The Yin-Yang of Life

Poverty has several meanings, several problems, and several faces. The usual meaning, in an affluent society, refers to the lack of economic stability. The usual problem, that I witness too often, is judgment of those who are poor, in other words, blaming the victim. The faces of poverty, however, that get sorely overlooked, include poverty of the heart and poverty of the spirit.

Through 30 years of my life, regardless of a mere subsistence income through most of this time, I have discovered abundance in so many other ways. The people with whom I experienced this abundance have not been affluent. Counting myself among such folks, we live very modestly, yet beyond the worry of poverty, while seeing our purpose in life as something different than the accumulation of money.

Other individuals whom I have known had more visible indicators of poverty. They lived, regardless, with reasonable grace and forms of generosity that are not related to money. These folks experienced some if not all of the circumstances that I next identify.

Aside from the silly arguments that I endured among (mostly former) more affluent friends who quibbled about what “real” poverty actually is, here are a few starting points in an affluent society. These circumstances include: too little money to cover basic living expenses without debt; development of health problems triggered by the stresses of poverty; diminished self-confidence, and dignity; and financial inability to get needed medical treatments.

I recall a particular friend, Darwin, who fit most of these circumstances. Lack of money would have terminated his life sooner had I not intervened. I did not loan, but gave him, several thousand dollars to get life-saving medical treatments.

(This donation came from the sale of a house, after a marital break-up, not from my limited income. I believed, however, that I never would need to worry about earning income, unable to prophesize today’s hidden yet widespread unemployment.)

Darwin had AIDS. I knew him in the mid-1980s, when people afflicted with this disease were horribly discriminated against, marginalized and, as well, in Canada unable to obtain the types of medicines then only available in the United States. My donation enabled Darwin to travel there several times to attain the life-saving medicines and go to AIDS conferences, to gather knowledge in order to stay alive.

Let me tell you why I helped Darwin. He numbers among special friends who have blessed my life, because of their courage and spiritual commitment to choose the road less taken – the road that mainstream society usually passes by – to contribute to the well-being of the larger world and to advance the evolution of human consciousness.

Darwin had worked as a librarian. As an avid reader, he discovered his passion – books focused on spiritual insights and phenomena largely marginalized, and sometimes disregarded altogether, by institutionalized religion. Through time, Darwin began to accumulate editions of such books, rare and out-of-print.

He quit his day job, to become a collector and seller of such books, but not targeted at making profits. His vision was to place such books into the hands of individuals who cared about the spiritual content, and also market them to selected library collections where such books could be preserved for fellow seekers.

How and why we met became the basis of our friendship. Darwin saw a feature story that I had written on the Religion page of The Toronto Star about the discrimination against Aboriginal spiritual elders, who were not being recognized as legitimate spiritual chaplains by the Canadian prison system. In the story, I had outlined the yuwipi ceremony and the reasons why it was misunderstood.

Darwin already was familiar with the yuwipi ceremony. He had taken his mother to such a ceremony in South Dakota, seeking to cure her cancer. Darwin believed doing so had extended her life. He therefore contacted the Religion editor to find out how to reach me, as a `fellow traveller’ respectful of Aboriginal spiritual healing practices.

Thus began an intellectually stimulating, and spiritually uplifting, friendship, during which Darwin and I would share many hours of philosophical conversations. We spoke about our respective, direct experiences with the spiritual dimension, and also what he had discovered in his voracious reading of numerous books.

Darwin’s ancestry was Irish, as is mine. Originally focusing on ancient Irish beliefs, he then added the exploration of Indigenous spirituality. What he discovered were many parallels between pre-Christian Celtic and Indigenous beliefs.

His discovery fascinated me, and further encouraged my chosen path to build cross-cultural understanding between Euro-Western and Indigenous peoples. My quest, in turn, has been to heal the fractures in Western cultural consciousness in order to renew the holistic perspectives essential for restoring inner and outer human health, and learning how to live respectfully on the earth again.

Most significant to Darwin in his subsequent travels to the United States, after being diagnosed with AIDS, was a second trip to South Dakota. He participated again in a yuwipi ceremony led by Frank Fools Crow, a medicine man and also a Ceremonial Chief of the Teton Sioux. Fools Crow gave medicine to Darwin to bring home, medicine that Darwin felt enabled his life to be extended a few years longer than the prognosis.

I will speak more about Fools Crow in a future blog post. For much wisdom resides in Indigenous culture that needs to be better understood and appreciated, especially traditional spiritual insights and medicinal knowledge of Indigenous people, globally.

My chosen role as a messenger to build cross-cultural understanding never was easy. But the most valuable pursuits in life are never about what is easy. My professional work – vocation, really – began in social justice and continues on a path to shift human consciousness.

In that pursuit, tapping the inner wealth of the heart and the spirit requires sacrifice to discover, and even begin the journey to understand, what really matters. A moment arrived, however, as a totally self-supporting storyteller, confronted by increases in the cost of living but no increases in freelance journalism fees, when my writing livelihood ended (although my work continued to be published, intermittently, for some years).

I began graduate studies to change my direction, ultimately hoping to teach part-time at university, which would enable me to write books, and also raise money to produce documentary films. I did create one film titled Soop on Wheels, a life story about Everett Soop, who illustrates the tenacity of the human spirit, and who became another spiritual friend.

Everett was a courageous seeker, who fought three types of discrimination – as an Aboriginal person, as a truth teller through his political satire and, even among his own people, discrimination because of his physical disability, muscular dystrophy.

Indeed, Everett opened my eyes, poignantly, to the fact that, among the attributes and the possibilities that the human family holds in common is the need to develop much more compassion toward each other – within all human cultures as well as across cultures.

So, here’s the thing. Storytellers like me, oriented toward truth telling, since the 2008 economic downturn, have found it even more difficult to pursue the professions of investigative writing and serious documentary filmmaking. This situation is serious, and has several causes. I will examine this issue at a future time, because it relates to the diminishing of freedom of expression to which many people are oblivious.

As for our most important spiritual teachers, always know that you find them precisely where, and when, you least expect them to appear. Meanwhile, never, ever, take freedom of expression for granted.

I do not see myself as a spiritual teacher. I am, however, a truth teller who offers to open doors to your awareness by introducing lesser known truths and truth tellers whose love, wisdom and generosity inform us about what is essential to create a world worth living in.

In recent years, I still feel blessed by abundance, although I seldom have found paying work, despite all of my credentials. In fact, lately I now have descended to the list of circumstances by which I identified poverty above.

The abundance, regardless, resides in: receiving love and generosity from caring friends who believe in my life’s work; making spaces in my life to discover the beauty and delicacy in the multitudinous forms of Nature; and awakening joy and inner peace in the ongoing pursuit to deepen spiritual qualities such as gratitude, compassion and more.

How else can I speak of what really matters, unless I authentically walk on this road less travelled? Yet, my sincere wish is for more people to find it and develop a highway as we journey together to co-create a more caring world.

Donations to my blog will help me continue my contributions here as one helper seeking to inspire a new humanity.

Homeward bound through the snow-laden countryside on a sunny, blue-sky day, I found myself humming, an unconscious impulse when inner peace and joy is awakened. These feelings arise whenever I spend time among kindred souls who care about the earth and everything alive on it. Driving past a woodlot, I then started to giggle, patiently slowing down. A wild turkey had decided to cross the road directly in front of my approaching car, and in no hurry.

Such serendipitous encounters with the world of Nature’s nonhuman creatures, to me, are gifts. They offer transformative moments of delight that can carry me through the day, and longer. For, in such moments one is reminded, so gently, about what really matters – life itself and being alive to the journey as it unfolds (or see it trundle in front of you) rather than be fixated on the destination.

I was returning home from an event hosted by the Bruce Botanical Food Gardens (BBFG), held at the Ripley Community Centre in Bruce County, mid-western Ontario. The focus was a webinar from Geneva, Switzerland, shown on a large projection screen – one of 50 community events – organized by Food Secure Canada.

Titled “Stepping Up to the Plate,” the webinar presentation featured Olivier De Schutter, United Nations Special Rapporteur. He communicated key points from his 2012 U.N. report on Canada’s food security and the right to food as a human right.

Here is an example of the digital world at its best, using interactive technologies to bring together the human family – in this case across a nation and connecting with another part of the planet – to share concerns and initiatives. Thus fortified with what unites us, we then can go forth to make a difference in the world, feeling lifted up in knowing that we are not alone.

Living in a rural area in recent years means everything to me as a former city woman, already well acquainted with the positive and challenging aspects of both suburban and inner city life. Now, I am immersed in a different cultural world, also endowed with its own yin-yang of what is positive and what is challenging.

The fact that we live on an imperilled planet is not new to me. But this fact too often meets deaf ears in the city. Here in the countryside, the challenge that I see is a sense of powerlessness, based on few people being well enough informed on how global issues impact on their own lives. My life now rooted in a rural region, I can speak as a witness to the challenges here, that also include cash-strapped municipalities and lack of jobs.

I feel compelled to lay on the table a fact that can no longer be denied. The world is heading toward a food crisis, and that includes Canada. No human being is exempt from this reality. The only choices we have – and we do have choices – is “stepping up to the plate” (pun intended) to figure out what we are going to do about it.

How can we minimize the impacts of future food shortages, and perhaps even divert the path we are on? For the latter, a shift in consciousness is essential now.

I am delighted to bring attention to the Bruce Botanical Food Gardens project, whose mandate illustrates the essential ecological shift in consciousness. In its early stages, the BBFG’s long term vision speaks to the heart and soul of what will keep rural Canada alive – people who care about each other and the well-being of the land and water that sustains life. The volunteer initiative here is outstanding and exemplifies the type of grassroots initiatives that are the hope for the future.

Such grassroots initiatives with a life-affirming vision, in fact, are why rural and urban people need to collaborate, hand-in-hand, to protect every acre of agricultural land wherever you live. As the U.N. Special Rapporteur and Food Secure Canada’s mandates mutually point out, safe food and clean water are human rights, not commodities. As well, the Canadian government needs to create a coherent national food policy.

Protecting what sustains life requires also fighting against industrial activities that further poison the very sources of life – the sacred feminine. We, as fellow citizens, need to work together to heal and restore the land and water contaminated by toxins, and ensure accessibility to clean water and healthy food for all, now and in the future.

Another issue of concern for planetary citizens globally is the growing inequality between the rich and the poor. I recommend looking at an Oxfam Media Briefing called “The cost of inequality: how wealth and income extremes hurt us all.” This fact was identified in the World Economic Forum’s Global Risk Report as one of the top global risks of 2013.

Be inspired by the work of Food Secure Canada (FSC). Its website is a visual and textual smorgasbord of knowledge and activities that mirror the multi-layered dimensions of food security and food sovereignty that it promotes, both within Canada and abroad. Its vision includes: zero hunger, a sustainable food system, and healthy and safe food.

Totally worth reading is the FSC report “Resetting the Table: A People’s Food Policy for Canada.” The contents would be of interest to fellow planetary citizens outside Canada too, because we all are affected by the priorities of multinational corporations and governments who focus on international trade to benefit industry, yet overlook the well-being of each nation’s citizens at a basic survival level.

One cautionary note, for example, refers to the huge returns in global agribusiness in 2008, the year of the global economic downturn, when the first indications of a coming food crisis were identified in the news media. The FSC report reads: “Hedge funds and other futures investors had also recently turned to food as the next hot ticket…In the absence of strong food policies and regulation in the public interest, the global food system has been left in the hands of the market” [p. 6, FSC report].

By the way, this dilemma was seeded in the fields of developed countries, as well as developing nations during the days of the so-called `green revolution,’ between the 1940s and the 1970s. Whether originally well-intentioned or not, the green revolution eventually was seen to be misguided – although still today not by government and industrial agriculture. Nevertheless, the U.N. Special Rapporteur Olivier De Schutter reports:

“Since the 1950s, Canada has been moving to large-scale, input-intensive modes of production, leading to increasingly unsustainable farming practices and higher levels of greenhouse gas emissions, soil contamination, and erosion of biodiversity” [p. 7].

The 2012 FSC report identifies an international recognition that Canada ought to heed:

“In 2008, the World Bank and the UN convened 900 experts to carry out a comprehensive three-year assessment of world agriculture. Formally endorsed by 58 countries, their findings called for fundamental shifts in farming away from industrial production models and towards agro-ecology” [p. 13].

De Schutter points out, furthermore, how trade liberalization practices – free trade – have been detrimental to local small farmers, estimating 25 per cent of Canadian farms lost between 1988 and 2007. Meanwhile, large agribusinesses hire temporary foreign farm workers whose human rights repeatedly are violated.

Worse, he points out that the current Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement with the European Union (CETA) undermines the transition to a more sustainable food system because of proposed legal requirements – currently in draft form – in public procurement that does not favour Canadian goods, services or labour within Canada.

Is there not something wrong with this picture??? More Canadians need to take steps to become better informed about CETA, and challenge what our federal government is endorsing, as usual, without sufficient public awareness and debate. Wake up, and demand more publicly available information and the right for your concerns to be heard!

Food sovereignty is at the core of human rights on this planet. Indigenous peoples always have been the leaders and teachers in trying to awaken the rest of humanity about the sacredness of the earth. For human life is totally dependent upon the health of, and accessibility to, other forms of planetary life, including water, land and air.

Both the FSC and U.N. reports recognize the importance of Indigenous human rights here in Canada, and internationally – particularly food sovereignty.

The fact is, in Canada (and elsewhere), Indigenous traditional knowledge has been disregarded by corporate and government power-holders who function, regrettably, with a consciousness split from the world of Nature and the world of Spirit. This split can be healed, with a willing and caring heart.

Awakening to possibility can happen everywhere, including among those folks who work within government and corporations, to apply the wisdom of the soul to see what must be changed in the ways that we function on this planet.

Grassroots people are setting the example. Let us see the same dedication to improve public policy that serves the people and the well-being of the earth.

In our digital era, the chicken and egg question is: Do today’s media mirror the world around us or, conversely, is it our uses of the digital world that shape contemporary culture? I believe it is reasonable to suggest that the answer is both/and, because of the ubiquitous presence of media in our lives and our potentially continuous choices of engagement.

How many people actually feel empowered versus feeling powerless and in the grips of something beyond our control? I raise a more provocative question: Are there some folks who feel empowered and in control yet who, regrettably, are kidding themselves? I speak to the growing popularity of reality TV and, more specifically, extreme TV.

In my latest quest, to find deeper insights about the human fascination with the extreme, top ranking Google pages on such topics mostly showed superficial affirmations about this phenomenon as a given, without questioning it. To be fair, a couple of articles did suggest that some soul searching is needed about the popularity of extreme TV.

As for YouTube videos about effects on the brain, they mostly focused on snippets of information accompanied by commercial interests, for example, to entice viewers to learn how to train the brain. Other popular videos focused on conspiracy theories about how television was invented to dumb us down, intentionally.

What needs serious reflection, regardless, is how popular media affect us, in ways that go beyond our conscious awareness. Ergo, this blog post peels back the layers of what we think we know to a glimpse into our unconscious where a fuller truth resides.

To begin, for several decades, it is no conspiratorial secret – among folks who investigate the marketing world – that subliminal messages have been an intentional component of advertising, probably for as long as advertising has existed.

As for television, it could be said to be the handmaiden of post-WWII capitalism in its consummate role as a communications tool to encourage us (who have access to TV) to desire and acquire all the worldly goods that a free market economy can offer.

The subsequent sea changes of communications technology arrived with the computer and internet, followed by the myriad of social media with which we, once again, seem to be more enchanted than not.

There is a reason why the influence of television is greater than, and radically different from, feature movies. It is similar to why and how multiple, quick-changing images on a computer screen differ in the impact upon us psychologically from long form documentary films.

That distinction is why veteran documentary filmmakers experienced in long form storytelling advocate for the continuing production of feature film stories, and lobby against the major reduction of television time slots available in recent years for documentaries. Broadcasters increasingly have replaced them with reality TV and a growing number of extreme TV program series.

Entertainment versus education always has been the yin-yang tension of television programming, no different from other media in regard to the tensions between commerce and communicating knowledge that is helpful rather than cause harm.

So, that tension is not new. What is new, however, is that today even documentary filmmakers are being pressured by broadcasters to create film stories not just with an emphasis on exaggerated drama but, furthermore, to construct engaging stories with the ultimate, conscious goal to make profits for TV channels.

That profit-driven intention never has been the primary motivation nor ethos behind the making of documentary films. The purpose of this form of storytelling – at its best – has been to bear witness to, and document, the human condition and the world. In doing so, such stories thereby elevate human consciousness by compelling audiences to reflect upon and do what is needed to co-create a better quality of life for the larger good.

Veteran doc filmmaker Peter Lee-Wright, in his book The Documentary Handbook (2009), speaks to the inner conflict today by his peers who try to negotiate a morally questionable marketplace where: “…the thirst for instant reaction and first-hand experience has created a market for the ill-considered.” One reviewer, Wes Skolits in 2010, paraphrases Lee-Wright’s perspective as follows:

“The easy accessibility of these multiple filmic forms has incurred rampant abuse by the public (and by the news stations) in not seriously considering the purposes behind the filmic act, nor their ramifications… [T]here is increasing focus on the audiences’ desires simpliciter to the exclusion of quality programming. The proliferation of voices and evolution of documentary media reflects a change from an overly moralistic society to one that is increasingly “commercial, hedonistic, and relativistic”; and this ought to be abandoned.”

Those are fighting words. As a filmmaking member of a documentary organization in Canada, I can tell you that the debates about how to sustain a documentary industry, threatened in this economy, and also how to keep our integrity, confronted with the aforementioned TV priorities offered today, are endless and passionate.

In other words, previously, if and when some doc filmmakers chose to expose the worst human behaviours, the ethical intention was to wake up fellow human beings and provoke us to challenge whatever caused harm. Now, rather than elevate human consciousness, more doc filmmakers are feeling pressured to participate in creating TV fodder that reduces humanity to its lowest common denominator.

The short answer to why reality TV now is so prevalent and, more so, extreme TV, is simple. The broadcasters (and producers sometimes) are making huge revenues, and so are the advertisers. Constructed reality is much cheaper to produce than scripted drama and comedy, and also documentaries, because they get high audience ratings from the younger generations of targeted viewers.

To maintain a livelihood, some filmmakers and crew do agree, often reluctantly, to work on shows for reality TV. I said above that such shows earn huge revenues, but for whom is one question, and at what human cost is another?

The Los Angeles Times wrote a scathing article online January 6, 2013, to expose tight budgets, lack of insurance, lack of trained safety personnel and, worse, last-minute production decisions to push cast and crew into potentially life-threatening situations, just to create more extreme drama and attract more viewers for more $ – but not necessarily $ that the cast or crew ever see. Such exploitative work conditions are outrageous. Do we even hear about all the injuries and, sometimes, loss of life, and the true reasons why?

Another ethical issue, cited in various online articles as I mentioned above, is the purpose for which the characters are selected for reality TV. Their life circumstances are grossly manipulated, foremost for the entertainment value which, again of course, means money, and human dignity is shredded.

A further ethical issue is the impact on children. According to education writer Anne Weinstein, children today still believe that what they see on reality TV is real-life, not `constructed reality’.”

Weinstein advocates for better media literacy. What is shocking to me (after more than 25 years facilitating workshops and writing about media literacy) is that it still is not widespread as standard school curricula, to develop critical thinking as a life skill.

Also frustrating (because I have trained in, and studied, psychology) is to see, in a USA Today College article, comments by Dr. Peter Christenson, a professor of rhetoric and media studies. He argues that the medium of reality TV is still new and not enough comprehensive studies yet exist to draw `cause and effect’ types of conclusions.

Christenson’s statement illustrates to me one example of the serious limitations of relying on empirical science. What is needed, instead, is holistic science accompanied by holistic interventions, to name, heal and transform, the root system of North American society.

We are a society, systemically and collectively, in denial of what I call `soul-woundedness’. The clearly visible symptoms of this affliction are our addictions, that cover a wide range of compulsive behaviours. Chemical dependencies are only the tip of the iceberg.

The first step of healing is a willingness to name the affliction, a spreading affliction planting its seeds throughout a globalized world.

“Television Addiction is No Mere Metaphor” is the single online article that I could find directly identifying “television addiction,” in Scientific American, dated February 23, 2002. Yes, its findings were gathered more than ten years ago. Nevertheless, the research in it can be seen as pertinent to reality TV since then, as well as the allurement of extreme TV.

The opening statement, by co-authors Robert Kubley and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, speaks volumes: “Perhaps the most ironic aspect of the struggle for survival is how easily organisms can be harmed by that which they desire.” Then, they point to how such “excessive cravings” play out in the brain of the human being.

For another provocative statement reads: “Most of the criteria of substance dependence can apply to people who watch a lot of TV.” The co-authors cite behavioural and brain wave studies that indicate relaxation and passivity while watching TV. But, among the more chronic viewers, not only did they express feeling less rewarded by extended viewing, yet also had difficulty to stop this prolonged habit partly because of the experience of heightened stress and restlessness when the screen went blank.

The co-authors suggest that the TV attraction “springs from our biological `orienting response’.” You can read their more detailed description in this revelatory Scientific American article. In it, the deeper, unconscious, addictive drive in humans is explained as being fed by the form as much as by the content of television.

For example, the co-authors credit two previous researchers, Byron Reeves and Esther Thorson who, as far back as 1986, did research to conclude that it was “the simple formal features of television – cuts, edits, zooms, pans, sudden noises – [that] activate the orienting response, thereby keeping attention on the screen.”

Therefore, I raise the question, cannot those findings be extrapolated to the increasing popularity of extreme TV? What is dangerous, psychologically, is not simply the time invested in TV viewing yet, moreover, as Kubley and Csikszentmihalyi suggested: “For growing numbers of people, the life they lead online may often seem more important, more immediate and more intense than the life they lead face-to-face.”

What is so painfully clear – painful because apparently so many people are oblivious to it – is the need to connect the dots between: the unconscious allurement of extreme TV; addiction to immediate and continuing stimulation; and shortened attention span, to end up at the undeniably addictive uses of social media, most particularly among younger generations.

The other significant resource online – that helps us understand yet also see the possibility how to transcend addiction – is the beautiful, soulful, healing perspective of Canadian physician Dr. Gabor Mate, accessible on several YouTube videos. I also recommend his books.

Watch, for example, one of his TED Talks titled “The Power of Addiction and the Addiction of Power,” with a message to awaken the healing power of our compassion and caring, because each of us can choose to elevate our consciousness closer to who we can be.

On a beautiful day in the early 1990s, I gave my Native Studies senior secondary students a transformative experience, one available to human beings since the dawn of storytelling around the campfire. We travelled to Six Nations on the Grand River to hear one of the only two public recitations in English of the Great Law of Peace, by the late Chief Jacob Thomas. The Great Law took several days to recite fully. My students only heard part of it. But what a memorial day!

They became so captivated by this remarkable Cayuga elder’s power of memory and storytelling that they wanted to stay longer, and protested leaving. Indeed, my students were taken by surprise at their own capacity – now awakened – to become so deeply engaged at all in regard to an older person’s lengthy oration.

Would doing so even be possible today? I say, yes. The reason is simple. Awakening the rivers of our own inner ways of knowing requires the choice, and wisdom, to make the time for deeper engagement, reflection, and the eventual gift of transformation. Adults responsible for the care and education of children need to offer such experiential types of learning to them from the earliest age, to illuminate the world in its bounty of wisdom.

As a pathway to understanding how to restore more balance in our stressed-out lives, I suggest we examine the differences between information, knowledge and wisdom. For those of you who have been reading my blog posts, you may have observed that I like to look at the big picture and the root causes, rather than symptoms, of where we are at.

That exploration requires looking back in time to make sense of how we got to the present and, importantly, recognize our capabilities to create a more peaceful future, within and around us. That task takes time and reflection. That task is why I do not write short blog posts, but instead enjoy sharing knowledge, which takes longer.

In regard to our digital era at this historic moment, I want to challenge the litany of woe voiced today by teachers, parents, employers, and anyone else, who wrings their hands, and bangs their head on the wall, in exasperation from trying to get focused attention from our youth.

Such frustration is understandable. But let us not point the fingers of blame at the youth. What is happening to the minds of the young is a major social issue (a topic for another day). Several generations, however, are culpable in co-creating today’s cultural environment of technological enchantment as our societal priority.

The ubiquitous presence of technical gadgets 24/7 has materialized because of our unquestioning acceptance. When I use terms such as “we” and “our,” it is in reference to what Jung identified as our “collective unconscious.” We have the free will and intelligence, nevertheless, to make wiser choices in our investment of time.

The seeds of our present-day “24/7 lifestyle” could be said to have been planted during the invention of electricity and the light bulb. No longer did daytime work stop when the sun set, kerosene lamps and candles then lit for evening activities.

Yet, through the past quarter century, without a doubt, the trajectory of “information overload” has instilled a sense of feeling overwhelmed since the internet became as central to our lives as television, radio and the telephone.

“Information” could be defined as a string of data or sound bites, disconnected, then sometimes linked with more units of information, in a linear, one-dimensional direction. Consider the famous statement voiced in Dragnet, on radio and TV through the 1950s originally, by fictional policeman Joe Friday: “All I want are the facts, ma’am.” The prime example today would be the strings of “tweets,” 140 characters at a time.

“Knowledge,” however, has height, depth and breadth, and therefore is multidimensional. Whereas information is quick and instant, as an event, the quality of knowledge increases along a journey through time as a process.

The attainment of knowledge is two-fold. It requires the seeker to develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills, in other words, “become knowledgeable” enough to make meaning of the layers and different sources of information that, woven together, offer more complex levels of insight and awareness – that is, greater knowledge.

Citing the fictional detective Joe Friday, again, his job required him to be equipped with knowledge skills, such as problem solving, to make meaning of the different facts given to him that could provide insights to solve criminal cases.

Another distinction between information and knowledge is: information requires “analysis” to make meaning of it. Knowledge, however, goes further. Through the process of gathering information, the knowledge accumulated requires “synthesis.” To clarify, synthesis is the process that opens up new levels of meaning and enlightenment.

In other words, the sum is larger than the parts, taking us to new levels of understanding on a spiral journey. That multidimensional journey is how our consciousness is transformed, leaving the flatland of one-dimensional thinking behind.

“Wisdom” is the eventual outcome, potentially yet not guaranteed. The reason is that the onus for learning is on the seeker, to be open-minded to develop higher qualities in regard to how to interpret and practice higher, deeper, and more expansive, levels of understanding.

Wisdom itself is a higher quality. It therefore requires more than intellectual understanding, and essentially involves the heart and, in its fullest expression, the inclusion of the soul. I already have elaborated on wisdom in a previous blog post, and invite you to read “Wisdom That Lies Beneath – Inner Ways of Knowing.”

To revisit what I suggested above: Information is an event, or a series of events; knowledge is a process that stitches together information to make meaning; and wisdom is the possible outcome, depending upon how we respond or, conversely, react to the knowledge gathered and synthesized.

Now, you may ask, how do my suggested distinctions between information, knowledge and wisdom relate to digital media?

Digital technologies, similar to forms of technology generally, in and of themselves, are not the problem nor the cause of society being out of balance. Western culture has been out of balance for a long time, and several of my earlier blog posts have addressed the reasons why.

The problem resides in the human mind, for example, how and why we are socialized in regard to what and whom we value in each historic era. The question, ultimately, is: What motivates us to make the choices we do in the ways we use our minds creatively. More specifically, what are the purposes for which we use respective technologies? Are the intended uses beneficial (and if so, for whom?), or harmful?

The possible answers are complicated, because no technology is “value neutral.” Even when technology initially is well-intentioned, as sure as night follows day, someone will figure out self-serving ways to misuse it, which includes over-using it.

What also makes the problem complicated is human nature, that can reduce us to choose the easier path of conformity, rather than choose the road less travelled toward our human potential.

Serendipitously, looking up the film Baraka directed by Ron Fricke, I discovered a deeply moving comment by hanah, a young adult. Her example gives me hope that youth truly yearn for more from life, when they have not yet had their souls wounded by today’s frenzied pace. For these youth, may they find healing someday through an opportunity that takes them on a quest to discover who they can be. Here is hanah, unedited:

“…as a teenager i find that most people my age are ignorant and oblivious to how amazing life and nature really is, and it personally makes me angry to see technogly dominating peoples lives and how destructive it can be. i loved the film, and i feel like the word love is way to over used but if there was a word that could describe how i felt about this film id use it, maybe ill make my own word up. most the people in my class fell asleep or chattered about irrelevant things, this just shows how distant and away we are from one another, as a result of technology, and many more factors. we all have to take one day at a time, and appriciate the things that really matter, and try to change the problems in the world eg poverty, war. we need to work together, and respect one another. thanks fricke for helping open my eyes. coming from australia and reading all the comments im so glad that people all over the world have viewed this gift.”

Hanah’s heartfelt response, to a non-verbal documentary feature that is a masterpiece about our beautiful planet, expresses wisdom that comes from the heart. Bless her. She identifies the struggle of youth today to retain any integrity about who they can be, at a soul level, against the onslaught of societal forces such as peer pressure and the mindless (instead of life-affirming) uses of social media.

Within and across all generations, we can work together to restore balance and meaningfulness to our lives.

For inspiration, I invite you to browse my list of Links, to explore organizations in which the human family, intergenerationally and across cultures, can come together, learn, play and discover new (and revitalized ancient) ways to walk on this earth as biological, cognizant and spiritual beings.

Where do we find love? Where do we bestow our love? Where are the places of beauty? These questions, in their essence, have the same answer: In the places, inner and outer, where we open our heart to see more fully, and feel grateful for, what is directly in front of our eyes. Yet, such places can remain overlooked, unseen and, therefore, unknown. I recall a poignant quote by Andre Kertesz, a 20th-century photographer, who once said: “The eyes are blind when the heart does not see.”

Such words would resonate in the heart of Piero Ferrucci, psychotherapist, philosopher and author of several inspiring books, which include Beauty and the Soul (2009). This book’s subtitle reads: The Extraordinary Power of Everyday Beauty to Heal Your Life. Here Ferrucci expounds upon the power within each and every one of us to awaken our consciousness to become more fully who we can be.

Among the marvellous qualities of Beauty and the Soul is Ferrucci’s down-to-earth, anecdotal style, through which he relates touching stories of the transformative moments in the lives of a diverse range of individuals, as well as in his own life.

These accounts are alongside several mentions of scientific, medical and educational studies that now provide empirical proof on the potentialities of human consciousness that have been manifested since almost the beginning of time – well, at least, approximately 1.8 million years ago.

Ferrucci cites the research of Steven Mithen, author of The Singing Neanderthals, in which the study of anatomy, neurology and archeological findings concludes, as Ferrucci sums up: “We are musical organisms, we are born with rhythm and melody in our DNA. Music, song, and dance have been essential in our bonding in groups and this social competence has given great advantage to our capacity to survive” [Ferrucci, 2009, p. 180].

As Ferrucci tells us, Mithen’s most recent theories of cognitive archaeology deepen the evidence that artistic expression always has been an essential aspect for human survival. It resides in the evolved relationship so long ago between three abilities: (1) producing a mental image and wanting to represent it in concrete form; (2) understanding the meaning of that image; and (3) being eager to share it with others. The confluence of these three abilities signified “a huge leap in our evolution. To be creative means to be fully human” [p. 100].

Ferrucci also cites ethnologist Ellen Dissanayake, who ascribes our aesthetic sensibility to our longing for mutuality: “According to Dissanayate, mutuality is one of the four basic psychobiological needs that generate our need for art. The other needs are: the sense of belonging to a group, the need to understand and create meaning, the need to make artifacts with our hands and thus to show our competence” [p. 179].

Beauty and the Soul is a book that touches the human soul, in bequeathing hope and possibility in how the human family can heal itself, and learn how to get along as a planetary family in relationship with everyone and everything that we cherish on our planetary home. That is why I first emphasize the universal experiences that Ferrucci describes in his book, as a loving gift to humanity, to show us what we hold in common.

What particularly resonates deeply in my own soul, as a writer, is the way in which Ferrucci presents the beauty of literature, embodied in age-old storytelling:

“This, too, is a universal passion, which started with the discovery and management of fire and the development of language… All people of the Earth, even those apparently most primitive, tell and listen to stories… This activity has had a huge advantage for the development of our mind and personality: It trains us to understand others and put ourselves in their shoes, to think up different ways of facing a situation, and to explain the world around us. There could be no better exercise for our brain… Here, too, we see how the search for and creation of beauty are part of our being, a primary survival tool” [p. 182].

I share the above passages of Ferrucci’s book, a book important in so many ways, in the hope that many school teachers read my blog post – then read Beauty and the Soul – and parents as well, who are concerned about the type and quality of schooling that is shaping the lives of your children. Too often, the arts are considered trivial and the first curricula to be cut when budgets are limited – a perennial excuse to cut the arts.

On that educational note, by the way, Ferrucci, bless him, cites a few studies, such as a study in the United States that indicates that where schools included 20 to 30 per cent art appreciation and expression, the academic results were much better in all subjects.

He also cites the work of Dee Dickinson of New Horizons for Learning, on the importance of the arts to break through ethnic and social barriers: “They [the arts] are symbolic systems as important as letters and numbers. They integrate body, mind, and spirit and offer students the chance to express themselves. They facilitate `peak and flow experiences’; that is, expansion of consciousness. They stimulate the motivation to learn. They develop both independence and collaboration, and thus improve socialization. They exercise intellectual abilities, such as analysis, synthesis and problem-solving” [p. 199].

Some of Ferrucci’s observations, in fact, speak to and challenge the disconnectedness in Western culture, in its approach to socialization processes, and the commercialization of beauty, that places so many obstacles along our life path to experience beauty in its natural life-giving essence. Experiencing authentic beauty is not based on money.

He presents a marvellous yin-yang approach to the profound attachment that the human species has to physical beauty. In other words, there is a positive aspect, biologically based, yet also the shadow side in regard to how we have become so preoccupied with outer beauty, today culturally-based.

Ferrucci addresses the phenomena of beauty through the range of experiences that we have in everyday life, from the ways, and reasons why, we respond to natural and cultural environments to the processes of each person’s unconscious or inner ways of knowing, such as emotions and intuition.

Eco-psychology, for example, speaks to our innate “ecological unconscious”: “Deep down, we feel separated from a wisdom and a beauty which we cannot afford to lose, in fact, from the source of life” [p. 111]. Ferrucci points out the negative impact on our psyche from urban noise pollution to obsessions about acquiring material goods in a consumer-driven society.

Many anecdotes within Beauty and the Soul are deeply moving in relating the ways beauty is available to us so freely, from when we awaken to our own capacity to discover it to when opportunities are given. Beauty has profound healing qualities in our personal lives. We can find beauty everywhere and in unexpected places.

Ferrucci relates diverse examples of the healing power of beauty, through the arts and otherwise, in conventional and alternative healing environments. He identifies, for example, the Natural Growth Project in the United Kingdom, devoted to treating torture victims through processes of rehabilitation such as gardening and other creative forms of self-expression, supported by organic gardeners and psychotherapists.

One of my favourite anecdotes is the story about Luciano, who experiences profound pleasure in restoring old and discarded objects to their original beauty. This act, for Luciano, is not only invested in the outcome yet, moreover, in the nurturing process to regenerate and show reverence, especially for hand-crafted items. Another, symbolic level of meaning for him, during his pursuit to restore an old pair of skiis, was his hope for the recovery by his father from a long term illness.

That brings us to another significant level of beauty on which Ferrucci elaborates – inner beauty. In other words, how much do we give power to the external conforming pressures of society that sometimes shape shift us away from who we really are? Why is it important to figure out how to toss away the social mask and reveal our true Self?

Indeed, awakening our capacity to give, and receive, love very much is influenced by the various ways in which we can see beauty in the world around us and the people who inhabit it. The key is our willingness to open our heart to do so.

The inherent beauty of this book, in summary, is that Ferrucci emphasizes where we can discover and replenish our inner wholeness and the connection with our soul, while he also presents the folly of today’s world that is so sadly out-of-balance.

Piero Ferrucci’s shared wisdom facilitates a pathway for us to find our way home again, home to our soul and what really matters.

One final note, I was honoured to spend time with Piero Ferrucci in 2005, near Florence, Italy, during research for my documentary film on his mentor Roberto Assagioli. Although the commercial media has no interest to support such a film, I pray, and persevere to write, research and produce Assagioli’s life story at a future time, for a growing public who seeks understanding to create a more hopeful life.