MSI Press Blog

  We build defenses to survive. Ego to protect our worth. Fear to shield our vulnerability. Insecurity to preempt rejection. These defenses are clever. They keep us safe. They help us navigate a world that doesn’t always feel kind. But over time, they become walls. And walls don’t just keep danger out. They keep connection out. They keep joy out. They keep life out. To be the source of your own life is to begin dismantling those walls. Not all at once. Not recklessly. But gently, intentionally, with courage. 1. Ego says “I must prove myself” But you are already worthy. You don’t need to perform your value. You don’t need to win every argument. You don’t need to be right to be real. Letting go of ego makes room for truth. 2. Fear says “I must protect myself” But protection can become isolation. Fear can shrink your world until it’s too small to live in. Letting go of fear makes room for possibility. 3. Insecurity says “I must hide myself” But hiding is exhausting. A...

  There’s a kind of strength that doesn’t come from pushing harder. It comes from listening deeper. It’s the strength of a tree that bends in the wind but doesn’t break. The strength of a river that flows around obstacles and still reaches the sea. To be the source of your own life is not to dominate the forces around you. It is to work with them. To move in rhythm. To shape your path through attunement, not resistance. 1. Harmony begins with noticing You can’t work with what you ignore. Notice the seasons in your body. Notice the patterns in your relationships. Notice the signals in your environment. Notice the invitations life keeps offering. When you notice, you begin to dance instead of fight. 2. Harmony requires humility You are not the only force at play. There are tides. There are currents. There are ecosystems of energy and timing and grace. Humility doesn’t mean shrinking. It means aligning. 3. Harmony honors both resilience and surrender Resilience...

  Excerpt from Typhoon Honey (Girrell & Sjogren) -  Defining transformation The nature of everything in this world we know of and in which we live is change. Nothing is static and immutable—nothing. Neither concrete buildings nor stones. Not mountains nor oceans. Nothing lasts forever without changing. Not only is everything in a constant state of flux (though admittedly at different rates and speeds), but the nature of those changes is purely chaotic. The universe is chaos that moves in patterned forms which we call fractals (self-repeating patterns). So when we begin to talk about change and what change is, we start with the idea that change is natural and continual.   This is no new concept. The ancient sages observed changes happening around them and sought to understand the nature of change and changing systems more than three thousand years ago. The “Book of Changes,” called the I Ching , is probably the most widely known of the systems for understanding change...

  Perception Is Not Reality In nearly every liberal arts college offering psychology as a major, you can find an advanced course labeled something like “Sensation and Perception.” This course studies how the brain reads information sent to it from the five senses and how these data are recognized and converted into thoughts, sensations, images, sounds, and memories. To make the point that it is the brain that sees and hears and then interprets the information it receives, the instructor will often show a video of a famous video experiment [1] wherein a student is given a pair of glasses fitted with a prism in front of each eye, functionally inverting the image that is sent to the brain. Through the inverting prism glasses the world looks upside down. At first the student has difficulty knowing up and down, but then she successfully pours milk into a tea cup. After a day, the student walks about quite a bit more easily but still at times reaches up for something that is low down....