Hello Doctor…

Some the things I get to do with my since retirement are most important to me. My friend Kasim Al-Mashat recently faced his final oral examination for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy for Counselling Psychology.

These examinations are open to the public! What a great way to hear what the thinkers of today are bringing to the world.

Kasim and Hunter

These folk are the Stephen Pinkers and Elizabeth Gilberts of our future.

Kasim believs that healing occurs in community and talked about post-traumatic growth. Individuals can healing within community, and communities as groups can heal. My healing takes place when I release my own grudges towards others.

His use of narrative inquiry (storytelling) made his presentation enjoyable and understandable: Dream of the Hanging Gardens: Iraqi Refugees and Exiles in Jordan, Their Migration and Adaptation Experiences. This is a presentation I would like to hear again.

Some thoughts I was left to ponder:

• Coping is incorporating action
• What is the role of employment in the transition phase?
• How do I honor the experiences of others?
• Am I transparent of my biases?
• What do I really understand about social justice in the context of voices of people who are tweeting, Facebooking or blogging?
  What is viral media?

Long Term Vision 80% in just 6 years!

I went through my Long Term Vision guide this afternoon. One that I wrote in March 2005 while being coached by Andrew Barber-Starkey of Procoach Success Systems. 

Wow! Can you believe that about 80% of my intentions have come to pass.

In being able to look back over these past 6 years, I have to say that it is miraculous.  And an integral part of my process was having a coach.

Some of the successes?

• Business and Career – I work and travel in comfort around the globe
  
• Money & Finance – I feel confident and proud of my financial achievements
• Primary Relationship – Wow! I have the most wonderful and supportive partner
• Family & Friends – Family and I have found a happy place to meet
• Recreation & Lifestyle – I am given gifts of clothing and gems and watches (all top of the line) and in turn am able to give the same
• Personal Development – I have grown to a depth and understanding that I could not conceive of in 2005
• Contribution – I sometimes give $$ but often fund spiritual development, arts, education in business, etc by giving my time and sharing knowledge
• Spiritual Connection – Doesn’t the above say it all?

An Afternoon of Wonder in Turin, Italy

On Monday May 23, after returning the keys  of the studio apartment on Via Massena to Senore Fasoli, I found an affordable hotel for my last night in Italy, just around the corner;  Hotel Italia. A perfect little place on Corso Stati Uniti, just blocks from Porto Nuevo train station.

After settling in to my hotel room, I went in search of the beauty salon I had been passing each day.

At this unassuming little salon, the Giglio on Via Assietta I was greeted by a smiling Veronica.I mimed cutting hair and kept saying “corto corto” – meaning short in Italian.

Hunter with Stylist Claudia

She placed me in the expert hands of Claudia and so began my first Italian salon experience. I relaxed. Over the next hour Claudia shampooed, cut, clipped and razored my hair into a wonderful, short, sporty, sexy Mod style. Perfect for the 30 degree temperature in Turin.

I wanted more! After thanking Claudia, I returned to Veronica and mimed massage pointing to their salon menu “con olio olivo”.

Veronica led me in my relaxed stumble through a low lit hall to a little room with narrow massage table. I was give a towel and panties and left alone to undress.  In came Julia who offered me a larger double mattress to relax on, but all I wanted to do was climb on the massage table.

The next hour heaven. Sprinkled with olive oil, limb-by-limb I was stroked, pummeled, stretched and slapped, by the fantastic massaging hands of Julia.

I have enjoyed great massages in every city I’ve traveled to around the globe since 2005

I award Turin the title for Best Massage on Planet Earth, winning out over Cusco Peru, Nairobi Kenya, Ocean Spring Resort in China and Varanasi, India.

The cost of shampoo, hair and one hour massage? Euro 38. Visit Giglio on Via Assietta

I have a Millionaire Mind.

Go ahead and provide your comments. Thanks

I like being a 72

Does anyone really want to be perfect?  To have everything under control in life and around them?

After  thinking about it, my answer is NO. I like being a little daffy, a little imperfect. Variety is the spice of life.

Beautiful spices in a Fijian farmer

My self-esteem has changed over the years.  I have grown and matured. The shy nervous girl of my teens has morphed into a confident (though not necessarily competent) business woman, to a relaxed entrepreneur.

So, grab a pencil and piece of paper. (remember those old fashioned things?) and see where you’re at.

On a scale of 10 through 1 rate yourself.
(1 = disagree or not at all, 10 = fully agree.)

Tally it up and I’d love to see your Comment – how did you score yourself. See what I came up with at the end. See you there.

1. I firmly believe in certain values and principles, and am ready to defend them even when finding opposition, feeling secure enough to modify them in light of experience.

2. I am able to act according to

The Search for Self, inspired by R.F. MACKENZIE

“Every human being has the right to answer life’s basic questions for himself or herself, and a large part of our trouble is that we make do with other people’s answers.” R.F. Mackenzie

Hunter in Inverness

R.F. Mackenzie had a huge impact on my life, unknown to him, or until recently myself.

I picked up a book entitled A Search For Scotland, a book sitting on the bookshelf in the guest room in my mother’s home.

The former headmaster of Summerhill Academy a progressive and controversial school that operated in Aberdeen, Scotland, Mr. Mackenzie writes about the finding of self through understanding one’s community lineage.

In a day and age that sings the praises of ancient Gurus and Teachers as the adjunct of Enlightenment, it is refreshing to read an emphatic call to self-discovery and Self-understanding from a Brit.

My recent years of training has been as a guide to others in their quest of Self. This book puts a refreshingly British view on the trip. Sounds strange? I encourage you, dear reader, to read a little of the book, then stop. Ponder. And ask yourself. “Who am I?”

I would love to hear your answer.

Ananda Shankar Jayant – Dance and Life

From TED India talks. Ananda Shankar Jayant Dances.

Hi Ho, Hi Ho, It’s off to PLRK We Go

Turtles, Tortoises, Heart

What do you get when you cross work with play. PLRK of course!

Plrking {combine PLay and WorK} is beginning to take the world by storm. Imagine knowing yourself so well that every option open to you becomes one of play. And work becomes a joy.

Well, Michael Stratford hosted the first round of Playing the game of … (fill in the blank – Life, Health, Work…) at the Doubletree Club Hotel in Santa Ana, California this past weekend.

I arrived fresh from Fiji to join 22 other supporters trusting that this latest investment into my personal development would be worth the roundabout travel returning to Vancouver, BC. Yes, this falls in line with life in retirement.

What, in a nutshell did I learn? Knock on any door. Someone may answer, it may remain closed, I may be told to go away, or it could be the chance of a life time.

What door are you knocking on? Watch out for turtles coming to your location soon.

Appendix 2 on The Tao and Tao Mission

Courtesy of Mr. Tsai

HUMAN CONSCIENCE

The representative of Human Original Nature—True SELF—that constantly sending message to guide and instruct human mind to do in accordance with the Five Essences and the Three Passions when dealing with life situations in hand.

1. WHAT IS THE CONSCIENCE OF A PERSON?

※ CONSCIENCE is an instant intuitive sense; it is “spiritual”.

※ CONSCIENCE is the representative of the Human Original Nature (5 Essences and 3 Passions) that guides a person to live a life.

※ CONSCIENCE constantly sends the following effects (messages) to a person when facing a life situation:

(1) Urging to react in a way being kind, generous, caring, concerned, understanding, forgiving;

(2) Urging to react in a way being gentle and respectful (to everyone and everything);

(3) Urging to take action on the right thing; to not take action on the wrong (in due case);

(4) Feeling bad, regretful or ashamed in case having behaved improperly or inappropriately; feeling delightful in case having done things properly and appropriately;

(5) Knowing what is right, what is not right; what is the best to choose to do;

(6) Longing for a contact with the unknown spiritual Beyond in sense (in due case);

(7) Constantly inquiring “What is this,” “What does this mean” and “Why and how is this to come” about anything;

(8) Wanting to be safe, free, comfortable, and happy;

(9) Wanting to make things more useful, beautiful and pleasing;

(10) Wanting to improve things to become better for experience.

Appendix 1 on The Tao and Tao Mission

These appendices are courtesy of Mr. Tsai,

(Appendix 1)
THE HUMAN ORIGINAL NATURE contains: 10/2008 version

Five Essences: (the quality of human heart; Godly aspect)

1. Being Compassionate — Not being able to bear seeing others suffer.

2. Being Righteous —
(1)Wanting to do what one feels being right; (2) Wanting to not do what one feels being wrong; (3) Feeling regret for not doing what was right; (4) Feeling shame when having done what was wrong.

3. Being Respectful —
Being respectful in interaction with others who (or what) are in relationship with one; mostly being sincere, considerate, nice, gentle, patient and humble.

4. Having Wisdom — Intuitively being able to tell right from wrong, good from evil, and how to do things to be better.

5. Believing a Divine Beyond —
(1) Believing the existence of an unknown “spiritual beyond;” (2) Longing for the connection with the unknown “spiritual Beyond.”

Three Passions: (the life force in human mind; humanly aspect)
10/2008 version

1. Pursuing Truth —
The passion that constantly propels the human mind to discover the meaning and value of what is being contacted by the six sensory faculties (through eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind).

2. Pursuing Happiness —
The passion that constantly urges the human mind to seek for safety, freedom, comfort, peace, convenience, efficiency, fellowship, pleasure, beauty, etc.

3. Pursuing Better —
The passion that constantly pushes the human mind to create something better than the previous experience.

End
=================================

Introducing Mr. Tsai, The Tao and The Tao Mission

Mr. Tsai is a gentleman who teaches me about the Tao, the Tao Mission and Tao Chi in a way that I can understand just a little bit. Mr. Tsai is Tao master. He has agreed that I may publish 3 of his letters to his students on this blog.

I hope you enjoy them and enjoy re-reading them to understand them more deeply, as much as I do.

THE ORIGIN OF TAO AND TAO MISSION

1. The great nature as such is an absolute. It is Spirit of Awareness that is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent. The Spirit is called God (in human terminology).

2. God willed the emergence of the universe out of Himself through His command; the command of God is Tao (named by ancient Chinese people), which literally means the (absolute) Way (that evolves everything in the universe).

3. Thus all created living beings fundamentally possess their allotted individualized spirits out of God’s Spirit. Their spirits are called souls and the original absolute, all-perceiving Awareness is then transformed into a relative-based consciousness in each of them.

4. Tao created the material level of existence in the universe which enables all living species to sense, discern, and define the relative meaning of time and space for their life activities. Under the natural assignment, humankind possesses a physical body with five sensory organs (eyes, ear, nose, tongue and flesh body) to contact the outer material world.

5. Tao endowed all species of living beings with their unique and absolute natures (that constantly and spiritually link them with the origin of the great nature, God) according to which all living species are to live a transient physical life with wellbeing and prosperity.

6. Tao evolves and governs all beings (living as well as non-living) of the universe by (1) the law of cause and effect, (2) the cycle of a sequential process of emerging, prospering, declining and disappearing under a changing but everlasting positive-and-negative energy flow.

7. Bestowed by Tao, the human original nature is spiritual, for it inherits the capacity of creativity from the highest SPIRIT and can will freely to create any relative aspect of meaning and value for humans to experience life. Such capacity as a faculty in human beings is called human MIND.

8. Human original nature defines humanity that evolves human life as a whole to go on with wellbeing and prosperity. It possesses Five Essences (the eternal, spiritual aspect of Godliness in human heart) and Three Passions (the periodical, worldly aspect of impulsion in human mind for human individual living) that together are to develop the human cultures and the civilization as a whole. (See Appendix 1)

9. Therefore, the fundamental make-up of a human person contains: (1) a spiritual soul that can feel through its awareness (the feeling aspect of a soul is called heart), (2) the faculty of mind that can discern, judge, memorize and aspire to create, and (3) a physical body to act.

10. With the permanent Five Essences in heart, all humans are constantly connected with God in their lives (Note: this is why every human individual is constantly BLESSED by God, the source where his/her existence comes from); with the Three Passions in mind, all humans, individual as well as collective, can will to create a wonderful relative aspect of world for themselves to experience life (Note: this is why every human individual is constantly DIGNIFIED in his/her own existence).

11. A human life sustains through a cycling continuation of perception and reaction. Each cycle of the process contains: (1) sensory contact (with attention); (2) perception (with interpretation); (3) feeling (and emotion); (4) thinking, planning and decision made; (5) reaction.

12. Humans live by free choice to react to anything at every moment of their perception-reaction lives; based upon the individual judgment onto the meaning and value of life scenarios, they react.

13. There is the VOICE that constantly comes from the human original nature (5 Essences in heart and 3 Passions in mind) to guide human mind to discern and judge life scenarios and urge to take action to respond according to the original nature. Such VOICE is called human CONSCIENCE (see Appendix 2).

14. Human CONSCIENCE is an intuitive sense. After judging whatever life situation that is perceived by mind, it feels and in the meantime generates emotions that urge a reaction. A life scenario of which the meaning and value show being resonant with human original nature induces good feelings that generate positive emotions such as joy, love and respect; a scenario of which the meaning and value show being against human original nature induces bad feelings that generate negative emotions such as anger, fear and shame. Nevertheless, no matter with good or bad feelings and emotions, the CONSCIENCE always urges a person to react to whatever life situation according to the original nature.

15. Along with life passing, the memory of life experiences accumulates. Such accumulation on the one hand enables humans to always update and refine the meaning and value of everything and on the other hand also develops their personal likes and dislikes (= ego preferences) through comparison. Both of the updated meaning-and-value of things and likes-and-dislikes are all together serving in the choice of their reactions to life scenarios. In the context of human evolution, while the update of the meaning and value enhances human civilization, the development of individual (ego) likes and dislikes characterizes the various more acute dispositions in human personalities.

[NOTE]
Although the variety of feelings and emotions experientially color human life and are indeed the unique treasure of humanity, they are actually just generated from mentally-created life dramas, hence possessing no true entity in them. For along with a perspective change in perception of an objective life scenario, a person will also immediately change the feeling and emotion of it accordingly. Such effect in the experience of human life produces the charm-like delusion and confusion in human mind when facing the relative aspect of life scenarios.

16. In reacting to life scenarios that are urged and directed by the CONSCIENCE, although individually self-centered, humans are loving, righteous, respectful and forgiving towards one another and can live together in community with peace, harmony, wellbeing and also prosperity.

17. Because of being deluded by the charm of the mentally-created relative effect of the world (particularly the meaning and value one makes up for everything in living), humans ignored (forgot) the truth of “All Are One” and developed certain degree of selfishness in their ego that constantly guards the personal interest and likes-and-dislikes against others.

18. Since then on, humans rather chose to satisfy their different degrees of ego-selfishness than to follow their good conscience in doing things. As a result, the strong started to pick on the weak, the capable to oppress the incapable, and the wise to take the advantage from the less wise. Hence, conflicts, fights and miseries happened in human life, and evilness emerged in human mind.

19. Along with the accumulation of the continuous update of meaning and value of everything into its detail, the function of human mind became more and more sharpened and agile, and the will of it more and more powerful and far-reaching. In proportion to it, that which came from the conscience in the human mind developed the brilliant human civilization on the one hand, but also on the other hand, that which came from the ego-selfishness created large-scaled and intensified suffering and miseries in human realm.

20. In the past human history, whenever the human ego-selfishness had developed in the minds of the majority of the population to such a degree that caused a whole regional or cultural disorders and sufferings for people, God would divinely select a specific prophet or saint to be His servant to guide and help human beings to restore their good conscience and reoriented their lives back to the wholesome track of human life. The disciples and disciples of later generations of these prophets and saints, because of the Essence #5 and Passion #1 of the human nature, created and formed their subjective religious doctrines and beliefs, and also religions thereafter.

21. The modern scientific advancement has enhanced the techniques of all aspects in the human life to such a degree that humans almost can do everything they want. Through the convenience of high-tech communication and transportation, the world has become like a common community that shared everything together, good one as well as bad one. In the meantime, the evilness in the human mind has also developed to the utmost state that not only has already caused great suffering of a vast human population worldwide, but also induced the global-scaled devastating disasters from the natural environment as well as from human societies (war, terrorism, crime, etc.). The impending catastrophe could even happen to destroy all lives on earth.

22. At this time, the command of God is again coming to rescue and the movement is called the Mission of Tao.

23. The Mission of Tao aims mainly at helping people restore their good CONSCIENCE. Along with the awakening process of their good conscience, people will intuitively know by themselves how to correctly and effectively redirect their lives and solve the problems of their pains, grievances that were developed in the past mainly because of the ignorance of the truth of the relative life that they lived. Hence, the essential practice of the universal Tao for a person in daily life is threefold: (1) spend time to learn to know more about the good conscience in a person and the mechanism of karmic law under which human mind works when living; (2) practice to increase the sensitivity of the good conscience; (3) practice to gain more strength to guard the good conscience against the schemes of the developed ego-selfishness (that constantly and stubbornly claim for personal interest and desires).

24. The principle of the ideal human life (Tao life) to live is:

Faithfully and pertinently express one’s true SELF (5 Essences & 3 Passions) in (every moment of) life (scenario) through action that is in the best balance and harmony (that one can afford to do in relation) with the surrounding parties (including people, material things and/or events), as well as with one’s (developed) self, so as to bring the optimal quantity and quality of well-being and happiness (in physical, mental and spiritual levels) for all (that are involved).

(End)

Appendix 1 and 2 will follow in separate blogs.