Faith is both spiritual and physical

Faith is the final challenge on the path of wisdom. When logic and physical and social supports fail us in a critical time, we are forced to call upon an internal reserve that we were previously unsure existed. Walking in that valley of shadow we must find a direction and motivation beyond reason. In that valley of dry bones, logic says that we are dead, but yet we find something that nourishes us. This essay is a meditation on faith as both a spiritual and physiological experience.

Yes, even here, in what may seem like exceptionally bad circumstances, we must stand. No excuses! Wisdom is the ability to be present in our lives, regardless of the circumstances. As we do so, we gain some distance from the pain, and begin to experience it as separate from us; or at least just a small part of us. We begin to access energies that are primal and pure. From here, we can get to a place of positive emotions, where we can benefit from the unlimited natural resource of the creative imagination. This is a critical moment. That is why Assurance (faith) is important. Through faith, we are able to access knowledge and power that are not accessible in our ordinary cognitive and emotional state. It is both spiritual and physiological.

SOPPHIA, which means wisdom in Greek, is not just an intellectual model or concept. It must bear fruit and show results in life. The last letter in the acronym stands for Assurance or faith. In the Biblical book of Hebrews 11:1 “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” In Protestant doctrine, the inner witness of the Holy Spirit gives the disciple the assurance of salvation. That process of finding inner assurance and comfort in the middle of a chaotic and frightening world is a process of transformation that is both spiritual and physiological. It is the same power that came upon the original disciples at Pentecost, when their fear disappeared and they became bold and able to act on their faith. It is the same power that artists and performers can access at peak moments. It is a process that is not confined or defined by any one religion. Rather it is a fundamental part of being human.

The challenge is to not accept the fear but to overcome it. We overcome it by seeing what is hidden behind it. The fear hides the awesome power that we first perceive as separate from ourselves. That is the holy awe that overcomes us in a transcendental or God-appearing moment. But if we face the fear, we experience the comforting presence; the assurance.

So, what is wrong with fear and its cousin anger? Aren’t they the natural physiological responses to threat to our safety and security? What is healthy fear and anger, as opposed to the unhealthy kinds? As Jimi Hendrix sang in Axis Bold As Love, the boldness comes though love, not from anger or fear. And it is in the boldness of love that we meet the source of being, our axis. Fear and anger signal a potentially urgent problem, to which we need to respond. But frequently in our complex social world, as opposed to our original African Savanna environment, fear and anger are based on distorted perceptions and interpretations.

Going past the anger and fear, we find in addition to love, humility. Humility allows us to accept help without humiliation. Compassion enables us to give help without pity. In those personally difficult times, we need to stay positive and keep working at it. Keep an open and creative mind, and try other things until something works. Even though it feels hopeless at times, eventually opportunities for fulfillment will be there, if we have the vision to see them and the ability to bring them to fruition.

To get past our dead-ends, each of us can ask ourselves, “What am I not seeing?” The barrier is within each of us. Something is getting in the way of reaching deeply enough into our inner resources to create a breakthrough. What is it? Perhaps it’s an unresolved relationship from the past; a parent or child, spouse or friend. Perhaps the lack of forgiveness and acceptance of the reality of who they were, and what that means for each of us as a person, and as a man or woman, is blocking our vision and energy. It could be anything in our lives.

To the extent that our light is shining, it means that we are connected to our internal energy source. This makes others attracted to us; because they are seeking that light that is also within them; though hidden. It must be possible to connect to that power source, regardless of the dismal external circumstances. That is also the meaning of faith or assurance. It is both a spiritual and a physiological state. It may also be that at least for some people, the only way to tap into that internal source is to be in such dire external circumstances that there is no alternative but to look within.

In Dark Night of the Soul, St. John of the Cross writes something to the effect that being close to the divine light can deepen one’s sense of being in darkness. An intruding image, a metallic dragon puppet sitting at the table, evokes fear. “What if I get sick?” This is real. This is it. Staying positive is not just a nice thing to do. It changes what we are able to perceive and therefore changes events. Another image appears, a ring of light; and then a building made of light. Be bold as love. We are on a quest. All of this is not accidental, though chance and probability have their roles.

Time may seem short, but we underestimate what can happen in a moment. Now there’s an image of pastel pink and blue swirls. There is someplace we are trying to get to that we could not get to without desperate measures. Learn from but do not regret the past.

Truth is as important as survival. Now we get to a place of peace and rest. There’s no need to do anything more.

I’m Dr. Bernard Brookes. You can reach me at www.sopphia.com.

Freedom In Work

In the world of work, many people are searching for freedom; not so much freedom from work as freedom in work: the ability to work in a manner that has meaning and purpose as well as that meets our financial needs. The answer is not in sentimentality, but in truth. Knowing our true purpose, we must make hard choices about how to spend our time and energy; what compromises to accept, and which to avoid. Inevitably, there will be a need for personal adjustments; changes in activities and changes in our emotional reactions to those activities. In other words, some pain and discomfort is both unavoidable, and necessary for our growth and development into the persons we envision ourselves to be.

Learning to be comfortable and content doing the things that are actually good for us; that work to build the kind of life that we aspire to have; sometimes requires a kind of rewiring of neural circuits. It requires an approach similar to the one used for reducing anxiety. One technique is physical relaxation; slowing the breath; and tensing and relaxing muscles. The other is cognitive, catching the negative thinking that accompanies the anxiety, and countering it with positive emotions.

It is not just a matter of gritting our teeth and just getting the work done. It requires examining the anxious and negative emotions that we experience during the work activity and to transform those into positive emotions, or to reach a decision that we really should be doing something else. This is a gradual process, using the relaxation and cognitive restructuring techniques previously discussed.

A good example of emotional challenges in a job is in sales. Is it fear of the unknown; fear of being rejected, of being spoken to harshly; that makes for emotional difficulty? That fear can become the only guidance a salesperson has as to what needs to change in order to improve performance in talking with prospective clients. Fear impedes the subliminal communication that in ten seconds establishes a connection with another person. Solving this practical interpersonal riddle is the gateway to success.

It can help to have as a driver, the need to make a living and pay bills. This forces us to choose among the available means of making money. Each of them has advantages and disadvantages in terms of compensation/time efficiency, schedule flexibility, natural emotional appeal of the work activity, availability etc. All force us to make emotional adjustments of one kind or another. It is best to make a decision about which type of work fits best with the life purpose and life style to which we are committed.

We expect more from work that just financial compensation. Even if we do not articulate it, we tend to seek greater fulfillment in work, as in our other life activities, than just the basics of survival. That is why we have art, sports, religion and the other seemingly impractical activities that nourish the human spirit. In work, we are in some way attempting to bring something of our spirit and imagination into the pedestrian activity of making a living. When we become more present, we can discern the internal pains and discomfort that are our only guides in this unknown world, where what has only existed in imagination must be brought into reality. That is where the matter of truth comes in. Although a vision is emotional, it is not sentimental. Its power comes from truth. It is born from and embedded in the elemental soil of who we are, individually and collectively. The passion of the vision, whether expressed in love, faith, ideology, esthetics or mathematics, is both necessary for powerful commitment and frightening; because in giving up self-control there is the potential to release both creative and destructive energies; to lose ourselves in the outpouring.


But we must trust enough to let go. We must trust that something in ourselves that we do not fully know, that we cannot control, and that has lead is into error at least some of the time in the past. We are therefore talking about a kind of faith or trust. This trust is in part based on competence or skills; in the sense of a performance artist or athlete, who has practiced certain movements so often that they become ingrained in the memory of the body; the arms legs, hands and fingers. However, since they must be performed in a situation that is live and ever changing, there is a sense of risk and the unknown. This creates excitement, but also can involve some anxiety.

If we stay true to our visions and dreams, then opportunities will arise to join with others to create a new world of work; where the gifts of partners and team mates complement each other, and the load is easy to carry, because it is shared, and because it is a labor of love.

I’m Dr. Bernard Brookes. You can reach me at www.sopphia.com.

Selling: The Last Stage of Innovation

In business, you sell an idea, a product or service, but in a friendship or romantic relationship you are offering yourself. Either way, you are selling, and there is nothing wrong with that. The important thing is to be a truth seeker in selling; that is, to aim to uncover the truth about the transaction and the relationship; whether or not the person can benefit from what you have to offer and vice versa; in other words whether there can be a fair exchange.

Every successful creative idea begin in imagination and ends in a sale, where someone else buys into or pays for the product or service generated from the idea, because it has value for them. This is the process of Innovation, one of the Seven Dimensions of Wisdom in my SOPPHIA system. SOPPHIA is the Greek word for wisdom, and each letter in the acronym represents a set of skills necessary for success. The I is for Innovation, the process of generating ideas, and developing them to the point where they create social and economic value. Therefore, selling is the end point of innovation.


Sales skills are made necessary in part by the human tendency to avoid doing certain things that we need to do or that are in our own best interest. We tend to avoid taking certain necessary or desirable actions such as getting life insurance, making a will, and making investments for the long term as opposed to focusing on short term costs. The goal in ethical selling should not be to convince people to buy things that they don’t want or need; but rather to find the people who can truly benefit from what you are offering. Because we are all bombarded with offers to purchase products and services, it requires sales skills to even get people to listen closely enough to determine whether or not they can benefit from your offering. You must overcome defensiveness and mistrust in order for the offer to be evaluated accurately.

In selling, fear of rejection is just the symptom; the real challenge is to overcome the focus on your own needs and to experience genuine empathy for the other person’s. Effective sales persons recognize that many of the people they approach won’t need or want the service or product; so it’s important to learn to not take their unwillingness as a personal insult.

You establish this self-confidence by examining your fears and motivations, and the value of what you are offering to others. This doesn’t mean puffing yourself up and denying your real concerns and feelings. Rather it means making an honest appraisal of your purpose, and how the activities you are engaged in relate to that purpose; to something that you are truly passionate about and that is of benefit to others as well as to yourself.

The truthful seller must be convinced that what he or she has to offer is valuable, in relation to the specific needs of the buyer. Prior reflection is helpful in revealing your true beliefs about the value of your offering, and the circumstances under which it can and cannot be helpful to someone. You then enter the interaction with the potential buyer with this clear understanding; and you don’t hesitate to ask questions that reveal the buyer’s need for your offering. Similarly, you know when your offering is not likely to be helpful to the buyer, and you can avoid crossing that ethical boundary.

As in any interaction, the best first step is usually to meet people where they are. Initially, self-protectiveness is one of the natural responses to being approached by someone we don’t know well, and therefore don’t trust. Having and showing sincere interest in the other person, their welfare, and their point of view, is the best way to begin establishing trust. If you don’t experience that interest in the other person naturally, then you need to work on yourself, and release the internal locks that are blocking your connection with others.

People’s defensiveness in reacting to salespeople is similar to what happens in psychotherapy. All of us want in some way to be healthy and to do the things needed to sustain our health. But we will throw up all manner of defenses to avoid facing certain truths about ourselves and changing behaviors that are necessary to achieve that goal. While not confronting our defenses directly, the therapist also does not accept our initial presentation as accurately representing our true needs and desires. Similarly, the skilled salesperson asks questions that overcome our initial objections and should help us to make a decision to buy something that we really need or want.

Of course, this process can be abused and become a means of manipulating people into buying things just to put money in the salesperson’s pocket. This unethical practice may be more characteristic of salespeople than say doctors or lawyers, but it is certainly not limited to the former. Whenever one is providing a service or product for sale, there is always the possibility and temptation to cheat the customer.

A buyer who feels pressured or manipulated into a purchase, as opposed to convincing themselves with the seller’s help, will experience resentment, and is likely to retaliate by later canceling the order or returning the product. An addition fallout is that the seller in such situations may feel guilt; or at least is not likely to experience the satisfaction that comes from helping another person to meet their needs. The fulfillment that comes from helping other people is what contributes to happiness, a sense of achievement and satisfaction with one’s work. Ultimately this is necessary for long term success.

I’m Dr. Bernard Brookes. You can me via by web site at www.sopphia.com

The Wisdom of Gratitude and Humility

Even the most successful life, as measured by societal achievements, has a past littered with errors and random events, in addition to effective decisions and actions. Wisdom requires that we accept this mixed past and live authentically in the present. The emotions that enable us to accomplish this task are gratitude and humility. One alternative response, excessive pride in our accomplishments, requires us to be untruthful about the mistakes, close calls, and sheer luck that led us to the present. At the other extreme, an alternative emotional response is a sense of helplessness, insecurity or frustration at the number of things that are beyond our control. Gratitude and humility recognize the truth about our past while allowing us a sense of ease and achievement.

A clear example of how effective decisions and actions mix with luck and random events to produce success is seen is the story of Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft. If Gates had not been able to find and buy the MSDOS software from its creator for a small sum, and then license it to IBM, his life would have been very different, and we might all be using Macs instead of PCs for our computer needs. So do we just credit Gates with justifiable vision and shrewdness, but ignore the luck and randomness involved in this seminal event?

The ancients had an understanding of the role of randomness or chance in human events. Greek mythology humanized it as the fates, and in Chinese tradition, it plays a central role as memorialized in the I-Ching, Book of Changes. The West African Ifa tradition is another form of divination from different culture. Perhaps surprisingly, even in the Judeo-Christian tradition, with its vision of an all-powerful God, chance has a key role. In the Bible, the will of God was often divined by the tossing a kind of dice, named the Urim and Thummim, which gave the answer yes or no, guilty or innocent.

It seems that wisdom develops from encounters with what is beyond our control, and the need to be empowered despite those forces. When we examine human development over the life cycle, we expect people to develop wisdom with experience; particularly as they approach old age. We understand wisdom to be more than just knowledge or technique, though those are essential components. Intuitively, we understand wisdom as having a sense of integration of knowledge and experience resulting in an acceptance of oneself and one’s place in the universe. Psychologist Erik Eriksson best captured this in his last stage of adult development; which he characterized as a challenge of integrity versus despair, with the fruit of the conflict being wisdom. Once past middle age, a person begins to see the inevitability of death. The challenge is either to despair at mistakes and missed opportunities in one’s life or to integrate and accept all of one’s experiences and thus to achieve wisdom.

I think of wisdom as having seven dimensions, which I represent with the acronym SOPPHIA, the Greek word for wisdom. These are seven sets of skills or competencies that helps us achieve fulfillment. The first letter S represents emotional Self-awareness and Self-management. The O is for skills for understanding Others and managing relationships. The first P is for skills needed to clarify and pursue our life Purpose. The second P is for the ability to be Present and have Presence; to be reconciled with the past and open to the future. The H is for skills and habits necessary to maintain Health of body, mind and spirit. The I is for Innovation, the ability to generate creative ideas and to work with others to bring them into reality, where they can produce social and economic value. And finally, the A is for Assurance or faith, the ability to endure and persevere beyond reason.

Presence and Assurance are probably the two dimensions of wisdom that are most subtle and least reducible to a “how to” or technical method. They require an acceptance of the large role of chance, randomness, or fate in our lives. They require that we accept this without helplessness or fear. The emotions that help us to achieve this are gratitude and humility. We can deliberately practice the attitudes of gratitude and humility, which are not surprisingly very similar to the attitudes we adopt in meditation or prayer. With these attitudes, we induce a state of peace and acknowledgement of our limitations, but also feel empowered to make decisions and to take action to benefit others as well as ourselves.

I’m Dr. Bernard Brookes. You can reach me at www.sopphia.com.

Recession Blues: Finding the Joy and Love Amid the Misery

Poetry and song speak truths that are as necessary for our sustenance and survival as the facts of science and technology. The latter without the former make us zombies; living bodies without spirit. This is a prose poem on joy and love in the midst of the misery of recession.

Rich chords sound, colors dark and cloud-like as I search for a firm footing beyond the grip of negative emotions. Circumstances hover above like vultures, waiting patiently for me to die; but I keep on finding the next breath. My strength is gone; my resources expended. I am at the mercy of the generosity of strangers.

All but invisible, arrogance and ignorance keep me banging my head against the glass in a futile attempt to get free; not realizing that regardless of my circumstances, a change is still needed in me. The salt tears of self-pity and sentimentality only serve to further obscure my vision.

The change begins in me. Where does this sense of joy and humor come from in the middle of seemingly endless toil and setbacks. It rises up apparently out of nowhere. Perhaps it was a conversation with someone who told me about something good that happened to her. My situation hasn’t changed, but now I remember that good things do happen after all. Or perhaps it was just opening the window and letting some fresh air into the room. My emotional state and mental frame have changed.

As my perspective changes, I now see the tension that was causing my internal pain rather than experiencing that pain as the natural unalterable state of being. Now that I can separate myself from my pain, I can begin to make the internal adjustments that are necessary to get rid of it. Instead of anger and frustration, I now feel hope and optimism. Instead of suspicion, I feel generosity and love towards others.

Joy and love can’t wait for everything to be right in our circumstances. In fact, joy and love may be necessary preconditions to putting right the things that are within our ability to change. Joy and love are irrational and almost idiotic. They just spring up organically within us if we allow them; without explanation or justification. How do we explain the emotional richness of a piece of music or the smiling voice of a child? These help us to triumph over sickness and death and all the challenges in life.

Yes, we love manuals with tools and instructions that tell us how to…But sometimes, the only instruction is a dancer’s gesture. What does it mean? It either touches your heart or leaves you cold. Study your ancient texts and current operations manuals in order to learn how to love and to have joy. Still, it will take courage to take that step to make yourself vulnerable enough to experience them.


I’m Dr. Bernard Brookes. You can reach me at www.sopphia.com.

The Wisdom of the Body: Health and Sustainability

The wisdom of the body keeps us connected to health, to the earth, to all life and its sustainability. The seven letters in the acronym SOPPHIA represent the seven dimensions of wisdom; seven sets of skills for success and fulfillment. SOPPHIA means wisdom in Greek, and wisdom is the extract that results when we boil our collective human experience down into simple practical lessons for achieving a purposeful and fulfilling life. In our emphasis on technological advancement and intellectual abstraction, we often neglect the wisdom of the body.

The H in SOPPHIA stands for Health, the skills and habits that we need to develop in order to be healthy in body, mind and spirit. The second P in SOPPHIA represents Presence; the importance of learning to be fully present in our life. Being present means being in the body; breathing, sitting, standing, moving, listening to the body. Health and Presence go together, and are connected to the wisdom of the body, which teaches us patience and the joy of just being. It teaches that limits can be overcome, with patience, persistence and discipline, particularly when driven by a purpose that is connected to who we truly are as human beings.

The O in SOPPHIA represents Others; the skills needed to relate to others well and to manage relationships. Usually we think of others as other human beings. However, this should also be extended to relating to nature and to animals. This is an important part of the wisdom of the body, recognizing that we are physical beings in an ecology including other forms of life and a natural environment that must be sustained, in order to sustain human life.

The wisdom of the body informs us that we can change our emotional and mental state from frustration and even panic to something positive by something as simple slowing our breathing and tensing and relaxing our muscles. It tells us that the sense of hopelessness that we feel in a particular moment may just be physical exhaustion and lack of proper nutrition, rest, and exercise. It informs us that we can find our second wind and continue to run with vigor. Ultimately, the wisdom of the body tells us that life and death form a natural cycle; and that we can face the prospect of physical death without dying spiritually from fear and hopelessness.

As humans we have a tendency to become so absorbed in our minds and technology that we believe, and begin to act as though, our bodies and natural environment are peripheral to our existence. This is evidenced in the epidemic of obesity among children and adults, and our numerous ecological challenges resulting from neglect of our interdependence with our natural environment. Listening to the wisdom of the body is a discipline that we can practice individually and collectively. As we do so, it will change our emotional states, our thinking, and our actions to move us towards better health and increased sustainability.

I’m Dr. Bernard Brookes. You can contact me about life and business coaching and consulting at www.sopphia.com.

Using Trust And Compassion To Get Past Glass Barriers To Innovation

Have you ever watched a bee or other insect wander into a room and become trapped by the concept of glass? I say that the bee is trapped by the concept of glass, rather than by the glass itself; because if it understood the difference between glass and air it could find its way back outside to freedom. Sometimes we are prevented from achieving our own purpose by the concept of glass. We have a misconception about the nature of the physical or social reality in which we are located. We are so certain that we understand our situation that we keep bouncing off the glass rather than accepting the fact of our ignorance. This glass barrier is an obstacle to innovation; to the generation of new ideas and the development and implementation of them to produce social and economic value; that is to impact our world. Innovation is one of the seven dimensions of wisdom in the SOPPHIA model of leadership development and coaching.

Trust and compassion create bonds of social opportunity, like the charge between neurons creates pathways for ideas, feeling and imagination. We can overcome the glass barrier through trust and compassion, which enable us to value and benefit from the ideas and perspectives of others; and which motivate us to share our own. You might respond that it is really self-interest that motivates us to cooperate with others to produce goods and services that create economic and social value. When we open the window to let the trapped bee out, we might just be interested in getting an annoying insect out of our space. But we know from both personal experience and from research that helping others produces positive emotions in helper.

One of the greatest challenges to innovation is not so much the generation of creative ideas, as developing them and bringing them into reality as services or products that produce social and economic value. This is a social activity, not the activity of a lone creative genius. Even in the conceptual phase, shaping an idea that has social potential, as opposed to a purely self-indulgent fantasy requires the engagement of the social world with the imagination. This is clearly true in science and the creative arts. For example, an artist such as Beethoven or Miles Davis or a scientist like Einstein, did more than create from their imagination, they interacted creatively with their contemporaries as well as with the works of those who lived before them, and then made a conceptual leap that was their own contribution.

Certainly self-interest and competition also drive us to innovate. But cooperation with others is essential to realizing successful results. Trust and compassion are necessary to form the bonds for team work and partnership, just as they are for friendship and love. When we run into glass barriers, and our conception of reality blinds us to other possibilities, trust and compassion enable us to accept the perspective of someone else, and encourage them to share possible solutions with us. Even in a work place where people are paid for their contributions, you can’t buy a certain level of engagement and motivation. It must be based on authentic trust and compassion.

Trust and compassion are built through practice. This includes the intentional practice of maintaining a positive emotional and mental state, and overcoming the fears and inhibitions that can limit our ability to experience trust and compassion. It means overcoming fears from past situations where others took advantage of us. It means being able to deal with the reality of evil in the world without becoming hardened and cynical. Maintaining a positive state also enables us to develop our gifts and skills, and to find our clear purpose. It also includes the intentional practice of building and maintaining relationships. Clarifying our purpose, developing our skills, and our ability for trust and compassion make our relationships both more enjoyable and more fruitful. With positive relationships extending in all directions, like connected neurons in the brain, we are more likely to overcome glass barriers to innovation, and the successfully realize our ideas and our purpose.

I’m Dr. Bernard Brookes, for coaching or consulting, you can reach me at www.sopphia.com