DECISION WINDOW: MAYBE WE SHOULD CHANGE OUR QUESTION

DECISION WINDOW: MAYBE WE SHOULD CHANGE OUR QUESTION

Is 2010 our decision window? What if we change our question? Today it seems that the whole world must come to terms with a multi-national hydra-headed existential face-off. Thus it becomes, at this point in history, imperative that we work hard to educate ourselves, in order to gain some insight and understanding of our idea of ourselves as human beings in a very large universe, and how that idea is interpreted and played out on the increasingly communal world stage. Thinking about this I have decided to post here some excerpts from the foreword I wrote for my husband’s new book. (Sheldon Stoff, The Western Book of Crossing Over: Conversations with the Other Side. North Atlantic Books, 2009)

In our efforts to widen and deepen our concepts and understanding of life and meaning, it may be helpful if we place our inquiries within the larger questions posed by general systems theory. It may indeed be helpful to direct an inquiring look at general systems theory and the nature of systems and how and why they organize themselves, and how they may change toward a more benevolent evolution.

Ervin Laszlo, often known as the father of systems science, says that as we now face a choice between "collapsing into chaos and evolving into a sustainable, ethical global community" the voices of the few, even the individual, can have a powerful effect for change. He says, in The Chaos Point: The World at the Crossroads:

Scientists would say we are living in a 'decision window'—a transitory period in the evolution of a system during which any input or influence, however small, can 'blow up' to transform existing trends and bring new patterns and processes into existence. This is similar to the often-discussed 'butterfly effect' discovered by U.S. meteorologist Edward Lorenz in the 1960s….In periods of relative stability, the consciousness of individuals does not play a decisive role in the behavior of society. But when a society reaches the limits of its stability and turns chaotic, it becomes super-sensitive—responsive to even small fluctuations such as changes in some people's values, beliefs, world views and aspirations. Many signs point to the fact that we are entering a new period of ecological and social instability, a time rife with chaos but also a window of exceptional freedom to decide our destiny.

Reading history upon tragic history, and trying to comprehend truly and fairly, we think that now is the time to offer thoughts about strategies for a deeper healing at the heart of humankind. With Martin Buber and Vaclav Havel, we plead for benevolent evolution in our consciousness, in our understanding of who we are, and where we are going. Are we evolving toward understanding and partnership? Asking a new kind of question can precipitate a profound change in our world view, and in our understanding of the entire cosmos. When we change our question, we begin to move forward in comprehension and toward greater spiritual evolution.

**** Note: Now Professor Emeritus at Adelphi University, Sheldon Stoff taught a course on the philosophy of Martin Buber while he was studying for his doctorate at Cornell University. During his long career as an educator and spokesperson for Humanistic Education, with inspiration from Dr. Buber, he established the International Center for Studies in Dialogue. He also received the Outstanding Educator of America Award in 1974. He is author of The Two Way Street, The Human Encounter, The Pumpkin Quest, Universal Kabbalah: Dawn of a New Consciousness, and the recently released The Western Book of Crossing Over: Conversations with the Other Side. As well, he is co-author, with Barbara Smith Stoff, of the forthcoming Partnership Society: The Marriage of Intuition and Intellect.
--Barbara Smith Stoff

REMEMBERING LITTLE RUBY BRIDGES ON MARTIN LUTHER KING DAY, 2010

Today is Martin Luther King Day, 2010. Today I like to reflect once again upon the story I heard in San Diego, California, sometime in the early 1980s, from Dr. Robert Coles, of Harvard University, about his conversation with little Ruby Bridges after she had endured the ordeal of being escorted by federal marshals into a previously all-white school in New Orleans, in 1960. As she faced the hostile crowds, the jeering, and even the death threats, Dr. Coles noticed that she walked calmly and her lips kept moving as if she were talking to herself. He later asked her what she was saying. Her response was, “I was saying forgive them. They do not know what they are doing.”

Down through the years, Professor Coles has studied children closely and has written with understanding and vision about his findings. If we are wise, we will ponder his conclusions: "Children, if we can listen to them, will tell us of a life richer in moral values than most grown-ups can comprehend.... If faced by the prospect of total annihilation, young people will try in some way to make sense of the mystery and madness of their lives." If we can just listen to the young ones…
--Barbara Smith Stoff

FROM MY JOURNAL - SEPTEMBER 20, 1984

From my journal – September 20, 1984

In the occult tradition, the eye that ‘sees’ must be washed in the blood of the heart. --Dane Rudhyar

It’s 3:30 a.m. Through the window in the east study I see the moon, a silver crescent held there like a cup. Oh Moon, night goddess who comes to balance and make round the glinting spears of light from rational day; we, poor creatures, crawling on the earth here, are we abandoned here until we all find the heartpoint…flashpoint!! flashpoint!!? Where the horizontal plane of rationality intersects the vertical plane of emotionality, the heart is born. The heart is born on the cross. And moment by moment I must reconcile myself to that crosspoint-flashpoint-heartpoint, the luminous center.

Has Christ really done it for us? Have we only to bring ourselves up to the ‘risen’ vibration that he has brought in for us? Stretched as he was there, he chose to monitor, moment by moment, his attitude and response toward his pain: He chose love. Father, forgive them. I will not give my soul, even in a moment of despair and pain, over to the power of darkness. Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit. I will not give my soul…the existential ordeal of choice. Flashpoint! A new threshold of luminescence glows in the web of existence called earth, vibrating outward from that birthpoint, shaking the web, even dangerously shaking the web.

I am with you all days…and wherever we are in this web, we are henceforth affected by this new vibration. I can choose this vibration out of all others and my attunement begins. Lo, I am with you all days, even unto the end of the world.


Suddenly I am remembering an exercise from our movement group. Working with a partner, one partner says ‘cookie’’ and the other is silent. ‘Cookie, cookie, cookie’…the silent partner listens carefully to the sound in order to learn to distinguish it from all the other intonations in the room. Then everyone goes into motion and the room becomes an arena of movement and varying tones of ‘cookie cookie’ as the task of each of the silent partners is to locate the tone of the original partner and find the way back to the dyad, all this with the eyes closed, attuning to the special sound, a sound which has become special, as a guide. The task is to focus only on that one sound in order to succeed in the exercise. Atonement, attunement.

The existential Jesus whispered “This is possible for me. I can choose forgiveness. This is possible for a human being. This is possible for the human race.” Flashpoint! Flashpoint! The fabric of existence is forever altered. The historical Jesus whispered ‘cookie, cookie’ and that sound vibrates forever through the web of time.

Out of the phantasmagoria of sounds, refractions, reverberations, and echoes, will come those, inevitably, who shape the sounds into words. Saint John says simply, “God is love.” T.S. Eliot says, “Love is God.”

Carlos Castaneda has written six long tales of power and has not mentioned the sound of love. His “cookie:power” permeates our living web of morphic resonance now in 1984 as did the dark tones of William Golding in the 1960s with Lord of the Flies, that darkest of echoes from the great war where power became so completely divorced from the heart…the heartfires of the world had gone out …and then erupted in a great conflagration in the bake ovens of Dachau and Buchenwald. Yet the pervasiveness of clouds seeded by this darkness drifted through the minds of masses of students as they read Lord of the Flies, which was assigned to them by their teachers of literature, to be read and studied and commented upon while their ears were yet full of the drums of war…ears unable at that point to distinguish the gentler sound, “cookie”love.” Into that rumble and din, we now have Castaneda generating sounds, words, echoes into the morphic web and the drums of power drown out the sound of love. The minds of students sift for seeds of wisdom in these dark clouds of words while their ears are muffled by the modern cacophony of television and dystrophic music. Only in the gentleness of the heart can the gentler sounds be heard. Only in the heart. Body, mind, soul, spirit…where is the heart?

“Oh! Beat the world with heart of song!” Where can the sounds of the heart be heard if not through the voice of the poet, the artist, who prays, “O! Mythical father of Icarus, stand me now in good stead as I go forth to forge within the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race!” Can the modern ear be attuned to the voice of the artist?

Hoc est enum corpus meum. The artist makes the bread of life and holds it out to us in holy communion. I will pass by the dark bread and choose that which has more light. I hold out my hand for the white hyacinth. Oh, where are we going with these light bodies?

There are those today who shape sounds into gentler words: William Irwin Thompson says “Time Falling Bodies Take to Light.” Oh, where are we going in this body of light? We breathe in light; we breathe out love. I breath in light, I breathe out love, I breathe in light I breath out love breathe in light breathe out love breathe in love breathe out light breathe in light breathe out love breathe in love breathe out love breathe breathe breathe…and so the heart of the earth breathes and the heart of fire is kindled within.

--Barbara Smith Stoff

BEWARE OF SARAH PALIN'S "PIT BULL DIPLOMACY"

Many years ago, I was listening to Christine Downing (Mirrors of the Self: Archetypal Images Shape Your Life) as she spoke of a force of great magnitude which is being liberated from the substructures of our consciousness, and the need to reckon with its potential destructiveness. In my own lecture, the following week, I found that I was much preoccupied with what we might do about this. I believe that this force is released through what we might call, in the Jungian sense, the Aphrodite consciousness—Aphrodite consciousness—creative energy which can go awry. The question is—how do we work with this powerful force so that we preserve life on this planet? We are talking here about working with polarized primal energy, and polarized spiritual energy. It seems to me that there is a possibility, if we are mindful, that we have evolved to the point of learning how to handle the polarities for creativity, and the optimum development of the individual concurrently with the optimum development of the collective.

My suggestion is that we need to look at, and understand, the emerging, or evolving, archetypes as they make their way up through the waters of the collective consciousness and stand before us on political platforms. We might just notice, and even study, those that are wanting to take center stage, and then make our choice as to which ones we want to encourage. I believe the future of our world depends upon us and our choices. I was thinking these thoughts a long time ago…

Now…skip down through the years, and I am watching, and listening to, Sarah Palin as she addresses the Republican Convention. For me, her speech bought back schoolyard memories . I think, “I’ve been here before.” Here’s the scene....I am a teacher, and I’ve got lunchtime patrol. This one kid has grabbed the attention and is holding forth—making fun of another student, and the crowd looks up to this student with smiles and clapping approval. I am watching a bully deftly drawing out the would-be-bully in the listeners…bullies-in-training. With 24-7 media, we have all seen more than we need of the ultimate results of that kind of rhetoric, that kind of dynamic—uzzis in the streets and in our classrooms.

So here she is at the Republican Convention for nomination of a political candidate and she says, “You know what the difference is between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick.” As she deftly points her finger at her own rouged lips, I feel a kind of chill…a tremor of warning.

That reference to pit bulls brought back personal memories…memories of counseling a young mother whose small child had been killed by a neighbor’s pit bull—on the sidewalk in front of her home, as she was unloading groceries from her car. Up until that experience, I had never even heard of pit bulls, but you can be sure that I have not had a very high opinion of them since. I simply don’t trust the gut impulses of a pit bull.

And so I am even more astounded when she proudly introduces herself again to the world through a book title: Going Rogue… Looking up ‘rogue’ in The Random House Dictionary of the English Language, I find: “a dishonest, knavish person; scoundrel; villain; trickster; swindler; cheat.” Hmmmm….I think we need to pay attention, and we need to decide what we want to encourage.

--Barbara Smith Stoff