Replying to LO29087 --
Dear Organlearners,
Dan Chay < chay@alaska.com > writes:
>Yesterday evening I saw a video presentation,
>"Forgive for Good," featuring Dr. Frederic Luskin
(snip)
>Luskin outlines 9 steps to forgiveness:
(snip)
>For those interested, I discovered that Luskin's work
>on forgiveness is featured at a web site:
>http://www.learningtoforgive.com/index.html .
>Note "learning" in the domain name. <G>
Greetings dear Dan,
Thank you very much for bringing this most important topic under our
attention for serious study.
>Are there any among you out there who would
>help me learn more about the idea and process of
>forgiveness? History, literature, anecdotes?
Many South Africans have learned the past 10 years that forgiveness
for the wrongs done by apartheid is vital to our nation's spiritual health.
The official website of the TRC (Truth and Reconciliation Commission)
is at
< http://www.doj.gov.za/trc >
Have a look at the "Register of Reconciliation" which has serious heart
stuff. You may also have a look at a lecture given by Nelson Mandela
< www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/mandela/1995/sp950125a.html >
(I hope this URL still works.)
[Host's Note: Yes, it works. ..Rick]
I think the time has come to consider under this topic of forgiveness the
relationship between women and men. Hopefully this contribution will
trigger a world wide reconciliation between women and men. Perhaps someone
can host somewhere a "Register of Reconciliation between Women and Men".
In what follows I will write of "women" and "men" in the sense of "not all
women" and "not all men". Dan, I know that you love your wife and
daughters dearly and respect their creativity. You are definitely not one
of these "men". Alow me now to digress somewhat in order to bring
wholeness into the picture.
I have taught chemistry to thousands of pupils and students of both sexes.
Girls and women are no different from boys and men in the outcome of their
chemistry studies. The only difference is that more women than men tend to
avoid chemistry because it is a difficult subject. Chemistry becomes very
difficult when taught with little wholeness. Women seems to be more
sensitive than men to a lack of wholeness. Perhaps this is the reason why
they avoid learning chemistry.
By the way, once self as a student, i also found the lectures in chemistry
and the text books on it more confusing and less organised than in physics
and mathematics. Whereas the clear evolution of thought in physics and
mathematics attracted me, the complexity and sudden surprises in chemistry
attracted me. Only when i began with my research career in soil science, i
discovered that the confusing nature of chemistry was because of the lack
of wholeness in its presentation to me.
The complexity of soil chemistry soon compelled me to seek greater
wholeness in my understanding of chemistry. One cannot avoid any of the
main branches (inorganic, organic, analytical and physical) of chemistry
in the study of soils. One also have to think simultaneously on various
levels of size when working with soils: molecular, microscopic,
macroscopic and even regional.
Through the years i have also observed in other walks of life this
tendency of women to be more sensitive to wholeness than men. Even though
i have no solid statistics to back up my casual observations, i began to
admire women for their intuitive commitment to wholeness. Women would more
readily avoid a confrontation in a situation where a lack of wholeness was
the actual issue. Men would more readily storm in despite the lack of
wholeness, do what they think is right rather than giving the very lack of
wholeness second thoughts.
I am a keen student of the irreversible evolution (increasing
complexification) of all kinds of systems, physical and spiritual. I often
get an idea which i then first have to test against what actually happened
in the past. Thus i study the history of all things in the broadest
possible sense to prune these ideas with facts. This brings me into
contact with many books of all kinds seeking for recorded facts in them.
When I browse through books in our university's library i often notice how
few of them had been written by women. When i browse through a book going
far back into the history of some subject, it is even worse. Often not
even once a woman had been mentioned in it. Since most of these books had
been written somewhere in the Western World (WW), I have to admit that
academy in the WW had been dominated by men for millennia.
As a man it makes me sad that so few women wrote books. Some exceptions
are fiction and poetry. I know that the tradition in the WW had been that
women had to be the housekeepers. Hence the first years of thinking of
most boys had been guided largely by their mothers. Yet, when those boys
grew up, they gradually came under the influence of men's thinking and
their books. Hence the domination of men was past on from generation to
generation. Men gained this dominance by their physical power rather than
preventing it by their intelligence. The analytical, reductionistic and
linear thinking typical of this domination grew from a little stream far
inland to a massive river as it approaches the sea. Today the health of
our world, physical and spiritual, is at stake.
My sadness often erupts in a shocking grieve when I study the history of
education for some country in the WW. Often young girls and boys would
benefit from the same schooling. But soon the girls had to give up
exploring the world of mind to take up their household duties. For the
boys an endless world of mental exploration beckoned. When I study the
history of a country's laws and specifically its laws concerning women, my
grief becomes deep shame by what its men had been doing to its women.
Women were frequently treated as the possession of men. Men usually
decided on the future of women, young and old. The only exception appeared
to be the royalty. Queens ruled like kings and princesses like princes.
When I study the history of religion, it is even worse. Almighty God has
been made the possession of men like they did with their women.
I want us to burry this man-woman conflict for good. But since it is one
of the symptoms of a lack of wholeness, we have to heal the cause and not
merely treat the symptom. We will have to grow in wholeness so as to bury
this conflict. The nine steps of Luskin provide a fine way to do it.
We have our physical differences as a result of the XX chromosome for
women and XY chromosome for men. These physical differences are necessary
for the propagation of the species "Homo sapiens". But for the spiritual
evolution of "Homo sapiens amans", they mean little, if anything. The
"spiritual DNA" does not have "spiritual sex chromosomes". The divine in
the human is sexless.
The joy or sorrow of women are the same as that of men, showing no signs
of spiritual XX/XY-like differences. A woman XX can have as much
compassion for a person as a man XY. A woman XX can have as much passion
for something as a man XY. A woman XX can imagine as much the future as a
man XY. The physical XX of a woman makes in no way her spirituality
inferior to that of a man with his physical XY. The future of humankind as
well as the ecology of mother earth depend on women and men acting as a
complementary dual rather than as a dialectical pair. The fact that they
are spiritually the same makes their physical differences complementary
rather than dialectical.
Men will have to learn authentically how it is to live like women.
To change in any organisation the practice of rote learning into a culture
of authentic learning is an intricate task because of the complexity
involved. In rote learning information is dished out so as to be "eaten"
by the memory and then to be "regurgitated" exactly, undigested. It leads
to spiritual anorexia like it happens for the body. Therefor rote learning
cannot be used as a means to understand spirituality. Furthermore, people
cannot be told about authentic learning so as to remember it and then
reproduce it. The spiritual anorexia will simply persist. People need a
practice of authentic learning so as to grow spiritually. The LO (Learning
Organisation) provides for this practice.
How can men learn authentically how it is to live like women? A man cannot
become physically a woman, except for modern medical technology which
changes the outward appearances, but still not the principal XX/XY
differences. Yet women and men have exactly the same neurological system
working in exactly the same manner. A sure way men can learn how it is to
live like women is to have an open dialogue with women. The dialogue is
one of the five ESCs (Elementary Sustainers of Creativity). The other four
ESCs can be employed too.
Since men cannot experience the carrying and birth of a child, they have
no tacit knowledge of it. Their knowledge on emergent phenomena will
always be incomplete in this respect. It is perhaps for this reason that
the general study of emergent phenomena began only late in the twentieth
century. Men have studied all kinds of competition (which are a digestive
issue) in great detail for centuries, but hardly glanced over emergences
(which is a bifurcative issue). Men's vision of the world is one of
competition. It lacks seriously in emergences which depend on wholeness.
Men confused victory with emergence, dominance with rejuvenation, logic
with metanoia and greed with love.
A battle ground and an emergence have one thing in common -- chaos. But
battles happen at the edge of chaos where the enemy has to be pushed
beyond that edge into the abyss. However, emergences happen at the ridge
of chaos where the past have to be pushed over the ridge (with its gully)
into a new future going down to the valley of equilibrium. To bridge that
gully in the ridge a catalyst is needed. I am convinced that women are
better catalysts than men.
I often wonder if we should let the task of war to women whether we still
would have had wars among us? Some women can sometimes be very nasty, but
few are willing to kill children for whatever cause. The vast majority of
children who had been killed only these past two years of this new
millennium was because of the decisions and acts of men. The excuse of
each waring party is that they do it for their own women and children. But
I have not yet met a woman who will deliberately kill other children for
the sake of her own children.
In our parish there is a woman tannie (aunt) Jotjie. Her husband, oom
(uncle) Boet (Brother), died early last year of cancer after more than
fifty years of married life. She is very old, very lonely and almost
blind. She recently said to me that in her moments of loneliness, to
suppress it with anger, she wants to recall all the incidents she and oom
Boet had quarrelled. But she said she could not remember those quarrels
any more. All what she remembers were what she and oom Boet did together.
And she said explicitly: "At, it is not sex. It is remembering all things
we did together as husband and wife. I still have some friends. But what
makes me lonely is that I lost my spiritual mate. We were the mirrors of
each other."
I can ask women to forgive all men for the chauvinism of so many of them.
But I cannot speak for any other man else than me. They can only join me
out of free will. So I will take the first step and beg from all women the
following. Please forgive me for not taking you fully into consideration.
Please forgive me for not talking enough to men about discrimination
against you. Please forgive me for not coming up enough for your plight.
Men of the world, do you feel spiritually lonely? Do you think that the
world has to become a better place to live in? Then please take the women
in your lives fully into consideration. When I think of 11 September and
all its aftermaths, all were the result of dealings by men. Should men
have given women full participation in their planning of the future, I
think that the horrible events of 11/9 and its aftermath would never have
occurred. Should we have a referendum on peace or war, I am sure that
women would vote overwhelmingly for sustainable development based on
peace.
Women of the world, please articulate your thoughts to men. Please tell
men what you expect of them. Please bear in mind that men have a backlog
when concerning the future of women since their wholeness had been
impaired. A man without a woman to remind him of his duties and virtues
becomes a man with obnoxious greed on the course to extinction.
With care and best wishes,
--At de Lange <amdelange@postino.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <Richard@Karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>
"Learning-org" and the format of our message identifiers (LO1234, etc.) are trademarks of Richard Karash.