Where'd ya get THAT value?
Ok - I'm not a huge fan of Andrew Cohen as a person. I think he's got a cult of personality going on, and I sometimes wonder if he's abusing it. BUT some of his ideas, or at least the way he phrases these ideas, I find useful. This quote of the week is about a subject we spent quite a bit of time on at Naropa. It can break your brain, but it's absolutely worth the time and energy. Why do you value the things you value? Are you sure those values are YOURS, or are they hand-me-downs you've never really checked to see if the fit was right? Anyway - here it is, the:
Quote of the Week
Freely Choosing to be Yourself
Our values are what define the choices we make, the actions we take, the life that we create. They are a set of subtle and not so subtle beliefs, ideas, and ways of seeing the world that we deeply subscribe to but may not even be conscious of. And if we're not conscious of the values of the conditioned self, they are going to inhibit our capacity to be truly awake.
So it's imperative, if you want to be an agent of conscious evolution, to bring the light of awareness to this level of your self. What are your deeply held values? Are they your values? Did you freely choose them? Probably not. Very few people freely choose their own values. Many of us who have grown up in a postmodern world where the freedom of individual is valued above all else assume that we have freely chosen our values, but it's very rarely true.
So this is why the culturally conditioned self is a subject in all of us that needs to be made an object in the light of our own awareness, so that we will be in a position to begin to freely choose who we will be. We have to, in a sense, die and be reborn again. This is what rigorous and serious spiritual practice is all about: learning how to freely choose to be yourself.
~Andrew Cohen
What about you? What are some of your deeply held values? Where did they come from?
Among my top values are kindness and curiosity. The deep awareness of mortality, arrived at through lived experience of many loved ones dying throughout my life, has convinced me there is very little of more worth in the world than being kind. Not nice. Kind. When you are dead, how do you want people to remember you? What can you do every day to make the world better? Being kind costs nothing more than attention and time and self-control. The benefits are enormous, both to others and yourself. I don't know that kindness was valued in my family of origin. At least not explicitly. Service to others was valued, learning was valued, elitism was valued, putting family first was valued. But not kindness. I think that's one I came to on my own.
Curiosity, that's a different story. I'm pretty sure I was born curious, and as learning - which is just another form of curiosity - was highly valued in my foo, that trait was always positively reinforced. During Naropa I had to take it apart and look at it from all angles, acknowledge it's dark side, and decide if it was a value I wanted to keep. I can be a terrible snoop, and sometimes rudely pushy about asking things that are none of my business. I've learned to temper that part of the trait, to a certain extent. The rest of it? I just love. I'm never bored, I find the world endlessly fascinating, there is always something else to notice, to find out about, to SEE.
How about you?
Quote of the Week
Freely Choosing to be Yourself
Our values are what define the choices we make, the actions we take, the life that we create. They are a set of subtle and not so subtle beliefs, ideas, and ways of seeing the world that we deeply subscribe to but may not even be conscious of. And if we're not conscious of the values of the conditioned self, they are going to inhibit our capacity to be truly awake.
So it's imperative, if you want to be an agent of conscious evolution, to bring the light of awareness to this level of your self. What are your deeply held values? Are they your values? Did you freely choose them? Probably not. Very few people freely choose their own values. Many of us who have grown up in a postmodern world where the freedom of individual is valued above all else assume that we have freely chosen our values, but it's very rarely true.
So this is why the culturally conditioned self is a subject in all of us that needs to be made an object in the light of our own awareness, so that we will be in a position to begin to freely choose who we will be. We have to, in a sense, die and be reborn again. This is what rigorous and serious spiritual practice is all about: learning how to freely choose to be yourself.
~Andrew Cohen
What about you? What are some of your deeply held values? Where did they come from?
Among my top values are kindness and curiosity. The deep awareness of mortality, arrived at through lived experience of many loved ones dying throughout my life, has convinced me there is very little of more worth in the world than being kind. Not nice. Kind. When you are dead, how do you want people to remember you? What can you do every day to make the world better? Being kind costs nothing more than attention and time and self-control. The benefits are enormous, both to others and yourself. I don't know that kindness was valued in my family of origin. At least not explicitly. Service to others was valued, learning was valued, elitism was valued, putting family first was valued. But not kindness. I think that's one I came to on my own.
Curiosity, that's a different story. I'm pretty sure I was born curious, and as learning - which is just another form of curiosity - was highly valued in my foo, that trait was always positively reinforced. During Naropa I had to take it apart and look at it from all angles, acknowledge it's dark side, and decide if it was a value I wanted to keep. I can be a terrible snoop, and sometimes rudely pushy about asking things that are none of my business. I've learned to temper that part of the trait, to a certain extent. The rest of it? I just love. I'm never bored, I find the world endlessly fascinating, there is always something else to notice, to find out about, to SEE.
How about you?