Art is what we call it when we are able to create something new that changes someone.* Seth Godin
Our society doesn’t teach us how to be an effective giver of gifts. The schools don’t emphasise it. The popular culture is confused by it.** David Brooks
The maths are straightforward: There’d be a whole lot more good things in the world if we were looking to give rather than get – Things we haven’t even imagined as yet. Another dimension to this is that we don’t set up places to give what they can, because of “imposter syndrome” or “stereotype threat,” We all miss out and the world is a poorer place. But the fact is you’re in the game, And that changes everything.
Puhpowee, she explained, translates as “the force which causes mushrooms to push up from the earth overnight.”* Robin Wall Kimerer/Keewaydinquay Peschel)
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters to what lies within us.** Henry Stanley Haskins,
English does not have a word for the specific energy of a mushroom but Potawatomi does. Each person should have a special word to describe their own unique energy. A word can sometimes help us to see a thing more fully, Not only what something is but what it also can be; Find your energy, Name it, Live it, Bababoom!
when we listen to a story, our brain experiences the action as if it was happening to us* Annie Murphy Paul
Julia Cameron’s morning pages help unlock something inside. Not the muse or a magical mystical power, but simply the truth of our chosen identity. If you do something creative each day, you’re now a creative person. Not a blocked person, not a striving person, not an untalented person. A creative person.** Seth Godin
Stories are not only for entertainment, Research is showing that we learn more when the facts are presented as a story, We also remember more. It’s why dreamwhispering doesn’t bring a person to a list list of talents, energies and values, but to their story. When we write these down, not only do we find clarity, We also find intent: On your marks, Set, Go.
The human soul is hungry for beauty; we seek it everywhere – in landscape, music, art, clothes, furniture, gardening, companionship, love, religion and in ourselves. No one would desire not to be beautiful. When we experience the Beautiful, there is a sense of homecoming.* John O’Donohue
Living a good story … is more like writing a good story. And writing a good story happens when a writer has created the disciplined habit of sitting down to do the work.** Donald Miller
A collage usually involves pictures being used to create a new image, But why not do the same with words? I am encouraging people who begin dreamwhispering to firstly find and commit to some form of writing out their experiences and thoughts, also bringing the best of what they are reading or listening to, and also mixing some doodles in. Writing connects our inner and outer worlds in powerful ways.
Tackling the correspondence problem involves breaking down an observed solution into its constuituent parts, and then reassembling those parts in a different way … an ability to apply that underlying principle in a novel setting.* Annie Murphy Paul
We don’t want to feel less when we have finished a book; we want to feel that new possibilities have been opened to us.** Madeleine L’Engle
When the pressure’s on us or on a system, we see the truth of how things are:
“Connais-toi pour t’ameliorer” (“Know yourself to improve yourself”).^
Then follows the decision: Do we accept this or do something about it? If we want to do something about it, A good place to begin is by copying others, To imitate those who are ahead of us. Dreamwhispering does this, Borrowing from anywhere and everywhere. This is solving the “Correspondence problem,” How that over there might work over here. Of course, we’re doing this all the time in many small ways – Such as changing something about yourself after reading a book; What this is suggesting is that we do it in big ways, too. To be able to innovate in this way is itself a creative act. Towards copying, Don’t see the way something is being expressed or used as being the only way; even words used for a totally different purpose than the one you have in mind can inspire and guide:
When you get past making labels for things it is possible to combine and transform element into new things. Look at things until their import, identity, name, use, and descriptions have dissolved.^^
Whatever the reality you are facing, There is something, somewhere, Waiting to improve things.
It is about discovering and living all that we are intended to be, with awe and wonder.* Sunil Raheja
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.**
To live in awe and wonder is our mission, Our quest. Yet there is no such thing as a “quest superstore” in which we browse the shelves until we find the quest to suit us best of all (job done), Even though our education system suggests this is how it is – We must try things and notice things and pursue things.
It is not objection to say that a man is not merely a person in general, but a person finding himself in a particular situation. … He only exists by changing himself, and only by remaining unchanged does heexist.^
Alain de Botton speaks the truth we need to hear:
good art is the sensuous presentation of those ideas which matter most to the proper functioning of our souls – and yet which we are most inclined to forget, even though they are the basis for our capacity for contentment and virtue^^.
There is something in each of us that matters deeply to us and which we cannot shake, Even though we may sometimes forget, And when we do then we must go to the deep places of our lives:
Though so much else is in motion in the mind and the senses, the hidden heart never loses sight of us. If we ever feel lost or overwhelmed, all we have to do is become still and listen in to our heart and we will soon find exactly where we are.*^
All you have is what you are and what you give.* Shevek
In a competition between someone who knows the most and someone who is willing to learn the most, the edge usually goes to the curious and empathic professional, not the one who is simply protecting what’s already known.** Seth Godin
Shevek’s words caught my eye because they relate to the two important questions: Who is my True Self? and What is my Contribution? What we are is enough because what we are can be grown. The two questions relate to the two myths Joseph Campbell encourages us to shape for our lives: A personal myth and a social myth, Which are expressions of meaning, Not that we are searching for meaning, Rather we have found our meaning, This in the way that James Carse espouses:
Myths, told for their own sake, are not stories that have meanings, but stories that give meanings.^
Our lives are stories that we’re telling every day. This also means they can be written or told differently. It may only take a moment to stop what we’re doing and ask the questions, Writing down what comes to you. Do this for a moment every day for a month and see what happens.
Being put in our place by something bigger than ourselves is not a humiliation; it should be accepted as a relief from our insanely hopeful ambitions for our lives.** Alain de Botton
a person is so far formed by his surroundings, that his state of harmony depends entirely on his harmony with his surroundings^ Christopher Alexander
Whilst I walk as much as I can on my way into work and back again, When I arrive at my workplace, I tend to remain inside until the end of the day; my room has no window, Only a ceiling lite. But today I will be taking a few moments outside, Here and there, Looking up at the sky, Feeling the cold, damp air, Noticing the shape of the trees sunk in tarmac – We benefit so much from nature, That even those unimpressed of wild things, Subconsciously gain a great deal in terms of wellbeing, focus, ability to think and problem solve. Even a minute will have some effect; Though we may not recognise it, We feel at home, Our bodies thick with hundreds of thousands of years of connection with nature. There are very few buildings that compensate for being inside, Our work environments often working against our reasons for being in them, So I will slip outside.
Because it’s not for you. It’s for them. Generosity unlocks doors inside of us.** Seth Godin
We change the story when we are prepared to notice.
The odds against us being here are astronomical – We only know this because we are here. Life is hard, We know only too well, But we are here, Together. We are not as special or important as some, But we are here and get to brig our unique beauty into the world. Our life is not about us, Abundance is community, Freedom is inservice, Enjoyment is in generosity. We are not able to control many things, Yet we are able to control our response to everything. And one day we will die, But until the we are alive within countless possibilities, and it’s a beautiful day.
When we shift our mindset and open ourselves to the awe of daily life, we may find that opportunities to be wowed are all around us.* Jonah Paquette
Awe is the feeling we have when we encounter the monumental or immeasurable. We experience a sudden shrinking of the self, yet a rapid expansion of the soul.** Nick Cave
We can find ourselves in awe of the things people do in the ordinariness of life. I think Nick Cave is right, If we can get past the fact that we can’t do what this person can, And we’re okay about feeling small in that moment, We can also feel an important part of us growing; Rather than resentment, we feel awe, and our soul grows. This was my experience just yesterday as I listened to someone share the different things that energised them but I couldn’t do. I realised that I wasn’t hard staring at their lives, With all of it accompanying judgement, I was soft gazing with openness; I was then able to help them and they were able to help me.
THIN|SILENCE 
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