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MEDITATION AND GUIDED IMAGERY:

"A Zen-inspired blend of meditation, breathing exercises and focus techniques are in vogue in corporate America—championed by blue-chip employers like Google Inc. and General Mills Inc. as a simple but potent mind-sharpening tool." Gershman, Jacob. "

Lawyers Go Zen, With Few Objections." WSJ. June 18, 2015.

Accessed September 20, 2015 by Starfish, E603A

Lovingkindness is a form of meditation designed to cultivate feelings of warmth and kindness to all people, including oneself, the researchers said. Practicing the technique may activate a soothing-caring regulation system that is probably deficient in chronic self-critics, they suggest [that] this practice may...... help in breaking down perfectionist tendencies. I know that at least for me, if I choose to allow myself forgiveness, encouragement, and grace, then I will be happier and more peaceful. The harshest of "self-critics" can use this meditation to learn how to better handle their self-judging nature. When we are less demanding of ourselves, we can in turn, be less demanding of others.

Lukits, Ann. "After Meditation, Self-Critical People Ease Up." WSJ. August 13, 2015. Accessed September 20, 2015 by Starfish, E603A

The Other Side of the Hedge

Dass Guided Imagery

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TODAY'S ACTIVITIES:

Dass Guided Imagery focused on sending light and love

B and W pairs 5 minutes; QUIZ; LEADER: BLACK BEAR;

   

REQUIRED READING:

Fowler, WE ARE ALL BESIDE OURSELVES, 1; first third of the novel: Part One and Part Two, pp. 5-103;   must bring book to class or -10

338-341     Kingsolver, Fowler review

 

possible topics: family of man, family of all living beings* ......distinctively human vs. distinctively animal traits, scientific experiments, language, emotions, abstractions, allusions,....

*"FAMILY" the word is derived from the Latin familia, usually translated "household," and from famulus, usually translated "servant." Both of these root terms invite animals into the family, most commonly defined as "the body of persons who live in one house or under one head, including parents, children, servants, etc." (OED).  That "etc." is quite inviting, in view of the more specific definitions of "family" in the O.E.D.  My favorite is the application of the term "Happy Family" to"a collection of birds and animals of different natures and propensities living together in harmony in one cage." The OED citations begin with P.T. Barnum's recollection that he visited such a family at Coventry in 1844. More importantly, in Victorian science "family" meant specifically "a group of allied genera." The Chambers Encyclopedia of 1753 is the first OED citation for this word: "The bream and the herring, though very different in genus, may yet be brought into the same Family." A related definition of "family" is "those descended or claiming descent from a common ancestor: a house, kindred, lineage" (OED). In 1859 The Origin of Species proved that the lineage of all living beings could be traced back to common ancestors, demonstrating that animals are indeed our "kindred": members, like us, of the "household" we now call the world ecosystem. A very powerful recent documentary about speciesism builds on this sense of family, identifying us all as Earthlings. 

            There are many more examples of families that include animals ranging from, for example, the popular Life of Pi to the Bible. Pi grows up in India with the animals in his father's zoo. When the family and some of the animals set out for Canada and the boat sinks, Pi cries, "And what of my extended family – birds, beasts, and reptiles? They too have drowned." He ends up on a small lifeboat with a few survivors, eventually only himself and a tiger, and they make it all the way to Mexico. Naturally, readers recall a similar boat full of animals who also survive a watery disaster. Noah has an even more extended "family" of animals, but when they reach land, the peaceful kingdom becomes a war within the "family": "And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth. And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered" (KJV: Genesis 9:1-2). This conflict, repressed at almost every meal, is a primary family secret.

            Despite this tension, extended families including animals pervaded nineteenth-century popular culture. Black Beauty, for instance, was almost as effective against one version of  speciesism as Uncle Tom's Cabin was against racism. We are familiar with the pet as a member of the Victorian family but this novel is an excellent example of how familia  as "household" includes servant animals as well as servants (famulus). John Manly, the coachman, says at one point: "where should I and Nelly have been if master and mistress and old Norman had only taken care of number one? Why – she in the workhouse and I hoeing turnips! Where would Black Beauty and Ginger have been if you had only thought of number one? Why, roasted to death!" No discrimination is made in that sentence between the humans and the animal servants. More importantly, this sense of family in the novel is expanded to the rest of the Christian world by the extension of "love thy neighbor as thy self" to animal as well as human neighbors.

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RECOMMENDED READING: recent research on similarities and differences between homo sapiens and other animals

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REVIEW, CONNECT, HAMMER INTO UNITY: homo sapiens and other animals