But to find the meaning of your life requires thinking and living differently from how you have been trained by school, work, media, entertainment, and culture.** Arthur Brooks
Who sat down with us to share “the facts of myth,” what did we learn in the curriculum, or have training for as part of our continuing personal development?– And yet it is where we discover our deepest joy and meaning.
The matter of individual maturation is a custom endeavour. There can be no rote, “do this, then this.”* Clarissa Pinkola Estés
The real talent is being obsessed with the thing. What are you willing to focus on wholeheartedly that you are happy to ignore nearly everything else?** James Clear
First you find yourself and then you lose yourself–
First you learn the rules and then you make your own–
First you focus and then you flow^–
*Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ Women Who Run With The Wolves; **James Clear’s 3-2-1 newsletter: The secret to creativity, how our challenges shape us, and the value of bad workouts. ^Here is my hinterland to the short “poetic”: I have come to know myself as an individual – this has involved a journey from dependence to independence and then to interdependence (shaping my ego and then my Self); also, my creativity began with what already existed, from those who’d explored before me, so I learnt several fields – and then I set out to change them, by adapting and improvising, and coming up with something different; I have become totally absorbed in what I have found and am making, entering into what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi identified and defined as flow.
I think every time I draw I learn something new and at the same time draw upon everything I’ve already stored before.* Keith Haring
If the world of imagination were a vast continent, then we have only wandered along the shore – we still have no ideas of the marvels that await us upriver…It is through imagination of human minds that purpose, meaning and relevance enter the universe.** John Higgs
It’s not a bad trade: Effort to learn more– Time to imagine more– Creating more meaning and purpose, Repeat–
Spontaneous and unstoppable. Roger had not just loved the wild, he had been wild. Not in the austere and chastening sense I had once understood the wild to be, but natural, like a tree or river.* Robert Macfarlane
Uncertainty prompts us to idealise the future. We tell ourselves that everything will be OK just as long as I can reach the projection of the future.** Christopher Kayes
As an expression of Earth seeded here, What is your wildness?
Ongoing momentum in slender green becoming serpentine imagination touching reality–
Because if your success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your heart, it’s not success at all.* Anna Quindlen
Thingness, life, mind, soul. All real, all with different degrees of form.** Rob Bell
I had stepped into a role, I was keeping to the script, I wasn’t for risking, I was delivering what people wanted– The audience was pleased, One person told me I was very good at this, I’m happy for them– I know I can do it, I just don’t want to.
Discipline turns intentions into action. Discipline means no procrastination. Discipline means now. Choose the pain of discipline, not the pain of regret.* Derek Sivers
I tell you about my desk and what’s on it because when you’re creating your life, finding your 1…the details of your life are vital to your staying true to your path.** Rob Bell
You can wait for the mood to rock up so you can get into it, or you could begin right now– Designing your creative spaces is a discipline, filling them with what you need is a discipline, Placing yourself within these in a timely fashion, expressing your talents and abilities, working on the smallest iteration, sharing with others what you come up with– These are all disciplines, and look how far they have brought you already.
In the most connected time in history we’re quickly losing touch with ourselves.* Ryder Carroll
The ascent always goes through MaximumU. There’s no way around this.** AleXander McManus
Called or called away? Technology can support but often distracts– Just watch the person scrolling– Yet myths as deeper stories of identity, purpose and meaning provide traction, and though we do not know just where they will lead us, our hearts will be beating– What is your myth?
But soul? Do you agree with soul? Not really. More like you resonate with soul. You listen to soul. You look for the soul of something. You’re aware of what something is doing to your soul.* Rob Bell
We look around to see what we have for the journey and find at bottom that we possess only intuitions and imagination, We look for courage and yet find little of it.** David Whyte
How large is my soul? Not the kind of question to come up in the everyday, Though I suspect one that has everything to do with the ordinary – soul caring for mind and heart and body as they move through this world from what is to what can be, Nurtured by these in turn, indirectly– Maybe soulful is bravery?
Life has much uneasiness; that is certain. Always remember that and it will never surprise you.* James Boswell
To walk into the beautiful unknown is not to reject home, but to seek its truest form – something ahead, not behind. To walk toward it is to walk through fire. Not to be punished. But to be remade.** AleXander McManus
That which I am uneasy about may yet be the making of me– Not in the blink of an eye but slowly as I repeat my steps.^
*Quoted in Mason Currey’s Daily Rituals; **AleXander McManus’ Blue Moments; ^I am thinking that we each have within us the means to move into uneasiness, and a slow, long look at ourselves will find this. Drop me a line if you would like to find out more: geoffreybaines@gmail.com.
You don’t chase the parade anymore. You’re an old king from some vanished country. You’re harder to programme. You’re not rushing to become anything, and you’re not haunted by the things that you did. You’re haunted by how little of it really mattered in the way you thought it would.* Bob Dylan
it is the old people who are the bones of the entire healing and spiritual structure everywhere on the face of the earth** Clarissa Pinkola Estés
In myths the old people are where the wildness is found, being steeped in the mysteries they show me the way.
People today … increasingly struggle with meaning because they have been deskilled in the deepest mysteries of life – mysteries that are deeply human because they could never even register with any other species.^
THIN|SILENCE 
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