I did an inventory the other day of the kinds of issues clients have brought me over time. Here are some of them: • Survival in the role of leader • Effectiveness in working with others, particularly troublesome personalities, other people who are in denial, and those who have more power • Living in high [...]

In a comment on my last post, Flor Fernandez Barrios talked about medicine wheels: “Native-Americans have the concept of the medicine Wheel, the great circle of life based on the cardinal directions. Every posiition has equal power and unique teachings. The essence of life is movement and as we move through the wheel we learn [...]

“We put thirty spokes together and call it a wheel; but it is on the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the wheel depends.” – Tao Te Ching There is a whole tradition in the definition of leadership that has to do with what leaders do not do themselves. The Tao Te [...]

Every once in awhile a message from some unknown source comes to me. This one appeared in a dream, one strong enough to wake me up, almost with a gasp. The dream narrative itself is muddled. All I can recall of it is that at the end some powerful presence seemed to come near me. [...]

Perhaps because I’ve been working on money management and taxes lately, I have been forced to consider what I do for a living. The conversation with myself seemed to go in circles today until this strange oxymoronic phrase came to mind: selling wisdom. As in, “You can’t be serious, you do what?” The phrase had [...]

For Rosa and Dick. The other day I found myself in a state of complaint. The recession, of course, and what it has done to my business. It’s clear, adding up the cancelled work for this year that I have lost a significant amount. I wrote to a good friend, Tom, about my state of [...]

In my last post I mentioned the phrase “straw for the fire” as having emerged during a meditation. Since then I have become increasingly aware of something within that continues to grow around these lines. Mostly this: that every concept of self, every cherished belief, and certainly all absolutes are so much straw, as well. [...]

Recently, I was tagged by Evelyn Rodriguez to share five things about myself others don’t know. I had been tagged previously, however, and had already responded. But thinking about Evelyn’s tag somehow reminded me of another disclosure “game” I once played. Here’s how it worked: five people sat together in a circle with a facilitator. [...]

[audio:RiverKnowsEverything.mp3] Hear Dan read this post. One of the most powerful passages in Hermann Hesse’s classic spiritual tale, Siddhartha, goes like this: I am only a ferryman and it is my task to take people across and to all of them my river has been nothing but a hindrance on their journey. They have traveled [...]

A reader, Marianne Powers, astutely suggested I reflect on where I learned to see truth in myself and others – a wonderful task that ought to take just about the rest of my life to figure out. However, something did come to me almost immediately: I remembered a book my mother gave me when I [...]

It is one of those mornings when, too early, I find myself on a jet headed east from Seattle. Thankfully, though I am in the last row of coach at the window, there is a seat between me and the guy who sits down at the aisle. At least, I can stretch out my elbows. [...]

I am convinced that “accountability” is one of the toughest, most confusing words in the English language. It’s tough because it is thrown around so frequently and easily as a catch-all criticism when things don’t go well. A mistake on the production floor? Hmmm. Must be lack of accountability by a machine operator, or maybe [...]