“There’s a new way of creating in the world. I was just talking to a man who is very driven in his work in the stock market, and he said success is all a matter of will, and I said, no, I think it’s all a matter of belief.
“We talked about the image of sandpipers on the beach: they run up, get all the delicious food in the sand, then run back – and their feet never get wet. They’re always in harmony, and in rhythm with the ebb and flow of the ocean. And what’s happening with women now is they are bringing to the party of life the concept of that ebb and flow with natural law. There’s no willfulness around it. Willfulness is masculine energy, which this society has been built on, but it is not the natural way.
“And that’s what you need to do. You don’t finish the ten thousand things on the list, and then get to you, who is ten thousand and one; what you want to do is make a practice of what centering and what quietude really is. And quietude is actually flowing with the flow – back to the sandpiper again. He’s not frantic, running back and forth; he’s rhythmic with the flow.'”
“[O]ur lives inherently have the power and unlimited capacity of a mighty river. … Then through positive energy rituals to train our physical, emotional, mental and spiritual capacities, we will create a dam to harness the power of the river and continually refresh the lake that is our life.”
Dana Arakawa, paraphrasing Greg Martin
“Willfulness is masculine energy, which this society has been built on, but it is not the natural way.”
Not sure I understand that…don’t you need both the masculine and the feminine?
Interesting quote with beautiful imagery…
It also points up the either/or thinking that is so common in the Western world (vs. Zen thinking).
Either the world is masculine or it is feminine.. Either the world is “Willfulness” or it is “Natural”. In business this type of limited, either/or thinking is what prevents people from seeing the world of possibilities beyond weak compromises or win/lose solutions.
Senia… thank you for making me think (on a Saturday, no less)!
Keep up the good work!
Grim and Dave – I totally agree with you both! You likely do need the masculine and the feminine. And I wouldn’t even necessarily agree that it’s
masculine = willfulness
feminine = natural
I think you’ve both hit the nail on the head.
Dave, just like you say, the holistic thinking of Zen… I think of the yin/yang symbol – you need to have one to have the other. You need to have have both to have balance to some degree.
And it certainly may not be one-for-one with balance, but it can be 3-to-1 or 1-to-7, but some balance. That’s what I think is cool about homeostasis!