A neo-renaissance, eco-epicurean savors, curates and shares slices from the surf's edge on the inspiration, imagination, the art of living, the living of art - and anything that screams Life.
M. Scott Peck: The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace Just started, but compelled by the model of moving from pseudo-community (where everyone is fake nice) to a true community where no one is trying to change anyone else; and collaboration truly flourishes.
Michael Scott: The Alchemyst: The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel Just checked out of library. Adore fantasy, fairy tales, and myth. And when the jacket said that Michael Scott was an authority on mythology and folklore, I was hooked. Plus I still have designs on writing my own mythic tale down soon.
Steven Johnson: Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation Really intrigued by the title. Fabulously diverse in examples. If you ever felt like a square in round world, this book will make you sing for joy because that's what life is about--growing, moving, evolving.... The book is much stronger for being in Science section and not restricted to business innovation alone.
"If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living." - Joseph Campbell
PILGRIMAGE - the inclination toward a willingness to live in perpetual discovery taken in form of an outer, worldly path or journey towards that which is simultaneously inherently Pathess and without distance; to move in unknown mystery and allow grace to unfold; sense of 'play' invoking gamer lingo -'sandbox' - for MMORPG which are "non-linear and open-ended" (hmmm, life on earth is THE ultimate massively multiplayer role-playing game but we often stick to the linear cause-effect closed-off 1.0 version); focused on active movement and engagement and experimenting and direct experience in and with the world as meditation over sitting still in concentration in a cave in Siberia; epiphanies; following the path with heart (i.e. "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." - The Teachings of Don Juan, by Carlos Castenada)
We have all known grace - sometimes it shows up as: serendipity, exhilarating adventure, synchroncity, coincidence, miracles, 'magic', breath-taking moments, sweeping moments of unexplicable love and compassion, simple joy, 'flow', time stands still moments, blessed moments, instants where you are buoyed and transported by beauty or nature or simply sublime extraordinariness of the ordinary. (Above two paragraphs I wrote in a private email outlining an idea sent 4/13/2006)
The first time I walk into the used bookstore called after the blue cypress, I interrupt the clerk listening to a monologue by a customer eruditely citing Ulysses and Lolita in the same paragraph if she has any of the Memory of Fire series by Eduardo Galeano. I'd already browsed the history section to no avail. She searches her computer, stares at the cover art before saying: "I think I saw that one in the fiction section."
"Fiction?!"
"Fiction."
“Myth is much more important and true than history. History is just journalism and you know how reliable that is.” ― Joseph Campbell
"Stop being such a cheapskate in your business dealings and your personal life. Give, give, give to others; make sure deals are win-win for both sides. Again, it's not the amount of money involved, it's maintaining--all day long--a truly generous, creative, flowing state of mind that wants to see everybody prosper. Ben Franklin was perhaps the greatest statesman, scientist, and businessperson in America's history--and his response to competition was to invite all his competitors to join a new society called a Chamber of Commerce, dedicated to finding ways to work together to expand markets, and make everybody involved richer."
Clue: From Memory of Fire: Volume 3: Century of the Wind by Eduardo Galeano a compilation of vignettes from the history of the Americas written in present tense:
The roundup is on for the wounded and hiding strikers. They are hunted like rabbits, with broadsides from a moving train, and in the stations like netted fish. One hundred and twenty are captured in Aracataca in a single night. The soldiers awaken the priest and grab the key to the cemetery. Trembling in his underwear, the priest listens to the shootings begin.
Not far away, a little boy bawls in his crib.
The years will pass and this child will reveal to the world the secrets of a region so attacked by a plague of forgetfulness that it lost the names of things. He will discover documents that tell how the workers were shot in the plaza, and how Big Mamma is the owner of lives and haciendas and of the rain that has fallen and will fall, and how between rain and rain Remedios the Beautiful goes to heaven, and in the air passes a little old plucked angel who is falling into the henhouse. (187 and 464)
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Complete quote via the Joseph Campbell Foundation: "If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Wherever you are -- if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time.
* * *
Now, I came to this idea of bliss because in Sanskrit, which is the great spiritual language of the world, there are three terms that represent the brink, the jumping-off place to the ocean of transcendence: sat-chit-ananda. The word "Sat" means being. "Chit" means consciousness. "Ananda" means bliss or rapture. I thought, "I don't know whether my consciousness is proper consciousness or not; I don't know whether what I know of my being is my proper being or not; but I do know where my rapture is. So let me hang on to rapture, and that will bring me both my consciousness and my being." I think it worked." - Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth, pp. 113, 120
"The Wonder Year project is an invitation to imagine what lies beyond the apparent boundary of 2012, not as a rigidy imposed concept or prediction, but as an adventure." - The Wonder Year
I adore invitations and adventure, so this The Wonder Year (via Spaziale blog) caught my eye today; I'm still investigating it for myself.
Two days ago, I conceived of a mini-adventure inspired by a book's premise that I'd like to share.
In The Future of Us, teenage protagonists Josh and Emma live in 1996, and find out that Emma's computer can mysteriously access Facebook fifteen years in the future. Facebook doesn't exist in linear time, yet inadvertently or not, they're reading their own future-self Facebook statuses. They begin to piece together a puzzle of their lives as grown-ups.
In 1996, taking the best educated guess I could at the time, I'd be starkly wrong about the ride into 2011 on almost every single front I'd hazard a guess. Rather than 15 years fast-forward, even 10-year-sprees are daunting: I was pretty much the same person with same worldview in 1996 as in 1986 so extrapolation sort of works for that time span. But 2006? That was night-and-day from 1996.
Eight years and exactly one day ago today, I published my first post here at Crossroads Dispatches. (Previous blog lasted a few months.) Could I predict I'd still be writing right here same bat-channel eight years later?
I'm startled myself how skimming (I didn't read it through as it's more suited to YA) The Future of Usgot me going on this theme about how we believe we can or ought to predict or shape destiny. Notions such as there is a singular optimum destiny and we must finagle to get there. Or fearsome other destinies we must avoid. It opens up a ball of wax to play with.
I just didn't know what I didn't know back then, and actually couldn't conceive of many of the events and insights that have occurred (and I've left out a lot of juicy, weird parts). Mind and spirit may not be static. Maybe we aren't confined by our 17-year-old beliefs, or even yesterdays'.
"Many times I imagined myself here--at the threshold of the palace. But I always thought I would be here as a conqueror, instead we are the Earth king's personal guests here to serve him tea. Destiny is a funny thing." - unnamed character in Avatar: The Last Airbender
Destiny is a funny thing.
"Now, we have to do something. It doesn't have to be huge, but something we weren't going to do before playing this game."
"Emma, I'm not messing with the future. Not as part of a game."
"Then don't call it a game!" she snaps. "Think of it as an award-winning science experiment."
Emma picks up the thin blue vase from her dresser. Earlier this week, it held the dying roses Graham gave her for prom. Emma slowly tips the vase until water begins dribbling onto her white carpet.
"What are you doing?" I ask. But I know the answer. She's making a small change in the present to see how it affects the future. If I grab the vase from her now, it wouldn't matter because that wouldn't have happened before either. - The Future of Us, by Jay Asher and Carolyn Macker
In the book, Emma and Josh started to notice that things they'd decide in the present would ripple into the future each time they hit refresh on Facebook--sometimes affecting the name of their spouse, the town where they reside, who's on their Friends list and who isn't and other factors.
The Invitation and Adventure. Try on this experiment in imaginal science. Less manipulating the future, more an exercise in imagination, at least for me--but play it as you will.
What did you do today that rippled into the future? As Emma notes, "It doesn't have to be huge, but something we weren't going to do before playing this game."
I like the ring of "hindsight is 20/20" so I'm setting my future statuses for the year 2020. Oh, and I'm not necessarily going to stay within the realm of "the feasible."
Add yours in Comments section below if you want to play too. (You can also invent the present-day statuses, if you like.) I'll play for about 10 or 11 days through February 19th--adding my statuses to the Comments. In a few days, I'll add yet another twist to the game inspired from the book, The Future of Us. Here's an example:
Yesterday: For the past year, nearly every day I walk 1 and 1/2 hours in pretty much the southerly direction in the same neighborhood. Today I walked a new northern route (I'd explored pieces of it years ago; today, I went further). And found a biking trail I didn't know about. It gave me a vantage point to see palatial 'star' homes that are often obscured by gates and walls.
In 2020: Jaunt through forests near Mogollon Rim. Built a fire for the evening. I'll travel again at dawn. (The unspoken, implied part is totally comfortable with wilderness survival in winter.) Photo attached with status update: Mongollan Rim and the Verde River.
ART CREDITS: Illustration by Katsuhiro Otomo via darksilenceinsuburbia; Bâtiment (Building) Installation, by Leandro Erlich, grants super-powers to passersby -- scale a building in Paris through March (a vertical mirror reflects a horizontal building facade) via MyModernMet.
The ruins of the once center of the cosmopolitan world Byzantium Empire are underground in Istanbul.
Paradoxically, antique and precious things aren't the only thing underground.
Often new and too edgy things reside underground.
Although, I'm tiring of hiding underground.
Perhaps it is the function of artists, shamans and culture-makers to be culturally dystonic: To be too edgy--not by force or contrivance but simply because you are going with the dynamic of life (go ahead and rock the boat, surf the edges).
Heck, it's a dragon year in the Chinese zodiac. It's a year of adventure. No time to be tentative and timid like Ms. Chihuro in Spirited Away. She was having none of it, sulking in the backseat as they drove to their new home. Her parents said a new school could be an adventure (ya right?). Little could she foresee her dread of the unknown would be tested by far more intimidating tests than any grade school.
Switching cartoons for a minute. I know it's been ages since you watched Avatar: The Last Airbender, if you've ever have.
There's a particular scene where one character does something so uncharacteristic, they faint immediately after, and in the next scene are bedridden with fever. A second character offers them support and wisdom in this dialogue (changed two words so I don't spoil the story for you):
You should know this is not a natural sickness. But that shouldn't stop you from enjoying tea.
What's happening?
Your critical decision. What you did beneath that lake, it was in such conflict with your image of yourself, that you are now at war within your own mind and body.
What's that mean?
You are going through a metamorphosis, my friend. It will not be a pleasant experience. But when you come out of it, you will be the beautiful person you were always meant to be.
Pretty much nails how I've been feeling. That sort of fever, but not quite a fever. An intense battle of my own self-images (self-mirages) clasping and collapsing.
I learned a new word last week in Shamans Through Time. "Among the Sedang Moi, a person may even drink his own urine, in the hope that this act will so depreciate him in the sight of his divine sponsors that they will take back the power they had been given." An individual who feels called to be a shaman may commit suicide as an act of refusal. It's so anathema to my self-concept, even if it is ultimately "positive" (well, maybe "whole") it wrecks how I have fixated myself.
ego-dystonic /ego-dys·ton·ic/ (e´go-dis-ton´ik) denoting aspects of a person's thoughts, impulses, and behavior that are felt to be repugnant, distressing, unacceptable, or inconsistent with the self-conception.
For a person who prides themselves on their cocky persona being compassionate might be repugnant, so ego dystonia looks unique to each. Ultimately no fixed image is going to do the river of you/us/I any justice.
Later, in the 1956 essay, George Devereux states, "shamanism is often also culture dystonic." The arts are dystonic. Who we really are is dystonic.
Recently, I read Tara Mohr contend that actually there are two flavors of fear, first is akin to worry about an imagined future fate. The second kind:
"This is the word used in the Old Testament whenever people encounter something sacred. When Moses meets the burning bush, he feels “yirah.” Yirah is described as a kind of trembling awe we feel when we are in the presence of the sacred. It is also described as “the fear that comes over us when we are inhabiting a larger space than we are used to.” - Tara Mohr
The fear that comes over us when we inhabit spaciousness, when we are the sacred.
The Evolution of Culture and The Evolution of Creativity chapters in British-Israeli physicist David Deutsch book, The Beginning of Infinity, asserts that shame and taboo are the primary tools used to keep individuals and society comfortable (or confined, depending on perception) in our conclusions and self-conceptions. In other words, tools to avoid the fever of dystonia, resist evolution, hem life.
Deutsch shares:
"Therefore no society could remain static solely by suppressing new ideas once the have been created.
That is why the enforcement of the status quo is only ever a secondary method of preventing change -- a mopping-up operation. The primary method is always -- and can only be -- to disable the source of new ideas, namely human creativity. So static societies always have traditions of bringing up children in ways that disable their creativity and critical faculties. That ensures that most of the new ideas that would have been capable of changing the society are never thought of in the first place.
How is this done? The details are variable and not relevant here, but the sort of thing that happens is that people growing up in such a society acquire a set of values for judging themselves and everyone else which amounts to ridding themselves of distinctive attributes and seeking only conformity with the society's constitutive memes. They not only enact those memes: they see themselves as existing only in order to enact them. So, not only do such societies enforce qualities such as obedience, piety and devotion to duty, their members' sense of their own selves is invested in the same standards. People know no others. So they feel pride and shame, and form their aspirations and opinions, by the criterion of how thoroughly they subordinate themselves to the society's memes." - David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity
Culture is a funny thing. In the West, they view dragon as adversary to be slayed, and in the East, dragons are harbingers of fortune and magic.
The dragon? It has no way of knowing, really, which culture you hail from. It just rides life.
Your humble wood dragon, Evelyn
Bonus: Self as a verb instead of self as an image is beautifully explained by Adyashanti in a January 18, 2012 webcast (available for sale) titled, "The Whole Notion of Self." (Scroll through titles on the right sidebar on the Radio Archives page.)
p.s. Yes, this is a very much an explaining post. Setting up context for what in near-future may look like up-ending memes and conceptions that have been handed down as gospel. In the end it's an experiential process of discovery that I really can't tell you about, and why I'm moving more toward exploring posts.
p.p.s. The young girl in the film was modeled after a real girl. If you've never seen Spirited Away it's a real treat for the imagination. It's been voice-overed in English by Pixar/Disney, and it is the top revenue film in Japan of all time.
"Awestruck, she watched the animal trainers, the acrobats, the jugglers, and clowns. And then the lights dimmed and a spotlight shot upward and a lone woman climbed up a rope to a metal bar suspended far above the floor. Later Olga would learn that this wondrous sport was called "trapeze." But before she knew the word she knew her destiny. "That's for me!" she promised herself.
. . . Most circus performers come from circus families or have trained as gymnasts. Olga had neither circus connections nor gymnastics' training. She didn't even know where the nearest circus school was located. She had no allies. Her parents were conservative and practical. Her sisters, her grandmother, her friends were all walls she had to scale on her way to the trapeze. Even the friend who had recklessly lowered her onto a stranger's balcony in the middle of the night wouldn't help her run away to the circus.
"The Census says that 5.9 million Americans ages 25 to 34 are living with their parents, an increase of 25 percent over from before the recession. Men are now twice as likely as young women to live with their parents.
. . . Only 55.3 percent of young adults 16 to 29 were employed, according to the Census, down from 67.3 percent in 2000 and again a post-World War II low. - "Editorial: Generation Needs More than a New Name," Willoughby, Ohio News-Herald, September 24, 2011
*****
You read this and it seems so... dim. According to some.
According to who?
Is it?
*****
"Young eagles have no instinctual fear when they emerge from the nest. They learn to avoid dangerous predators such as the wolf and fox, so Kazak hunters must climb to the nest and capture the juvenile eagle before it learns to fly -- when it is fearless. The Kazaks call the fledging a 'balapan', which they compare to a celestial raptor Hangaard (Khan Garuda). Living with an eagle may seem impractical - the raptor must be fed a marmot or a rabbit every other day and when it is cold in winter the nomads will sometimes feed it from their own flocks. The visible benefits of owning an eagle may not seem to tally with the cost, but what binds the Kazak to the eagle is something more than utility, it is what anthropologists call 'deep play.' The Kazaks say that the eagle 'chases away darkness from a man's heart.'"-- Hamid Sardar
*****
I had lost all sense of deep play when I lived in New York City.
I tried to make it--according to other people's terms.
Students praised for performance and ability tend to want to continue receiving those kudos, and won't risk threaten their reputation as a smart cookie or as a success. "The mastery-oriented children are really hell-bent on learning something" have been praised on process and effort, and they go for it for the pure privilege of growing. They'll look foolish. So what. Kids that were praised for performance tend to want to confirm their greatness, and kids praised for process seek activities that expand their abilities. (see also Little Bets, by Peter Sims)
Why, glory be, you are so successful!="All this implied that when students were valued for their intelligence, failures would be taken more personally, even as being disgraceful."
Whoa, look at you, you are learning!="Tend to view failures and setbacks as opportunies for growth. They have a desire to constantly challenge and stretch themselves."
*****
"Uranus thus confronts the Saturnian part of us that wishes to hold on, to maintain the status quo, to resist change in favor of security, tradition, and the established order.
The rebel-trickster side of the Prometheus archetype can thus come from within or without, and in the latter case a person can feel constantly subject to problematic changes that require one to reorient one's life. Whether these changes are precipitated by other people, by new psychological or physical conditions, or by external circumstances, their role is to open one's life to something new. If one is identified excessively with the past, if one tries to hold on to structures that are outmoded, then one will experience Uranus as a disruptive force that at times can be quite uncomfortable. But the potential is always there for one to integrate the archetype, and for one to contact one’s own capacity for freedom and excitement, for openness to the unexpected and the new.
When any planet is in major aspect to Uranus, that second planetary archetype tends to be liberated into expression, often in sudden, unusual, or unexpected ways. The second archetype is given an exciting, creative or innovative stimulation, and can be a source of both freedom and unanticipated change." - "An Introduction to Archetypal Astrological Analysis," Richard Tarnas, Ph.D.
*****
"Come to the edge" he said, "We can't, we are afraid" they said...
"Come to the edge" "We can't, we will fall" "Come to the edge" and they came and he pushed them and they flew. - Guillaume Appollinaire
"After years of rampant consumerism and easy credit, such nascent initiatives speak to the new mood in Greece, where imposed austerity has caused people to come together — not only to protest en masse, but also to help one another." - "Battered by Economic Crisis, Greeks Turn to Barter Networks," NY Times, October 1, 2011
*****
". . . . Unlike most runaways, who are impelled by impulse, Olga postponed her departure for months. She would need at least a little money, and, not being a thief, would have to earn it. And she needed an act.
. . . For a few days she tried juggling with stones and fruit, but having no one to teach her, quit in frustration. She thought of animal acts. . . Her father refused to buy her a dog so Olga went to Ishim and befriended a tiny shaggy mongrel she spotted at a refuse dump. It followed her home, where she washed it and named it "Lassie," after a dog she had seen in a movie.
Her father said, "You can't take care of yourself! How are you going to care for a dog?"
But Olga proved a good master and proceeded to train Lassie with a determined patience she rarely accorded humans. In no time Lassie was standing and playing dead. Olga would make her climb the stairs one at a time. If Lassie failed to stop on a step until given permission to continue, Olga would make her start all over. By the end of the month she had an act." -- Dreams of the Solo Trapeze: Offstage with the Cirque du Soleil, by Mark Schreiber
*****
"“I felt liberated, I felt free for the first time,” Mr. Mavridis said in a recent interview at a cafe in this port city in central Greece. “I instinctively reached into my pocket, but there was no need to.”
Mr. Mavridis is a co-founder of a growing network here in Volos that uses a so-called Local Alternative Unit, or TEM in Greek, to exchange goods and services — language classes, baby-sitting, computer support, home-cooked meals — and to receive discounts at some local businesses."
. . . For Ms. Houpis, the network has a psychological dimension. “The most exciting thing you feel when you start is this sense of contribution,” she said. “You have much more than your bank account says. You have your mind and your hands.”- "Battered by Economic Crisis, Greeks Turn to Barter Networks," NY Times, October 1, 2011
*****
"Now all [Olga] she needed was a train ticket to Tyumen, her first stop on the road to Moscow. She had no money of her own and certainly couldn't approach her parents. There weren't many jobs available for a young girl, and she was still attending school. She and her friends had brought lollipops from gypsies in Ishim, but none of the townspeople sold them. So one day Olga asked a gypsy woman how they were made and went in to business for herself, stealing sugar from her parents' kitchen. The first batch was awful, but the second was good enough to sell to her friends. Her father kept asking where all the sugar was going. To this day he doesn't know it financed her escape, the first yellow brick in her long road." - Dreams of the Solo Trapeze: Offstage with the Cirque du Soleil, by Mark Schreiber
*****
Exactly one year ago today I was living in NYC.
I'm not sure if I were there today I would be part of the Occupy Wall Street protest.
mid-14th century (implied in protestation) "solemn declaration," from Latin protestari "declare publicly, testify, protest," from pro- "forth, before" + testari "testify," from testis "witness" (see testament).
my public declaration
I can certainly identify with many of the frustrations of the protesters. I was broke, I was running out of options: tried and tired all the grant proposal crayon inside the line forms, tried potential investors (long story, 'twas a media venture), tried X and Y and Z's and Kickstarter and plain hustle. Gave up. Try the government. Trudged to the food stamp office, uh-huh so they'd alert my landlord, and that would send them red flags (I was month-to-month, not on a lease) -- so there goes that. I'd never felt so powerless. So I left NYC before rent was due up again. I did not Make It in America. Near penniless with just enough for airfare, I moved in with family across the country.
(btw, I'm only able to share this aloud now since I've shifted into
a growth mindset...
even if the USA is predominantly a fixed mindset...
it's
a #
not me
although one can fixate on poor too)
So yeah, I can certainly identify.... and yet....
I am not 1%. I am not 99%.
I am the 100%--and I don't see that message conveyed much.
Except I just did when I read this. There are instances... for instance, that one woman.. you'll recognize her when you get to that point in the story below (and this again is an excerpt of a longer piece) conveys the I am the 100%:
"We stood there for a while, and when it started to rain, we got under an umbrella with an older, white couple who looked to be in their mid-sixties or so. Then they walked up to a police officer, spoke to him, and he motioned for them to approach the ranking officer in front who was standing with a bullhorn. We then saw this couple walk out of the netted area and leave.
At this point, Rebecca and I walked up to the same ranking officer and politely requested to leave. We were told no and to get back in the crowd. We overheard two officers holding the netting asking each other what they were going to do with all these people. They obviously had no idea what the leadership’s strategy was, if any. We then went under the umbrella of a group of young women who were in their teens and twenties and were talking to a detective (or someone with the NYPD who was wearing an overcoat). He asked us some very leading questions: “Are you all together?”, “So no one told you to disperse?”, “Did you know you would end up here?” We said we had no idea what was happening. Then he told us to talk to the same ranking officer with the bullhorn. This time when we approached, the cops gave him a signal and he motioned for us to all pass through. Just like that.
As we were leaving, I asked one of the women what she had said to the officers before we came over and why they had let us go. She said she had struck up a conversation with an officer and told him he was “beautiful” and a “beautiful person” and that the “love and good vibes” she had sent his way seemed to have an impact on him."
Alas, in the next sentence the writer belittles
the magic and power of the 100%...
the compassion of unconditional love and remarks in response
to the truthfulness of that woman, she adds: "Oh, I’m sure."
It's so easy to be jaded.
Dig deeper. Be still. Feel the undercurrent.
Be sure of love. It's there's 100%.
*****
Olga calmly told her parents she was running away to circus school one day in August.
"Let her go," he told his wife, whose tearful pleading was no more effective than his own threats. "She'll be back tomorrow."
. . . . She was fourteen years old.
Olga Sidorova became a trapeze artist with Cirque du Soleil for many years.
Today, she teaches master classes at the aerial dance studio and school she founded in Sydney, Dancing in the Air.
*****
There were too many roads, too many versions. There were too many roads, no one path--
And at the end?
16. List the implications of "crossroads."
Answer: a story that will have a moral.
Give a counter-example.
17. The self ended and the world began. They were of equal size, commensurate, one mirrored the other.
I was doing what I could with what I had where I was. -- Bob Dylan
What Dylan replied when asked about the secret to his success.
That may be paraphrased as I had to jot it down quickly as I was passing through the casino mall. The point is it's exactly what I needed to hear today.
Drain my energy on whining about what I don't have, and who I can't afford to hire, and the imperfect conditions I'm in for inspiration to work, or whatever. Sure, been there done that. Or--I can do what I can with what I have right now.
------------------------------------------
Above is an example of a public post I shared on Google+. They're shorter and tend to share a singular point rather my rambling shares over here. Note, if you check it out now, that I only be sharing about 30% publicly, the rest are private circles, including one circle (my largest, and hopefully the most active) I've set aside just for creative folks like you that visit here.
If you need a Google+ invite, please leave your name in comments below and I'll send you one, and add you to the fun and mystery-laden blog circle for everyone here.
The prime reason I'm keen on Google+ is it has features designed for interactivity in a way that a blog and/or an email newsletter is not. As Greg Christopher shares, "Google+ is a Salon in the old French style. It is a gathering place for people with something to say. People with opinions and a desire to interact with others. People who don't care that their grandma had cereal for breakfast before planting her farm on Farmville, as much as they care about connecting with other passionate people with something to say. It is a place where ideas have sex, to borrow from Matt Ridley. Where someone who is a Star Wars geek can talk to other Star Wars geeks. Where artists, journalists, philosophers, geeks, and freaks of all types can find their home. Where you can find your own community and talk to each other about precisely what you want to talk about."
So Crossroads Dispatches is more like the stage, and our private Google+ circle is more like the lobby... where connections and conversations actually happen informally.
"It is far more delightful to be fond of the world because it has thousands of aspects and is different everywhere. . . for every divergence deserves to be cherished, simply because it widens the bounds of life." - Karel Capek
Are there times you're just not riveted by your desires and visions? Can't do anything to prop them up to be enjoyable to play out? There are certainly lots of reasons for that, including existential. Also it's easy to get caught up in cultural spells of what we should do, want, have, be so that the vision isn't even ours, so we can't truly align with it.
For me, I have had to keep expanding any vision that pops into my mind into ever-widening circles to be more inclusive and more encompassing of the world-at-large until it was compelling and adventurous enough to intice me. Otherwise, I'm just fine sipping lemonade on the porch.
Row row row your boat gently down the stream... merrily merrily merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.
My mind recalled all the wild ideas I’ve ever had. I ran one or two by my lunch partner.
“That’s not big enough,” he said. - Joe Vitale, Lunch With God
That's how I talk myself out of my own ideas lately. "That's not big enough." And I mean talk myself out of in the best possible way as it behooves me to be devoted to an idea that's compelling.
(Guess what, I learned that words compassion and encompass have similar etymological roots.)
I'm currently car-free in a city (Las Vegas) that doesn't really make it easy in 107+ degree sunny weather to tool around. On my private blog, I'd been playing a game where I receive an imaginary check each day (the amount increases by $1000 each day) and I have to put it into play right away (no hoarding). Although, I've quit said game and approach it now from "What project do I want to do next?" assuming "money is no object."
For the first week, I used the money to do projects--perhaps a public art installation, or arrange a Hunch Hub retreat or Salon with other folks. As I've already said, I enjoy producing things much much more than consuming things. I find that if I think about paying the rent, or buying a croissant in a cafe, or getting an iPhone and much of the desires I'm advertised to suppose to have--that they fairly boring to me. But if I think broadly "bigger than me," it gets interesting again.
Day 8 into the game, muse: "I really ought to get a car." Although in my heart of hearts I'm not THAT excited about a car.
Why is that? I ask myself. Why don't I want a car? Why do I want a car? I kept on with Why questions in my head. Even that exercise barely helped... sure, I want mobility to have the freedom to go from A to B, true. That wasn't juicy enough, and I can't fake enthusiasm.
This is what I wrote down (slightly edited) in a private blog post:
Going to settle for a VW Beetle, or something practical like an FJ-Cruiser--too bored to even pretend to want them. Rather, my mind keeps being flooded with blue or silver-blue convertibles, so I'm going with it.
So while searching for VW beetle photos... found this gem!--from a car forum: "is essentially a low-cost alternative to the Porsche Boxster."
"If all goes well and the [Volkswagen] BlueSport Roadster receives the final green light for production, the first cars could arrive at VW showrooms around late 2012."
Yeah, it's def more than $8000, but more checks will be arriving. This is my deposit ;)
Still.... I couldn't muster sustaining interest in any car--not even the all-electric Tesla, although at the same time I am in a city with dismal public transit, and a severe lack of sidewalks for pedestrians, etc. And did I mention how hot the asphalt gets in triple digit weather?
I thought about it and saw what I truly want is the about freedom of movement. Car being one of thousands of ways to achieve that end. That could be Zipcar combined with good city public transit, or so many other ways And also, I want to not only flourish myself, but have freedom of movement available to All.
Not so much impose my 'vision' on everyone but add options... something for everyone--walking, biking, anti-gravity propulsion capsules, flying saucers, rockets, flying, teleporting, bilocating, Zipcars, public transit--oh i love those Japanese bullet trains! More stuff like Eurorail (Amtrack, er, so-so). Then, there's that cool guy that runs the super-cheap $30 shuttles to LA from Vegas... more shuttles, limos, flying carpets, Segways, etc.
Monorails, light rails, people-movers, cablecars, gondolas, flying porpoises, Blimps, steampunk airships, hotair balloons, kite trios, caravans of camels, Mary Poppins umbrellas, whatever floats your boat... just get me/you/us from point A to B. Car is NOT the sole way.
Why not make those train cars more aesthetic, fun, spacious, maybe interactive theater with costumes for all to wear and make-believe in the cars?
Just read this tonight [at the time of writing] at bookstore on teleportation, and walking on water. Explains my vast respect for the East:
In 1894, Baird T. Spalding was on an expedition that he wrote up in a tome, Life and Teachings of the Masters of the Far East. They came to a swift river and many in the expedition party wanted to pay a visit to a neighbor on the other side. The stream was about "two thousand feet wide, running bank-full, and the current was at least ten miles per hour."
"When Jast [one of the guides] rejoined the group the twelve fully dressed, walked to the bank of the stream, and with the utmost composure stepped on the water, not into it... I held my breath, expecting, of course, to see them plunge beneath and disappear.... I think each of us held his breath, until they were all past midstream, so astonished were we to see these twelve men walking calmly across the surface of the stream... and not sinking below the soles of their sandals." - Spalding
Spalding was too afraid to try this himself although Jast and Neprow insisted he could do the same and be safe.Jast instead that none of the folks that crossed over were special. "They do not have one atom more power than you were created with." Spaulding also mentioned that he had witnessed Jast materialize and dematerialize his body at will and be at two places at once.
"How is it, a few are able to do the things we have seen accomplished, that all men cannot accomplish the same things? How is it that man is content to crawl, and not only content to crawl but is obliged to do so?" - Spalding
If my guide insists that I can walk across a raging river--no bridges, other the 'bridge' to spirit--just as gracefully as he, would I? Would you? Now, that, my friends is what I want. To expand our view of what is possible, and to walk the talk.
p.s, What is this beautiful old-school convertible? Found during my car search. Lovely (via Honestly WTF).
p.p.s. This post was originally posted in my private for-my-eyes-only blog, then re-edited for Encanto circle members. The me-only blog is basically a place to sift and discern what I want to create apart from the many voices in the fray and explore project ideas before they're fully crystallized.
“To require perfection is to invite paralysis. The pattern is predictable: as you see error in what you have done, you steer your work toward what you imagine you can do perfectly. You cling ever more tightly to what you already know you can do – away from risk and exploration, and possibly further from the work of your heart. You find reasons to procrastinate, since to not work is to not make mistakes.”
“To the critic, art is a noun. To the artist, art is a verb.”
"Look at your work and it tells you how it is when you hold back or when you embrace. When you are lazy, your art is lazy; when you hold back, it holds back; when you hesitate, it stands there staring, hands in its pockets. But when you commit, it comes on like blazes.”
Those three quotes are from Art and Fear: The Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking, by David Bayles and Ted Orlund. Now read them again. This time substitute "love" wherever the words "work" or "art" appear.
Now read it again one last time, substitute "life" wherever the words "work" or "art" appear.
Intriguing, ain't it?
I haven't touched a business book in a few years. Partly due to burn-out since I used to review business books as a hobby, and since surviving the Indian Ocean tsunami they just felt a little bit, well, cold (no offense intended to business book authors) compared to so many other things I could be doing with my lifetime. After one survives a disaster, reading "Execution: The Art of Getting Things Done" drops a few notches on the "to do before I die" list.
In October I decided I wanted to shake some things up a bit, by attempting to break my routines (being a Gemini a "routine" is anything I've done for more than a year ;)).
I was desiring to break through a personal plateau.
For instance, I decided if I walked into a bookstore (now that act of walking in is a definite decades-long habit--why not a knitting shop instead?) I'd at least be open to "new" topics or ones I was purposefully averting. So I my eyes fell upon, "Who's Got Your Back," by Keith Ferrazzi. I had recently heard it mentioned in one of those ubiquitous "how to get rich" newsletters I decided to subscribe during the same timeframe so I wasn't averting money (part of the shaking things up process). Keith Ferrazzi charges CEOs $250,000 to coach them to better relationships in their networks, often peer networks (in case alarm bells of "too warm and fuzzy" are sounding, although close connections are their own reward in my book).
"Once when I was in Italy visiting my extended family near Milan, one of my great-aunts took me to a local churchyard where many of my relatives are buried. The church itself is one of those Renaissance cathedrals with a soaring dome. Looking up from the pews, it's hard to imagine how it was built. But outside, when you trace with your eyes up and down the exterior, you can see how the vaulted dome rests on firm columns, which in turn are supported by substantial foundations. It's all out in the open, for anyone to see.
To me, the courage to reveal your vulnerabilities reminds me of the structure that supports that dome. No one would ever attempt to build a church from the top down.
Ferrazzi intertwines vulnerability and candor with successful risk-taking--which is basically what courage is. In The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace, which I also read recently, M. Scott Peck shares how vulnerability and commitment lead to bonafide community (not a superficial one where it everyone gets along because they avoid everything of any consequence) or a clique.
Dr. Brown is firmly rooted in her Ph.D. academic researcher credentials and identity and in the very beginning she shares how uncomfortable she feels with the TED organizer's suggestion to change her title from "researcher" to "storyteller" so it doesn't sound dull in the event program.
Dr. Brown exclaims, "You're going to call me a "storyteller"? Why not a magic pixie!" I laughed particularly because it echoes my journey. I clung to the identity of computer engineer for so long as it gave me a wide berth from the sticky stuff of people patter. (Machines made much more logical sense.) Then I dipped my toes into soft stuff by route of marketing. Then I started to call myself a writer (eh, close enough to "storyteller").
Not that any stamp of identity is necessary, but if you were to pin me down nowadays "magic pixie" is fairly spot on because what I care about are the enchanting possibilities that most people label "impossible." It's a work-in-progress, however go ahead and peek as I crystallize the vision (that's not the end-product, rather it's a public doodle of its coming into being), please see http://soundwhole.posterous.com--I'd love your feedback.
"Too much agreement kills a chat." - Eldridge Cleaver
Most people assume that dissenting viewpoints squash utopian visions of collaboration and teamwork. (Beware that compromise is not collaboration.)
I watched bits and pieces of an animated movie last night as I was cooking called, Happy Feet. In it, a young penguin dares to contradict the tribal elders and the wisdom of the crowd (funny, his name is Mumble yet he speaks up) to claim that the dwindling fish supplies are caused by the "aliens" he's seen (i.e. humans).
Oh, and he loves to tap dance, which I guess is a definite no-no where this young Emperor penguin hails from. One of the chiefs declares forcefully, "Dissent leads to division and division leads us to doom!"
Typical. The young penguin is immediately exiled.
Typical. "Many deal with conflicting opinions by shutting off the conversation" and "people assume that truth lies in numbers," I'd just read that earlier...
... in a research paper titled, Rogues and Heroes: The Value of Dissent, by University of California at Berkeley's Charlan Nemeth. Her research shows that "majority [viewpoints] induced compliance," while "minorities [views] stimulate more originality."
One of Nemeth's most cited studies on free association is the one that evokes a lot of intrigue around the question how do we get beyond rote, reactive, predictable--how do we grow fresh and creative?
"In study after study, when people free-associate, they turn out to not be very free. For instance, if I ask you to free-associate on the word "blue," chances are your first answer will be "sky". Your next answer will probably be "ocean," followed by "green" and, if you're feeling creative, a noun like "jeans". The reason for this is simple: Our associations are shaped by language, and language is full of cliches." - Jonah Lehrer, The Frontal Cortex blog
And by "chances," we're talking roughly 80% of folks take the predictable road, blurting "sky" to a prompt of blue, or "grass" in reply to green.
"How do we escape these cliches?Charlan Nemeth, a psychologist at UC-Berkeley, has found a simple fix. Her experiment went like this: A lab assistant surreptitiously sat in on a group of subjects being shown a variety of color slides. The subjects were asked to identify each of the colors. Most of the slides were obvious, and the group quickly settled into a tedious routine. However, Nemeth instructed her lab assistant to occasionally shout out the wrong answer, so that a red slide would trigger a response of "yellow," or a blue slide would lead to a reply of "green". After a few minutes, the group was then asked to free-associate on these same colors. The results were impressive: Groups in the "dissent condition" - these were the people exposed to inaccurate descriptions - came up with much more original associations. Instead of saying that "blue" reminded them of "sky," or that "green" made them think of "grass," they were able to expand their loom of associations, so that "blue" might trigger thoughts of "Miles Davis" and "smurfs" and "pie". The obvious answer had stopped being their only answer. More recently, Nemeth has found that a similar strategy can also lead to improved problem solving on a variety of creative tasks, such as free- associating on ways to improve traffic in the Bay Area.
The power of such "dissent" is really about the power of surprise. After hearing someone shout out an errant answer - this is the shock of hearing blue called "green" - we start to reconsider the meaning of the color. We try to understand this strange reply, which leads us to think about the problem from a new perspective. And so our comfortable associations - the easy association of blue and sky - gets left behind. Our imagination has been stretched by an encounter that we didn't expect." - Jonah Lehrer, The Frontal Cortex blog
The beauty of this is not that we're converted over to another view: "We believe that the minority [viewpoint] “influenced” individuals, not so much on the perception of color but, rather, on the importance of saying what you believe, says Charlan Nemeth in her paper, http://bit.ly/rogueheroes.
By the way, by the finale of the movie Happy Feet, that young exiled penguin named Mumble, yep... Typical: He's the hero.
I first heard of Charlan Nemeth's research through the chapter on Error (my favorite chapter) in Steven Johnson's new book (recommended), Where Do Good Ideas Come From?So many people drown out voices that don't agree with them, not realizing that they don't have convert over to allow another their expression. Here Johnson sums up why one of his SIX keys for an environment conducive to good ideas is encouraging, rather than shutting out errant, "noisy" thoughts:
"When one of our peers calls the blue painting green, or [in a jury deliberation] comes to the defense of a suspect who is clearly guilty, he or she is, technically speaking, introducing more inaccurate information to the environment. But that noise makes the rest of us smarter, more innovative, precisely because we're forced to rethink our biases, to contemplate an alternative model in which blue paintings are, in fact, green." - Steven Johnson, Where Do Good Ideas Come From?
Here's a Charlan Nemeth's take on "diversity" for a speech to the National Bar Association. The first two Powerpoint presentation slides open like this:
The usual approach
• Most talks on diversity deal with legally protected categories e.g. race, age, gender, sexual orientation and
• the dream is to “imagine” a world where categories don’t matter and where differences are submerged
An immodest proposal
• I suggest to you that the differences will always exist and, moreso, they SHOULD exist
• Instead IMAGINE a world where they are celebrated and utilized
Bravo! That's precisely my dream, too. "IMAGINE a world where they are celebrated and utilized."
Why? Because I think that is the type of world where each person can freely share their gifts and be thoroughly creative blooming towards the widest outskirts of their potential, never shuttered if they don't "fit" in. Who wants to outlaw all flavors of ice cream but just one.
Here's a related observation, I stumbled across while searching on LeWeb:
"Rush Limbaugh, a conservative syndicated radio host, became popular because he’s a credible voice that confirms people’s existing beliefs. This is exactly how I felt about Chris Pirillo’s presentation about community. Better known as preaching to the choir, my sentiment was evidenced by the number of tweets that echoed “I agree with him” rather than “I learned something.”" - David Spark, "The Cool and Not-So-Cool of LeWeb"
So, you see, I don't want you to agree with me. I want you to agree with you. Yet, let's keep learning and growing and glowing from each other.
p.s.In comments below, do you mind sharing how you include more dissenting views into your life? Or your organization?
Bonus: A good summation of Charlan Nemeth's Rogues and Heroes: The Value of Dissent paper from the paper is: "Our own experimental studies have found that minorities stimulate a search for information on all sides of the issue while majorities stimulate a search for information that corroborates the majority view (Nemeth and Rogers, 1996); minorities stimulate the use of multiple strategies in problem solving whereas majorities stimulate the use of the majority strategy (Nemeth and Kwan, 1987); minorities stimulate the detection of solutions that otherwise would have gone undetected whereas majorities stimulate adoption of the majority solution, right or wrong (Nemeth and Wachtler, 1983). Further, minorities stimulate more originality while majorities stimulate more conventionality of thought (Nemeth and Kwan, 1985). As a consequence, those exposed to minority views come up with more creative solutions to problems (Nemeth, Brown and Rogers, 2001)."
art credits Spice Market, Orchha, India by Stanislaw Urbaniak; Yves Klein (I'm not sure name of this painting; Klein serendipitiously found he liked how the natural sponges he sued to dab on blue added texture to the canvas, and so his tools became his raw material); and even though if this is tempting scrumptious, I wish to be spared from a world where latte e mirtilli (blueberries and milk) is the only choice of gelato flavor on earth.
Although there are no ready-made, everyone-do-this-or-else rules for how to be you, I really enjoy encouraging each other to be the grandest possibility bursting to bloom forth.
I've been inquiring to myself how to do that within the context of a group--or, even larger, in a culture.
Geographically, I like to be surrounded by all types of people exploring being all they can be--not necessarily all trying to achieve the very same thing.
"It's not so much that you do whatever a city expects of you, but that you get discouraged when no one around you cares about the same things you do." - Paul Graham, Cities and Ambition essay
For a long time, I agreed with Paul Graham above and sought that sense of camaraderie. I tried out San Jose, San Francisco, New Orleans, Chicago, Las Vegas, New York--whew--and that's only the last couple of years.
"Originality is ... a by-product of sincerity." -Marianne Moore
Nowadays, I don't agree with Paul Graham. If you are doing anything new, and you expect to find people who care about the same things as you do than (a) it may not be that pioneering to begin with (b) you might want to look deep at your supposed "need" for external vouching (c) who said contrast and, heck even opposition (ever seen a beautiful pearl?) is all bad?
Sure, I thrive within mutual respect, but I have witnessed that's not necessarily the same as people "caring about the same things."
So my open-ended question nowadays is: Under what condition(s) or what environment is risk-taking liberated? And, allowing our own "original" to us ways? This is a big topic and I've created another feed titled "Community" expressly to share resources and book excerpts for this exploration (don't worry if you don't subscribe, I'll link to its contents from time to time here).
I am not waiting for any finished wrap-up conclusion to that question, as a place of innovative risk-taking itself is a little fuzzy and messy, just like hunches are:
"If you zoom in you'll see that I've made black circles a little fuzzy and irregular, which to me, makes it more representative of what "hacking" is about: Innovative Solutions.
Innovation tends to be fuzzy, it resolves itself with time and thought." - Hugh MacLeod
Ideally, innovation never truly resolves itself, rather it continues expanding and learning and surfing new edges infinitely.
"If in the culture into which we are born there are always persons who urge us to theatricalize our lives by supplying us with a repeatable past, there will also be persons (possibly the same ones) in whose presence we learn to prepare ourselves for surprise. It is in the presence of such persons that we first recognize ourselves as the geniuses we are.
These persons do not give us our genius or produce it in us. In no way is the source of genius external to itself; never is a child moved to genius. Genius arises with touch. Touch is a characteristically paradoxical phenomenon of infinite play.
I am not touched by an other when the distance between us is reduced to zero. I am touched only if I respond from my own center--that is, spontaneously, originally. But you do not touch me except from your own center, out of your own genius. Touching is always reciprocal. You cannot touch me unless I touch you in response.
The opposite of touching is moving. You move me by pressing me from without to a place you have already foreseen and perhaps prepared. It is a staged action that succeeds only if in moving me you remain unmoved yourself. I can be moved to tears by skilled performances and heart-rending newspaper narratives of heroic achievement--but in each case I am moved according to a formula or design to which the actor or agent is immune. When actors bring themselves to tears by their performance, and not as their performance, they have failed their craft; they have become theatrically inept.
This means that we can be moved only by persons who are not what they are; we can be moved only when we are not who we are, but are what we cannot be.
When I am touched, I am touched only as the person I am behind all the theatrical masks, but at the same time I am changed from within--and whoever touches me is touched as well. We do not touch by design. Indeed, all designs are shattered by the touching. Whoever touches and whoever is touched cannot but be surprised. (The unpredictability of this phenomenon is reflected in our reference to the insane as "touched.")
p.p.s. Not only an idle question this one of: Under what condition(s) or what environment is risk-taking liberated? Perhaps it'll be the underpinnings of an actual geographical place, or an online space, or both? We'll see.
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.
"If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living." - Joseph Campbell
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