Imagination-Creating Possibility in the Unthinkable

Autumn Mountain Morning

The imagination is capable of kindness that the mind often lacks … it does not engage in things in a cold, clear-cut way but always searches for the hidden words that wait at the edge of things. The mind tends to see things in a singularly simple, divided way: there is good and bad, ugly and beautiful. The imagination, in contrast, extends a greater hospitality to whatever is awkward, paradoxical or contradictory. … The imagination is always more loyal to the deeper unity of everything. It has patience with contradiction because there it glimpses new possibilities. And the imagination is the great friend of possibility. …this is what beauty is: possibility that enlarges and delights the heart. John O’Donohue Beauty-The Invisible Embrace

In the midst of the unthinkable, of horrors and hatred, of rancor and disrespect, turning from mind to heart offers a doorway of passage into a field of brighter possibilities.

Earlier this week I was given an opportunity to imagine the future, my future, three years out. The conversation inspired me to reflect more deeply on what a world of unity, peace, compassion, and integrity look like. How would we/I be in our responses to today’s multiple crises and violence? How would our leaders BE and what choices would they make in a world truly committed to peace? How might we shift?

The following day Charles Eisenstein shared his thoughts on those very questions (click here to watch). His answer in short: forgiveness, shifting from blame and revenge to forgiveness and seeking to understand. Not an easy or simple path, as any of us who have been ‘wronged’ and sought to forgive another know from our experience. Yet might we dare to allow our hearts to dream what our minds will surely declare is ‘impossible’?

In the midst of the unthinkable, of horrors and hatred, of rancor and disrespect, turning from mind to heart offers a doorway of passage into a field of brighter possibilities. Can we imagine a different future than where the arc of history seems headed? Dare we dream and endeavor to bring such dreams into reality, creating sacred spaces and fields of possibility?

I’m reminded of Rumi’s wise words:

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
There is a field. I'll meet you there.

Even in the comfort and relative safety of home it is not always easy to imagine such a bright future. Life’s daily details and our habitual keeping up with today’s dramas, horrors, and predictions of the next scary thing may trap us in dead-end, worn out thinking and lead us to forget our power to imagine and call forth a different future.

Yet imagine a new world we must. Seeking those whose ideals resonate with ours and joining them in community to call forth and create the new. Creating new pathways and ways of being and doing right where we are.

Moment to moment we choose where to focus our attention, where to devote our precious life energy. What might be possible if, beyond our compassion and empathy, our sorrow and grief, we tapped into the kindness of the imagination to dream a future where we’ve grown our capacity to listen (deeply listen) to one another along with our willingness to engage in this way. Where we have the capacity to forgive past deeds (our own as well as those of others) and to imagine and create a new world together. And then to trust that such a world is possible even when that seems not so and despite history’s evidence to the contrary. How much beauty can we imagine?

To be sure, I have work to do. Let’s dance!

The Portal on Cordial

Completion: Physically & Meta-Physically

Looking Up Through the Mother Tree

Completion is the natural progression of the planet established out of the characteristic of the planet. … The esoteric meaning of the number nine is completion. An aspect of knowledge is now a part of you to such an extent that nothing can diminish it or be added to it. The learning has been completed up to the point you find yourself. Gregge Tiffen (The Language of a Mystic: Completion)

Today, 8-30-2023, is a ‘nine’ day: completion.

Yesterday morning found me reflecting on cycles. Frustrated at being unable to move forward with a project that I very much want to complete, I wondered, ‘Where am I in the greater cycles of life that seems to make this hard? Is my timing off?’

Since the project is sorting through old files, records, and photos the timing in this period of several planets being in retrograde motion seemed perfect. It’s a time for rethinking, reworking, reorganizing, reexamining … “re- almost anything,” says a friend astute in planetary influences. What could be off?

As I examined my approach I saw chaos, disorder, clutter. I noticed that I wasn’t clear about what is truly important to me in these boxes of ‘stuff’. One side of the internal tug-of-war said, “toss it all!” as the other cautioned thoughtfulness, clarity, and care. Each time I’d opened a box, I was caught in the middle of that tug. I was stuck.

I began to see that I hadn’t prepared myself or the project for smooth execution. Rather I’d just dived in and was attempting to swim upstream against the tide. I’d missed a critical step in creating: preparation.

Recognizing that, I took a breath and a step back, then another breath to connect with my heart. I hit the rewind button. ‘How can I best prepare?’ The question rose in me as a breath of fresh air.

Muse cut through the confusion giving voice to my heart. ‘Create order. Clear the clutter,’ came the clear answer.

Having quite recently reorganized the garage, I quickly saw a clear path to establish order and summoned help to move the boxes out, organizing them for easy access when my inner preparation is complete.

With order restored and clutter removed, I’m prepared to do the inner, meta-physical preparation. A first step is to review my hesitancy (Muse says ‘resistance!’) to release old things. And I need to ask what seem to be key questions:

·        What choices will help me simplify and create more ease and flow in life?

·        What choices support my growth?

·        What do I value and choose to care for?

Once again, I’m reminded of the potency and richness lying in wait in the mundane tasks and choices of life. Not overworking them or making something a ‘big deal’, rather using them as gifts of life that support awareness and remind me that everything is creation and creation is a process. Skip a step and I’m out of step in moving toward completion.

Perhaps as a reward for engaging in this re-examination and adjusting to strengthen my ability to act, a remodeling project here at the house, delayed by a contractor not being available, was completed yesterday evening. WooHoo! A definite cause for celebration and for evaluating what I learned and discovered in that process. Also, a reminder of the satisfaction that comes with completion and inspiration for the project ahead.

Engaging with awareness and clear choices, I experience ease. Blundering through obliviously, I struggle. Cycles teach me this.

Humanity and Mother Earth – of which we are microcosms of the macrocosm – are engaged in their own cycles coming to completion. May our participation in Life support us all to do so with ease.

Looking Up Through the Grandmother Tree

Nurturing the Creator Within

Create with the flow of life!

Do I want to add to the drama, or pass and not play into the drama? … We all get triggered at times. If you are not conscious of your triggers, you can quickly get pulled into a family or work drama. You may not always remember to pause and ask yourself that question, but sometimes you may. With every decision to skip the drama you have taken one more step toward choosing a more empowering response to people and situations you find challenging. David Emerald & Donna Zajonc, MCC

A few days back I felt guided to a book that I read many years ago, David Emerald’s, The Empowerment Dynamic. I didn’t follow the guidance immediately but a bit later when I opened email, there was David and his partner Donna’s inspirational newsletter, TED* Works  [https://theempowermentdynamic.com/skip-the-drama/. Apparently, I needed a reminder.

That question ‘do I want to pass or play?’ and their story offered a great, if a bit prickly, reminder that I sometimes engage in other people’s drama, usually by being critical of rather than being curious. I notice that I do this more frequently in response to seeming little things – complaints on social media about weather, mosquitoes, the choices others make. It’s a drama that plays out in my head, ‘Grrrr, don’t they know this is contributing to the chaos and negativity of our world?’. Even though it’s not spoken or shared, and it too is a reaction that contributes to that negativity and chaos.

Every thought matters!

My reaction places me, hopefully only briefly, in the role of victim. And when I’m in the role of victim I don’t have access to my power as a co-creator. I’m not aligned with the knowing of my heart, nor am I able to access peace, joy, beauty, harmony, those aspects of the Universe that I long for our world to be.

Whether the potential drama of the moment is massive or a small blip, when we pause to ask whether to ‘pass or play’ we nurture the natural co-creator within. When we pass, we create. We open the door to gratitude, to curiosity, to care, to love. We contribute to a more beautiful world that works for all.

May we know that there are no small choices and that, as I shared last week, our heart knows the Truth that Everything IS a part of Everything else. May we invite her to remind us of that truth and to guide us in our choices whether they seem large or small. May I.

P.S. – David’s book was among those that guided me through a rocky period of change in my life way back in 2006-7. Beautifully and playfully written, The Power of TED* - The Empowerment Dynamic, is his poignant story of making the pivot from victim to creator during a challenging period in his life. David’s story and this pivot is much needed as the world we know crumbles and we seek to create our world anew. TED is off the shelf now and on the bedside table as I enjoy another read.

Early Mountain Morning

Imagining a New Reality

Winter Vistas …

You represent and unknown world that begs you to bring it to voice. … The imagination is committed to the justice of wholeness. … Imagination is the most reverent mirror of the inner world. John O’ Donohue (The Body is Your Only Home in Anam Cara: Spiritual Wisdom from the Celtic World

Once again, I’m challenged to settle in and focus attention, to put pen to paper, words to paragraphs on the page. O’Donohue’s words draw me deep within as they invite me to bring voice to the world I alone represent.

Winter’s gifts of soul time and precious solitude are giving way to a spectrum of activity that ranges from the mundane of tax preparation and heater repair to the magical, mystical realms of imagination. Winter’s embrace nurtures the later, holding seeded ideas until their time to sprout. The world I give voice to seems scattered, unformed like a bonus seed packet of ‘surprises’.

As the first shoots of green are breaking through the soil, I’m in awe of their response to some inner voice that knows and guides: Now! This is the time. These plant beings are tuned into the greater energy force field of our planet home. They listen. They know. They ebb and flow, go dormant then grow in tune with rhythms lost to most of us in our culture as we attend to the outer world more than the inner.

It is these greater rhythms that I am drawn to tune into more deeply in this phase of life. Observing them sparks something inside, a seed gone dormant long ago perhaps, and expands my capacity to imagine and contribute to a world far different from what we label ‘reality’ today.

This week I found myself returning to the childlike nature I remember as a toddler growing up in the country and breaking the bounds of home to head to the pasture and commune with the cows. Oh how I wish I could remember cow wisdom. The family canine, Sweetheart, a Lassie-like Collie, came along and would nudge me homeward before our escape became a worry to parents whose ‘reality’ was vastly different than mine.

I walked these woods with what of that nature I could muster and I ‘heard’ and ‘saw’ the land in new ways that don’t yet have words. A felt sense of deeper connection, more confidence in my capacity to sense the land’s needs as well as its sacredness.

The labyrinth is guiding some gentle adjustments and inspiring creations to strengthen the energetic flow and the contribution of this land to the greater whole – community, continent, Gaia, and beyond.

I feel as if I’m writing a dream. The ‘adult’ me wondering ‘will this make sense?’. The childlike me inviting you to come play on the playground of creating our world anew.

Listening to and holding sacred this vortex of energy in the woods out back

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!