| Reflections
on the Worth of Lifespring - Page 3
Accomplishment
includes producing results and completing tasks, but is really
a much larger opening. Accomplishment involves unlocking possibilities
and then building upon the discoveries you make. You are actually
a different person after accomplishment.
A prerequisite
of effectiveness and accomplishment is that your principles
and concerns show up in your projects. Only then do you have
the commitment to persevere in the face of breakdowns or interruptions.
In fact, the only time you show up as your commitment is when
you are challenged by breakdown.
We at Lifespring
see ourselves facing a new charge: to provide an opening for
people to engage their principles and to achieve new levels
of effectiveness and accomplishment.
Fundamental
to Lifespring's effectiveness is our commitment to the power
of inquiry versus the weight of answers. Answers or positions
can become roadblocks to progress, while rigorous questioning
is a process of opening.
"The
stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything.
When Don Quixote went out into the world, that world turned
into a mystery before his eyes . . . The novelist teaches
the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is
wisdom and tolerance in that attitude . . . all over the world
people nowadays prefer to judge rather than to understand,
to answer rather than ask so that the voice of the novel can
hardly be heard over the noisy foolishness of human certainties."
-
Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Questions create
an opportunity for motion, for evolution. In our dynamic world-society,
recognition of the significance of inquiry is a powerful tool
in our investigation of the mystery of being human. Inquiry
in the realm of the human being may be compared to the story
told by Francis Bacon in The Advancement of Learning
in which a man told his sons he had left them gold buried
somewhere in his vineyard:. . . "They, by digging, found
no gold, but by turning up the mold about the roots of the
vines, procured a plentiful vintage. So the search and endeavors
to make gold have brought many useful inventions and instructive
experiments to light." The conversation that has you
engaged in questions is one which allows for possibility and
inspiration.
I have personally
undertaken a rigorous philosophical inquiry with particular
emphasis on Lifespring's purpose and methods. I have been
grappling with such questions as "What is a human being?"
"What is possibility?" "What is language?"
"How can we be in the world with an authenticity that
allows for effectiveness and possibility?" As my search
deepens, answers seem to grow ever shallower. To paraphrase
Ludwig Wittgenstein on the subject of propositions: they are
nonsensical, useful only as steps to climb beyond; we must,
so to speak, throw away the ladder after we have climbed.
All of this
contemplation, however, is useless unless it generates effective
action.
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