Having The Attitude Of An Investigator Of Truth

By Bill Harley

No age previous to ours has ever been so overwhelmed with information.  From the 24-hour news cycle, the ready access to the internet, the rapid expansion of research and technical knowledge, and the constant drone of advertising messages, we are bombarded with information constantly.  

Yet no age previous to ours has had more trouble identifying and agreeing on the truth of any given matter.  It is no coincidence that the revolutionary decision-making and problem-solving process called Compassionate Consultation (CC) has appeared in this age—it is the truth finding methodology for the 21st Century and beyond; yet few people know about it.

Jean’s and my second book, TRANSFORMED: How to Make the Decisions That Change Your Life, is a guidebook to understanding and gaining skill in using CC for individuals, couples, families, communities, organizations, institutions and the world at large.  In the book, we outline 12 Behavioral Standards for practitioners that distinguish CC from all other decision-making processes and help provide its transformative results.  One of these is “Having the Attitude of an Investigator of Truth.”  What does it mean and look like to embody this Behavioral Standard during CC or in life generally?

A good investigator of truth does not have prejudgments about the issue at hand.  Whether the investigator is a detective, a scientist, a citizen trying to keep well-informed on social issues or a member of a group using CC, she or he may have an initial “theory” about how to solve a problem or address an issue, but the theory goes out the window the second the objective evidence leads in a different direction.  The good investigator doggedly follows the evidence on the path to truth. 

Any good investigator of truth is curious and hungry to objectively explore all the evidence surrounding an issue; and will never ignore or downplay evidence that contradicts his or her evolving “theory of the truth”.  Having a partisan point of view—as so many do in today’s world—prevents having the objectivity and independence of mind that are characteristic of an authentic investigator of truth.  A synonym for “partisan” is “biased”.  

For example, whether one leans toward the left or the right on social issues, one tends to take in evidence that confirms that bias and avoid evidence that does not.  The fact that virtually all network and cable news sources have a partisan editorial perspective in these days feeds this tendency.  However, the true investigator of truth conscientiously finds and explores sources of evidence from both the left and the right in equal quantities and depth before drawing conclusions on the truth of the matter.

In this regard, the investigator of truth remembers that the truth of any matter and the optimal solutions to addressing it are usually subtle and multi-faceted.  As a result, almost any complex social issue requires for its resolution a nuanced combination of solution elements from both the right and the left.    When the investigator’s viewpoint is a partisan one, it tends to prevent this type of holistic resolution by over simplifying the issue at hand; and it leads to solutions and decisions characterized by mistaken premises, imbalance, and unjust and divisive outcomes.

The antonym of “partisan” is “impartial” and this is a key attribute of the sincere investigator of truth.  Having the attitude of an investigator of truth in Compassionate Consultation and in life generally is best described by the scripture in which God says: 

“O SON OF SPIRIT!  The best beloved of all things in My sight is Justice; turn not away therefrom if thou desirest Me, and neglect it not that I may confide in thee. By its aid thou shalt see with thine own eyes and not through the eyes of others, and shalt know of thine own knowledge and not through the knowledge of thy neighbor. Ponder this in thy heart; how it behooveth thee to be. Verily justice is My gift to thee and the sign of My loving-kindness. Set it then before thine eyes.”

This quotation makes it clear that when every participant in the Compassionate Consultation decision-making process is striving to manifest the attitude of an investigator of truth, they are also manifesting justice, accessing divine assistance and drawing nearer to their Creator.

To better understand how to be an authentic investigator of truth, the rest of the 12 Behavioral Standards for CC and the process of Compassionate Consultation itself, read Jean’s and my second book, TRANSFORMED: How to Make the Decisions That Change Your Life

When What Seems Bad Is Actually Good

By Bill Harley

I was a good athlete through my high school and college years; but once marriage, children and making a living took center stage, sports and exercise went into the wings of my life.  

I probably would have ignored physical exercise except for one thing: I developed recurring lower back trouble in my late 20’s; and learned through calamitous suffering that the only way to keep the trouble at bay was to stay in shape.  Consequently, from age 30 onward, I have started each day with 30 minutes of calisthenics that have kept my back purring instead of raging.  

Now and then, I grow weary of this regimen or am late for a meeting and skip the workout for a day.  By evening, I can feel the back pain returning; and this galvanizes my will to continue the discipline.  It’s been clear now for 40 plus years: one of my lots in life is to commit to this 30-minute time of intense exertion every morning.  

For the first 20 years, I felt sorry for myself having to keep this looming disability at bay; and resented having to rise each morning earlier than I would have needed to absent the threat.  But by the time I turned 50, I started to notice that, while I was doing my repetitive and boring workout, I was reflecting on my life and values, bringing myself to account against those values, and planning my day accordingly, which was a great lead-in to my prayer and meditation session that followed.  Starting then and up until the present time, the continuously looming back trouble has felt more like a friend that has guided me to maintain my physical and holistic health and well-being into my seventh decade of life.  

While the threat is still there, my entire body, mind and spirit have been invigorated by this mandatory discipline.  It is just one example of many in my life that have demonstrated the truth of the following scripture: The Creator says, “My calamity is My providence, outwardly it is fire and vengeance, but inwardly it is light and mercy”.

All people’s lives are filled with examples like this; but these patterns of “calamities” guiding us to “blessings” are easy to miss if we are not seeing them with our spiritual eye.  To get better at seeing these dynamics in your life and leveraging them for growth, read Jean’s and my first book, Now That I’m Here, What Should I Be Doing?

To get better at making decisions in your life while taking these dynamics into account, read Jean’s and my second book, TRANSFORMED: How to Make the Decisions That Change Your Life

The Global Hunger For New Thought

By Bill Harley

There is hunger in the world today for new thought and practice in the way we address both our problems and opportunities.  One organization that tries to address this hunger is the Association for Global New Thought (AGNT).  Recently, Jean and I were asked to give a presentation to the Minnesota Chapter (MAGNT) of this organization on Compassionate Consultation (CC), the revolutionary problem-solving and decision-making process.

We had a great time sharing ideas with this diverse and open-minded group of people.  We discussed the importance: 

• of being guided by the three ultimate purposes of life as we approach problems and opportunities; 

• of thoroughly identifying and agreeing on the facts related to an issue without being limited by ideological biases; 

• of identifying and agreeing on the spiritual principles and human values related to an issue before solution finding.  This helps to dissolve the false dichotomies that can prevent us from discovering innovative, blended solutions. 

• And we did short CC demos to illustrate how deliberation looks with and without a compassionate atmosphere, how compassion can fully unfold the truth of a matter; and how it looks to go through all the steps of CC on a real world problem.

We thank MAGNT for having us and wish this organization well as its members use new thought to seek improvement in the world.

If you would like to bring new thought and practice to your problem-solving at home, in the workplace, in the community and the world at large, read our second book, TRANSFORMED: How to Make the Decisions That Change Your Life.

Searching For A Second Ring I Had Lost

By Bill Harley

If the story told in a previous blog of losing and finding my first lost ring were not incredible enough, I lost a second ring not long after finding the first one; and the circumstances and significances in the losing and finding were just as amazing to me.

Reading that earlier blog before this one will aid your understanding of this one.  That story took place at the time Jean’s and my publisher had accepted our one long book under the condition that we split it into two books.  The loss of the first ring shortly thereafter triggered a cascade of events that guided us to the successful extrication of what became our first book from its entanglement with what became our second book; and to the publication and launching of that first book, Now That I’m Here, What Should I Be Doing.

One might think that, after extracting the first book from the original long book, one could quickly and easily tidy-up what remained and have a completed second book ready for publication.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  

Since we had spent a decade researching and writing the original long book, we had integrated the subjects so tightly that, after the extrication of the first book, the remaining pages that needed to become the second book were as pock marked as the surface of the moon.  As before, we agreed that I would take the lead in creating a first draft of the second book; and then we would go through a back and forth collaborative process of editing, rewriting, and re-editing until we were both satisfied.

As with the first book, I again struggled to buckle down and get the first draft completed.  The struggle was partly due to weariness from completing the first book; it was also due to the fact that the second book was more complicated than the first book and needed to read like a detailed manual for decision-making and problem-solving rather than a straight-forward narrative like the first book.  I worked sporadically from mid-summer to early September in Minnesota and was not proud of my progress; I began praying daily for the energy and focus to complete my task.

Only a few days later, the school year began; and this meant that I started picking up my granddaughter, Sofia, at her elementary school each weekday at 2:00 PM so that she could be with Jean and me until evening when her parents came home from work.  I picked her up each day at a rear doorway to the school where parents and grandparents waited to pick up their children.

There was a school playground adjoining this doorway and when the kids came roaring out of the school, they would beg their loved ones to let them play on the playground equipment before going home.  I usually succumbed to this appeal; and on a mid-September day was pushing Sofia on the swings and helping her learn to climb on one apparatus after another when I realized that my gold wedding ring was no longer on my finger.  

This was only about four months after the silver ring I had previously lost had almost miraculously been returned to me; and I felt an immediate sense of panic and embarrassment that now I had lost my wedding ring!  How sloppy could I get?  And how could I expect to be so fortunate as to get a second lost ring returned to me?

I knew I had lost the ring at the playground, so Sofia and I began searching for it in the deep sand at the base of all the playground equipment we had been on.  Before long, several of her friends and numerous schoolmates were helping us “search for gold”.  I was touched to see the group of searchers enlarge to about 15 children earnestly questioning me about where we had been and digging through the sand.  We found nothing that first day; and many of the children continued searching with us in the days that followed to no avail.  

After about a week, I thought that someone in the neighborhood might find the ring and would have no way to return it.  So I went to the school office and reported the loss.  In addition, one of the parents I knew who lived in the neighborhood volunteered to post a message about the lost wedding ring on the Nextdoor Digest website for that neighborhood. There were no responses in the weeks that followed.

By early October, all searching had stopped except for mine.  Each day while Sofia played, I would search around the playground retracing the steps I remembered us taking on that fateful day, turning over the sand in hopes of seeing a flash of gold, and even combing through the grass at the perimeter of the playground where we may have walked.  Finding the ring increasingly seemed hopeless.  I pictured it deep in the sand underneath the playground equipment and wondered what could ever bring it back to the surface to be found.

Towards the end of October with the onset of the Minnesota winter chilling the air, I rented a metal detector in one last effort to find the ring before the ground would freeze and be buried under deep snow.  I found a few coins, but not my wedding ring.

As I continued working fitfully on the second book, I ruminated constantly about the fact that again, I was searching for a ring I had lost.  Was this just a random event or did it have real significance?  I had to admit that the themes of the Watchman Parable which played such a large part in our first book and in the earlier loss and recovery of my silver ring seemed to be at work again in my life.

That parable tells the story of a lover who has become separated from his beloved and has been unsuccessfully seeking her for long years.  He comes to a point where he can no longer bear her absence and goes on a quest to relieve his suffering.  During his quest, he is obstructed and chased by “watchmen”—people who seem intent on harming him and driving him off course.  Ultimately, the lover is cornered by the watchmen and, to escape them, he climbs a high wall with great difficulty and, giving up his life, throws himself into the darkness on the other side.  He lands in a garden; and there he unexpectedly finds his beloved “searching for a ring she had lost”.  

The lover immediately realizes that, rather than obstructing him, the watchmen forces have actually guided him to his beloved; and that these guiding forces have been sent by God for his own growth and development.  He concludes that forces of both obstruction and support can be veiled guidance from the Creator and that he must learn from these forces rather than resist them.  

Consequently, after the loss of my first ring (the silver one which I called my “spiritual” ring), Jean and I used Compassionate Consultation to figure out that I was being guided to focus on drafting the “spiritual” book first rather than working on both books simultaneously.  Now, I was working on the second book about Compassionate Consultation and, with the loss of the second ring (the gold one), I struggled to understand what the guidance was. 

As before, I asked Jean to use Compassionate Consultation with me to try to answer that question.  We concluded as before that the beloved’s search for her ring in the parable seemed to represent a search for completion; and we were now seeking completion of the second book.  

While I had considered the first lost ring to be my “spiritual” ring, we concluded that the second lost ring, my wedding ring, was my “relationship” ring—it symbolized my primary relationship with Jean; my relationships with our children and grandchildren; and by extension, my relationship to the family of humankind.  Clearly, the second book is about how to make transformative and just decisions that unite rather than divide human relationships at all levels.  

We also concluded that this lost ring represented the absence of human capacity in the modern world to make such transformative decisions; and that the wall I needed to scale was to bring intense urgency to the completion of this book draft so that we could more rapidly share this divinely-revealed methodology with a suffering humanity.

As soon as these conclusions resulted from Jean’s and my Compassionate Consultation, I was transformed.  I found myself so infused with energy that I became obsessed with finishing the first draft of the second book.  In the following days, I sacrificed everything that was non-essential in my life and focused only on completing the draft, and did so in just a few weeks.  Then Jean and I completed, in another few weeks, the still more difficult back and forth process of editing, rewriting, and re-editing until we were both satisfied with the final draft.  We turned the manuscript over to the publisher in the latter part of December; and we basked in the “beloved” of completion.

Once again, we realized that the watchman forces—the need to separate the one book into two books, the frustration of my early attempts to buckle down on the second book draft, my prayers for divine assistance, the loss of the second ring, the failure to find it, the thought and consultative process it spawned leading us to reframe the task at hand, and the intense energy this process released to scale the wall and find the beloved of completion—all of them reflected the hand of divine guidance.  Once again, my prayers had been answered with the loss of a ring, which triggered a cascade of both struggle and positive outcomes.

My only lingering regret was the loss of my wedding ring—my “relationship” ring—as the ransom for our new awareness and achievement.  Jean suggested that we just buy a new one; but my heart was sentimentally longing for the original ring she had given me on our wedding day.  All through the long winter months that followed, when I picked up Sofia at her school, I continued to scan the snow-covered playground and wonder whether the ring was still there—frozen somewhere under the sand. 

The first lost ring had been returned to me within a week of our completing the final draft of the first book.  By early spring in Minnesota it had been five months since our completion of the final draft of the second book; and I concluded my wedding ring was lost forever.  

But then an interesting thing happened.  Some of our readers in the local region asked for a venue in which to deepen understanding of the concepts and practices in our two books.  Our response to this was to ask two other people who had been very helpful to us in the development of our two books to meet with us as a steering team; and out of the Compassionate Consultation in this first meeting the concept for the Growth Lab, an on-going action learning gathering, was born.  

After this meeting, Jean and I commented to each other that the “relationship” ring, while still lost, was continuing to gestate, strengthen and expand relationships; and that maybe establishing the Growth Lab was a final part of the wall we needed to scale.

A few days later, I received an excited phone call from the person who months before had posted a message about the lost wedding ring on the Nextdoor Digest website for the neighborhood surrounding the school.  He said that a woman had posted about finding a gold wedding ring in the school playground and offered to return it to any person who could prove they were the owner.  Her phone number was provided.

In a state of both disbelief and wonder, I called the woman and told her about the loss of my ring.  The ring she described sounded like it could be mine.  Then she said, “There is an engraving on the inside wall of the ring—can you tell me what it says?”  I said, “If it is my ring, the inner wall is engraved with Jean’s and my initials and the wedding date as follows: “JKD to WBH 6-7-69”.

After a pause, she said, “Your ring is no longer lost!”  As I hung up the phone, I wiped tears from my eyes.

The next evening I stopped by her home, met her husband and two small children, and she handed me the ring I had lost.  I thanked her profusely and gave her a copy of our first book so that she could appreciate the role she and her children had played in my spiritual journey.  Then I asked, “Where exactly did you find the ring?”  She said, “In the sand right below one of the swings.”  I asked, “Had you and your kids been digging in the sand?”  “No”, she replied, “it was sitting in clear view right on top of the sand.”  

Driving home, I marveled at the idea of my ring being lost beneath the sand for so many months and then somehow being borne aloft to the surface to be found at that very moment.  I said a prayer of thanks to the Creator.

Some readers relying only on their material eyes will conclude that I lost two rings one after the other, I was very lucky to find them, the events were entirely random, and there was no meaning beyond this.  

Other readers who see happenings with both their spiritual and material eyes will recognize in these events the seeking of beloveds; guiding watchman forces masquerading as calamities or helpers; the appearance of walls that need to be scaled for growth; the marshaling of great energies and Compassionate Consultation to understand and scale these walls; the sudden, unexpected discovery of beloveds; and all of these dynamics unfolding under the influence and attentive gaze of a loving Creator.  

To better understand how these tailored, guiding forces impact your life, read our first book, Now That I’m Here, What Should I Be Doing?  To understand the process of Compassionate Consultation that Jean and I used to discover what was trying to happen in our lives, read our second book, TRANSFORMED: How to Make the Decisions That Change Your Life.

The Most Powerful Engine Needs a Cooling System to Match

By Bill Harley

If you have read Jean’s and my second book and/or read several of my blogs, you know that we have depicted Compassionate Consultation as the most powerful decision-making and problem-solving engine in the world.  Consultation is the engine; and Compassion is the cooling system.  I came to understand this relationship in an interesting way.

Some years ago I was a member of an outside consulting and change management team that worked with Caterpillar, the international heavy equipment manufacturer, to help the company design and install a universal product development process for all of their far-flung facilities.

One of the divisions I visited and worked with was the Mining Division, which manufactures huge mining trucks that can carry incredibly large and heavy loads of ore from deep, open-pit mines up very steep grades with considerable power and speed to the surface of the earth.  

These trucks represent the essence of heavy-lifting; their torque and payload capacity is unsurpassed.  The vehicles’ size is truly breathtaking.  The diameter of the wheels is longer than two 6-foot men laid end-to-end; and to get to the driver’s seat requires that one climb approximately two stories high into the cab using a built-in staircase.

In talking to a group of design and manufacturing specialists, I learned that one of the biggest development problems they face is not so much the huge size of the engine and other vehicle components, but the cooling systems required to dissipate all the heat generated by the metal-to-metal engine and other moving parts during operation.  If the cooling system isn’t up to the task, they said, the engine and the truck itself will burst into flames.  

This got me thinking.  These huge trucks are extremely powerful tools for going deep, gathering the ore, doing maximal heavy-lifting and moving forward; but they can’t perform the tasks without an equally powerful cooling system.  Compassionate Consultation (CC), the decision-making and problem-solving process for the 21st Century and beyond, is also an extremely powerful tool for going deep, gathering the truth of the matter, doing maximal heavy-lifting and moving forward in connection with individual, couple, family, community, organizational and governmental decisions; but it can’t perform the tasks without an equally powerful cooling system. Without a maximal cooling system, the deliberative human interface can burst into flames of conflict.

With the mining trucks, the tasks get done through mechanical means; and the cooling is achieved through air and fluid dynamics.  With CC, the tasks get done through steps and procedural means; and the cooling is achieved through spiritual, intellectual and social behaviors and attitudes.

Examples of the behaviors and attitudes which are the cooling system for Compassionate Consultation are:

• Praying collectively for divine assistance;

• Having purity of motive;

• Honoring the inherent value of each deliberating member;

• Detaching one’s ego from one’s ideas;

• Manifesting humility and lowliness;

• Disagreeing dispassionately;

• Having the attitude of an investigator of truth;

• Treasuring diversity in the deliberating members and in the ideas expressed;

• Using perfect liberty in expression within a context of courtesy, moderation and patience;

• Manifesting patience and long-suffering in difficulties;

• Having unity in implementing decisions.

When these cooling behavioral standards (and others described in our book) are not honored, deliberation in all contexts—whether a couple, family, community, organization or government—gets overheated and can burst into flames.  We see all too many examples of this overheated, adversarial, and destructive deliberation throughout world culture; and it leads to sub-optimal or no decisions being made and the spread of conflict, disunity and fragmentation.  

But today, wherever Compassionate Consultation skills are being used and perfected in families, neighborhoods, communities, organizations and institutions throughout the world, people are discovering an optimal tool for the deep exploration and heavy-lifting required to truly reveal the truth of the matter; and to successfully change human, scientific and societal problems into transformative opportunities and social progress.  

It is clear why this is so.  CC provides both the most powerful tool in the world for decision-making and problem-solving; and the cooling system to maintain clear vision, nurture relationships, and reach robust, just and unifying results.

All of these parallels between mining trucks and CC became clear to me that day at the Caterpillar Mining Division facility.  And, speaking of facility, the best part of all of this is that we are all pre-wired to use CC; to achieve facility in it, we just need to practice it in order to draw out the latent capacities that are already within us.

To learn more about the powerful procedures and cooling system behaviors for Compassionate Consultation, read our second book, TRANSFORMED: How to Make the Decisions That Change Your Life

Searching For A Ring I Had Lost

By Bill Harley

A few years ago, I lost a ring that was very dear to me. The path to finding it was amazing to me and I am still trying to understand the full meaning of what occurred.

It all started at the time when Jean and I had submitted our book to the publishing company (the one that eventually published both of our books) and we were waiting to hear whether or not there was interest in publishing it. At the time, we had written one long book about the ultimate purposes of life, the spiritual growth patterns designed into life by the Creator and Compassionate Consultation as the problem solving and decision-making process that could help one choose a purposeful life and navigate the spiritual growth patterns along the way.

After a few weeks, the publisher called us and offered to publish the book under one condition: that we split the one book into two books—one on the ultimate purposes of life and the spiritual growth patterns designed into life by the Creator, and the other on Compassionate Consultation. Mind you, Jean and I had spent over a decade researching and weaving these subjects together into a single book; so our first reaction was stunned disbelief. However, as we reflected on the publisher’s reasons for splitting the one book into two, we had to admit that his proposal made a great deal of sense. So we signed the publishing contract.

Then, the hard work began—or should have. We agreed that I would take the lead on breaking the books apart; and then we would go through a back and forth collaborative process of editing, rewriting, and re-editing until we were both satisfied. So I began the surgery on the book—splitting it as I thought of it, like conjoined twins, into two books; creating new connecting devices where portions had been excised, cauterizing certain sections to change them from mid-sections to end sections, and largely dismantling a great deal of what we had worked so hard to integrate in the initial book.

For the next couple of months, I worked very slowly and sporadically in this way; felt a great deal of inner conflict about what we were doing; and struggled to move the project forward.

Then, at bedtime one night, I noticed one of the two rings I wear was missing. My wedding ring was still on my finger, but the other ring I wore on the next finger was nowhere to be seen. The missing ring, like my wedding ring, was very close to my heart. It was a silver ring with a spiritual symbol on it which represented the relationships between the realm of God, the realm of the divine Messengers, and the realm of humanity. I wasn’t sure how long the ring had been missing, but I hoped somehow to find it.

It was early winter in Minnesota. Over the next several days I checked all my gloves and the pockets in my clothing and outer garments; I checked all the places at home, in our cars and in my office where the ring could have slipped off my finger; and then I called and checked at every place I had been in the preceding week to see if a ring had been found. I found nothing.

As my separation of the two books crawled along in the following weeks, I increasingly ruminated about the fact that I was searching for a ring I had lost. This situation held great mystery for me because, in a generic way, I had been thinking about this for over 40 years in connection with a profound parable that greatly influenced my spiritual journey.

If you have read what became Jean’s and my first book—Now That I’m Here, What Should I Be Doing?—you know about the Watchman Parable in which a lover has become separated from his beloved and has been unsuccessfully seeking her for long years. He comes to a point where he can no longer bear the separation from her and goes on a quest to relieve his suffering. During his quest, he is obstructed and chased by “watchmen”—people who seem intent on harming him and driving him off course. Ultimately, the lover is cornered by the watchmen and, to escape them, he climbs a high wall with great difficulty and, giving up his life, throws himself into the darkness on the other side. He lands in a garden; and there he unexpectedly finds his beloved “searching for a ring she had lost”.

The lover immediately realizes that, rather than obstructing him, the watchmen forces have actually guided him to his beloved; and these guiding forces have been sent by God. As a result, the lover is not only reunited with his beloved, but draws closer to God. And it is clear in the parable that similar watchman forces have uncannily guided his beloved to this synchronized meeting point in the garden as part of her search for the ring she has lost. The parable suggests that, while very challenging, these divinely guiding “watchman” forces play a powerful, growth- producing and ultimately benevolent influence in all our lives.

So here I was, struggling to rewrite one book into two books and also searching for a ring I had lost, which was a key theme of one of the emerging books. What did it mean? I asked Jean to use Compassionate Consultation with me to try to answer that question. In the parable, we gradually concluded, the beloved’s search for her ring seemed to represent a search for completion; and we were seeking completion of the two books.

The fact that I considered the ring I had lost as my “spiritual” ring made us wonder if it represented the emerging book on the purpose of life and the spiritual growth patterns designed into life by the Creator—which included the Watchman Parable. Possibly, instead of working on the reshaping of both books simultaneously using the clinical metaphor of separating conjoined twins, I needed to “search for” the “completion” of the “spiritual” book first.

The moment this conclusion took shape, a new metaphor for the task entered my mind: it came from the statement by the sculptor, Auguste Rodin, that when he began a sculpture of the human form (e.g., “The Thinker”), he thought of the figure already complete, but imprisoned inside the block of marble—his job being to free the already-sculpted shape from the surrounding marble. With this thought, I felt a surge of energy and realized that my task was not a clinical but an artistic one to free the “already-completed” first book from its entanglement with the second one.

With that, the search for my ring changed my slow and sporadic work into highly motivated and focused work aimed at discovering the true nature of the first book on its own terms. The work was still very difficult, but, as the cold winter weeks went by, I completed the first draft and Jean and I began generating heat in our interactive process as we gradually refined that first draft of the first book.

As we worked, we realized that the watchman forces—searching for a publisher, finding the publisher, the need to separate the books, the frustration of my early attempts to separate the books, the loss of the ring, the failure to find it, the thought and consultative process it spawned leading to the reframing of the task at hand—all of them reflected the hand of divine guidance. We were scaling a wall with great difficulty, but we were increasingly confident that the beloved—completion of the first book—was waiting on the other side of the wall.

In the early days of spring, having relentlessly maintained our focus on the task, we turned the final draft of the first book—freed from its entanglement with the second book—over to the publisher with a sense of joy in completion. My only lingering regret was the loss of my “spiritual ring” as the ransom for our new awareness and achievement.

Three days later, I received an email from a friend which read: “Didn’t you say you had lost a silver ring during the winter? I found one this morning in the greening grass along the edge of our front sidewalk where the melting snow had receded. It had been lying hidden under the snow all winter. Could it be yours?”

Indeed, it was my ring; and I recalled that Jean and I had attended a prayer meeting at this friend’s house early in the same week that I lost the ring. At that meeting, I had silently prayed for guidance on how to accelerate my slow progress on separating the two books. Looking back, it was clear that my answer to that prayer—the ensuing watchman forces beginning with the loss of the ring—began guiding me almost instantly. And the finding of the ring was the second beloved and final “completion” in this real life parable.

To understand how these guiding forces impact your life, read our first book, Now That I’m Here, What Should I Be Doing?

To understand the process of Compassionate Consultation that Jean and I used to discover what was trying to happen in our lives, read our second book, TRANSFORMED: How to Make the Decisions That Change Your Life

What About Your *Spiritual* DNA?

By Bill Harley

We hear a lot about DNA in the news these days, especially with the development of mail-in kits to discover one’s ancestry.  As a refresher, DNA is short for deoxyribonucleic acid, a molecule that contains the biological instructions an organism needs to develop, live and reproduce.  

It’s unique in each of us, which has revolutionized the solving of crimes; but it is similar within family lines, which allows us to trace the identity, characteristics and geographical movements of our ancestors. 

Many people are finding meaning in learning more about their ancestry: understanding for the first time where they got their cleft chin, or why they have an aversion to some foods, or the exact mix of nations their ancestors came from.  For many, this lends to the feeling “Now, I really understand who I am.”  

It is wonderful to learn more about ourselves, but I have to ask, “This is only your material DNA; what about your spiritual DNA?”

If we are really spiritual beings having a material experience during our brief lives on earth as all of the world’s Holy Books confirm, then shouldn’t we be even more interested in the attributes of our spiritual beings than those of our physical beings, which turn to dust after our material bodies die?

Our spiritual DNA is also unique to each of us; and it contains the instructions that our true self, or higher nature, needs to guide our lower or material nature and to expand, progress, and serve others in this world and the next.  The spiritual DNA databank is composed of the Scriptures of the world’s major religions—humanity’s common faith heritage—and it is available to each of us at no charge.

Some of the things we know about our spiritual DNA from these sources are:

• All of us belong to one human family spiritually;

• All of us have been schooled by the succession of Divine Messengers who have come down through the ages; and all the religions they have revealed are chapters of a single book;

• These Messengers and their teachings are the true drivers of the social and spiritual advancement of human beings both individually and collectively;

• Our true selves, our souls, are endowed with latent spiritual attributes (such as patience, love, humility and a sense of justice) that we are supposed to be developing while we are on earth;

• If we don’t develop these spiritual capacities during our lives on earth, we will be handicapped when we transition into the spiritual existence that follows;

• Our capacities vary soul to soul, but the goal for each of us is to develop and manifest our full capacity;

• Just like food is nutrition that assures the growth and health of the body, prayer and Scriptural reading assure the growth and health of the soul or higher nature;

• Service to the world and our fellow human beings also enhances the soul’s development;

• Our spiritual nature resonates to the three major purposes of life during our time on earth;

• One of the most important ways that our spirits and minds progress in this world is through navigating tests and difficulties and discovering the guidance concealed in them.

All of these characteristics (and many more—see “Your Higher & Lower Nature”) of our spiritual DNA have been implanted in our souls by a loving Creator.  Maybe it’s time for all of us to learn more about our spiritual DNA.  When you think about it, it’s much more relevant to our long-term future than our material DNA.  And it will enable each of us to say, “Now I truly understand who I am!”

To better understand your spiritual DNA and how to advance your spiritual development in the context of the true purposes of life, read Jean’s and my first book, Now That I’m Here, What Should I Be Doing?

To increase your skills in making life decisions and solving problems while keeping both spiritual and material considerations in mind, read our second book, TRANSFORMED: How to Make the Decisions That Change Your Life

Wishing You Dull Moments

By Bill Harley

Jean and I attended an event recently where someone at the podium praised their best friend for “never providing a dull moment”.  In that moment, I understood what the speaker meant and nodded in agreement.  But then, I got to thinking.  What is so bad about dull moments?  

On the one hand, we live in a culture that teaches us to strive with all our might to avoid dull moments.  If we go to a sporting event, we are surrounded and immersed in multi-media, audio-visual stimulation that is unceasing. Restaurants are designed to be noisy so that there will be no awkward moments of silence between two people or a group of people.  Our digital devices are so engaging that we no longer watch where we are going or notice who is around us.  All of this keeps us at the surface rather than the depths of awareness.

On the other hand, in dull moments we are faced with silence and profound questions that a noisy culture helps us keep submerged.  Questions like: 

• Who am I?  

• What is the purpose of life?  

• What’s trying to happen in my life and relationships?  

• How can I enhance my key relationships?  

• In what ways do I need to grow?  

• What is my calling in life?  

• How can I best serve in the world?

• How can I contribute to the advancement of society?  

• How much taking versus giving am I doing in my life?  

• What truly makes me happy and fulfilled?  

• What makes those around me happy and fulfilled; and am I contributing or detracting from that? 

• What must happen in the rest of my life for it to be a life of few regrets, a life well lived?

Deep questions like these draw forth our True Self, our higher nature; and answers to these types of deep questions not only motivate us to grow by making constructive changes, but contribute to our sense of meaning and fulfillment in life.

But the nature of our culture keeps us preoccupied with shallow questions: Which of the 14 styles do you like?  Which of the 8 flavors and 10 toppings do you choose?  What level of service do you want—there are 6 to select from?  We are so overwhelmed with trivial questions and choices that we have no time for profound ones.  We are starving from the absence of dull moments.  Meanwhile, the rates of mind altering drug use and suicide climb.

One message found in Scriptures of all the major world religions is that human beings were created to rise above their present-day cultures in order to carry forward an ever-advancing civilization.  This cannot be done when we are totally immersed in the present culture.  The only way to get a foothold for climbing above the present culture is to step willingly into dull moments.  We need to embrace the silence, articulate the profound questions, seek the profound answers and then act accordingly.

As an aid to understanding this process, read Jean’s and my first book, Now That I’m Here, What Should I Be Doing?

As an aid to making decisions and solving problems while navigating this process, read our second book, TRANSFORMED: How to Make the Decisions That Change Your Life

Jean and I wish you many dull moments in the year ahead!

Write here…

Don't Forget To Tie Your Camel

By Bill Harley

In Jean’s and my studies of the world’s Holy Books over the last fifty years, we came across a statement made by Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, which really got our attention.  When one of His followers asked Him how to reconcile the concepts of free-will and fate, Muhammad said, “Trust in God, but tie your camel!”

When you consider that Muhammad was teaching warring desert tribes during the 6th and 7th Centuries AD, the reference to “tie your camel” couldn’t have been more tailored to the consciousness of His listeners; but, it also got our attention as an amazingly succinct statement to all people of faith about how to live their lives.  

Jean and I interpret Muhammad’s statement to mean that we must strongly trust in God’s guidance in our lives and strive to align our wills with His will for us; but, we must also do the due diligence to address the details of life and strive for the outcomes we are seeking.  When we are doing our best to maintain our lives while addressing and resolving our problems, the remaining problems that we can’t control are probably sent by God for our perfecting.  On the other hand, if we are not doing our due diligence in this way, it’s almost impossible to determine which problems are of our own making and which are sent by God to stimulate our growth.

I had a recent series of experiences in which Muhammad’s guidance proved very helpful to me.  I plan to tell a more detailed version of this story in a future blog, but here is the short version.

I was having problems with my eyesight, which related to glaucoma, cataracts and severe dry eye.  My eye doctor of some years didn’t seem to be staying on top of my condition.  I realized this when I went to my primary care physician for my annual physical and his first words to me were, “What’s going on with your eyes?”  He sent me to a different eye doctor for a second opinion, and I spent 6 months under his care while he treated only one symptom: the severe dryness in my eyes, which improved only moderately.

Meanwhile, everyone I interacted with commented on the redness of my eyes; and I sensed that the vision in my right eye was getting more blurry.  I grew increasingly anxious about my condition and prayed with rising intensity to God for guidance in finding the right doctor (trust in God).  But I also read research about my condition, shared my struggles with people who might be knowledgeable about my condition, and searched for a specialist that could resolve my issues (tie your camel).

Then, about 90 days ago, I encountered an acquaintance who spontaneously praised her doctor for the resolution of her eye conditions; and her conditions closely mirrored mine.  I immediately went to this doctor.  He resolved the severe dryness in my eyes in one visit; quantified the amount of vision loss that had occurred in my right eye while the other doctors had been treating only symptoms; and did surgery on my right eye to halt the vision loss.

In the aftermath of all this, one of my adult daughters recently said to me, “How worried are you still about the condition of your eyes?”  My response was, “Not very worried.  Muhammad said, ‘Trust in God, but tie your camel!’  Now that I have this excellent new eye doctor, I feel like I have tied my camel.  If I remain under his care and do all the things he tells me to do to care for my eyes, then any other decline in my eyesight must be something God has planned to spur my spiritual growth.  Now, I just need to trust in God.”

To better understand how to trust in God, but tie your camel, read Jean’s and my first book, Now That I’m Here, What Should I Be Doing?

To better understand how to make the decisions that enable you to tie your camel while trusting in God, read our second book, TRANSFORMED: How to Make the Decisions That Change Your Life

A Requisite for World Peace: A Transformative Decision-Making Method

By Bill Harley

A common theme in the religious scriptures of all the major world religions is the historic dispersion of the human race throughout the world; and the coming regathering of that race into one human family living in peace on the planet.  This regathering is associated with the coming of age of the human race collectively.  We are witnessing that regathering in the world today.  Human beings from all ethnicities, cultures, and walks of life are being forced by circumstances to intermingle at an accelerating rate—both within and between nations.  

This regathering generates great possibilities and complex challenges.  To successfully fulfill these possibilities and wisely resolve these challenges will require enlightened decision-making capacities—in families, neighborhoods, communities, organizations, and city, state, national and international institutions—which are not yet evident.  As we survey these venues of decision-making, we see the predominance of adversarial deliberation practices that generate destructive conflict, inaction on pressing problems, and decisions (when they occur) that are sub-optimal and foster new rounds of conflict.  It is as though we are using adolescent decision-making tools to address adult problems and opportunities.

You know you are using immature/adolescent decision-making practices when the deliberation devolves into a swamp of false dichotomies like the following:  

• We can do it my way or your way—there is no in-between way.  

• We can live on a budget or we can be free and enjoy life.  

• We can have national borders that are open or borders that are closed.  

• We can totally control access to guns or we can make them freely available to all.  

• My candidate is all virtue, and your candidate is all evil.  

• We can use fossil fuels or we can save the environment.  

• You can support management or labor—make your choice.  

• We can have government that is small and nimble or large and bureaucratic.

When false dichotomies emerge along with the debilitating arguments that accompany them, you know the regathering of the human family is going to be mismanaged—in your home, neighborhood, city, state, nation and the world.

What would it look like to be using mature/adult decision-making practices instead?  For one thing, the deliberation process would free us from a preoccupation with overly simplistic, false dichotomies; and foster collaborative exploration of the rich middle ground between them where the creative, nuanced solutions reside.  

For another thing, the decision-making process would draw forth the adult (rather than the adolescent) in each of us and connect us to our latent but transformative deliberative skills such as the ability to separate our egos from our ideas and to use dispassionate disagreement.

For another thing, this mature decision-making process would be informed by reference to spiritual principles and human values that not only call out the best in each of us, but guide us to go deeper to discover nuanced, multi-faceted solutions that address the problems and exploit the opportunities more effectively than ever before.

For example, consider the immigration crisis that is currently causing consternation and disunity in the U. S., many other countries and the world at large.  If the spiritual principles inherent in this issue were identified and agreed upon, it would change the shallow, conflictual, adolescent deliberation processes currently on display into a profound and comprehensive decision-making process that would generate social progress.  To illustrate, some of the spiritual principles (in quotes) and human values (not in quotes) involved would be the following:

• “The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens.”

• The members of the human race are one family spiritually.

• “Be a home to the stranger, a balm to the suffering….”

• “Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor.”

• Law and order are the basis for peace and security in every civilized society.

• The bonds that unite individuals are love, compassion and forbearance; but what bonds nations together into a united world is justice.

• “Justice has a mighty force at its command.  It is none other than reward and punishment for the deeds of men.  By the power of this force the tabernacle of order is established throughout the world…”

• “The structure of world stability and order hath been reared upon, and will continue to be sustained by, the twin pillars of reward and punishment.”

The close reader will notice that the first four spiritual principles/human values seem to direct our solution finding in one direction while the second four seem to direct us in a different direction—and these two directions represent the polarized sides of the current argument in society.  In reality, this perception is a false dichotomy because the truth of the matter can only be understood by entertaining all eight spiritual principles/human values at once.  The wise, robust, loving, just and unifying solution must be a nuanced one that honors all of the eight principles in concert.  

This is what mature, adult deliberation and decision-making looks like.  We call this methodology Compassionate Consultation (CC) and it is introduced in detail in Jean’s and my second book, TRANSFORMED: How to Make the Decisions That Change Your Life. 

As we observe the fractious and largely unproductive deliberating practices at the local, state, national and international levels all over the world today, it is difficult to imagine that the path to justice, unity and peace is anything but long and winding.  However, for the increasing number of early adopters in families, communities, organizations and institutions in the world that are transforming their deliberative skills using Compassionate Consultation, the path to justice, unity and peace is increasingly straight.  And the straightest path between two points is always the shortest.

If the path to justice, unity and peace in your personal world seems long and winding, find the deliberative straight path by reading Jean’s and my book.  The decision-making skills you develop will bring justice, unity and peace to hearts, minds and spirits.