Is This Really All There Is?

Reflection and Action for Leadership

Category: belief

The Way To Happiness Is Simple (Not Easy)

happy face

Happiness is our natural condition. All you have to do is look at a healthy infant to notice that their default state is one of unfiltered joy. As we grow older, we learn to add to our list of needs. Our wants and needs become confused. Eventually, as Ralph Waldo Emerson pointed out, “Things are in the saddle and ride mankind.”

Our attention has become fractured. We are losing our ability to intuit. We seek increasing stimulation from external sources. When the stimulation is no longer present, when we feel we are not able to meet our “needs,” we pick up the pace or become despondent.

We have to create opportunities for silence – periods of meditation where God speaks to us. This will aid us in understanding our points of individuality and our points of connection. Before we can value our differences, we must accept the things that we have in common. This begins when we seek the answer to the question: “Who am I and why I am here?” I believe that an honest effort to answer that question will prevent the moral nihilism that too many people organize their lives around.

We have the tools for happiness. They can only be accessed when we strip away the extra. They are only effective when we are honest about all the parts that make us who we are. Only then can we discover and work with our real strengths. The world has need of our gifts. They can only be given when we engage in addition by subtraction.

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No Comments by Hans Hageman on July 29, 2010
filed in Christian, balance, belief, happiness, society
tagged children, craving, desire, happiness, simplicity

How Does It End?

light in the tunnel
You’ve put in a few decades doing whatever it is you do. How does it end? I was prompted to think about this after a longtime friend came by for dinner. We’ve known each other for close to 35 years. We talked about the paths we’ve been on and the paths we see ourselves taking in the near future. We also reminisced about people we know in common.

Retirement
Our dinner guest is pushing hard. She’s one of the women I talked about in my last post who’s always shown me qualities that were missing in many of my male professional counterparts. She got her Ivy League degree but knew that nothing was promised. She’s hasn’t had it easy but she’s embraced “free agency” and works to improve the lives of those around her.

I was taken aback to hear that friends we went to school with are getting ready to head for retirement and quieter climes in the next year. I was shocked to hear recently that the nephew of a friend had put in his twenty years and was retiring in a year or two and was opening a restaurant/bar.
Maybe what happened to me is…

What’s Next
that I share the view of people like Peter Ragnar who believe that a lot of the aging process is mental. I’ve also taken positions that haven’t provided decent retirement benefits as one of their perks – so temptation is less. My ADD also does not lend itself to a hammock. I am also from the Helen Keller school of thought that says ” security does not exist in Nature. Life is either a daring adventure or it’s nothing.” This is part of the manifesto shared by me and my fellow Ronin.

God does not promise security in this life. The author Philip Yancey points out that we don’t get to know God and then do his will – we get to know God by doing his will. Like my parents, I choose to “wear out rather than rust out.” It took me a while, but I realize that my wife’s complaints about our path are mainly pro forma. In many ways she pushes harder than I do. She does this in the face of the paradoxes that come with being a good Christian. The more you do, the more is demanded and gratitude be damned.

The reasons for staying on or stepping off may be the result of evolution, genetics, or something else. Some of us are built a different way. Some deal with the difficulty of the now – they live how they believe Christ lived, and they accept that God will determine the value of all these efforts at some point in the distant future. You are not alone. I respect and admire those who have decided that their race has been run. But there are those of us who are not content with where we are and what we’ve done and we will keep moving. The Talmud, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Bible all recognize that we cannot possibly finish the work set before us – but we will not be excused for not taking it up.

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No Comments by Hans Hageman on July 26, 2010
filed in Christian, belief, ethics and morality, living, over 50
tagged career, faith, life, meaning, purpose, retirement

The Power of Belief

friendly universe
“Cogito ergo sum” – I think, therefore I am. I have been hoping that there is a related principle that applies to the art of writing. Something like, “I write, therefore I am a writer.” Even if it is not true, I will continue to act as if it is. I combine this with Emerson’s advice on writing that “when you run out of arrows, throw your body at it.”

Today I’m throwing my body at a short post on the Universe.

Albert Einstein felt that the fundamental question facing all of us is: “Is the Universe a friendly place?” We each get the chance to answer this for ourselves. What if you decided just for today that it was? Would you be a rebel in this Universe? Would your belief about your capabilities or responsibilities change?

What kind of Universe do you currently live in? If we take better control of our beliefs and imagination, we can make sure the trance we’re in is one of our own making.

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2 Comments by Hans Hageman on July 24, 2010
filed in belief, education, living, society
tagged belief, imagination, Universe, writing

Independence Is Not About Hot Dogs

independence
There is no official post today because of the holiday. I’ll be doing one tomorrow on nonprofit leadership (I think!).

Because this weekend is a ceIebration of our independence, I did want to say “thank you” to all the people who defend our freedom. In particular, THANKS to my two former students, Michael Rivera and Anthony Howell, both serving in the USMC. These two young men joined the Corps as teenagers so that they could grow and serve. Thank you also to Lt. Col. Ridenhour, currently deployed to Afghanistan. I am also proud of the fact that they allow me to call them “friend.”

I have worked with too many “men without chests” (C.S. Lewis) so it’s good to know that there are those capable and willing to do the work that liberty requires.

“We sleep safely at night because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would harm us.”
— Winston S. Churchill

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No Comments by Hans Hageman on July 5, 2010
filed in belief, courage, education, ethics and morality, history, service, society
tagged independence, liberty, Marines

Reiki Energy Healing And Growing Up

pranic healing
I’m back on the path! Reiki energy healing was a part of my life in the mdi-90′s. I had parents with health problems and students who were living with holes in their souls. Reiki, hypnosis, biofeedback, and NLP were some of my stops along the way. My intuition, stress level, communication skills, and health all improved as I undertook this journey. I studied under some good people – Rachel Hott and Stephen Leeds, John LaValle, and William Lee Rand, among others.

Reiki
“Reiki” means “universal” or “spiritual” energy. Kanji is made up of ideographs and pictographs so it’s difficult to come up with an exact translation. The founder, Mikao Usui, did not use the term “Reiki” but this is the name that has come to describe this system of healing. I studied under William Lee Rand and became a Reiki master in 1997. It was cool for me to go back and check on this lineage

As the son of a Methodist minister, I had to ask myself whether I was delving into the dark side with my studies? Part of this question was answered by the peace that I was able to bring to my family and students with my practice. I was honored to be part of an Episcopal church, headed by Father Robert Castle, that invited me to the altar on Sundays to provide Reiki healing.

Christianity
For me, Reiki has meant a closer connection to God – a way to relieve suffering, express compassion, and to be more Christ-like. I spoke to Christians who were concerned or skeptical. They were unable to answer my questions about “Gifts of the Spirit” and Paul’s guidance in Corinthians. If you are called to practice the gift of healing do you ignore the Jesus of John 14:12 who says: “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing.”

The Lesson
I have stated it in other posts and been attacked for it in other contexts but…I am my parents’ child and I am a child of God. Healing is part of my path. I hope to pass this on. I ‘d love to hear about your path to healing and your thoughts on ways we can create a healing community. I’m not ashamed to say that I’m growing up.

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1 Comment by Hans Hageman on June 28, 2010
filed in belief, education, energy, health, life fitness, living

Is Suffering Optional?

suffering bastards

Desire and Suffering
So I’m sitting here trying to evolve and flitting across my consciousness was the phrase: “Desire is the root of all suffering.” I’m not sure why it came up, but it’s something I had always believed was one of the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism and probably a generally good prescription for the things that ail us as Americans and as humans. This time, as I thought about it, something didn’t seem to feel right.

Happiness
Too many of us seek reward and recognition from sources outside ourselves and we all eventually find out, as Arjuna did, that we are not entitled to the fruits of our labors-only to our labors. As we undertake our labors and fight the “Long Defeat,” it doesn’t mean that we should no longer continue to seek our bliss or to undertake Joyce’s (and Joseph Campbell’s) “Hero’s Journey.” In fact, I believe that never embarking on this journey or leaving the path is the source of most suffering in the people I run across. We need to do what we are called to do with no thought of reward. Our desire for self-importance becomes a trap.

Desire vs. Craving
I’m not comfortable (or perhaps not evolved enough) to believe that if I was able to eliminate all my desires that I would be in a better place. Our desires not only direct our basic survival but they help us to create as well. I choose to believe that the world is a better place because some people had the desire to create freedom, justice, and artistic beauty.

I think Buddha and the Bible are referring to craving. Excessive aversion or excessive attachment can screw up a lot of things. So can the substitution of hope for action. Our desires create a spiral that requires a constant attention to our material and emotional happiness – to the exclusion of our mission. This keeps us from getting the real work done. We will never have all the facts so we just need to focus on our daily acts on the way. If you want to know what’s required, Micah 6:8 says we are to: “Act justly, and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

If that’s too much, then if you’re somewhere between “I’m on top of the world!” and “I guess things could always be worse”, you’re probably okay.

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No Comments by Hans Hageman on June 24, 2010
filed in balance, belief, energy, ethics and morality, living, society

What We Believe Makes All The Difference

acupuncture

What we believe – the things we know are true - influences the quality of our lives. This post had originally been meant for the the first Sunday of Pentecost but reality intruded – again! It was brought back to my consciousness by the master physical therapist and healer, Ming Chew. I have to search through my old posts but I think I wrote about Ming Chew a couple of years ago when I tore the quadriceps tendon of my right knee. Instead of traditional PT, I went to Ming for a couple of painful sessions. I gained mobility and, more importantly, I gained the confidence to take responsibility for the rest of my rehab.

Well, it was now it was my right shoulder that was giving me problems – so it was back to Ming. One of the first things he did was to pull out a plastic doll that had a bunch of different colored lines on it. Now, I’ve been around this “complementary medicine” thing for a while, so I knew the lines represented acupuncture meridians. This was a “Tong Ren” doll. This was new to me. Ming explained that this was another technique in energy medicine that worked “remotely” with lasers, needles, or a magnetic hammer. A muscle test after the Tong Ren treatment showed that my shoulder was stronger. The power of suggestion? Perhaps. As a Reiki master who has done remote emotional healing, I believe otherwise. Placebo effect or something else, the effect improved the quality of my life.

One of the nice things about my new existence as a trainer and transformation coach is that I can talk about these things without worrying about how they sound to buttoned-down bean counters. Tong Ren, Reiki, Therapeutic Touch, hypnosis, Emotional Freedom Technique, the Release Technique, or the gifts of the Pentecost (Mark 16:15-18), I’m working with them all!

Limiting Beliefs
I’m going to end this post with an NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) technique that will help you deal with any belief that have held you back from your true potential.

We structure our experience in different ways. We delete, distort, and generalize in order to organize the barrage of stimuli that seek our attention. We create filters and maps of the world that become self-fulfilling and self-reinforcing. We eventually only allow in information that conform with the beliefs we have developed. These beliefs and filters sometimes get in the way of our “path.”

Submodalities are the way we record our experiences – the building blocks. We experience the world through our five senses. Submodalities are the details and the “control knobs” of our sensory experience. Our memories are recorded as pictures. When you are looking at the pictures of your memories you can change things like the brightness, the focus, the color, and the movement of the pictures. When you think back on something you can change the feelings associated with the memory by noticing its location in your body, moving it around, changing its weight, pressure, or size, etc. We all have memories of conversations that haven’t gone well. The memory of these conversations have a certain volume, rate, pitch, rhythm.

Exercise
Here is an exercise with submodalities that will help you gain better control of your beliefs:

  • Think about a belief that you currently have that you would like to change (e.g. – “I’ll never lose this weight.”),  This is called a “limiting belief.”
  • Think about something you used to believe but that you now believe is not true (e.g. – Santa Claus brings the Christmas gifts).
  • When you access this thought/memory of the thing you no longer believe- what submodalities (like position, color, sound, pitch, weight, etc. like the ones I mentioned above) are associated with this?
  • Make a picture of the limiting belief and substitute the submodalities of the thing you used to believe.

Notice how you feel about the formerly limiting belief.  If you want to play further, bring up an empowering belief.  Notice the submodalities and put these in the picture  of the former limiting belief.  Things at this point should have changed.

Let me know how this worked for you or if you have any questions about the process.

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No Comments by Hans Hageman on June 21, 2010
filed in belief, education, energy
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