Retreats Starting December 13!

Friends! I haven’t blogged for a while here because I’ve been finishing 3 new books and that’s taken all my time. I do post really short things on social media, but have come back to this blog today to invite you to a retreat coming up soon. I'm excited that our favorite local beach hotel near my home has green lighted a first retreat weekend for us in a new cycle of retreats. It’s scheduled to be at the great Holiday Inn Lumina Resort on Wrightsville Beach, outside Wilmington, NC from Friday December 13 (Dinner)-Sunday December 15 at noon. Things will start with a Friday dinner session and go through the weekend, assuming we can get a quorum of people for this first, soon upcoming date in a busy time of year. A reasonable retreat fee helps pay for the dinner and snacks and our meeting rooms, whose use reduces the cost of overnight rooms, which are already great with off season prices, and will help promote the mission of Wisdom/Work, the book imprint and overall enterprise I'm engaged in to bring more practical wisdom to the culture. The topics of this first retreat will be true success, happiness, fulfillment, and change in our lives. More retreats on this cluster of topics and others will be scheduled for early 2025. Let me know at TomVMorris@aol.com if you'd like to come to this first retreat or be put on a list for future retreats! And I’ll send you more info. I'd love to host you and dig deep into such vital aspects of a deep life philosophy. When I last had time to do retreats, ten years ago, they were amazing, and people often bonded incredibly. Let me know if you're interested!

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Reading Phi-Fi: My Philosophical Fiction

Friends! I have to tell you, I'm having a great great time with my 2024 international book club, now underway! Smart people of many ages and professions from various spots across the globe reading my novels with me and diving deep into the philosophy in new ways. Thanks to all who are participating! You are my teachers. Maybe we'll do it again.

For those of you who may not know of these books, they came to me as a mental movie starting in February of 2011, a story set in Egypt in 1934 and 1935 that soon became a rollicking adventure of mystery, philosophy, romance, intrigue, and deep perspectives on life in the world. It was the most unexpected intellectual adventure of my life. Last year, I did a book club on these novels, reading one a month and meeting by Zoom at the end of each month. I was amazed at how much I learned from readers who were deep diving into the books and recommending them to friends. I decided to repeat the process and it’s been another incredible experience this time around as well, full of new insights, novel questions, and deep thinking together. If you get to see these books, I’d love to hear what you think. They’re fiction but “based on a true story” - the human adventure in this world!

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The Difficulty of the Climb

Good morning, friends! I just did my morning post across social media and wanted to share it here because it’s an insight that’s become very important to me. I just had a new and unexpected project come my way. At first it was a major surprise and challenge over whether to say yes, then I realized it was a wonderful opportunity, and it very quickly turned into a tremendous challenge that slowly revealed itself to be one of the most amazing adventures ever. I’ll say more about that later. But here is my post today for you to ponder. I’d love to hear what you think.

There are days when this is how it seems. A vertical ascent, the hardest of environments and difficulties. But ponder this guy’s likely mindset. Focus. Determination. A strong sense of purpose and a goal. An exhilaration at the very difficulty. An easy climb can’t bring the deep satisfaction of the all out commitment and complete engagement required by the extreme challenge. So, climb on. One finger hold and foot hold at a time. Inch by inch of progress. Alert. Aware. Relishing the process as the deep adventure into yourself that it always is. The summit awaits and is as patient as you and I are learning to be. #difficulty #hard #adversity #focus #determination #grit #success #wisdom #mindset

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Consciousness. Awareness. Mindfulness.

A good friend just asked me last night by voice mail: What’s the difference between consciousness, awareness, and mindfulness? By the time I heard the message, it was late and I was on the verge of losing my grip on each of those things. So I’ve waited until this morning. You all want to take a crack at this one? My first thoughts are that consciousness is the base level of what we all experience except when we’re sitting through a long and boring lecture in a warm room. It separates people and animals from plants, maybe, or all three from stones, maybe. Or. It’s an awake visual surround sound sensorium of perceptions, memories, and thoughts, whenever they’re present, and lively, or “brought to mind.” We all know what the opposite is like, to be unconscious, except of course while it’s going on, which is odd in its own right, right? And then there’s the subconscious that takes over and drives your car in way that Tesla software can't when your conscious mind decides to take a break and wander in warm trustingness that this other part of you can make do just fine, most of the time, unlike Tesla's CEO.

Awareness is just another name for what distinguishes consciousness from the totally oblivious unconscious, or what strangely attaches both conscious and subconscious states to a greater reality beyond the individual mind. It can take such forms as the immediacy of sharp visual seeing or keen concurrent hearing, or else the indirectness of merely realizing.

Mindfulness is by contrast a particular focus of the conscious, aware mind. It’s about paying attention and keenly noticing in an undivided and nondistracted way. It’s a purity of being there, or here, and now. It’s a spiritual attainment, whereas consciousness and awareness at least begin as among our most basic, given equipment, our starting points for active participation in the world. I may be wrong, but I’m not yet conscious, or aware, of how, and yet I’m mindfully open. You?

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Decisions

One more this week for those of you who aren’t with me on social media. I’ll not usually do back to back posts here but today, I decided to do so!

Decisions. How many decisions do you make in a given day, week, month, or year? Sometimes they can seem as numerous as a big sky full of migrating birds, and much less likely to make their intended destinations. It can feel overwhelming at times. We walk through a fog of the unknown and radically unpredictable. And yet, we want to get each decision right. But in an uncertain and dynamic world, we should know that’s impossible. No mere human has done it yet. None of us will likely be the first. And so that provides a different perspective on the challenge. Maybe the practical point of decisions isn’t to get them all right, but merely to be fully responsible in them all. We do our best, and this is all that’s asked. The world then takes over and we await the results, which most likely will present more decisions. It’s less like a test a school room exam, but parts of a journey, an adventure forward, where we’re exploring and perhaps building, but it’s all a bit tentative. Our learning and growth is foremost. Our curiosity, creativity, and courage are to be developed and deployed into the world. But perfection isn’t even on the horizon. And to worry about it is wasted energy. We’re here to fly. And the sky is indeed big, with lots of great stops along the way. #growth #building #creativity #learning #courage #decisions #choices #wisdom #life #leadership

Comment: Many people find themselves frozen by decisions, as if so much turns on each one. Once we frame them differently, we free ourselves from most of that pressure. Sure, there are some decisions we have to do our best to get right, but if we’re resilient and creative, if we’re alchemists or what I can lemonade makers, we can adapt and adjust when we see what the world has done with our input. As long as we seek to mitigate risk so that no decision is so bad as to take us out of the game of life altogether, we have the chance to rebound and redirect, change and do that thing everyone mentions these days, pivot. It’s Ok to be even a little bird brained now and then, as long as we’re agile enough to recover and relaunch. And, yeah, we have words like pivot and agile because they name things we need to be able to master. So I try not to be tired of them or irked with their repetitive ubiquity. At least they give us a chance to use phrases like ‘repetitive ubiquity.’

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It's Up to Us

It’s ultimately up to us how we experience this moment. We bring a sensibility to every situation, a predilection, a perspective or disposition. And we forget that fact all too often, giving the circumstance much more power than it inherently has. Part of a happy and fulfilled life is taking that power back and using it properly, for the good of others as well as ourselves. This little trick can even allow the welcome visitor of joy to come our way.

This is what the great practical philosophers and their wisdom traditions seek to remind us. It’s an inner game. It’s a soul journey. We’ve been given much more power than we use, resources we ignore or forget. When we reclaim our inheritance and use it in healthy ways, we flourish together and as individuals. May you flourish more today than yesterday, and tomorrow even more.

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The Real Truth about Comfort Zones

The Real Truth about Comfort Zones. The number one piece of business, personal growth, and high achievement advice in our day gets shouted out from stages, repeated in podcasts, and endlessly printed in the pages of best selling books: “You gotta get out of your comfort zone!” “All the good stuff is to be found outside of your comfort zone!” And: “You want one piece of advice from me today that will change your life? Get out of your comfort zone!” But as I realized long ago and have mentioned in a short reflection before, the last few times I heard someone repeat this advice as if it were scintillatingly new and powerful and desperately needed, they were voicing it from the middle of a stage, in front of a big audience, under spotlights, where they are to be found dozens, scores, or even hundreds of times a year, or, in other words, from right smack dab in the middle of their own comfort zones. Yeah. Ponder that for a second. Now this is a conundrum, and that always attracts a philosopher’s attention.

If you’re stuck in a rut, hiding from anything new, wallowing like a little pig in warm mud deeply ensconced in a dulling comfort, or you’re robotically frozen in a rigid routine that prevents you from experiencing or discovering anything new, then yes indeed, maybe you need to get out of your comfort zone. Right now. But there’s a deeper truth and a much more powerful one that nobody ever mentions. You ultimately need to learn to develop a different sort of comfort zone, one of mastery not mediocrity, and take that comfort zone with you wherever you go. Get out of that? No. Get into it if you aren’t already. Then: Take it with you into any new situation.

It just occurred to me yesterday that all the championship athletes I’ve ever known play best in their comfort zone, one they’ve built up and cultivated and constructed into an inner cathedral of strength that they can take with them into any new stadium, field, arena, or contest where they’ll be mightily challenged to prevail. All the great musicians I’ve ever seen also tend to play right in the middle of their own well earned comfort zones, where there’s a groove and a deep feeling of flow. Masters of any art or craft, intellectual discipline or difficult enterprise most often live and work inside an amazing comfort zone that the rest of us can only admire with great respect. They make it look easy, no matter how incredibly hard it might be.

The real truth is that there are two very different kinds of comfort zones. There is of course the one that the motivational speakers and high paid business advisors are urging you to leave behind. And that’s what we can call “The Complacent Comfort Zone.” But then there is another kind that we might call “The Courageous Comfort Zone.” It’s a commanding place of strength and skill. It’s about attitudes and emotions, talent and skill, and seemingly effortless lightning quick thought. That’s what’s worth creating and sustaining and taking with you wherever you go. That’s where greatness happens. It’s the garden of delights for the excellence of peak attainment. It’s the highest playground of mastery.

And that’s where I’ll see you soon. Ok? Bring your own.

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The Individual

The Myth of the Lone Individual. In western civilization, if we can now even call ourselves civilized, we have a distorted view of human beings along many dimensions, one of which is often referred to as our philosophy of individualism. This viewpoint atomizes human beings as each an island, an isolated self, a sole former of beliefs, feeler of emotions, holder of attitudes, and initiator of actions. On such a view, the metaphysically isolated individual alone is responsible for his or her path in the world. If you succeed or fail, it’s all on you. If you’re loving or cruel, the same is true. Individual responsibility is an implication of individual isolation.

But there is an ancient Chinese and more broadly Asian counterpoint to this view, a philosophy in which we are all essentially entwined parts of a greater whole, believing, feeling, seeing, and acting in community within an all embracing system that surrounds and permeates us, in what can be imagined as concentric circles of influence and cooperation, indeed of collaboration. Some of the deeper classical Christian thought has its own version of such a conception. On this view, life is a vast partnership of all with all, either for good or ill. Community matters. Surrounding systems and structures are powerfully involved in our lives. Things like heroism or racism, to cite two polarities, are never just the responsibility of the sole individual so characterized, but are effects of collective forces.

This does not rob us of individual responsibility, but rather shows the full stage on which that responsibility develops and plays out. We live best when we understand the involvement of systems and communities of agency in the situations and souls of those around us, as well as with ourselves. Primal societies even see the objects around us as having a form of agency to help or hinder. Some of our deepest political problems arise out of an extreme individualist myth that sees each of us as solely accountable for whatever we think, feel, or do. If you're poor, it's all your fault. Feeding the hungry is going out of your way to solve a problem the hungry created for themselves. A more enlightened philosophy will cast its net more broadly and understand the collaborative nature of existence and action in all its forms. We live within a huge and intimately engaged ecology of things and spirits enlivened with energy. We need to think more and do more to enhance our broader communities of being and doing. That's the only sane and safe way forward.

Note: This post was inspired by an extraordinary essay in Aeon: https://aeon.co/essays/in-classical-chinese-philosophy-all-actions-are-collective?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=2789347d4a-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2022_11_21_05_39&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-2789347d4a-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D

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So. I'm a Wisdom Coach

I’m what you might call a wisdom coach, a philosophical guide, a mentor for others as I also continue to absorb deeper lessons on life’s path. When I pass on what I’ve received, I always see more.

We typically best learn from digging deep and doing well in the company of those who know. One of my favorite grad school professors at Yale long ago reflected that we were in danger of losing our greatest model of education, the master-apprentice relationship, where a novice accompanies an experienced expert on a journey, an adventure of imitation, repetition, individuation, and growth into a form of distinctive excellence. And we’re never too old to apprentice ourselves to a master. As the British social scientist and philosopher Michael Polanyi showed long ago in his books Personal Knowledge and Tacit Knowing, that’s how greatness is sparked and conveyed.

So I’m launching a new enterprise soon, a new official form of service as a mentor, advisor, and guide for C suite executives, company founders, and top performers in many domains who seek more wisdom and practical philosophy in their lives. I’ve done it informally and quietly for a long time, but now, while it will still be quite confidential an endeavor, I’m going to officially open up for a few more ongoing partners and companions along the way. But, shhh. It’s still a very quiet enterprise.

Oh, and about the picture: The small horse is me. The bigger one represents the great sages of our history, showing us the way, if we’ll only attend and take it all in. You may want to run with us.

Final thought for all of us each day: Who are you helping to grow? Who is helping you?

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Reflections

What if this world, as real as it is for what it is, is at the same time a reflection of another more solid and substantial reality? I think Plato had a suspicion of the possibility that finally became a belief.


We typically suppose our surrounding snow globe of a cosmos to be in its physicality fundamentally solid, dense, and firm, within all its open emptiness, but our odd friends, the physicists, tell us it’s mostly that emptiness, even lurking beneath the solidity, vastly empty space filled by enigmatic energy packs that are themselves barely substantial at all, beyond the sheer mathematics that may actually comprise them. What if then we merely mirror a more robust reality beneath or beyond it all?


We think of the body as solid and the spirit as, well, more like the merest gas or steam, or an insubstantial shadow. But what if it’s the other way around? We need to keep our minds and hearts open to the deeper possibilities, the stranger things, however outside our normal experience, as we take in the beautiful and terrible reflections in this world.


Plato even joked that we're just in a cave and that the bright light of reality yet awaits us outside it. I like my little cavern, but perhaps it's preparing me for something yet more and greater and beyond my ability now to grasp. Let's keep in mind the vision, as we interact with others today and tomorrow, leaving room for the greatness they may be here to mirror, even when they don't shine brightly.

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Bold Thought

Most people who read Plato's Republic as adults, or his other shorter dialogues featuring Socrates, usually get caught up in the discussions and never notice a very strange thing. The master pattern is something like this: Someone brings up a topic, and Socrates begins asking questions. He quickly finds that at least one person present seems to think he knows all about the topic, or at least has a high degree of certainty about some central idea or claim. Our philosopher begins to dismantle that certainty. And the dialogue tends to end with no more accurate truth to replace the counterfeit insight that was originally so confidently presented as the truth. Then Socrates ambles off.

Careful readers eventually say, "Wait. Why no resolution? Why does Socrates leave things unresolved? Is he trying to show us that philosophy unsettles us but never gives us answers?" No. Not at all.

On reflection, it looks to me like what most motivated Socrates was not actually clarifying common concepts or evaluating popular claims to arrive at ultimate truth, but rather inducing a measure of intellectual humility into others as a way of sparking a courageous curiosity about life. Then, great things could happen. We're too tied to the status quo, too pressured by peers, too often caught in group think, too chained to the assumptions of our day, or industry, or profession, or party. We need to be bold thinkers, all of us, unafraid to try ideas, to test assumptions, and to think in new and creative ways. That's when we can make our greatest contributions.

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Limits

Ok, one last blog post this week. Then I’ll shut up for a while. But I had to share something.

Are there any new philosophical questions? Here's one new for you to ponder this weekend. The most ancient human epic story in our possession is the epic of Gigamesh, which, while called an epic, and it is, is actually a relatively short story. Clay tablets could be only so big. It's about a king who is a bad leader and a pretty terrible person primarily because he has no sense of limits. We live in a world where we seek to deal with limits by fight or flight. We smash them or run from them. We have bumper stickers that say "No Limits!" But what if we need them? When Gilgamesh discovers his, he is transformed. Have you discovered yours? Have we as a culture? Have our leaders? Have fun with this short article sent to me by a friend, a retired CBS Radio News anchor: https://twitter.com/dwnews/status/1578359377077178370

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