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Nov 28, 2020Liked by Adam Lerner

I love this holding of dualities and entireties, Adam: "Instead of trying to removing the bands one by one to arrive at the centre, we need to hold on to the ball (and the earth) in its entirety. As Renée says, it is a “classic both-and situation...it helps us move through the harder stuff much faster and more readily than if we deny or keep at bay the scarier feelings that can come up.” "

It is right in line with what I heard last night about Joanna Macy's original title of her first despair workshop - she said "I titled it 'From Despair to Empowerment' but then I realized, no, it has to be both, despair *and* empowerment." this was the kernel of what later evolved into her Work that Reconnects (from the last chapters of the audio-book of Bill Plotkin's Nature and the Human Soul) More here: http://www.personaltransformation.com/joanna_macy.html

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Nov 28, 2020Liked by Adam Lerner

From that linked interview she says: "Hope is an openness to the future that arises out of our evolutionary history. Hope is an impulse in the evolution of humanity. We continually die and live and die into forms that are ever more complex, with greater capacities for sensitivity, intelligence and responsiveness. The story of biological organic life on Earth is this movement toward ever-greater responsiveness on the part of living systems. This is the thrust of living systems. Hope is not hope for any particular thing, or an attachment to an outcome you desire. It's an openness toward what you don't even have the capacity to think yet because you're still in the present. Hope is a radical openness to what can be. It is a posture that leaves us flexible and adaptable and alive."

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Dissolving the binaries seems so important, and something that I also heard Agustín Fuentes speak about in this On Being podcast episode suggesting that we need to stop asking the question of whether humans are evolutionarily cooperative OR competitive. It is both/and. Fuentes shares, "meaning, imagination, and hope are essential to the human story, as are bones, genes, and ecologies.” I think you will also enjoy his perspective on embodiment too, Peter https://onbeing.org/programs/agustin-fuentes-this-species-moment/

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Dec 1, 2020Liked by Adam Lerner

Thank you!

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