Aldea Messages

THRIVAL (Part 8): Laughter is Medicine | Jake Haber & Nancy Stanley

Laugh with us as we explore the healing and transformative power of humor, including an interview with Tucson comic Nancy Stanley!
 
Quotes:
 
Maya Angelou:
“My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.”
 
Alan Watts:
"Real religion is the transformation of anxiety into laughter."
 
Gospel of Thomas (63): 
"Jesus said, "There was a rich man who had considerable wealth. He said, 'I shall invest my wealth so as to sow, reap, plant, and fill my barns with crops, lest I run short of something.' These things are what he was thinking in his heart, and that very night the man died. Whoever has ears should listen!"
 
Lao Tzu:
“If it were not laughed at, it would not be sufficient to be Tao.”
 

THRIVAL (Part 7): No Bad Parts | Jake Haber

Add another tool to your thrival toolkit as we explore "parts work" such as Internal Family Systems, a form of therapy and introspection that sees the inner self as a diverse collection of "parts".
 
*IFS Intro for Kids video by Kenny Dennis
 
Quotes:
 
Ralph De La Rosa:
“We are not one-dimensional, and our multiple dimensions are not static. Just as our bodies are made of many parts that form a dynamic, interwoven system that works together, so it is with our psyches. We are more awake, alive, and complex than we know.”
 
Richard Schwartz:
“When you were young and experienced traumas or attachment injuries, you didn’t have enough body or mind to protect yourself. Your Self couldn’t protect your parts, so your parts lost trust in your Self as the inner leader. They may even have pushed your Self out of your body and took the hit themselves—they believed they had to take over and protect you and your other parts. But in trying to handle the emergency, they got stuck in that parentified place and carry intense burdens of responsibility and fear, like a parentified child in a family….Your protectors’ goals for your life revolve around keeping you away from all that pain, shame, loneliness, and fear, and they use a wide array of tools to meet those goals—achievements, substances, food, entertainment, shopping, sex, obsession with your appearance, caretaking, meditation, money, and so on.”
 
Sigmund Freud:
“Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways.”
 
Gareth Gwyn:
"Our triggers become welcomed signs that we have rejected something inside us."
 
Richard Schwartz:
“The goal of IFS is not to eliminate parts, but to get them to work together in harmony. This leads to a greater sense of wholeness and integration.”
 

THRIVAL (Part 6): The Alchemy of Change | Jake Haber

Join us as we take a new perspective on the disruptions of life - exploring the metaphors of wind & alchemy! 
 
Quotes: 
 
Travis Brownley (Marin Academy): 
"Without stress wood, a tree can grow quickly, but it cannot support itself fully. It cannot withstand normal wear and tear, and survive. In other words, the trees needed some stress in order to thrive in the long run."
 
Matthew 7:24-26:
"You are like a wise man who built his house on a rock, on a firm foundation. When storms hit, rain pounded down and waters rose, levies broke and winds beat all the walls of that house. But the house did not fall because it was built upon rock."
 
Wendell Berry: 
"It may be that when we no longer know what to do - we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go - we have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed - The impeded stream is the one that sings."
 
Alan Watts:
"I have always been fascinated by the law of reversed effort. Sometimes I call it the “backwards law.” When you try to stay on the surface of the water, you sink; but when you try to sink, you float. When you hold your breath, you lose it—which immediately calls to mind an ancient and much neglected saying, “Whosoever would save his soul shall lose it.”
 
“If we cling to belief in God, we cannot likewise have faith, since faith is not clinging but letting go.”
 
John Stuart Mill:
“(They) who know only (their) own side of the case knows little of that.”
 
Malcolm Gladwell: 
“I feel I change my mind all the time. And I sort of feel that's your responsibility as a person, as a human being – to constantly be updating your positions on as many things as possible. And if you don't contradict yourself on a regular basis, then you're not thinking.”
 
Carl Jung:
“Only by discovering alchemy have I clearly understood...the real metamorphosis of the psyche.”
 
Rumi (The Undressing): 
"Learn the alchemy true human beings know - the moment you accept what troubles you have been given, the door opens."
 
 
 

Easter 2024: Practicing Resurrection | Jake Haber

Enjoy the message from Aldea's 2024 Easter gathering, titled "Practicing Resurrection". Join us as we take a fresh look at the Easter story, focusing on the universal themes of resurrection and hope.
 
Aristides:
“They love one another. They never fail to help widows. They save orphans from those who would hurt them. If they have something, they give freely to the one who has nothing. If they see an immigrant, they take him into their homes and rejoice over him as a brother.”
 
Joseph Campbell:
“Mythology is not a lie, mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical. It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth--penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words.” Richard Rohr: "The Resurrection is not a one-time miracle but the revelation of how reality works: that nothing truly dies.”
 
John 20:25-27
Thomas: Until I see His hands, feel the wounds of the nails, and put my hand to His side, I won’t believe what you are saying. Eight days later, they gathered again behind locked doors; and Jesus reappeared. This time Thomas was with them.Jesus: May each one of you be at peace. He drew close to Thomas. Jesus: Reach out and touch Me. See the punctures in My hands; reach out your hand, and put it to My side
 
Alan Watts:
"The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance"
 
Boyd Varty:
"Accept that losing the track is part of tracking. Go back to the last clear track. There is information there. Walk up ahead checking any open terrain and bare ground. Open your focus. Any place you don’t find a track is not wasted, but part of refining where to look."
 
Deepak Chopra:
"The symbolic language of the crucifixion is the death of the old paradigm; resurrection is a leap into a whole new way of thinking."
 
John 20:19:
"Peace be with you."
 
Martin Luther King Jr.:
Easter provides answers to the deepest queries of the human spirit... Through the resurrection...we have fit testimony that this earthly life is not the end, that death is just something of a turn in the road, that life moves down a continual moving river, and that death is just a little turn in the river, that this earthly life is merely an embryonic prelude to a new awakening, that death is not a period which ends this great sentence of life but a comma that punctuates it to more loftier significance. That is what it says. That is the meaning of Easter. That is the question that Easter answers.... People are always asking, “What is the most durable power in the universe? And the fact is that Easter answers that question too. And do you know what that is? It’s the power of love. Easter tells us that. Sometimes it looks like the other powers are much more durable. Then we come to see that isn’t true. But the most durable, lasting power in this world is the power to love.

THRIVAL (Part 4): Mindfulness | Arlene Marko

In this episode, guest speaker Arlene Marko shares an in-depth look at Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, and how this incredible tool for thriving came into her life. 
 
Quotes: 
 
Thomas Merton: 
"Let us never forget that the fruitful silence in which words lose their power and concepts escape our grasp is perhaps the perfection of meditation. We need not fear and become restless when we are no longer able to "make acts", rather, we should rejoice and rest in the luminous darkness of faith. This resting is a higher way of prayer".  
 
Jon Kabat-Zinn: 
"Mindfulness is about being fully awake in our lives. It is about perceiving the exquisite vividness of each moment. Through this, we gain immediate access to our own powerful inner resources for insight, transformation, and healing" 
 
 

THRIVAL (Part 3): In The Marketplace | Jake Haber & Carl Swart

Join us as Jake and Carl have a conversation about what it means to integrate our spirituality into our ordinary lives - including our careers and obligations. What does it look like to be "in the moment" if it's not a moment we particularly prefer?
 
Zen Proverb:
“Before enlightenment chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment chop wood, carry water.”
 
Tish Harrison Warren: 
“In the creation story, God entered chaos and made order and beauty. In making my bed I reflected that creative act in the tiniest, most ordinary way. In my small chaos, I made small order.”
 
Thich Nhat Han:
“If while washing dishes, we think only of the cup of tea that awaits us, thus hurrying to get the dishes out of the way as if they were a nuisance, then we are not ‘washing the dishes to wash the dishes.’ What’s more, we are not alive during the time we are washing the dishes. In fact we are completely incapable of realizing the miracle of life while standing at the sink.”
 
 

THRIVAL (Part 2): HEAL | Jake Haber

Join us for the second installment of our THRIVAL series as we look at the shift from living unconsciously to consciously healing. 
 
Quotes:
 
Carl Jung: 
"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
 
Blaise Pascale: 
“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
 
J. Krishnamurti: 
“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
 
James Clear: 
“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.”
 
Paracelsus:
"Sola dosis facit venenum” (only the dose makes the poison). 

THRIVAL (Part 1) | Jake Haber

What if we could do more than just survive? What if we could thrive? Throughout this series, we'll be looking at the various aspects of life where we can experience "thrival".
For today's episode, we look at our current cultural moment, asking why we have so many of our needs met, yet often remain unfulfilled. Is there more to life than just making it through? 
 
Quotes: 
 
John 10:10
“I came to give life with joy and abundance”
 
Ken Wilber:
“The movement of descent and discovery begins at the moment you consciously become dissatisfied with life.... A person who is beginning to sense the suffering of life is, at the same time, beginning to awaken to deeper realities, truer realities. For suffering smashes to pieces the complacency of our normal fictions about reality, and forces us to become alive in a special sense—to see carefully, to feel deeply, to touch ourselves and our worlds in ways we have heretofore avoided. It has been said, and truly I think, that suffering is the first grace. In a special sense, suffering is almost a time of rejoicing, for it marks the birth of creative insight.”
 
Baal Shem Tov: 
“Let me fall, if I must fall. The one I will become will catch me.”
 
Carl Jung:
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate”
 

Love, Period (Part 4): Emergent Love | Jake Haber [Extended Version]

Check out the closer of our "Love, Period" series as we talk about the great love story of the cosmos, including a new perspective on evolution, healed femurs, the survival of the fit (enough), Opera, Mother Teresa, and a giant shift in culture. 
 
The Podcast version of this message also includes an extended conversation with the Aldea Community. 
 
Quotes: 
 
 "Emergent properties are characteristics of a system that arise from the interactions and relationships among its components, but are not present in the individual components themselves” 
 
Brian Swimme: 
“The earth was once molten rock and now sings operas”
 
Stuart Davis:
“If Mother Teresa came from clay, maybe there’s more to evolution than a little DNA”
 
Rabbi Marc Gafni:
"Within the human world, there is also a progression of love from ethnocentric to worldcentric consciousness. This means... an expanding circle of love and care— from one’s own nation or religion (ethnocentric) to every human being on the planet (worldcentric).…It is not an ordinary love story but an Evolutionary Love Story whose very plotline is the evolution of love."
 
Thomas Merton: 
“To say that I am made in the image of God is to say that love is the reason for my existence, for God is love. Love is my true identity. Selflessness is my true self. Love is my true character. Love is my name.”
 
Joseph Campbell: 
“The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.”
 
 

Love, Period (Part 3): Loving Awareness | Jake Haber

Check out the third episode of our "Love, Period" series as we look at love through the concept of expanded awareness. How does pain increase our capacity for love? What are "spiritual altitudes"? What exactly is "loving awareness"? 
 
Quotes: 
 
Kahlil Gibran:
"The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain"
 
Rumi:
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
 
Veronica Tugaleva:
"To love unconditionally does not mean to give your unconditional time. Sometimes, to love completely, we must never see someone again. This, too, is love - giving someone the freedom to exist and be happy, even if it must be without you.”
 
Matthew 5:43-48:
"You have been taught to love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I tell you this: love your enemies. Pray for those who torment you and persecute you— in so doing, you become children of your Father in heaven. He, after all, loves each of us—good and evil, kind and cruel. He causes the sun to rise and shine on evil and good alike. He causes the rain to water the fields of the righteous and the fields of the sinner."
 
Ram Dass:
“I have a holy table with pictures on it of Buddha and Christ and Maharajji, my guru.... And I used to have Caspar Weinberger”— the secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan—“on the table, but I now have replaced him with Bob Dole. So in the morning, I say, ‘Good morning, Christ! Hello, Buddha! Good morning, Maharajji! Hello, Bob.’ And I see how far I have to go yet. Because after all, [Bob Dole] is merely God in drag, saying, I bet you won't recognize me this way, will you? They're all faces of the beloved.”
 
“(I’ve) read the words of great masters and others about death. Now, when I piece it together with my heart, not with my intellect, I find nothing to fear if I identify with loving awareness. Death becomes simply the final stage of my sadhana”.
 
Rob Bell:
“If we want hell, if we want heaven, they are ours. That's how love works. It can't be forced, manipulated, or coerced. It always leaves room for the other to decide. God says yes, we can have what we want, because love wins.”
 
James Baldwin: 
“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.”