RSA Animate: The Secret Power Of Time

(By Professor Philip Zimbardo, published at RSA Animate on 24 May 2010 at the following link: http://www.thersa.org/events/rsaanimate/animate/rsa-animate-the-secret-powers-of-time)


Professor Philip Zimbardo reveals how our individual perspective on time affects our work, health and well-being. This RSA Animate is adapted from Zimbardo's lecture at the RSA.

N.B. Professor Philip Zimbardo is an internationally recognised scholar, educator, researcher, winning numerous awards and honors in each of these domains.  He has been a Stanford University professor since 1968, having taught previously at Yale, NYU and Columbia.  Zimbardo's career is noted for giving psychology away to the public through his popular PBS-TV series, Discovering Psychology, along with many text and trade books, among his 300 publications.  He was recently president of the American Psychological Association.

RSA Animate: The Divided Brain

(By Iain McGilchrist, published at RSA Animate on 24 October 2011 at the following link: http://www.thersa.org/events/rsaanimate/animate/rsa-animate-the-divided-brain)



In this RSA Animate, the renowned psychiatrist and writer Iain McGilchrist explains how our 'divided brain' has profoundly altered human behaviour, culture and society. This was first taken from a lecture which was given by Iain McGilchrist as part of the RSA's free public events programme on 17 November 2010.

N.B. Iain McGilchrist is a former Fellow of All Souls' College, Oxford, where he taught literature, before training in medicine. He has an interest in brain research, and now works as a private consultant in London,  where he was a Consultant and Clinical Director at the Bethlem Royal and Maudsley Hospital Acute Mental Health Services.  He is a fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

RSA Animate: The Truth About Dishonesty

(By Dan Ariely, published at RSA Animate on 14 September 2012 at the following link:http://www.thersa.org/events/rsaanimate/animate/rsa-animate-the-truth-about-dishonesty)


In this RSA Animate, Dan Ariely explores the circumstances under which someone would lie and what effect deception has on society at large. In this case, he sought to examine the mechanisms at work behind dishonest behaviour, and the implications this has for all aspects of our social and political lives.This is taken from a lecture which was first given by Dan Ariely as part of the RSA's free public events programme on 10 July 2012 at this link: http://www.thersa.org/events/video/vision-videos/free-beer-the-truth-about-dishonesty.

N.B. Dan Ariely is the James B. Duke Professor of Psychology & Behavioural Economics at Duke University, and is dedicated to helping people live more sensible – if not rational – lives. His interests span a wide range of behaviours, and his sometimes unusual experiments are consistently interesting, amusing and informative, demonstrating profound ideas that fly in the face of common wisdom. In addition to appointments at the Fuqua School of Business, the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, the Department of Economics, and the School of Medicine at Duke University, Dan is also a founding member of the Center for Advanced Hindsight, and the author of the New York Times bestsellers Predictably Irrational, and The Upside of Irrationality. His new book The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty will be published in June 2012.

Random Thoughts: The Peverell Story

(By The Butterbeer Experience: taken from the "Songs From Beedle The Bard" album)

 

I once happened ‘cross fair brothers three
Who thought they could use all their magic to thwart me
But I, being Death, being sly blocked their path
And said “Brave, cunning brothers oh what do you ask
I will give each a prize and then let brothers pass.”
 
The first brother begged “Please, Death, make me a tool;
A wand that will win every fight, every duel.”
So I broke a branch off of an elder tree
And I fashioned a wand for he thought he was worthy
And gave elder wand to the eldest of three.
 
Go, brother, I bid thee goodnight
I promise you’ll win all your battles and fights
But your wand will be stolen and you will be slain
Then you and I will meet again.
 
The next brother cried “Give me magic instead,
The power to bring others back from the dead.”
So I picked up a stone from the riverside
And I told him the pebble had magic inside
It would bring back the dead and his departed bride.
 
Go, brother I bid thee goodnight
You’ll see your love soon but things will not be right
You’ll drive yourself crazy 'cause she won’t be whole
And then I will claim your soul.
 
The youngest brother said “Death, I don’t trust your ways,
Please leave me alone ‘til the end of my days.”
And though I was reluctant, he was the wisest of the three
So I gave him my cloak of invisibility
And I let the young brother go free.
 
Go, brother I bid thee goodnight
Go take your new cloak and go live out your life
Be happy and healthy and when you are ready
You can take off your cloak and join me.
 
And that is the story of the Peverell brothers
They each made their choice, one wiser than others
They stripped me of wand and of cloak and of stone
And I bade young Ignotus be selfless and roam
And many years passed ‘til he called me his home
But I took the other two for my own. 

N.B. I rather like the moral of this story.

The Tale of the Three Brothers

(As read by Hermione Jean Granger, from a first edition of "The Tales of Beedle the Bard", a collection of wizarding fairy tales, left to her by the late Professor Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore)

“There were once three brothers who were traveling along a lonely, winding road at twilight. In time, the brothers reached a river too deep to wade through and too dangerous to swim across.

However, these brothers were learned in the magical arts, and so they simply waved their wands and made a bridge appear across the treacherous water.

They were halfway across it when they found their path blocked by a hooded figure. And Death spoke to them. He was angry that he had been cheated out of three new victims, for travelers usually drowned in the river.

But Death was cunning. He pretended to congratulate the three brothers upon their magic and said that each had earned a prize for having been clever enough to evade him.

So the oldest brother, who was a combative man, asked for a wand more powerful than any in existence: a wand that must always win duels for its owner, a wand worthy of a wizard who had conquered Death!

So Death crossed to an elder tree on the banks of the river, fashioned a wand from a branch that hung there, and gave it to the oldest brother.

Then the second brother, who was an arrogant man, decided that he wanted to humiliate Death still further, and asked for the power to recall others from Death.

So Death picked up a stone from the riverbank and gave it to the second brother, and told him that the stone would have the power to bring back the dead.

And then Death asked the third and youngest brother what he would like.

The youngest brother was the humblest and also the wisest of the brothers, and he did not trust Death. So he asked for something that would enable him to go forth from that place without being followed by Death. And death, most unwillingly, handed over his own Cloak of Invisibility.

Then Death stood aside and allowed the three brothers to continue on their way, and they did so, talking with wonder of the adventure they had had, and admiring Death’s gifts. In due course the brothers separated, each for his own destination.

 The first brother traveled on for a week or more, and reaching a distant village, sought out a fellow wizard with whom he had a quarrel. Naturally with the Elder Wand as his weapon, he could not fail to win the duel that followed.

Leaving his enemy dead upon the floor, the oldest brother proceeded to an inn, where he boasted loudly of the powerful wand he had snatched from Death himself, and of how it made him invincible.

That very night, another wizard crept upon the oldest brother as he lay, wine-sodden, upon his bed. The thief took the wand and, for good measure, slit the oldest brother’s throat. And so Death took the first brother for his own.

Meanwhile, the second brother journeyed to his own home, where he lived alone. Here he took out the stone that had the power to recall the dead, and turned it thrice in his hand. To his amazement and his delight, the figure of the girl he had once hoped to marry, before her untimely death, appeared at once before him.

Yet she was sad and cold, separated from him as by a veil. Though she had returned to the mortal world, she did not truly belong there and suffered.

Finally the second brother, driven mad with hopeless longing, killed himself so as truly to join her. And so Death took the second brother for his own.

But though Death searched for the third brother for many years, he was never able to find him. It was only when he had attained a great age that the youngest brother finally took off the Cloak of Invisibility and gave it to his son. And then he greeted Death as an old friend, and went with him gladly, and, equals, they departed this life.”

N.B. The Peverell brothers, Antioch, Cadmus, and Ignotus, are believed by some to be the subjects of the wizarding legend, "The Tale of the Three Brothers". Each possessed one of the legendary Deathly Hallows, where Antioch had the Elder Wand, Cadmus had the Resurrection Stone, and Ignotus had the Cloak of Invisibility. 
Peverell was the surname of a medieval pure-blood wizarding family. Hermione Granger reported in early 1998 that, according to Nature's Nobility: A Wizarding Genealogy, the Peverell name was among the first to "become extinct in the male line", meaning that the name had died out among wizarding families. 
However, the Peverells had numerous descendants through female lines, but by the twentieth century only two such families could be identified through heirloom. They are the Gaunt family (the Resurrection Stone) and the Potter family (the Cloak of Invisibility).

Random Thoughts: The Distance Of Conscience

(By Mahatma Gandhi)

The human voice can never reach the distance that is covered by the still small voice of conscience.

The happy secret to better work

(By Shawn Archer)



The same speech as well as Shawn Archer's detailed profile can be found at the following site: http://www.ted.com/speakers/shawn_achor.html. The full text of the lecture is enclosed as follows:

When I was seven years old and my sister was just five years old, we were playing on top of a bunk bed. I was two years older than my sister at the time -- I mean, I'm two years older than her now -- but at the time it meant she had to do everything that I wanted to do, and I wanted to play war. So we were up on top of our bunk beds. And on one side of the bunk bed, I had put out all of my G.I. Joe soldiers and weaponry. And on the other side were all my sister's My Little Ponies ready for a cavalry charge.

There are differing accounts of what actually happened that afternoon, but since my sister is not here with us today, let me tell you the true story -- (Laughter) -- which is my sister's a little bit on the clumsy side. Somehow, without any help or push from her older brother at all, suddenly Amy disappeared off of the top of the bunk bed and landed with this crash on the floor. Now I nervously peered over the side of the bed to see what had befallen my fallen sister and saw that she had landed painfully on her hands and knees on all fours on the ground.

I was nervous because my parents had charged me with making sure that my sister and I played as safely and as quietly as possible. And seeing as how I had accidentally broken Amy's arm just one week before ... (Laughter) ... heroically pushing her out of the way of an oncoming imaginary sniper bullet, (Laughter) for which I have yet to be thanked, I was trying as hard as I could -- she didn't even see it coming -- I was trying as hard as I could to be on my best behavior.

And I saw my sister's face, this wail of pain and suffering and surprise threatening to erupt from her mouth and threatening to wake my parents from the long winter's nap for which they had settled. So I did the only thing my little frantic seven year-old brain could think to do to avert this tragedy. And if you have children, you've seen this hundreds of times before. I said, "Amy, Amy, wait. Don't cry. Don't cry. Did you see how you landed? No human lands on all fours like that. Amy, I think this means you're a unicorn."

(Laughter)

Now that was cheating, because there was nothing in the world my sister would want more than not to be Amy the hurt five year-old little sister, but Amy the special unicorn. Of course, this was an option that was open to her brain at no point in the past. And you could see how my poor, manipulated sister faced conflict, as her little brain attempted to devote resources to feeling the pain and suffering and surprise she just experienced, or contemplating her new-found identity as a unicorn. And the latter won out. Instead of crying, instead of ceasing our play, instead of waking my parents, with all the negative consequences that would have ensued for me, instead a smile spread across her face and she scrambled right back up onto the bunk bed with all the grace of a baby unicorn ... (Laughter) ... with one broken leg.

What we stumbled across at this tender age of just five and seven -- we had no idea at the time -- was something that was going be at the vanguard of a scientific revolution occurring two decades later in the way that we look at the human brain. What we had stumbled across is something called positive psychology, which is the reason that I'm here today and the reason that I wake up every morning.

When I first started talking about this research outside of academia, out with companies and schools, the very first thing they said to never do is to start your talk with a graph. The very first thing I want to do is start my talk with a graph. This graph looks boring, but this graph is the reason I get excited and wake up every morning. And this graph doesn't even mean anything; it's fake data. What we found is --

(Laughter)

If I got this data back studying you here in the room, I would be thrilled, because there's very clearly a trend that's going on there, and that means that I can get published, which is all that really matters. The fact that there's one weird red dot that's up above the curve, there's one weirdo in the room -- I know who you are, I saw you earlier -- that's no problem. That's no problem, as most of you know, because I can just delete that dot. I can delete that dot because that's clearly a measurement error. And we know that's a measurement error because it's messing up my data.

So one of the very first things we teach people in economics and statistics and business and psychology courses is how, in a statistically valid way, do we eliminate the weirdos. How do we eliminate the outliers so we can find the line of best fit? Which is fantastic if I'm trying to find out how many Advil the average person should be taking -- two. But if I'm interested in potential, if I'm interested in your potential, or for happiness or productivity or energy or creativity, what we're doing is we're creating the cult of the average with science.

If I asked a question like, "How fast can a child learn how to read in a classroom?" scientists change the answer to "How fast does the average child learn how to read in that classroom?" and then we tailor the class right towards the average. Now if you fall below the average on this curve, then psychologists get thrilled, because that means you're either depressed or you have a disorder, or hopefully both. We're hoping for both because our business model is, if you come into a therapy session with one problem, we want to make sure you leave knowing you have 10, so you keep coming back over and over again. We'll go back into your childhood if necessary, but eventually what we want to do is make you normal again. But normal is merely average.

And what I posit and what positive psychology posits is that if we study what is merely average, we will remain merely average. Then instead of deleting those positive outliers, what I intentionally do is come into a population like this one and say, why? Why is it that some of you are so high above the curve in terms of your intellectual ability, athletic ability, musical ability, creativity, energy levels, your resiliency in the face of challenge, your sense of humor? Whatever it is, instead of deleting you, what I want to do is study you. Because maybe we can glean information -- not just how to move people up to the average, but how we can move the entire average up in our companies and schools worldwide.

The reason this graph is important to me is, when I turn on the news, it seems like the majority of the information is not positive, in fact it's negative. Most of it's about murder, corruption, diseases, natural disasters. And very quickly, my brain starts to think that's the accurate ratio of negative to positive in the world. What that's doing is creating something called the medical school syndrome -- which, if you know people who've been to medical school, during the first year of medical training, as you read through a list of all the symptoms and diseases that could happen, suddenly you realize you have all of them.

I have a brother in-law named Bobo -- which is a whole other story. Bobo married Amy the unicorn. Bobo called me on the phone from Yale Medical School, and Bobo said, "Shawn, I have leprosy." (Laughter) Which, even at Yale, is extraordinarily rare. But I had no idea how to console poor Bobo because he had just gotten over an entire week of menopause.

(Laughter)

See what we're finding is it's not necessarily the reality that shapes us, but the lens through which your brain views the world that shapes your reality. And if we can change the lens, not only can we change your happiness, we can change every single educational and business outcome at the same time.

When I applied to Harvard, I applied on a dare. I didn't expect to get in, and my family had no money for college. When I got a military scholarship two weeks later, they allowed me to go. Suddenly, something that wasn't even a possibility became a reality. When I went there, I assumed everyone else would see it as a privilege as well, that they'd be excited to be there. Even if you're in a classroom full of people smarter than you, you'd be happy just to be in that classroom, which is what I felt. But what I found there is, while some people experience that, when I graduated after my four years and then spent the next eight years living in the dorms with the students -- Harvard asked me to; I wasn't that guy. (Laughter) I was an officer of Harvard to counsel students through the difficult four years. And what I found in my research and my teaching is that these students, no matter how happy they were with their original success of getting into the school, two weeks later their brains were focused, not on the privilege of being there, nor on their philosophy or their physics. Their brain was focused on the competition, the workload, the hassles, the stresses, the complaints.

When I first went in there, I walked into the freshmen dining hall, which is where my friends from Waco, Texas, which is where I grew up -- I know some of you have heard of it. When they'd come to visit me, they'd look around, they'd say, "This freshman dining hall looks like something out of Hogwart's from the movie "Harry Potter," which it does. This is Hogwart's from the movie "Harry Potter" and that's Harvard. And when they see this, they say, "Shawn, why do you waste your time studying happiness at Harvard? Seriously, what does a Harvard student possibly have to be unhappy about?"

Embedded within that question is the key to understanding the science of happiness. Because what that question assumes is that our external world is predictive of our happiness levels, when in reality, if I know everything about your external world, I can only predict 10 percent of your long-term happiness. 90 percent of your long-term happiness is predicted not by the external world, but by the way your brain processes the world. And if we change it, if we change our formula for happiness and success, what we can do is change the way that we can then affect reality. What we found is that only 25 percent of job successes are predicted by I.Q. 75 percent of job successes are predicted by your optimism levels, your social support and your ability to see stress as a challenge instead of as a threat.

I talked to a boarding school up in New England, probably the most prestigious boarding school, and they said, "We already know that. So every year, instead of just teaching our students, we also have a wellness week. And we're so excited. Monday night we have the world's leading expert coming in to speak about adolescent depression. Tuesday night it's school violence and bullying. Wednesday night is eating disorders. Thursday night is elicit drug use. And Friday night we're trying to decide between risky sex or happiness." (Laughter) I said, "That's most people's Friday nights." (Laughter) (Applause) Which I'm glad you liked, but they did not like that at all. Silence on the phone. And into the silence, I said, "I'd be happy to speak at your school, but just so you know, that's not a wellness week, that's a sickness week. What you've done is you've outlined all the negative things that can happen, but not talked about the positive."

The absence of disease is not health. Here's how we get to health: We need to reverse the formula for happiness and success. In the last three years, I've traveled to 45 different countries, working with schools and companies in the midst of an economic downturn. And what I found is that most companies and schools follow a formula for success, which is this: If I work harder, I'll be more successful. And if I'm more successful, then I'll be happier. That undergirds most of our parenting styles, our managing styles, the way that we motivate our behavior.

And the problem is it's scientifically broken and backwards for two reasons. First, every time your brain has a success, you just changed the goalpost of what success looked like. You got good grades, now you have to get better grades, you got into a good school and after you get into a better school, you got a good job, now you have to get a better job, you hit your sales target, we're going to change your sales target. And if happiness is on the opposite side of success, your brain never gets there. What we've done is we've pushed happiness over the cognitive horizon as a society. And that's because we think we have to be successful, then we'll be happier.

But the real problem is our brains work in the opposite order. If you can raise somebody's level of positivity in the present, then their brain experiences what we now call a happiness advantage, which is your brain at positive performs significantly better than it does at negative, neutral or stressed. Your intelligence rises, your creativity rises, your energy levels rise. In fact, what we've found is that every single business outcome improves. Your brain at positive is 31 percent more productive than your brain at negative, neutral or stressed. You're 37 percent better at sales. Doctors are 19 percent faster, more accurate at coming up with the correct diagnosis when positive instead of negative, neutral or stressed. Which means we can reverse the formula. If we can find a way of becoming positive in the present, then our brains work even more successfully as we're able to work harder, faster and more intelligently.

What we need to be able to do is to reverse this formula so we can start to see what our brains are actually capable of. Because dopamine, which floods into your system when you're positive, has two functions. Not only does it make you happier, it turns on all of the learning centers in your brain allowing you to adapt to the world in a different way.

We've found that there are ways that you can train your brain to be able to become more positive. In just a two-minute span of time done for 21 days in a row, we can actually rewire your brain, allowing your brain to actually work more optimistically and more successfully. We've done these things in research now in every single company that I've worked with, getting them to write down three new things that they're grateful for for 21 days in a row, three new things each day. And at the end of that, their brain starts to retain a pattern of scanning the world, not for the negative, but for the positive first.

Journaling about one positive experience you've had over the past 24 hours allows your brain to relive it. Exercise teaches your brain that your behavior matters. We find that meditation allows your brain to get over the cultural ADHD that we've been creating by trying to do multiple tasks at once and allows our brains to focus on the task at hand. And finally, random acts of kindness are conscious acts of kindness. We get people, when they open up their inbox, to write one positive email praising or thanking somebody in their social support network.

And by doing these activities and by training your brain just like we train our bodies, what we've found is we can reverse the formula for happiness and success, and in doing so, not only create ripples of positivity, but create a real revolution.

Thank you very much.

(Applause)

Financial Journals: The Broken Window Fallacy

(Reproduced from an article taken from "The Daily Crux Sunday Interview" entitled "An economic lie that is ruining America" - An interview between The Palm Beach Letter and one of its authors, Mark Ford)



The Palm Beach Letter: Let's talk about books. What is the best book on economics or investing you've ever read?

Mark Ford: I haven't read all that many. But I'd have to say that the book that had the greatest impact on my thinking was Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson.

PBL: A classic. How did that affect you?

Ford: It was one of those "eureka!" moments. It was like coming up from a murky basement into a bright room. The book gave me a clear, common-sense explanation of why things were the way they were. I could finally see the fallacies that supported so much stupidity that passed for economic science.

PBL: Such as?

Ford: Such as why public works are so often wasteful, why government credit diverts production, why technological advances are good, not bad, for employment, why spread-the-work schemes inevitably fail, why government price-fixing and tariffs make us poorer, etc.

PBL: So what is the most important thing you got from reading Economics in One Lesson?

Ford: That you can't understand any economic policy unless you look at the whole picture. It's not enough to see the immediate, localized consequences of any public action. You must see its long-term effect on the entire economic community. Hazlitt says that nine-tenths of the economic fallacies politicians use do so much harm because they ignore this lesson. After reading the book, I can't help but agree.

PBL: That's a little abstract. Can you explain?

Ford: Hazlitt explains it beautifully in the second chapter, entitled "The Broken Window."

It goes like this:

A hoodlum throws a rock through a baker's plate glass window. A crowd gathers and talks about what a shame it is. But someone suggests that it is actually a blessing. He points out that the $250 the baker must pay for a new window will make the glazier $250 richer. And the glazier will use that $250 to spend with other merchants. The smashed window, according to this theory, will go on providing money and employment in ever-widening circles.

The logic is that the hoodlum who threw the brick was not a menace at all, but a public benefactor. The crowd agrees.

PBL: It does seem like a compelling argument.

Ford: It does. Yet, it's a logical fallacy.

PBL: So what's the fallacy?

Ford: The crowd is right that the broken window will benefit the glazier. But the crowd is looking only at one part of the picture: the effect on the glazier. That's the fallacy. To view the event properly, one must take into account its effect on not just one person or group, but also on the entire economy.

If you do that, you will quickly see that the baker is poorer by $250. And that means he won't be able to spend $250 on the suit he was planning to buy. The tailor that was to get his order for the suit won't have the $250 that would have come to him. And so he won't be able to spend that money with other merchants.... and so on, down the line.

The crowd was thinking only of two parties – the baker and the glazier – because they can see the window. But they don't consider the tailor because the suit is invisible – it is never made.

PBL: That's good. So how does this apply to governmental policies?

Ford: One example Hazlitt gives is government credit to farmers. (This was a big issue during the 1940s, when the book was written.)

At that time, many politicians supported government credit to farmers because farmers represented a big constituency for them. The argument in favor of farm credits was based on particular farmers who could not get the credit they needed from private lenders (banks, mortgage lenders, and so on).

In proposing the legislation, politicians always told stories about the poor farmer who won't be able to make it unless the government steps in to help him. If we buy a farm (or tractor) for him, he will be productive again and resume his role as an upstanding citizen. His farm will add to the total national product, and he will eventually pay it off with the produce he sells. So the loan actually costs the taxpayers nothing, since it will be self-liquidating.

PBL: Again, it sounds like a compelling argument.

Ford: Yes it does, so long as you look at only part of the picture: the short-term effect on the particular farmer who can't get the loan. But if you have learned Hazlitt's lesson, you will see the fallacy in it.

There is a reason this particular farmer cannot get the loan he wants. It is because the private lending community doesn't think he or his farm is worthy of it. (In other words, he is not credit-worthy.)

As Hazlitt points out, credit – good or bad – is what the farmer already has before he applies for the loan. If he has credit, he will get the loan privately. It is only when he doesn't have credit that the government must step in. In other words, the only purpose of government credit is to provide loans to people or businesses that are not credit-worthy.

To understand the whole picture, you must look at the effect of that loan. To provide the loan, the government must take the money – in the form of taxation – from the private sector. And that money will not be used for whatever purposes it would have been used.

For every $1,000 that is given by the government to a farmer with bad credit, $1,000 will not be spent by some private person or business on a person or business with good credit. The long-term implication is obvious: more risk, greater net losses, and less efficiency. The economy loses out in the long run.

PBL: Yes, I can see that. But that particular farmer, if he doesn't get the loan, will be worse off.

Ford: Yes. In the short term, he will be worse off. Hazlitt doesn't deny this. And that is one of the things I like about his thinking. He does not make the mistake that some free-market theorists make in denying these short-term, limited problems.

Economic progress in a free market always produces limited and temporary hardships, but those hardships are more than offset by an overall long-term increase in wealth. Hazlitt doesn't pretend that free markets will solve all problems. He argues that in the long run they provide the best net result.

PBL: Can you give me examples of how this is relevant today?

Ford: Open up any newspaper and you will see evidence of it in the editorials. Watch any talk show on economics and you'll see it all the time. The broken window fallacy is the go-to gimmick of almost every successful politician, Republican or Democrat.

PBL: For example?

Ford: On the treadmill this morning, I saw a "news" story about what the "reporter" called "the growing problem of hunger in America."

The reporter showed a clip of a young woman who said she was having trouble feeding her children with the $300 a month she gets in food stamps. She said the pain of hunger was "unimaginable." The reporter concluded that something must be done to increase food stamp allocations.

If it weren't for the fact that this young woman weighed about 280 pounds, I would have been moved. But had I believed her, I would have reminded myself that this was the broken window theory in operation.

No mention was made of the fact that the $300 in food stamps she was getting from the government was actually costing taxpayers much more than $300. With all the government bureaucracy involved in qualifying her, tracking the expenses, and reporting them, the cost of those food stamps was probably closer to $500 or $600. And that $500 or $600 was taken from taxpayers that would have spent it elsewhere, providing food and clothing for others.

So the net effect is actually negative. That wasn't part of the report.

PBL: So how does this idea affect you personally? I mean, how can a person use this knowledge to better his life?

Ford: Well, for one thing, I'm very careful about my charitable expenditures. I don't give to major charities, because I'm afraid they may be as inefficient as the government.

I do spend a good amount of money every year on charitable projects, but they are all my projects – ones that I feel responsible for and that I control. I want to know that if I spend $60,000 to build a library in Nicaragua, it will do more good than spending $60,000 on a new BMW. This makes me work much harder to make sure the investment pays off.

This idea has also been important in my business thinking. When I discuss capital expenditures with my client companies, I always stop to think, "Is this the best use of this money? Or would we get a higher return for the whole company if we spent it elsewhere?"

But the most important benefit for me is that it allows me to spend very little time worrying about government policies that attempt to regulate the economy. I know that most of them – regardless of what party favors them – will be wasteful. That gives me extra time to focus on my investing.

PBL: Thank goodness for that.

N.B. The Broken Window Fallacy was first introduced via the Parable Of The Broken Window by Frédéric Bastiat in his 1850 essay "Ce qu'on voit et ce qu'on ne voit pas" (That Which Is Seen and That Which Is Unseen) to illustrate why destruction, and the money spent to recover from destruction, is actually not a net-benefit to society. The parable, other than the Broken Window Fallacy is also known as Glazier's Fallacy, and demonstrates how opportunity costs, as well as the law of unintended consequences, affect economic activity in ways that are "unseen" or ignored.

The Emergence Of Multiple Chaotic Nodes: A Hathor Planetary Message Thought Tom Kenyon

(By The Hathors Through Tom Kenyon - As extracted from Evolution Ezine: http://evolutionezine.com/the-emergence-of-multiple-chaotic-nodes-a-hathor-planetary-message-through-tom-kenyon/)

Your planet is entering a critical transition state, characterized by a multiplicity of Chaotic Nodes.

In our previous communications we have discussed the changes taking place on your Earth in the context of a single Chaotic Node. But from our viewpoint, multiple Chaotic Nodes are now emerging. These complex interacting nodes involve such things as radical weather anomalies, increases in earthquake and volcanic activity, critical challenges to the planet’s eco-systems, challenges to agriculture and food sources, as well as political and economic volatility.

In addition to these planetary Chaotic Nodes, the sun of your solar system is entering a greater level of volatility and unpredictability as well. It is entering into multiple Chaotic Nodes itself, driven by its own internal cycles, but also greatly impacted, as we have said in previous messages, by the galactic center.

The physical challenges you will face in the near future are many, but our message at this time does not concern the physical dimension of these difficulties. These changes, and their resulting challenges, will be apparent to anyone who looks beneath the surface of current events.

Our focus in this communication is on the emotional and spiritual crisis you are facing.

When a system enters multiple Chaotic Nodes there is increased stress on those elements or beings that reside in the vibratory level of existence where the Chaotic Nodes are taking place.

Let us speak to this for a moment in terms other than human existence. From our experience, other dimensions of consciousness and existence are also experiencing their own version of multiple Chaotic Nodes. Thus, the energetic challenges you are facing are not limited just to Earth, but extend to all dimensions of consciousness and all beings, including non-corporeal (energy beings without bodies), who are related to Earth and this galaxy.

But let us come down to Earth, to the nexus point of your existence in time and space.

As we said earlier, beings living in a realm of existence undergoing multiple Chaotic Nodes will be inevitably stressed by increases in chaotic events.

As chaotic elements within planetary weather patterns increase, as challenges to agriculture multiply, and as economic problems grow, there will be an increase in global human anxiety.

This type of anxiety tends to center around physical survival, and while anxiety about survival can drive human beings into a type of madness and irrationality, there is something more insidious and hidden in the current transition state you are now entering.

This hidden danger has to do with thought forms perpetuated by some of your major religions and spiritual traditions. These thought forms and belief systems maintain the notion that there is a separation between the physical and the interdimensional (spiritual) aspects of your existence. The physical world is viewed as tainted; nature is seen as something to be subdued and dominated (as opposed to co-creating with the natural world), and in essence, the world is viewed as something to be escaped from.

We do not share this belief. Our experience is that consciousness is one continuum from the highest vibrations of light into the lowest vibrations of matter and that the very atoms and subatomic particles that comprise your world are, by their very nature, sacred—if by sacred you mean related to the whole.

As the stresses generated by multiple Chaotic Nodes increase, there will be a tendency for many humans to enter delusional and dissociative states of consciousness.

Those who adhere to the thought form that there is an eternal schism between the realms of matter and those of spirit will be most prone to this aberration in consciousness. And as stresses increase, due to the complex interaction of multiple Chaotic Nodes, there will be a marked tendency for some of these individuals to be separated further and further from the realities of the physical dimension. This type of communal dissociation will be further driven by religious and spiritual thought forms regarding “the End Times,” “the Day of Judgment,” and the “Purification of Earth.” This delusional state of mind will become a type of collective mental/emotional virus as whole groups of individuals succumb to stress and overwhelm as they struggle to deal with the global effects of multiple Chaotic Nodes.

Lines in the sand

From our perspective, a line is being drawn in the sands of human consciousness. And this line is nothing less than the demarcation between those who uphold the schism between matter and spirit as perpetuated by the world’s major religions and those who don’t.

What side of this line you stand on will determine to a great extent what you are open to, in terms of planetary and personal transformation.

All Initiates must determine for themselves, what is true and not true, especially when it comes to this religiously perpetuated schism between matter and spirit. And by Initiates, we simply mean those who strive to live upward in consciousness, regardless of the method or spiritual traditions they follow.

The Path of the Heart

From our perspective, the threshold for an Initiate from the lower vibrational worlds into the upper worlds is, first and foremost, through the heart. This transit of consciousness is essentially an inner journey from the lower chakras to the higher chakras. It is only when an Initiate both transcends and transforms his or her personal fixation on security, sex and power that the upward spiral opens. And the entrance into this upward spiral of consciousness occurs when the heart chakra becomes energetically open and permeable.

The paradox and the difficulty is that you live in a dualistic universe, and virtually any action you take is met by a counter-force. This paradox and difficulty is like a metaphorical grain of sand in an oyster; it is irritating. But through the process of self-evolution, the irritation (i.e. duality) becomes a pearl, and paradoxically, something of value emerges from that which was problematic. But each Initiate must create this pearl of self-transformation for him or herself. No religion, no master, no teacher or guru can do it for you.

It may sound too simplistic but, in our experience, the greatest evolutionary catalyst, and the greatest vibratory field of safety to bridge transition states (such as the one you are collectively entering), is through the heart, your heart.

Let us be more specific here. As the number of Chaotic Nodes increases, the challenges to mental and emotional stability will multiply. And as a result, increasing numbers of individuals will enter irrational states of consciousness. There will be a tendency for these individuals to act out in self-destructive ways. And because you are connected to all life on this planet, you will be affected to some extent by the emotional turmoil of others.

Thus it would be of great benefit to you as an Initiate, to cultivate a coherent emotional state, something you return to again and again, reinforcing what we call a positive attractor.

Then it will be as if you have an energetic bubble of coherency around you. You will be able to see clearly and respond to the dualistic world you live in, yet your vibratory essence will remain protected from the increasing levels of chaos and irrationality of others. How you do this is your choice. There are many ways to accomplish this. We will simply offer two.

The first is the most basic and fundamental but is the foundation for the more advanced. We are well aware that many persons reading these messages are new to this type of information, while others are very advanced, which is why we are offering two techniques.

The Basic Technique

This first method is for those unfamiliar with the vastness of their own inner consciousness. It is simple but highly effective.

We recommend you regularly cultivate this coherent state in the garden of your mind.

To accomplish this, you simply reside in the feelings of appreciation or gratitude, without any reason to do so. In other words, you are not looking to something in your environment or your life to feel appreciation or gratitude for. You simply enter into this vibratory state for no other reason other than choosing to do so.

This vibratory state creates a coherency in your body and mind, and it is a type of mental/emotional upliftment that acts as a counter-balance to the downward spiral many humans will be experiencing.

We recommend that you enter this emotional state several times a day. Just a minute or two is all that is needed, but by entering into this vibratory state throughout the day, you train your brain/mind/body to enter into a coherent state at will. And this will be a very helpful and important mind-skill as you enter further into this planetary transition state (i.e. the emergence of multiple Chaotic Nodes).

One reason we say that this mind-skill will be helpful to you is due to the inherent effects of multiple Chaotic Nodes.

Many of you will find greater opportunities for frustration in your daily life. This is because actions taken will increasingly not lead to the result anticipated. Even those of you who are intellectually gifted and masters of manifestation may find blocks and unanticipated hindrances, due to no causation on your part, but rather due to the actions or inactions of others, as well as unanticipated problems caused by the increase of chaotic events in the world around you. Thus, when you find yourself at your wit’s end, so to speak, if you have cultivated the positive attractor of appreciation or gratitude you can use it to intervene into your own emotional turmoil, for if you succumb to your own emotional stress the contagion of mass hysteria is more likely to reach you.

Think of this simple technique as a lifesaver. It’s something passive, you just rest in it, and it creates a vibratory field that by its very nature protects your emotional and spiritual essence.

The Advanced Technique

The second technique we wish to share is for those of you who are more experienced with your inner worlds.

We discussed the first part of this method in a previous message called Ecstasy and the Heart.

The technique involves focusing on the physical heart, not the heart chakra, and while focusing your attention on the physical heart you enter into the state of appreciation or gratitude (just as with the simple method we gave earlier).

The effect of holding your awareness in the physical heart while experiencing appreciation or gratitude creates bliss or ecstasy if you hold the two together long enough.

Once you enter bliss or ecstasy you become aware of the space between the atoms of your body and your environment. This is a shift of mental attention and is based on the quantum reality that physical matter is over 99% space.

Obviously, you do not perceive this space between the atoms of your body and your immediate environment through your physical senses due to the limitations of your nervous system. But the non-local aspect of your consciousness that is unfettered by the limitations of your physical reality can experience this space.

The final stage of this technique involves a shifting of attention. As you become aware of this space in your body and the space around you, you perform a paradoxical feat of consciousness. You send the appreciation and gratitude you are experiencing, both to the space within your body and to the space around you, as well to the particles of matter that comprise your body and the world around you.

This “holding” of both space and matter in the vibratory realm of appreciation or gratitude will eventually reveal your nature as both an embodied and un-embodied being—as a being living through a physical body or form and simultaneously as a consciousness unbounded by form. If you persist with this method, it will eventually open a miraculous doorway for you, a doorway that leads to profound insights regarding the nature of ascension.

In regard to choosing which method to use, we suggest you begin where you are.

The first method, though simple, is highly effective at protecting you from the contagion of human irrationality and will lift you upward into the currents of the upward spiral, even as those around you spiral downward.

When you feel you are ready, you can explore the advanced method. This is not a marathon race to see who can get to the advanced method the quickest.

The only thing that is required is that you reside in appreciation or gratitude as often as possible without causation. This simple vibratory realm will be a great ally to you as you pass through the current planetary transition state.

...

Summary

As we said at the beginning of this message, you are entering a critical transition state. For those unfamiliar with our previous message entitled Transition States of Consciousness, we strongly suggest that you take a look at this communication.

Your Earth is entering a perilous period in its upward movement. Many aspects of your reality will be changing right before your eyes, more rapidly than you could ever have imagined.

Due to the acceleration of time, the transformation of your civilization will increase exponentially. Your word “transformation” literally means moving beyond form, thus the structures of your reality (meaning the thought forms and beliefs as well as the external realities of your life) will be undergoing rapid change.

A greater fluidity of consciousness is required. Protection of your vibratory essence is vital. You are entering harrowing times and yet in this complexity there are immense opportunities for your own personal evolution.

We believe that there will be a greater polarization between people as the Chaotic Nodes increase in number and intensity. And yet even in the midst of that polarization, if your heart/mind is open you will have moments of deep communion with others, even strangers, whenever you look into the eyes of another human being who recognizes the sacredness of this moment, the sacredness of life, and the sacredness of this Earth.

Our thoughts and blessings are with you.

P.S. According to Tom Kenyon, he said "The Hathors say that they are a group of interdimensional, intergalactic beings who were connected with ancient Egypt through the Temples of the Goddess Hathor, as well as several other pre-history cultures.In the late 1980′s, I was “contacted” by them during meditation, and they began to instruct me in the vibratory nature of the cosmos, the use of sacred geometry as a means to stimulate brain performance, and in the use of sound to activate psycho-spiritual experiences. While I was intrigued with the information, I was, at the time, uncomfortable with their self-described origins. I was, after all a practicing psychotherapist and involved in brain research at the time. In short, I was a rationalist. And these beings—whoever they were and wherever they came from—did not fit into my views of reality at the time."

佛祖说：Why are you still carrying her?

Tanzan and Ekido, two monks on a pilgrimage, were traveling together when they came to the ford of a river. It was there where they met a lovely young girl dressed in silk kimono with a sash and all manners of finery. However, she appeared not to know how she could proceed towards the opposite bank since the water level in the river was high and she obviously was not too keen to soil or wet her clothes.

Without much ado, Tanzan then proceeded to take her on his back, carried her safely across the river and put her down on dry ground on the opposite bank. Thereafter, the monks continued on their way.

Tanzan and Ekido did not speak again until that night when they reached a lodging temple. It was then when Ekido could no longer restrain himself and said “Surely, it is not right for us to touch that girl by the river bank; for it is against the commandments for monks to have close contact with women. How could you of all people violate such a cardinal rule for monks?”

Tanzan remained silent for a moment, but he finally remarked, “I have already set her down by the river bank hours ago. Why are you still carrying her?”

P.S. The above story is derived from a classic kōan. A kōan is a fundamental part of the history and lore of Zen Buddhism. It typically consists of a story, dialogue, question, or statement, the meaning of which cannot be understood by rational thinking but may be accessible through intuition.
One of the most difficult thing which we face constantly in life is to let go of something from the past. When someone does us wrong and seeks forgiveness in the process, we may already choose not to grant that someone forgiveness. Even if we do forgive that someone, we may inadvertently still choose to continue carrying the memory of that wrong. It is especially so if we are that someone who has committed the wrong against somebody else. I am sure we do not want to continue carrying memories of the wrong and its associated guilt, but unfortunately, we often do. In fact, it often seems to be infinitely more difficult for us to forgive ourselves than to forgive someone else. So, when are we ever going to lay down the memories of our past transgressions and move on in life?

佛祖说：石桥禅

阿难对佛祖说 ：我喜欢上了一女子。

佛祖问阿难：你有多喜欢这女子?

阿难说：我愿化身石桥，受那五百年风吹，五百年日晒，五百年雨淋，只求她从桥上经过。

佛祖说:会有多喜欢?

可是一见钟情便倾心一世?

可是不问回报而付出等待？

阿难，某日等那女子从桥上经过，那也便只是经过了，此刻你已化身成了石桥，注定只与风雨厮守。

这一切你都明白，仍旧只为那场遇见而甘受造化之苦。

阿难，你究竟有多喜欢那从桥上经过的女子，令你舍身弃道，甘受情劫之苦？

------------------------------------------------------------

有个年轻美丽的女孩，出身豪门，家产丰厚，又多才多艺，日子过得很好。

媒婆也快把她家的门槛给踩烂了，但她一直不想结婚，因为她觉得还没见到她真正想要嫁的那个男孩。

直到有一天，她去一个庙会散心，于万千拥挤的人群中，看见了一个年轻的男人，不用多说什么，反正女孩觉得那个男人就是她苦苦等待的结果了。

可惜，庙会太挤了， 她无法走到那个男人的身边，就这样眼睁睁的看着那个男人消失在人群中。

后来的两年里，女孩四处去寻找那个男人，但这人就像蒸发了一样，无影无踪。

女孩每天都向佛祖祈祷，希望能再见到那个男人。

她的诚心打动了佛祖，佛祖显灵了。

佛祖说：“你想再看到那个男人吗？”

女孩说：“是的！我只想再看他一眼！”

佛祖：”你要放弃你现在的一切，包括爱你的家人和幸福的生活。”

女孩：“我能放弃！”

佛祖：“你还必须修炼五百年道行，才能见他一面。你不后悔么？”

女孩：“我不后悔！”

女孩变成了一块大石头，躺在荒郊野外，四百多年的风吹日晒，苦不堪言，但女孩都觉得没什么，难受的是这四百多年都没看到一个人，看不见一点点希望，这让她都快崩溃了。

最后一年，一个采石队来了，看中了她的巨大，把她凿成一块巨大的条石，运进了城里，他们正在建一座石桥，于是，女孩变成了石桥的护栏。

就在石桥建成的第一天，女孩就看见了，那个她等了五百年的男人！

他行色匆匆，像有什么急事，很快地从石桥的正中走过了，当然，他不会发觉有一块石头正目不转睛地望着他。

男人又一次消失了，再次出现的是佛祖。

佛祖：“你满意了吗？”

女孩：“不！为什么？为什么我只是桥的护栏？如果我被铺在桥的正中，我就能碰到他了，我就能摸他一下！”

佛祖：“你想摸他一下？那你还得修炼五百年！”

女孩：“我愿意！”

佛祖：“你吃了这么多苦，不后悔？”

女孩：“不后悔！”

女孩变成了一棵大树，立在一条人来人往的官道上，这里每天都有很多人经过，女孩每天都在近处观望，但这更难受，因为无数次满怀希望的看见一个人走来，又无数次希望破灭。

不是有前五百年的修炼，相信女孩早就崩溃了！

日子一天天的过去，女孩的心逐渐平静了，她知道，不到最后一天，他是不会出现的。

又是一个五百年啊！最后一天，女孩知道他会来了，但她的心中竟然不再激动。

来了！他来了！他还是穿着他最喜欢的白色长衫，脸还是那么俊美，女孩痴痴地望着他。

这一次，他没有急匆匆的走过，因为，天太热了。

他注意到路边有一棵大树，那浓密的树荫很诱人，休息一下吧，他这样想。

他走到大树脚下，＊着树根，微微的闭上了双眼，他睡着了。

女孩摸到他了！他就靠在她的身边！

但是，她无法告诉他，这千年的相思。她只有尽力把树荫聚集起来，为他挡住毒辣的阳光。

千年的柔情啊！

男人只是小睡了一刻，因为他还有事要办，他站起身来，拍拍长衫上的灰尘，在动身的前一刻，他抬头看了看这棵大树，又微微地抚摸了一下树干，大概是为了感谢大树为他带来清凉吧。

然后，他头也不回地走了！就在他消失在她的视线的那一刻，佛祖又出现了。

佛祖：“你是不是还想做他的妻子？那你还得修炼……”

女孩平静地打断了佛祖的话：“我是很想，但是不必了。”

佛祖：“哦？”

女孩：“这样已经很好了，爱他，并不一定要做他的妻子。”

佛祖：“哦！”

女孩：“他现在的妻子也像我这样受过苦吗？”

佛祖微微地点点头。

女孩微微一笑：“我也能做到的，但是不必了。”

就在这一刻，女孩发现佛祖微微地叹了一口气，或者是说，佛祖轻轻地松了一口气。

女孩有几分诧异，“佛祖也有心事么？”

佛祖的脸上绽开了一个笑容：“因为这样很好，有个男孩可以少等一千年了，他为了能够看你一眼，已经修炼了两千年。”

Random Thoughts: Propaganda

(By Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda of Nazi Germany)

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

N.B. I am posting a topic which is rather negative for once. But regardless of how much we dislike acknowledging the truth behind this, the reality of the case is that as, Joseph Goebbels said, "the most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly – it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over". Have you ever had the experience of totally disliking a song the very first time you heard it over radio, but gradually began to accept and even like the song as it was played incessantly over and over again? How many other times have we begun to accept mere opinions and suggestions as truths which are then ingrained into our value and belief systems by virtue of the fact that they were drummed constantly into our consciousness?

EARTH: Grounding Yourself through Joy and Creativity

(Earth as channeled by Pamela Kribbe)
www.spiritlibrary.com/pamela-kribbe/grounding-yourself-through-joy-and-creativity

Dear friends,

I am the voice of the earth. I salute you all in joy. It warms my heart to experience your presence and openness towards me. I long to connect with you. We are meant to develop together and jointly walk the road to a different, new world.

I would like to take you back to the very origin of our mutual connection and cooperation. I am a living creature. I am a conscious being who has received you here on the planet in very ancient times. I was receptive to your arrival here on earth and wanted to learn and grow through your presence. You are not from the earth, you come from the stars. You carry a light within that is new and inspiring to earth and all the realms of nature here. Let me explain.

As a planet I absorb light from the outside. The light of the sun warms me and helps me bring forth life on the planet. I am inspired by the great force of the sun and I need it to create and sustain physical life on my skin. The sun is a star. You are representatives of the sun. You carry star light within your soul and bring this light to earth as you are born here.

What was the meaning of this light descending on earth? What was the intention behind your coming? You are here to bring the light of consciousness to me and all of the realms of nature. You are here to awaken us to inner life. Whereas the physical sun helps me to create and sustain physical life on earth, your star light helps me to evolve at an inner level, to grow in consciousness.

To offer a simple illustration of this principle, think of what happens when you hold a flower in your hand and look at it in awe and admiration. You see the exquisite beauty of the flower; you sense its purity, marvel at the colours and enjoy the scent. The flower itself is not aware of its beauty; the flower is simply being itself. But because of your admiration, your presence, your consciousness enveloping the flower, something awakens inside it. She will start to experience itself as something beautiful and valuable. She enjoys your attention and a spark of soul light is awakened in her.

You will see that plants and flowers you give conscious attention to, simply by enjoying them and caring for them, will grow more abundantly, have more life force and develop stronger roots into the earth. You are creators. By your thoughts, intentions and self-consciousness you are able to add life force and creative power to living nature on earth. This is exactly what nature longs to receive from you. All the realms of nature seek to grow in self-awareness, to reach out to the stars, make the connection and absorb star light within.

Think of the animals you keep in and around your house, your pets. So many of you have a special bond with them. Whenever you enter into an intimate relationship with an animal, you receive their unconditional love and loyalty. The animal however also receives something back from you. The animal is touched by your human presence, and the particular type of consciousness that belongs to humans. Your presence lights a spark of consciousness in their being and it helps them evolve in their evolution towards greater self-consciousness.

Everything in the universe is growing and evolving towards self-consciousness. Self-consciousness brings one closer to awareness of one’s own divinity, one’s indestructible light and creative power. Everything in the universe gradually grows towards a state of consciousness in which it realizes: I am part of God. I am Creator myself. To celebrate your divine creatorship and handle it with responsibility is the purpose of creation.

You are creators, and you as souls have come to earth to learn to deal with your creative powers in a conscious and responsible way. As creators, you are meant to contribute to my evolution, and to inspire the realms of nature which in turn provide you with many services and blessings on the material and ethereal levels. When you look at the current condition of the planet, it is hard to perceive there was once an original intention for a mutual cooperation between you and the planet.

Things have not worked out as planned and many would say things have gone wrong. In this moment however, I ask you to remember your original excitement to embark upon our mutual adventure. Your loving intention is still alive within your heart, even if you notice all around that humanity has used her creative powers unwisely and has damaged earth because of it. Humanity has veered off its course, taken a detour, one might say.

Originally, you came down to earth from a great source of Light, like angel-children. You were innocent and pure, but as your journey progressed, you were led astray. Humanity came to a point at which it refused to cooperate with the forces of nature, and instead placed itself in opposition to nature. Humanity then lost its connection and roots into the greater whole. Out of fear, people sought to gain power over others and over nature, in order to secure a place for themselves on earth. One could say a fall from Paradise took place. Where you had originally intended to serve life on earth, to nurture and inspire it with your creative powers, you now experienced the opposite. In the present, you see what happens when nature is not recognised anymore as a living partner in creation.

Humanity’s lack of respect for nature and the planet deeply saddens many of you reading this. There is sadness in me too about all that has happened. The realms of nature, both animal, plant and rock, have absorbed part of the darkness and negativity spread by humanity. They have experienced in their own way a sense of abandonment, a crack in the all-pervading sense of oneness that once was.

Yet, in the very heart of me, there is lasting love and compassion for all of you, and I ask you to also feel compassion for yourself and the whole of humanity. You are involved in a grand learning process. In any such process it is inevitable that mistakes are made. It is part of growing and learning that you embark on detours and dead-ends.

In this age, the collective consciousness of humanity is changing. There are more and more people nowadays, who carry in their heart a remembrance of the original bond between man and nature. They have a silent awareness of the true and blessed relationship that humans are meant to enter into with me, their home planet. Feel again, how deeply you are connected with my being.

I love you so. You are my angels of light, and still my faith in you has not withered. I ask you to acknowledge me and allow my energy to pour through you again. I am a living partner walking right beside you on your path of incarnation on earth. By connecting yourself more intimately with me, by grounding yourself more, you bring your star light deep into the material realm. You let it shine and radiate and that will bring the changes on earth so direly needed right now. By connecting to me from the heart, your true self will come out. Every human being has a unique contribution to make to this grand adventure. Your unique gift inspires me, adds life force to nature and inspires other people as well.

What is grounding about?

I would like to say some more on the meaning of grounding. What does it mean to be connected to earth, to be grounded? Being grounded means: being present in your body, being able to feel your body from the inside out, feeling the flow of life in every part, from your head to your toes to your fingertips. Check for yourself if you can experience this flow. Can you simply feel your fingertips at this moment? Your toes? Can you feel the life inside of it?

Being grounded means that you anchor your star light, your soul light, deep into matter. The part of the material world closest to you is your body. The cells and molecules of your body are open to receive your light, your soul. You are the sun for your own body. Your consciousness makes your body alive and endows it with healing power, life force and vitality. The anchoring of your soul into your body gives you the strength to fulfil your truest desires in life. Be aware of your creative power. The more you anchor it into your body, the more you truly incarnate on earth and create the changes in your life that you long for.

When you are grounded, you feel clear and quiet. You are open to your soul’s inspiration and at the same time you are connected to all that happens around you in everyday life. Making the bridge between cosmos and earth, feeling that connection, is what it means to be grounded.

Many of you carry your soul light in the upper half of your body, around your heart and head. You find it difficult to let it truly descend into the lower part of your body, your belly, legs and feet. One reason why this is hard for you is fear of your own greatness. You have fear of being the radiant angel and star that you are and to make a difference in the world. This fear is old and its roots extend further than only this lifetime. In the past, you have incarnated on earth many times and you have often felt unwelcome. You are all in the process of healing this old pain.

I will suggest two ways of grounding yourself and feeling that you are indeed welcome on earth, in your greatness, your creative power and your divinity.

Grounding yourself through joy

The first way is through enjoyment. You are really not used to enjoying. Enjoying what? Everything you can experience on earth. Your body offers many possibilities for enjoyment, but many of these have been deemed sinful or inferior in your culture. Enjoying the movements of the body, the sunshine on your skin, eating and drinking, the warm touch of another. Being able to enjoy this has to do with being able to truly receive. Why is this difficult for you?

Many of you feel there is something wrong with you, that you are somehow not right the way you are. You feel you have to achieve and work hard in order to receive acknowledgement and appraisal. This is a silly idea, seen from the perspective of nature. Have you ever seen a wild animal work hard to gain recognition? Well no, the animal simply is and takes its right to be for granted, not as something it must deserve. The animal is able to enjoy without reserve the sun, the food, a water bath, the seasons and natural rhythms of life.

You are all invited to receive and to experience yourself as a divine being who is allowed to receive simply because of who you are. You are invited to enjoy the simple things life in a body has to offer you. Receiving seems to be easy, but it is not. It requires a deep level of self love, a deep recognition and appreciation of who you are. Dare to reach out to that level of self love. Choose one moment every day, in which you ask yourself what you can do for yourself now that truly pleasures and fulfills you. What do you really feel like having or doing? Then do it. Do it for you, because you honour yourself and because you are here on earth to enjoy yourself.

When you truly enjoy, whatever it is, without guilt or shame, you are grounded. You are completely present in the now moment and all is well. There are no thoughts of the past or the future. Enjoying is being in the now, fully grounded.

Grounding yourself through creativity

There is a second way of becoming more firmly connected to earth, more grounded. It is the way of creativity. This is what you are made for. Every human has a natural longing to express themselves, to manifest themselves in the world. This has nothing to do with achieving fame or success in society. Rather, it has to do with finding a way of expressing yourself that gives you real satisfaction. It may be the case that raising a family deeply fulfills you, or that leading a company inspires you. Perhaps caring for animals in some way is your heart’s desire, or it may be a type of artistic expression that feels natural to you. Every soul longs to express itself in some manner. The moment you answer to that longing, you feel fulfilled. The moment you allow the natural creativity inside to unfold, you feel “yes, this is me, this is how my energy wants to flow”.

In that moment, your soul connects to the heart of earth, the heart of this reality. It is important to find out what you truly long for in your life and to make room for the creative flow inside you. This is where your divine essence touches earth and finds material form.

Now, I would like to impress on you that you should really stand up for yourselves a bit more in this respect. Many of you suppress your impulses to do what your heart desires. So often you think of ‘how you should behave’, what is expected of you, your duties and responsibilities. In that way you will not find the key to the unfolding of your creative power. Your creative power speaks to you from your belly, from your gut. It is not concerned with all the limiting rules and obligations that you have internalized. Break free from this! Feel the fountain of fire and passion springing from your belly, and let it flow freely. Sparkles of light will find their way from your belly, to your heart, from the inside to the outside, and you will express yourself in your own original way on earth. You will see that your creativity will touch other people and that it will make them joyful and inspired. Following your passion and desire has a much more positive effect on the world than virtuously doing what you’ve been told and forcing yourself to comply with limiting rules and structures.

This is a time of change. It is a time to be brave and take risks, to hear the voice of your heart and act according to it in all areas of your life. By truly surrendering yourself to your heart’s guidance, you dig your roots deep into earth, and you start to feel that life here is truly worth living.

Full circle

The first way of grounding yourself was to enjoy and receive. This is an ingoing flow. The second way is about an outgoing flow: creating and giving. By creating from the heart, you give yourself to the world. Receiving and giving, enjoying and creating, together make a full circle. It is a healing circle.

The more you dare to enjoy and find yourself worthy to receive, the more you connect with your natural inspiration, the energy you are meant to share with this world. And as this flow of inspiration becomes stronger and finds a creative form in the world, the more you enjoy the love and joy that will befall you on your path. The flows of giving and receiving, creating and enjoying, mutually reinforce each other.

I, the earth, benefit from this healing circle of receiving and giving. In this flowing, dynamic circle, I am working with you. It is my desire to nurture and stimulate your divine creative power, this unique sparkle in you. Human beings who have developed the capacity to enjoy and create, will naturally enter into a different connection with earth. They will be aware of their greatness, their divine nature, and for that very reason understand also that they are held and carried by a force of Life that connects all beings together. Experiencing your own greatness goes hand in hand with a sense of smallness, the realisation of your embeddedness in the great web of life that sustains you. Humans who honour and respect themselves, naturally cooperate with their living environment, other humans, animals, plants, all of nature. Knowing your greatness goes together with recognising your place in the larger whole, and deriving joy from the part you play in it.

A journey to the New Earth

In closing, I would like to ask you to travel with me to the future, to a new earth. Imagine that the evolution we are now in together has progressed a few steps further. I am myself evolving towards a more expanded self-awareness. This new awareness has been awakened inside me, urged by both the good and the bad times on earth. I am becoming more self-conscious and creative in my being. There’s a longing in my heart for a reality in which humanity and earth reinstate their original bond of love and companionship. A new earth on which we joyfully cooperate and I am again inspired by your love and thoughtful attention, while I provide you with all that you need, living in a physical body and attuned to the rhythm of nature.

Imagine this new earth that you all so long for, present in the now moment. In our hearts it is already alive, as a seed. Let us nurture this seed with consciousness and have it sprout in our imagination. See yourself living on this new earth. What is the first thing you notice? Humans are living in harmony with nature here. Technology is used to support nature rather than manipulate it. See whether you can find yourself a house on this new earth. There is a place and a community there in which you feel like you belong. Let your imagination guide you, and feel no restrictions. Where do you live on this new earth? Can you find a natural surrounding in which you feel comfortable? Feel the climate, feel the ease and simplicity of life there. Life is pure and simple there, as it is meant to be.

Now take a look at what kind of work you do. Work means anything that inspires you and gives you a sense of fulfilment. What are you doing? You probably live in a small community of kindred spirits and you do exactly what your soul inspires you to do. What form does your creativity take?

When you see or feel this, know that your soul is speaking to you in the present. What you are seeing is something that you long to do right now, and something you can do right now, if only you trust and dare to be who you are. This is the work of your heart.

Now in this imagination of the new earth, feel also what it is you truly enjoy. Let your inner eye provide you with a situation in which you truly enjoy yourself and receive something from what earth has to offer you. Let an image of what that is spontaneously well up in your mind. What is it that truly makes you feel: all is well and I am content.

Feel the flow of giving and receiving in this place, this new reality. And hold on to it when we go back to the present.

Earth is in a transition stage and the more people remember what their inspiration is, what they are here to give and to receive, the sooner the new earth will become a reality. It is you who will give birth to this reality. I thank you for this and I find joy in your presence.

© Pamela Kribbe 2010
www.jeshua.net

Random Thoughts: Shareholders' Value vs. Stakeholders' Value

(By Mr. Ho KwonPing)

N.B. The following text is extracted and reproduced from the Executive Chairman's Statement in Banyan Tree Holdings Limited Sustainability Report 2009. The full Report may be downloaded at the following site: http://www.banyantree.com/csr/CSRPublications.php

Because of Banyan Tree’s reputation for Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), I am often asked if spending money on such things comes at the expense of the shareholders, whose interests should always come first. This line of thinking says that while CSR is a laudable goal, it should not come at the expense of “maximising shareholder value”.

I have always responded that in fact, this mantra of “maximising shareholder value” is the very source for the downfall of American-style capitalism, as we have seen with the virtual collapse of the global financial system starting in late 2007.

And, not until we can redefine capitalism in a very fundamental way, can we restore business – and business leaders – to respectable status in society. Once we redefine what capitalism is about, we will see that far from being an external, “nice to have” feature, CSR is in fact a vital component of a sustainable business. The kind of capitalism practiced on Wall Street (Anglo-American Capitalism) has as its sole objective, the maximising of profits for the owners of capital, the shareholders. Management is incentivised to make as much profit as possible for shareholders, in the shortest time possible. This “short-termism” is basically what led to the debacles on Wall Street: working only to maximise profits for a short period, CEO’s got their bonuses and then got out; investors were happy to put money into private equity funds who did nothing but buy companies, load them with unsustainable debt which generated rapid short term growth, but eventually collapse. We have seen what happens with “maximising shareholder value”.

The concept of stakeholder vs shareholder is vital here. Stakeholders may not own shares in a company, but they have a vital stake in the welfare of the company. Stakeholders include employees, suppliers, and customers, and the community within which the company does its business.

If the community is a vital stakeholder in the company, then obviously CSR is the way to generate value for this group of stakeholders. The vital follow up question then is: by focusing on maximising stakeholder value, must a company inevitably accept lower profits? In other words, are stakeholder value and shareholder value contradictory?

My answer is a clear NO. If you look only for the short term, there is no doubt that maximising shareholder value and stakeholder value are contradictory. But, if you want an enterprise to be sustainable, you can only generate long term profits if you enhance the value of the company for all stakeholders.

For Banyan Tree be sustainably successful, we must create long term value for all stakeholders. At a time when business is so morally bankrupt, CSR is in fact NOT a drain on profits, but probably one of the only ways a company can regain its soul and recreate a sustainable model.

Yours Sincerely,

Ho KwonPing
Executive Chairman

N.B. Although this post seems more grounded in issues surrounding secular events (and, most certainly, a deviation from topics which i normally like to discuss), but I think there is a strong underlying spiritual theme beneath the business talks nonetheless.

There are only just that few entities which I am aware of that embrace social responsibility as part of its corporate governance, let alone publishing annual reports on its work on sustainable development and corporate social responsibility. As the Executive Chairman of Banyan Tree Holdings Limited ("Banyan Tree"), Mr. Ho (with his core management team) has led Banyan Tree from inception as a socially responsible business, which was in turn founded with the core value of driving sustainable development.

Banyan Tree's mission statement is:
"With the call to arms of embracing the environment and empowering the people, we seek to continue being an agent of social and economic development through responsible tourism. Our triple bottom line (economy, society and environment) help direct our sustainable development by inspiring associates, guests, and partners to take a wider consideration encompassing a long term view when making business decisions."

The Executive Chairman's Statement in Banyan Tree Sustainability Report 2009 serves as a timely reminder on what is really most important to us all as fellow members of the human community, of the present and of the future to come. I sincerely hope that we can one day all live up to the ideals which are propounded in this statement by Mr. Ho.

To Mr. Ho:
I subscribe wholly to what you have said. To entities which embrace profit maximisation strategies under the prevailing definition of capitalism, your ideals are surely considered to be unreasonable. But George Bernard Shaw said before, and I quote: "Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.". And it is my sincere hope that you will persist in being unreasonable, so that our future generations will also have the opportunity to experience Mother Nature as we have today. But most importantly, I hope that they will also know (through your ideals) and embrace the essence of equity when dealing with Mother Nature and their fellow human beings.

Nuturing Creativity

(by Elizabeth Gilbert)



The same speech as well as Elizabeth Gilbert's detailed profile can be found at the following site: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html. The full text of the lecture is enclosed as follows:

I am a writer. Writing books is my profession but it's more than that, of course. It is also my great lifelong love and fascination. And I don't expect that that's ever going to change. But, that said, something kind of peculiar has happened recently in my life and in my career, which has caused me to have to recalibrate my whole relationship with this work. And the peculiar thing is that I recently wrote this book, this memoir called "Eat, Pray, Love" which, decidedly unlike any of my previous books, went out in the world for some reason, and became this big, mega-sensation, international bestseller thing. The result of which is that everywhere I go now, people treat me like I'm doomed. Seriously -- doomed, doomed! Like, they come up to me now, all worried, and they say, "Aren't you afraid -- aren't you afraid you're never going to be able to top that? Aren't you afraid you're going to keep writing for your whole life and you're never again going to create a book that anybody in the world cares about at all, ever again?"

So that's reassuring, you know. But it would be worse, except for that I happen to remember that over 20 years ago, when I first started telling people -- when I was a teenager -- that I wanted to be a writer, I was met with this same kind of, sort of fear-based reaction. And people would say, "Aren't you afraid you're never going to have any success? Aren't you afraid the humiliation of rejection will kill you? Aren't you afraid that you're going to work your whole life at this craft and nothing's ever going to come of it and you're going to die on a scrap heap of broken dreams with your mouth filled with bitter ash of failure?" (Laughter) Like that, you know.

The answer -- the short answer to all those questions is, "Yes." Yes, I'm afraid of all those things. And I always have been. And I'm afraid of many many more things besides that people can't even guess at. Like seaweed, and other things that are scary. But, when it comes to writing the thing that I've been sort of thinking about lately, and wondering about lately, is why? You know, is it rational? Is it logical that anybody should be expected to be afraid of the work that they feel they were put on this Earth to do. You know, and what is it specifically about creative ventures that seems to make us really nervous about each other's mental health in a way that other careers kind of don't do, you know? Like my dad, for example, was a chemical engineer and I don't recall once in his 40 years of chemical engineering anybody asking him if he was afraid to be a chemical engineer, you know? It didn't -- that chemical engineering block John, how's it going? It just didn't come up like that, you know? But to be fair, chemical engineers as a group haven't really earned a reputation over the centuries for being alcoholic manic-depressives. (Laughter)

We writers, we kind of do have that reputation, and not just writers, but creative people across all genres, it seems, have this reputation for being enormously mentally unstable. And all you have to do is look at the very grim death count in the 20th century alone, of really magnificent creative minds who died young and often at their own hands, you know? And even the ones who didn't literally commit suicide seem to be really undone by their gifts, you know. Norman Mailer, just before he died, last interview, he said "Every one of my books has killed me a little more." An extraordinary statement to make about your life's work, you know. But we don't even blink when we hear somebody say this because we've heard that kind of stuff for so long and somehow we've completely internalized and accepted collectively this notion that creativity and suffering are somehow inherently linked and that artistry, in the end, will always ultimately lead to anguish.

And the question that I want to ask everybody here today is are you guys all cool with that idea? Are you comfortable with that -- because you look at it even from an inch away and, you know -- I'm not at all comfortable with that assumption. I think it's odious. And I also think it's dangerous, and I don't want to see it perpetuated into the next century. I think it's better if we encourage our great creative minds to live.

And I definitely know that, in my case -- in my situation -- it would be very dangerous for me to start sort of leaking down that dark path of assumption, particularly given the circumstance that I'm in right now in my career. Which is -- you know, like check it out, I'm pretty young, I'm only about 40 years old. I still have maybe another four decades of work left in me. And it's exceedingly likely that anything I write from this point forward is going to be judged by the world as the work that came after the freakish success of my last book, right? I should just put it bluntly, because we're all sort of friends here now -- it's exceedingly likely that my greatest success is behind me. Oh, so Jesus, what a thought! You know that's the kind of thought that could lead a person to start drinking gin at nine o'clock in the morning, and I don't want to go there. (Laughter) I would prefer to keep doing this work that I love.

And so, the question becomes, how? And so, it seems to me, upon a lot of reflection, that the way that I have to work now, in order to continue writing, is that I have to create some sort of protective psychological construct, right? I have to, sort of find some way to have a safe distance between me, as I am writing, and my very natural anxiety about what the reaction to that writing is going to be, from now on. And, as I've been looking over the last year for models for how to do that I've been sort of looking across time, and I've been trying to find other societies to see if they might have had better and saner ideas than we have about how to help creative people, sort of manage the inherent emotional risks of creativity.

And that search has led me to ancient Greece and ancient Rome. So stay with me, because it does circle around and back. But, ancient Greece and ancient Rome -- people did not happen to believe that creativity came from human beings back then, OK? People believed that creativity was this divine attendant spirit that came to human beings from some distant and unknowable source, for distant and unknowable reasons. The Greeks famously called these divine attendant spirits of creativity "daemons." Socrates, famously, believed that he had a daemon who spoke wisdom to him from afar. The Romans had the same idea, but they called that sort of disembodied creative spirit a genius. Which is great, because the Romans did not actually think that a genius was a particularly clever individual. They believed that a genius was this, sort of magical divine entity, who was believed to literally live in the walls of an artist's studio, kind of like Dobby the house elf, and who would come out and sort of invisibly assist the artist with their work and would shape the outcome of that work.

So brilliant -- there it is, right there that distance that I'm talking about -- that psychological construct to protect you from the results of your work. And everyone knew that this is how it functioned, right? So the ancient artist was protected from certain things, like, for example, too much narcissism, right? If your work was brilliant you couldn't take all the credit for it, everybody knew that you had this disembodied genius who had helped you. If your work bombed, not entirely your fault, you know? Everyone knew your genius was kind of lame. And this is how people thought about creativity in the West for a really long time.

And then the Renaissance came and everything changed, and we had this big idea, and the big idea was let's put the individual human being at the center of the universe above all gods and mysteries, and there's no more room for mystical creatures who take dictation from the divine. And it's the beginning of rational humanism, and people started to believe that creativity came completely from the self of the individual. And for the first time in history, you start to hear people referring to this or that artist as being a genius rather than having a genius.

And I got to tell you, I think that was a huge error. You know, I think that allowing somebody, one mere person to believe that he or she is like, the vessel you know, like the font and the essence and the source of all divine, creative, unknowable, eternal mystery is just a smidge too much responsibility to put on one fragile, human psyche. It's like asking somebody to swallow the sun. It just completely warps and distorts egos, and it creates all these unmanageable expectations about performance. And I think the pressure of that has been killing off our artists for the last 500 years.

And, if this is true, and I think it is true, the question becomes, what now? Can we do this differently? Maybe go back to some more ancient understanding about the relationship between humans and the creative mystery. Maybe not. Maybe we can't just erase 500 years of rational humanistic thought in one 18 minute speech. And there's probably people in this audience who would raise really legitimate scientific suspicions about the notion of, basically fairies who follow people around rubbing fairy juice on their projects and stuff. I'm not, probably, going to bring you all along with me on this.

But the question that I kind of want to pose is -- you know, why not? Why not think about it this way? Because it makes as much sense as anything else I have ever heard in terms of explaining the utter maddening capriciousness of the creative process. A process which, as anybody who has ever tried to make something -- which is to say basically, everyone here --- knows does not always behave rationally. And, in fact, can sometimes feel downright paranormal.

I had this encounter recently where I met the extraordinary American poet Ruth Stone, who's now in her 90s, but she's been a poet her entire life and she told me that when she was growing up in rural Virginia, she would be out working in the fields, and she said she would feel and hear a poem coming at her from over the landscape. And she said it was like a thunderous train of air. And it would come barreling down at her over the landscape. And she felt it coming, because it would shake the earth under her feet. She knew that she had only one thing to do at that point, and that was to, in her words, "run like hell." And she would run like hell to the house and she would be getting chased by this poem, and the whole deal was that she had to get to a piece of paper and a pencil fast enough so that when it thundered through her, she could collect it and grab it on the page. And other times she wouldn't be fast enough, so she'd be running and running and running, and she wouldn't get to the house and the poem would barrel through her and she would miss it and she said it would continue on across the landscape, looking, as she put it "for another poet." And then there were these times -- this is the piece I never forgot -- she said that there were moments where she would almost miss it, right? So, she's running to the house and she's looking for the paper and the poem passes through her, and she grabs a pencil just as it's going through her, and then she said, it was like she would reach out with her other hand and she would catch it. She would catch the poem by its tail, and she would pull it backwards into her body as she was transcribing on the page. And in these instances, the poem would come up on the page perfect and intact but backwards, from the last word to the first. (Laughter)

So when I heard that I was like -- that's uncanny, that's exactly what my creative process is like. (Laughter)

That's not all what my creative process is -- I'm not the pipeline! I'm a mule, and the way that I have to work is that I have to get up at the same time every day, and sweat and labor and barrel through it really awkwardly. But even I, in my mulishness, even I have brushed up against that thing, at times. And I would imagine that a lot of you have too. You know, even I have had work or ideas come through me from a source that I honestly cannot identify. And what is that thing? And how are we to relate to it in a way that will not make us lose our minds, but, in fact, might actually keep us sane?

And for me, the best contemporary example that I have of how to do that is the musician Tom Waits, who I got to interview several years ago on a magazine assignment. And we were talking about this, and you know, Tom, for most of his life he was pretty much the embodiment of the tormented contemporary modern artist, trying to control and manage and dominate these sort of uncontrollable creative impulses that were totally internalized.

But then he got older, he got calmer, and one day he was driving down the freeway in Los Angeles he told me, and this is when it all changed for him. And he's speeding along, and all of a sudden he hears this little fragment of melody, that comes into his head as inspiration often comes, elusive and tantalizing, and he wants it, you know, it's gorgeous, and he longs for it, but he has no way to get it. He doesn't have a piece of paper, he doesn't have a pencil, he doesn't have a tape recorder.

So he starts to feel all of that old anxiety start to rise in him like, "I'm going to lose this thing, and then I'm going to be haunted by this song forever. I'm not good enough, and I can't do it." And instead of panicking, he just stopped. He just stopped that whole mental process and he did something completely novel. He just looked up at the sky, and he said, "Excuse me, can you not see that I'm driving?" (Laughter) "Do I look like I can write down a song right now? If you really want to exist, come back at a more opportune moment when I can take care of you. Otherwise, go bother somebody else today. Go bother Leonard Cohen."

And his whole work process changed after that. Not the work, the work was still oftentimes as dark as ever. But the process, and the heavy anxiety around it was released when he took the genie, the genius out of him where it was causing nothing but trouble, and released it kind of back where it came from, and realized that this didn't have to be this internalized, tormented thing. It could be this peculiar, wondrous, bizarre collaboration kind of conversation between Tom and the strange, external thing that was not quite Tom.

So when I heard that story it started to shift a little bit the way that I worked too, and it already saved me once. This idea, it saved me when I was in the middle of writing "Eat, Pray, Love," and I fell into one of those, sort of pits of despair that we all fall into when we're working on something and it's not coming and you start to think this is going to be a disaster, this is going to be the worst book ever written. Not just bad, but the worst book ever written. And I started to think I should just dump this project. But then I remembered Tom talking to the open air and I tried it. So I just lifted my face up from the manuscript and I directed my comments to an empty corner of the room. And I said aloud, "Listen you, thing, you and I both know that if this book isn't brilliant that is not entirely my fault, right? Because you can see that I am putting everything I have into this, I don't have anymore than this. So if you want it to be better, then you've got to show up and do your part of the deal. OK. But if you don't do that, you know what, the hell with it. I'm going to keep writing anyway because that's my job. And I would please like the record to reflect today that I showed up for my part of the job." (Laughter)

Because -- (Applause) in the end it's like this, OK -- centuries ago in the deserts of North Africa, people used to gather for these moonlight dances of sacred dance and music that would go on for hours and hours, until dawn. And they were always magnificent, because the dancers were professionals and they were terrific, right? But every once in a while, very rarely, something would happen, and one of these performers would actually become transcendent. And I know you know what I'm talking about, because I know you've all seen, at some point in your life, a performance like this. It was like time would stop, and the dancer would sort of step through some kind of portal and he wasn't doing anything different than he had ever done, 1,000 nights before, but everything would align. And all of a sudden, he would no longer appear to be merely human. He would be lit from within, and lit from below and all lit up on fire with divinity.

And when this happened, back then, people knew it for what it was, you know, they called it by it's name. They would put their hands together and they would start to chant, "Allah, Allah, Allah, God God, God." That's God, you know. Curious historical footnote -- when the Moors invaded southern Spain, they took this custom with them and the pronunciation changed over the centuries from "Allah, Allah, Allah," to "Ole, ole, ole," which you still hear in bullfights and in flamenco dances. In Spain, when a performer has done something impossible and magic, "Allah, ole, ole, Allah, magnificent, bravo," incomprehensible, there it is -- a glimpse of God. Which is great, because we need that.

But, the tricky bit comes the next morning, for the dancer himself, when he wakes up and discovers that it's Tuesday at 11 a.m., and he's no longer a glimpse of God. He's just an aging mortal with really bad knees, and maybe he's never going to ascend to that height again. And maybe nobody will ever chant God's name again as he spins, and what is he then to do with the rest of his life? This is hard. This is one of the most painful reconciliations to make in a creative life. But maybe it doesn't have to be quite so full of anguish if you never happened to believe, in the first place, that the most extraordinary aspects of your being came from you. But maybe if you just believed that they were on loan to you from some unimaginable source for some exquisite portion of your life to be passed along when you're finished, with somebody else. And, you know, if we think about it this way it starts to change everything.

This is how I've started to think, and this is certainly how I've been thinking in the last few months as I've been working on the book that will soon be published, as the dangerously, frighteningly over-anticipated follow up to my freakish success.

And what I have to, sort of keep telling myself when I get really psyched out about that, is, don't be afraid. Don't be daunted. Just do your job. Continue to show up for your piece of it, whatever that might be. If your job is to dance, do your dance. If the divine, cockeyed genius assigned to your case decides to let some sort of wonderment be glimpsed, for just one moment through your efforts, then "Ole!" And if not, do your dance anyhow. And "Ole!" to you, nonetheless. I believe this and I feel that we must teach it. "Ole!" to you, nonetheless, just for having the sheer human love and stubbornness to keep showing up.

Thank you. (Applause) Thank you. (Applause)

June Cohen: Ole! (Applause)

P.S. Elizabeth Gilbert faced down a ­pre-midlife crisis by doing what we all secretly dream of – running off for a year. Her travels through Italy, India and Indonesia resulted in the mega bestselling and deeply beloved memoir Eat, Pray, Love, about her process of finding herself by leaving home.

She's a longtime magazine writer – covering music and politics for Spin and GQ – as well as a novelist and short-story writer. Her books include the story collection Pilgrims, the novel Stern Men (about lobster fishermen in Maine) and a biography of the woodsman Eustace Conway, called The Last American Man. Her work has been the basis for one movie so far (Coyote Ugly, based on her own memoir, in this magazine article, of working at the famously raunchy bar), and now it looks as if Eat, Pray, Love is on the same track, with the part of Gilbert reportedly to be played by Julia Roberts. Not bad for a year off.

Gilbert also owns and runs the import shop Two Buttons in Frenchtown, New Jersey.