I think, therefore...
Published: Wed, 03/01/17
Last week I spent two days in Gloucestershire at an event entitled ‘Entrepreneurial Think Tank’. Basically it was an opportunity for 70 or so business owners to get together and think about what they were trying to do with their businesses. It did turn out to be interesting and thought provoking. Apparently the organiser was advised against using the word ‘think’ in the title on the grounds that it would put people off attending. Two famous quotations on the subject are: ‘Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.’ Attributed to Henry Ford and “Two percent of the people think; three percent of the people think they think; and ninety-five percent of the people would rather die than think.” Attributed to George Bernard Shaw. So, if you threaten people with two days of thinking who would want to come? All places were taken so either Henry and George were exaggerating somewhat or it
was a very select group of people.
Ivar has always said that Stav is about seeing reality and being able to think clearly about it. The role of Heimdal, the patron of the Hafskjold family and the Stav tradition is the teacher who educates Jarl and brings the runes to mankind. The purpose of the runes is to teach you to think clearly today.
Words in books have their value. (At least I hope they do, I have hundreds of volumes and I read avidly.) However, the written word imposes a particular structure of thought. Everything has a beginning, middle and end. Everything is listed according to priority. There has to be an introduction, argument and conclusion. The web of reality does not actually conform to these structures. If our thinking is conditioned by book learning then our knowledge may be considerable but our ability to relate to the universe is going to be limited.
Another way of learning to think comes through the use of bind runes. The other morning I was reflecting on how I solve problems. There is a combination of experience, method and planning together with classical knowledge, experiments and vision. The nice thing about a Hagl based bind rune is that it provides a structure of three ‘practical’ aspects supported by the esoteric counterpoint to the ‘obvious’ aspect. You can see my problem solving bind rune here http://www.screencast.com/t/LT3SXhwPlPH This is just an example that came to me. At the foundation course on the 11th of March in Crewkerne I will be many different ways of thinking about and using the runes, including studying and creating bind runes. See the full details at http://www.iceandfire.org.uk/foundation.html
Regards
PS I will be covering a lot of the same ground at the USA course in Minneapolis in May, details here http://iceandfire.org.uk/usamay17.html