I have a problem.  What I know becomes a filter to what you know.  

I can end up thinking that what I know is more valuable than what you know because it’s wrapped in my stories but I do not see your stories.

Knowledge wrapped in stories produces my paradigm, my worldview – and a worldview is hard to displace.

What we need are new stories we can create and own together around what we know.  Our understanding is that we are living in a world – intra-, inter- and extra-personal – that is far more complex than it is complicated.  New ways of knowing are needed, new ways of finding answers being required of us.  (I also anticipate that the visual will be an important part of this, images helping different worlds to come together when words struggle.) 

If I think I have the answer, I don’t.  I am trying to live my way into the answer, though, and I think I need your help in this.

We’re moving through the levels of noticing.

We’re noticing things all the time.

When we notice what we are noticing then we’re turning our attention towards some person, idea, thing.

When we do this, there’s the possibility of noticing just how we feel about this and a connection can be formed which may be short-term of longer-term.

When this kind of noticing happens then we open ourselves to the possibility of doing something – a noticing through activity.

The problem is, these levels of noticing demand so much of us.  Like muscles stretching, tearing and repairing they require great intention and discipline, but after all the effort, we find we have grown.

It’s certainly easier to limit our noticing of all there is to notice, reducing the possibility of having to notice what we are noticing we are noticing.  Of such a person, Theodore Roosevelt declared:

“The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer. There are many men who feel a kind of twister pride in cynicism; there are many who confine themselves to criticism of the way others do what they themselves dare not even attempt.”*

When we open both our mind and heart towards the other, we open fields of growth possibilities for ourselves and for others, so Keri Smith writes about the Wander Society:

‘I believe its members exist to aid us in our quest to discover our own deepest should life, to help us move to a higher plane of consciousness.’**

When describing communities of gifts, Lewis Hyde writes:

‘As in the case with any circulation of gifts, the commerce of art draws each of its participants into a wider self.  The creative spirit moves in a body or ego larger than that of any single person.’^

John O’Donohue adds in his usual helpful way:

‘It seems that in a soul sense, we cannot be fully ourselves without others.  In order to be, we need to be with.‘^^

It’s as if we’re creating a map of possibility that is able to teach, enchant and guide us.*^

Noticing in deeper ways is akin to laying down more detail on the map.

(I want to write here about how maps combine images, shapes and words, but I’ll resist the temptation and leave this for another day).

The more complex the journey we want to take, the more details we need on the map.  Maps are about getting somewhere but they are also about how we choose to get there, what we want to experience on the way.

Most of us would not want to think of ourselves as a cynic or of being cynical, but oftentimes cynics don’t have a sneer on their faces but an unwillingness to notice, to connect, to cross borders in order to enter new lands.

(*Theodore Roosevelt, quoted in Maria Popova’s Brain Pickings: Theodore Roosevelt on the Cowardice of Cynicism and the Courage to Create rather Than to Criticise.)
(**From Keri Smith’s The Wander Society.)
(^From Lewis Hyde’s The Gift.)
(^^From John O’Donohue’s Eternal Echoes.)
(*^These three dimensions are borrowed from Otto Scharmer’s characteristics of a living field of possibility: Theory U.)

But with everybody so busy these days, who has time for thinking? […]  In a world where most people spend their days rushing around, to have the time and space to actually think properly, at a deep enough level to where you’re actually solving real problems; is for real people, one of the great privileges of the western world.*
(Hugh Macleod)

Most people have no idea how to generate Attention like this.  Most people think about listening as linear.  They think that listening is lined up waiting, waiting to speak. […] Most people miss the creator.  Most people miss the ignition that is inside the listening.’**

To slow down, to notice more, to listen deeply, to think deeply.  All of these are enhanced by the visual.

Forget the arguments about not being able to draw.  We are visual creatures living in an increasingly visual-information world, and everyone can include shapes and images alongside words – the building blocks for being a visual thinker, creating:

‘an incubation formula where art and science co-exist’.^

Time to visualise the future.

(*From gapingvoid’s blog: Where ideas are born.)
(**From Nancy Kline’s More Time to Think.)
(^Misha Mercer, from Drawn Together Through Visual Practice.)

You must remain attentive in order to be able to receive.*
(John O’Donohue)

Attention is an act of creation.**
(Nancy Kline)

You say listen but I want to act.

We have to do something.

There has to be a decision.

Instead of making a mighty leap, why not create a process, take a walk?

This is about creating a living, breathing transition between what has been and what is needed, between the past and the future.

When we move forward through listening, we’ll find much more to inform us about what might be.

The first listen is to listen with our heads.  The second listen is to be heart-attentive.  The third listening occurs in our taking a walk, trying things out, letting more speak to us that we cannot hear whilst we’re careering through the air, wind whistling past our ears in the mighty leap.

(*John O’Donohue, quoted in the Northumbria Community‘s Morning Prayer.)
(**From Nancy Kline’s More Time to Think.)

To ensure life doesn’t feel too full or too empty, learn as much as you can and teach as much as you can.

Don’t wait for someone else to provide the place of learning in and learning out.  Create your own and it will last for a lifetime.

Life becomes a matter of showing up and saying yes.*
(Richard Rohr)

There is nothing quite so tragic as a young cynic, because it means the person has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.**
(Maya Angelou)

Before the one willing to say yes the darkness recedes.

Feeling more, all becomes their teacher.

To see and feel more leads them into a world of possibilities for doing more.

Not so for the cynic who finds the darkness closing in around them as they remain closed to the the other.

Unable to feel more, they feel less.

Not feeling the stirring within, the urge to create is small.

Each morning I search for the birds in flight, to wait within a moment and wonder.

I must turn again from pride to humility.

From greed to gratitude.

From foolishness to faithfulness.

(*From Richard Rohr’s The Divine Dance.)
(**May Angelou, quoted in Maria Popova’s Brain Pickings: Theodore Roosevelt on the Cowardice of Cynicism and the Courage to Create Rather Than Criticise.)

science describes accurately from outside, poetry describes accurately from inside, [and] both celebrate what they describe*
(Ursula Le Guin)

Any organization of more than two people has a structure, intentional or not.**
(Seth Godin)

Back in 1955, Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham created the Johari Window, with four “panes” describing different types of personal awareness: characteristics and awareness that we are aware of and are willing to tell others about; the things we know about ourselves and don’t tell others; the things we don’t know about ourselves but others can see about us; and, the things that are hidden to both ourselves and to others.^

It’s a really helpful and revealing way to understand there is both an inside and outside to each of us – the things we’re constantly exploring.  Stretch that some more and we come to realise that none of us know all the truth about ourselves or about others, and about our world and our affects upon it.

Tom Rath wrote about “vital friends,” a necessary antidote to “friends lite,” the cheapening of friendship we find especially in so much social media.  Emerging out of Gallup research into the workplace that uncovered how people are far more engaged in their work if they have someone they count as a friend, Rath took a closer look at the different kinds of friend we can be.  There isn’t a friend, any more than we can feel supported in a rounded way by one person.  He identifies eight different friend types: Builders (develop us), Champions (stand up for us), Collaborators (work with us), Companions (walk with us), Connectors (put us in touch with others), Energisers (encourage us), Mind-openers (help us to see new things), Navigators (pilot us from here to there).  Rath suggests we’re two or three of these more strongly than others.  I like to think they make it possible for us to extend ourselves in a friendship way towards people who may never be our friends.^^

This is something really necessary for figuring out a better future for one another, our planet and, so, ourselves.  They provide us with ways of taking relationships deeper, and with these, opening greater possibilities for something Jennifer Shepherd sees being made possible in her visualising work with individuals and organisations, bringing out the invisible:

‘learn[ing] to surface the wisdom hiding with us and between us and connect it with what we already know’.*^

We are not just our role or job title, we are not simply a cache of data or understanding, we are inside-outside people, meeting with the inside-outside of each other, searching together for the future.

(*Ursula Le Guin, quoted in Maria Popova’s Brain Pickings: Astrophysicist Janna Levin Reads Ursula K. Le Guin’s “Hymn to Time”.)
(**
(^See Mikael Krogerus and Roman Tschäppeler’s The Decision Book.)
(^^See Tom Rath’s Vital Friends.)
(*^Jennifer Shepherd, from Drawn Together Through Visual Practice.)

Here’re are a few things to play with:

A doodle to print off and colour in with a “slow pen.”

Find a pen you love and play with your handwriting to create a font that is yours.

Look at a view you love and take in all the details that want to flood into your life.

Meet with a friend, have your favourite drink and laugh a lot.

Without a doubt, your little idea is going to grow. We’re rooting for your acorn to turn into an oak tree.

But bringing that acorn to the lumberyard, hoping to make a sale … you’re wasting your time and their time too.

Most people are waiting for a proven, tested and popular solution.*
(Seth Godin)

The acorn is not the finished article, it’s natures way of making more oak trees.  Give it time, nurture it.  Lots of acorns don’t grow into anything, but with some intervention, it’s likely that every one would at least make it to a sprout, if not a sapling.

The other thing is, whatever it is we’ve been looking at as an acorn may not be an acorn at all when we take a closer look.  Then the last thing it’s going to produce is an oak tree.

Flannery O’Connor made the important point for us:

“In art the self becomes self-forgetful.”**

We find our art where the past and the future merge into the deep present, where we don’t notice if this is or is not what we ought to be doing but we’re simply immersed, exploring, producing.  When we find our art we no longer see ourselves.

When we lose sight of our art it can be because we are becoming more conscious of what others are doing and comparing ourselves.  Elle Luna writes:

‘And we might even find ourselves as adults still living in a world of should from childhood that were have not consciously examined.’^

Whether implicit or explicit, shoulds are the things others think we ought to be doing or we think we ought to be doing like others.

Just last night I heard someone speak about how their own artwork was unfolding.  I found myself thinking, I ought to be doing something like that.  Then I caught myself, and I laugh.  I do not have this person’s taste and interests, I don’t have their talents and abilities, how could I possibly do what they do?  A few years ago we’d walked together through the things this person loves to do.  What I love is to help people do what they want to do.  Claudia Madrazu writes about her diary initiative (development of intelligence through art):

‘start the session by performing a physical activity that enables them to bring their attention to the present moment, feel their body, name their emotions and be connected to themselves’.^^

Because we can’t be anyone else.

This is what we learn when we become self-forgetful: this is who we are and this is our art.

(*From Seth Godin’s blog: Selling acorns at the lumberyard.)
(**Flannery O’Connor, quoted in Lewis Hyde’s The Gift.)
(^From Elle Luna’s The Crossroads of Should and Must.)
(^^From Drawn Together Through Visual Practice.)

Silence will speak more to you in a day than the world of voices can teach you in a lifetime.
Find silence.  Find solitude – and having discovered her riches, bind her to your heart.*
(Frances Roberts)

Do you find your quiet talents going unused and unnoticed in a world that values bravado, celebrity, publicity, and money?’**
(Keri Smith)

Have you ever been in one of those situations where everyone in the group is sharing something.  You can feel the pressure building as more people say something.  With five minutes to go, you go around the circle and realise everyone has made at least one contribution, except for you.  What can you say?  Something profound, but what?

I wish I could say I’ve cracked it, that I now feel comfortable being one of those, perhaps the only one, not to say anything out loud.

Terry Tempest Williams writes about the irony of our existence:

“We are infinitesimal in the grand scheme of evolution, a tiny organism on Earth.  And yet, personally, collectively, we are changing the planet through our voracity, the velocity of our reach, our desires, our ambitions, and our appetites.  We multiply, our hunger multiplies, and our insatiable craving accelerates.

Consumption is a progressive disease.

We believe in more, more possessions, more power, more war.  Anywhere, everywhere our advance of aggression continues.”^

This behaviour is anything but quiet and Williams continues by pointing out where the un-quiet begins:

“My aggression toward myself is the first war.

Wilderness is an antidote to the war within ourselves.”^

We discover things about ourselves in solitude and silence that we can never find in the whirl and swirl with others or the world of constant sound.  A moment of presence, though, is able to connect our small self with the largeness that we are a part of and which fills us.  There’s something about this exploration of smallness that leads to the discovery and experience of something big.

This in turn alters the way we create and enter space with others.  This is a different way of being with others than those whom Martin Buber identifies as having We-We relationships:

‘Theirs is a sheltered, childish world in which no individuality has yet emerged.’^^

Buber ultimately wants to reveal the richness of the I-Thou relationship, a term full of Richard Rohr’s re-spect:

‘We know things in their depth only by the second gaze of love.’^^

I know you, but do I know thou?

In solitude and silence, we’re offered an opportunity to discover our “I am” in relationship and connection to everyone and everything.  Silence and solitude are neither empty nor lonely spaces, but overwhelmingly rich and full:

‘Wonder is a beautiful style of perception; when you wonder at something, your mind voyages deep into its possibility and nature.  You linger among its presence.’*^

(*Frances Roberts, quoted in the Northumbria Community‘s Morning Prayer.)
(**From Keri Smith’s The Wander Society.)
(^Terry Tempest Williams, quoted in Maria Popova’s Brain Pickings: The Hour of Land.)
(^^From Richard Rohr’s The Divine Dance.)
(*^From John O’Donohue’s Eternal Echoes.)