Dateline Amsterdam
I’m visiting Asmsterdam to work with a wonderful group of financial advisors and executives in the financial services field. I have walked around Amsterdam twice now - a wonderful, friendly and efficient city, built around a series of semicircular canals. Everybody seems to ride a bicycle (it’s easier when the land is flat!) so there seems to be far less obesity, much greater fitness and less polution. And everyone speaks beautiful English (essential if no one else speaks your language elsewhere in the world).
It’s Sunday and bells are ringing all over the place. So I thought I would go to church - but the most famous and imposing Nieuw Kirk isn’t a church anymore - it’s a museum. So then I went to the Oude Kirk, but it’s not a church anymore either - it’s become a restaurant. Another big building that looked like a church (but was originally a very ornate Post Office) turned out to be a shopping mall! So I went back to the Oude Kirk which I realized (there were a few clues) is paradoxically situated in the middle of the Red Light district! I guess that the oldest profession, eating, shopping and worshiping are all ONE these days! And anywhere is sacred if we choose it to be.
As I chat with people, the lesson is re-enforced for me that we need to spend more time with people who are different from us and learn from them and learn to love them. Thinking about our troubled world, perhaps we might be ONE again, instead of being separate, if we learned more about those we fear and listened to them better. We can start now.
No, make that, I can start now.
May 22nd, 2006 at 8:34 am
Dear Lance,
What a pleasure to look at your blog and read some of the uplifting stories. I am just in the throes of getting my own blog up and running and hope to do my part in educating people to gentler ways of healing themselves. In some ways it is like your own quest, to unite people in positive ways.
I look to you for inspiration as I go on my own journey. I hope I can welcome as many interested people as you have. Perhaps if you find my blog interesting you will forward it to your own mailing list. It would be appreciated.
Hope your trip to Amsterdam continues to bring you success.
My best regards.
John board at, http://johnboard.blogspot.com/
May 23rd, 2006 at 3:41 pm
Dear Lance,
Pleasant syncronicities allowed me to enter what once used to be a church in Amsterdam, my beloved city, and listened to your lecture on oneness and leadership, yesterday. I am not an executive or a financial advisor, I devote my attention to communication and I am eager to receive as many messages and testimonials as possible about the awakening of humanking from its long sleep/nightmare. Thank you being among the new leaders/guides of this new phase of our common history. You certainly inspired me in a major way to overcome an old issue and be free to pursue my goals, from the bottom of my heart.
Go shining
Simonetta
May 25th, 2006 at 5:25 pm
“Sympathy and pity come naturally. But truly understanding a person or group of people may require you to put yourself in their shoes, and that requires empathy. A careful process of teaching and field trips can lead students toward this frame of mind, and a greater understanding of the people around them.” I think you will enjoy this article on “empathy education”:http://www.monitor.upeace.org/innerpg.cfm?id_article=366 from Sabrina Sideris. She is fellow Masters student at the University for Peace. It speaks directly to the point you make about needing to spend more time with people who are different from us and learn from them and learn to love them by describing a touching personal experience.