If you haven't been following Hugh from GapingVoid's How to Be Creative series...all I can say is go now. Mind-blowing stuff.
In two posts I'm fleshing out the comments I wrote on Hugh's "Ignore Everybody" post. Mind you, I thoroughly agree that you shouldn't be looking for "everybody" or anyone for that matter to approve and goo and gaw over your stuff. Ignore Everybody's Approval, Affirmation, Permission, Acceptance. That's what my Validation Marketing posts (and here) are about. The moment you need anyone's approval and the more you go looking for it, alas the further and further you get from your own "wee voice" (Hugh's term for our authentic voice) until it's distant muffled background noise.
"If you try to view yourself through the lens that others offer you, all you will see are distortions; your own light and beauty will become blurred, awkward and ugly." - Anam Cara: The Book of Celtic Wisdom, by John O'Donohue
First, in this post I'll highlight how much each of us have fixed static images - or ideas - of a person and of things. This keeps us from creating anew and growing. Second, how much precious friends can be gentle reminders for our wee voices (that's part 2, separate post).
It's a very seductive trap to think that it's other people that are judging us, holding us back or potentially drowning out our wee voice. I'll admit it's been ever-convenient scapegoat for my own justifications and excuses.
"Many of us have made our world so familiar that we do not see it any more." - Anam Cara
Look at a cup, for example. Do you see a cup, or are you merely reviewing your past experiences of picking up a cup, being thirsty, drinking from a cup, feeling the rim of a cup against your lips, having breakfast and so on? Are not your aesthetic reactions to the cup, too, based on past experiences? How else would you know whether or not this kind of cup will break if you drop it? What do you know about this cup except what you learned in the past? You would have no idea what this cup is, except for your past learning. Do you, then, really see it? - A Course In Miracles
During the separation from my now ex-husband, in one of our therapy sessions he says the reason that the relationship won't work is that he can never forgive me. The past can't be put aside and so we can't start over. It goes beyond the fact that he wants me to "change". That I need fixing. Even acquaintences notice I'm different somehow. I knew some huge shifts were happening. I tried to explain that I wasn't changing so much as I was becoming more myself - I was dropping walls that barricaded me in a fortress. But he had a fixed image of me that he had glued in place and nothing would dislodge it.
How does one look at a bird, or a flower - is the brain scanning its memory store to find out what label or what remembered image fits? If so, one does not discern the immediacy of what's there - the bird or the flower or the person one meets. So are we relating mostly because that's what we're always done, according to memory? ...what I'm talking about is the memory which prompts us to react with some kind of prejudice, holding on to attraction or rejection. ...perhaps there is an energy of meeting, of listening and looking, which can disconnect the belief that we think we know what he, she or it is? ...Coming together and meeting each other as if for the first time. - Weavers of Wisdom: Women Mystics of the Twentieth Century by Anne Bancroft
I no longer identify my friends with the walls, barriers, and defense mechanisms that they have in place. That's not them - that's just the wall they built up over time most often because they were protecting themselves and hoping if they walled some part of themselves they'd get affirmation and acceptance and love. I look beyond that and miraculously by acknowledging a higher aspect of themselves that's where we relate from. I don't see friends in terms of the past, for that would block the growth and dynamism inherent perhaps latent in their being. This isn't easy - I'm used to taking the lazy way out and going to the memory bank and pulling up the old "Ah yes, now this is the David I know" file rather than seeing them with fresh eyes. This is true for people as it is for things. True creativity is discarding past images and seeing with fresh 'beginner's mind' eyes.
The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. - Marcel Proust
In the book Anam Cara, poet John O'Donohue (I may need to remind readers that just because I quote and get value from portions of a book doesn't mean I enthusiastically endorse all of it) goes through the different filters for our vision - the fearful eye, the judgmental eye, the resentful eye, the indifferent eye, the inferior eye until he rests upon the loving eye.
"To the loving eye, everything is real. This art is neither sentimental nor naive. Such love is the greatest criterion of truth, celebration and reality. Love is the light in which we see each thing in its true origin, nature and destiny. If we could look at the world in a loving way, then the world would rise up before us full of invitation, possibility and depth. The loving eye is bright because it is autonomous and free. It can look lovingly on anything... Such vision is creative and subversive. It rises above the pathetic arithmetic of blame and judgement and engages experience at the level of its origin, structure and destiny. The loving eye sees through and beyond image and affects deep change. Vision is central to your presence and creativity." - Anam Cara
Not everyone will take the time to see you, others - or any concept - with fresh, loving eyes but I believe true friends do so for each other. Part of the reason I moved to the Bay Area was to get a fresh start. I was changing so fast that it that no one who already "knew" me seemed to be able to keep up their preconceptions of who I was. In hindsight, I'm not so sure that was necessary. One reason I dislike online social networks: Just because you "knew" me five years ago or five months ago or five minutes ago doesn't really doesn't mean anything.
There's been many times - more than I care to admit - where I was prejudiced that a friend just wouldn't understand: Suzanne isn't self-aware enough so this will be over her head, Enrique is too attached to safety and security to 'get' this risky idea, Cindy is preoccupied with her own concerns and I'll just burden her, Steve is afraid of deep, painful subjects so this would push his buttons way too much, or....
The past is a tyrant.
So the more I'm able to literally drop those preconceptions and assumptions about who they are and just give them the benefit of the doubt - that beyond those illusory walls dwells a wise and whole human being - the more they have met me fully in profound ways. We speak directly at a entirely different level (since two walled off fortresses can't really communicate.) And when I falter and I've pre-judged them - well, these times are fairly sad in a myriad of ways as I know I've limited the possibilities in both of us.
We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are. - Anais Nin
We keep people 'down' as much as they us - if we maintain our fixed images of them. Don't be surprised if they rise to their highest potential - it was always there. Don't be surprised if they are your biggest fan - they always were.
Miracles seem to rest, not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from far off, but upon our perceptions being made finer so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear that which is about us always. - Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Willa Cather
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