the only thing unchanged is Change

2012-01-20T00:39:00.000-08:00

Everyday Loyalties and Betrayals in Personal Relationships
Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 1997 14: 655

reading list

2012-01-20T00:36:00.000-08:00

Baxter, L. A. (1986). Gender differences in the heterosexual relationship rules embedded in
break-up accounts. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 3, 289–306.

Emmers, T. M., & Canary, D. J. (1996). The effect of uncertainty reducing strategies on young
couples’ relational repair and intimacy. Communication Quarterly, 44, 166–182.

Feeney, J. A. (2004). Hurt feelings in couple relationships: Toward integrative models of the
negative effects of hurtful events. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 21, 487–508.

Feeney, J. A. (2005). Hurt feelings in couple relationships: Exploring the role of attachment
and perceptions of personal injury. Personal Relationships, 12, 253–271.

Kowalski, R. M., Walker, S., Wilkinson, R., Queen, A., & Sharpe, B. (2003). Lying, cheating,
complaining, and other aversive interpersonal behaviors: A narrative examination of the
darker side of relationships. Journal of Social and Personal Relationship, 20, 471–490.

Leary, M. R., Springer,C., Negel, L., Ansell, E., & Evans, K. (1998). The causes, phenomenology,
and consequences of hurt feelings. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1225–1237.

Planalp. S., & Honeycutt, J. M. (1985). Events that increase uncertainty in personal relationships.
Human Communication Research, 11, 593–604.

Roloff, M. E., Soule, K. P., & Carey, C. M. (2001). Reasons for remaining in a relationship and
responses to relational transgressions. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 18,
362–385.

Vangelisti, A. L., & Crumley, L. P. (1998). Reactions to messages that hurt: The influence of
relational contexts. Communication Monographs, 65, 173–196.

Vangelisti, A. L., & Young, S. L. (2000). When words hurt: The effects of perceived intentionality
on interpersonal relationships. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 17,
393–424.

Young, S. L. (2004). Factors that influence recipients’ appraisals of hurtful communication.
Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 21, 291–303.

Liberation from Ignorance, from Sorrow

2012-01-19T19:48:00.000-08:00

We listen with hope and fear; we seek the light of another but are not alertly passive to be able to understand. If the liberated seems to fulfill our desires we accept him; if not, we continue our search for the one who will; what most of us desire is gratification at different levels. What is important is not how to recognize one who is liberated but how to understand yourself. No authority here or hereafter can give you knowledge of yourself; without self-knowledge there is no liberation from ignorance, from sorrow. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

2012-01-19T01:15:00.000-08:00

Characteristics and Consequences of Expectation Violations in Close Relationships
Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 1998 15: 365

2012-01-19T00:25:00.001-08:00

The Phenomenology of Intimacy
Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 1992 9: 467

Free at the Beginning

2012-01-18T17:20:00.000-08:00

If we can understand the compulsion behind our desire to dominate or to be dominated, then perhaps we can be free from the crippling effects of authority. We crave to be certain, to be right, to be successful, to know; and this desire for certainty, for permanence, builds up within ourselves the authority of personal experience, while outwardly it creates the authority of society, of the family, of religion, and so on. But merely to ignore authority, to shake off its outward symbols, is of very little significance.To break away from one tradition and conform to another, to leave this leader and follow that, is but a superficial gesture. If we are to be aware of the whole process of authority, if we are to see the inwardness of it, if we are to understand and transcend the desire for certainty, then we must have extensive awareness and insight, we must be free, not at the end, but at the beginning. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

M.I.T. Expands Its Free Online Courses

2012-01-17T22:10:00.000-08:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/19/education/mit-expands-free-online-courses-offering-certificates.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/19/education/mit-expands-free-online-courses-offering-certificates.html

Listening Without Effort

2012-01-17T21:49:00.000-08:00

You are now listening to me; you are not making an effort to pay attention, you are just listening; and if there is truth in what you hear, you will find a remarkable change taking place in you -a change that is not premeditated or wished for, a transformation, a complete revolution in which the truth alone is master and not the creations of your mind. And if I may suggest it, you should listen in that way to everything -not only to what I am saying, but also to what other people are saying, to the birds, to the whistle of a locomotive, to the noise of the bus going by. You will find that the more you listen to everything, the greater is the silence, and that silence is then not broken by noise. It is only when you are resisting something, when you are putting up a barrier between yourself and that to which you do not want to listen, it is only then that there is a struggle. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Listening to Yourself

2012-01-17T20:02:00.000-08:00

Q: While I am here listening to you, I seem to understand, but when I am away from here, I don't understand, even though I try to apply what you have been saying.

K: . . . You are listening to yourself, and not to the speaker. If you are listening to the speaker, he becomes your leader, your way to understanding -which is a horror, an abomination, because you have then established the hierarchy of authority. So what you are doing here is listening to yourself. You are looking at the picture the speaker is painting, which is your own picture, not the speaker's. If that much is clear, that you are looking at yourself, then you can say, "Well, I see myself as I am, and I don't want to do anything about it" and that is the end of it. But if you say, "I see myself as I am, and there must be a change," then you begin to work out of your own understanding which is entirely different from applying what the speaker is saying. But if, as the speaker is speaking, you are listening to yourself, then out of that listening there is clarity, there is sensitivity; out of that listening the mind becomes healthy, strong. Neither obeying nor resisting, it becomes alive, intense and it is only such a human being who can create a new generation, a new world. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Learning Has No Past

2012-01-17T19:38:00.000-08:00

Wisdom is something that has to be discovered by each one, and it is not the result of knowledge. Knowledge and wisdom do not go together. Wisdom comes when there is the maturity of self-knowing. Without knowing oneself, order is not possible, and therefore there is no virtue.Now, learning about oneself, and accumulating knowledge about oneself, are two different things. A mind that is acquiring knowledge is never learning. What it is doing is this: It is gathering to itself information, experience as knowledge, and from the background of what it has gathered, it experiences, it learns; and therefore it is never really learning, but always knowing, acquiring.Learning is always in the active present; it has no past. The moment you say to yourself, "I have learned," it has already become knowledge, and from the background of that knowledge you can accumulate, translate, but you cannot further learn. It is only a mind that is not acquiring, but always learning, it is only such a mind that can understand this whole entity that we call the "me," the self. I have to know myself, the structure, the nature, the significance of the total entity; but I can't do that burdened with my previous knowledge, with my previous experience, or with a mind that is conditioned, for then I am not learning, I am merely interpreting, translating, looking with an eye that is already clouded by the past. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Authority Prevents Learning

2012-01-17T19:30:00.000-08:00

We generally learn through study, through books, through experience, or through being instructed. Those are the usual ways of learning. We commit to memory what to do and what not to do, what to think and what not to think, how to feel, how to react. Through experience, through study, through analysis, through probing, through introspective examination, we store up knowledge as memory; and memory then responds to further challenges and demands, from which there is more and more learning. What is learned is committed to memory as knowledge, and that knowledge functions whenever there is a challenge, or whenever we have to do something. Now I think there is a totally different way of learning, and I am going to talk a little bit about it; but to understand it, and to learn in this different way, you must be completely rid of authority; otherwise, you will merely be instructed, and you will repeat what you have heard. That is why it is very important to understand the nature of authority. Authority prevents learning - learning that is not the accumulation of knowledge as memory. Memory always responds in patterns; there is no freedom. A man who is burdened with knowledge, with instructions, who is weighted down by the things he has learned, is never free. He may be most extraordinarily erudite, but his accumulation of knowledge prevents him from being free, and therefore he is incapable of learning. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

The Old Mind Is Bound by Authority

2012-01-17T17:19:00.000-08:00

The problem then is: Is it possible for a mind that has been so conditioned -brought up in innumerable sects, religions, and all the superstitions, fears-to break away from itself and thereby bring about a new mind?.The old mind is essentially the mind that is bound by authority. I am not using the word authority in the legalistic sense; but by that word I mean authority as tradition, authority as knowledge, authority as experience, authority as the means of finding security and remaining in that security, outwardly or inwardly, because, after all, that is what the mind is always seeking -a place where it can be secure, undisturbed. Such authority may be the self-imposed authority of an idea or the so-called religious idea of God, which has no reality to a religious person. An idea is not a fact, it is a fiction. God is a fiction; you may believe in it, but still it is a fiction. But to find God you must completely destroy the fiction, because the old mind is the mind that is frightened, is ambitious, is fearful of death, of living, and of relationship; and it is always, consciously or unconsciously, seeking a permanency, security. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

To Destroy Is To Create

2012-01-16T23:09:00.000-08:00

To be free, you have to examine authority, the whole skeleton of authority, tearing to pieces the whole dirty thing. And that requires energy, actual physical energy, and also, it demands psychological energy. But the energy is destroyed, is wasted when one is in conflict.So when there is the understanding of the whole process of conflict, there is the ending of conflict, there is abundance of energy. Then you can proceed, tearing down the house that you have built throughout the centuries and that has no meaning at all.You know, to destroy is to create. We must destroy, not the buildings, not the social or economic system -this comes about daily- but the psychological, the unconscious and the conscious defenses, securities that one has built up rationally, individually, deeply, and superficially. We must tear through all that to be utterly defenseless, because you must be defenseless to love and have affection. Then you see and understand ambition, authority; and you begin to see when authority is necessary and at what level -the authority of the policeman and no more. Then there is no authority of learning, no authority of knowledge, no authority of capacity, no authority that function assumes and which becomes status. To understand all authority -of the gurus, of the Masters, and others- requires a very sharp mind, a clear brain, not a muddy brain, not a dull brain. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Virtue Has No Authority

2012-01-16T23:01:00.000-08:00

Can the mind be free from authority, which means free from fear, so that it is no longer capable of following? If so, this puts an end to imitation, which becomes mechanical. After all, virtue, ethics, is not a repetition of what is good. The moment it becomes mechanical, it ceases to be virtue. Virtue is something that must be from moment to moment, like humility. Humility cannot be cultivated, and a mind that has no humility is incapable of learning. So virtue has no authority. The social morality is no morality at all; it's immoral because it admits competition, greed, ambition, and therefore society is encouraging immorality. Virtue is something that transcends morality. Without virtue there is no order, and order is not according to a pattern, according to a formula. A mind that follows a formula through disciplining itself to achieve virtue creates for itself the problems of immorality. An external authority that the mind objectifies, apart from the law, as God, as moral, and so on, becomes destructive when the mind is seeking to understand what real virtue is. We have our own authority as experience, as knowledge, which we are trying to follow. There is this constant repetition, imitation, which we all know. Psychological authority -not the authority of the law, the policeman who keeps order- the psychological authority, which each one has, becomes destructive of virtue because virtue is something that is living, moving. As you cannot possibly cultivate humility, as you cannot possibly cultivate love, so also virtue cannot be cultivated; and there is great beauty in that. Virtue is nonmechanical, and without virtue there is no foundation for clear thinking. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Look with Intensity

2012-01-13T00:01:00.000-08:00

It seems to me that learning is astonishingly difficult, as is listening also. We never actually listen to anything because our mind is not free; our ears are stuffed up with those things that we already know, so listening becomes extraordinarily difficult. I think, or rather, it is a fact that if one can listen to something with all of one's being, with vigor, with vitality, then the very act of listening is a liberative factor, but unfortunately you never do listen, as you have never learned about it. After all, you only learn when you give your whole being to something. When you give your whole being to mathematics, you learn; but when you are in a state of contradiction, when you do not want to learn but are forced to learn, then it becomes merely a process of accumulation. To learn is like reading a novel with innumerable characters; it requires your full attention, not contradictory attention. If you want to learn about a leaf -a leaf of the spring or a leaf of the summer you must really look at it, see the symmetry of it, the texture of it, the quality of the living leaf. There is beauty, there is vigor, there is vitality in a single leaf. So to learn about the leaf, the flower, the cloud, the sunset, or a human being, you must look with all intensity. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

To Learn, the Mind Must Be Quiet

2012-01-12T23:42:00.000-08:00

To discover anything new you must start on your own; you must start on a journey completely denuded, especially of knowledge, because it is very easy, through knowledge and belief, to have experiences; but those experiences are merely the products of self-projection and therefore utterly unreal, false. If you are to discover for yourself what is the new, it is no good carrying the burden of the old, especially knowledge -the knowledge of another, however great. You use knowledge as a means of self-projection, security, and you want to be quite sure that you have the same experiences as the Buddha or the Christ or X. But a man who is protecting himself constantly through knowledge is obviously not a truth-seeker.For the discovery of truth there is no path. When you want to find something new, when you are experimenting with anything, your mind has to be very quiet, has it not? If your mind is crowded, filled with facts, knowledge, they act as an impediment to the new; the difficulty for most of us is that the mind has become so important, so predominantly significant, that it interferes constantly with anything that may be new, with anything that may exist simultaneously with the known. Thus knowledge and learning are impediments for those who would seek, for those who would try to understand that which is timeless. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Learning Is Not Experience

2012-01-12T23:25:00.000-08:00

The word 'learning' has great significance. There are two kinds of learning. For most of us learning means the accumulation of knowledge, of experience, of technology, of a skill, of a language. There is also psychological learning, learning through experience, either the immediate experiences of life, which leave a certain residue, of tradition, of the race, of society. There are these two kinds of learning how to meet life: psychological and physiological; outward skill and inward skill. There is really no line of demarcation between the two; they overlap. We are not considering for the moment the skill that we learn through practice, the technological knowledge that we acquire through study. What we are concerned about is the psychological learning that we have acquired through the centuries or inherited as tradition, as knowledge, as experience. This we call learning, but I question whether it is learning at all. I am not talking about learning a skill, a language, a technique, but I am asking whether the mind ever learns psychologically. It has learned, and with what it has learned it meets the challenge of life. It is always translating life or the new challenge according to what it has learned. That is what we are doing. Is that learning? Doesn't learning imply something new, something that I don't know and am learning? If I am merely adding to what I already know, it is no longer learning. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

When Is Learning Possible?

2012-01-12T23:12:00.000-08:00

To inquire and to learn is the function of the mind. By learning I do not mean the mere cultivation of memory or the accumulation of knowledge, but the capacity to think clearly and sanely without illusion, to start from facts and not from beliefs and ideals. There is no learning if thought originates from conclusions. Merely to acquire information or knowledge is not to learn. Learning implies the love of understanding and the love of doing a thing for itself. Learning is possible only when there is no coercion of any kind. And coercion takes many forms, does it not? There is coercion through influence, through attachment or threat, through persuasive encouragement, or subtle forms of reward.Most people think that learning is encouraged through comparison, whereas the contrary is the fact. Comparison brings about frustration and merely encourages envy, which is called competition. Like other forms of persuasion, comparison prevents learning and breeds fear. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Learning Is Never Accumulative

2012-01-12T22:52:00.000-08:00

Learning is one thing and acquiring knowledge is another. Learning is a continuous process, not a process of addition, not a process which you gather and then from there act. Most of us gather knowledge as memory, as idea, store it up as experience, and from there act. That is, we act from knowledge, technological knowledge, knowledge as experience, knowledge as tradition, knowledge that one has derived through one's particular idiosyncratic tendencies; with that background, with that accumulation as knowledge, as experience, as tradition, we act. In that process there is no learning. Learning is never accumulative; it is a constant movement. I do not know if you have ever gone into this question at all: what is learning and what is the acquisition of knowledge? Learning is never accumulative. You cannot store up learning and then from that storehouse act. You learn as you are going along. Therefore, there is never a moment of retrogression or deterioration or decline. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

2012-01-12T00:32:00.003-08:00

book--- Before I go to sleep : a novel

2012-01-12T00:31:00.001-08:00

book--- What I wish I knew when I was 20 : a crash course on making your place in the world

Kevin Leman

2012-01-10T01:37:00.001-08:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Leman

2012-01-09T19:38:00.001-08:00

http://learningplace.com.au/deliver/content.asp?pid=31363

Listening Brings Freedom

2012-01-05T17:10:00.000-08:00

When you make an effort to listen, are you listening? Is not that very effort a distraction that prevents listening? Do you make an effort when you listen to something that gives you delight? . . . You are not aware of the truth, nor do you see the false as the false, as long as your mind is occupied in any way with effort, with comparison, with justification or condemnation. . . .Listening itself is a complete act; the very act of listening brings its own freedom. But are you really concerned with listening, or with altering the turmoil within? If you would listen. . . in the sense of being aware of your conflicts and contradictions without forcing them into any particular pattern of thought, perhaps they might altogether cease. You see, we are constantly trying to be this or that, to achieve a particular state, to capture one kind of experience and avoid another, so the mind is everlastingly occupied with something; it is never still to listen to the noise of its own struggles and pains. Be simple. . . and don't try to become something or to capture some experience. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Human Genome Project

2012-01-01T21:15:00.001-08:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Genome_Project

Second Life

2012-01-01T21:14:00.001-08:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life

2012-01-01T21:07:00.001-08:00

wikinomics

2012-01-01T19:24:00.001-08:00

Object relations couple therapy
Scharff, David E.

2012-01-01T19:23:00.001-08:00

The highest goal : the secret that sustains you in every moment
by Ray, Michael L.

Generosity of the Heart Is the Beginning of Meditation

2012-01-01T18:58:00.000-08:00

We are going to talk about something that needs a mind that can penetrate very profoundly. We must begin very near because we cannot go very far if we do not know how to begin very close, if we do not know how to take the first step. The flowering of meditation is goodness, and the generosity of the heart is the beginning of meditation. We have talked about many things concerning life, authority, ambition, fear, greed, envy, death, time; we have talked about many things. If you observe, if you have gone into it, if you have listened rightly, those are all the foundation for a mind that is capable of meditating. You cannot meditate if you are ambitious, you may play with the idea of meditation. If your mind is authority-ridden, bound by tradition, accepting, following, you will never know what it is to meditate on this extraordinary beauty.It is the pursuit of its own fulfillment through time that prevents generosity. And you need a generous mind, not only a wide mind, a mind that is full of space, but also a heart that gives without thought, without a motive, and that does not seek any reward in return. But to give whatever little one has or however much one has that quality of spontaneity of outgoing, without any restriction, without any withholding, is necessary. There can be no meditation without generosity, without goodness which is to be free from pride, never to climb the ladder of success, never to know what it is to be famous; which is to die to whatever has been achieved, every minute of the day. It is only in such fertile ground that goodness can grow, can flower. And meditation is the flowering of goodness. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Meditation Is Essential to Life

2012-01-01T18:51:00.000-08:00

To understand this whole problem of influence, the influence of experience, the influence of knowledge, of inward and outward motives to find out what is true and what is false and to see the truth in the so-called false- all that requires tremendous insight, a deep inward comprehension of things as they are, does it not? This whole process is, surely, the way of meditation. Meditation is essential in life, in our everyday existence, as beauty is essential. The perception of beauty, the sensitivity to things, to the ugly as well as to the beautiful, is essential to see a beautiful tree, a lovely sky of an evening, to see the vast horizon where the clouds are gathering as the sun is setting. All this is necessary, the perception of beauty and the understanding of the way of meditation, because all that is life, as is also your going to the office, the quarrels, miseries, the perpetual strain, anxiety, the deep fears, love, and starvation. Now the understanding of this total process of existence -the influences, the sorrows, the daily strain, the authoritative outlook, the political actions, and so on- all this is life, and the process of understanding it all, and freeing the mind, is meditation. If one really comprehends this life then there is always a meditative process, always a process of contemplation,but not about something. To be aware of this whole process of existence, to observe it, to dispassionately enter into it, and to be free of it, is meditation. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Putting Aside Screens

2012-01-01T18:45:00.000-08:00

How do you listen? Do you listen with your projections, through your projection, through your ambitions, desires, fears, anxieties, through hearing only what you want to hear, only what will be satisfactory, what will gratify, what will give comfort, what will for the moment alleviate your suffering? If you listen through the screen of your desires, then you obviously listen to your own voice; you are listening to your own desires. And is there any other form of listening? Is it not important to find out how to listen not only to what is being said but to everything -to the noise in the streets, to the chatter of birds, to the noise of the tramcar, to the restless sea, to the voice of your husband, to your wife, to your friends, to the cry of a baby? Listening has importance only when one is not projecting one's own desires through which one listens. Can one put aside all these screens through which we listen, and really listen? - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Listen with Ease

2012-01-01T18:42:00.000-08:00

Have you ever sat very silently, not with your attention fixed on anything, not making an effort to concentrate, but with the mind very quiet, really still? Then you hear everything, don't you? You hear the far off noises as well as those that are nearer and those that are very close by, the immediate sounds;which means really that you are listening to everything. Your mind is not confined to one narrow little channel. If you can listen in this way, listen with ease, without strain, you will find an extraordinary change taking place within you, a change which comes without your volition, without your asking; and in that change there is great beauty and depth of insight. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Beyond the Noise of Words

2012-01-01T18:40:00.000-08:00

Listening is an art not easily come by, but in it there is beauty and great understanding. We listen with the various depths of our being, but our listening is always with a preconception or from a particular point of view. We do not listen simply; there is always the intervening screen of our own thoughts, conclusions, and prejudices. To listen there must be an inward quietness, a freedom from the strain of acquiring, a relaxed attention. This alert yet passive state is able to hear what is beyond the verbal conclusion. Words confuse; they are only the outward means of communication; but to commune beyond the noise of words, there must be in listening an alert passivity. Those who love may listen; but it is extremely rare to find a listener. Most of us are after results, achieving goals; we are forever overcoming and conquering, and so there is no listening. It is only in listening that one hears the song of the words. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Listening Without Thought

2012-01-01T18:37:00.000-08:00

I do not know whether you have listened to a bird. To listen to something demands that your mind be quiet -not a mystical quietness, but just quietness. I am telling you something, and to listen to me you have to be quiet, not have all kinds of ideas buzzing in your mind. When you look at a flower, you look at it, not naming it, not classifying it, not saying that it belongs to a certain species; when you do these, you cease to look at it. Therefore, I am saying that it is one of the most difficult things to listen -to listen to the communist, to the socialist, to the congressman, to the capitalist, to anybody, to your wife, to your children, to your neighbor, to the bus conductor, to the bird- just to listen. It is only when you listen without the idea, without thought, that you are directly in contact; and being in contact, you will understand whether what he is saying is true or false; you do not have to discuss. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Politeness theory

2011-12-29T22:50:00.000-08:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politeness_theory

Expectation Violations

2011-12-29T19:56:00.000-08:00

Characteristics and Consequences of Expectation Violations in Close Relationships
Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 1998 15: 365

reading list, Dec 30. 2011

2011-12-29T19:35:00.000-08:00

Clark, C. L., Shaver, P. R., & Abrahams, M. F. (1999). Strategic behaviors in romantic relationship initiation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25, 707–720.
Emmers, T. M., & Canary, D. J. (1996). The effect of uncertainty reducing strategies on young
couples’ relational repair and intimacy. Communication Quarterly, 44, 166–182.
Knobloch, L. K., & Solomon, D. H. (1999). Measuring the sources and content of relational uncertainty. Communication Studies, 50, 261–278.
Knobloch, L. K., & Solomon, D. H. (1999). Measuring the sources and content of relational
uncertainty. Communication Studies, 50, 261–278.
Knobloch, L. K., & Solomon, D. H. (2002a). Information seeking beyond initial interaction:
Negotiating relational uncertainty within close relationships. Human Communication
Research, 28, 243–257.
Knobloch, L. K., & Solomon, D. H. (2002b). Intimacy and the magnitude and experience of
episodic relational uncertainty within romantic relationships. Personal Relationships, 9,
457–478.
Knobloch, L. K., & Solomon, D. H. (2003). Responses to changes in relational uncertainty
within dating relationships: Emotions and communication strategies. Communication
Studies, 54, 282–305.
Knobloch, L. K., & Solomon, D. H. (2004). Interference and facilitation from partners in the
development of interdependence within romantic relationships. Personal Relationships, 11, 115–130.
Knobloch, L. K., Solomon, D. H., & Cruz, M. G. (2001). The role of relationship development and attachment in the experience of romantic jealousy. Personal Relationships, 8, 205–224.
Planalp, S., & Honeycutt, J. M. (1985). Events that increase uncertainty in personal relationships. Human Communication Research, 11, 593–604.
Solomon, D. H. (1997). A developmental model of intimacy and date request explicitness.
Communication Monographs, 64, 99–118.
Solomon, D. H., & Samp, J. A. (1998). Power and problem appraisal: Perceptual foundations of the chilling effect in dating relationships. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 15, 191–209.
Surra, C. A., & Hughes, D. K. (1997). Commitment processes in accounts of the development of premarital relationships. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 59, 5–21.
Wilson, T. D., & Kraft, D. (1993). Why do I love thee?: Effects of repeated introspections
about a dating relationship on attitudes toward the relationship. Personality on Social
Psychology Bulletin, 19, 409–418.

relational turbulence

2011-12-29T18:52:00.000-08:00

A model of relational turbulence: The role of intimacy, relational uncertainty, and interference from partners in appraisals of irritations
Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 2004 21: 795

The Phenomenology of Intimacy

2011-12-29T17:43:00.001-08:00

Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 1992 9: 467

Finding Silence

2011-12-29T17:15:00.000-08:00

If you have followed this inquiry into what is meditation, and have understood the whole process of thinking, you will find that the mind is completely still. In that total stillness of the mind, there is no watcher, no observer, and therefore no experiencer at all; there is no entity who is gathering experience, which is the activity of a self-centerd mind. Don't say, "That is samadhi";which is all nonsense, because you have only read of it in some book and have not discovered it for yourself. There is a vast difference between the word and the thing. The word is not the thing; the word door is not the door.So, to meditate is to purge the mind of its self-centered activity. And if you have come this far in meditation, you will find there is silence, a total emptiness. The mind is uncontaminated by society; it is no longer subject to any influence, to the pressure of any desire. It is completely alone, and being alone, untouched, it is innocent. Therefore there is a possibility for that which is timeless, eternal, to come into being.This whole process is meditation. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Free from the Net of Time

2011-12-29T00:04:00.000-08:00

Without meditation, there is no self-knowledge; without self-knowledge, there is no meditation. So you must begin to know what you are. You cannot go far without beginning near, without understanding your daily process of thought, feeling, and action. In other words, thought must understand its own working, and when you see yourself in operation, you will observe that thought moves from the known to the known. You cannot think about the unknown. That which you know is not real because what you know is only in time. To be free from the net of time is the important concern, not to think about the unknown, because you cannot think about the unknown. The answers to your prayers are of the known. To receive the unknown, the mind itself must become the unknown. The mind is the result of the thought process, the result of time, and this thought process must come to an end. The mind cannot think of that which is eternal, timeless; therefore, the mind must be free of time, the time process of the mind must be dissolved. Only when the mind is completely free from yesterday, and is therefore not using the present as a means to the future, is it capable of receiving the eternal. Therefore, our concern in meditation is to know oneself, not only superficially, but the whole content of the inner, hidden consciousness. Without knowing all that and being free of its conditioning, you cannot possibly go beyond the mind's limits. That is why the thought process must cease, and for this cessation there must be knowledge of oneself. Therefore meditation is the beginning of wisdom, which is the understanding of one's own mind and heart. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Meditation

2011-12-28T17:50:00.000-08:00

I am going step-by-step into what is meditation. Please don't wait till the end, hoping to have a complete description of how to meditate. What we are doing now is part of meditation.Now, what one has to do is to be aware of the thinker, and not try to resolve the contradiction and bring about an integration between thought and the thinker.The thinker is the psychological entity who has accumulated experience as knowledge; he is the time-bound center that is the result of ever-changing environmental influence, and from this center he looks, he listens, he experiences. As long as one does not understand the structure and the anatomy of this center, there must always be conflict, and a mind in conflict cannot possibly understand the depth and the beauty of meditation.In meditation there can be no thinker, which means that thought must come to an end -the thought that is urged forward by the desire to achieve a result. Meditation has nothing to do with achieving a result. It is not a matter of breathing in a particular way, or looking at your nose, or awakening the power to perform certain tricks, or any of the rest of that immature nonsense. Meditation is not something apart from life. When you are driving a car or sitting in a bus, when you are chatting aimlessly, when you are walking by yourself in a wood or watching a butterfly being carried along by the wind; to be choicelessly aware of all that is part of meditation. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

A Mind in the State of Creation

2011-12-28T17:43:00.000-08:00

Meditation is the emptying of the mind of all the things that the mind has put together. If you do that -perhaps you won't, but it doesn't matter, just listen to this- you will find that there is an extraordinary space in the mind, and that space is freedom. So you must demand freedom at the very beginning, and not just wait, hoping to have it at the end. You must seek out the significance of freedom in your work, in your relationships, in everything that you do. Then you will find that meditation is creation.Creation is a word that we all use so glibly, so easily. A painter puts on canvas a few colours and gets tremendously excited about it. It is his fulfillment, the means through which he expresses himself; it is his market in which to gain money or reputation and he calls that "creation"! Every writer "creates," and there are schools of "creative" writing, but none of that has anything to do with creation. It is all the conditioned response of a mind that lives in a particular society.The creation of which I am speaking is something entirely different. It is a mind that is in the state of creation. It may or it may not express that state. Expression has very little value. That state of creation has no cause, and therefore a mind in that state is every moment dying and living and loving and being. The whole of this is meditation. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Lay the Foundation Instantly

2011-12-28T17:28:00.000-08:00

A still mind is not seeking experience of any kind. And if it is not seeking and therefore is completely still, without any movement from the past and therefore free from the known, then you will find, if you have gone that far, that there is a movement of the unknown that is not recognized, that is not translatable, that cannot be put into words;then you will find that there is a movement which is of the immense. That movement is of the timeless because in that there is no time, nor is there space, nor something in which to experience, nor something to gain, to achieve. Such a mind knows what is creation -not the creation of the painter, the poet, the verbalizer; but that creation which has no motive, which has no expression. That creation is love and death.This whole thing from the beginning to the end is the way of meditation. A man who would meditate must understand himself. Without knowing yourself, you cannot go far. However much you may attempt to go far, you can go only so far as your own projection; and your own projection is very near, is very close, and does not lead you anywhere. Meditation is that process of laying the foundation instantly, immediately, and bringing about naturally, without any effort, that state of stillness. And only then is there a mind which is beyond time, beyond experience, and beyond knowing. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

2011-12-28T01:50:00.001-08:00

create space for life

2011-12-27T21:33:00.001-08:00

work is part of your life, not the whole of your life
create space for your life much more than your work

you are .....

2011-12-27T19:25:00.000-08:00

physically, you are what you choose to eat,to do
emotionally, you are what you choose to think , how you choose to feel
spiritually, you are what you "choose" to believe or not to believe

life is about feelings

2011-12-27T17:38:00.000-08:00

how do you feel this moment determines the quality of your life or existence

Know the Whole Content of One Thought

2011-12-27T01:49:00.000-08:00

Not being anything is the beginning of freedom. So if you are capable of feeling, of going into this you will find, as you become aware, that you are not free, that you are bound to very many different things, and that at the same time the mind hopes to be free. And you can see that the two are contradictory. So the mind has to investigate why it clings to anything. All this implies hard work. It is much more arduous than going to an office, than any physical labour, than all the sciences put together. Because the humble, intelligent mind is concerned with itself without being self-centered; therefore it has to be extraordinarily alert, aware, and that means real hard work every day, every hour, every minute. This demands insistent work because freedom does not come easily. Everything impedes -your wife, your husband, your son, your neighbor, your Gods, your religions, your tradition. All these impede you, but you have created them because you want security. And the mind that is seeking security can never find it. If you have watched a little in the world, you know there is no such thing as security. The wife dies, the husband dies, the son runs away,something happens. Life is not static, though we would like to make it so. No relationship is static because all life is movement. That is a thing to be grasped, the truth to be seen, felt, not something to be argued about. Then you will see, as you begin to investigate, that it is really a process of meditation.But do not be mesmerized by that word. To be aware of every thought, to know from what source it springs and what is its intention, that is meditation. And to know the whole content of one thought reveals the whole process of the mind. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Igniting the Flame of Self-Awareness

2011-12-27T01:40:00.000-08:00

If you find it difficult to be aware, then experiment with writing down every thought and feeling that arises throughout the day; write down your reactions of jealousy, envy, vanity, sensuality, the intentions behind your words, and so on.Spend some time before breakfast in writing them down, which may necessitate going to bed earlier and putting aside some social affair. If you write these things down whenever you can, and in the evening before sleeping look over all that you have written during the day, study and examine it without judgment, without condemnation, you will begin to discover the hidden causes of your thoughts and feelings, desires and words.Now, the important thing in this is to study with free intelligence what you have written down, and in studying it you will become aware of your own state. In the flame of self-awareness, of self-knowledge, the causes of conflict are discovered and consumed. You should continue to write down your thoughts and feelings, intentions and reactions, not once or twice, but for a considerable number of days until you are able to be aware of them instantly.Meditation is not only constant self-awareness, but constant abandonment of the self. Out of right thinking there is meditation, from which there comes the tranquility of wisdom; and in that serenity the highest is realized.Writing down what one thinks and feels, one's desires and reactions, brings about an inward awareness, the cooperation of the unconscious with the conscious, and this in turn leads to integration and understanding. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

The Way of Meditation

2011-12-27T01:35:00.000-08:00

Is truth something final, absolute, fixed? We would like it to be absolute because then we could take shelter in it. We would like it to be permanent because then we could hold on to it, find happiness in it. But is truth absolute, continuous, to be experienced over and over again? The repetition of experience is the mere cultivation of memory, is it not? In moments of quietness, I may experience a certain truth, but if I cling to that experience through memory and make it absolute, fixed -is that truth? Is truth the continuation, the cultivation of memory? Or, is truth to be found only when the mind is utterly still? When the mind is not caught in memories, not cultivating memory as the center of recognition, but is aware of everything I am saying, everything I am doing in my relationships, in my activities, seeing the truth of everything as it is from moment to moment; surely, that is the way of meditation, is it not? There is comprehension only when the mind is still, and the mind cannot be still as long as it is ignorant of itself. That ignorance is not dispelled through any form of discipline, through pursuing any authority, ancient or modern. Belief only creates resistance, isolation, and where there is isolation, there is no possibility of tranquillity. Tranquillity comes only when I understand the whole process of myself -the various entities in conflict with each other which compose the 'me'. As that is an arduous task, we turn to others to learn various tricks, which we call meditation. The tricks of the mind are not meditation. Meditation is the beginning of self-knowledge, and without meditation, there is no self-knowledge. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships

2011-12-22T17:03:00.000-08:00

http://www.amazon.com/Social-Intelligence-Science-Human-Relationships/dp/0553803522

IQ-- individual
EQ -- individual
SQ-- individual to individual

The Religious Man

2011-12-22T01:02:00.000-08:00

What is the state of the mind that says, "I do not know whether there is God, whether there is love," that is, when there is no response of memory? Please don't immediately answer the question to yourselves because if you do, your answer will be merely the recognition of what you think it should or should not be. If you say, "It is a state of negation," you are comparing it with something that you already know; therefore, that state in which you say, ""I do not know"" is nonexistent.So the mind that is capable of saying, "I do not know," is in the only state in which anything can be discovered. But the man who says, "I know," the man who has studied infinitely the varieties of human experience and whose mind is burdened with information, with encyclopedic knowledge, can he ever experience something which is not to be accumulated? He will find it extremely hard. When the mind totally puts aside all the knowledge that it has acquired, when for it there are no Buddhas, no Christs, no Masters, no teachers, no religions, no quotations; when the mind is completely alone, uncontaminated, which means that the movement of the known has come to an end; it is only then that there is a possibility of a tremendous revolution, a fundamental change. The religious man is he who does not belong to any religion, to any nation, to any race, who is inwardly completely alone, in a state of not-knowing, and for him the blessing of the sacred comes into being. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

I Do Not Know

2011-12-21T23:19:00.000-08:00

If one can really come to that state of saying, "I do not know," it indicates an extraordinary sense of humility; there is no arrogance of knowledge; there is no self-assertive answer to make an impression. When you can actually say, "I do not know," which very few are capable of saying, then in that state all fear ceases because all sense of recognition, the search into memory, has come to an end; there is no longer inquiry into the field of the known. Then comes the extraordinary thing. If you have so far followed what I am talking about, not just verbally, but if you are actually experiencing it, you will find that when you can say, "I do not know," all conditioning has stopped. And what then is the state of the mind?We are seeking something permanent -permanent in the sense of time, something enduring, everlasting. We see that everything about us is transient, in flux, being born, withering, and dying, and our search is always to establish something that will endure within the field of the known. But that which is truly sacred is beyond the measure of time; it is not to be found within the field of the known. The known operates only through thought, which is the response of memory to challenge. If I see that, and I want to find out how to end thinking, what am I to do? Surely, I must through self-knowledge, be aware of the whole process of my thinking. I must see that every thought, however subtle, however lofty, or however ignoble, stupid, has its roots in the known, in memory. If I see that very clearly, then the mind, when confronted with an immense problem, is capable of saying, "I do not know," because it has no answer. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Beyond the Limitations of Beliefs

2011-12-21T23:01:00.000-08:00

To be a theist or an atheist, to me, are both absurd. If you knew what truth is, what God is, you would neither be a theist nor an atheist, because in that awareness belief is unnecessary. It is the man who is not aware, who only hopes and supposes, who looks to belief or to disbelief to support him, and to lead him to act in a particular way.Now, if you approach it quite differently, you will find out for yourselves, as individuals, something real that is beyond all the limitations of beliefs, beyond the illusion of words. But that, the discovery of truth, or God, demands great intelligence, which is not assertion of belief or disbelief, but the recognition of the hindrances created by lack of intelligence. So to discover God or truth -and I say such a thing does exist, I have realized it- to recognize that, to realize that, the mind must be free of all the hindrances which have been created throughout the ages, based on self-protection and security. You cannot be free of security by merely saying that you are free. To penetrate the walls of these hindrances, you need to have a great deal of intelligence, not mere intellect. Intelligence, to me, is mind and heart in full harmony; and then you will find out for yourself, without asking anyone, what that reality is. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

True Religion

2011-12-18T20:55:00.000-08:00

Do you know what religion is? It is not the chant, it is not in the performance of puja, or any other ritual, it is not in the worship of tin gods or stone images, it is not in the temples and churches, it is not in the reading of the Bible or the Gita, it is not in the repeating of a sacred name or in the following of some other superstition invented by men. None of this is religion. Religion is the feeling of goodness, that love which is like the river, living, moving everlastingly. In that state you will find there comes a moment when there is no longer any search at all; and this ending of search is the beginning of something totally different. The search for God, for truth, the feeling of being completely good -not the cultivation of goodness, of humility, but the seeking out of something beyond the inventions and tricks of the mind, which means having a feeling for that something, living in it, being it-that is true religion. But you can do that only when you leave the pool you have dug for yourself and go out into the river of life. Then life has an astonishing way of taking care of you, because then there is no taking care on your part. Life carries you where it will because you are part of itself; then there is no problem of security, of what people say or don't say, and that is the beauty of life. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

A Marvelous Escape

2011-12-18T20:47:00.000-08:00

What is the impetus behind the search for God, and is that search real? For most of us, it is an escape from actuality. So, we must be very clear in ourselves whether this search after God is an escape, or whether it is a search for truth in everything -truth in our relationships, truth in the value of things, truth in ideas. If we are seeking God merely because we are tired of this world and its miseries, then it is an escape. Then we create God, and therefore it is not God. The God of the temples, of the books, is not God, obviously-it is a marvelous escape. But if we try to find the truth, not in one exclusive set of actions, but in all our actions, ideas, and relationships, if we seek the right evaluation of food, clothing, and shelter, then because our minds are capable of clarity and understanding, when we seek reality we shall find it. It will not then be an escape. But if we are confused with regard to the things of the world -food, clothing, shelter, relationship, and ideas-how can we find reality? We can only invent reality. So, God, truth, or reality, is not to be known by a mind that is confused, conditioned, limited. How can such a mind think of reality or God? It has first to decondition itself.It has to free itself from its own limitations, and only then can it know what God is, obviously not before. Reality is the unknown, and that which is known is not the real. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Your God Is Not God

2011-12-18T20:41:00.000-08:00

A man who believes in God can never find God. If you are open to reality, there can be no belief in reality. If you are open to the unknown, there can be no belief in it. After all, belief is a form of self-protection, and only a petty mind can believe in God. Look at the belief of the aviators during the war who said God was their companion as they were dropping bombs! So you believe in God when you kill, when you are exploiting people. You worship God and go on ruthlessly extorting money, supporting the army; yet you say you believe in mercy, compassion, kindliness. As long as belief exists, there can never be the unknown; you cannot think about the unknown, thought cannot measure it. The mind is the product of the past, it is the result of yesterday, and can such a mind be open to the unknown? It can only project an image, but that projection is not real; so your god is not God, it is an image of your own making, an image of your own gratification. There can be reality only when the mind understands the total process of itself and comes to an end. When the mind is completely empty-only then is it capable of receiving the unknown. The mind is not purged until it understands the content of relationship -its relationship with property, with people until it has established the right relationship with everything. Until it understands the whole process of conflict in relationship, the mind cannot be free. Only when the mind is wholly silent, completely inactive, not projecting, when it is not seeking and is utterly still -only then that which is eternal and timeless comes into being. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Your Gods Are Dividing You

2011-12-15T16:38:00.000-08:00

What is happening in the world? You have a Christian God, Hindu Gods, Mohammedans with their particular conception of God, each little sect with their particular truth; and all these truths are becoming like so many diseases in the world, separating people. These truths, in the hands of the few, are becoming the means of exploitation. You go to each, one after the other, tasting them all, because you begin to lose all sense of discrimination, because you are suffering and you want a remedy, and you accept any remedy that is offered by any sect, whether Christian, Hindu, or any other sect. So, what is happening? Your gods are dividing you, your beliefs in God are dividing you and yet you talk about the brotherhood of man, unity in God, and at the same time deny the very thing that you want to find out, because you cling to these beliefs as the most potent means of destroying limitation, whereas they but intensify it. These things are so obvious. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

To Climb High One Must Begin Low

2011-12-14T16:54:00.000-08:00

Religious organizations become as fixed and as rigid as the thoughts of those who belong to them. Life is a constant change, a continual becoming, a ceaseless revolution, and because an organization can never be pliable, it stands in the way of change; it becomes reactionary to protect itself. The search for truth is individual, not congregational. To commune with the real there must be aloneness, not isolation, but freedom from all influence and opinion. Organizations of thought inevitably become hindrances to thought.As you yourself are aware, the greed for power is almost inexhaustible in a so-called spiritual organization; this greed is covered over by all kinds of sweet and official-sounding words, but the canker of avariciousness, pride and antagonism is nourished and shared. From this grow conflict, intolerance, sectarianism, and other ugly manifestations.Would it not be wiser to have small informed groups of twenty or twenty-five persons, without dues or membership, meeting where it is convenient to discuss gently the approach to reality? To prevent any group from becoming exclusive, each member could from time to time encourage and perhaps join another small group; thus, it would be extensive, not narrow and parochial.To climb high one must begin low. Out of this small beginning one may help to create a more sane and happy world. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

What statistical analysis should I use?

2011-12-13T17:35:00.001-08:00

http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/mult_pkg/whatstat/default.htm

Is There Truth in Religions?

2011-12-13T17:20:00.000-08:00

The question is: Is there not truth in religions, in theories, in ideals, in beliefs? Let us examine. What do we mean by religion? Surely, not organized religion, not Hinduism, Buddhism, or Christianity, which are all organized beliefs with their propaganda, conversion, proselytism, compulsion, and so on. Is there any truth in organized religion? It may engulf, enmesh truth, but the organized religion itself is not true. Therefore, organized religion is false, it separates man from man. You are a Muslim, I am a Hindu, another is a Christian or a Buddhist and we are wrangling, butchering each other. Is there any truth in that? We are not discussing religion as the pursuit of truth, but we are considering if there is any truth in organized religion. We are so conditioned by organized religion to think there is truth in it that we have come to believe that by calling oneself a Hindu, one is somebody, or one will find God. How absurd, sir; to find God, to find reality, there must be virtue. Virtue is freedom, and only through freedom can truth be discovered, not when you are caught in the hands of organized religion, with its beliefs. And is there any truth in theories, in ideals, in beliefs? Why do you have beliefs? Obviously, because beliefs give you security, comfort, safety, a guide. In yourself you are frightened, you want to be protected, you want to lean on somebody, and therefore, you create the ideal, which prevents you from understanding that which is. Therefore, an ideal becomes a hindrance to action. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

2011-12-12T21:03:00.001-08:00

Respect other people regardless of the level they are at... or the level you are at. When you hand out respect, you get it back. —Erik Estrada

The Religious Mind Is Explosive

2011-12-12T20:47:00.000-08:00

Can we discover for ourselves what is the religious mind? The scientist in his laboratory is really a scientist; he is not persuaded by his nationalism, by his fears, by his vanities, ambitions, and local demands; there, he is merely investigating. But outside the laboratory, he is like anybody else with his prejudices, with his ambitions, with his nationality, with his vanities, with his jealousies, and all the rest of it. Such a mind cannot approach the religious mind. The religious mind does not function from a center of authority, whether it is accumulated knowledge as tradition, or it is experience which is really the continuation of tradition, the continuation of conditioning. The religious spirit does not think in terms of time, the immediate results, the immediate reformation within the pattern of society. We said the religious mind is not a ritualistic mind; it does not belong to any church, to any group, to any pattern of thinking. The religious mind is the mind that has entered into the unknown, and you cannot come to the unknown except by jumping; you cannot carefully calculate and enter the unknown. The religious mind is the real revolutionary mind, and the revolutionary mind is not a reaction to what has been. The religious mind is really explosive, creative, not in the accepted sense of the word creative, as in a poem, decoration, or building, as in architecture, music, poetry, and all the rest of it, it is in a state of creation. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Prayer Is a Complex Affair

2011-12-12T20:41:00.000-08:00

Like all deep human problems, prayer is a complex affair and not to be rushed at; it needs patience, careful and tolerant probing, and one cannot demand definite conclusions and decisions. Without understanding himself, he who prays may through his very prayer be led to self-delusion. We sometimes hear people say, and several have told me, that when they pray to what they call God for worldly things, their prayers are often granted. If they have faith, and depending upon the intensity of their prayer, what they seek -health, comfort, worldly possessions-they eventually get. If one indulges in petitionary prayer it brings its own reward, the thing asked for is often granted, and this further strengthens supplications. Then there is the prayer, not for things or for people, but to experience reality, God, which is also frequently answered; and there are still other forms of petitionary prayer, more subtle and devious, but nevertheless supplicating, begging and offering. All such prayers have their own reward, they bring their own experiences; but do they lead to the realization of the ultimate reality?Are we not the result of the past, and are we not therefore related to the enormous reservoir of greed and hate, with their opposites? Surely, when we make an appeal, or offer a petitionary prayer, we are calling upon this reservoir of accumulated greed, and so on, which does bring its own reward, and has its price. Does supplication to another, to something outside, bring about the understanding of truth? - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

The Answer to Prayer

2011-12-12T20:20:00.000-08:00

Prayer, which is a supplication, a petition, can never find that reality which is not the outcome of a demand. We demand, supplicate, pray, only when we are in confusion, in sorrow, and not understanding that confusion and sorrow, we turn to somebody else. The answer to prayer is our own projection; in one way or another it is always satisfactory, gratifying, otherwise we would reject it. So, when one has learned the trick of quieting the mind through repetition, one keeps on with that habit, but the answer to supplication must obviously be shaped according to the desire of the person who supplicates.Now, prayer, supplication, petition, can never uncover that which is not the projection of the mind. To find that which is not the fabrication of the mind, the mind must be quiet, not made quiet by the repetition of words, which is self-hypnosis, nor by any other means of inducing the mind to be still.Stillness that is induced, enforced, is not stillness at all. It is like putting a child in the corner superficially he may be quiet, but inwardly he is boiling. So, a mind that is made quiet by discipline is never really quiet, and stillness that is induced can never uncover that creative state in which reality comes into being. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Is Religion a Matter of Belief?

2011-12-12T20:13:00.000-08:00

Religion as we generally know it or acknowledge it, is a series of beliefs, of dogmas, of rituals, of superstitions, of worship of idols, of charms and gurus that will lead you to what you want as an ultimate goal. The ultimate truth is your projection, that is what you want, which will make you happy, which will give a certainty of the deathless state. So the mind caught in all this creates a religion, a religion of dogmas, of priest-craft, of superstitions and idol-worship and in that, you are caught, and the mind stagnates. Is that religion? Is religion a matter of belief, a matter of knowledge of other people's experiences and assertions? Or is religion merely the following of morality? You know it is comparatively easy to be moral to do this and not to do that. Because it is easy, you can imitate a moral system. Behind that morality, lurks the self, growing, expanding, aggressive, dominating. But is that religion?You have to find out what truth is because that is the only thing that matters, not whether you are rich or poor, not whether you are happily married and have children, because they all come to an end, there is always death. So, without any form of belief, you must find out; you must have the vigor, the self-reliance, the initiative, so that for yourself you know what truth is, what God is. Belief will not give you anything; belief only corrupts, binds, darkens. The mind can only be free through vigor, through self-reliance. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Begin Here

2011-12-08T18:49:00.000-08:00

A religious man does not seek God. The religious man is concerned with the transformation of society, which is himself. The religious man is not the man that does innumerable rituals, follows traditions, lives in a dead, past culture, explaining endlessly the Gita or the Bible, endlessly chanting, or taking sannyasa, that is not a religious man; such a man is escaping from facts. The religious man is concerned totally and completely with the understanding of society, which is himself. He is not separate from society. Bringing about in himself a complete, total mutation means complete cessation of greed, envy, ambition; and therefore he is not dependent on circumstances, though he is the result of circumstance, the food he eats, the books he reads, the cinemas he goes to, the religious dogmas, beliefs, rituals, and all that business. He is responsible, and therefore the religious man must understand himself, who is the product of society that he himself has created. Therefore, to find reality he must begin here, not in a temple, not in an image, whether the image is graven by the hand or by the mind. Otherwise, how can he find something totally new, a new state? - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

I Am Afraid

2011-12-07T20:54:00.000-08:00

My inquiry now is how to be free from the fear of the known, which is the fear of losing my family, my reputation, my character, my bank account, my appetites and so on. You may say that fear arises from conscience; but your conscience is formed by your conditioning, so conscience is still the result of the known. What do I know? Knowledge is having ideas, having opinions about things, having a sense of continuity as in relation to the known, and no more.There is fear of pain. Physical pain is a nervous response, but psychological pain arises when I hold on to things that give me satisfaction, for then I am afraid of anyone or anything that may take them away from me. The psychological accumulations prevent psychological pain as long as they are undisturbed; that is,I a m a bundle of accumulations, experiences, which prevent any serious form of disturbance -and I do not want to be disturbed. Therefore, I am afraid of anyone who disturbs them. Thus my fear is of the known, I am afraid of the accumulations, physical or psychological, that I have gathered as a means of warding off pain or preventing sorrow. Knowledge also helps to prevent pain. As medical knowledge helps to prevent physical pain, so beliefs help to prevent psychological pain, and that is why I am afraid of losing my beliefs, though I have no perfect knowledge or concrete proof of the reality of such beliefs. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

What Is Your Reaction?

2011-12-07T20:43:00.000-08:00

When you observe those poor women carrying a heavy load to the market, or watch the peasant children playing in the mud with very little else to play with, [children] who will not have the education that you are getting, who have no proper home, no cleanliness, insufficient clothing, inadequate food; when you observe all that, what is your reaction? It is very important to find out for yourself what your reaction is. I will tell you what mine was.Those children have no proper place to sleep; the father and the mother are occupied all day long, with never a holiday; the children never know what it is to be loved, to be cared for; the parents never sit down with them and tell them stories about the beauty of the earth and the heavens. And what kind of society is it that has produced these circumstances where there are immensely rich people who have everything on earth they want, and at the same time there are boys and girls who have nothing? What kind of society is it, and how has it come into being? You may revolutionize, break the pattern of this society, but in the very breaking of it a new one is born, which is again the same thing in another form -the commissars with their special houses in the country, the privileges, the uniforms, and so on down the line. This has happened after every revolution, the French, the Russian and the Chinese. And is it possible to create a society in which all this corruption and misery does not exist? It can be created only when you and I as individuals break away from the collective, when we are free of ambition and know what it means to love. That was my whole reaction, in a flash. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Compassion Is Not the Word

2011-12-07T20:38:00.000-08:00

Thought cannot, by any means whatsoever, cultivate compassion. I am not using that word compassion to mean the opposite, the antithesis of hate or violence. But unless each one of us has a deep sense of compassion, we shall become more and more brutal, inhuman to each other. We shall have mechanical, computer-like minds that have merely been trained to perform certain functions; we shall go on seeking security, both physical and psychological, and we shall miss the extraordinary depth and beauty, the whole significance of life.By compassion I do not mean a thing to be acquired. Compassion is not the word, which is merely of the past, but something that is of the active present; it is the verb and not the word, the name, or the noun. There is a difference between the verb and the word. The verb is of the active present, whereas the word is always of the past and therefore static. You may give vitality or movement to the name, to the word, but it is not the same as the verb, which is actively present.Compassion is not sentiment; it is not this woolly sympathy or empathy. Compassion is not something that you can cultivate through thought, through discipline, control, suppression, nor by being kind, polite, gentle, and all the rest of it. Compassion comes into being only when thought has come to an end at its very root. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Aloneness in Which There Is No Fear

2011-12-07T17:57:00.000-08:00

It is only when the mind is capable of shedding all influences, all interferences, of being completely alone, there is creativeness.In the world, more and more technique is being developed -the technique of how to influence people through propaganda, through compulsion, through imitation. There are innumerable books written on how to do a thing, how to think efficiently, how to build a house, how to put machinery together; so gradually we are losing initiative, the initiative to think out something original for ourselves. In our education, in our relationship with government, through various means, we are being influenced to conform, to imitate. And when we allow one influence to persuade us to a particular attitude or action, naturally we create resistance to other influences. In that very process of creating a resistance to another influence, are we not succumbing to it negatively?Should not the mind always be in revolt so as to understand the influences that are always impinging, interfering, controlling, shaping? Is it not one of the factors of the mediocre mind that it is always fearful and, being in a state of confusion, it wants order, it wants consistency, it wants a form, a shape by which it can be guided and controlled. And yet these forms, these various influences create contradictions in the individual, create confusion in the individual. Any choice between influences is surely still a state of mediocrity.Must not the mind have the capacity to fathom -not to imitate, not to be shaped and to be without fear? Should not such a mind be alone and therefore creative? That creativeness is not yours or mine, it is anonymous. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Create a New World

2011-12-06T17:50:00.000-08:00

If you have to create a new world, a new civilization, a new art, everything new, not contaminated by tradition, by fear, by ambitions, if you have to create something anonymous which is yours and mine, a new society, together, in which there is not you and me but an "ourness," must there not be a mind that is completely anonymous, therefore alone? This implies, does it not, that there must be a revolt against conformity, a revolt against respectability, because the respectable man is the mediocre man because he wants something, he is dependent on influence for his happiness, on what his neighbor thinks, on what his guru thinks, on what the Bhagavad-Gita or the Upanishads or the Bible or the Christ says. His mind is never alone. He never walks alone, but he always walks with a companion, the companion of his ideas.Is it not important to find out, to see, the whole significance of interference, of influence, the establishment of the "me," which is the contradiction of the anonymous? Seeing the whole of that, does not the question inevitably arise: Is it possible immediately to bring about that state of mind that is not influenced, which cannot be influenced by its own experience or by the experience of others, a mind that is incorruptible, that is alone? Then only is there a possibility of bringing about a different world, a different culture, a different society in which happiness is possible. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Compassion and Goodness

2011-12-06T01:52:00.000-08:00

Can compassion, that sense of goodness, that feeling of the sacredness of life about which we were talking last time we met; can that feeling be brought into being through compulsion? Surely, when there is compulsion in any form, when there is propaganda or moralizing, there is no compassion, nor is there compassion when change is brought about merely through seeing the necessity of meeting the technological challenge in such a way that human beings will remain human beings and not become machines. So there must be a change without any causation. A change that is brought about through causation is not compassion; it is merely a thing of the market place. So that is one problem.Another problem is: if I change, how will it affect society? Or am I not concerned with that at all? Because the vast majority of people are not interested in what we are talking about, nor are you if you listen out of curiosity or some kind of impulse, and pass by. The machines are progressing so rapidly that most human beings are merely pushed along and are not capable of meeting life with the enrichment of love, with compassion, with deep thought. And if I change, how will it affect society, which is my relationship with you? Society is not some extraordinary mythical entity; it is our relationship with each other, and if two or three of us change, how will it affect the rest of the world? Or is there a way of affecting the total mind of man?That is, is there a process by which the individual who is changed can touch the unconscious of man? - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

social networks

2011-12-06T00:54:00.001-08:00

Kadushin, Charles. 2011. Understanding social networks: Theories, concepts, and findings. New York: Oxford University Press.

Free Materials/Textbook for Teaching OB

2011-12-06T00:45:00.001-08:00

Simon Dolan (ESADE Business School) and Tony Lingham (Case Western Reserve) have put their textbook Introduction to Organizational Behavior online
for free. The book can be accessed at
http://www.introtoob.com/

The One Who Is Alone Is Innocent

2011-12-05T17:28:00.000-08:00

One of the factors of sorrow is the extraordinary loneliness of man. You may have companions, you may have gods, you may have a great deal of knowledge, you may be extraordinarily active socially, talking endless gossip about politics -and most politicians gossip anyhow- and still this loneliness remains. Therefore, man seeks to find significance in life and invents a significance, a meaning. But the loneliness still remains. So can you look at it without any comparison, just see it as it is, without trying to run away from it, without trying to cover it up, or to escape from it? Then you will see that loneliness becomes something entirely different.We are not alone. We are the result of a thousand influences, a thousand conditionings, psychological inheritances, propaganda, culture. We are not alone, and therefore we are secondhand human beings. When one is alone, totally alone, neither belonging to any family, though one may have a family, nor belonging to any nation, to any culture, to any particular commitment, there is the sense of being an outsider, outsider to every form of thought, action, family, nation. And it is only the one who is completely alone who is innocent. It is this innocency that frees the mind from sorrow. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Transmitting Compassion

2011-12-04T21:33:00.000-08:00

If I am concerned with compassion, with love, with the real feeling of something sacred, then how is that feeling to be transmitted? Please follow this. If I transmit it through the microphone, through the machinery of propaganda, and thereby convince another, his heart will still be empty. The flame of ideology will operate, and he will merely repeat, as you are all repeating, that we must be kind, good, free -all the nonsense that the politicians, the socialists, and the rest of them talk. So, seeing that any form of compulsion, however subtle, does not bring this beauty, this flowering of goodness, of compassion, what is the individual to do? What is the relationship between the man who has this sense of compassion, and the man whose mind is entrenched in the collective, in the traditional? How are we to find the relationship between these two, not theoretically, but actually?That which conforms can never flower in goodness. There must be freedom, and freedom comes only when you understand the whole problem of envy, greed, ambition, and the desire for power. It is freedom from those things that allows the extraordinary thing called character to flower. Such a man has compassion, he knows what it is to love -not the man who merely repeats a lot of words about morality.So the flowering of goodness does not lie within society, because society in itself is always corrupt. Only the man who understands the whole structure and process of society, and is freeing himself from it, has character, and he alone can flower in goodness. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Knowing Loneliness

2011-12-04T21:13:00.000-08:00

Loneliness is entirely different from aloneness. That loneliness must be passed to be alone. Loneliness is not comparable with aloneness. The man who knows loneliness can never know that which is alone. Are you in that state of aloneness? Our minds are not integrated to be alone. The very process of the mind is separative. And that which separates knows loneliness.But aloneness is not separative. It is something that is not the many, which is not influenced by the many, which is not the result of the many, which is not put together as the mind is; the mind is of the many. Mind is not an entity that is alone, being put together, brought together, manufactured through centuries. Mind can never be alone. Mind can never know aloneness. But being aware of the loneliness when going through it, there comes into being that aloneness. Then only can there be that which is immeasurable. Unfortunately most of us seek dependence. We want companions, we want friends, we want to live in a state of separation, in a state that brings about conflict. That which is alone can never be in a state of conflict. But mind can never perceive that, can never understand that, it can only know loneliness. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Only in Aloneness Is There Innocence

2011-12-04T20:41:00.000-08:00

Most of us are never alone. You may withdraw into the mountains and live as a recluse, but when you are physically by yourself, you will have with you all your ideas, your experiences, your traditions, your knowledge of what has been. The Christian monk in a monastery cell is not alone; he is with his conceptual Jesus, with his theology, with the beliefs and dogmas of his particular conditioning. Similarly, the sannyasi in India who withdraws from the world and lives in isolation is not alone, for he too lives with his memories.I am talking of an aloneness in which the mind is totally free from the past, and only such a mind is virtuous, for only in this aloneness is there innocence.Perhaps you will say, "That is too much to ask. One cannot live like that in this chaotic world, where one has to go to the office every day, earn a livelihood, bear children, endure the nagging of one's wife or husband, and all the rest of it." But I think what is being said is directly related to everyday life and action; otherwise, it has no value at all. You see, out of this aloneness comes a virtue which is virile and which brings an extraordinary sense of purity and gentleness. It doesn't matter if one makes mistakes; that is of very little importance. What matters is to have this feeling of being completely alone, uncontaminated, for it is only such a mind that can know or be aware of that which is beyond the word, beyond the name, beyond all the projections of imagination. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Come to It Empty-Handed

2011-12-03T00:04:00.000-08:00

Compassion is not hard to come by when the heart is not filled with the cunning things of the mind. It is the mind with its demands and fears, its attachments and denials, its determinations and urges, that destroys love. And how difficult it is to be simple about all this! You don't need philosophies and doctrines to be gentle and kind. The efficient and the powerful of the land will organize to feed and clothe the people, to provide them with shelter and medical care. This is inevitable with the rapid increase of production; it is the function of well-organized government and a balanced society. But organization does not give the generosity of the heart and hand. Generosity comes from quite a different source, a source beyond all measure. Ambition and envy destroy it as surely as fire burns. This source must be touched, but one must come to it empty-handed, without prayer, without sacrifice. Books cannot teach, nor can any guru lead to, this source. It cannot be reached through the cultivation of virtue, though virtue is necessary, nor through capacity and obedience. When the mind is serene, without any movement, it is there. Serenity is without motive, without the urge for the more. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Aloneness Is Not Loneliness

2011-12-02T22:55:00.000-08:00

Though we are all human beings, we have built walls between ourselves and our neighbors through nationalism, through race, caste, and class -which again breeds isolation, loneliness. Now a mind that is caught in loneliness, in this state of isolation, can never possibly understand what religion is. It can believe, it can have certain theories, concepts, formulas, it can try to identify itself with that which it calls God; but religion, it seems to me, has nothing whatsoever to do with any belief, with any priest, with any church or so-called sacred book. The state of the religious mind can be understood only when we begin to understand what beauty is; and the understanding of beauty must be approached through total aloneness. Only when the mind is completely alone can it know what is beauty, and not in any other state.Aloneness is obviously not isolation, and it is not uniqueness. To be unique is merely to be exceptional in some way, whereas to be completely alone demands extraordinary sensitivity, intelligence, understanding. To be completely alone implies that the mind is free of every kind of influence and is therefore uncontaminated by society; and it must be alone to understand what is religion- which is to find out for oneself whether there is something immortal, beyond time. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

commit to action despite fear, the courage will follow

2011-12-02T01:00:00.001-08:00

"If you can commit to action despite fear, the courage will follow," says Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D., author of The Willpower Instinct

Pinkerisms

2011-12-01T20:41:00.000-08:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/29/science/pinkerisms.html?ref=science#

Human Nature's Pathologist

2011-12-01T20:36:00.000-08:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/29/science/human-natures-pathologist.html

2011-12-01T20:34:00.000-08:00

It’s psychologically astute, given the massive amount of self-serving biases, he said. “In any dispute, each side thinks it’s in the right and the other side is demons.”

If you want peace, Dr. Goldstein argues, work for peace. Dr. Pinker agrees.

Alone Has Beauty

2011-12-01T20:24:00.000-08:00

I do not know if you have ever been lonely; when you suddenly realize that you have no relationship with anybody -not an intellectual realization but a factual realization- and you are completely isolated. Every form of thought and emotion is blocked; you cannot turn anywhere; there is nobody to turn to; the gods, the angels, have all gone beyond the clouds and, as the clouds vanish they have also vanished; you are completely lonely -I will not use the word alone.Alone has quiet a different meaning; alone has beauty. To be alone means something entirely different. And you must be alone. When man frees himself from the social structure of greed, envy, ambition, arrogance, achievement, status, when he frees himself from those, then he is completely alone. That is quite a different thing. Then there is great beauty, the feeling of great energy. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

2011-11-29T04:30:00.001-08:00

Gable, S. L., Reis, H. T., & Downey, G. (2003). He Said, She Said. Psychological Science, 14(2), 100-105.

2011-11-28T21:45:00.001-08:00

SPITZBERG, B. H. (2002). The Tactical Topography of Stalking Victimization and Management. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 3(4), 261-288

Obsessive relational intrusion and stalking

2011-11-28T00:52:00.001-08:00

Spitzberg, B. H., & Cupach, W. R. What mad pursuit?: Obsessive relational intrusion and stalking related phenomena. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 8(4), 345-375

Modeling Serial Arguments

2011-11-28T00:27:00.001-08:00

Bevan, J. L., Finan, A., & Kaminsky, A. (2008). Modeling Serial Arguments in Close Relationships: The Serial Argument Process Model. Human Communication Research, 34(4), 600-624

2011-11-28T00:03:00.001-08:00

Ein-Dor, T., Mikulincer, M., Doron, G., & Shaver, P. R. (2010). The Attachment Paradox. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 5(2), 123-141.

2011-11-27T23:22:00.001-08:00

Pryor, J. B., & Merluzzi, T. V. (1985). The role of expertise in processing social interaction scripts. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 21(4), 362-379.

2011-11-27T22:36:00.001-08:00

Knobloch, L. K., & Solomon, D. H. (2002). Information Seeking Beyond Initial Interaction. Human Communication Research, 28(2), 243-257.

Boundaries of privacy

2011-11-27T20:15:00.001-08:00

Petronio, S. (2002). Boundaries of privacy: Dialectics of disclosure. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

2011-11-27T20:03:00.001-08:00

Knobloch, L. K., & Solomon, D. H. (2003). Manifestations of Relationship Conceptualizations in Conversation. Human Communication Research, 29(4), 482-515

with measurement in this paper

beliefs and stalk

2011-11-27T19:59:00.000-08:00

potential beliefs that may contribute to the likelihood that a specific individual will obsessively pursue a love interest. Such beliefs include sex role stereotyping or beliefs in traditional sex roles and adversarial beliefs regarding the pursuit of romantic relationships (i.e., that it is a competitive process) (Spitzberg & Cupach, 2001)

preoccupied style and stalk

2011-11-27T19:57:00.000-08:00

those with the preoccupied style may be most likely to stalk others (Meloy, 1998), as they are constantly seeking intimacy but, due to a lack of self-confidence, do not feel worthy of anyone.

types of stalkers

2011-11-27T19:48:00.000-08:00

Davis, J. A., & Chipman, M. A. (1997). Stalkers and other obsessional types: a review and forensic psychological typology of those who stalk. Journal of Clinical Forensic Medicine, 4, 166–172.
Mullen, P. E., Pathe, M., Purcell, R., & Stuart, G. W. (1999). Study of stalkers. American Journal of Psychiatry, 156(8), 1244–1249.