 |
Perspective
Volume XX Number 1
The writer of the song "The Bear Went Over the Mountain" seems disappointed with the results of the bear's climb. But is that disappointment justified? Perhaps the bear had taken his first steps toward enlightenment. He had realized that he had only one point from which he viewed everything - the side of the mountain that was home to him - and so he lumbered clumsily over the mountain to see how the world looked from the other side. So often we don't even realize that we have a perspective, a familiar, but limited, point of view from which our responses flow. The feature article by Jorge Waxemberg examines how important it is to be aware of our point of view, how to suspend or shift it at will and how to expand it, as the broader our point of view is, the wiser are our decisions. A sense of humor can be a real asset in developing inner flexibility of this kind. In Perspective: It's a Funny Thing, Dr. Dunkelblau, a psychotherapist who takes humor seriously, shows us how he uses laughter to gently ease people out of a point of view that is causing pain to themselves and others. Creating silence inside ourselves and gardening are two other, very different, strategies for becoming more conscious of our fundamental point of view. It takes curiosity and effort to see how we see. There's really no way we can be |
|
