3 X 5's: Index Card Wisdom from Best of Books

ZEN LISTENING Rebecca Shafir (2000). Zen of Listening:  Mindful Communication in                                       the Age of Distraction. What makes listening ZEN  is the mindful attention that we give to the speaker, focusing on them without judging in a curious way that allows us to learn. My view of listening is much broader than the International Listening Society Definition of listening used in the book. Listening is more than attending to spoken/nonverbal messages...listening includes the whole of life, the SONG of life where SONG is an acronym that stands for S = listening to self, O = listening to others, N = listening to nature, and G = listening to God/Goddess or more broadly the divine.  One of many practices based on Shafir's Zen listening is to approach our listening encounters with the same intention as we have w...

SYSTEMS Donella Meadows (2008). Thinking in systems. anything and everything can be modeled as a system(s)...a set of interconnected ideas/things with properties that guide its purposeful behavior...finding the lever(s) in a system is the key to changing a system...we do well to remember that systems are our creations, maps of reality, helpful for describing and understanding the interconnectedness of life. before we intervene in a system, we should inquire about the history of the system...study the beat of the system by plotting the behavior of the system over time, listen to what is working well and what is wrong, keep language concrete, meaningful, truthful, discover/develop feedback loops to keep learning more, embrace errors, enhance growth, stability, diversity, resilience, sustainability, and beauty... the future of the system can be envisioned and brought lovingly into being by discovering how its properties and our values work together...begin with small changes, constant mo...

FULLY HUMAN Hal Hodges (1975). On Becoming Fully Human (unpublished                                             manuscript, San Jose State University, California). Hal Hodges was a sociology professor of mine in the early 1980's at San Jose Sate University in California. I recall his enthusiasm, energy, dynamic style of lecturing. A tall lanky clean shaven man with white hair and simple attire. In this book, and in his course, he suggested that we might become more "fully human", that there are laden capacities within  us that remain (for most of us) largely untapped throughout our life. He hints at what fully human might look like through Abraham Maslow's self-actualization, quotes from mystics and philosophers throughout the centuries, and through the lives of creatives.  Among the qualities of the fully human are: child-like wonder, openness, insatiab...

ENERGY MED James Oschman (2000). Energy Medicine: The Scientific Basis. There is a scientific basis for energies that influence our mind and bodies...energy fields, electricity, electromagnetism, cellular and molecular energies are all compatible with conventional chemistry and physics...for example: the organs of the body produce electric fields detectable on the skin as in the heart electrocardiogram and the brain electroencephalogram (in theory every organ would have a measurable electric field),  electric currents flow through  our tissues and are detectable by SQUID technology,  pulsing magnetic fields and be emitted from human hands,  light and heat are emitted by cells, tissues, organs, and the whole body detectable with spectroscopic methods that show the emission and absorption,  and the entire body acts as a LIVING MATRIX communication system with many frequencies/vibrations that are influenced by the earth, Schuman frequencies, elf's, and human hands....

MIND-BODY CONNECTION Lissa Rankin (2020, revised edition). Mind over medicine:                                                                               Scientific proof that you can                                                                               heal yourself. Rankin is a medical doctor that became disenchanted with the medical standard care practice of drugs and surgery and the protocol of exercise and nutrition as the primary ways  to address illness...she began asking her patients profound questions during the intake process lik...

BODY WISDOM  Therese Bertherat (1989).  The body has its reasons: Self-awareness                                                           through conscious movement.  Berherat takes us on a personal journey in learning body wisdom /awareness using Ehrenfred's method which is radically different than the medical model/method she learned at University. The story unfolds as "sessions" of practices, and the end of the book reveals several "preliminaries" on how to cultivate body wisdom. Among the many practical lessons are:      pause after exhaling to let the body use oxygen before inhaling again--this allows the              body to rest/relax with every breath.      because all parts of the body are integrated, working with one par...

  GRANDSON OF GANDHI Arun Gandhi (2017). The Gift of Anger: And other Lessons from my                                                Grandfather Mahatma Gandhi. I first encountered Arun Gnadhi, the grandson of the great Mahatma Gandhi, via a video recording of him speaking on nonviolence at Old Dominion University in Virginia (my home institution). Then, i had the opportunity to meet him personally while at a Communication convention in Nashville, Tennesse at Christian Brothers University where he had a small institute for nonviolence on campus. The part about the visit i remember most was at lunch everyone pulled out their food and placed it on the table for anyone to partake of--it was one big feast shared by all, and everyone ate their fill--so unlike the western idea of everyone brings and eats their own bagged lunch...a model for a larger ...