Soul, entropy and learning LO5137

John Woods (jwoods@execpc.com)
Fri, 26 Jan 1996 07:12:39 -0600 (CST)

Replying to LO5118 --

Dave Birren's posts always stimulate me. Let me comment on this one as well.

>Thomas Moore connects with this in _Care of the Soul_. The following
>quote is on the January 24th leaf of the Care of the Soul daily calendar:
>
>"We want to sidestep negative moods and emotion, bad life choices and
>unhealthy habits. But if our purpose is to first observe the soul as it
>is, then we may have to discard the salvational wish and find deeper
>respect for what is actually there. By trying to avoid human mistakes and
>failure, we move beyond the reach of the soul."
>
>If we, and the organizations whose development we are committed to, are to
>progress, we must stay within the domain of soul, with all the misery and
>failure and frustration that entails. That's the domain of learning,
>growth and real development.

More says by trying to avoid human mistakes and failure, we move
beyond.... As far as I am concerned, we CANNOT avoid mistakes. This is
another way of saying we cannot avoid being a human being. In other
words, we propagate ideas like it's a possibility that one can avoid
screwing up or not experiencing frustration, and so on. This is not
possible. We should not entertain for a second that it is.

And we can no more move beyond the reach of the soul than we can move
beyond the reach of being human. Everything that happens to us is, from
one perspective, the work of the soul. So we might as well acknowledge
that. If we do, it opens us up to more fully experiencing our humanity and
our soulfulness. However, if we don't acknowledge it, it doesn't mean
that the same forces aren't at work. They are. It just means we are
likely to miss a lot and have a lot less interesting and more sorrowful
lives.

Finally, we should also note that ideas like mistakes and failure are just
value judgments we place on our experience. I have said here before that
a mistake is a value judgment rendered after the fact. If we let go of
such judgments and simply use our experience as the lessons they are in
what it means to be a person, we will be taking a more realistic position
and will be able to use those lessons to learn even more. At some level,
I suspect that is what life is really about.

--
John Woods
jwoods@execpc.com