when you flow with the go, greatness cannot elude you

Day 21 of everyday inspiration.

"When you flow with the go, greatness cannot elude you." - snippet of my weekly horoscope as found tucked in the tin tip jar at Caffea, on the edge of the 9th Ward, New Orleans, and currently my favorite cafe in the whole wide world

The rest of my horoscope recounts how it's spring cleaning time. Time to shed old images, it says, especially around my 10th house of reputation and career. (Oh, I could have the houses wrong as I know nada about astrology.)

Now, this sense of the falling away of self images I did not need to read a horoscope to know.

And this, my friends, is where and when inspiration can be ruthless. By now, you might have been suspicious as you've sensed bodily the incredible lightness of being that comes with "flowing with the go"...hmmm, there's got to be a catch, you mumble. How can this be simply free? How is it I'm simply free?

The revolving doubt comes back, "So, what's the catch?"

This is the 'catch' (and, it only feels like a 'catch' when we kick and scream all the way to bliss): She can and will most definitely wreak havoc with any self-images and opinions you may cherish about yourself, your unique expression, & the showering of your gifts upon the world. You might find yourself tempted to interfere lest She royally screw up everything you had painstakingly shored up.

I'm beginning to understand in hindsight perhaps why I personally didn't make it to post-Katrina Nola any earlier than I did. Nola simply would have clashed with the sophisticated image I held of myself. (Caveat/disclaimer: There are many other faces to Nola, including the genteel Southern society, yet I feel safe in saying that's it doesn't have tons of pockets of uber-metropolitan-worldly.)

Clawfoot tubs, peeling chipped paint, bright magneta and chartreuse shutters loose and askew on hidges, cockroaches lounging by the toilet, grim lined gutters with broken brown beer glass, the music of riverboat calliope blurring with the long train horn, Washington Park jugglers, apocalytic-coutured junk-band musicians, block parties with cheap California box wine - and I'd have sworn to you it's all too crass for moi before.

Oh, but She knew better despite my protestations. It's a snug fit. Uncanny, really. It's what I might imagine The Village or Haight-Asbury might have been like a generation ago, way before the artists were commodified and mimicked and then Gap and Starbucks moved in.

"Let’s say a startup is hot. It ships something great, and it achieves success. Thus, it’s able to attract the best, brightest, and most talented. These people have been told they’re the best since childhood. Indeed, being hired by the hot company is “proof” that they are the A and A+ players; in fact, the company is so hot that it can out-recruit Google and Microsoft.

Unfortunately, they develop a fixed mindset that they’re the most talented, and they think that continued success is a right. Problems arise because pure talent only works as long as the going is easy. Furthermore, they don’t take risks because failure would harm their image of being the best, brightest, and most talented. When they do fail, they deny it or attribute it to anything but their shortcomings.

And this is the beginning of the end." - Guy Kawasaki's blog, "The Effort Effect"

If you're snug in your image, if you've invested 'too much', if you stomp & insist "I can't afford to let it go", well then perhaps inspiration is mighty dangerous. Image inspiration as Kali, I'd say, more than lovely Aphrodite.

If you don't stomp and insist, rather dancing instead, I tell you this from direct experience - there is no more effortless way to move through the world.

The Effort Effect is primary about growth, evolution, creative destruction: yay. The article's emphasis on success and effort: naw. Sounds way too 1999. If you are experiencing any sense of efforting you can rest be assured you're insisting on fixation, rather than delighting with inspiration. She doesn't operate in last century's linear, finite fashion. Just because you cannot fathom how She works, does not mean She's mad.

Consider this bold prediction: In these accelerating times, the traditional concept of success fritters away altogether as greatness takes precedent. Observe non-judgmentally any tendencies that come up to shore up, defend, grasp any old images that are slipping away.

Extra credit if you can watch with amusement. When it all feels like a divine comedy, you're getting the hang of it. That's all you need to do, watch, then enjoy the note floating away & the next note in the symphony will reveal itself. Repeat. repeat & repeat &

p.s. To date, we've focused on the receptive, contemplative side of inspiration. On the equinox, I'll be shifting to the active side of Her.

Bonus: Something's happening here in New Orleans - maybe my fabrication, but I get a wiff of the cusp of Something.

The cocooning stage of a new creation myth, and/or the embodying of an old revelation myth.

"You're the second person I met in the last 24 hours that's here for the apocalyptic mythology," says the Bywater yoga studio owner-musician.

(The -musician suffix is a pretty much a given in Nola, that is 'cept me.)

Myself, I absolutely need to be here precisely now, in New Orleans, the root chakra of the nation (some say sacral chakra, and others say that's all b.s.) awakens.

Here's a tradition of worshipping the ephemeral, 'in the moment', 'just passing thru', kind of art forms such as food and live, impromptu music, which honestly, I believe points to a few creative trends of the future: from video shorts ala YouTube over scripted films, blog bursts over book publishing, etc.

"Explain to me again why you're in New Orleans again," my mother interrogates me on the phone my first evening as I unpack my suitcase.

"Umm, I can't."

Her concern escalates (and she must be reading my mind): "You're not even thinking of moving to that lawless city are you?"

My dear mum lives alone in gated community nirvana where her company is the news anchors droning from the TV set. The irony is she spends more and more of our conversations reminiscing about her childhood neighborhood, its vibe and the camaderie of growing up in small town Cuba. She'd grok Nola if she threw aside her newspaper stories, as she'd once grew up with 9:10 time.

I love how Darlene's Lagalou blog puts the rippling changes:

Peter Berg from Planet Drum Foundation: "In Ecuador the playing out of social beliefs, intentions and priorities has a different emphasis...Things get done but the society is able to manage without industrial style infrastructures. For lack of an existing term to describe this I offer "lagalou." Clearly, warmth and camraderie replace officialdom and frustration. This describes New Orleans...

Bonus Deux: Here's a foreshadowing of the active side of inspiration:

"Since [Marshall] McLuhan has called the artists the early-warning system of cultural change, you can observe this shift in levels of consciousness in the work of the artists, not the official ones in the galleries and literary salons who go around carrying signs saying, "I am a artist!" but the less obvious and pretentious expressions of imagination... Art not only records the present, it helps too create the future. Art is also an agent of transformation. To see the transformation, you have to think big, and, therefore, this kind of art is mythopoeic rather than abstract or mimetic." - William Irwin Thompson, "Darkness and Scattered Light: Four Talks on the Future" (amazingly prescient, visionary and relevant today even though published in 1977, discovered in French Quarter's bookstore, Kaboom)

images 'in the moment' daily art from Leah's Creative Everyday blog - featured above Two Many Fish in the Sea, collage and acrylic on canvas; Elm, acrylic on paper; Rebirth, collage and acrylic on canvas; and butterfly journal cover

Comments

[Marilyn]

"She can and will most definitely wreak havoc with any self-images and opinions you may cherish about yourself..." This phrase LEAPED out at me. I've had the opposite experience you described...my self-images have been of someone who would feel MOST comfortable in..."Clawfoot tubs, peeling chipped paint, bright magneta and chartreuse shutters loose and askew on hidges, cockroaches lounging by the toilet, grim lined gutters with broken brown beer glass, the music of riverboat calliope blurring with the long train horn, Washington Park jugglers, apocalytic-coutured junk-band musicians, block parties with cheap California box wine..." And when I've lived from that place, I've been truly happy. What I rub up against is extraordinary pressure from others who don't share my self-image...who constantly try to convince me that that's NOT who I am. For some reason, those innate desires make a lot of people uncomfortable.

So pleased to see my pal Leah's artwork here. She's a font of creative inspiration...and a delight.

[leah]

thank you so much for using my artwork. It was such a sweet surprise to find it here when I checked in on your blog!

i love this idea of shedding the image of who you are, like kali who destroys and creates. i'm in that place of letting go, some things seem harder to let go of, but i like the idea of shedding those old images like snakeskin and being able to move much more freely.

[dennis jones]

Philo-café in NOLA last week was attended by a most alive and articulate and cheerful friendly gracious and graceful aspirant of limitlessness. So I am here in my hotel near LAX after my “Peace is Possible” conference reading a blog for the first time. My passion consumes most of my time so many experiences like blogging get postponed. But Evelyn is not ordinary so my curiosity has driven me here. When I observe this all too rare love of life, of existence, this aliveness, this wakefulness I crave to learn of the causes and so seek to interview the person but our after-philo-café-conversation at the coffeehouse with two others was as numerous erupting volcanoes with little need for additional sounds from me. So hopefully my path will cross Evelyn’s again one day, meanwhile I will read her blog and offer a comment knowing nothing of the rules of blogging but hoping to learn. I welcome anyone’s tips. I do know that long emails often go unread so I’ll stop here but soon I will post remarks on her March 16th “Flow With The Go” entry.

Dennis Jones New Orleans

[rudi]

"When you flow with the go, greatness cannot elude you".

And when you recognise yourself AS the eternal flow, you cannot escape infinity and limitlessness.

[Evelyn Rodriguez]

Yes, Rudi.

Yes.

[Redza]

A most excellent piece, Evelyn. As always.