics, history, political theory, literary theory, or the human spirit. The only requirement is that some simple and non-obvious idea explain some diverse and complicated set of phenomena.

[Thanks to Steven Pinker for suggesting this year's Edge Question and to Stewart Brand, Kevin Kelly, and George Dyson for their ongoing advice and support.]

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Andrei Linde

Father of "Eternal Chaotic Inflation"; Professor of Physics, Stanford University

Excerpt: To summarize, the inflationary multiverse consists of myriads of 'universes' with all possible laws of physics and mathematics operating in each of them. We can only live in those universes where the laws of physics allow our existence, which requires making reliable predictions. In other words, mathematicians and physicists can only live in those universes which are comprehensible and where the laws of mathematics are efficient.

One can easily dismiss everything that I just said as a wild speculation. It seems very intriguing, however, that in the context of the new cosmological paradigm, which was developed during the last 30 years, we might be able, for the first time, to approach one of the most complicated and mysterious problems which bothered some of the best scientists of the 20th century.

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Why Is Our World Comprehensible?

"The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible." This is one of the most famous quotes from Albert Einstein. "The fact that it is comprehensible is a miracle." Similarly, Eugene Wigner said that the unreasonable efficiency of mathematics is "a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve." Thus we have a problem that may seem too metaphysical to be addressed in a meaningful way: Why do we live in a comprehensible universe with certain rules, which can be efficiently used for predicting our future?

One could always respond that God created the universe and made it simple enough so that we can comprehend it. This would match the words about a miracle and an undeserved gift. But shall we give up so easily? Let us consider several other questions of a similar type. Why is our universe so large? Why parallel lines do not intersect? Why different parts of the universe look so similar? For a long time such questions looked too metaphysical to be considered seriously. Now we know that inflationary cosmology provides a possible answer to all of these questions. Let us see whether it might help us again.

Write & Share Your Life Stories!

 

Writing Assignment:  From the life-history questions below, choose one and write a short vignette focused on this subject.  Over time, using these questions, you can create a collection which can grow into a full memoir.  Or, you may wish to just create stand-alone life stories in your journal.  Write Now! GO!

Consider: Choose events to write about from your life as it is happening right now - small life stories which can eventually become part of  a memoir.

The questions below are from  Write My Memoirs, a site dedicated to supporting writers who wish to create an autobiography.

Read more at:  http://www.writemymemoirs.com/index/about_us.html

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How many people lived in your family home when you were a child? Did your extended family – grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins -- live under the same roof, or very near by?

The Long Now Foundation - Ready for Long Term Thinking? Like 10,000 Years?

 

 

Journal Assignment:   Come over and take a look at Stewart Brand's Long Now Foundation:

www.longnow.org

 

Challenge yourself to think in terms of 10,000 years in the future.   How about just 1000 years?  If this opportunity inspires you,  do some imaginative thinking about how we and our home planet might change, what values will endure, how we will live, what kind of communities we might have, and whether or not we will be able to reverse the destructive patterns that are now in play.  Take notes on what you would LIKE to see here in 1000 years, and then stretch out to 10,000 years.  Write Now! GO!

 

The Clock and Library Projects

Below is an essay by  founding board member Stewart Brand on the need for, and the mechanism by which, The Long Now Foundation is attempting to encourage long-term thinking.

Civilization is revving itself into a pathologically short attention span. The trend might be coming from the acceleration of technology, the short-horizon perspective of market-driven economics, the next-election perspective of democracies, or the distractions of personal multi-tasking. All are on the increase. Some sort of balancing corrective to the short-sightedness is needed-some mechanism or myth which encourages the long view and the taking of long-term responsibility, where 'long-term' is measured at least in centuries. Long Now proposes both a mechanism and a myth. It began with an observation and idea by computer scientist Daniel Hillis :

 

Advice to New Writers from Po Bronson

 

Full Biography and other information about Po's books and articles at:

http://www.pobronson.com

 

Excerpt:

Find a few good role models. You only need a few, maybe only one. Let them inspire you. Art reacts to art. All good books are a work of art that is a creative reaction to other art.

Always tell a story. It grounds the reader in a shared experience.

Understand voice. Write the same sentence ten different ways by imitating the writing voices of ten different writers. 

Practice plots. Understand different ways to tell the same story – the difference between hiding a surprise and foreshadowing it, for instance. Starting a story in the middle versus its natural beginning, et cetera. Learn what creates suspense, forward lean, keeps the pages turning.

Journalism first or fiction first? (Grad school in Journalism or Grad school in Creative Writing?) There is no way to answer this. This is an artificial question. It reveals a thirst, a hope, that the journey can be shortened, that there is a shortcut. It can’t. Journalism (facts) or fiction (style)? Both. Both. Both. In no particular order.

Don’t be a snob. It’s good for people to read, so whatever they read, no matter what it is, be glad they're reading.  

No matter what your style or genre or form, even if it's journalism, read John Gardner's "The Art of Fiction" very carefully and try some of the exercises. Realize that once you command these skills, you can break every rule he teaches, but these are the basic skills.

Work on your weaknesses. Find out what you’re hiding from.

Stop looking for shortcuts.

Surviving Our Initiation Into a New Level of Consciousness

 

 

Quotations for our Times from Cultural Historian William Irwin Thompson

We are experiencing the initiation of the human race into a new level of consciousness, and that is a very terrifying experience. It does no good to turn and run from the terror of our darkness into light; we must sit it out: zazen. We must take our counsel from The Tibetan Book of the Dead and realize that these frightening projections of famines, economic disasters, ecological catastrophes, floods, earthquakes, and wars are all only the malevolent aspects of beneficent deities. If we sit and observe them, do not identify with them, but remember our Buddha-nature, we will not be dragged down by them into an incarnation of the hell they prefigure. If we run from them, we validate them; we give the projections the very psychic energy they need to overtake us. Then, as Jung has pointed out, the situation will happen outside as fate.
William Irwin Thompson, Evil and World Order

 

More quotes from William Irwin Thompson...

 

The Origin & Significance of Our New Story

 

 

The Origin and Significance of the New Story - About Thomas Berry

Berry's ideas on the New Story began in the early 1970s as he pondered the magnitude of the social, political, and economic problems we were facing in the human community. His articulation of the need for a new orientation and direction was motivated by his deep concern for the almost suicidal path of humans in their destruction of the earth and in their violence and indifference to one another. The need for a New Story or a functional cosmology, then, arose not as an abstract idea, but as a response to the sufferings of humans in a universe where they saw themselves as deeply alienated(20). This alienation was, no doubt, a particular experience of the west in the post war years as expressed in existentialist philosophy, the death of God theology, and the theater of the absurd. Nonetheless, the spirit of disaffection, ennui, and alienation has spread to other parts of the world due to western cultural influences. Berry's New Story provides an important antidote to this disillusionment and despair. It creates, above all, a new context for connection, for purpose, for action. It is an idea with direct implications for providing the human energy needed for positive social, political, and economic change.

25 Visionaries Who Are Changing Our World - Utne Reader

WRITE NOW!  Review the list of 25 outstanding visionaries, below, and take journal notes on which ones inspire you. Which of these would you like to study with?  Why?  Which ones open up new horizons for you in terms of personal betterment and positive action in the world?

 

Visionaries don’t always make us comfortable.  Some quit their workaday jobs in disgust and turn to new mediums, like David Simon, who abandoned what he saw as the withering journalist trade for the powerful art form of television. Some publicly criticize their peers, like Alice Dreger, an activist who exposes the questionable practices of genital reconstructive surgeons. Some, like farmer Jim Gerritsen, work within the law to attack the status quo; others, like environmentalist Tim DeChristopher, get arrested for their heartfelt actions.

BOOKS: FREEING CREATIVE EFFECTIVENESS: Opening Doors into the Upper Mind, by Bill Harvey

 

 

 

If you just read one book for your Journey this coming year, I recommend Bill Harvey's brilliant classic, FREEING CREATIVE EFFECTIVENESS: Opening Doors Into the Upper Mind.  Please see the testimonials, below.

You can order from Bill's website: http://www.mindmagicprogram.com

 

Praise and Testimonials for FREEING CREATIVE EFFECTIVENESS: Opening Doors into the Upper Mind.

“If a Presidential library is built
in future years, it can be
placed there.”
- Jimmy Carter

“Mind Magic is a delight. Sets
forth with neat precision just
how to do it (think).”
- Ram Dass, author of
Be Here Now

“Highly recommended...will loosen your moorings and open you
to creative vistas.”
- Dr. Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence

“"We need the Microcosmology book. My copy was immediately taken by a friend. Please send a dozen.
- Yoko Ono Lennon, New York City
(The original edition purchased by
John Lennon from the East West bookstore was subtitled
The Science of Microcosmology)

BOOKS: A Year To Live - Stephen Levine

 

If you only had a year to live, what would you do?

In his work with the dying, author Stephen Levine observed the radical changes people can make in the face of death - how they heal relationships, open up to love, act on plans put off for years, even quit dead-end jobs. Levine challenged himself to live an entire year as if it were his last - and in this revealing narrative he shares what he learned. Through a series of month-by-month practices anyone can do, and including special meditations and exercises, A Year to Live teaches a way to live every day of your life with vivid fullness.

Write Now!

Make a list in your journal of ten changes you would make in your life if you knew that the coming year would be your last and a list of ten things you would want to accomplish.

List everyone whom you need to forgive, and everyone from whom you ask need to ask forgiveness.

 

Rumi - Only Breath (Write Now!)

Write Now!  Watch this Rumi video, and write a poem or short reflection on how you see this as it may pertain to your own life and journey.  GO!

 

Write Now! A Prayer of Forgiveness

 

Write Now!  As preparation for the coming year, write a prayer of forgiveness, so that you may release any old baggage, and be free to forgive yourself, and those whom you think, rightly or wrongly, have harmed you. This is an especially powerful journaling exercise if you include names and details in your prayer.

Catalyst:

 "A Buddhist Prayer of Forgiveness"

"If I have harmed anyone in any way
either knowingly or unknowingly
through my own confusions
I ask their forgiveness.
If anyone has harmed me in any way
either knowingly or unknowingly
through their own confusions
I forgive them.
And if there is a situation
I am not yet ready to forgive
I forgive myself for that.
For all the ways that I harm myself,
negate, doubt, belittle myself,
judge or be unkind to myself
through my own confusions
I forgive myself."

Mentors: Wayne Dyer - Quantum Moments & The Shift

 

Write Now!: A Love Poem to Planet Earth

Write Now!  Pretend you are an Astronaut, circling our Home Planet, and looking down on her seas and desert sands, her alps and wildflower-filled valleys, her clouds and her swirling storms.  Write  a love poem to Earth, sharing with her what you wish for her future. Use specific imagery, draw on  familiar landscapes that you love, memories of connection and joy, and meditate on your chosen role as a passenger on our big blue space ship.

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Catalyst:

 "If the earth were only a few feet in diameter, floating a few feet above a field somewhere, people would come from everywhere to marvel at it. People would walk around it marveling at its big pools of water, its little pools, and the water flowing between the pools. People would marvel at the bumps on it, and the holes in it, and they would marvel at the very thin layer of gas surrounding it and the water suspended in the gas. The people would marvel at all the creatures walking around the surface of the ball and at the creatures in the water. The people would declare it sacred because it was the only one, and they would protect it so that it would not be hurt. The ball would be the greatest wonder known, and people would come to pray to it, to be healed, to gain knowledge, to know beauty, and to wonder how it could be. People would love it and defend it with their lives because they would somehow know that their lives, their own roundness, could be nothing without it. If the Earth were only a few feet in diameter..."

- Joe Miller

Write Now!: A Blessing for My Journey

Write Now!

What does this blessing below call forth in you? Write a blessing for yourself, for your journey ahead, into the Unknown of 2012, in all its mystery and promised changes. Love the things you cannot know. Welcome the Sacred Path, and celebrate your new birth into the cosmos!

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Catalyst:

“May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. May your rivers flow without end, meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells, past temples and castles and poets' towers into a dark primeval forest where tigers belch and monkeys howl, through miasmal and mysterious swamps and down into a desert of red rock, blue mesas, domes and pinnacles and grottos of endless stone, and down again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs, where deer walk across the white sand beaches, where storms come and go as lightning clangs upon the high crags, where something strange and more beautiful and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits for you - beyond that next turning of the canyon walls.”

- Edward Abbey, "Benedicto"

Blogs: The Alchemy of Transmuting Feelings Into Right Action - Bill Harvey

From Bill Harvey's Blog:  http://www.mindmagicprogram.com/billharveyblog

(See also Bill Harvey's Classic, FREEING CREATIVE EFFECTIVENESS: Doorways into the Upper Mind  ... and link to The Human Effectiveness Institute.)

Experiments you can perform best when alone, such as in shower or tub

Full disclosure: I am an interested party — these experiments will tend to confirm my speculations and hypothesis — and help prove my theories.

On the other hand, you stand to gain a great deal. Your decision making can be made more creative and more effective — by judo-ing your own negative emotions so that they stop hurting you and start helping you.