Showing posts with label Book Discussion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Book Discussion. Show all posts

Friday, August 19, 2022

You are invited to join the UUWOL book discussion group

 

UUAWOL Book Discussion group

Each month a book will be chosen to discuss via email.

I will post a video on the UUAWOL blog every Sunday and send an email to the people who have signed up for the group. The ideas and topics will be discussed via email to all.

If you would like to join this email group, send your request to me at davidgmarkham@gmail.com and your email will be added to the UUAWOL book discussion group.

The first book is David Cycleback's, Against Illiberalism


Thursday, August 19, 2021

UU A Way Of Life book for discussion September, 2021 - The Presence Of The Infinite

 The UU A Way Of Life book for discussion beginning on September 1, 2021, will be "The Presence Of The Infinite: The Spiritual Experience Of Beauty, Truth, and Goodness by Steve McIntosh.



From the Amazon Web Site

Reviewed in the United States on December 26, 2015
Verified Purchase
Every once in awhile, I read or hear something that creates a whole new space of possibility for myself. This is always a thrilling and Grace-full experience. Not only did this book do that for me ... It is also an extremely deep and thoughtful work that provides powerful direction to the inquiry and potential application for this new space.

WARNING! ... Do NOT speed-read this book. Each sentence is powerful. Let it in ... BE vulnerable, and ALLOW it to permeate not only your Mind ... but your Heart and Body as well.

I sense that Steve's destiny was to write this book. I don't know anyone else that could have done it ... and we are all richer for it.

I look forward to co-creating the UNFOLDING of the SUBSTANTIATION of the possibilities.

(I recommend reading the many other excellent reviews here for more content detail.)

Gratefully,

Dr. David Kamnitzer: Holistic Doctor and Ontological Coach

Friday, June 18, 2021

Where is Unitarian Universalism taking us?


 Topic Six

Where is Unitarian Universalism taking us?


The way people have been told they’re supposed to go is not the way they came here to go. And that is why 98% of the world’s people are spending 98% of their time on things that just don’t matter. When you turn that around, you’ll turn your life around.


Walsch, Neale Donald. The Only Thing That Matters (Conversations With Humanity Book 2) (p. 9). Hay House. Kindle Edition. 


Unitarian Universalists join together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. This sounds good in theory but as a practicality it leaves people drifting and wandering.


Unitarian Universalism would be more helpful if it provided a map or at least a compass. It’s failure to do so leaves the denomination floundering and fighting amongst themselves about what direction the group should take. As Donald Walsch writes “98% of the world’s people are spending 98% of their time on things that just don’t matter.”


The big questions are “Where is Unitarian Universalism headed and where is it taking its members and the world it interacts with?”


Anybody know? Anybody have ideas about these two questions? As Lewis Carroll wrote, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.”


Sunday, June 6, 2021

To what extent do you have your shit together?


 Topic Five

To what extent do you have your shit together?


So to put what is occurring in your life another way, you are now paying greater Attention to your Awareness. It’s one thing to be “aware,” but it is another thing altogether to pay attention to what your Soul is aware of (instead of ignoring it, which most people do most of the time). 


This mixture of the two is what might be called Consciousness. When your Mind pays attention to your Soul, and your Mind and Soul thus carry the same data, hold the same idea, and possess the same perspective, you might be said to be fully conscious. 


So, in real terms, it is your Consciousness that is expanding as the Awareness of your Soul comes to the Attention of your Mind.


Walsch, Neale Donald. The Only Thing That Matters (Conversations With Humanity Book 2) (p. 7). Hay House. Kindle Edition. 


Consciousness is when the awareness of your soul and the attention of your mind are in sync. In other words, does your mind know what’s in your soul? For most people most of the time the answer is “no,” they have no idea.


One way of describing this psychologically is to name these two faculties as “the head” and “the heart.” Often the head is one place and the heart is somewhere else. There is a disconnect. When the head and the heart are functioning together we call this “integration.” We say that someone has a well integrated personality. In the 60s we called this “having your shit together.”


In Unitarian Universalism we affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. This search takes us to observing whether our head and hearts are in sync. Is our mind attending to the awareness of our soul?


The soul is aware of what really matters and it is that which we deeply desire which ultimately is the rejoining with the Divine after separating ourselves from it. We desire deeply to become one again with God, the Divine, our Transcendent Source, the Ground Of Our Being, Life. The ego has to be discarded in the end and our separateness will end as we rejoin the Divine which is what our souls deeply desire.


How conscious are we of this deep yearning? Not very. We have forgotten from whence we came and to which we yearn. Our life on earth has been an experience of grief for our lost innocence, and we yearn to regain that which we have lost, to be healed of our separateness. To be, once again, in Love.


To what extent does you mind pay attention to your soul? Are you aware of deep down your heart’s desire? Do you consciously strive to become the person deep down you believe God is calling you to become? Are you doing with your life what deep down you believe God is calling you to do with it? Answering these questions requires a process of discernment. And discernment is a practice. It regularly askes, especially when stressed, “What would Love have me do?” It is in attempting to answer this question that we engage in the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. It is in this search that we work to get our shit together.


Friday, June 4, 2021

Do you know what you know?



 Do you know what you know?

So to put what is occurring in your life another way, you are now paying greater Attention to your Awareness. It’s one thing to be “aware,” but it is another thing altogether to pay attention to what your Soul is aware of (instead of ignoring it, which most people do most of the time).


Walsch, Neale Donald. The Only Thing That Matters (Conversations With Humanity Book 2) (p. 7). Hay House. Kindle Edition. 


St. Theresa of Avila is reported to have said something along the line of “It is one thing to know. It is another to know that you know. It is a third thing to teach what you know that you know to others.”


In the passage above Neale Donald Walsch seems to be making the same point. It is one thing to be aware, and it is another thing to pay attention to that of which you are aware.


I remember seeing a piece of urinal stall graffiti which said “Be a lert. America needs more lerts.” This is not only funny but very true except that it is not just America that needs more lerts but the whole world.


In Unitarian Universalism we covenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning and one way of doing this is to give more attention to that of which we are aware. One person calls this “self -reckoning.” People keep busy to avoid self-reckoning.


Self-reckoning scares people. This is the reason that they disparagingly talk about needing to go see a “shrink” because the therapist will ask them to engage in a process of self-reckoning which can seem judgmental contributing to an experience of shame. Once this fear is overcome usually the opposite occurs when the self-reckoning leads to clarifying understanding, increased confidence, a growing sense of optimism in the goodness of life and an experience of empowerment..


Walsch is suggesting that people pay attention to their awareness either by themselves or with a trusted other.


One of the purposes of religion is to help people pay more attention to that of which they are aware and to make sense of their understanding. Does your church do this for you? Does your church help you discern that which you should pay attention to and what really matters?


Tuesday, June 1, 2021

Increasing awareness that life is holy.


Increasing awareness that life is holy.


Call it an energy shift, call it a cosmic cycle, call it the overhaul of humanity, or whatever you will, but what’s occurring on Earth right now is, you can be sure, very real. It’s touching lives emotionally, physically, and spiritually. Some lives more than others, but none are immune. This experience is global in scope. Talk to people. Just ask them. Talk to people anywhere, everywhere. They’ll tell you: Yes, life has been tumultuous lately. More than usual. More than normal. For some, more than ever.


Walsch, Neale Donald. The Only Thing That Matters (Conversations With Humanity Book 2) (pp. 4-5). Hay House. Kindle Edition. 


What Neale seems to be describing is an evolutionary push for higher levels of consciousness. Ken Wilber calls this simply “Levels.” Developmental models have phases, stages, levels, whatever you want to call them. Is there a collective growth occurring pushing humanity to a further level of consciousness?


Yes, this is what the Covid-19 and climate warming and digital communication is doing to us, usually below our level of consciousness. We are becoming more and more aware of what Unitarian Universalists call the “interdependent web of existence.” This is no more evident than the idea of “supply chains” which became so evident with the toilet paper shortage during Covid-19.


When we experience the shortage of supply we become acutely aware of how interdependent we are and that our dependence makes us feel vulnerable and fragile. The push is for harmony, for working together, for the valuing of every link in the chain, an awareness that every person is important. We become more aware than ever of the inherent worth and dignity of every person and that we sink or swim together.


This awareness brings us back to what really matters. It is not the individual as much as the whole. Life is not linear and reductionistic but systemic and one. Our recent experiences have changed our understanding of who and what we are as human beings. We are forced to see life as whole (holy) if we are to survive.


Saturday, May 29, 2021

Book discussion, The Only Thing That Matters - Remembering what matters to you.


Remembering what really matters.


The answer to the question “What really matters” is to be found, according to Neale Donald Walsh, not in the head, but in the soul, or as it might be preferred, in the heart.


Walsh writes: “Think this: My soul knows exactly what it is doing. Also think this: My soul already knows what matters. So it is not a question of finding that answer, it is a question of remembering. It is not a process of discovery, it is a process of recovery. This data does not have to be researched, it merely has to be retrieved.” p.4


When I am in counseling sessions with people I’ll ask a question and the person will respond too quickly, “I don’t know.”


I will say, “Yes you do,” and ask the question again.


If they say, “I don’t know” again, I say, “Guess,” and they always come up with some answer where we can begin the remembering, the retrieval.


One of the working assumptions of a good psychotherapist is that the client already knows the answers to their problems. The biggest problem is that they don’t know what they already know. The job of the therapist is to help the person remember what really matters to them. In psychodynamic terms this is called making the unconscious conscious.


It is one thing to know something, and it is another thing to know that you know it. People come to therapy not knowing that they already know, not only what really matters to them but what it would take to realize it.


In Unitarian Universalism we covenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. What this comes down to is for the person to consciously become aware of what really matters to them. This often takes an interpersonal dialogue where two or more people are joined together in a remembering endeavor. This activity is affirmed and promoted in the third principle of UU which is the acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth.


When was the last time that you had a conversation about what really matters to you or to them? What would it take for you to have one now or in the near future?


Tuesday, May 11, 2021

Book Discussion - Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapy - Bio-psycho-social-spiritual components of human functioning.


Bio-psycho-social-spiritual: the four components of human functioning.


After all, psychology is still a young field, just a little over a hundred years old. And the study of spirituality is even younger, after having been largely neglected by psychologists for many years. My hope is that this work contributes in some way to a more integrated approach to understanding and addressing the spiritual dimension in psychotherapy.


Kenneth I. Pargament PhD. Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapy: Understanding and Addressing the Sacred (Kindle Locations 55-57). Kindle Edition. 


Most psychotherapists since the 1970s have been trained in the bio-psyco-social model of human behavior. In the last twenty years “spiritual” has been added so now we have the bio-psycho-social-spiritual model.


All four components of the model explaining human functioning are important. Kenneth Pargament is one of the early pioneering psychologists exploring the spiritual in addition to the other three models.


There is an important distinction to be made between “religious” and “spiritual.” Religious refers to membership in an institution and an ethnocentric identity which involves membership, adherence to creedal beliefs, certain practices and traditions, and respect for expert leaders of the religion as well as for sacred texts.


Spiritual is one’s relationship with one’s Higher Power whatever the person considers their Higher Power to be.


Some people are religious but not spiritual. Some people are spiritual but not religious, and some people are both religious and spiritual.


Being spiritual does not require a belief in a god. In fact many atheists consider themselves spiritual in the sense that they believe in a transcendent reality greater than their own egos if only a belief in the rightness of atheism itself.


One of the important aspects of a psychotherapist’s activity is to try to understand the client’s view of the world. The three major spiritual questions are: why was I born, what is the purpose of my life, what happens when I die? Unless the psychotherapist understands how the client would answer or does answer these three major existential questions, the psychotherapist may not be able to be of much help to the person.


These three questions are not often explicitly stated and discussed, but as the psychotherapist comes to know the client’s story and the client’s situation, an empathic psychotherapist will have a good sense of how the client views themself and the world.


Opening up these questions for exploration and examination may be an important part of any helpful episode of psychotherapy.


Monday, May 10, 2021

Book discussion - Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapy by Kenneth Pargament.

I am reading Kenneth Pargament's book, Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapy, and will be posting a series of articles on some of the ideas he discusses. Feel free to comment and share your thoughts as well.



These articles will be posted on Markham's Behavioral Health. Visit the Markham's Behavioral Health and subscribe so daily notices will arrive in your email inbox when new articles are posted there.
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