The Beauty Way for Organizations

Living the Beauty Way is all about first disentangling from “The Game” and reorienting the sensation of the “I” or ego self. Only then will you be able to re-enter any game of your choice and purpose, knowing your are both the actions and the events, that, in fact, you are the process of existence itself.

Transforming organizations towards the Beauty Way requires every single member of the organization to first realize their own self like that. Only then can people be brought together in a non-forcing, flowing way to make things happen without conflict and realize the synergy of the organization as a whole.

The Beauty Way is an attitude towards life and existence that was the natural lifeway for humans up to about 8000 years ago. It still is the lifeway of native people all over the world. This does not mean the Beauty Way is tied to any type of culture or social structure. It can be realized in what we call modern life just as seamlessly. The Beauty Way has, through later history, partly manifested itself in the form of Taoism and Zen. Those philosophies are also the easiest way back in to the Beauty Way from the context of our current culture and lifeways. Together with experience and understanding of Natural Awareness they enable us to free the mind and give direction of nature back to nature of which we are an indivisble part.

Due to the very nature of the Beauty Way for Organizations (BW4O) it is a very suitable approach for:

- New visionary start-ups.
- Organizations or departments that are heavily dependent on the output of highly creative and visionary people.
- Educational/Mentoring organizations.
- Organizations dealing with environmental issues and attitudes.
- Charity organizations.

But truly all organizations that want to thrive and provide through natural simplicity, based on a vision of oneness, respect, responsibility and true purpose for all.

Contact me if you are interested in designing a program for your organization!

Peter
VaraVild

#VaraVild #TheBeautyWay #BW4O #PeterFriebel #Zen #Taoism

An Essential Realization of The Phenomenal

What is the Beauty Way really? I use the term often to describe the Old Way lifeways, philosophies, world views and attitudes towards self discovery. Yet, in the end it is just a term, some words that may or may not have meaning for you.

I chose to use that term as it resonates with me. It is originally a Native American term for what in Zen is called the experiential essence of life. In all fairness we should turn that around and say that the experiential essence is a Zen term for what some Native American people originally call(ed) The Beauty Way, long before Zen even existed.

This shuffling of the words demonstrates a very important point: For you to understand what the Beauty Way is I provided some concepts you can compare with each other, hoping that the Zen version of the concepts make some sort of sense you can apply to the unknown ones. The reality of things is that you can not describe The Beauty Way using concepts. The Beauty Way can only be experienced.

The only thing I can hope for is that the words that will follow will provoke in you an experience that will give meaning to your experience of The Beauty Way. I know it is paradoxical but there simply is no other way: I need to use words (i.e. concepts) to describe something that isn't.

First I will use some words from (what I think I know of) Zen Philosophy:

Reality has two sides: the phenomenal side and the essential side. The phenomenal side of reality is the one we are most familiar with. It is made up of all the things we can see, hear, smell, touch and taste and all the thoughts, the concepts and beliefs, we hold about the world. This makes it fundamentally a world of dualities. The original duality being the distinction between "self" and "other". Because of this we experience the world as something different and separate from the "I". We experience the "I" or ego.

The essential reality is our recognition of the oneness and complete interconnectedness with everything. It transcends all dualities, even the "self" and "other" duality. This makes the essential reality  a reality beyond concepts that can only be realized through direct experience.

To experience this essential reality is the ultimate goal in Zen. The challenge lies in learning to destroy the barrier of conceptual and dualistic thinking that stands between the phenomenal and the essential.

Before I go on to describe The Beauty Way from an Old Way perspective I need to make very clear that Zen is a product of the Civilized Way. Please read the About on my web site for an explanation of Old Way and Civilized Way.

I will use a very well known and old story to describe the Beauty Way. In this story the term "The Gifting Way" is used. This is the aboriginal lifeway of seeing that life is given, that the deer hunter gifts the Deer Spirit health to the deer and the deer in turn gift their flesh and hides to human. The underlying concept is deep ecological balance. (My words and interpretation of this story were once inspired by the same story written down by Tamarack Song.)

Two Hungry Bears

A young girl entered the shelter of her Grandfather to ask him a question that was troubling her.

"Grandfather," she said, "I am older than my Brother but he wins in everything we compete in. I was always the better archer but now he seems better even in that. I love my Brother and I am proud of him when I see he grows in all things. Yet when he beats me in something it is like two angry hungry Bears awake in my gut and start fighting."

"Dear Child, I know these Bears well. They live in all People and we all feel them fighting sometimes. One Bear is the Bear of Balance and comes when we trust in the Gifting Way, the other is the Bear out of Balance and he comes when we trust in ourselves."

After a short silence the girl asked: "Grandfather, can you tell me which Bear will win?"

"The bear you feed my Child."

"How would I feed the Bear of Balance? I would like him to become strong."

"With your heart," was the simple answer her Grandfather gave.

They sat for a while in silence. Then the girl said: "But Grandfather, they are both me. If I do not feed one I do not feed myself."

"Yes, my Child, you are wise beyond your years. There really is only one Bear. Just as Cloud and Sun come together to make the day, the two fighting Bears come together to help us see both the dark and the light. Now go back and rest with your family so that your two Bears can find their place of rest within you. Together they will guide you through this Journey of Life and together they will help you find vision in blindness."

In this story the bears can be interpreted as representing the phenomenal and essential realities. The Bear of Balance who comes out when we trust the Gifting Way represents Oneness, Balance, interconnectedness and the realm beyond concepts and dualities. The Bear out of Balance represents the "self" and "other" duality, the "I" or ego and on the whole the phenomenal reality. Their distinction is simply: Balance vs out of Balance.

Interestingly, the story recognizes that they are both one and the same. That their interaction is what creates our reality. We can not ignore the "I" as it creates our means of survival. The Beauty Way, for me, is the lifeway of balancing the influence of the Bear of Balance and that of the Bear out of Balance.

This now gives a very simple definition of Old Way and Civilized Way: This balance is achieved in Old Way cultures and lost in Civilized Way cultures.

We are part of a Civilized Way culture. We almost exclusively experience the phenomenal reality. Our egos dominate completely and our mode of thought is completely conceptual. In fact we are prisoners of the Bear out of Balance as it became the single victor. And, of course this happened because we only fed that particular bear. We lost our hearts.

As a consequence we lost half of our true selves.

Wouldn't you like to meet your other half?  

Well, a good start is to learn how to destroy the barrier of conceptual and dualistic thinking that stands between the phenomenal and the essential. To give room to the intuitive mind and your heart.

Before you know it, a new and unknown Bear will start to stir deep within you, hungry for more ...

Peter Friebel 

Earthbound

Go outside
And sit
Feel the Soil
The Air
And Time beyond your grasp

Her gift is all she is
For all to share
For all to care
As in giving we are living

She shares her bounty
Through the Circle of all our Lives
No need is ever missed
Yet we fell to wanting
Yet we left our Hearts

Go outside
And sit
Feel the Soil
The Air
And Time beyond your grasp

Her gift is all she had
For all disrupted
For all corrupted
As in taking we now believe lies living

Yet in these days of so called giving
The gifts that are but loot and greed
We may find our Hearts once more

And go outside
And sit
Feeling the Soil
The Air
And Time beyond our grasp

As again Her Circle embraces
Our gift of love
And life

For all to share
For all to care
As only in giving we ALL are living

Peter Friebel

The Deep Blue

"As a tracker you need to be as a question".

This is one of the most profound insights in the state of mind of the aboriginal tracker I know. Every time we say we know something to be true, we also say something about what is consequently false. We create a duality and using that we categorize.

Say, you find sign that makes you decide something is blue. Will you, days later, still be open for sign that hints it was green all along?

No, and that is why knowing and deciding effectively diminishes our perception. We create beliefs based on what we know, decide, love and fear. These beliefs become prejudices and effect our perceptions and decisions in the future. Even worse is that we apply a cultural framework in this process of "knowing" and "deciding". And so we flow from simple prejudice into judgment. In fear of being judged do you dare to still perceive objectively?

As a tracker you want to preserve oneness. You will want to find questions that lead you to more questions because in those questions you will find wisdom. Knowledge without wisdom, packaged in a cultural framework, is an extremely dangerous and toxic thing. Current cultural and geopolitical trends are clear evidence of that.

So if you find that sign, ask yourself things like:

"Could this be blue?"
"What if it was green?"
"Is blue the same for all or can some perceive green while I see blue?"
"What does it tell me that the thing may have a specific color?"
"What can I learn from it regardless of its color?"
 etc.

Doing this you avoid the duality and you learn a lot more than just that the thing was blue.

In the Deep Blue you may discover the Zen of Tracking and the intrinsic self:

Not Two!

The Counsel of Crossbill

This morning I Became a fluttering of joy and intent
I was not Self but the cool morning air between the pines
I was the itching of the midges and mosquitoes and went beyond

Then they went through and I through them
I Became their whirlwind of green and yellow
Happy calls in a meadow of boreal bounty

And on they went
Doing what Crossbill does
Being what Crossbill is

For a moment
I tracked their Spirit
And they lifted mine

And on I went

Doing what Man does

Being what Man is

And my Spirit sang

TODO: Mindfulness training

Just saw a Swedish documentary on the "phenomenon" of mindfulness and instead of inspiring me, it actually kind of annoyed me.

Mindfulness was portrayed as this new thing, a way to observe when we act out of judgements and habits and bend the future to achieve new things. The largest part of the documentary was about its value in leadership and other corporate functions.

On the health and wellbeing side, its effects on lowering stress were countered with notes of warning from the medical profession as many of the claims were not backed up with actual scientific knowledge. Certain people, with certain diagnosis, could even experience negative effects by practicing mindfulness, they said.

The funny thing was that the majority of the people that were interviewed who give courses, hold lectures or in any way were experts in the field of mindfulness, constantly talked about living a life in Awareness and how mindfulness opens up that possibility while, at the same time, the actual documentary focused on the activity of mindfulness as separate to the state of Awareness. Basically a miracle pill that solves all your problems but is a bit hard to swallow.

It is the typical effect you get when a headspace culture tries to wrap it head around a heartspace concept.

Mindfulness becomes the next trendy (and supposedly beneficial) thing on the agenda. Yet another event to track in your weekly obligations.

Not a single word was said about the origins and function of Awareness (and mindfulness). That living in Awareness is the most natural thing for any animal including the human animal. Nobody observed that people, when living in the wilderness, switch to a state of Awareness in about 6 to 7 days.

In short, nobody connected it back to our deepest instincts and our survival and earth living skills. Instead it is 'that new trendy thing' and you can probably download a bunch of apps to help you train it.

This whole approach negated everything they supposedly wanted to achieve. It is like making a documentary on how healthy it is to exercise between hamburgers.

It shows a willingness to act but at the same time a lack of understanding and an inability to leave the cultural pressure that caused the problems in the first place!

As you all know I am a tracker. Tracking is a human animal instinct and capability. It requires full control over the internal dialog. I define tracking as becoming mindful of connected things in your Awareness. We all have this capacity. It is embedded in our very existence. Therefor mindfulness and Awareness are central and mandatory concepts in all my courses.

In fact, all the earth living skills are connected with tracking and Awareness. In our current culture we have systematically ignored this connection. The result is that everything becomes based in science, schedules and physical skills: The physical survivalists that try to win the battle against Nature each and every day. But also the host of people who live their lives in habit and fear of judgement, making sure that every tomorrow looks exactly as all the yesterdays by hopping over today.

What annoyed me is not that the creators of the documentary apparently were not able to grasp the real intent of the subject matter but that they propagate this on to their viewers. They enact the culture that causes the problem even when the subject matter is about changing that!

Man we are really in a downward spiral here.

I do not blame all the experts that were on the show. I know from experience that it is extremely hard to get through to people on this matter. Some people are so hard wired into the rat race, so trusting of its promises and so sensitive to judgements of their peers that they simply can not let go.

Letting go,  however, is the key!

You need to let go of time, burdens, judgement, analysis, naming, preconceptions and trivia. Once you let go you can discover 'today' and the choices it gives you, living in full Awareness and a state of intuitive questioning. You will subconsciously start to unravel the concentric rings (ripples of cause and effect) around you. In other words you will start to track the solutions to the challenges that face you; you will enable the tracker that was dormant in you all this time!

My courses are in the context of earth living and tracking. Clearly I chose the wrong context because I think I could make an easier living by lecturing to business managers :-) But make no mistake about it: It is that context of earth living and tracking, our humble origins, that is the fundamental of all we still are today, manager or not.

Mindfulness is just an activity, a technique and one of many you need to master and practice to become Aware. But please please please, let it not become the new TODO in your agenda!

Because, by its very nature, you can not embed it into your 'normal' life. Life should be embedded in Awareness!




Live Deliberately (and I mean it! :-))

Peter Friebel

Total Perspective

Those of you familiar with the works of Douglas Adams will certainly recognize the following:

"a tiny little mark, a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot, which says, "You are here.""

It was part of a description of a torture device called the Total Perspective Vortex. The machine worked by letting you, for a short time, see yourself in relation to the infinity of the entire Universe. This perspective would annihilate the soul of any man.

Interestingly, the protagonist Zaphod walked out of the machine even more convinced about his total awesomeness than before. Why? Because the Universe he was in was artificial and created only for him. That made him the most important thing in it.

I can not help to recognize the bane of modern man in this: his relatively recently contracted inability to connect with Nature.

When I write 'Nature' (capitalized) I mean the totality of existence. Not only the Earth with all its life and environments but all of the Universe and even Multiverse. The force that drives change. That creates structure in chaos and at the same time creates chaos from structure. The set of all possibilities.

When people sit on top of a mountain or in some other awesome natural environment or when they look up in the night sky at all the stars, they often remark that it makes them feel small and insignificant. It is their ego-selves speaking.

When you separate your self from all of Nature you are very right in perceiving that what you separated is insignificant. The ego-self does more than that: it also classifies all the rest as the enemy. The result is a totally skewed perspective and experience of existence.

As I wrote earlier, the development of the ego-self is critically important for our individual survival but it is a slowly killing decease if it is elevated into a culture.

It is this culture that causes us to believe that all life experience is triggered by external stimuli. Look around you! People do virtually everything in their power to acquire all the paraphernalia needed to create these stimuli. We need constant entertainment, praise, status, excitement and recognition.

Not surprisingly we need money to acquire those things and our ethics falter in this pursuit. We have narrowed our ethics and morals to the human-centered and in a numbed daze we hunt the rare highs of actualization in the cage of our modern society. In the process we create the economy that drives the lives of those very very few that are best in this form of self actualization and separation.

Read the above a few times and you will see I could have just as easily talked about heroine addicts and their dealers!

I am very happy that I have always been interested in the natural world and that with a bit of age and a few life lessons I have managed to kick the habit.

Tracking, Awareness and all the other earth living skills and, last but not least, Nature itself, have helped me enormously in freeing myself from this destructive and addictive culture.

Bushcraft for me is Earth living and requires no stuff. Unfortunately, and this is the reason I no longer use the term bushcraft, the addictive culture has permeated even the bushcraft community. Bushcraft is now very much about all the stuff you need and the desire for self actualization and a hint of escapism.

Not for me. For me it meant rediscovering that life experience is visceral! That our reality is not defined by separation and external stimuli but is the projection of our unity and connection with Nature.

And now we can get back to the Total Perspective Vortex:

For me total perspective is not that we created a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot saying, "You are here."

For me total perspective is that the microscopic dot on a microscopic dot is the result of all of Nature working together to allow that dot to exist. Without everything around it, the dot could not be there and without the dot the rest could not be there too! More importantly, you and all of Nature feel this force of existence from within! You don't need to constantly stimulate your nervous system to experience life. It will stimulate your spirit from within, sourced from all that is.

And on the dot it says: "You made this dot by being it and everything around it!"

The Pale Blue Dot photograph taken by Voyager I. Probably the most amazing picture humanity has ever taken. One hell of a selfie!