Distinctions

How about you?

Do you have your life arranged so you have recurring occasions for entering and exploring the depths?

What I’m saying here is well known. The world’s religions have days set aside for entering the depths through reflection, contemplation, remembering our place in the universe, but we can easily fill these times with household chores, errands, going through the motions of traditional rituals while our heart and mind are elsewhere.

When we neglect the depths we never get to find out who we are, because that takes quiet, solitary introspection over an extended period of time.

Missing regular encounters with depth, our lives lack meaning that we unsuccessfully try to substitute for with frantic activity and endless distraction.

Without depth we cannot meet the inevitable difficulties of our life—loss, brokenheartedness, disappointment, illness, death itself—with clarity and stability. Instead we attempt to cover them up, numb ourselves or cut off whole parts of ourselves so as not to feel them. We lose our humanity, become less alive.

We cannot be of much use to others unless we meet them from depth, where wisdom and compassion reside and spontaneous insight is sourced.

Attending to our development as people—as distinct from getting more skillful at a task or accumulating more success—requires that we regularly encounter and become familiar with depth. Being more developed means we can be more kind, patient, creative, and expressive of our unique gifts.

In our times of relentless, unpredictable, tumultuous change, living in and from depth brings us resilience and creative responsiveness instead of reactivity, cynicism and resignation.

Some people might see a downside to depth. They might say that living from there would take away the human touch, or spontaneity or humor or practicality or popularity. Like you, I can clearly see our Western cultures pulling for speed, the easily graspable idea or concept, and the immediate, strong, emotional reaction. But I would say that our major, pressing, immediate problems—the environment, economic inequity, social injustice, epidemic drug use and so on—come from our making decisions that lack depth: decisions that don’t consider the long-term, the consequence for people outside of our immediate circle of concern, or all the systemic factors implicit in them.

What do you make of this?

How important is depth for you?

Why is that?

I’m sure you know that living from depth or knowing ourselves as depth, if that formulation makes sense to you, is not so easy given all the ways our daily lives pull us into quick, superficial interactions. Besides that, entering the depths means that we are willing to encounter that which we have been ignoring or otherwise not attending to. Consequently, for quite a long time, visiting the depths means feeling body sensations that we don’t like, emotions we would prefer avoiding, memories of shame and regret, and the basic encounter with our mind—usually a neurotic and chaotic process.

So you see it’s up to you, once you know there is such a thing as depth and what it can make possible. Will you ford the rapids of mind and body to come to the warm, still, bottomless places of depth?

Certainly our coaching work originates there, and it’s intended to awaken our clients’ appreciation and access to depth.

How will you respond to all I’m saying?

The poems that follow, the practice of the quarter and the book review can all assist you as you explore and choose your path.

Take care of yourself.

Love,

• What invitations, chances, opportunities were there for me to enter greater depth?
  • How did I respond (if at all)?
  • If I did respond, what shifted in my experience?
• What did I do to bring greater depth to whatever I was doing? Whatever conversation/relationship was there? To whatever I was reflecting on?
  • How did I go about that and what were its effects?
• How will I take what I learned in this period of observation into the next period of time so that I have greater depth in my life?

Grace and the Great Turning

Joanna Macy

When you act on behalf
of something greater than yourself,
you begin
to feel it acting through you
with a power that is greater than your own.

This is grace.

Today, as we take risks
for the sake of something greater
than our separate, individual lives,
we are feeling graced
by other beings and by Earth itself.

Those with whom and on whose behalf we act
give us strength
and eloquence
and staying power
we didn’t know we had.

We just need to practice knowing that
and remembering that we are sustained
by each other
in the web of life.
Our true power comes as a gift, like grace,
because in truth it is sustained by others.

If we practice drawing on the wisdom
and beauty
and strengths
of our fellow humans
and our fellow species
we can go into any situation
and trust
that the courage and intelligence required
will be supplied.

Letter from the Graduate Department

Dear friends,

In June I had the opportunity to be part of the inaugural Masterful Conversations workshop in San Francisco. While I knew that the material was going to be powerful, there were some particularly valuable elements of the course that I didn’t necessarily expect. I’ll share a bit of my experience here.

I found the examination of what is central to our lives—indeed, what we’re organizing ourselves around—and how that influences how we are in interactions to be quite powerful. I personally found that my central value is harmony, and I quickly came to see how this both serves and holds me back in conversation. The exploration became how to preserve the quality of the intention without distorting myself to maintain it. As you can imagine, I’m still working with this realization and will be for some time to come!

That was one of myriad ‘aha’ moments that occurred for me and my classmates over the three days. Others included looking at how recurring breakdowns can often be connected back to an incomplete or unskillful conversation, and how conversations can only really be productive when we’re cognizant of the background mood. (I remember mood being a topic in the PCC that I was intrigued by and wanted to know more about, so it was a bonus to get it here.) We did an exercise that showed us how listening to intentions, commitments, and what the other person is really up to reveals so much more than than listening to just the content that’s being offered. Everyone in the class uncovered their unique developmental edge around conversations and came away with a clear understanding of how to go about that development.

It being a class geared toward professionals, much of the material was grounded in business scenarios. For instance, organizations often only may be in conversations for action; conversations for relationship and possibility aren’t used intentionally or are altogether overlooked. Projects can go sideways when we abandon possibility and move into action too soon.

The course is designed such that everyone—grads and nongrads—encounter fresh territory in themselves and in their learning. And it’s practical enough bring to our work and broader lives in immediately transformative ways. One powerful example of this is that one participant actually left the workshop intending to apply this material to their performance review process, opening those conversations from mere assessments into ones that allow for development and possibility.

The teleclass following the workshop has proven so far to be an opportunity for students wanting to go deeper to practice this advanced material and get real-time feedback from James. He’s providing case consulting and coaching people through difficulties with their conversations (relational dilemmas, issues with teammates, etc.). Our use of the Zoom platform facilitates deeper discovery both in the work with James and in smaller breakout practice groups.

I unequivocally recommend this course to anyone wanting to become masterful in the art of communication. I hope you can join us with your colleagues for the next course starting on Nov. 1 in San Francisco.

Love,

Sahar Azarabadi

The wonderful students & faculty of London PCC “Q” celebrating their graduation in June