November/ December 2009

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Welcome

I was elected back into the position of President at the AGM of the Dunedin Theosophical Society, so that will keep me busy for the another year. We increased our membership by 25% in the last year and we have new initiatives, such as a study group starting up.

The photo to the left is me with my birthday cake. the numbers on the cake were the wrong way round!
Sonja, Emerald and I had a weekend in Timaru where we met up with Rowena and Max. the bird on the right was in an aviary down by the beach. It was a great weekend together. We had walks around the coast and wharf and went through an aviary.

There was another meeting of the national council of the Theosophical Society in Auckland in November. Then I had a great training week in Wellington learning advanced facilitator skills for working with difficult people in groups. It went really well with a really good group of facilitators from around the country. The photo to the left is a rhododendron bush down my driveway and the right is looking back to Dunedin from the air.

Interesting Websites

http://www.vmacgill.net/newsletter/nov09 Adaptive Cycle Model

Lance Gunderson and Buzz Holling, who wrote the book, Panarchy, I have been reading have some great videos on their site at http://www.stockholmresilience.org. The photo is of Buzz Holling. I gave a talk on their adaptive cycle to the Theosophical Society. On the right is the three dimensional model I made to help explain the adaptive cycle. in my talk.

More books...

The Way of Selflessness: A Practical Guide to Enlightenment Based on the Teachings of the World's Great Mystics by Joel Morwood.

I have been given this book for doing a review of the book. It looks like a very thorough investigation of mystical spiritual practices and beliefs from a Buddhist, Hindu, Christian and Daoist perspective. It is very well researched and designed as a workbook for spiritual practice as much as a book about spirituality. It is quite heavy going, but broken into parts and worked through progressively it looks like be a useful resource. Rather than being a theoretical study, it is designed as a workbook for practical study. I'm nearly halfway through.

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Books I read this month

Resilience Thinking, Sustaining Ecosystems and People in a Changing World by Brian Walker and David Salt

This is a smaller version of the book, Panarchy, I have been reading. It is a good intorduction to the adaptive cycle giving six case studies of very different ecologies and how we can understand the changes in those environments over time.

The Human Antenna, Reading the language of the universe in the songof the cells by Dr Robin Kelly

Dr Robin Kelly is a NEw Zealand author, living in Auckland. This book was recommended while I was in Auckland at the national council meeting. It is about how cells communicate in our body and the link to DNA acting as an antenna, tuning into the energy and energetic signals in our environment. It gives a lot of scientific data. the basic idea sounds good, but I wonder about many of the specifics he hypothesises about how this happens.

Victor's webpage Victor's complexity website Subscribe Email Victor Victor's first book