'Strategy' Articles
For anything to be a “religion” it has to offer not just insights into life and reality in general, it has to offer a strategy for living. A plan that allows communities to work together and deal with this rather intimidating world. Your “religion” is synonymous with your habitual action. You hear people say “I am not religious”. Yet most people who say that hold down a job. Most people who declare they are not religious are very much creatures of habit, but are these habits really chosen by the person?
A strategy is a plan to deal with elements not of your making. It’s a big universe. Strategy is writing your own story, realizing the elements of story, the reality of story, and “Writing what you know.”
“All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.” Sun Tzu (Chinese General and Author, b.500 BC)
“Study strategy over the years and achieve the spirit of the warrior. Today is victory over yourself of yesterday; tomorrow is your victory over lesser men.” Miyamoto Musashi (Japanese Martial Arts master, one of the world’s greatest swordsmen, 1584-1645)
Strategy For Living
The topic of strategy might seem confusing. You might ask yourself, “What does strategy have to do with spirituality?” This would reflect the common thinking on the general class of topics we lump together as spirituality. We all have intentions, good or bad, wise or unwise. Your daily life is either shaped by your own intentions or reacting to the intentions of others. Very often the later, and every path that exists in this life arises for a reason. People aren’t really capable of random thought. Your “religion” is synonymous with your habitual action. You hear people say “I am not… Seek More
Failing Strategy
Are each of the worlds religions unique in their practices? No, not unique. They are distinct, but not unique. A bit different, but all fall within a set of entirely human behaviours. All are a bit different in their ways, Islam, Christianity. Different forms. Oh, yes. They make a big fuss about forms, but are all ultimately doing the same things. They pray, they chant, they keep ritual observances, they meditate and contemplate the truths that their faith supports. Why so much in common between these practices that reject the validity of each other? How much people like the subtle… Seek More
Firmly In Truth
A southern USA Christian church celebrating Jewish Hava Nagila. It is a joyous inclusiveness moment. So, there are signs as you say. I am given hope by these things, but it can’t just be an experiment. A spirituality fad is going to cost us dearly. People are seeing the gaps, but if they fail to see a way to choose with deliberation, to actively apply wisdom, then they will just sink even deeper into what caused the problem in the first place. Fear. It’s not enough to see that the old views are insufficient. There needs to be a way to… Seek More
Roots Of Human Spirituality
We can now look at the roots of human spirituality. We can look at the spiritual tendency as a whole, and we can choose practices that reflect the whole truth of human existence as well as the truth of the individual. You can look at the spiritual instinct in the interpersonal to better understand the intrapersonal spiritual life. Your spiritual life to best serve your needs can give you a ground for dealing with your relationships. It also needs to give you a sense not only of the strengths of your “family”, but what you can share with them to… Seek More
Yours To Shape
The topic is strategy, and specifically strategy as it relates to spirituality. I will ask you friends, Do you feel strategy has a place in your spiritual lives? Mine has seemed characterized by chaos. Chaos has its advantages. Some of the wisest Sages were known for making the chaos factor primary in their understanding. Your life has as its substance energy. Energy of whatever character you care to apply. Not relevant to this specific topic, but energy is synonymous with tension. We know low energy states only by the lack of any tension or drives. Of the wide world of… Seek More
Plan To Express
If you talk about strategy, that implies rules but not yours? Strategy only implies planning. A strategy is a plan to deal with elements not of your making. Otherwise it would be a blueprint, and does anything about life seem to be confined to a blueprint? The blueprint notion failed. Gods “plan”, as an argument to create community unity, got humanity where? All traditions were strategies that were believed to be at least good approximations of how best to deal with reality as a whole. The elements are not yours, but the planning … Now the planning can be. This… Seek More
Writing Your Own Story
We, each of us, have strategies that apply to our spiritual lives. One or more practices we believe to be meaningful, to have worth, that are backed up by our experience and maybe even these days by science itself. But they are encrusted in “culture”. I am not saying we must reject culture or identity, but are the cultural prejudices in our best interests? The belief that my prayers will be answered and yours won’t, because supposedly I pray to the one true God? What has that done for us? Cultural prejudices are often simply reflections of a striving to… Seek More
