Crossroads Dispatches

Michel de Montaigne, retreat to self-study for advancement, I AM a verb = I Know Nuthing

At age 21, Ryan Holiday became Director of Marketing at American Apparel, the largest clothing manufacturer in the United States, and he recently guest-blogged at Tim Ferriss' Four-Hour Work Week blog about one of his guiding mentors, Michel de Montaigne.

What impressed me was that Ryan clearly knows how contrarian his hero is in today's "I have the answer" expert/guru cult(ure) and boldly forged ahead with his praise. This is the tiniest sliver from the well worth reading post, The Experimental Life: An Introduction to Michel de Montaigne.

"In late 1569, Michel de Montaigne was given up as dead after being flung from a galloping horse.

As his friends carried his limp and bloodied body home, he watched life slip away from his physical self, not traumatically but almost flimsily, like some dancing spirit on the “tip of his lips,” and then return. This sublime experience marked the moment Montaigne began a uniquely playful relationship with his existence and was a sense clarity and euphoria about life that he carried with him from that point forwards. Shortly thereafter he took a bold step, retiring from a promising public career—retired to himself, so to speak—and made self-study his official occupation.

...

3) Que sais je? (Don’t take yourself too seriously)

You’d think that Montaigne, as he grew older and more practiced, would have become more certain, more sure of himself. In fact, the more he studied, the more frequently he found himself asking his most famous question: “Que sais je?” or “What do I know?” The answer to the rhetorical question is, “Nothing.” Montaigne practiced the Skeptic’s notion of questioning what he “knew” and deliberately threw his assumptions into doubt.

By building up tolerance to uncertainty, he not only better suited himself for life in chaotic civil war-era France but primed his mind for tackling the big questions that don’t have easy answers. For a second, consider of all our major public thinkers today. They do the opposite, constantly telling how sure they are of their beliefs and criticizing their “opponents” for changing their minds. Changing your mind is a good thing, Montaigne would say. It means you’ve resisted the impulse to think you’re infallible. He wrote that as part of his profession of getting to know himself he found such “boundless depths and variety that [his] apprenticeship bears no other fruit than to make me know much there remains to learn.” If only we could internalize that attitude—instead of feeling cocky when we learn something, acknowledge that it really just taught us how much more we need to learn." - Ryan Holiday

One of my guiding, but alas dead, mentors is Buckminster Fuller. He was prepared to drown himself and was standing on the brink of one of the Great Lakes (after the death of his daughter, followed by a business bankruptcy) when he realized that he didn't belong to himself, but was part and parcel of the Universe--and, instead of wading in, he vowed to participate fully in the universe. Right after that epiphany, he went through a silent period to purge everything thing he'd learned from others that he didn't know to be absolutely true; basically, questioning all second-hand knowledge and adopted beliefs that he'd assumed were his own.

His clearing period lasted about 2 years. (Some folks call it Bucky's "gestation period.")

"I live on Earth at present, and I don't know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing — a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process — an integral function of the universe." - Buckminster Fuller

 My spiritual teacher, Adyashanti, shares that one of the best things he did to get really clear was to keep a journal where he only wrote something down if it were true. (Interestingly, Steven Johnson mentioned the "commonplace book"--a journal--in Where Do Good Ideas Come From? and Montaigne kept one too.) He'd ask himself, What do I know for sure is true? He speaks of this journalling often, but this interview is the only instance I've found readily online where he talks of the value of self-inquiry and why writing it down the questions and answers worked for him. I particularly mention my teacher precisely because he's one of the clearest, shining people I've ever yet met (Miguel Ruiz and Byron Katie are two others, and you won't know the others as they're not online much); he charts into the Unknown moment by moment.

"The valuable part was not only what I found, but was really also that it showed me what I didn’t know, which is really valuable. It’s extraordinarily important. It’s kind of like a spring-cleaning, you know? You just dust out your consciousness–you go, “Wow, 99% of the things that I think I know, when I really examine them honestly…” You’re all of a sudden not so sure if it’s really true or not. And it’s really valuable to empty out the mind in that way, and to empty out the old belief system." - Adyashanti, "I'm Not Babysitting Your Ego," Buddhist Geeks interview

I've had the privilege (at first it didn't feel like a privilege, but more like a dot-bomb and divorce catastrophe) of having much more than 30 hours a week for past 9 years devoted to contemplation and self-study ala Montaigne, Bucky and Adya.

I happened to be looking for an attachment in an email on an  incubator/hunch hub idea I had back in 2007 (yes, the Pooh tea party illustration is the right mood for said hunch hub/ serendipity Salon) when I happened upon a long, lost (or so I thought) 46-page retreat program I'd designed for an intimate group of folks that usually attended the Daring to Live an Authentic Life weekly gatherings that my housemates and I hosted when I lived in San Jose, CA. I called the retreat an "Advance" and it was held in spring 2005--two months after I vowed to quest for "What is Deathless?" post-tsunami.

I was surprised reading it how much I focused on self-contemplation (I was much more brute-force goal-oriented back then). The hypothesis was all the answers to the new, never-ending questions you're asking are already being presented to you within and in your unfolding life.

Here are the first two pages of the section ETHOS OF AN ADVANCE for your pleasure:

“Maybe your next vacation should be a journey inward,” read this month’s Body + Soul magazine.

This is a journey without a distance. It is not horizontal, but vertical.

“Buddha is a scientist of the inner world. Meditation is his basic contribution – turning the horizontal consciousness into a vertical consciousness.” – Osho, "Buddha: His Life and Teachings"

If we could take a journey, make a pilgrimage together, without any intent or purpose, without seeking anything, perhaps on returning we might find that our hearts had unknowingly been changed. I think it worth trying. Any intent or purpose, any motive or goal, implies effort -- a conscious or unconscious endeavor to arrive, to achieve. I would like to suggest that we take a journey together in which none of these elements exist.

 

If we can take such a journey, and if we are alert enough to observe what lies along the way, perhaps when we return, as all pilgrims must, we shall find that there has been a change of heart; and I think this would be much more significant than inundating the mind with ideas, because ideas do not fundamentally change human beings at all. Beliefs, ideas, influences may cause the mind superficially to adjust itself to a pattern; but, if we can take the journey together without any purpose and simply observe as we go along the extraordinary width and depth and beauty of life, then out of this observation may come a love that is not merely social, environmental, a love in which there is not the giver and the taker, but which is a state of being, free of all demand.

 

This journey I am proposing that we take together, is not to the moon, or even to the stars. The distance to the stars is much less than the distance within ourselves. The discovery of ourselves is endless, and it requires constant inquiry, a perception which is total, an awareness in which there is no choice. This journey is really an opening of the door to the individual in relationship with the world. So, the understanding of ourselves is not to the end of individual salvation, it is not the means of attaining a private heaven, an ivory tower into which to retire with our own illusions, beliefs, gods. On the contrary, if we are able to understand ourselves, we shall be at peace, and then we shall know how to live rightly.  -J. Krishnamurti

THE INNER GURU

There are no gurus "out there", but simply people whom reflect and mirror our highest selves and/or our shadow selves. In the yogic sense, a guru merely mirrors your innate but unawakened potential back to you.

Look within for answers. But note your blind spots in the mirrors (i.e. "other people") surrounding you.

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters, compared to what lies within us.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

“Not I - not anyone else, can travel that road for you. You must travel it for yourself.” - Walt Whitman

 

“You cannot teach a person anything; you can only help him find it within himself.” - Galileo

This story is very illustrative of our own capacities when we are still and listen. In fact, it’s illustrative of the ethos of the Advance. You may come in feeling thoroughly lost as well:

“You may remember A.A. Milne’s story about Winnie the Pooh, Piglet, and Rabbit getting lost in the Hundred Acre Wood. Under Rabbit’s bossy, officious guidance, the three go around and around until they’re thoroughly lost and terrified of lurking Heffalumps. Eventually, a disgusted Rabbit leaves Pooh and Piglet and goes to find the way home. He never returns. After a while, Pooh turns to Piglet:

 

“Come on, Piglet. Let’s go home.”

 

“But we’re lost,” said Piglet.

 

“Yes,” said Pooh, “but there are twelve pots of honey in my cupboard at home, and they are calling to my tummy. I couldn’t hear them before, because Rabbit would talk.”

 

This is what happens to someone who settles into the threshold of Square One [Square One's similar to what Joseph Campbell calls the ‘Initiation’], stops fighting the process, and accepts the strange formlessness of the situation. The chattering, Rabbit-like social self gets so frustrated and disoriented that it finally wanders away. Then something else comes through: a silent sweetness that resonates deep in your essential self, your pots of honey calling to your tummy.” – Martha Beck, Finding Your Own North Star

WHAT TO EXPECT

 

Nothing.

“I don’t know in advance what I am going to put on canvas any more than I decide beforehand what colors I am going to use.” – Pablo Picasso

Everything happens after the Advance. And even then, expect nothing for optimal results.

Okay, okay. You can expect clarity, insights, and a desire to commit and focus – but the what’s and how’s are not known yet. Don’t worry about them now.

art credits: Just Walk Away by Dasha Denger; journal page Will I Ever Find An Answer? by Hannah of Spans Stitches blog (p.s. yes + yet more infuriating questions galore after that one--enjoy the unfurling infinite mystery!); A.A. Milne illustration via Mystery of Existence (how apropos!) blog; last photo of journaler via She Knows blog.

What Your Deepest Love Wants

"The more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it." - Steven Pressfield

Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art will help you finish what you started by inspiring you to overcome the self-sabotaging power of Resistance. - from John Moore, BrandAutopsy [This resistance of our call phenomena is known as the Jonah Complex.]

Silly me. Last week's smooth sailing had me thinking that perhaps for the first time during a Dwelve creative process I'd come up with a plan I absolutely loved to implement and execute so wholeheartedly that there were no lingering doubts or fears holding me back. My god this is a breeze. Simply effortless, I thought. The last stage, Translation, is where you put your breakthrough ideas into a plan of action. It is typically harder than it sounds because Resistance rears its ugly head. It can be subtly sly.

On one hand, I can't spot an ounce of fear. But there is a nagging thought I can't shake. Am I watering down the plan into a more palatable undertaking? I can't help wondering if I'm not sidestepping the full call by (metaphorically speaking) busily scribbling a plan to open a cafe for writers rather than pursuing the call to write for my own self. What am I resisting?

I find I want to cling to an identity that is slipping away that gave my ego nice big strokes and plenty of coddling. A friend changes jobs last week in order to simplify his life and get out of a high-stress high-bureaucracy environment. He has a lot less responsibility now. He admits he is misses not being the "go-to man" anymore. I know exactly what he means. Egolessness is tough when I think I am my ego.

Another friend is interviewing. He's currently in a work situation well-known in Silicon Valley - he's working for stock, period. He is lukewarm about a recent interview. It's a great company but the (paying) job position isn't as good a fit. He mumbles that he has a lot of financial responsibilities right now. I note a look of resignation.

Resistance has many faces. I can't afford to creatively write, I too say to myself.

Can I afford not to? the Voice whispers.

I'm slouched in the black leather chair. All the cafe tables are occupied at Borders today. I have a stack of writing books piled on the floor and I'm absorbed in The Writer's Market 2005.  The gentleman next to me says, "Are you a writer?" "I write some, yes." He shares his dreams of documentary film-making. He loves conducting interviews. He's thinking of returning to India this winter to do some filming. I can't tell if it's a fantasy or reality. The conversation soon turns to his software start-up.

Nothing materially tangible has held much value to me since the tsunami, yet I was pleased to have my long-lost journal returned to me via mail from the bungalow operatars on Koh Phi Phi. The card they inserted read:

Good luck. Hope you win the award for your book! - Guy and Marie Pia

What?! I'd said I was writing a short story for a contest...I never mentioned anything as absurd as writing a book.

But there it is. Did I mention this before? Sometimes I forget what I've written in the blog and what entries I compose in my head and later forget to write. I search and see I've started to write about the business card tucked in the journal several times before. I've never hit publish.

A friend rhetorically asks months ago: Don't you think it's meaningful that the single thing you've gotten back thus far is your journal?

I'd forgotten myself what I'd written within. Perhaps the kind bungalow operators weren't reading my mind - perhaps they've read the journal...

December 24, 2004. Last night I woke up to pee and then couldn't go back to sleep. I thought about (AND THIS IS DEFINITELY AN OMEN) the book.

I'd woken up in the middle of the night December 23rd with the image of a memoir outline. I now recall laying awake for a moment, then inching across the rust-colored tile floor at the Seasons Bungalows clutching my journal as I headed toward the bathroom. I practically never wake up in the middle of the night. (Yes, I could sleep through a tsunami.)

A rough outline of the book follows in the journal pages. I had a sense then that the ending of the memoir hadn't happened yet. The arc of the story is a work in progress I wrote. I'd outlined turning points in the last few years. Little did I know that another turning point in the unfolding story would occur days later. Yet, it's still not 'done.' I wrote then:

I feel a slight inkling/nudge to finish book in India (not sure what the 'ending' would be).

Hmmm, I'm returning this winter to the Indian Ocean region. India's on the list. It's all part of the plan I'm writing. Perhaps I'm not veering off, not running away if I can keep the larger vision intact and allow my ego to cool.

December 24th is the last entry in that journal.

There are days I ponder how I can throw away a perfectly good computer engineering education and years of keeping up on the bleeding edge of technology. When I'm honest, I can see myself the passion is waning all on its own. That is all I need to know. Today in my email inbox I read:

Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely. - Auguste Rodin

What matters is that I digest and integrate the experience. The twinges of regret are losing its hold on me.

Those roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God today. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am procrastinating this morning. I pull up the 800-CEO-READ blog. This is what I read:

Just as musicians must make music, poets must write, and artists must paint, we all have a unique gift designed for a specific vocation that will bring both meaning and purpose to our lives. True joy and happiness will continue to elude us until we use that gift to become who we were born to be. - Brian Souza, Become Who You Were Born to Be 

Later, not knowing why, I open a page in "What We Ache For: Creativity and the Unfolding of Your Soul" by Oriah Mountain Dreamer. The words pierce through me:

The more skill you use, the further you'll be

from what your deepest love wants. - Rumi

Sattva: The Power of Centeredness

I've been quiet. I've been quietly busy the last few days translating my aha! insights into a rough plan. I'm totally pleased with the outcome.

I've spent much of the last month or so enveloped in quiet, stillness, and (gasp) slowness. All unbusiness attributes, no? 

With my degree and background in computer engineering, I have calculative thinking pretty well under my belt. But meditative thinking, ah that was a mysteriously wasteful avoidance for a long, long time.

I used to be a fairly competitive marathon and ultra-marathon runner. Although I'm not fast anymore that has more to do with my lack of consistent training than a willful desire to slow down. (And I don't intend to slow down on my runs.) But going top speed on rocky downhill trails (my favorite) was my modus operandi for every inch of my life. And so when I went out for a hike, I loved to count the number of fit hikers I left in the dust behind me. When I went on vacation, you'd best be a marathoner yourself to keep up with my tightly scheduled sightseeing program.

Now, hiking and walking periods are my time for meditation. I still feel a slight twinge of Ego rising when an elderly couple briskly walks past me as if I am the one standing still. But, I'm not in any rush to be somewhere else anymore. I'm here now.

I read something this morning in the recent issue (not online yet) of Yoga Journal that underscores the main current pulsing through a Dwelve creative process.

I notice sometimes I'm embarrassed to talk about this in ahem supposedly 'business' blog as it's such a counterintuitive approach to strength and power - but one I suspect that our Eastern business counterparts are more adept with. And well, nearly everyone else thinks, those folks in India and China are our nemesis perhaps it makes sense to understand this counterintuitive frame of reference for 'power' and 'strength' better. In this piece, the author shares the wisdom of the three gunas, or three basic energetic qualities that run through our world. I'm drilling into the third, and least spoken about:

The word sattva comes from the root sat, which means "being" or "truth." It's literally the power of beingness, the inner integrity that let the Buddha sit under the bodhi tree until he became enlightened, the power that supported Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., the power you that you feel in cathedrals and redwood forests and in people who quietly offer help too those who need it. Sattvic strength is one part discipline and three parts trust - trust that the invisible is stronger than what you can see or touch, and that what you are speaks louder than what you say.

Sattva is born in stillness. True sattvic strength arises out of a willingness to wait, to allow actions to unfold out of the quiet of your center. The forceful agent of sattvic strength is the force of clear intention - a subtle, yet unbending clarity about what it is that your heart and soul truly want.

Intention - the formulation of what you want to happen - is created in silence, through contemplation. It's refreshed each time you return to it. Then, often without your knowing how it happens, the subtle power of intention will guide your actions and words, and gradually, almost invisibly, create change. The key is to keep acting from that stillness out of which the intention was formed. - "Living Your Yoga: Give Me Strength", by Sally Kempton, Yoga Journal, June 2005

On the first day of the incubating retreat (a.k.a. an Advance), the small group gathered and we walked in silence in single file out of the meeting room into the crisp spring air. And we moved at a pace that would make a snail proud. It may have taken twenty minutes to walk the tenth of a mile to the shady bank of Adode Creek -- but who was counting minutes? I noticed the slower I walked the more alive the surroundings became. When I quickened the pace where individual grass blades began to blur my meandering mind filled my attention with its to-do lists, plans for dinner, the outline for my evening talk, and anything it could muster to drag me away from the present moment.

This is what I noticed the slower I walked: the simple aching beauty of a sprawling meadow dotted with lumbering California oak trees pierced a veil of indifference within me which touched a spot that brought me to the edge of tears. Tears of pure joy. My housemate concurred; this week he shared with me that the four days of the Advance were among the peak experiences of his life.

In the Advance handbook, I wrote that the only way we peek beyond our limited self concept of ourselves – or what the spiritual sages call the Ego – to the Real Deal is to surrender the idea that we know. Maybe we don’t know what we don’t know. This is a very yin – a very feminine [or meditative] – way of thinking and it requires a receptive mind. A still mind. If you've ever tried this you know full well the urge to bolt. There is an intensity in the barrage of thoughts and feelings that come up. There is a recognition of our inherent restlessness. And ultimately, the strength to stay, stay, stay and keep looking without falling apart is is very yang, a very masculine energy.

And we need both to thrive. Don't discount the power of a disciplined receptively still mind.

The Truth Can Never Harm, I Shall Write, Said Gandhi

A friend works with publishers tells me publishers desire that that the author is someone readers can look up to - thus there are only so many foibles and weaknesses that can be revealed, I reckon.

"I was worried about you," confided a blogging buddy recently. Huh, what is he talking about? Ah, perhaps I am coming across a bit too confused, lost, and distraught. Readers, I've let you peek into the inner workings of the Ego for a purpose. So I wondered aloud and I wondered silently if I should hold back. If I'm doing more harm than good.

But all the signs say that I am on the path with heart. Last Wednesday, I hear Dwarko Sundrani, a direct disciple and follower of Gandhi, speak. (I've also heard him speak before.)

He tells us that Gandhi was influenced by the great novelist Leonard Tolstoy. After two pages Tolstoy abandoned his autobiography. Tolstoy began to question the wisdom of even writing it believing it would be a huge disservice to society. Folks would ponder, If such a great man as Tolstoy had this many weaknesses, then what of us?

Dwarko-ji continued. There was a time Gandhi believed that Brahma was Truth (Brahma translates to God, which as far as I'm concerned is not the Godhead, atman). In his last days he changed his thinking Dwarko-ji said. Gandhi now declared: Truth is God. And he realized the whole of his life had been an experiment with Truth. Gandhi finally decided:

Truth can never harm, I shall write.

And Gandhi commenced his authentic weaknesses-and-all but obviously publishable autobiography titled, My Experiments With Truth.

The very next day after this talk, I eat lunch at Chipotle. I am heading out the door as a college-aged woman is walking in the door. She has three or four books tucked under her arm. My eyes rivet on the spine of one - and it's not the one on the very top. Nestled within the other imperceivable titles clearly jumps out Gandhi's autobiography.

From Chipotle, I walk into the Borders bookstore next door. (I use bookstores like libraries, btw.) I am intrigued of late by open-heartedness, or bodhichitta. I seek out more of Pema Chodron's work. When I pick up the book, the page falls to this:

When I was a child, I had a picture book called Lives of the Saints. It was filled with stories of men and women who had never had an angry or mean thought and had never hurt a fly. I found the book totally useless as a guide for how we humans were supposed to live a good life. For me, The Life of Milarepa is a lot more instructive. Over the years, as I read and reread Milarepa's story, I find myself getting advice for when I am stuck and can't seem to move forward. To begin with, Milarepa was a murderer, and like most of us when we blow it, he wanted to atone for his errors. And like most of us, in the process of seeking liberation, he frequently fell flat on his face. He lied and stole to get what he wanted, he got so depressed he was suicidal, and he experienced nostalgia for the good old days. Like most of us, he had one person in his life who continually tested him and blew his saintly cover. Even when almost everyone regarded him as one of Tibet's most holy men, his vindictive old aunt continued to beat him with sticks and call him names, and he continued to have to figure out what to do with that kind of humiliating squeeze. [Chodron says the "squeeze" is the between a rock and a hard "place where we look for alternatives to just being there."] - Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart

Symbols are simply nice-to-haves. I don't over-mysticize them. I know this all along, you see. And these are only a sampling.

So I remind myself: Truth can never harm, I shall (continue to) write.

Parting Clouds

I'll be continuing this authenticity niching theme - or, people being real theme - by way of (what else) real open-hearted stories...

April 6, 2005

Hi-

This will be a little blubbery, I'm sure, but I just want to thank you.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was one of my first mindblowing literary adventures.  It was given to me by my dear uncle, who was one of my teenage mind's early mentors. I poured over that book, and talked about all the parts he underlined. It's still on my shelf, in two or three pieces from many readings.

My uncle's in failing health.

Seeing your thoughts and posts provided some context for us to connect, on a level deeper than we have done in years. I picked the book back up, and called him.

We talked about some of the passages you've mentioned, and we talked about how my life is getting pretty remarkable these days. I'm shifting careers into the wine industry, and focusing on the more spiritual and sustainable aspects of a "vocation." As my Latin-teacher mother has reminded me, the root of the word is vocare- to speak. I'm finding my calling and starting to evangelize.  I hope to take it to a larger stage soon, and folks like you, and Hugh, and the other Seth, etc. are some of my spiritual leaders.

But it's busy. And sometimes, there's a need for more quiet.  To stay up late with my friend and uncle who's not long for this earth, and to talk about his imprint on my life. Out of all the richness that's being added to my life right now, yours is the voice that speaks softest, and truest.

Thank you,

Seth

This note gently touched the soft spot of my heart. It stayed with me for a long, long time stirring and slowly parting the clouds that often obscure resolute realness. And it was exactly the right note to start the Advance on. Thank you, Seth.

Sometimes the completely open heart and mind of bodhichitta is called the soft spot, a place as vulnerable and tender as an open wound. It is equated, in part, with our ability to love... Even ordinary people like us with hang-ups and confusion have this mind of enlightenment called bodhichitta. The openness and warmth of bodhichitta is in fact our true nature and condition. Even when our neurosis feels far more basic than our wisdom, even when we're feeling most confused and hopeless, bodhichitta - like the open sky - is always here, undiminished by the clouds that temporarily cover it. - Pema Chodron, The Places That Scare You

Niching Authenticity

"Authenticity" is bandied about everywhere. So too "transparency." There is a spectrum of authenticity that depends on where you are in the multifold layers of defense mechanisms, coping fortifications, and walls of armored facade. I'm drilling into one niche of authenticity.

In verifying how to spell the -ing form of niche, I find that niche primarily means:

1. A recess in a wall, as for holding a statue or urn.
2. A cranny, hollow, or crevice, as in rock.

Aha, yes, there are chinks in the armor. Crevices and cracks in the unscalable labyrinth wall. Yup, that's precisely the niche I care about.

Here are two versions of a story from Wild Mind: Living the Writer's Life by Natalie Goldberg written by her friend Miriam Sagan. I say both stories are authentic. You won't see either in a press release or corporate marketing brochure anytime soon. Yet there is a big big difference between the two. (In the interest of time, I've only included the very beginning and ending of each.)

I am in the hospital room waiting for Fred too die so I could go to the Lexington Hotel with Larry and fuck my brains out.

Fred lay in a coma, he was dying of AIDS, he smelled like a waterbed with a leak, his black skin had turned to ash, his feet and his hands were curled like claws, and he weighed less than he had at puberty...

...When [Larry] thought they weren't listening, he whispered to me that the two psychic Pauls were faggots.

The second version goes:

This is how Jeff died. Patrick sat in the hospital room for almost forty-eight hours straight, watching Jeff in a coma...

Jeff was a doctor. The nurses stood crying at the nurses' station because they believed a thirty-three-year-old doctor should not die. Jeff was born Thomas Jefferson Able, but he never told his friends at Harvard this. It made him sound too black, in a country way. A skinny man, he mixed the purple ebony of West Africa with the reddish brown of the Algonquin people.

Before you read further...contemplate for yourself a second: What did you notice? This is what author Natalie Goldberg noticed:

[I] learned that there is a quiet place in us below our hip personality that is connected to our breath, our words, and our death. Miriam's second piece connected to that place, because she slowed down. In her first piece, she was scared, so the piece was glib. We are often funny too cover up fear, but this quiet place exists as we exist, here on the earth. It just is. That is where the best writing comes from and what we must connect with in order to write well. I could take Miriam's revised second piece to Asia, to a small village there, maybe a place that knew nothing of AIDS, and they would understand her writing, because it came from the place where we are not American, not gay, not a New Yorker.

But if we wipe out country, sex, religion - the things that form us - where does writing style come in? Style is all these things fully digested into our humanness, so the fact that Miriam was brought up in New York doesn't overrun the basic emotion of sorrow.

Katagiri Roshi said in his book Returning to Silence (Shambala, 1988) that it is not important whether a spiritual teacher has reached the peak or not; what is important is how he has digested the truth he has experienced and how much this truth is manifested in the teacher's life moment by moment. - Natalie Goldberg, Wild Mind

This past Sunday at the Advance after we spent an entire day being present (the first day we spent cultivating presence), I woke up that morning and spontaneously changed the schedule to make day two a day in which we cultivated open-heartedness, or bodhichitta.

Bodhichitta is also equated, in part, with compassion - our ability to feel the pain that we share with others. Without realizing it we continually shield ourselves from this pain because it scares us. We put up protective walls made of opinions, prejudices, and strategies, barriers that are built on a deep fear of being hurt. These walls are further fortified by emotions of all kinds: anger, craving, indifference, jealousy and envy, arrogance and pride. But fortunately for us, the soft spot - our innate ability to love and to care about things - is like a crack in these walls we erect. It's a natural opening in the barriers we create when we're afraid. With practice we can learn to find this opening. We can learn to seize that vulnerable moment - love, gratitude, loneliness, embarrassment, inadequacy - to awaken bodhichitta. - Pema Chodron, The Places That Scare You

After so many days of unguardedness, I bolted to the safe confines of my left brain, and that is the place I wrote my first post on my return from the Advance.

It is difficult (but immensely rewarding) work to stay open. To write and speak and act from the heart. It's not necessarily relevatory writing. I don't need to know your social security number or your girlfriend's quirks or what your nightmare last night was about. What is required is staying still when you want to bolt and then writing from that stillness.

While I was meditating on the West Coast, my friend Jerry was on his own meditative retreat on the opposite side of the country:

The topic was Daring; daring to be open to overcome the crusty old habits of behavior that lock us in and keep us from authentically connecting. In other words, "Aaaahhh. Just right for me." - Jerry Colonna, Madeleine's blog

Daring. Daring writing. Real stories. Real people. Real stories from people being real. Authentically connecting universally. Universal stories. Resonating stories. Writing that peeks out from behind that crack in the wall guarding our hearts, and turns from the hip, glib, scared fortification - whether that be in marketing stories or creative nonfiction or this burgeoning citizens media or whatever realm.

That's where I'm putting my energy.

Truth in writing is something more intuitive that has to do with a work's ability to become timeless in its timeliness and universal in its particularity. - Jeff Davis, The Journey from the Center to the Page

Illuminating

The act of writing has a way of crystallizing and refining my half-baked thoughts and weaving the patterns together of disparate threads. It's one of the zillion reasons I love blogging.

However, it's not time for me to finalize and synthesize yet. So over the next week, I'll let you connect the dots. I'll keep noticing the patterns, but it's not time to wrap it all up yet. I'm still trying to remain in the receptive Illumination stage.

I'm alert and attentive. I'm in observation mode. Many of the insights come in the form of symbol and metaphor. It's a time to be led.

I make sure not to veer off without my journal. I'll jot some observations here on the blog for posterity and to share relevant gleanings, but it's overflowing and thus I'll have to cull much out of it out.

I recently heard Anne Lamott speak on her recent book tour. "I think I'm getting a lot of your ideas," she says directly to the audience. "God says, I think I'll give this one to Anne Lamott because she has a pen." She carries a pen and a few index cards wherever she goes.

In closing, I want to offer you the one passage that has stuck with me and reverberated through me the entire Dwelve process. It speaks of following the path with heart.

For me personally, the insight spontaneously arose during the Incubation phase retreat (or, the Advance) that this means following the path that opens my heart further, and allows me to practice what Buddhists call boddhichitta, or open-heartedness.

And we come full circle back to the journey, or the Camino, metaphor. Here is wisdom for all of us at any stage in our life:

Anything is one of a million paths. Therefore you must always keep in mind that a path is only a path; if you feel you should not follow it, you must not stay with it under any conditions. To have such clarity you must lead a disciplined life. Only then will you know that any path is only a path and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you to do. But your decision to keep on the path or to leave it must be free of fear or ambition. I warn you. Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary.

      This question is one that only a very old man asks. Does this path have a heart? All paths are the same: they lead nowhere. They are paths going through the bush, or into the bush. In my own life I could say I have traversed long long paths, but I am not anywhere. Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn't, it is of no use. Both paths lead nowhere; but one has a heart, the other doesn't. One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it. The other will make you curse your life. One makes you strong; the other weakens you.
      
      Before you embark on any path ask the question: Does this path have a heart? If the answer is no, you will know it, and then you must choose another path. The trouble is nobody asks the question; and when a man finally realizes that he has taken a path without a heart, the path is ready to kill him. At that point very few men can stop to deliberate, and leave the path. A path without a heart is never enjoyable. You have to work hard even to take it. On the other hand, a path with heart is easy; it does not make you work at liking it.

      I have told you that to choose a path you must be free from fear and ambition. The desire to learn is not ambition. It is our lot as men to want to know.

      The path without a heart will turn against men and destroy them. It does not take much to die, and to seek death is to seek nothing.
      
      For me there is only the traveling on the paths that have a heart, on any path that may have a heart. There I travel, and the only worthwhile challenge for me is to traverse its full length. And there I travel--looking, looking, breathlessly. - The Teachings of Don Juan, by Carlos Castenada

The Dwelve Journey in Business Speak

I'm back from the Advance. It was hard to get back to computers yesterday. And, uh, I don't think I can tackle describing the experience in words quite yet.

To bring the Dwelve process home in business terms, it provides you with a personal strategic vision (with modifications, it can be used for organizational strategic vision too). And if you remember I called the entire process a journey.

Great journeys start with a vision...

Journeys have specific goals or objectives that drive certain behavior. John F. Kennedy wanted to have a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s. This goal focused many people's energy into specific actions to achieve this deadline. That's the purpose of a well-defined objective; it produces meaningful action. - The One Page Business Plan, by Jim Horan

The intent of the Dwelve process is to come up with a compelling vision that we truly want to throw our full self wholeheartedly into.

After the Illumination phase - if we can accept the continuation of the "not knowing" receptive state of mind, in fact I told participatants to "expect absolutely nothing" - a strategic vision starts formulating and emerging.

Without clarity and focus, our energy is scattered and uncommitted. We say yes when we should say no, and we say no when we should say yes. And coming up with simple yes-no decisions can be excrutiatingly conflicted without alignment to a vision. With a clear vision to focus on, every other decision simply becomes "Does this move me closer to or farther from my vision?"

Strategy 2 - Focus on Apple

Apple is becoming a growth company again because Steve Jobs knows how to focus his innovation energy on three product families with three clear marketing messages (portables, desktops, and music players). So when we say focus on Apple, we are really talking about focus. Mr. Jobs knows that when you try to push more than three product messages at a time, people get confused and you lose your leverage.

For smaller companies, that usually means focusing on one product or service and one marketing message. Google is the supreme example here. The "Holy Trinity" at Google (founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and CEO Eric Schmidt) is so focused on search, and making it the best search and the easiest search, that they're almost boring to talk to. But that focus drove their market cap to $60 billion in seven years. - "Growth Strategies: Product Focus and Asian Tigers", Tony Perkins, Always On Network blog

Speaking of growth and focus, Brian Oberkirch (via gapingvoid) asks, How Does Your Global Microbrand Grow?

Take one savvy tailor in the UK. Niche the offering. Niche it again...

I can hear you groaning.  No not that. Yes that. It may mean gripping juicy possibilities, intriguing potentialities and luscious maybes will be shelved - perhaps even permanently. This has got to be the grand mistake of most start-ups I've seen: the compulsion to do it all and thus stand for nothing.

Niche implies focus. Implies clarity. When someone is crystal clear about what they want, they go after it. Everything else doesn't register, but it's not deemed a sacrifice - it's only clutter. Tactical decisions can now be made peaceably and with minimal effort...that is, until enough changes internally or externally that it's again time to revisit and reformulate the strategic vision again.

A thousand half-loves must be forsaken to take one whole heart home. - Rumi

Gone Dwelving

I'm heading to the Dwelve Advance and will be inaccessible via cellphone and Internet until next Tuesday evening.

If you've been wanting to do your own Dwelve Advance, I'll have more details next week on the "how to", but make sure to plan to be go away from your routine (no, it does not work at home) to somewhere quiet -- and without TV and telecommunication networks. Usually there are quiet environments within a few hours of even the largest metropolitan areas.

In the meantime, enjoy the archives, or check out the current "creativity" themed issues of Scientific American and Shift magazines. They are both display at magazine stands and bookstores (at least in USA) right now.

The Honey Pots and the Inner Guru

We live in a celebrity and expert culture. Someone else always has the answer.

What if we had the answers all along?

There are no gurus out ‘there’, but simply people whom reflect and mirror our highest selves and/or our shadow selves. In the yogic sense, a guru merely mirrors your innate but unawakened potential back to you.

Look within for answers. But note your blind spots in the mirrors surrounding you.

I'm merely facilitating this weekend Dwelve Advance (yep, there's plenty of food for a few more folks this weekend as well as Monday - show up at 8 a.m. any day if you are interested; all the details here). And also sharing the disciplined surrender practices to hear our own guru. It's up to us to do the real work.

You cannot teach a person anything; you can only help him find it within himself.” - Galileo

The story below is very illustrative of our own capacities to be our own guru when we are simply willing to be still and listen.

“Listening is a form of accepting.” – Stella Terrill Mann

In fact, it’s illustrative of the spirit of the entire Advance experience:

You may remember A.A. Milne’s story about Winnie the Pooh, Piglet, and Rabbit getting lost in the Hundred Acre Wood. Under Rabbit’s bossy, officious guidance, the three go around and around until they’re thoroughly lost and terrified of lurking Heffalumps. Eventually, a disgusted Rabbit leaves Pooh and Piglet and goes to find the way home. He never returns. After a while, Pooh turns to Piglet:

"Come on, Piglet. Let’s go home.”

“But we’re lost,” said Piglet.

"Yes,” said Pooh, “but there are twelve pots of honey in my cupboard at home, and they are calling to my tummy. I couldn’t hear them before, because Rabbit would talk."

This is what happens to someone who settles into the threshold of Square One [Martha Beck's lingo; what Joseph Campbell calls the ‘Initiation’], stops fighting the process, and accepts the strange formlessness of the situation. The chattering, Rabbit-like social self gets so frustrated and disoriented that it finally wanders away. Then something else comes through: a silent sweetness that resonates deep in your essential self, your pots of honey calling to your tummy. – Martha Beck, Finding Your Own North Star