The Known Universe by AMNH is a post by Michael William Roach from: Hero-Myth.com

I’ve previously tried lots of things to entice him into the water from carrying him safely as I paddled in the shallows (the onlookers must have thought I was about to commit murder from the screams) to giant blow-up crocodile floating enticingly just out of reach. And yet holding the space (and the magic combination of Pirates of the Caribbean 3, and a visit to the Bournemouth Aquarium) created the readiness for him to strip down to his underpants and and run happily into the gentle waves.

I’d been tempted to take a book to read, or have my iPod secreted discreetly about my person but I decided to just be present to whatever was going to happen… And was rewarded with aquamarine cloudless skies with gentle breezes, golden warm sunshine and calm cool deep blue seas and a happy laughing 7 year old experiencing the miracle of just being alive (hunting for the Kraken, but only in the shallows).

And I notice the adults around me, reading their books and magazines eating their ice-cream oblivious to the ordinary everyday miracles of their children discovering the world in its beauty, magic and mystery.

Re-discovering the world is a post by Michael William Roach from: Hero-Myth.com

By contrast here’s an article by Stephen Pinker that talks about the fact that we have learnt from our mistakes, that we’re getting less violent, more nobler. See: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/pinker07/pinker07_index.html

Just a suggestion, we can learn from the past, and by putting our attention on what does work allows us to get more of that. 

Oh, and Happy Easter  

Happy Easter and yes the world is getting better is a post by Michael William Roach from: Hero-Myth.com

http://edge.org/q2007/q07_index.html

2007 – What are you optimistic about? is a post by Michael William Roach from: Hero-Myth.com

From: http://news.ncsu.edu/releases/2006/dec/212.html

News Release

Science of Santa Claus: Jolly Old Elf Really Can Deliver Presents in One Night, Says NC State Engineer

Media Contacts:
Dr. Larry Silverberg, 919/515-5665
Mick Kulikowski, News Services, 919/515-3470

Dec. 6, 2006

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Don’t believe in Santa Claus?

If you’re skeptical of Santa’s abilities to deliver presents to millions of homes and children in just one night, North Carolina State University’s Dr. Larry Silverberg, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, can explain the plausible science and engineering principles that could allow the Jolly Old Elf to pull off the magical feat year after year.

With his cherubic smile and twinkling eyes, Santa may appear to be merely a jolly old soul but he and his North Pole elves have a lot going on under the funny-looking hats, Silverberg says. Their advanced knowledge of electromagnetic waves, the space/time continuum, nanotechnology, genetic engineering and computer science easily trumps the know-how of contemporary scientists.

Silverberg says that Santa has a personal pipeline to children’s thoughts – via a listening antenna that combines technologies currently used in cell phones and EKGs – which informs him that Mary in Miami hopes for a surfboard, while Michael from Minneapolis wants a snowboard. A sophisticated signal processing system filters the data, giving Santa clues on who wants what, where children live, and even who’s been bad or good. Later, all this information will be processed in an onboard sleigh guidance system, which will provide Santa with the most efficient delivery route.

Silverberg adds that letters to Santa via snail mail still get the job done, however.

Silverberg is not so naïve as to think that Santa and his reindeer can travel approximately 200 million square miles – making stops in some 80 million homes – in one night. Instead, he posits that Santa uses his knowledge of the space/time continuum to form what Silverberg calls “relativity clouds.”

“Based on his advanced knowledge of the theory of relativity, Santa recognizes that time can be stretched like a rubber band, that space can be squeezed like an orange and that light can be bent,” Silverberg says. “Relativity clouds are controllable domains – rips in time – that allow him months to deliver presents while only a few minutes pass on Earth. The presents are truly delivered in a wink of an eye.”

With a detailed route prepared and his list checked twice through the onboard computer on the technologically advanced sleigh, Santa is ready to deliver presents. His reindeer – genetically bred to fly, balance on rooftops and see well in the dark – don’t actually pull a sleigh loaded down with toys. Instead, each house becomes Santa’s workshop as he utilizes a nano-toymaker to fabricate toys inside the children’s homes. The presents are grown on the spot, as the nano-toymaker creates – atom by atom – toys out of snow and soot, much like DNA can command the growth of organic material like tissues and body parts.

And there’s really no need for Santa to enter the house via chimney, although Silverberg says he enjoys doing that every so often. Rather, the same relativity cloud that allows Santa to deliver presents in what seems like a wink of an eye is also used to “morph” Santa into people’s homes.

Finally, many people wonder how Santa and the reindeer can eat all the food left out for them. Silverberg says they take just a nibble at each house. The remainder is either left in the house or placed in the sleigh’s built-in food dehydrator, where it is preserved for future consumption. It takes a long time to deliver all those presents, after all.

“This is our vision of Santa’s delivery method, given the human, physical and engineering constraints we face today,” Silverberg says. “Children shouldn’t put too much credence in the opinions of those who say it’s not possible to deliver presents all over the world in one night. It is possible, and it’s based on plausible science.”

- kulikowski –

Science of Santa Claus is a post by Michael William Roach from: Hero-Myth.com

Some seasonal viewing for you is a post by Michael William Roach from: Hero-Myth.com

What I do instead is be present to the experience that we have together. I’m interested in him and what he thinks, feels and wants.

This is of course for my own purely selfish reasons, as I get to experience the magic of life from the perspective of a 6 year old.

Do you remember when you were 6 years old and what you thought was possible for you then?

Were you looking forward to Santa delivering his presents?

Were you hoping for cold white snow to flutter it’s flakes down on Christmas eve, to coat the ground with a carpet of pleasure for you to dance through on Christmas morning?

Or are you too busy still standing in line in the Playstation 3 queue thinking that if you just bought the one right thing then everything would be perfect?

All I Want For Christmas Is… is a post by Michael William Roach from: Hero-Myth.com

Here’s Jeff’s post:

It is said that the value of our life is not in what we talked about or even what we did, but in the value of what is left behind when we pass on…

I am deeply saddened to hear of Roye’s passing in a way that would not make sense in any logical, rational way… and that is the point of all of this work isn’t it? To begin to have the life that is real when we get beyond everything we think we know.

I never met Roye Fraser in the flesh but I knew him well, in some ways intimately… I knew him because I know Joseph Riggio and to know Joseph Riggio is to know of Roye Fraser’s life work and since his life work was him, it can also be said that to know Joseph Riggio is to know Roye Fraser… Never was there a student more intent on making this be so, rarely was there a teacher who appreciated it more and could simultaneously care less.

I can count in the thousands, the stories I’ve heard of Joseph’s years studying with Roye (some of them I could retell almost verbatim), studying with him almost every weekend for the better part of five years… In New Jersey, in Connecticut, in New York… Joe met his wife at one of these trainings, Joe found the teacher who would give him the gift that would become the foundation of his life’s work and perhaps most important of all, Joe found the Mentor who would help guide him – and even in moments carry him – across the threshold to set him without compromise on his quest, outward into the world.

My own life was a mess before I met Joseph. I was a world of potential with a gift buried somewhere inside, but spinning my wheels going nowhere. I was both desperately seeking to find a way out and equally as aggressive at making certain that nothing would work (it’s called secondary gain out the wazoo). I ran circles around the specialists I worked with, including many of these prominent nlp trainers who people rave about who haven’t the first clue of what it takes to do the real deep structural work that ultimately makes the difference… I don’t say that as a badge of honor, but only to put in context the tenacity that Joe assassinated my ego with the first weekend we met… you’d have to have been there that weekend to even begin to get what I mean by this… What he did that weekend was beyond genius, it was beyond generous… and in his eyes and voice and the resonance of his presence was the exact gift that Roye had given to him to be passed on, including the ruthless compassion to rip apart someone else’s personhood and set free the gift that G-d had given…

I know that Roye was a regular reader of this list even though he never wrote anything directly here. He had many opinions about decisions Joe made to allow certain people and their bullshit, and much respect for Joe’s tolerance and compassion to make room for their frailties. I believe that somewhere inside Roye admired Joseph’s willingness to allow people so much access to him with such ease, as he chose instead to make it almost impossible to get to him, not wanting to deal with everything that comes with big business, politics and public opinion… not that he cared, just that he didn’t want to waste his energy on it. Because of that, few really got to work with him, especially over the last decade… But he remained ever present and available for Joseph, meeting him for lunch or at a cafe or just for a long chat in the phone to offer his wisdom, if not just his opinions, to the man who surely was one of, if not his most, respected student.

I know that he loved Joseph like a son and I know that Joseph loved Roye like a father.

“Rarely do member of the same family grow up under the same roof” a quote from Richard Bach. But they do have a way of finding each other and when they do, they offer one another something that cannot ever be taken away. I know that as much as Joe’s received from Roye, Roye received plenty in return, probably more than he ever expressed to Joseph… It is part of the humaneness that comes with being in the role of teacher and why it can be said “it is lonely at the top”… lonely perhaps, but never alone.

I have only heard Joseph cry twice in my life. The first was at a Mytho training at Barnet Hill when he told a most intimate story about how he came to love his wife Nancy, the other was tonight on the phone when he told me of Roye’s passing.

Robyn and I send our heartfelt thoughts and prayers to Joseph and will hold a place of gratitude and remembrance for Roye at our Thanksgiving gathering tomorrow.

I would not be the man I am today if it weren’t for Roye, I wouldn’t be running the business I am running, doing the caliber of work I am doing, married to the woman I am married to and holding in my arms the beautiful child I am holding in my arms…

To know Joseph Riggio is to know Roye Fraser.

The world is a better place because he was in it.

What greater blessing is there than this.

with Love, Respect & Gratitude,
Jeffrey Leiken

—
Jeffrey Leiken, MA
Owner/Director, The Center for Performance and Success
Licensed & Certified MythoSelf Master Trainer and Facilitator
North America & Europe

415.441.8218
Headquarters in San Francisco, California USA

http://www.MentorCounselor.com

Experience the MythoSelf Process with Jeffrey Leiken, MA:

Discover the most important myth of all –
Your own.

In memory of Roye Fraser – A Hero’s Journey, a Hero’s Life. is a post by Michael William Roach from: Hero-Myth.com

Do you think this world was only an entertainment for you?

Never to enter the sea and notice how the water divides
with perfect courtesy, to let you in!
Never to lie down on the grass, as though you were the grass!
Never to leap to the air as you open your wings over
the dark acorn of your heart!

No wonder we hear, in your mournful voice, the complaint
that something is missing from your life!

Who can open the door who does not reach for the latch?
Who can travel the miles who does not put one foot
in front of the other, all attentive to what presents itself
continually?
Who will behold the inner chamber who has not observed
with admiration, even with rapture, the outer stone?

Well, there is time left –
fields everywhere invite you into them.

And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away
from wherever you are, to look for your soul?

Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk!

To put one’s foot into the door of the grass, which is
the mystery, which is death as well as life, and
not be afraid!

To set one’s foot in the door of death, and be overcome
with amazement!

To sit down in front of the weeds, and imagine
god the ten-fingered, sailing out of his house of straw,
nodding this way and that way, to the flowers of the
present hour,
to the song falling out of the mockingbird’s pink mouth,
to the tippets of the honeysuckle, that have opened

in the night

To sit down, like a weed among weeds, and rustle in the wind!

Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?

While the soul, after all, is only a window,

and the opening of the window no more difficult
than the wakening from a little sleep.

Only last week I went out among the thorns and said
to the wild roses:
deny me not,
but suffer my devotion.
Then, all afternoon, I sat among them. Maybe

I even heard a curl or tow of music, damp and rouge red,
hurrying from their stubby buds, from their delicate watery bodies.

For how long will you continue to listen to those dark shouters,
caution and prudence?
Fall in! Fall in!

A woman standing in the weeds.
A small boat flounders in the deep waves, and what’s coming next
is coming with its own heave and grace.

Meanwhile, once in a while, I have chanced, among the quick things,
upon the immutable.
What more could one ask?

And I would touch the faces of the daises,
and I would bow down
to think about it.

That was then, which hasn’t ended yet.

Now the sun begins to swing down. Under the peach-light,
I cross the fields and the dunes, I follow the ocean’s edge.

I climb, I backtrack.
I float.
I ramble my way home. 

Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches by Mary Oliver is a post by Michael William Roach from: Hero-Myth.com

Here’s a poem for you, by Mary Oliver, I’ve highlighted my favourite line is a post by Michael William Roach from: Hero-Myth.com