Light and learning

"For the unlearned, old age is winter; for the learned it is the season of the harvest.” ~ the Talmud

Every morning and evening as I head to and from work here at Royal Roads, the daylight continues to wane. Scowling grey skies and puddles of wet are the landscape now. Teasing bouts of sunshine and illuminated clouds of boundless white brink overhead only to remember their place and quickly tuck themselves back into the wings of autumn's final act.

Next week the light returns and winter begins. It's an odd paradox in our Gregorian calendar. We somehow think of winter solstice as an end to the bleakness of winter as the days slowly grow under the sun's reign, yet it is a heralding to winter's arrival and its place in our lives.

Moving from California to Canada nearly five years ago, I have come to love the deep abiding embrace of winter's silent gifts. Circadian rhythm awakened in me like vestiges of an ancient dance my body longed to remember. Winter offers its gentle permission for me to slow down at work, at home, and in all of life. In these coming weeks the calls of rest and inward turning will beckon from books and friends in warm cafes, from longer periods of meditation and tiny white lights cascading over the fireplace. It's a time for reflection and learning, of a harvest within us painting the light of all we are onto the brilliant canvas of the world.

We hope you'll spend this winter time with those dear to you and with yourself, awakening to the gifts unfolding inside and celebrating the light, wherever you may find it.

Join us in 2013 for classes that call to your creativity, your leadership, and our connection to each other.
 
Happy holidays from all of us in Continuing Studies.

Tess Wixted
Program Associate

Visit us at cstudies.royalroads.ca.

Deep listening

This week I finished Difficult Conversations, my first Continuing Studies course of the season. It was a two-day class that asked us to bring our full authenticity and awareness to a room of strangers and share the vulnerability and fears that arise when we wish to connect with another, but don't have the means to cross the abyss of conflict and separation.

One of the fascinating pieces of information our facilitator, Paul Mohapel, PhD, shared with us was that we only use about 35% of our brain to hear and understand words in conversation. The remaining 65% is up for grabs. Most often we use it to layer judgements on the other person in what they are saying, wearing, how they took our parking space last month. We draft grocery lists or think about what we'll have for lunch or carefully plan how we are going to respond to what they just said, holding onto the thread of our thought lest we forget and don't get to speak our precious words. In the meantime we have stopped listening and have indentured ourselves to that other side of the abyss, still not fully connecting, not fully engaging in this most human of interactions.

Another possibility ripe for exploration is to use that 65% for listening with our full being, opening every cell and neural pathway to be present, to wonder what the speaker is feeling, what judgments they may be facing, how we may be curious to find out more about them and the gift of words they are sharing with us.

Listening is the bridge to our interconnection. It is the skill we need the most yet sadly is the one least likely to be honoured and practiced. It's a strange irony that education offers us tools in the exact opposite order in which we must use them to communicate effectively with each other. In school we are first taught how to read, then how to write, how to speak in front of others, but we are never taught how to listen. The written word is but a blink on the timeline of human presence on this planet, yet it has taken on a superior veneer at the expense of the ancient skill of listening in a profound and life affirming way.

Poet, author and Continuing Studies facilitator, Mark Nepo's new book, Seven Thousand Ways to Listen, offers us a path to listening not just to other people, but to our nature, our calling, our interdependence with all. It is about the work of being, the work of being human, and the work of love.

To learn more about deep communion and the art of listening, join us this month and several times next year for Non-Violent Communication: The Language of Respect and next July for another offering of Difficult Conversations.

Tess Wixted
Continuing Studies Associate

Visit us at cstudies.royalroads.ca.

Image credit: Microsoft Images

Our 2012/2013 season of lifelong learning begins

"Not all those who wander are lost." – J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring 

As we roam, our imaginations take the cue. Wandering, getting lost on purpose, allows us to learn by going. A practice of walking is “realization in action”, a moving meditation in the here and now that helps widen our focus by moving our intelligence from the hegemony of the head into the whole body, expanding into and more easily connecting with, the world.

Rhythmic movement transfers energy from left logic to right artist brain where inspiration arrives in the discovery of new perspectives as we tap into inner resources, and saturate the senses in the wisdom of the natural world. Henry David Thoreau (1986 in Glick) viewed it as genius and held “the art of walking” in a nearly spiritual capacity where insight followed sight. He wrote that in the Middle Ages, one who walked in a pilgrimage to the Holy Land was called a ‘Saint of the Earth’, Sainte Terre or ‘saunter-er’. Today, those who wander are not usually noted for this particular genius despite the fact that every significant religious leader seriously wandered (often for years) until each made a world-shifting return!

When we literally take our ideas out for a walk, letting the primacy of experience flow in and through us, paying attention to the beauty of the small and the ordinary, we begin to recognize the world as ensouled where everything has a life of its own. This tends to in/form and grow our compassion. Many of our indigenous friends already know this. Know to listen to light, to heed the intuition of the river, attune to the voice of the wind, converse with the invisibles and the ancestors, respect mountain patience and honour the wisdom of the stars. Know that we must let the world shape us rather than the other way around.

Infamous itinerants, like cultural ecologist, David Abram and poet/rover, David Whyte with his new work, Pilgrim, will be here this year to re-mind us. And there will be other seasoned wanderers - courageous ones who dare to the unpredictable frontier of their lives bringing curiosity and joyful ability to share what they have been called to along the way.

This calendar is filled with hospitable ways to let go of always being wise and right, to let our animal bodies “love what they love”, and to trust in each other because so much is at stake now. And if we fail to create the necessary 'psychic elbow room' required for deep listening, self-reflexive practices and the open spaces required for vision and reciprocal relationships that invite conscious awareness, change and the strengthening of what our venerable teacher, Joanna Macy calls our “moral imagination”, then we may miss our chance for life…sustaining. Life. Changing.

Those who dare to go forth now, to bring their own uniqueness and gladness may in fact be the ones to inherit the earth as they will be so beautifully equipped to let their imaginations wander widely (and wildly) enough to dream into the impossible. Let these lifelong learning opportunities generously feed and nourish your soul, provide the companionship, support and skills along the way necessary for you to see with new eyes that open to wonder as you wander forth with confidence and compassion.

We’ll meet you there!

                        "Are you coming?  Good -
                         now it is time"             ~ W. Stafford

Hilary Leighton, M.Ed., Director
Continuing Studies

Visit us at cstudies.royalroads.ca

Deep listening

Our surprise at the beauty and fragility of life is part of one chorus of awe. ~ Mark Nepo

Yesterday was convocation day here at Royal Roads. Hundreds of learners savoured the delicious refrains of graduation and completion of their long sought degrees. A smile slipped through my body in seeing the graduates in oh so proper cap and gown gliding like skipping stones through the rivers of hallways with proud families and friends watching the sparks of their lightened wakes. What they have done in their studies has laid a path of grit and mortar, bricks and hopes for an intrepid future. With tomorrow's dawn will be the next challenge, the next dream, the next moment of awe whose breath will whisper a prayer to become all that they truly are.

In each whisper is a chance for all of us to listen all the more carefully to what calls to us and asks us to step more firmly into our intrepid lives. With each step we come upon the risk to be fully authentic. And taking that risk, we are faced with the unquenchable need to stand by our core in order to live life fully. If we get this far, we are returned, quite humbly, to the simple fate of being here. Through each step, each fall, each reclaiming of our direction, our devotion to deep listening remains the simple and sacred work of being here. As Mark Nepo, poet, philosopher and writer says, "…there are no wrong turns, only unexpected paths.”

Join Mark Nepo and storyteller, Margo McLoughlin, September 21-23, 2012 at Royal Roads for their course, Seven Thousand Ways to Listen: The Work of Reverence, based on Nepo's latest book by the same name.


Where do you find awe? What cleaves you open for the next chapter of your life, this singular day, this precious moment? To re-imagine Nepo's words, let the water of your heart fill a deeper glass that only you can call your authentic self.

Tess Wixted
Continuing Studies Associate

Visit us at cstudies.royalroads.ca.

Ezio Manzini in Conversation with Robert Bateman

Being a designer means being an optimist: given the problems, all the problems even the most difficult, all we can do is to presume there is a possibility of solving them, not because we cannot see the difficulties (designers must also be realists), but because we have no alternative. ~ Ezio Manzini

Join celebrated Canadian artist and naturalist, Robert Bateman in conversation with visiting scholar and Leading Sustainable Design Thinker, Ezio Manzini, for a brownbag lunchtime discussion on how Art and Design are helping people around the world respond to the complex challenges of our times.

Date: Thursday, April 5, 2012
Time: 12pm - 1pm
Location: Royal Roads University, Learning and Innovation Centre - 4th floor

Click here to register or for more information.

Tess Wixted
Program Associate

Visit us at http://www.royalroads.ca/continuing-studies.

Wisdom and the Open Window: Seniors and Lifelong Learning

"In times of change, ‘learners’ inherit the Earth, while ‘knowers’ find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists."  ~ Eric Hoffer

So often when we reach the age where wisdom is supposed to sing us magically to the end of our days, we find instead, the dull monotonous clang of knowing.  Knowing everything. Knowing it all. Knowing there’s nothing else to do or to learn. Friends and family stop asking questions of us because they’ve heard the same answer time and again. The fact is, we’re tired of the same answers too. We wait for luminous insight to inhabit our bodies and we wait and we wait.

Knowing is like a fortress where the mortar and bricks concretize life. Knowing is a closed door; learning is an open window. Lifelong learning asks us to seek the larger parts of ourselves around every corner, invites us into the largest conversations with the world. It can be following a yearning that has been with us all our lives or discovering a sprouting seed in our aging garden that we never knew existed and begs to be tended.

Learning can take the form of meditation, photography, exploring native culture, tending bees, or making friends with your computer. And you won’t find “for seniors only” programming within our calendar.  We have come to understand the richness of what can happen when all generations share and learn together. Learning is what brings us alive and asks us to open to more and more of life’s treasures. Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, “Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.” Growing beyond the bounds of our comfort zone means stepping into the light of the unknown, perhaps walking alongside our fears or biases, and always brings us closer to a space of wide open wonder and possibility. It is here, in this space, that wisdom’s whisper sometimes is heard. It’s waiting for all of us. We just need to step to the window and listen.

Tess Wixted

Program Associate

Join us at http://www.royalroads.ca/continuing-studies/

What dreams may come

Hurrying to catch my bus to work last week, my eyes followed the course of hard, cold streets and sidewalks as my thoughts ticked off the day's endless list of to-dos and to-wants. I happened to glance up long enough to see the waxing light of day stretch its pastel arms into the eastern sky. For the slightest of moments the pink dawn appeared to be a dream of cherry blossoms coloring the bare tree branches along the street. I paused and smiled at the portend of spring, crinkled and fresh like crepe paper tucked behind the outline of sleeping bark and hopeful buds.

Dreams come in all forms. The light is returning, bringing with it glimpses of dreams yet unexamined and those fully awakened. Joanna Macy, Buddhist scholar, writer, and spiritual activist, has been living the dream of mindful, purposeful work for most of her life. Her pioneering guidance in The Work That Reconnects and The Great Turning, our shift as a culture from an industrial growth society to a life-sustaining civilization, has inspired and opened countless numbers of people to the deep possibilities that lie sleeping within them.

In her latest newsletter, Joanna writes:

"The other night at dinner, as we were sharing news and views, my Creation theologian friend Matt Fox said, 'Courage is the first sign of the Spirit. It is the root of all the other virtues.'

I loved his saying that. It caused me to think how courage is the essential ingredient of truth-speaking, how it sparks our fervor and our self-respect, how it lets us discover new strengths, new allies. And I got to reflecting on how lucky I am that the work I do acquaints me with so many courageous people."

Yesterday on my same route to work I noticed the first cherry blossoms opening in the trees. The light of the pale blushed beauty of the petals and the dark strength of the gnarled gray bark set their opposites in beautiful alignment. Our courage lies in seeing the light and the dark in union and stepping into our truth with fervor and respect.

What do you see when you look to the sky?

Join Joanna Macy this summer for nine days of intensive training in The Work That Reconnects. Click here for more information.

Tess Wixted
Continuing Studies Associate

Visit us at http://www.royalroads.ca/continuing-studies

Happiness and education are connected...

Educator and philosopher, Nel Noddings (2003) wrote “Happiness and education are, properly intimately connected.”  (p.1). Nel has contributed significantly to educational theory with her philosophy of the ethics of care and wellbeing and what we have come to understand that she means by this line of thinking is that those who experience satisfaction in their lives synonymously seem to be those who continue to develop themselves, and in turn contribute positively to their societies. And while “happiness” in this context refers to a sense of hope about the future and current feelings of wellbeing,  educational experiences that foster personal growth and expanded awareness can do much to support this. 

Here we are just a few days past January – the month named for the Greek God Janus who looked both into the future and the past as the double-faced force of new beginnings. What better time to reflect on where we have come from and what lies ahead and ask ourselves how happiness and education together might shape what is arriving in 2012?  Happily, the university supports continued learning and with that invitation comes a responsibility for us all to keep learning, keep developing, keep contributing.  This is a fortuitous time to   glimpse a fresh perspective on human resources, tell our story and connect with others on social media, expand your emotional intelligence, learn to facilitate difficult conversations, develop your leadership, manage your energy, learn about systems thinking and have the courage to change while building teams that trust. So much to learn!  

Such a gift is waiting for us all … and perhaps a way to happiness too as we learn together. 

Hilary Leighton, M.Ed.
Director, Continuing Studies

Snow day!

With the Royal Roads University campus closed because of mounds of fresh glistening snow and slip-sliding skids of black ice, I’ve been womaning my emails and phone calls from the warmth of home and hearth. Well, no hearth per se; make that a most reliable radiator.

Fewer cars on the road outside my window, fewer voices passing by. The silence is exhilarating and feels almost like a precipice as I lean into its core of expectant wonder. It’s in the peace of days like this that I most hear my heart’s longings. It’s a call to dream, to manifest, to turn inward and somehow fan the flames of alchemy, changing forever the metal of longing into the gold of knowing.

Winter calls for us to go inward and our upcoming courses offer a wonderful bridge to examine your own inner longings.

The Gift of Dreaming: Transforming the Mundane into the Sacred begins Sunday, January 29

Dreams are a valuable and powerful tool. They can be a magical and even mystical experience. When we have a vital, authentic relationship with our dreams, we become more of who we are meant to be. Life takes on a richer sense of meaning as we honour the mystery of our own journey.  Join Dr. Corrinne Allyson for this deep and powerful exploration of your relationship with your dreams.

Finding the Poem in Your Heart's Garden begins Saturday, February 4

Everyone, no matter what their skill level, can learn to write a poem, and you will leave with at least five poems to plant into your life and into the lives of others. Wendy Morton, author of five poetry books and a memoir, will guide you through the process where you'll learn what makes a poem, how you can pick a poem out of your experience, how you can write poems for others and how to become a poet or be a better one.

Meditating to Heal the Heart begins Saturday, February 4
Unconditional friendliness toward oneself is the foundation of all the transformation that arises on the human journey. Neil McKinlay is a meditation instructor and personal coach who will guide you through the various practices that can heal your relationship with yourself. Drawing from the Meditating with the Body® curriculum of Dr. Reginald Ray, you will explore both the body and heart in this deep and insightful program.

Whether snow or sun visited you today, wishing you a night of peaceful dreams.

Tess Wixted
Continuing Studies Program Associate

Visit our website at http://www.royalroads.ca/continuing-studies.

New beginnings everywhere

Sometimes I wonder how much goodness can caress one person in their life? Me for example. I have one of the best jobs in the world. An overstatement? Well, not to me. Every day I look forward to coming to work and help to bring people like Jane Goodall, David Whyte, Robert Bateman and Joanna Macy to people like you. I started at Royal Roads in the Continuing Studies department this past October and dove into the deep underspine of a cresting wave of over 300 courses. Lots of work met me the moment I sat down and just now, in the quiet interlude of winter’s arrival, I can breathe in the work lying ahead in the exhale of a new year.

Coming to Royal Roads has been part and parcel to stepping into a deep abiding of the call to service within me. When the opportunity came to work here I leapt at the chance. Like I said, where else do you get to work with such amazing facilitators, look out at the ocean, walk magnificent gardens and have lunch with peacocks. Wow.

It’s traditional to look back at the year that has passed and examine the path with eyes now far down the road of time. This was my first year in Victoria having moved last December from wee Cortes Island, BC, my home for nearly three years. I smile at the realization of how rich and welcoming Victoria can be to a new arrival. Friends grow into communities, discoveries of secret beaches, favoured farmers’ markets and the riot of azure blue spring camas exalting from Beacon Hill. Coffee houses and music festivals, dragon boat races and busking festivals. Victoria is my home and every day I treasure its embrace of me and my life.

I’m looking forward to bringing you bits of information and inspiration from the warmest spot in Canada. I hope you’ll join me on the journey.

One’s destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things ~ Henry Miller

Tess Wixted

Continuing Studies Associate

http://www.royalroads.ca/continuing-studies