Transcript:

Hello, I’m David Breeden, I’m the senior minister at First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis, a historically humanist congregation. This is Coffee and Wisdom Summer Edition when we meet live at nine a.m. Central Time on Tuesdays and Thursdays. For the next couple of weeks, I want to be looking at an idea of “no way, yes way.” And that’s a little bit silly there. But my main idea here is looking at words, methods and ideas and how we use them according to ancient philosophical wisdom and religious traditions. How we are advised to use them, how we are told not to use them as we think through these things. So maybe we should always start with Dogbert. But this is his communications seminar. “There’s really no point in listening to other people,” says Dogbert. “They’re either going to be agreeing with you or saying stupid stuff.” And then he thinks that should cut down on the questions. So, yes, one way to think of communication is people are either agreeing with me or saying stupid stuff. But there are other ways of thinking about communicating, as a matter of fact. And I want to stick with the business world for just a minute and think of something from the business entrepreneur, Seth Godin. Seth Godin writes a blog every day (excuse me), and I really enjoy the way he thinks about business ideas.

He says this: “The most successful problem solvers are people who have embraced this simple method: Your current idea isn’t your identity. It’s simply a step closer to a solution to the problem in front of you.” He goes on, “One way to define our identity is to fall in love with an idea (often one that was handed to us by a chosen authority). Another is to refuse to believe our identity is embodied in an idea, and instead embrace a method for continually finding and improving our ideas.” So do we fall in love with our idea and identify with that and hold on to it for all it’s worth? Or can we think in a different way, and deal with ideas as tools that we aren’t necessarily attached to, but rather we are using in some way to not say stupid stuff? So there you go. Well, let’s think about that a little bit, because I’ll go to Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor and stoic philosopher from the 1st century, who said this: “Watch out for four errors of the higher mind; when you see one of these, say, ‘that thought is unnecessary!’ First is a thought which tends to damage social relations. Second is a thought that does not come from genuine thinking. Third is speaking the thoughts of others.” Notice that’s one of the things Seth Godin says is a bad idea – is using someone else’s idea.

And “The fourth is when you reproach yourself for anything, for this is evidence that the better part of your thinking is being overpowered and is yielding to the less honorable, the passions.” So when you were reproaching yourself, you are letting your passions take over. Now, we want to unwind these things a little bit and look at them from another wisdom tradition. And that is from a book called “The Four Agreements: A Toltec Wisdom Book – A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom.” This is a bestseller. It’s sold millions of copies at this point and has been translated into many different languages. It was written by Don Miguel Ruiz. He is from Guadalajara, Mexico, and is a descendant from the Toltec tradition. The Toltecs were a group that developed an empire in central Mexico. And it covered really most of what is Mexico today (skipped a bit in the deep forest there), and they went by boat over to Chichen Itza. But the Toltec empire was quite extensive and covered b...