Articles

Here are some illustrations from some of Ruth’s recent presentations, some articles she’s written, and some of her interviews… enjoy!

Scroll down to the bottom to hear some of the radio interviews Ruth has done.

States of Consciousness Presentation

There are many models of what consciousness is and how it works, ranging from the ancient Egyptian and Vedic models to Freud to Hawkens and Wilber, and all of them have some useful insights to offer us. But none of them is complete in itself.

We’d like to believe that we live in a “normal” state of consciousness and occasionally explore “altered” states of consciousness, but in fact, that’s not true. Think about it: when you’re beginning to wake up, is that the same state of consciousness as when you’re driving or sitting in a meeting? When you’re playing with kids, is that the same state of consciousness as when you’re doing your taxes? We all move through dozens of what Charles Tart calls “discrete states of consciousness” every day, and some of them improve our quality of life–while others can literally cause illness and others forms of distress. And the good news is… we can choose!

Psychiatrist David Hawkins offers a model of consciousness as related to chakras and worldviews:

David Hawkins' Map of Consciousness from www.veritaspub.com

Check back for more of the presentation…

Spiritual Entrepreneurship
One of the more interesting trends of the past decades has been the emergence of new spiritual organizations and movements around the world. Most of these have been spearheaded by a few individuals, using all the techniques and skills of traditional entrepreneurship, with an additional twist—the ability to generate a physical-emotional state in their followers that feels empowering and enlightening at the same time. Another emerging trend has been the dissolution of the authoritarian model of leadership/management toward a more egalitarian and participatory approach. That these two shifts are occurring is not too surprising, given some recent theoretical models of organization and human consciousness.
Defining Terms
Entrepreneur—a leader who is creating new organizations/processes for production and/or distribution of material goods in a way that provides a return on investment for those participating. read more…

Models of Reality
Across human cultures, all the different spiritual traditions are culturally defined ways to describe our human experience as something more than physical and to help individuals step beyond that. They’re based in a fundamental understanding, based on experience, that there’s more to being human than simply birth, procreation, and death—and that there’s a way in which we’re all connected: to each other, and to the rest of the universe(s).

One model that works for me is to say that the All That Is consists of 3 aspects: Power, Spirit, Substance. The Substance may be said to be the quantum substrate that takes form in the presence of consciousness. The Spirit may be said to be the individuation of the All into different frames of consciousness. The Power may be said to be the motive force, showing up as the things we call Love, the Law of Attraction, the Law of Circulation, etc. and sustaining both the Spirit and the Substance in their myriad forms.

What’s Real, by that model, is unformed Substance interpenetrated by Spirit and motivated by Power. “The world” is therefore, by definition, not Real, since it’s constantly changing form. It’s the effect, the result, of consciousness held as separate from the All That Is, operating in fear and attempting to fill what it perceives as “void” with stuff. The model says that our experience may be more or less Real depending on our sense of separation from other aspects of the All That Is… read more…

Stages in Spiritual Development
In modern-day America, one is either religious, spiritual, or not. The idea that we can mature in our religious or spiritual practice is almost unheard-of.

Yet, across the millennia and across cultures, humanity has created and experienced lengthy training programs in order to advance to higher understandings and greater spiritual power—with the ultimate goal being what Christians call theosis, Oneness with God. read more…

Income Streams
In our culture, we’re trained to think that if we get a good job with a good salary, we can feel safe and secure. Sadly, too many of us have learned that a salary is only as secure as the company it comes from and we’ve no control over when it ends.

As a result, many of us decide to set up our own businesses, thinking we’ll have more control. Unfortunately, as economists are delighted to tell us, more small businesses fail in the first 3 years than survive. (A good share of those are deliberate closing-and-reopening processes for tax and other personal purposes, but that’s another story.) And even for those that survive, the income stream is now dependent on a consistent customer base—which is never guaranteed.

So, self-employed or not, I recommend 4 income streams for everyone… read more…

Is Leadership a Particle or a Wave?
Today, anyone seeking to understand organizational process discovers that there’s far more going on in the formation and maintenance of an organization than may be measurable by the traditional tools of classical physics or psychology. If we truly want to know how things happen in an organization, we must explore the possibilities of applying some of these ideas. For example, if, in fact, human interaction is most accurately described as overlapping fields, what are those fields composed of and how are they formed? If, in fact, an organization is maintained by mutual causal processes, what is the nature of those processes and the elements involved in them? read more…

Always Living
One of the most difficult things in life to experience is the separation we feel when someone we care about has left their body behind and moved on to a new life—seemingly without us.

We feel lost.

Sometimes we feel betrayed.

Often we feel abandoned, and angry at them for moving on without us.

They weren’t supposed to move on and leave us here. They were supposed to always be here with us.

Always.

Later, we feel a numbness, the deep emptiness of grief, whenever we think of them.

(This, by the way, is NOT depression—it’s grief: the simple and natural response of the body-mind to loss. You don’t need to be treated for it; you simply need time to move through the process…typically 1-3 years for a close relationship, a few weeks for a job or car, a few months for a major move).

When I was a Navy wife, moving on was part of the game. Orders would come and close friendships would be ripped apart as people were assigned new duty stations. Fortunately, few of our friends were lost in battle…but still, we never knew if we’d ever see each other again.

So I got used to “situational” friendships. They lasted as long as they lasted, and you gave thanks for what came your way—both while they were there and when you remembered them over the years that followed.

Turned out to be…read more…

Looking Back for a Path to Peace
It’s been said that we can’t solve a problem at the level of the problem. Addressing the problem of world peace requires, therefore, that we step outside of the present time and space and take a longer view… read more…

Looking Forward to a Possibility
Consider the possibility of a large number of nations working together to get themselves off of oil as their primary fuel source. What would it take?

The design process is always the same: whether for a meal, an invasion, or a multi-national project. First, get clear about your intentions. Then look at what’s needed to accomplish them. An assessment of existing resources follows, with a plan for acquiring the missing pieces. Then agreement among all the participants—with a shared commitment to do whatever it takes, within agreed-upon limits, to get the job done. A test of the approach makes sure it will work.
Then the work begins… read more…

Women & Mental Illness
Women become objects in this culture in a number of ways. First of all, they are not as physically strong as, and so are not “equal” to the men who embrace “Taker” values. Second, women are genetically “programmed” to perceive things differently: using the dispersed awareness of a multi-tasking gatherer and homemaker, rather than the focused concentration of a hunter. Third, women’s brains are structured so that there’s more interaction between the right, “relational-holistic-metaphoric” side of the brain and the left, “linear-analytic” side of the brain—leading them to use different systems of logic and memory than most of their male counterparts… read more…

Martin Luther King Jr. Today
This weekend we honor and celebrate the life of one of the Great Americans—Martin Luther King, Jr.—a man who, though he was not a president, is a truly great example of democracy in action. He has become the icon of the civil rights movement if the 1960s—and, like too many others, he was martyred for his willingness to speak and live the truth as he saw it.

Most of us have been taught to remember Rev. King as a Southern Baptist preacher who led what were then called “Negro” Americans to demand their rights under the Constitution, and mobilized millions of souls with his “I Have a Dream” speech, delivered almost extemporaneously at the Lincoln Memorial during the march on Washington in August of 1963.

Each year, we are shown clips from this speech, reminding us that he told his audience, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by their character…” This is admirable enough, but in that same speech, he also said, “Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy.” read more…

What Use is the Lenten Season?
As we experience the change of seasons, watching buds grow on the trees and shrubs, watching the birds return, seeing longer and longer days, some of us welcome the new life easily and readily. We’re ready to get our hands into the garden soil, or to take long walks in the woods. Others long for the long dark nights of winter, in front of the fire with a good book or film, or on the computer or telephone with friends. Still others see the first life of spring and are reminded of past losses in their lives—and feel a deep, pervading sadness that they don’t understand. They are usually grieving what wasn’t fully grieved in the moment… read more…

Understanding Easter
Throughout Christendom, the holiest day of the year is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Vernal (spring) equinox. We call it Easter. And this year it falls on Sunday, April 24.
It moves because it’s tied to the Jewish Passover feast, which, according to the Gospels, was the last meal Jesus the Christ shared with his disciples: the Last Supper.

Passover is when Jewish people honor their salvation from Egypt. As seen in Ten Commandments, they were told to stay up that night, rather than go to bed, and feast on lamb, painting lamb’s blood on their door so God’s Angel of Death would “pass over” them and only kill Egyptians. The Hebrew Torah (the Christian Old Testament) says to honor this night each year, remembering how God delivered His children from slavery and death. And Jesus and his disciples, being good Jews, followed the prescribed ritual… read more…

Understanding the “10 Commandments” And Their True Meaning for Our Lives

Most English-speaking people over the past several centuries were taught their language and their religion by reading from America’s and Europe’s most popular book: The Bible.

Christians grew up on a Bible that includes two sections: The Old Testament and The New Testament. Jews grew up on one that’s roughly comparable to the Christian Old Testament, called Torah. Catholic Christians have more books in their Bible than Protestant Christians, but most Catholics have been encouraged not to read it, instead being taught portions of it in the mass and in weekly religion classes called “catechism”, or CCD. The Protestant Reformation was, in part, a reversal of that norm. The Reformers brought the sacred text into the household when Martin Luther (who, the story goes, had never seen a Bible ‘til long after he’d been granted the degree of Doctor of Divinity) translated the Latin version he’d found into German and gave it to a friend to be printed in large numbers on Herr Gutenberg’s brand new invention, the printing press (nice timing, that!).

Within a hundred years, the King James translation was available to English-speaking people, based in large part on Luther’s translation into German from the Latin, which scholars have long known was translated from the Greek that the New Testament was originally written in and into which most of the Old Testament had been translated about 200 years later. That translation was from the form of Hebrew in use at the time, which was considerably different from both modern Hebrew and the “proto-Hebrew” of the original texts of the first 5 books (which we know as Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, or, collectively “The Pentateuch”) which were written over 1000 years before that.

When we understand that what we read in English today was written thousands of years ago by people who spoke a very different language and thought very differently, and that it’s been translated multiple times over centuries, by many different people, all of whom thought differently about the world than we do, we begin to realize that what the original writers said and what we hear may be radically different. read more…