“Thought of the Week” for December 14, 1998 Ideas can serve us—but can also put us to sleep or take our place Ideas can easily float by, cover up, or even substitute for reality….Ideas are as dangerous as techniques as substitutes for real experience [because] they tempt us with their clarity and clearcutness. Thus we […]
Thought of the month: May 2009 Meaning is dependent on context From Ken Wilber, Integral Psychology: Not only is meaning in many important ways dependent upon the context in which it finds itself, these contexts are in principle endless or boundless. Thus there is no way finally to master and control meaning once and for […]
The Hero’s Journey Thought for the Month: February 2010 Reflection: Making meaning of our journeys By Reg Harris Copyright © 2010 by Reg Harris. All rights reserved. Apart from properly cited quotes and short excerpts, no part of this article can be copied or used in any form without written permission from the author. In […]
“Thought of the Week” for March 2, 1999 SPEED IS THE YARDSTICK BY WHICH THE CRISIS IS EXPRESSED “…the two worlds of the traditional and the industrial are diametrically opposed. The indigenous world, in trying to emulate Nature, espouses a walk with life, a slow, quiet day-to-day kind of existence. The modern world, on the […]
“Thought of the Week” for December 28, 1998 First you must understand yourself When you try to understand everything, you will understand nothing. It is best to understand yourself, and then you will understand everything. Shunryu Suzuki Comment: To know your journey is to know yourself by Reg Harris Copyright © 1998 by Reg Harris. […]
“Thought of the Week” for August 23, 1999 THE SACRED POWER OF METAPHOR TWISTED TO MANIPULATION AND ENTRAPMENT “Thought of the Week” for July 5, 2004 …Quoting Manfred Lurker, “The meaning of the symbol does not lie in the symbol itself but points to something else outside. According to Goethe, true symbolism is found wherever […]
How literature becomes a personal journey ELABORATION IS A KEY FACTOR IN READING ENGAGEMENT “Thought of the Week” for July 5, 2004 In You Gotta Be the Book, Jeffrey Wilhelm wrote about his own study of reluctant readers. …elaboration becomes a key indicator, and in fact a prerequisite, of the link between participating in a […]
Journey are never separate events THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE IS A SINGLE UNDIVIDED WHOLE “Thought of the Week” for August 17, 1998 Wholeness in quantum physics even includes the experimental apparatus by which measurements are made. Beyond this, it includes the entire context of the experiment: the laboratory, the experimenters themselves, and so on. Quantum physicist […]
by Reg Harris Copyright © 2001 by Reg Harris. All rights reserved. Updated: 4 October 2008. This article may not be copied in whole or in part without my expressed written permission. Contact me for permission. Please respect my copyright. I have been teaching the hero’s journey pattern as a foundation to study literature and […]
Our journeys often originate within WHY WE GET THE JOURNEYS WE NEED “Thought of the Week” for July 8, 2002 Gestalt theory also tells us how ultimately we formulate our conceptions. “We do not look at the world as though our eyes were the lenses of a photographic camera. We select objects according to our […]
Our culture’s folk psychology influences our journeys OUR FOLK PSYCHOLOGY: HOW THINGS ARE AND HOW THINGS SHOULD BE “Thought of the Week” for May 21, 2004 All cultures have as one of their most powerful constitutive instruments a folk psychology, a set of more or less connected, more or less normative descriptions about how human […]
by Reg Harris Copyright © 2005 by Reg Harris. All rights reserved. Revised October 7, 2007. A personal mythology is the story we tell ourselves about ourselves. It influences how we view and interpret our experiences, and it filters the experiences that will enter our consciousness by selecting those events that relate to our myth. […]
The constitutive nature of metaphor in everyday life Much of what we think and do is a function of metaphor “Thought of the Week” for January 1, 2007 Metaphor is for most people a device of the poetic imagination and the rhetorical flourish—a matter of extraordinary rather than ordinary language. Moreover, metaphor is typically viewed […]
Yin and Yang
by Reg Harris Copyright 1999 © by Reg Harris. All rights reserved. Updated: 4 October 2007. This article may not be copied in whole or in part without my expressed written permission. Contact me for permission. Please respect my copyright. Polar opposites express cosmic harmony Every year I have at least one student who wears […]