Dying to be human
To our First Nations People
whose unceded land we live, love, work and die upon,
may we tell the truth at how we arrived and came to settle upon this great land.
We acknowledge all of their ancestors and elders -
past, present and emerging.
info.dtbh@icloud.com
Dying to be human
To our First Nations People
whose unceded land we live, love, work and die upon,
may we tell the truth at how we arrived and came to settle upon this great land.
We acknowledge all of their ancestors and elders -
past, present and emerging.
info.dtbh@icloud.com
What does it mean to be human?
Let's open the conversation
Sometimes you have to step out of this century and into a place that asks for nothing else but to be human.
Perhaps it’s the only qualification worth owning in a time of frenzied mania characterised by never being enough, where you're only as good as your last achievement or posted-selfie. What about the low hum anxiety beneath your conflicted exterior telling you, that it need not be this way. Your wise soulful intelligence, a known voice, springs from revelations buried deep and pleas, “Has it always been this way?
Let's work Together
What has the promise been so far?
A down to earth human approach to relating
and connection that asks for
sincere and radical attention to what matters
Let's work Together
What has the promise been so far?
A down to earth human approach to relating
and connection that asks for
sincere and radical attention to what matters
Somewhere in the world pundits are making a killing on the ASX or Wall Street. This world promises growing productivity, less distraction and being more centred but is it helping manifest true success?
The revolution of mindfulness training, the new gospel, is urging many exhausted seekers to react to volatile markets and their lives with increased calm. What's the result? More patience and increased awareness leading to greater efficiency at making money and possessing more things?
Despite the apparent success, a well kept secret percolates. An unease. A dis-ease. A rupture beneath the one time loveliness of our facade begins to show. Does our gluttonous drive for results ever find a real home?
Like many, you’ve probably been snared by the trap of insatiable striving. (I had been) through the quest for transcendence, self-improvement, transformation and an addiction to the light.
A light so blinding it passes for radical self-centred devotion. The over the top positivity that is extolling the world is truly your oyster in an obsessive age of paralysing, individual and ritualised self-belief. The voracious wellness machine steadily eats at your insecurities, as you wait for the world to conspire with your plans. The repeat button plays and success is the only option. How did we become like this?
“We live in a kind of dark age, craftily lit with synthetic light so that no one can tell how dark it has really gotten. But our exiled spirits can tell. Deep in our bones resides an ancient singing couple who just won’t give up making their beautiful, wild noise. The world won’t end if we can find them.”
In a world obsessed with the glow of yoga and all you can drink smoothies, a sprouted self-styled version of an all you can eat mindfulness has arrived. It's a brand like many blindsided by it's own expansion. Armoured and pumped, its self-assured certainty is only a breath away from reframing the normalization of heartless power, wealth, the authoritarianism and distortion of the truth.
We live in dangerous times.
The culture of crushing greed and self-cherishing beguiling
narcissism is revered and even celebrated to lofty heights.
The vulnerable need not apply.
Far more serious is that if you’re sad, unwell, lonely and exhausted, or living under a bridge, this socio-economical, cultural and political landscape alienates, rejects and disposes you.
It’s you.
So how has the promise been so far?
“The devotion to personal contentment is the depression machine, it generates the depression. It makes the depression inevitable which of course obliges you to work harder to be happy and there we are. But how does it do that? Because it whispers to you that happiness should be the discernible consequence of you winning, of you trying hard, of your best intent being in the forefront of all your design. And a lot of people in the world, ancestrally, knew long ago that being content or that sense of well-being, that’s a consequence of your willingness to help the world live. That your happiness is actually a corollary—let me change happiness—that your health is a corollary of the health of everything around you.”
What if there's nothing wrong with you?
Proceed As If You Are Needed In The World
info.dtbh@icloud.com
What if there's nothing wrong with you?
Proceed As If You Are Needed In The World
info.dtbh@icloud.com
In the wake of advertising, social media and its filters, where celebrity adoration, comparison and entitled self-interest go unchecked, can you ever truly measure up? What about the cyclical mantra professing that there’s always something wrong with you? Chanting that until you meet every need you’ll never amount to anything. Why is this the only story we’re most interested in telling? There's little escape from the pressure to be seen, to be relevant, current and heard. We live in a world where our cultural institutions have been effective at building an extremely one-dimensional way of being in this world. Their project has focused on building the individual at the expense of community, connectedness and the planet.
The foundation from where you're perched resembles an ever needy proposition. A shaky one. How can the planet sustain everyone’s needs?
Canadian elder, Stephen Jenkinson asks:
What if there’s nothing wrong with you?
Instead of being needy…what if you are needed?
Imagine proceeding in the world as if you are needed?
Someone once said – Instead of always taking, consuming and feeling entitled. What if you fed and nourished what has been feeding you all along? That in you, which is willing to feed the larger life. Tell stories about how you are carrying all the gifts that have been given to you, by all that has fed you.
“Your gifts are not about YOU
Leadership is not about YOU
Your purpose is not about YOU
A life of significance is about SERVING those who need your gifts, your leadership, your purpose.”