The breeze at dawn has secrets

Self-Reliance Day 4

2011-06-03T13:45:00.001-04:00

#Trust30 is an online initiative and 30-day writing challenge that encourages you to look within and trust yourself. Use this as an opportunity to reflect on your now, and to create direction for your future. 30 prompts from inspiring thought-leaders will guide you on your writing journey.

Inspiration

That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. Where is the master who could have taught Shakespeare? Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or Newton? . . . Shakespeare will never be made by the study of Shakespeare. Do that which is assigned you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

Prompt by Jenny Blake

Identify one of your biggest challenges at the moment (ie I don’t feel passionate about my work) and turn it into a question (ie How can I do work I’m passionate about?) Write it on a post-it and put it up on your bathroom mirror or the back of your front door. After 48-hours, journal what answers came up for you and be sure to evaluate them. Bonus: tweet or blog a photo of your post-it.

I'm not sure about today's prompt. It doesn't really work for me yet. I don't think there's anything major in my life that I don't feel passionate about. I could ask myself how can I live my potential more than I do...that's something I know I fall short of all the time. Yes, maybe that's the question I'll ask myself.

I'll be back in 48 hours with my answers.

Note: #trust30 is the twitter hashtag to post responses and read those of others who are taking part in this 30-day challenge.

Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote is very inspiring. I wish today's prompter had paid more attention to Emerson's directions; instead of turning them into something secular. I'm going to skip the rest of the prompt instructions (other than the 48-hour contemplation) and post Emerson's quote alongside my question on a post-it note, to help me go more deeply. I'll post my answer here instead of in my journal, on Sunday.

Self-Reliance Day 3

2011-06-02T23:54:00.014-04:00

Inspiration

It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. - Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

Prompt by Buster Benson

The world is powered by passionate people, powerful ideas, and fearless action. What’s one strong belief you possess that isn’t shared by your closest friends or family? What inspires this belief, and what have you done to actively live it?

The strongest belief I have today is that traditional enlightenment will no longer save the world. It may save the individual but it will not save the world. I remember seeing Schindler's List a few days after meeting Andrew Cohen in 1994. What led me to seek him out was an unexpected and irrevocable break with the spiritual teacher I had been with since 1985. My heart broke into a million pieces. It was more devastating even than the death of a boyfriend some years before, who had been the great love of my life. In an instant I knew two things: my relationship with my teacher was over; I had taken a wrong turn somewhere in my search for enlightenment and I had to make it right.

Having only heard Andrew's name through a friend, and that he would be in New York around this time, I found myself compelled to see a teacher I knew nothing about, in the hope of finding answers to my deepest questions about life. In that meeting many things happened, most of all, I received my answers, through listening to Andrew respond to the questions of others. Almost everything he said that night has stayed with me, but what pressed into my consciousness most immediately, was a direction he gave to a young man sitting in front of me: what would it be like to go beyond the boundaries of ignorance, self-delusion, selfishness and fear?

I thought about this in my every waking moment, and I saw that I was afraid of everyone and everything. I didn't want to be the same as all other human beings. I kept pushing more deeply into the enquiry, and then the day arrived when I had promised to see Schindler's List with a friend. I refused to turn away from the screen when the Nazis committed atrocities. I let myself make room in my heart for the possibility that I was absolutely no different; that everything they did, I too was capable of doing. I remember at the end, Schindler was given a gold ring with the inscription: He who saves a single life saves the world. Three nights later, in the middle of the night, I had a profound experience of spiritual revelation. The God I had been raised to believe in did not exist. The only thing that existed was I, that One without a Second, and the weight of the world's suffering was caused by my ignorance and self-delusion. This experience shook me to the very core of my being. But I could no longer turn my back on what I'd always suspected in my heart of hearts--that there is ultimately only one human being, and we are all that one. I could no longer pretend I didn't know the truth of Reality with a capital R. And so, the course of my life changed.

That was then, and this is now. Seventeen years after seeing the film, and through the Grace of my Teacher, I am less afraid of my conditioning and, therefore, of other people's. I am less tempted to believe that the desire to remain separate from others is something unique to me. I have had more spiritual experiences than I probably deserved. And I have come to know that Plato's Beauty Goodness Truth emerges when people come together beyond ego, to create that which does not yet exist, without having to undo everything that came before.

Note: #trust30 is the twitter hashtag to post responses and read those of others who are taking part in this 30-day challenge.

Surprisingly, it took the whole day to arrive at what I wanted to say today. Yesterday and today, what ended up on the page were not the first thoughts that came to mind, when I read the prompts. Staying with the prompt until a heartfelt response emerges is similar to writing Natalie Goldberg's practice pages, where the goal is to go beyond what she calls second and third thoughts to arrive at first, or original, thought.

Self-Reliance Day 2

2011-06-01T20:04:00.005-04:00

Inspiration

Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. The force of character is cumulative. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

Prompt by Liz Danzico

If ‘the voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tracks,’ then it is more genuine to be present today than to recount yesterdays. How would you describe today using only one sentence? Tell today’s sentence to one other person. Repeat each day.

Today is every breath I take
and every road I travel

Note: #trust30 is the twitter hashtag to post responses and read those of others who are taking part in this 30-day challenge.

This was harder than yesterday, where all I had to do was let go of my mind and allow my imagination take over. Here, I had to think and write out all the cliches that come up in a second when asked to describe Today in one sentence. I brainstormed with myself during a daily writing sprint I do with a group of writers and it took almost an hour to arrive at something I felt satisfied the challenge. I wanted to encompass being and becoming in a way that I could repeat it every day, as the prompt suggests (though the prompter may also mean to repeat the exercise every day, and come up with a new description each time; this wasn’t clear).

Self-Reliance Day 1

2011-05-31T20:40:00.011-04:00

I signed up for #Trust30, an online initiative and 30-day writing challenge that encourages you to look within and trust yourself. Use this as an opportunity to reflect on your now, and to create direction for your future. 30 prompts from inspiring thought-leaders will guide you on your writing journey.

Inspiration

We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other. Our age yields no great and perfect persons. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

Prompt by Gwen Bell

You just discovered you have fifteen minutes to live. 1. Set a timer for fifteen minutes. 2. Write the story that has to be written.

Here goes.

The letter dropped from her hand. The paper was thick and ivory and bordered with a thin strip of pure silver. The door stood silent, not daring to say anything after a hurried "goodbye" to the winged messenger who had brought the note and handed it to the frowning girl.

Of all days, this was the last thing she wanted to read: the end of her life. Why today? Why now? She had paintings to finish and supper to make and a birthday to celebrate tomorrow. And now. This. Fifteen minutes to live, the note said. She had known what it was the minute the envelope iced her hand. The messenger wasn't Death, though she wished now it had been. At least she would have gone before she had time to think. She bent down and picked up the fallen letter. Fire burned through the letters of her name and the time of her imminent death, looping flames of colour that trailed across the paper like the tail of a snake across sand. Fifteen minutes to live the note had said. It was worth repeating. It was a lot less than that now. She refused to look at her watch. What good was to know she'd wasted time standing at the door instead of doing whatever people did when they knew they had fifteen minutes left to live.

"Wait!" she cried out into the empty air. "Come back. I need to speak with you."

In an instant the room shimmered with light and in a stream of blazing white a figure stood in front of the girl.

"You delivered this message to me didn't you?" the girl demanded though she knew the answer. "Why?"

"Because you know who I am," the figure replied. "I wanted to give you a second chance. Before it’s too late."

"A second chance? At what? To be the nobody I was before I made a deal with the Devil? Look at me. I'm the most famous painter in the world!"

"No. A chance to be yourself before it's too late."

"Myself?" Her words stopped. "Who am I? I'm a poor girl from a broken family who had a mediocre talent in art. People laughed when I said I wanted to be a painter. That's the person you want me to be in the last few minutes of my life instead of who I've become?"

"In your mediocre talent was a seed of light to be great, and to live a good life. You just had to trust yourself that it would carry you through the dark. You chose a different path. But it's not too late."

The girl felt the minutes draining away from her, her heartbeat growing thinner, the blood slowing down. She knew the figure in front of her was right. He was her guardian angel. He knew everything she had done and left undone. She felt the weight of regret in her eyes as she looked into the streaming light.

"What should I do?" she said. "Show me the way back to myself."

Note: #trust30 is the twitter hashtag to post responses and read those of others who are taking part in this 30-day challenge.

I wrote this short piece directly onto this blog for the allotted time, without pausing to think. During the last minute, the scene led to a small ending, while leaving open the possibility of enlarging the story at a later time.

2010-05-01T22:11:00.002-04:00

All works of art are commissioned in the sense that no artist can create one by a simple act of will but must wait until what he believes to be a good idea for a work comes to him. - W.H. Auden

To Be Human Again

2010-03-04T15:30:00.004-05:00

I was just reading a blog post: So what's so great about people dancing in a train station? The author quotes a commenter at salon.com articulating what she felt but could not express. The quote ends, "They have shown me a little bit of what it is to be human again."

I've been thinking quite a bit about what it means to be a human being on the leading edge of Consciousness in the 21st century. I've heard Andrew Cohen say ever since I met him, almost sixteen years ago, that evolution is a messy process. And until this past weekend I always thought of that messiness as something happening in the process between those of us in EnlightenNext creating a new culture; or the mess of the world at large. What changed my perspective was something that happened in a discussion group on Sunday.

The group discussion took place via a conference call, with participants across the United States and from Europe. At one point something I said caused the discussion leader to point out that the way in which I was speaking was as if the culture being created between us wasn't real. I didn't get it: wasn't I talking about culture in a real way by referring to our postmodern tendencies to....? No, he said. By referring to something outside what was happening within the group, it was making the enquiry between us flat. It wasn't the higher we that Ken Wilber describes as the interior evolution of Consciousness that occurs when two or more people come together to create culture, consciously.

Then something extraordinary happened--though it took awhile to emerge. Our group leader said that though we had met only a couple of times (we'll have five more discussions together between now and July), we were starting to know each other in ways that would allow us to collaborate. His words were simple yet what he transmitted was a deep trust in the process occurring between us. Suddenly, everything inside was outside--the unseen space between us became palpably indistinguishable from my awareness. I was aware of thoughts and feelings flitting in the atmosphere of my mind like distant butterflies but they weren't relevant to the space of the group that had suddenly become apparent. I realized that every interaction is the creation of culture, whether we like it or not, whether we believe it or not. And it's always from the inside out.

More than that I realized that the edge of Consciousness is not just an experience of enlightened awareness of bliss or clarity or ecstasy. The leading edge of Consciousness is the degree to which we are aware that everything that has materialized in time and space over fourteen billion years is what being human is. All of it, from the grotesque to the sublime. There is no becoming human again: the messy process we feel inside, as we struggle with the greater awareness of Life that postmodern individuation brings to light in our consciousness, is exactly what it means to be human now.

Implied in the commenter's observation was the idea that we once were human and then forgot; and, now, through acts of collaboration, like singing and dancing together in a railway station, we are reclaiming our humanity. But our humanity never went anywhere. We're simply waking up to the messiness of evolution--or what it means to be a human being in the 21st century.

Rules of Creation

2010-02-22T12:56:00.007-05:00

An article in the Guardian on ten rules for writing fiction is currently circulating Facebook. Someone used an expletive to convey her poor opinion of Philip Pullman's response: My main rule is to say no to things like this, which tempt me away from my proper work. Another writer, whose work for me is seminal, was not invited to offer her Ten (surprising as she won the 2004 Guardian Award). She came up with her own.

But the criticism of Pullman's choice to decline listing his rules got me thinking...what are the rules of Creation?

1. Creation has no boundaries, only direction.
2. Creation makes that which 1 attosecond (10⁻¹⁸ s), or about 10²⁶ Planck times before was unimaginable, imaginable.
3. Creation destroys whatever came before without undoing its existence.
4. Creation doesn't care who creates, only that it happens.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10. Creation has no rules.

Connecting the dots

2010-02-04T11:31:00.004-05:00

I've been thinking about Web 2.0. What is it? How do I shift myself from 20th century webbing to 21st, and why?

So today I was reading an article What Is Web 2.0 and then I remembered another article I read last month, A Master Blueprint for Making Stars.

So now I'm contemplating how the dots connect between Web 2.0 and the creation of Energy, Light, Matter, and would like to hear your thoughts on what you see as connecting (or disconnecting) points of entry and departure between these two seemingly discrete subjects.

On a different but related topic, I made a number of posts last year that ended, to be continued... more dots to connect... more ideas to be revisited and carried forward....this will happen.

Vampires and Hungry Ghosts

2010-01-18T13:49:00.005-05:00

I've been puzzled by the burgeoning fascination of vampires in film and literature.

Then it came to me this morning: what if the cultural obsession with vampires is a metaphor for our fear of hungry ghosts? That making everything-vampire or zombie--including two of the most enduring classics in literature that represent the true heart: Little Women and Pride and Prejudice--springs from knowing that in the necessary process of individuation we have gone too far and forgotten the reality of who and what we are?

I began this blog from my realization that the creative impulse is not an object in consciousness but who I am at the source of being. I AM THAT. At the place where the two worlds touch I emerge from unmanifest limitless potential into the world of form that I choose to create.

If we stay true to the deepest source of inspiration from within (not as personality but as creative impulse), what happens to our apparent fascination with zombies and vampires, whose existence depends on the lifeblood of human beings because they lack our self-generative power?

The Power of Simplicity

2009-11-17T11:33:00.003-05:00

The power of simplicity is the ability to unmuddle complexity.

If Thoughts Are Not the Problem...

2009-11-15T23:09:00.012-05:00

...then why do we keep trying to fix them in gross and subtle ways? The question has been with me for sometime. And I'm aware of it again because of the work I'm doing with Unleashing Originality. I'm paying more attention to the work of teachers and leaders, young and old, experienced and fresh, who are trying to help others to wake up from the illusion that thought is real. (Interestingly, almost all say that thought is an illusion, then proceed to give instructions on how to swap out one "illusory" thought for another.)

The first time I consciously realized that thought has no self-nature was in India, in January 1995, when I was on retreat with Andrew Cohen. I had directly experienced that enlightenment is Real, through a series of spiritual revelations, as a result of meeting Andrew in April 1994; and I had begun to remember spiritual episodes I had encountered as a child but had not understood their significance.

In India, in the town of Bodhgaya where the Buddha is said to have achieved permanent enlightenment under the Bodhi tree, I began to realize how important it was to wake up, to make my life count so that other human beings wouldn't have to endure so much suffering. Open sewers served as public bathrooms, swarms of flies buzzed incessently in the air between the tents of the thousands of Tibetan Buddhist monks and refugees who had fled Tibet. The abject poverty of the Indian families who ran the roadside chai stands from rickety wooden shacks with cloths for roofs; barely large enough to hold one adult let alone an entire family with children; selling their goods by day, sleeping in those small fold-up boxes by night, come rain, cold or heat.

I remember speaking with Andrew about the nature of thought. I kept wondering how I could become enlightened--be an unself-conscious expression of the depth and beauty of singularity I had glimpsed in revelation. How was it possible to transcend ego (self-consciousness, self-referencing), which seemed to be present in the mind, all the time? Suddenly I realized that it was possible to be one step ahead of the ego, because thought/ego has no self-nature. Then I promptly forgot this realization and struggled, all over again, with my relationship to the mind, until I went on retreat in Tuscany earlier this year.

Now the question is back on the table. If thoughts in and of themselves are not the problem, how will "wrapping love around them," or "replacing one kind of thought with another," change the nature of thought itself?

We believe thoughts are the problem because we are not sufficiently convinced that thoughts are not the problem! If we were doubtless that thoughts are not the problem we would cease to spend time trying to fix a problem that doesn't actually exist. I make it sound simple, and I'm aware there might be a lot more to the picture than I'm bringing to the table. But the question itself is something I've been contemplating. I wanted to open it up and see where it goes.

Who Am I?

2009-11-05T13:53:00.191-05:00

For awhile now I've had this sense that Joseph Campbell's provocative statement, Follow Your Bliss, means surrendering to a purpose I can't own or claim for myself.

Ever since I can remember I wanted to be a writer. In fact, whenever I refer to myself as a "writer," my mind immediately recalls a particular evening when I was about eight and half years old. I sat in a corner of my mother's workroom while she worked at her table. I had just completed a story called "The Land of Green Bacon," and I decided to create my Will. I have no idea what drew me to work on a document of that nature (perhaps the Universe was trying to spark an interest in me from an early age, to pursue a career in estate law; knowing I would wind up administering my father's complicated estate...I don't actually believe this but it's fun to speculate on the odd things that children glom onto). I do recall trying to decide who should inherit my favourite doll and her perambulator but I don't remember who received the honor.

I also wanted to write poetry. I loved reading tales of high magic and listening to songs of the medieval troubadours. Around age ten I fell under the spell of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's reworking of Mallory's Morte d'Arthur:

Then saw they how there hove a dusky barge,
Dark as a funeral scarf from stem to stern,
Beneath them; and descending they were ware
That all the decks were dense with stately forms
Black-stoled, black-hooded, like a dream--by these
Three Queens with crowns of gold--and from them rose
A cry that shiver'd to the tingling stars,
And, as it were one voice, an agony
Of lamentation, like a wind, that shrills
..............

When I read the work of great writers, I am not convinced--as my parents were of their work and themselves, even as they admired the same greatness in others--that I must take writing to a new level of genius. Nor do I feel that my writing, in its current iteration, comes close to the spark of genius I see in the work of writers I admire. I have no doubt that I have an ability to write. I know I'm a good writer, maybe even an above average writer. Maybe I could even become a great writer if I put my attention on becoming one. But I'm beginning to question whether writing is my primary goal in Life.

For my father, Art was the driving force of his life. He once wrote, "I express myself in paint in order to exist." I don't think I could say with the same conviction that I express myself in words in order to know who I am.

So, I find myself asking what exactly do I feel the pull to do? The answer is subtle. I can't point to a particular object I want to create, like a painting or a novel, or anything the mind can grasp and understand. I feel empty handed, because all I can point to is the pull to create a world space in which depth and possibility can emerge.

To be continued...

Those Who Can, DO...

2009-10-30T12:57:00.030-04:00

The title for this post came to mind while I was working with Trudy Enloe and Linda Di Tullio on Unleashing Originality, the workshop we co-led on 24 October 2009. I found myself wondering if was true that those who can, do; those who can't, teach.

My father always said he could never teach art. My mother couldn't impart her ability to design women's haute couture, always one season ahead of Paris fashion. If I had understood this as a child, I would have spent time with them, observing their thoughts and actions; instead of feeling inadequate in the face of their inability to articulate the mystery of originality. And I would have learned by example. Example is an exemplary teacher.

Instead I went to ordinary schools (including the private schools I attended from age eleven) where I was taught how to parse book knowledge rather than how to unleash the force of originality. No wonder children, left to their own devices, seem to be so natural, spontaneous and creative (if not original). Children allow the force of Life to drive much of their imaginative thinking. Though I suspect with the mountains of mediation indoctrinating us these days, original thought is becoming harder, by the minute, to identify; let alone express.

So is it true that those who can't, teach? I think of my spiritual teacher, Andrew Cohen, and it's clearly not true. But if I stop and think, what actually is Andrew teaching?; he's not actually teaching in a conventional sense; (though he has created and continues to evolve an original teaching of enlightenment that articulates the mystical experience of higher realities and spiritual idealism). And he leads by example. He does what he teaches. He is the best student and exemplar of evolutionary enlightenment. And he tries, in every way, to get his students to become the same.

Trudy, Linda, and I made a commitment not to teach anything in our workshop. And at the same time we made a promise to give people their money's worth (whatever that meant). The one thing we knew we could offer beyond many of the "creativity" workshops that are presented worldwide, was our capacity to generate depth; so that originality could emerge. That's what Andrew Cohen trains all of his students to access in themselves, and with others.

Looking back, I can see that we dared to lead by example, to prove that ordinary women could hold a world space in which the New would emerge. We dared to create conditions in which we could say with confidence to anyone who asked, that originality would be unleashed in ourselves and in participants as long as all in the room were open, willing and committed for this to happen. And, then, we dared to take it further, when it emerged.

What I'm describing may not sound unusual, but it is. In a world where, historically, men have led the charge into the unknown, the reality of women developing together in a field of trust and unity consciousness, in order to tread boldly into the unknown, is still nascent--an emergent expression of independence through autonomy and communion.

To be continued...

Sisterhood is Everything & More ...

2009-10-30T09:01:00.006-04:00

Shortly after my return from the retreat with Andrew Cohen in Tuscany, Linda, Trudy and I got together with another woman evolutionary, Megan Dietz, for coffee.

We had a good time with Megan, discussing her inspired ideas to bring Bright Green into mainstream culture through workshops at universities. After Megan left the cafe, Linda, Trudy and I continued our conversation until closing time. What happened next is one of those cosmic mysteries; or something out of the Twilight Zone: take your pick.

We were on 40th Street close to Avenue of the Americas. Just before the subway entrance there's a storefront with a slightly recessed display window. Something made us stop in front the store and continue our conversation. Less than three feet away, a pile of black garbage bags spilled trash onto the street. All around us cars and buses honked as they travelled uptown along Sixth Avennue, or sped toward the east side on 40th Street.

And then, in a way that is always mysterious, it was as if our surroundings were like a parallel world, and everything we said fell into a space of depth and trust between us...lightness of being became present in each of us, and our words became interchangeable; and yet not. I cannot remember anything we said. I only remember the field of unity consciousness between us.

We stayed talking outside that shop front for nearly two hours. Reluctantly, we decided to part ways and head for home. Still, we didn't seem to want to separate. Trudy and I walked Linda to Port Authority where she had parked her car. Then we walked back to the red line and caught the subway together to the upper west side.

Little did we know, on that late summer evening, what would begin to create itself out of the emptiness we had experienced on West 40th Street, New York.

To be continued...

Sisterhood is Everything ...

2009-10-29T21:04:00.008-04:00

I have been trying to decide what to write, following the first Unleashing Originality workshop I co-led with Trudy Enloe and Linda Di Tullio last Saturday. There are many things I want share about our process, as well as the workshop itself. But the experience that remains most present in my awareness is the bond of true sisterhood that we've been forging between us--in a way that is nothing less than miraculous. Forging this bond began quite sometime before we decided to create the workshop.

Notably, last year, Andrew Cohen led a workshop for his women students. At some point he asked us how profound were our relationships with each other; how trustworthy? I knew my answer instantly: not profound, not trustworthy. And even though I felt myself flush with embarrassment, I also knew that my spiritually bankrupt relationship with my spiritual sisters was not unique to me.

In fact, I was sure that when we got into the discussion groups that were to follow, I would not be alone in admitting that none of my relationships were profound, and that I could not be counted on to be trustworthy. (By trustworthy I mean I could not be counted on to remain steadfast and hold depth in the face of women's condition that expresses itself as mistrust, competition, victimization and collusion of and with other women). Indeed that workshop with Andrew was the beginning of my commitment to be a liberated woman for real.

Over the months that followed, the women in New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia met by phone or in person. Slowly bonds of trust and trustworthiness began to emerge between us. The work of many women contributed to the development of deep trust and transparency that began to emerge between Trudy, Linda and me as we generated material for our workshop, Unleashing Originality. By the day of the workshop itself, the unity consciousness we were transmitting between us was palpable.

Clearly I will have to write about the lineage of the new women's liberation among women engaging with evolutionary enlightenment, but I'll save that for another post. For now I'll document the conditions that allowed our workshop Unleashing Originality to take form.

To be continued...

From Nothing Came Something

2009-10-05T23:56:00.003-04:00

I've been thinking about the Big Bang quite a bit recently. From that infinitesimally single-pointed instance an entire universe, which has not yet stopped emerging, came into being.

I've also been thinking about the fact that before that moment of emergence there was nothing. And then there was something. Out of Nothing, the Creative Impulse emerged and is still emerging, fourteen billion years later.

It's impossible to fathom that we are the outer reaches of the Big Bang, the way my teacher, Andrew Cohen, and some scientists describe. And I sense it must be true, because I've been reflecting on the creative process in myself and seeing the exact same movement of nothing to something--having no idea to inspiration to decision to put something down and begin a story that will generate and populate its own universe...in time.

NO Pre-Conceptions

2009-10-03T15:24:00.024-04:00

I don't exactly know what to call this particular post, but I know what I want to say!

This morning I took part in a call for practitioners of Evolutionary Enlightenment who are also practitioners in the Arts. Something brand new emerged in the call.

Two things stayed with me.

1. In the theory and practice of evolutionary enlightenment, there's usually not much room to talk about ourseves in a personal way, which makes sense in the culture we're trying to create together: an intersubjective engagement that calls for a perspective beyond the individual historical self.

Today, however, we began with a brief introduction of ourselves, which included which aspect(s) of the arts we are engaging with.

It was so thrilling to hear architects, musicians, composers,curators, art historians, fine artists, authors, and others, on the call. And to know that we chose to "meet," on a rainy Saturday (at least, in New York); solely to acknowledge that a deeper awareness of Emptiness (or the Ground of Being)--out of which the Creative Impulse is endlessly emerging--is beginning to express itself in our work. (Phew! Long sentences, I'm sorry; but I'm not sure Hemingway's economy of style and understatement could have captured the ecstasy of the call, either!)

An expression of the enlightened perspective PLUS intersubjective engagement in the right context provides perfect conditions to create a future unfettered by the past ... amazingly, a future unfettered by the past, matches the nature of the Creative Impulse!

There was a deep, felt sense that this kind of pre-conscious engagement with others, which is simultaneously self-confident for all the right reasons, is where the real juice of Life and Creativity merge--revealing uncharted ground, virgin territory, a tabula rasa on which to create a previously unimagined future. My friend (and moderator of the call), Carol Raphael, said the thrill was the potential of the future.

2. I had a flash that the nature of the Creative Impulse has no pre-conceptions of what it wants to create, or what needs to be created. It has a trajectory, which is always vertical (i.e., always reaching for something higher). And it has mandate to create the future. But it's up to us to choose what that future will look like, and how it will be created

My friend, Mags Blackwell, observed that what makes our relationship to the future different from previous generations is that we actually know, in a way that was not possible before the 20th Century, that we are co-creating the future individually and collectively.

Every Hero Has a Karmic Line

2009-09-30T13:30:00.028-04:00

I was exchanging messages on Facebook with my friend Lia Keyes the other night. She was discussing the challenge of creating an antagonist who is as developed as her protagonist. My last reply (pre-thought) was this:

For Harry Potter, for example, I think one thing in particular: losing Dumbledore. I don't think in his wildest dreams Harry ever thought that Dumbledore could fall; and yet he did. So something in Harry's world was more powerful than what Harry imagined was the force for the greatest good...and part of the karmic line turned out to be that the greatest good had not always been that. And I'm sure Harry never imagined he would have to let Hedwig die to save his own life...creating his own karmic line. Every hero has a karmic line...that's the real antagonist.

Morality is not inherent in the Creative Impulse, it exists only in human consciousness...the most deviant antagonist has as much access to the power of the Creative Impulse as the ideal hero.

As I thought more about what I'd written, that every hero has a karmic line, I began to contemplate that there's only ONE karmic line, just as there is only ONE Creative Impulse. I may have what appears to be a personal karmic line that began around the time of my birth, but is that really so; or is what I think of as my karmic line intrinsically part of a larger anti-evolutionary force that came into existence with the initiation of the Big Bang?

The Creative Impulse Never Fits In

2009-09-22T14:11:00.008-04:00

My friend Nicky Schmidt and I have been exchanging emails on writing and what publishers seem to want. So many catch-all rules seem to be dictating to writers not only what they should write but how they should write. Personally, I refuse to go there--it's like voluntarily climbing into a coffin and nailing down the lid, from the inside out.

I've been thinking about the odds my parents overcame as immigrant artists in England in 1949/1950; (no small feat, given the climate in England's postwar rationing, and India's recent independence from British rule).

It took my father five years to receive recognition; by the late fifties he was hailed as an important British painter. By the mid-sixties, my mother found herself in (what some might consider) the enviable position of being offered full backing from a publishing mogul to create a boutique line of fashion, accessories, cosmetics and perfumes that would compete directly with Mary Quant's. (My mother declined.)

My parents were not interested in fitting in with the prevailing success model. They were interested in breaking with it by doing what had not yet been done.

The Creative Impulse--from the initiation of the Big Bang, to its outer reaches in this moment--has never sought to fit in. It seeks only to create that which is ever new and does not yet exist.

Singularity

2009-09-16T12:29:00.012-04:00

Revisiting my earlier post on reaching for the Creative Impulse, I'm wondering whether it's true that "I" have "a new relationship" with the Creative Impulse? To say "I" have a relationship with the Creative Impulse implies TWO, not one. Yet, the Creative Impulse is ONE.

The experience of the Creative Impulse is that of unbroken Singularity. The recognition of this singularity is the experience of no self-doubt, which I attempted to describe in my post yesterday.

As I write "the experience of unbroken Singularity" I have a flash of what "nothing to fix because nothing is broken" means in an evolutionary context.

The direct experience of the Ground of Being is nothing to fix because nothing is broken. My felt-sense is the direct awareness of the Creative Impulse (the evolutionary impulse that initially emerged as the Big Bang) is also a recognition of nothing to fix because the process is not broken--AND simultaneously the recognition that there's an infinite amount to create and accomplish because the process of creating an entire Universe is just getting started!

If the experience no self-doubt is the result of aligning with the Creative Impulse, then I have to rejig the question and ask myself, not Who Am I"? but, "What Am I"?

On the Being and Becoming retreat in Tuscany, Andrew Cohen kept pointing out the significance of describing our experiences from the nondual perspective.

Men Are Not from Mars; Women Are Not from Venus...

2009-09-15T12:59:00.020-04:00

...But we are very different from one another.

As a "child of the sixties," I grew up with the idea that women's liberation made women equal to men. My mother was an extraordinary role model of an independent, forward-thinking, creative woman. So, in many ways, it never occurred to me that my belief in gender equality might not actually be true (more on that in a future post).

Recently I have been reflecting on the creative capacities of men and women (mainly thinking about my parents), from the perspective of the Creative Impulse.

Whenever people find out who my father was, even if they are not familiar with his work but have learned of his accomplishments, the first question they invariably ask is, "Do you paint, too?" Or, "Are you an artist, as well?" I'm always left with the feeling that saying I'm anything else will be a disappointment to them. Even though (like my father) I believe the art of writing, like the art of playing music, can be more demanding; especially if the goal, as it is in my case, is to write a work of fiction in which characters come to life; such that they live on in your heart and mind long after you've forgotten the details of the plot.

One of the most profound experiences from the Being and Becoming* retreat in Tuscany (2009) is the ongoing experience of no self-doubt. All kinds of fears arise in my awareness, almost every day. But louder than the voice of fear, I hear the call of the Creative Impulse to create the future. The conscious awareness of this call within and as myself, is self-affirming in ways that no amount of external approval will ever satisfy. (Not that outside affirmation isn't important--it is, for many of its own reasons--but true self-confidence comes from another source.)

Perhaps the most difficult part of my childhood was living in the shadow of my parents' overwhelming self-confidence in their creative abilities. And in believing other people's expectations of me, that I had to grow up to be "as great," and "as talented" as my parents. It was a regressive message that said, if I couldn't be exactly like my parents, I would fail.

What most people saw was the result of the Creative Impulse--my father's paintings, my mother's haute couture. They neither knew nor understood that what fueled my parents' confidence had very little to do their natural talents; (or if they did know and understand, they didn't share this all-important secret with me!)

My parents' talents were formidable in their ability to create the NEW but not just because they had talent. They were unconditionally surrendered to the Creative Impulse. Of course they had a propensity to paint or to design. But it was their surrender to the call of the future that gave their work a deep and abiding power.

I remember asking my mother, once, whether she ever doubted her abilities as a designer. Her answer was an unequivocal "No!" (It only served to increase my self-doubt.) I didn't have to ask my father this question--it was obvious to the world at large that he had no doubt whatsoever that he was a great (and important) painter.

What I now understand and experience since the Tuscany retreat is that real and lasting self-confidence doesn't come from the mind or cultural identity, from gender or family. It stems from the Creative Impulse.

Men and women are different for many reasons (some obvious others less)...but the real leveler of the playing field is not women's liberation (or men's liberation); it's the realization that the Creative Impulse is ONE, and it is genderless.

* The linked clip is not from the recent Tuscany retreat, but it's a beautiful explanation of Being and Becoming.

We have to REACH for the Creative Impulse

2009-09-12T15:48:00.001-04:00

I've been thinking more about how to articulate this new relationship with the Creative Impulse. Many different concepts come and go in my awareness. Sometimes it's hard to decide which one(s) to try and express. But one thing came to me this morning that I think is worth pursuing. I began to realize that the Creative Impulse doesn't exist in the past (or even in the present); it doesn't really exist anywhere in time. It's more like the leading edge of the future that has not yet been actualized.

In every moment the Creative Impulse is calling us to stretch beyond ourselves so that we bring into existence something that does not yet exist in time.

It seems to me, from the perspective of the Creative Impulse, it perpetually pulls us into the unknown.

When We Change, Everything Changes

2009-09-07T19:55:00.000-04:00

I was thinking about my friend Nicky Schmidt's response to my last post, in which I wondered how much do we dare to give ourselves to the power of the Creative Impulse? Several different responses came to me over the weekend, and they may be interesting to explore in the future. But what came to me this morning, in a flash, was a brief but absolute recognition that when WE change, EVERYTHING changes. Every cell in me felt the shock of recognition of this fundamental and immutable truth: that when we change, everything throughout the Universe changes, right down to the smallest particle.

I had always interpreted that truth as being, when I change, everything in my own life will change. And that may also be true. But this morning, what I recognized is what Buddhists call Dependent Origination or Arising, and which is sometimes described as Indra's Net. And in that recognition it was clear to me that there's no way for any one of us to know ahead of time what publishers will or won't be interested in, if we give ourselves heart and soul to the Creative Impulse.

Do We Dare?

2009-09-04T23:29:00.008-04:00

The Creative Impulse is BOLD and inspiring. Do we dare to follow it with our heart and soul?

Ever since my return from the Being and Becoming Retreat led by Andrew Cohen in Tuscany this summer, I feel inspired to write in a new way. My style (and preference) has always leaned toward the lyrical. But what wants to emerge from and through me right now is something more than beautiful, cadenced writing, more than words strung together to create an enticing story.

What I feel, every day, from the moment I wake up until I go to sleep (and sometimes in my dreams) is the creative impulse pushing against the very fabric of my being, passionate to be released. It calls to me every day to be in service to something higher and more sacred than anything my rational mind, or even my own present values, can understand. Something much higher wants to emerge through and as me, as a writer. The challenge before Tuscany was always to let go of everything I already knew about writing and story telling and to be empty handed. But right now, that challenge doesn't seem to be there. There's just an incredible trust that the way in which I seem to be writing (which is quite fragmented compared to my usual method of working) is the right way. And an even greater trust that I may find out it's not; and, at that moment, the creative impulse will point the way to something more, something higher...and so it will continue...onward and upward.