A friend sent me this image. Since my sister’s wedding, thoughts about Roman Catholic Symbolism and language in relation to hypnosis have not stopped pouring through my head. For now, let this picture speak for itself.
Thoughts. We all have them, most of the time at least. Monks and spiritual leaders train themselves to shut their thoughts up, and get into a state of not-thinking. A state Carlos Castaneda referred to as “Stop the World”. Yet, this is not what we are aiming for today. What has recently caught my interest is the process of thought that leads to innovation and progress. Caught somewhere between daydreaming and number crunching, so to speak, we find the pendulum of progress, swinging politely in the background of our culture.
When I was 12 years old, I remember looking around and being asked: “And what do you want to be when you grow up?” While I deeply love my family and friends where I was raised, I felt something deep inside me stir, as I responded: “I don’t know what I want to do, but I know where I want to be: Not here!” And so it was that at the age of 19, I moved out, of the house I was raised in, out of the country I grew up in. Nowadays, I tend to go back home for vacation every once in a while, and in doing so, I have noticed a disturbing tendency: at the same time as I am part of that place I call home, I am also just an outside observer looking in.
After centuries of presiding over the monastery, the zen master passed away. Upon his death, all his pupils, some had been there for their entire lives, convened to discuss who would follow him. Of course, the question who would become the new zen master, led to a discussion of what qualities make someone a master. Perseverance? Clarity of thought? Enlightenment? For days and days the monks discussed.
At one point, they were sitting at the dinner table. They had been stuck for days now, and desperation slowly made the rounds. While the cook walked in, they said: “Ha, why don’t ask the cook about what makes a zen master?!” They all laughed, and then one turned to the cook and said:” Cook, what makes a zen master?”. They laughed.
Upon hearing the question, the cook froze. In his hands, he held the full pot of soup that he made to feed the monks. As their laughter died down, he still stood looking at them. Once they were silent, and without a word coming out of his mouth, he just let go of the pot, and as it fell he turned and walked away. When it lay shattered on the ground, they knew what made a zen master, and the one who would lead them forward.
It is one of the most common activities around the world, and I can confidently say we have all done, are doing it, and probably will keep doing it for some time to come: breathe. Many different (interestingly enough, mostly Eastern) traditions have devoted considerable time of study to breathing, how it affects us, and what are the best ways to utilize it. “In-then-out” seems to be quite straightforward, yet the subtleties are actually quite amazing, and once you start to learn about them, things do change….
Over the last few years, I have made it a personal habit to look for new ways of doing things in strange places. This has led me, among other places, to the very interesting world of improvisational theatre, to learn about the way they codify and utilize their understanding of human interaction. Recently, I have noticed a tendency of some business publications to follow their own advice (look for innovation in places other than your business field!), and interview at least one “non-business” person. In the last issue of Harvard Business Review, this person was Twyla Tharp, the famous choreographer and author of 2 books. How could a choreographer possibly know something about business and change that could positively change the way we work?
Well, well, it has certainly been a while since I wrote anything. That is not to say that I have been lying around lazily, I actually have been quite busy. Among other things, I am helping a friend launch a company for training people in NLP, hypnosis and Mind power. This is a very interesting venture for me, as I have worked mostly as a freelance trainer before, so now making all the “executive decisions” is tricky. One of the biggest ones is which type of NLP course to offer! “What do you mean, what type of course?” I hear you ask. Well, there is a debate raging in the (decidedly small) world of NLP, regarding the length of practitioner courses. Originally, NLP Practitioner courses lasted…
I have spent the last couple of weeks reading a lot of literature about techniques for influence and persuasion. For me, this is an absolutely fascinating topic, with so many wildly different opinions on it. Ranging from social and cognitive psychologists, to sales people, to absolute Muppets promising gold and delivering dung, there is not much I have not read. Yet, in all these books, there is one idea lacking, that is actually one of the most powerful and easy things to do….
After Bankei had passed away, a blind man who lived near the master’s temple told a friend:
“Since I am blind, I cannot watch a person’s face, so I must judge his character by the sound of his voice. Ordinarily when I hear someone congratulate another upon his happiness or success, I also hear a secret tone of envy. When condolence is expressed for the misfortune of another, I hear pleasure and satisfaction, as if the one condoling was really glad there was something left to gain in his own world.
In all my experience, however, Bankei’s voice was always sincere. Whenever he expressed happiness, I heard nothing but happiness, and whenever he expressed sorrow, sorrow was all I heard.”
I have been studying various different tools for change for some time now. Among those, is NLP or Neuro Linguistic Programming. NLP is not only a set of tools, it is a whole mind set, and as such I have incorporated a lot of it into my approach. Yet, one aspect that never really sat right with me was that in NLP you don’t really look at the “problems”, you only look for a way out. Surely, there must be some use in our problems, or? And indeed, there is: Motivation!
