Imagining ...

The Portal

For the awakened imagination there is no such thing as inner poverty. John O’Donohue (essay The Celtic Imagination: Experience and the ‘Web of Betweenness’ in Beauty: The Invisible Embrace)

I returned to reading John O’Donohue’s brilliant, moving words this week, simply picking up the book and thumbing pages until sensing I was where I needed to be. I’d come to the reading time with no particular intention nor with a question in search of an answer. I came for nourishment, as his words never fail to feed this soul.

The essay I landed on and quoted above ends with this:

As in the rainforest, a dazzling diversity of life-forms complement and sustain each other; there is secret oxygen with which we unknowingly sustain one another. True community is not produced; it is invoked and awakened. True community is an ideal where the full identities of awakened and realized individuals challenge and complement each other. In this sense both individuality and originality enrich self and others.

Imagine we humans are that diverse and complementary rainforest. For a moment I think of the divisiveness I observe here in the place where I live as a micro to the countless conflicts beyond this sacred place.

Then O’Donohue’s words spark memory of a long held ideal, vision, belief that when we each discover and follow the path of our purpose, our passion, our gifts, we will experience healing of all that divides us. We will harmonize with one another naturally never by force as well as with all life and our beloved planet home, Gaia.

I reflect on the extent to which our current world falls far short of this imagined ideal and how, sadly, our systems are designed to create something far different than true community. Hence ‘community’ is not invoked or awakened in much of daily life. Nor is our true nature, yours and mine, called forth into expression. Rather our true selves and true community lie in wait as potentials that we’ll attend to ‘someday’. Someday when we have time. Someday when we can ‘afford’ it. Someday when …

Perhaps that is why we witness and experience so many systems failing. Perhaps those systems that have pitted us against one another in oh so many ways are calling forth our ‘someday’ in this moment, suggesting that for humanity survive, ‘someday’ is now. Perhaps fear and ‘winning’ at any cost, the highest ‘price’ being the peace of the soul from which our true essence can arise – individually and collectively – have run their course.

Our world – humanity and the planet - need our truest selves to attend them. Amidst the world’s chaos and breakdowns how might we put more attention on invoking our own true essence, that ‘secret oxygen’ with which we sustain not only one another, but first, ourselves for the sake of our wholeness?

The answer of course comes from deep within and we must first be willing to put our toes in the water, then dive into the deep well. While our journeys are unique and individual to each of us, they hold the potential for invoking true community in our world: world as diverse and complementary as the rainforest. Self as an integral part of that world. Self and world as life generating, life enhancing. Self and world as whole. The Heaven of our dreams manifest on Gaia.

Imagine …

Raven ‘Cawing’ Forth Magic in the Woods

Gratitude & Curiosity - The Dynamic Duo

Starry Night (courtesy of Unsplash)

Coupling curiosity and gratitude offers an antidote the fear, angst, and confusion of our world. The energy of the two together leaves little room for such distractions. Indeed, it paves the way for love.

I woke early this morn with a grateful heart. Feeling a deep sense of gratitude in my whole being.  Blissful peace. While I’ve long practiced breathing gratitude in and out, the deeper sense I experienced this day is one I want to cultivate further, to live in and with as I walk this earth.

I step outside long before dawn to be with the dark sky, the stars, the planets, galaxies beyond our own. Mars high in the sky directly overhead. The little dipper nearby. Awestruck by the peace and beauty. The quiet. Stillness. Gratitude more deeply anchored.

Gently a nudge from Muse stirs something inside. I think of curiosity, like gratitude, a ‘friendship’ that I’ve cultivated over the years.

Being reminded of the important role each play in my life, it occurs to me in a blinding flash of the obvious, that together the two make a powerful pair. Thanks to Muse, I am from time to time an ‘oracle of the obvious’.

I sense that coupling curiosity and gratitude offers an antidote to the fear, angst, and confusion in our world – individually and collectively. The energy of the two together leaves little room for such distractions. Indeed, it paves the way for love.

For a moment I wonder ‘what becomes possible in my world when I walk in both gratitude and curiosity rather than with one or the other’? In the next I recognize that I experienced just that yesterday while I was on the ground gathering pine nuts under a pinyon tree near the house.

While being deeply grateful for the abundance, I was likewise aware that I wasn’t in sync with the rhythm of the trees, particularly when the nuts would fall. I’d been placing sheets in areas where I thought nuts were ready to drop. Thinking that a particular tree was ‘done’, I’d moved the sheets to another tree a couple days before.

To my surprise the tree that I thought was complete had a dropped an abundance of nuts during the night.

“That’s what you get for thinking,” Muse chimes in with a chuckle. “Listen to the trees!”

As I sat beneath the tree, I expressed my gratitude. And I asked for guidance. How might I listen and hear your rhythm? As if in response I wondered about the indigenous peoples whose land I occupy. How did they harvest, prepare, use this bounty? How did they relate to this tree? To these woods? How might I cultivate their reverence and care for Mother Earth more deeply in me?

Gratitude it seemed had paved a path to curiosity. The sense of feeling both was palpable and reminded me of a community meeting that I attended recently where neither gratitude nor curiosity seemed to be present. Rather than being curious about what isn’t yet known, many people were demanding answers. There was little, if any, gratitude for the work that had gone into organizing and preparing for the meeting. It was a bit chaotic to the point that I too became a tad annoyed. Yet I remained grateful for the team’s efforts. I wondered ‘where has curiosity gone?’. How can we become more curious about possibilities rather than leaping to opposition grounded in fear?

Beyond my community and its challenges, I wonder the same for our world. How might we evoke gratitude and curiosity into our public conversations? For surely this dynamic duo in partnership with one another are powerful antidotes to the fear and anger so present in our culture today.

Will you join me in sprinkling more seeds of gratitude and curiosity in your conversations and your observations of our world? Of your world? Let’s pave this world with love!

A Developing Cone - Three Months Before Maturity

A World of Peace. A World of Gratitude. A World of Harmony.

Grateful for the Peace and Harmony of Mountain Mornings

It’s up to us to create the more beautiful world we want to live in.

The today is the International Day of Peace established in 1981 by the United Nations General Assembly. Today is also World Gratitude Day, an idea birthed at a Thanksgiving Day dinner in the meditation room of the United Nations building (yes, there is a meditation room in the place where world leaders and representatives gather) by Spiritual leader Sri Chinmoy suggesting that there be a day of thanks the whole world could celebrate together. And today is the eve of the Autumnal Equinox.

A trifecta of opportunity to be grateful and express our gratitude, to create peace within and be that peace as we walk in the world, and to consider what this day of balance when light and dark are equal holds as summer fades and autumn steps forth. A day to consider that it is ‘we’, individually and collectively, who are creating the future and to reflect upon our vision for that more beautiful world.

It’s cloudy here as I wake before dawn, the waning crescent moon visible for a moment as clouds move about. Fall is in the air. Crisp mornings. The first hint of changing leaves a appears high in the mountain aspen groves, the promise of that beauty soon to behold and a signal to begin in earnest preparing for winter.

Muse smiles, sensing my urge to ‘get going’, a smile that gently reminds me of how I want to walk this labyrinth of life: at peace in a world of peace, with awareness and expression of a grateful heart, in harmony with all of life.

I hold this not as a goal to achieve, but as a contribution to, as Charles Eisenstein says, “the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.

And so, I’m drawn to acknowledge and share days and events such as this that can grow to become wholly days for all of humanity. Days for recognition and for reset. Acknowledging the potentiality in each of us for peace, gratitude, harmony. Adjusting course to align with that potentiality. Each in our way for there is no ‘one size fits all’ formal that so many desperately try to find or create. Everyone has their story; we are all different, we are all the same.

As I go about the tasks of this day, I do so with awareness that days like this offer up the opportunity to heal separation and become whole, indeed, to live into the wholeness that is the truth of this world and the world beyond. Having experience the power of gratitude up close and personal over many years as a part of my personal practices, I’ll be watching the world premiere of Louie Schwartzberg’s new film Gratitude Revealed with a grateful heart and vision of all that IS possible in our world.

How will celebrate the wholly holiness of this day?

And Abundant Pine Nuts to Harvest

From Conflict Arises Beauty: Everything is Music

Sunflowers, Sun, Trees, Sky - Beauty Abounds in the Woods Out Back

The mystery of music is its uncanny ability to coax harmony out of contradiction and chaos. Often the beauty of great music is a beauty born from the rasp of chaos. The confidence of creativity knows that deep conflict often yields the most interesting harmony and order. John O’Donohue (Beauty: The Invisible Embrace)

We have fallen into the place where everything is music. Rumi

As I read O’Donohue’s essay on music one recent morning I felt a gentle nudge, a Muse reminder of the beauty in life that can arise from conflict. O’Donohue’s words typically carry me and open possibilities far beyond his topic. No exception to that found in these words.

I thought of conflicts past when I was less conscious than (hopefully) I am today and felt gratitude for the beauty in my life that has risen like a phoenix from ashes of the past or any other such mythical tale. I see threads of beauty throughout the journey in the choices, effort, angst, allowing, letting go, holding on. You know, life.

I reflect that although I didn’t consciously set out to create this sacred sanctuary in the woods of the Rocky Mountains, step by step the Dragonfly House emerged from a conflict that has roots in the events of September 11, 2001. Five years passed before I moved to Colorado and another seven before I landed in this spot. Twenty plus years (perhaps I’m more patient than I thought) and still evolving at its pace through ‘chaos and contradiction’, confusion, uncertainty, even fear. Fueled along the way by Nature, beauty, care, love, joy, friends, beloved canines, to name a few.

This perspective offers me context for a current conflict that has me engaged and curious (after going through a brief stage of rage and furious). Navigating what has become a challenging working relationship, I’m in the question of how to participate in a way that creates beauty. Beauty in the collaborative relationship as well as in the fruits of that labor. What music wants to rise from what is currently ‘raspy chaos’? How do I conduct myself to bring beauty into both?

Beyond the human defined bounds of the dot on the planet that I’m blessed to occupy, what beauty wants to rise in humanity? In Nature? What if we would hold greater intention to create music and beauty in all of life? What pivots and new scaffolding would call such beautiful music forward in us, for us and for Mother Earth?

Muse smiles at my leap from me to we, acknowledging my care for our world while gently guiding me back to the choices before me to make and the actions I need to take right here in this micro-climate that is home. In them is my power to create beauty here that extends to the world beyond. Music indeed.

Writing complete as day began to dawn, I closed my journal and looked out into the woods, discovering a large black bear ambling through the landscape 50 feet or so from the house. When it ambled out of sight, curiosity led me to read up on the spiritual meaning of bear: Awakening the Power of the Unconscious. Feel free to amble through any time Bear …  Did someone say ‘music’?

Bear in the Woods

For Your Health, Pivot to Self-trust

About Ready to Burst into Bloom

Distrust of the body damages the core of us. Stephen Harrod Buhner in Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm

Sometimes when I’m reading, a few words or a sentence or two will fly off the page and land in that inside place that knows my truth. I experience resonance, sometimes a confirmation, sometimes a sense of ‘aha …’. For sure, the words capture my attention. And Muse generally chimes in that ‘this’ may be a topic for a future musing.

Such was the case yesterday when I read Buhner’s simple truth about the importance of trusting the body. The short sentence was in a sea of scientific, technical language about the role (and importance!) of serotonin in our bodies and in all of Nature. Muse suggests I assure you that we aren’t about to ‘go scientific’. We aren’t! Honestly, I’m amazed that I’ve slogged through 200 pages (so far) of science, but the ongoing journey to deepen my connection to and communication with Nature keeps me engaged, curious, and turning the pages. Unlike the science classes of my college days, the final grade is reflected in my satisfaction with life. No pressure there!]

Take a moment to dance with Buhner’s words: Distrust of the body damages the core of us.

If we don’t trust the body, we damage our very being, our core. Just as certain vitamins support the immune system, trust supports this vehicle we inhabit.

This idea landed deep, evoking heart-felt gratitude as I recognized that I listen to this physical body. I listen because I’ve learned to trust what it knows, having built that trust over years of listening, experimenting, experiencing, adjusting, and generally sustaining pretty darn good health.

Muse seems to be speaking on behalf of body, reminding me that I don’t always honor what I hear the body say. Yep. Truth! Sometimes the body says ‘rest!’. I ignore and push through. Or a craving for chocolate may override body’s warning to avoid.

Listening to this vehicle isn’t a solo journey. I seek out tools and professionals to give more voice to what my body is saying. They help with interpretation. I take and use what seems aligned with the body’s needs, letting go of that which doesn’t resonate.

For the most part allopathic medicine doesn’t resonate with this body. Chinese medicine, in particular acupuncture and Chinese herbs, does. A daily mug of Chinese herbal formula created by my Oriental Medicine Doctor after she reads my pulses and listens to what I share is one of the most nourishing practices of my day. As I reflect on how it is that I have such trust in my body, this experience rises to top.

I’m grateful to Buhner for pointing to trusting one’s body as an important element in creating, sustaining, and maintaining health. And, for opening the door to reflect on that trust. I notice that the awareness and exploration alone seem to deepen the trust I feel.

What about you? Do you listen to this vehicle that you move about life in? Do you heed its messages? Do you trust?

Spinx Moth (Hummingbird Moth) Enjoys the Blooms (thanks to my friend S.T. for catching this beauty!)

Living Into Sovereignty

Art in the Afternoon Sky

There’s a sense of sovereignty that comes from life on a mountain. Tara Westover

Muse woke me before dawn this morning with this gentle nudging: Sometimes one must get in a box to know just how that box doesn’t fit. For only when one knows the details of how something doesn’t fit can one begin to design and create what does.

Hmmm … I knew almost instantly what Muse was referring to: a box of the legal/medical system I’ve recently experienced.

I’m in the process of attending to some life decisions that I need make, updating wishes and instructions for when my time in this vehicle is complete. For a while I’ve been ‘trying on’ (actually, trying to make fit) the language presented as choices by the legal and medical systems (no, I’m not about to hop on my soapbox about that, so stay with me).

None of their choices felt ‘just right’, so I chose the ones that seemed to fit the best, settling for less than the perfect fit I desired. I did so because I wanted to be done AND because I didn’t see any other possibilities. I was in the system’s box, compromising my sovereignty and my wishes to fit so that I could check the ‘completed’ box on my ‘to do’ list.

Somehow it didn’t occur to my inner rebel to look outside that box for other possibilities.

That prompting came in a conversation with a trusted friend and advisor who with deep conviction challenged me to, “write your own words!”. Gulp. Say what? I can do that?

I was at once embarrassed (Why didn’t I think of that? How could I allow myself to get so trapped in the system’s box?). And I was relieved. With her words, the possibility of ‘having my cake and eating it too’ opened.

I could execute the ‘close but not a perfect fit’ documents as written, thus relieving the pressure that what I had in place didn’t reflect my wishes at all.

And I could declare that executing these documents doesn’t close the door to creating that ‘just right’ fit. I can take time to explore, co-create, and discover how to implement language that’s ‘just right’: language that fits my understanding and beliefs about life and (so-called) end of life, as well as my desires for comfort as I exit this physical body. Then I can work with my attorney to add whatever legalese is necessary.

In choosing to live more fully into my sovereignty, I feel the fresh air of empowerment and freedom. This is how life is intended to be but doing so is not easy in a world that prefers we choose from its boxes, boxes designed not to honor our free will and sovereignty as universal beings, but to control. I’m excited to explore and discover in what other life domains I may have boxed myself in, not remembering that I am the co-creator of this life.

Muse gives a nod and posits a query about the collective: Is it any wonder that there is such anger and angst in your world? No matter how conscious one is, this conflict is ever present in all. It seems that the more conscious we are of the conflicts and constraints imposed by our systems the more at choice and sovereign we can be. Perhaps as we raise our awareness, we’ll be better able to build sustainable, sovereign community systems. And that, suggests Muse is a story for another day.

Cheerful Morning

Calling Forth the Beauty in All of Life

Rainbow Over the Stupa

Only if there is beauty in us can we recognize beauty elsewhere: beauty knows beauty. In this way beauty can be a mirror that manifests our own beauty. … To achieve a glimpse of inner beauty strengthens our sense of dignity and grace. John O’Donohue (Beauty: The Invisible Embrace)

On our walk yesterday afternoon, shortly after stopping briefly to help a neighbor, something caught my eye as I looked at these amazing mountains: a faint band of red, a rainbow beginning to form.

I watched as the other bands of color slowly became visible – yellow, green, blue, purple. Beauty unfolding on the stage before me, the sacred Sangre de Cristo Mountains a splendid backdrop. Continuing to watch, colors brightened, faded, brightened again through several cycles as rain moved south. Zadie Byrd patiently sniffed the territory in no rush to move on from the beauty her olfactory system was discovering.

As the rainbow faded, we walked on. With the mountains behind us the vast San Luis Valley now offered its own visual feast. When we rounded the corner toward home, the mountains were once more ahead. Taking in the sacred landscape, I discovered that the rainbow had brightened once again and, from our vantage point, was hanging over the largest of several local Buddhist stupas. Another dose of stunning beauty.

Now, as I write before dawn, the tingle of rainbow’s beauty returns. Or, perhaps, it lingers. I’m reminded of this O’Donohue wisdom which seems to mirror my experience:

The experience of beauty has for the most part a particular force. It envelopes and overcomes us. Yet there are times when beauty reveals itself slowly. There are times when beauty is shy and hesitates until it can trust the worthiness of the beholder.

The visual beauty of the rainbow eventually faded but the imprint of its beauty on this heart lives on, a gentle reminder that beauty is first and always an inside job. Beauty is always present to the heart that beholds her.

I gently close my journal feeling that Muse and I are complete. I notice that beauty has been our focus of late and am curious about Muse guiding me here. No,’ nudges Muse, ‘we aren’t quite done yet.’

Questions emerge: How might we call forth the shy beauty hidden in the so-called problems of our world? Of the bumps and bruises in our individual roads of life? How might we demonstrate our worthiness so that beauty will be revealed? How might I behold that beauty?

My questions hang like the crescent moon over these mountains as dawn breaks.

I think of how slowly and deliberately Nature revealed hidden aspects of her beauty during the Covid pause two years ago. Wildlife returning. Skies clearing. Clean waters flowing. What was our worthiness to witness that? How could we allow it slip away in our quest to return to ‘normal’?

My attention turns to a contentious issue here in my community. How can I call forth the beauty that is surely hidden in the divisiveness? How can I demonstrate my worthiness so that any shy beauty can be revealed?

With a gentle nod, Muse seems to say, ‘Simply stop, look, listen, and love. Know that beauty IS there in each and every player.’

Indeed, beauty IS there. And so it is with all the world’s seeming darkness as well as the dim patches in our own lives. Gentle rays of light penetrate deep to point the way when we stop, look, love, and listen for beauty and light of wisdom within.

Now, about that mouse that visited the kitchen overnight … surely there is beauty waiting to be revealed.

Morning Moon Over the Sangres

Reminiscing As Year 10 Begins

Morning Clouds Bring Beauty & the Possibility of Blessed Rain

Speak what you think today in hard words, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today.  Ralph Waldo Emerson

So began The Success Zone 15 August 2013. I described my intention for weekly posts as “an eclectic place for your personal success!”. I don’t recall precisely what prompted me to use these particular words from Emerson, but I do know that they hold true for me today: what I think (feel, sense, know, etc.) and say today may not be what I think (feel, sense, know, etc.) and say tomorrow.

For indeed we change as does the world we navigate, those humans with whom we share our planet home, Gaia herself, and the cosmos in its entirety. Moment to moment. Day to day. Year to year. Lifetime to lifetime.

When I started the weekly blog, I was steeped in the growing profession of coaching, (re)building a coaching business and finding/creating my place, my purpose, my role(s) in life. Today, no longer in the business of coaching, I aim to bring the best of my coaching presence and skills into life and (with support from Muse) to these weekly musings. Today I recognize and accept more deeply that finding/creating place, purpose, role(s) in life is a journey, not a goal or a destination and that success is a matter of satisfaction, contribution, and fulfillment more than of money or acquiring more ‘stuff’.

Place, purpose, role(s) pivot with new circumstances, new knowledge, and insights. Awareness, agility, and adaptability are skills to strengthen. New thinking that leads us to personal and collective pivots is the order of the day (and, likely, for many tomorrows).

Who among has not made significant pivots in the last nine years? Who among us has not rethought and pivoted again as life conditions change and as heart and soul tap our being and point us to new possibilities or a new way? Who among us is the same today as we were then (or, heck, even yesterday)?

Certainly not moi. In the early days of the pandemic, The Zone pivoted to become The Pivot (120 weeks ago – if you be counting). A change in name and focus had been bubbling in me for some time. Clarity came as I saw the need to make changes in my own thinking, my beliefs, my habits and as I witnessed the Earth’s responses to our collective global pause. For me it was the beginning of reexamining EVERYthing, of exploring wider avenues of thought and possibility, and of seeking out those people, places, and pockets that are building the new, a process that’s likely to happily engage me for the duration of this lifetime.

In sharing my engagement, discoveries, and curiosities I aim to offer introspection, inspiration, insights, intelligence, and information for your journey of discovering and navigating your own pivot points. As Muse reminds, surely much change is afoot. Perhaps some wisdom will emerge along the way.

As it was in the beginning, The Pivot will continue to be eclectic. My curiosity runs both wide and deep. And one belief that isn’t likely to shift is that ‘one size does NOT fit all’. Likewise, The Pivot continues to support individually and collectively reclaiming personal power as a right and a responsibility and seeks to challenge your thinking and mine.

As it always has been, there is rarely an ‘editorial plan or calendar’ for what will come. The Pivot emerges weekly in response to the promptings – internal and external – of life and to (mostly) gentle nudging from Muse.

I (WE! – suggests Muse) aim to bring more beauty to light and life. Beauty not just of the visual sort, although certainly I’m steeped in the natural beauty of place (and not likely to pivot away from sharing that), but beauty of the heart, the soul, the spirt of life. Beauty that is of sight, sound, and all our senses. Perhaps beauty that is beyond our senses, yet ever present when we are open to receive.

A deep bow of gratitude to you for being with us on the journey and some beautiful words to remember as we engage in the days ahead.

Being here is so much. Rainer Maria Rilke

The human mind is in itself a world with huge mountains, deep valleys, and forests of the unknown. John O’Donohue

Morning Moonset over the San Luis Valley

Cycling Through the Cycles of Life

Sunrise In the San Luis Valley

Each day is born with a sunrise
and ends in a sunset, the same way we
open our eyes to see the light,
and close them to hear the dark.
Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

Another cool, still morning. Cloudless dawn. Quiet after a band of raucous pinon jays noisily flitted through the woods. The soothing sound of Cottonwood Creek in the distance. Hummingbirds waking, making their way to the feeder. Zadie Byrd sleeping soundly nearby.

Another cycle begins within the myriad cycles of life. Cycles of Gaia. Moon cycles (a full super moon coming tomorrow). Planetary cycles and cycles of the stars. Cycles of our bodies and each cell within. Cycles of time, of Nature, of Self. Bicycles and tricycles to carry us on our cyclic journey.

Mystically speaking (at least as I understand – and Muse doesn’t seem argumentative on the point) there are no beginnings or endings. ALL is energy and flow of that energy in cycles. Rising sun brings light of day. Setting sun leads the way to the darkness of light.

We ebb and flow likewise navigating events of these cycles in cycles of our own and cycles of the collective. We experience times of clarity, focus, and action as well as times of confusion, questioning, and the stillness of inaction. These fallow times may cause angst in our culture that places so much value on getting ‘things’ done. Muse smiles, reminding me of the ‘should’ word: our culture’s quick path to inducing guilt.

We experience times of receiving and times of giving, neither more blessed than the other, as each is integral to thriving in communities of life. Just ask a tree.

Summer, the season we in the northern hemisphere are currently experiencing, calls us to the outdoors to experience the longer light of day. In this cycle of heightened activity aligned with other cycles – growing and harvesting food, preparing for winter, enjoying the bounty of local produce – I appreciate simply sitting, being with the beauty of Nature that surrounds me.

Muse nods in agreement and adds that awareness of these cycles supports our sense of the legions of cycles operating in our world and of their intensity. Economic cycles. Climate cycles. Cycles of war and peace, division and unity. Cycles of civilizations rising and falling. Cycles. Cycles of life.

Awareness of the cyclical nature of life from the micro to the macro (and back) somehow strengthens my belief that life in this vehicle now is but a tiny part of the sojourn of infinite life. Important? Yes – each point in time, each life is. Yet this life is by no means the whole story. I notice that being with life from this cyclical perspective calls forth curiosity, compassion, love, gratitude, care. It deepens my understanding and acceptance of what is while calling forth new ways of walking in our world.

Amidst gratitude for the experience of this life and compassion for the suffering of humanity and our planet home, I wonder ‘What cycles are rising?’. What cycles are waning? What is emerging? What new cycles have yet to surface?

I carry those wonderings into the beginning of year 10 of these weekly musings. Today’s post marks the cycling of nine years (468 weeks!) since ‘The Zone’ (which pivoted to ‘The Pivot’ in 2020) began. It’s been quite a ride and I am grateful to all who journey with Muse and me each week. I’m cycling into the next nine years with that gratitude, along with curiosity about life’s ongoing evolution and a commitment to this weekly date with you, with Muse, and with creation.

Sunset

From Solution to Creation

July 16,1945 - First Test of the Atomic Bomb

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. Albert Einstein

 Most everyone reading these words is familiar with this Einstein quote. We use it to remind ourselves (and, yes, sometimes others) of the need to change our thinking in order to evoke a different present and future. But what if those weren’t Einstein’s actual words? What if over the years his words have been massaged, shifted, and he actually said something much more powerful?

 Curious about the context of the familiar quote, I did a quick search and discovered the apparent origin: a fundraising campaign (more here).

by a group of concerned atomic scientists who had been a part of developing the atom bomb. In 1946, some months after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (August 6 and 9 1945 – yes, we are coming upon the 77th anniversary of those tragic, fateful days), Einstein co-founded the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists to warn of the dangers of nuclear weapons and to promote world peace. (Muse suggests I let you know we aren’t intending a history lesson this week 😉, but context is sometimes everything.)

 Einstein and the Committee wrote:

 We need two hundred thousand dollars at once for a nation-wide campaign to let the people know that a new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels.

Oh, they were talking about something bigger than just changing our thinking about the mundane issues that crop up during the day. They were suggesting a bigger pivot, a shift in consciousness as suggested by another Einstein quote:

No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.

The scientists were in fact creating!

I’ve been wondering whether the pivot suggested in these quotes is about making a shift from our cultural tendency/habit of problem solving to creating. Muse has fed my wondering since the question popped up in a recent conversation with a friend. I was sharing some ideas and learning that I was exploring, many of them from a class I’m attending. “So, what is her solution?” asked my friend.

The question startled me a bit and I don’t recall my response. It may have been some incoherent babble (Muse invokes a chuckle of agreement at that possibility). My friend’s question stayed with me.

In reflecting later, I realized that in most of life I see opportunities to create rather than problems to solve. I read and listen to podcasts, classes, etc. not to solve, but to expand my capacity to create. This wasn’t always my way, my perspective. For many years (okay, decades!) I approached life as a series of problems to be solved. Whether it was situations in my own life or bigger world issues, most everything was a problem that needed solutions.

Noting the difference this shift has made in my life, I think such a pivot may have been what Einstein intended with his words: to shift from searching for solutions to creating anew and co-creating with creation itself. In short, to shift our consciousness.

What does such a shift offer? There is light and lightness in creating and co-creating that engages heart and soul. Creating allows (rather than trying to control) and is curious about the seen and the unseen. It wonders ‘what wants to rise?’.

Solving mostly engages the mind and is often aimed at control. As I look out at our world that generally holds problem solving as its preferred path, I think it’s time to pivot to a new way: creation and collaboration with Life.

Surely the howl of coyote this early morning as I write these words suggests ‘hey humans, look to Nature and all that Nature creates.’ Muse smiles. I wonder if our preoccupation with problems is some sort of cosmic joke. But I digress …

I’m not suggesting that ‘mind’ has no place in the way forward – individually and collectively. Au Contraire!  Mind’s gifts are integral to creation, to engaging heart and soul. Imagine the beautiful world we will create collectively in making this fundamental shift, integrating the gifts of heart, mind, and soul. Close your eyes for a moment and imagine. Then take these words from John O’Donohue into your day …

Beauty inhabits the cutting edge of creativity – mediating between the known and the unknown, light and darkness, masculine and feminine, visible and invisible, chaos and meaning, sound and silence, self and others. John O’Donohue (The Soul as Twilight Threshold in Beauty: The Invisible Embrace

Nature Creates!