What is Open Religion?
Open Religion is a project by itself. Its aim is to be able to talk religiously and at the same time put religion itself – as a phenomenon – into sub-conceptual context. [see: ‘About ‘Subconceptual’] There are many religions. In the course of time, there have been many more, now forgotten or not practiced anymore. Read the full article…
Brace Yourself, then Go for It
Dear reader, if you really believe in something, then I would so much like you to go for it. Of course this doesn’t mean that you would otherwise be worth less. Everybody may lead a life that is agreeable to live and doesn’t demand much more than, well, to live it. Nice! But IF there Read the full article…
From Placebo to Insight
… there should be a gentle slope. Not a downfall. (This text is not about what concretely is or is not a placebo.) Gentle slope – principle Many people do depend on their placebo, like a kind of crutch. To abruptly take this crutch away can have negative results: people fall and break another leg. Read the full article…
Using AURELIS = ‘Dangerous’?
For many people, the ‘deeper self’ is quite unknown territory. Could it be ‘dangerous’ to deal with this field? To be more specific: could one become mentally confused because of this or, in an extreme case, can it even encourage a surge of psychosis? The intake of 15 grams of aspirin (one and a half Read the full article…
Difference between Motivation and Manipulation
Motivation originates in the heart of the motivated. All the rest is manipulation. The human psyche is not a box of building blocks. On the contrary. It is a hugely complex ‘organ’ that is, in addition, constantly moving. We are only partly aware of this. That explains why it sometimes resembles a box of building Read the full article…
Transformant Leadership
Tolerate chaos. Try to use it to achieve a new, better order than before. An important function of a leader is to supply openness for change. Moses leading the Jews from Egypt to the promised land. Almost every election is about ‘change!’. Not only because what there is now would not be good, but because Read the full article…
I Believe
I confess: I do indeed believe. I believe in Beauty because beauty brings motivation to believe in myself and live this life. No beauty, no me. I believe in beauty because I feel such. Firsthand. What else can I do? I mean: look at this world. I believe in Beauty, as I believe in beauty of Read the full article…
Manage Time so that Time Doesn’t Manage You
Return to your co-workers ‘my time’ as what it has always been and will always be: my time. Take care that at the same time it also becomes your time. A thin booklet on time management costs 5 Euros. If I read this through, I have as much information as on one day of ‘workshop’. Read the full article…
Without Feedback No Rocket Gets to the Moon
Even on a regular office day, EVERYTHING can be seen as feedback, which you in your turn can react to as feedback. This way everything becomes one big school of life. There are 2 ways to look at feedback: 1) Feedback is the glue that keeps everything together. Without feedback, things are not tuned in Read the full article…
Depth is Formless Meaning
Forms are meaningless. Meaning is formless. You may like money or status But what really motivates you, is the liking. Money doesn’t mean anything by itself. Status doesn’t mean anything without your liking it. And eventually, you cannot consciously decide to be motivated. You cannot consciously decide to ‘like’. Try it if you, well… like Read the full article…
Compromis-cuity
A compromise in which both parties ‘give in’ is often a lose/lose situation in the long term, then more and more so in the short term, before getting stuck. Both parties water the wine. Result: watery wine. When you do this time and time again, eventually there will be people who think that wine tastes Read the full article…
Work-Life (in the) Balance
Work-life balance may not be the best start if it brings more emphasis on a divide between both. For ages and until relatively recently people had only a ‘life’. ‘Work’ was what you had to do to stay alive within that life. At times, one had to work really hard… still it wasn’t ‘work’ as Read the full article…
A Bully is Not an Open Leader
A bully is not open to ‘total human being’. He is not respectful. He is not free towards himself nor towards others. [see also: ‘From Bullishness to Leadership’] Enumerating the above and other ‘elements’ of bullying, is enumerating – in the negative – the ethics of Open Leadership. Contrary to the latter, a ‘bully leadership Read the full article…
Religion IS Openness
In order to ‘make deepest connection’ (re-ligare), Openness as an invitation may be sufficient to let it happen in a natural flow. This is not about openness at a purely conceptual level. It is not about ‘talking the truth’. It is rather about ‘deeply being truthful’. Of course, this is not incompatible with talking the Read the full article…
Whence Beauty?
To me, a world without beauty is hardly a world worth living in. Some tend to reduce beauty to an ‘evolutionary trick’ something like a mechanism concocted by nature only to lure us into existence and even more: keep us here… This reasoning may be correct. However, the ‘only’ is loathsome because it’s not the Read the full article…
Rituals
An action becomes a ritual when it is repeated and when it is deeply meaningful. For this, one needs to be open to it. ‘Open’ as in ‘Open Religion.’ A ritual is a repetitive action to which one attaches ‘deeper meaning’. Without ‘deeper meaning’, a ritual has no, well, meaning. It’s like an empty box, Read the full article…
Feeling Better or Being Better
Do you want to work on feeling better in this world, or rather feeling OK in a better world? This is a moral choice A better world is a world of better persons, including you. It’s not a world, of course, in which you necessarily feel worse. Still, you might even consciously choose for such. Read the full article…