Nota: 5/5
My opinion on the book:
A book that talks about relationships and the unfolding of life through them. Among them the coincidences that make us believe in some kind of Synchronicity, well described in the book through the author's personal experiences.
Preface to the First Edition
Definition of Sinchronicity by the Author:
"perfect moments, when things come together in an almost unbelievable way, when events that could never be predicted, let alone controlled, remarkably seem to guide us along our path. (...) “synchronicity.” C. G. Jung’s classic, “Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle,” defines synchronicity as “a meaningful coincidence of two or more events, where something other than the probability of chance is involved.” (recommends the book from Jung)
"In the beautiful flow of these moments, it seems as if we are being helped by hidden hands." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
"Over the years my curiosity has grown, particularly about how these experiences occur collectively within a group or team of people. I have come to see this as the most subtle territory of leadership, creating the conditions for “predictable miracles.”
My quest to understand synchronicity arose out of a series of events in my life that led me into a process of inner transformation. As a result of this transformation I decided to follow a dream that I had held close to my heart for a number of years. It was the most difficult decision I had ever made, but the day I made it, I crossed a threshold. From that moment on, what happened to me had the most mysterious quality about it. Things began falling into place almost effortlessly, and I began to discover remarkable people who were to provide crucial assistance to me." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
"Why did so many doors open for me after I crossed the threshold? How did I lose the capacity to create the future I had envisioned? How did I regain that capacity? What principles could be discerned from these experiences? (...) What qualities of leadership could inspire this dynamic to occur?" (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
"this is the story of my personal journey in search of the answers to those questions, and of my inner transformation along the way."
Trying to define Sinchronicity again:
"the call to become what we were meant to become, the call to achieve our vital design." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
Recommends the book: Henri J. M. Nouwen’s book Reaching Out.
Introduction
> Page 1
"For many years I have told people that, although there are a lot of books on leadership, there is only one that serious students have to read—Servant Leadership by Robert K. Greenleaf." (negrito por Daniel Brandt - recommends a book)
"For Greenleaf, being a leader has to do with the relationship between the leader and the led."
> Page 2
"Joe Jaworski takes Greenleaf’s understanding further. He suggests that the fundamental choice that enables true leadership in all situations (including, but not limited to, hierarchical leadership) is the choice to serve life." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
"He suggests that, in a deep sense, my capacity as a leader comes from my choice to allow life to unfold through me." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
> Page 3
"leadership is about learning how to shape the future. Leadership exists when people are no longer victims of circumstances but participate in creating new circumstances." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
"We all earn it in our life experience. I think this is one part of what Buddhists mean by “life is suffering.” We have to suffer through life, not in the sense of pain, but in terms of living through it."
> Page 5 and 6
Recommends David Bohm.
"David gave a small seminar at MIT for a group of us interested in his work on dialogue.
(...)
Over the years my colleagues and I had come to use the term “alignment” to describe what happens when people in a group actually start to function as a whole." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
> Page 6
"I felt deeply that this phenomenon of alignment was not individualistic at all, but fundamentally collective."
"“Thought creates the world and then says ‘I didn’t do it,’” (...) He talked about a “generative order” in which, depending on our state of consciousness, we “participate in how reality unfolds.”"
"When we are engaged in something that is deeply meaningful and are attuned to one another, human beings can participate in the “unfolding” of the implicate wholeness into the manifest or explicate order." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
> Page 7
"Wholeness and the Implicate Order, where Bohm lays out the basic theory, Einstein had once said that Bohm was the one person from whom he ever understood quantum theory." (negrito por Daniel Brandt - recommends David Bohm)
> Page 8
"I’ve come to appreciate that one of the gifts of artists is the ability to see the world as it really is. The vision of what painters or sculptors intend to create is critical, but it is of little use if they cannot accurately observe the current state of their creation.
(...)
We can’t see people as they really are because we’re too busy reacting to our own internal experiences of what they evoke in us, so we rarely actually relate to reality." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
"I think people such as David Bohm have the feeling that by telling Joe their story, their story will actually be heard."
> Page 10
"First, Joe said, we need to be open to fundamental shifts of mind. We have very deep mental models of how the world works, deeper than we can know.
(...)
it’s about a shift from seeing a world made up of things to seeing a world that’s open and primarily made up of relationships,
(...)
A deeper level of reality exists beyond anything we can articulate." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
"Once we understand this, we begin to see that the future is not fixed, that we live in a world of possibilities. And yet almost all of us carry around a deep sense of resignation. We’re resigned to believing we can’t have any influence in the world, at least not on a scale that matters.
(...)
we’re resigned to being absolutely powerless in the larger world.
(...)
Yet, if we have a world of people who all feel powerless, we have a future that’s predetermined." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
ONE OF THE BEST PARTS IS BELOW
> Page 11
"absolutely everything around us is in continual motion. There’s nothing in nature that stays put. When I look at the leaves on the tree, I am really seeing a flowing of life. Those leaves won’t be on that tree in a couple of months. At this very moment, they’re changing.
(...)
Part of that ironclad grip on ourselves which maintains the illusion of fixity involves seeing our own selves and each other as fixed. I don’t see you; I see the stored-up images, interpretations, feelings, doubts, distrusts, likes, and dislikes that you evoke in me. When we actually begin to accept one another as legitimate human beings, it’s truly amazing." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
ONE OF THE BEST PARTS IS BELOW
> Page 12
"We have to sacrifice. If everything starts to fall apart, we try harder, or we tell ourselves that we’re not good enough, or that we don’t care enough to be that committed. So we vacillate between two states of being, one a form of self-manipulation, wherein we get things done by telling ourselves that if we don’t work harder, it won’t get done; and the other a state of guilt, wherein we say we’re not good enough. Neither of these states of being has anything to do with the deeper nature of commitment.
When we operate in the state of mind in which we realize we are part of the unfolding, we can’t not be committed. It’s actually impossible not to be committed. Nothing ever happens by accident. Every single thing is part of what needs to happen right now. We only make the mistakes that we have to make to learn what we’re here to learn right now. This is a commitment of being, not a commitment of doing." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
"Sometimes the greatest acts of commitment involve doing nothing but sitting and waiting until I just know what to do next.
> Page 13
"When this new type of commitment starts to operate, there is a flow around us. Things just seem to happen. We begin to see that with very small movements, at just the right time and place, all sorts of consequent actions are brought into being. We develop what artists refer to as an “economy of means,” where, rather than getting things done through effort and brute force, we start to operate very subtly." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
> Page 14
"Water flows downhill because of gravity. Of course, gravity itself is a pretty mysterious phenomenon. It seems to be a type of field, as if all physical objects in the universe have some attraction for one another. But even though no one knows exactly how gravity works, we can observe the result: water flows downhill. We don’t argue about the result because it is observable. That’s much the way synchronicity seems to operate in this field of deep commitment."
"If we were not making such an immense effort to separate ourselves from life, we might actually live life day to day, minute by minute, as a series of predictable miracles."
Part One: Preparing to Journey
3. The Journey Begins
> Page 33
Recommends a book: Notes to Myself, by Hugh Prather,
> Page 35
"Instead of controlling life, I ultimately learned what it meant to allow life to flow through me.
(...) Without the control, there are more intense highs and lows, and I felt much more at risk than ever before."
4. Freedom
(tries to define freedom - Daniel Brandt)
> Page 38
"The first was “freedom from,” that is, freedom to get away from the oppressiveness of circumstances.
(...)
the freedom to follow my life’s purpose with all the commitment I could muster, while at the same time, allowing life’s creative forces to move through me without my control, without “making it happen.”
(...)
The experience at Chartres made me want to find ways to break through the limiting factors I had discovered in myself, especially fear." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
Recommends the book: Jonathan Livingston Seagull, by Richard Bach.
> Page 39
"“Break the chains of your thought, and you break the chains of your body, too.”
(...)
Jonathan knew so much about freedom because he knew about breaking the chains of conformity.
(...)
lifting ourselves out of ignorance and finding ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and creativity.
(...)
It is about overcoming the fear of learning and the fear of seeing the godlike in ourselves." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
5. Grand Prix Test Run
> Page 44
"if we are to participate in the unfolding process of the universe, we must let life flow through us, rather than attempt to control life. (...) my usual pattern had been just the contrary: to commit to something and then move to fulfill that commitment at all costs, to do whatever it took to “make it happen.” That’s exactly what had happened at the Grand Prix—I had even resorted to deception when the possibility of success looked least likely.
(...)
this is a much less powerful way of operating in life.
> Page 45
(try to define flow states)
"In this state there is an extraordinary clarity, focus, and concentration. The flow of time is altered." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
"allow me to see relationship as the organizing principle of the universe." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
6. The Art of Loving
> Page 46
Recommends: Eric Fromm’s The Art of Loving.
"Fromm’s thesis is that love is the only satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence. Loving is an art, and we must master not only the theory of love but also the practice of love. I learned that our deepest need is to overcome our aloneness and our separateness." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
"Fromm writes that mature love is union under the condition of preserving one’s integrity and individuality.
(...)
Fromm sets forth the elements of love: care, which is active concern for the life and growth of the one we love; responsibility, which is caring for one’s physical needs as well as one’s higher needs; and respect, which is allowing others to grow as they need to on their own terms.
He speaks of the types of love—erotic love, parental love, self-love, love of God, and brotherly love." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
"To learn to love is not easy."
> Page 47
"Much later I realized there was an openness and a vulnerability within me that allowed me to connect with people in a way and at a level that I had never experienced before. It was all part of my experiment with trust of and patience with the natural flow of life, with being open to the next step, and then taking it when the moment seemed right."
> Page 48
"As I sat in my room, tears were running down my cheeks. It was not out of sadness that I wept, but because of the realization that I had had a profound effect on someone else’s life."
"The alchemy of Fromm’s teachings and my experience with Bernadette provided for me a key insight: when we are in this state of being where we are open to life and all its possibilities, willing to take the next step as it is presented to us, then we meet the most remarkable people who are important contributors to our life. This occurs in part through the meeting of our eyes; it’s as if our souls instantly connect, so that we become part of a life together at that moment." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
> Page 49
"It’s as if you and the other are in the same family." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
"in another sense all of the meetings are forever because they are deep and meaningful encounters that we always hold close."
> Page 50
"I could barely get my arms around the issues related to building the law firm and trying lawsuits. How could I possibly get my arms around the issues facing our community or our nation? I felt powerless, and so I just hung back. I didn’t feel qualified, and I didn’t have the linkages outside of my own little group. I didn’t have any support group to speak of, I was out of touch with anyone but lawyers, and I basically felt isolated." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
7. Oneness
> Page 56
"Over time I came to see that the boundaries we create in this life are imaginary; they don’t exist, but we create them. Then we feel trapped by them." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
8. The Dream
> Page 57
"The Way to do is to be. —Lao-Tzu"
> Page 58
Recommends a book: Fromm’s next book, To Have or To Be.
9. Cairo
> Page 66
"Leadership is all about the release of human possibilities. One of the central requirements for good leadership is the capacity to inspire the people in the group: to move them and encourage them and pull them into the activity, and to help them get centered and focused and operating at peak capacity. A key element of this capacity to inspire is communicating to people that you believe they matter, that you know they have something important to give. The confidence you have in others will to some degree determine the confidence they have in themselves." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
(...)
"Just being able to be there for others and to listen to them is one of the most important capacities a leader can have. It calls forth the best in people by allowing them to express what is within them. If someone listens to me say what I am feeling, then my feelings are given substance and direction, and I can act." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
Part Two: Crossing the Threshold
11. The Mystery of Commitment
> Page 74
"Somewhere, deep down, I knew that to cooperate with destiny would bring great responsibility, and I was too fearful to accept that responsibility. I realize now that I was being called to engage my destiny, and by doing so, as Joseph Campbell says, I would be yielding to the design of the universe, which was speaking through the design of my own person." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
> Page 75
"Yet, on another plane, I was spending more and more time alone, writing and reading and thinking and reflecting and meditating. This is what I did with my evenings and my weekends. Every spare moment was engaged in the inner struggle, thinking about the new forum, seeing pictures of it in my mind, pictures of how it would be, and pictures of the results.
(...)
At this moment, says Rollo May, one arrives at a point where freedom and destiny merge." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
> 75 and 76
"I had a great sense of internal direction and focus, and an incredible sense of freedom that I had never felt before in my entire life. I had committed to something far larger than myself—and through that step, as I was to realize over time, I would achieve a quality of meaning and adventure I had never before attained. As I had no specific knowledge, only the guidance of the dream I had formed during the two weeks in Steamboat Springs, I made up my mind to take one day at a time, one step at a time.
There was an inner confidence that things would work out in the right way." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
> Page 76 · Location 1447
"at this moment I had the feeling of certainty that I would accomplish this dream. I felt nothing could deter me; I would not let anything get in my way."
"The day I left the firm, I crossed the threshold."
12. The Guide
> Page 77
Recommends a book: Bohm’s latest book, Wholeness and the Implicate Order.
> Page 78
"Bohm thinks that the current trend towards fragmentation is embedded in the subject-verb-object structure of our grammar, and is reflected at the personal and social levels by our tendency to see individuals and groups as “other” than ourselves, leading to isolation, selfishness and wars."
"I went to the telephone and began dialing. After several calls, I found Bohm’s home number, and before I knew it, he was at the other end of the line. I was pouring my heart out, telling him what I was about and that I must see him. Almost without hesitation, he agreed to spend the entire next afternoon with me."
> Page 80
"Different people are not that separate, they are all enfolded into the whole, and they are all a manifestation of the whole.
(...)
Everything is included in everything else." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
"“You cannot think of existence as local,” Bohm said to me that afternoon."
> Page 81
"We are all connected. If this could be taught, and if people could understand it, we would have a different consciousness. “At present, people create barriers between each other by their fragmentary thought. Each one operates separately. When these barriers have dissolved, then there arises one mind, where they are all one unit, but each person also retains his or her own individual awareness. That one mind will still exist even when they separate, and when they come together, it will be as if they hadn’t separated. It’s actually a single intelligence that works with people who are moving in relationship with one another." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
> Page 82
"Bohm then told me, “You’ve got to give a lot of attention to consciousness. This is one of the things of which our society is ignorant. It assumes consciousness requires no attention. But consciousness is what gives attention. Consciousness itself requires very alert attention or else it will simply destroy itself. It’s a very delicate mechanism." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
> Page 83
"Mach’s principle: “The whole is as necessary to the understanding of its parts, as the parts are necessary to the understanding of the whole.”" (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
13. Synchronicity: The Cubic Centimeter of Chance "
> Page 87
"I’ve thought a great deal about the way both Bohm and Mavis showed up in my life right after I made the commitment to leave the firm and follow my dream. At the time, I was amazed by the coincidence of it all. But when I thought about it, particularly in light of what Bohm had taught me, I told myself, “Why be surprised? This is the way things should work in a world that is fundamentally connected.” Yet all my old conditioning made me see the world as fragmented, as made up of separate “things,” so I continually struggled to find a reason to connect “things” together. It was difficult for me to consistently see the world as one of relatedness rather than thingness." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
> Page 90
"I also found Arthur Koestler’s account of synchronicity in Janus helpful. Koestler traces the idea of unity-in-diversity all the way back to the Pythagorean harmony of the spheres and the Hippocratics’ “sympathy of all things”—“There is one common flow, one common breathing, all things are in sympathy.” The doctrine that everything in the universe hangs together also runs as a leitmotif through the teachings of Taoism, Buddhism, the Neo-Platonists, and the philosophers of the early Renaissance. Koestler concluded that “telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition … and synchronicity are merely different manifestations under different conditions of the same universal principle—i.e., the integrative tendency operating through both causal and acausal agencies.”
(...)
I kept always in the forefront of my mind Bohm’s injunction: Just go with it. You cannot be fixed in how you’re going about it any more than you would be fixed if you were setting about to paint a great work of art. Be alert, be self-aware, so that when opportunity presents itself, you can actually rise to it.
(...)
As I was to discover, acting in the belief that I was part of a greater whole while maintaining flexibility, patience, and acute awareness led to “all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.”" (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
Part Three: The Hero's Journey
15. The Wilderness Experience: A Gateway to Dialogue
> Page 106
"You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down. … So why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. In climbing, take careful note of the difficulties along your way; for as you go up, you can observe them. Coming down, you will no longer see them, but you will know they are there if you have observed them well." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
16. Dialogue: The Power of Collective Thinking
> Page 109
Recommends a book: David Bohm, On Dialogue
> Page 110
Recommends a book: Unfolding Meaning.
"the word “dialogue,” as used by Bohm, comes from two Greek roots, dia and logos, suggesting “meaning flowing through.”"
"No one mentions the undiscussables—they’re just there, lying beneath the surface, blocking deep, honest, heart-to-heart communication. Furthermore, we all bring basic assumptions with us, our own mental maps, about the meaning of life, how the world operates, our own self-interest, our country’s interest, our religious interest, and so forth. Our basic assumptions are developed from our early days, our teachers, our family, what we read. We hold these assumptions so deeply that we become identified with them, and when these assumptions are challenged, we defend them with great emotion. Quite often, we do this unconsciously." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
> Page 111
"Dialogue does not require people to agree with each other. Instead, it encourages people to participate in a pool of shared meaning that leads to aligned action." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
ONE OF THE BEST PARTS IS BELOW
> Page 116
"People always say “We have to step back and see the big picture here,” as if we have to go from seeing the parts to constructing a whole. But the whole already exists; it’s just that we’re locked into a frame of reference that keeps us from perceiving it." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
17. Lessons: Encountering the Traps
> Page 118
Recommends a book: The Power of Myth,
Recommends a book: Robert Greenleaf in Servant Leadership:
> Page 119
"We tend to deny our destiny because of our insecurity, our dread of ostracism, our anxiety, and our lack of courage to risk what we have.
(...)
This is the point where our freedom and destiny merge. “Here I stand. I can do no other,” said Martin Luther."
> Page 120
"we cross threshold after threshold, enduring the agony of spiritual growth and breaking through personal limitations." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
> Page 122
"I began to feel I was indispensable to the whole process, that I was responsible for all the people involved, and that everyone was depending on me. The focus was on me instead of on the larger calling. In this state, the fear factor began multiplying." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
"The longer I stayed in this trap, the worse my situation seemed to get. My productivity and effectiveness went down the drain. I began to experience feelings of inadequacy and loss of confidence." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
"I began to get out of this trap by seeing things the way they really are: I am operating in the flow of the universe." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
> Page 123 · Location 2215
"You have your love and concern for those operating in this sphere with you, but you don’t feel responsible for them."
"That’s the very nature of these traps: they are habits of thought, and once we recognize them, they tend to disappear." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
"scenario planning is a far cry from obsessive worry, which can sap energy and kill the spirit." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
"We’re not really straightforward with people for fear that we will offend them, and they will leave the team. (...) We forget that these key people enrolled in our project in response to the flow and that call from our center. That’s why they were attracted in the first place."
> Page 124
"understanding of the creative orientation. It’s critical that you focus on the result and not get attached to any particular process for achieving the result." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
"It’s a little bit like sailing. If you’re focused on your course rather than your destination, you’re in big trouble." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
> Page 125
"There are actually two aspects to this cornerstone idea. The first part is the distinction between focusing on the intrinsic result we care about versus focusing on our assumptions about how we need to get there. And the second is the orientation toward the result itself." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
"why we have a dream we want to fulfill. It’s actually very rare that people focus on what they want to create for its own sake."
"Robert Frost once said “All great things are done for their own sake.”"
"So at this stage of building ALF, I had reverted to focusing rigidly on the business plan we had devised, instead of focusing on the result, the vision we had intended. This was the exact opposite of what I had done during our most successful earlier phase. At that earlier time, I kept focusing on the dream and had remained highly flexible, going with the flow of things, taking one day at a time, and listening for guidance about the next step."
"In this process, a lot of fear was generated. The further we fell behind in the original game plan, the more fearful I got. Being stuck in the process, the fear of no alternative loomed larger and larger."
> Page 126
"My habit of thought—dependency on the original action plan calling for Texas funding for the first three years of operations—had almost sent us under. That habit of thought was reinforced by my sense that we were not worthy of national funding unless we had established chapters in other regions."
"The traps of responsibility and dependency generate a lot of their energy from the fear of no alternative. But there are always alternatives. It’s just that we often are unable to see them." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
> Page 128
"To me, the payroll was huge, the expectations were huge, and the task seemed almost overwhelming. The pressure was on to produce. Who did I think I was? What was I doing here in the midst of all of this? I felt a great deal of anxiety, and I began questioning my ability to carry the whole thing off. It was like the time I almost made a perfect score skeet shooting and “woke up” only to miss the last target. The sense of true freedom and clarity of purpose I had experienced in the early days after returning from London began to erode. I was being forced to operate at a pace I found uncomfortable. I do best when I have plenty of time to reflect on things, and “process” what’s going on. That’s the way I stay anchored in the midst of the necessary chaos. That was fine in the early days, when the pace was less frenetic. But now I wasn’t able to control the pace, and the more I operated at the others’ pace, the less clear and coherent I could be about my internal direction." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
> Page 129
"It’s so easy under these circumstances to blame the situation on others: “They simply don’t get it. … They’re not committed,” or such. There’s always a “they.” But that’s where the confusion lies. In these situations, it’s not “they” who are responsible. It’s us." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
"Taking the time to come together on a regular basis in true dialogue gives everyone a chance to maintain a reflective space at the heart of the activity—a space where all people can continue to be re-nurtured together by what is wanting to happen, to unfold." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
18. The Power of Commitment
> Page 133
"The free man is he who wills without arbitrary self-will. He believes in destiny, and believes that it stands in need of him. (...) he must go to it, yet does not know where it is to be found." (negrito e itálico por Daniel Brandt)
> Page 134
"The ground of being that enables the grand will to operate is the ground of being of the implicate order—being a part of the unfolding process of the universe," (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
"In this state of being, we will do things that are very difficult, and which might even be unnatural for us in terms of our habitual way of doing things." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
"Jung described himself: I had a sense of destiny as though my life was assigned to me by fate and had to be fulfilled. This gave me an inner security. … Often I had the feeling that in all decisive matters, I was no longer among men, but was alone with God." (negrito e itálico por Daniel Brandt)
> Page 136
"I stopped being swayed by other people’s opinions, I stopped worrying about what my colleagues and neighbors would think, and I found a new force within me." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
Recommends a TV series: six-hour PBS television series based on Campbell’s writings, The Power of Myth
"I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be." (negrito e itálico por Daniel Brandt)
Part Four: The Gift
22. New Frontiers
> Page 161
"we live in a relational, participative universe, that what is unfolding in the world is unique, and that this is an “open” moment in history." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
> Page 170
"Wherever I seemed to turn, the answers would be provided—a door would open, a “coincidence” would occur; someone would introduce us to another who “just happened” to know a person who, as it turned out, would provide a key direction to us." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
23. A World of Possibilities
> Page 173
"I thought about the law firm, and how when we were just a handful of young lawyers, only two or three years out of law school, we used to go on recruiting trips to all the best law schools. We would stand up before a group of one hundred law students and talk about our dream of a two-hundred-lawyer firm that would be a major force in the nation’s legal community. We had a dream and the obvious commitment. Year after year, the best young lawyers were attracted to our small group, until ultimately, our dream was realized. We created our future that way." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
> Page 174
"It’s like a painting. There are various spots of paint in an impressionist painting, but when you step back to see the picture, there is no correspondence between the spots of paint and what you see in the picture. Similarly, the implicate order and its mathematics does not directly come to describe a sort of correspondence with reality. It is simply a language. This language is referring to something that cannot be stated. The reality which is most immediate to us cannot be stated." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
> Page 175
Recommends the books: The Tree of Knowledge and The Embodied Mind (Francisco Varela).
> Page 177
"He explained that a spoon is not something that exists in itself. It becomes a spoon in the background of our species (hands, food requirements, and so forth) and our human history (etiquette, national style, for example), both of them recurrent. We put the spoon to our mouth to feed ourselves. But for this recurrent practice, it would not exist for its present purpose."
> Page 178
"When I promise or make a request, I do so while in the midst of the past and current network of human practices. Although it is I who makes the request or the promise or declaration, it is not individual, because it is coming from and inserted into the whole background and history of human practices.”"
"it is through language that we create the world, because it’s nothing until we describe it. And when we describe it, we create distinctions that govern our actions. To put it another way, we do not describe the world we see, but we see the world we describe." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
24. Creating the Future
> Page 183
"Everything that I have studied since that time has confirmed to me that relationship is the organizing principle of the universe." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
> Page 184
"knowing that whatever we need at the moment to meet our destiny will be available to us. It is at this point that we alter our relationship with the future.
> Page 185
"Out of this commitment, a certain flow of meaning begins. People gather around you, and a larger conversation begins to form. When you are in this state of surrender, this state of wonder, you exert an enormous attractiveness—not because you are special, but because people are attracted to authentic presence and to the unfolding of a future that is full of possibilities. This is what occurred when I gathered the trustees, founders, and others who were so important to the success of the Forum." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
"The people who come to you are the very people you need in relation to your commitment."
"At this point, your life becomes a series of predictable miracles." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
"I have concluded that the leadership that can bring forth such predictable miracles is more about being than about doing." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
25. Bretton Woods and Hadamar
"“when a complete stranger calls out of the blue and wants you to do a book with him about something you don’t fully understand, would you say ‘Yes’? You say ‘Yes’ because something calls you to say ‘Yes.’ You cannot figure it out rationally, because if you try to figure it out that way, you would say ‘No.’”"
"“Over the entrance to Carl Jung’s home in Switzerland is a Latin inscription: Vocatus atque non vocatus, Deus aderit—‘Invoked or not invoked, God is present.’”"
Recommends the book: Bohm’s book, Wholeness and the Implicate Order.
Part Five: The Journey Continues
"THE INTUITIVE MIND IS A SACRED GIFT AND THE RATIONAL MIND IS A FAITHFUL SERVANT. WE HAVE CREATED A SOCIETY THAT HONORS THE SERVANT AND HAS FORGOTTEN THE GIFT. —Albert Einstein" (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
27. Shifting the Prevailing Belief System
Recommends the books: Charles Handy’s book, Beyond Certainty and Peter Senge’s book, The Fifth Discipline.
"“By deliberately changing the internal image of reality, people can change the world. Indeed,”" (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
"the universe offers infinite possibility." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
"What is the source of our capacity to access the wisdom for action we need at the moment? How can we learn to reliably enable that capacity, individually and collectively? The answer was to be revealed slowly, over a ten-year period, beginning with the discovery of the “U.”"
"We began in earnest the following week, and over the next three months, interviewed dozens of scientists, social leaders, and entrepreneurs, ultimately developing what we called “the U-Process,” a way of describing what can happen when a team or an organization works together to bring forth a new future that is not simply a projection of the past." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
"the fundamental triad of reality is information, matter, and energy." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
ONE OF THE BEST PARTS OF THE BOOK IS BELOW
"There is a creative Source of infinite potential enfolded in the universe." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
"The field of the finite is all that we can see, hear, touch, remember, and describe. This field is basically that which is manifest, or tangible. The essential quality of the infinite, by contrast, is its subtlety, its intangibility. This quality is conveyed in the word spirit, whose root meaning is “wind or breath.” This suggests an invisible but pervasive energy to which the manifest world of the finite responds. … That which is truly alive in the living being is this energy of spirit, and this is never born and never dies." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
Recommends a book: Bohm had formulated the principles found in the paper “On Dialogue.”
"Lee pointed out that when the mind is silent, transcending the ego (as it is during deep meditation), something beyond thought comes into operation—a knowing that is primary. “It is an awareness decoupled from our view of our self or our view of the world. It is genuinely a new order of insight.”"
"In Unfolding Meaning, Bohm wrote that meaning is an aspect of reality, tied to the achievement of goals and to specific contexts that are too complex to be represented by any closed formula." (negrito por Daniel Brandt)
"Meister Eckhart: “The outer work can never be small if the inner work is great. And the outer work can never be great if the inner work is small.”"
"Humans can learn to draw from the infinite potential of the Source by choosing to follow a disciplined path toward self-realization and love, the most powerful energy in the universe."
Notes
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (New York: Harper & Row, 1990).
Eric Fromm, To Have or To Be? (New York: Harper & Row, 1976). See pp. 108–09 for Fromm’s discussion of freedom and the mode of existence symbolically represented by the hero.
John W. Gardner, No Easy Victories (New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1968). Chapter 12 of this book is the most lucid and inspiring message about the need for community leadership I have ever read. It’s as true today as it was twenty-five years ago.
John W. Gardner, On Leadership (New York: The Free Press, 1990), p. 199.
Rollo May, Freedom and Destiny (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1981). I recommend this book to anyone taking the inner path to leadership. May suggests that freedom loses its solid foundation without its opposite, destiny, which sets up the necessary creative tension and gives freedom its viability (p. 16). He also says that after pursuing our destiny for many years, we may arrive at a point where our freedom and destiny seem united. This was true of Martin Luther, who, when he nailed his ninety-nine theses on the door of the cathedral at Wittenberg, said, “Here I stand, I can do no other.” Such acts, May points out, are “the fruits of years of minor decisions culminating in this crucial decision in which one’s freedom and destiny merge” (p. 99).
In addition to Jung’s classic essay on synchronicity, see also F. David Peat, Synchronicity: The Bridge Between Matter and Mind (New York: Bantam, 1987).
Isaacs’ book, Dialogue: The Art of Thinking Together (forthcoming from Doubleday)
David Bohm, “Epilogue” in Unfolding Meaning
H. Maturana and F. Varela, The Tree of Knowledge (Boston: Shambhala, 1991 [1987]).
The late Jonas Salk, who brought polio under control with the vaccine he developed, also spoke of a universe that unfolds kaleidoscopically according to a deeply ingrained order.
“I have come to recognize evolution,” he said, “not only as an active process that I am experiencing all the time, but as something I can guide by the choices I make.
Martin Buber, I and Thou, trans. Smith, p.
O. Scharmer, Theory U: Leading from the Future as it Emerges (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2009); and A. Kahane, Power and Love: A Theory and Practice of Social Change (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2010).
F. D. Peat, Infinite Potential: The Life and Times of David Bohm. (Boston: Addison Wesley Longman, 1996).
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