Hello Everyone.

This past month, as part of an event with Independent Authors and Illustrators of Canada http://www.iaicanada.org/ I needed a brochure to hand out, about Self-to-self .com. I made the focus phrase for my pamphlet, “Life is Learning” and I made the theme “Your Power is Your Choice – Choose to Learn – Beginning Self-to-self”.

After much thought, I included a critical concept in Speaker Material and Self-to-self philosophy: Revolution renames evolution. This is the view that only original, innovative, radically ingenious creative thinking will re-direct the course of our development in any fundamentally meaningful way – either personally or globally. A newly creative direction for evolution will need to come from a revolution to our thinking - a momentous, sweeping change to how we understand and use our own thought processes for creating our world.

The question of “…what do you think?” is the opening-door of our learning. What we think, is the beginning of our learning about anything – including our self and our Self. This question of “…what do you think?” often seems only an innocuous and banal social observance; or hardly more than a patronizing pretense of our interest; or even an expected masquerade of our disinterest! Or perhaps we ask others this question as an avoidance mechanism, so we won’t have to ask it of ourselves. Yet, only when we honestly ask and try to honestly answer this question for ourselves, do we begin our Self-to-self learning. For the creative voice of our reality will only speak to us from within this question of “what do we think”.

At the event I was participating in, this idea of revolution renaming evolution generated a wonderful conversation about the meaning of revolution, evolution, change, and development – precisely the kind of conversation that Speaker Material is asking us to have – with ourselves! In fact, through the years, these are precisely the conversations I have had with myself as part of my own learning about what I think.

The conversation I shared was possible only because the person I was talking to had actually thought about what they thought; and so had I. That independent thinking that we had each done allowed us to share in a richly interesting, and meaningful interaction/exchange/dialogue. We can only share that which we have – in this case, mind-full thinking! If we do not know, or care to know, what we think, then we have little to share beyond surface facts, or other people's ideas and opinions, about anything. We can gather facts from a plethora of sources, and there is no shortage of other people's ideas and opinions. We can only gather what we think, from our self-and-Self.

This little episode of conversational interaction tied into another recent experience of someone pointing out that “you will never be successful at anything if you are trying to give, share, sell, trade, exchange, interest or involve someone in something that they are not already actively wanting and seeking. The equivalent Speaker Material point is, “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink”.

The link between the idea that revolution can redirect evolution, and the idea that our choice is an individually inviolable prerogative, is that they each constitute our own understanding about our power and ability to create and the meaning of our creating. If we believe that “Life is Learning”, then we are already engaged in asking ourselves that question about what (and then how), we think. If we believe that “revolution renames evolution” then we are already involved with people who are using that belief in some way within their lives, in order to help ourselves further our own learning. These are revelatory demonstrations of our power to think, to choose, to take action toward, to understand - to live a life that is learning.

I write this column and present Speaker Material through this site because I believe that I’m not the only person already actively seeking to learn, Self-to-self. And I believe that I am not the only person already actively involved in the challenge of understanding our thinking minds as a way to expand our possibilities and open a revolutionary, original new choice, as a meaningful self-directed path for human-hood’s development.

Of course, to think about our thinking eventually requires that we ask that other question of “what do we believe?” How fortunate that life is a true reflection of what we think and what we believe; and how helpful that I can always find the answer to the one question, by asking the other question. Of course, I can always choose to answer neither – which will always tell me the exact truth about both; complete with my life’s private show-and-tell demonstration! Now that’s a real win-win situation!

The design of the Self-to-self relationship is cooperative mutuality - my Self will always help me, and I am expected to reciprocate. For me, that translates into my belief that “Living is Learning”. To the friend who once complained “choices, choices, choices – do I never get to stop making choices!?” my answer is still, “not until you stop thinking.” What do you think? What do you believe?

Regards,
Spinfo