Month: October 2017

The 2017 Edinburgh College U Lab Hub has been exploring different practices and approaches to engaging with the current U Lab course  https://www.edx.org/course/u-lab-leading-emerging-future-mitx-15-671-1x-0

This has included some reflections on presencing and absencing inspired by some John O’Donohue blessings http://ianwight.ca/presence-and-absence-john-odonohue/  and experiments with ‘a pause practice’  http://ianwight.ca/a-pause-practice-reflect-refresh-reset/  to better presence our attentions and intentions, and their relationship.

This practice Enlivened Writing – Who am I? What is my work? around ‘enlivened writing’ is designed to facilitate a deeper inquiry into two particular, foundational, course questions: Who am I? and What is my work? It also includes options to ‘partner’ with John O’Donohue, in a complementary inner dialogue, around more of his blessings – For the Unknown Self, For Work, and For the Senses.

Some inspiration from John O’Donohue, to resource the U Lab Edinburgh College Learning Hub, October 24th, 2017, which also integrated ‘a pause practice’ http://ianwight.ca/a-pause-practice-reflect-refresh-reset/

Two of his ‘blessings’ from his book, To Bless the Space Between Us, Doubleday, 2008: For Presence and For Absence

[Awakening to the mystery of being here…] 

For Presence ~ John O’Donohue

Awaken to the mystery of being here

and enter the quiet immensity of your own presence.

Have joy and peace in the temple of your senses.

Receive encouragement when new frontiers beckon.

Respond to the call of your gift and the courage to follow its path.

Let the flame of anger free you of all falsity.

May warmth of heart keep your presence aflame.

May anxiety never linger about you.

May your outer dignity mirror an inner dignity of soul.

Take time to celebrate the quiet miracles that seek no attention.

Be consoled in the secret symmetry of your soul.

May you experience each day as a sacred gift woven around the heart of wonder.

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Attending to Our Intending: The Potential in Pause

Guided Reflection ~ The Pause that Refreshes

A Pause Practice – Reflect, Refresh, Reset

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[Presencing the absencing….]

For Absence ~ John O’Donohue

May you know that absence is alive with hidden presence,

that nothing is ever lost or forgotten.

May the absences in your life grow full of eternal echo.

May you sense around you the secret Elsewhere

Where the presences that have left you dwell.

May you be generous in your embrace of loss.

May the sore well of grief turn into a seamless flow of presence.

May your compassion reach out to the ones we never hear from.

May you have the courage to speak for the excluded ones.

May you become the gracious and passionate subject of your own life.

May you not disrespect your mystery through brittle words or false belonging.

May you be embraced by That in which dawn and twilight are one.

May your longing inhabit its dreams within the Great Belonging.

A Pause Practice: Reflect, Refresh, Reset – A peek in your mirror.

[Give yourself a break – for a few minutes… when you notice the need…]

1. Thinking back, over the last little while (the last hour or so, the last day or so, the last few days or so… take your pick – but make a clear pick and stick to it):

… what has had your attention?

[What have you given your attention to? What have you invested yourself in?]

2. Reflecting on this a little deeper, 

… what has been your intention behind that attention?

[What has been underlying the attention? What has been underlying that ‘underlying’?]

3. Looking forward from this pause (but from within ‘the now’…)

… what is now your intention, your underlying intention?

4. How do you plan on attending to that intention?

[in particular… what will you do that’s new? What is your ‘will’? What do you openly will?]

5. In the next little while – specifically,

… what do you now plan on giving your attention to?

[What do you intend to consciously invest yourself in?… in the next hour, the next day, the next week? …. whatever initial reference period selected]

6. What possibility do you sense you have just created… in your pause? 

[What future will you emerge? … a new commissioning of your self/Self]

[Notes by Ian Wight, May 7, 2014; revised October 24, 2017]