Tag: Consciousness
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Two Ideas One Mind: The Vices and Virtues of Cognitive Dissonance
I sometimes wonder if hypocrisy comes from a person’s inability to harmonize the seemingly divergent awarenesses that arise as a result of them experiencing cognitive dissonance. Take for example someone like the segregationist Senator, Strom Thurmond who, despite adamantly advocating against civil rights for Black Americans and pushed for state’s rights to impose segregation, was…
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The Many Realms of Knowledge
There’s a reason why people say knowledge is power. We have convinced ourselves that the one who knows has an advantage over those who do not know. And in many instance, this can prove accurate. But there are different realms of knowledge and with them we find the ability to access different levels of wisdom.…
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The Cleansing of the Multitudes (A Parable)
And it came to pass, that the Teacher had been giving instruction for about 2 hours when some of her apprentices came up to her and said, “Teacher, the people have come to us and said that they need a potty break. But they do not have any tissue or hand sanitizer. What should we…
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The Comfort Paradox
The first time I heard the saying, “Afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted”, it was in seminary. I heard it from a cohort leader who said it in a way that led me to believe that she made it up. She never said she made it up. But, that was her response, when I…
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To Be the New Me
Several posts ago, I wrote about how I sometimes hold myself back from shining my light. The excuse that I was using was that by holding myself back in some areas, I was somehow protecting the people who would otherwise try to hold me back. I’d hold myself back before they could try to. Yeah.…
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Pretending to Be You
There is this common idea in the world of appearances that is described as “faking it until you make it”. When I first heard that saying, it was disturbing to me. The way I interpreted it was that people should pretend to be someone others think they should be. This was something people advise people…
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Power Beyond Measure Part 4
We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. — Marianne Williamson One day my dad called me out of nowhere and invited me to visit him in Mississippi. He said he wanted to talk to me and that it had…
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Mastering Your Greatest Weakness
“Your greatest weakness is your strength overdone.” — Some Wise Person Whose Name I can’t remember. In a recent post, I reflected a little on being an 8 on the Enneagram. In it I mentioned briefly about 8s despising weakness in themselves and others. What I didn’t get into was examples of that in my…
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How 8 Thou Art (Reflections on My Enneagram#)
For about 6 years now, I have known that I am a type 8 on the Enneagram, what is often referred to as the Challenger/Protector. Even before I had a name and a number to describe some aspects of how I show up in the world, I was aware of many of the dimensions of…
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Stop In the Name of Love
If you had the power to end all of the violence in the world with a single action, would you do it? I imagine that most of us would say that of course we would. No one wants violence, right? It is just an unfortunate deterrent that we must use to prevent greater violence from…
The Roofless Church 