It remains the dream of every life to realise itself, to reach out and lift oneself to greater heights. A life that continues to remain on the safe side of its own habits and repetition never engages with the risk of its own possibility, remains an unlived life.*
John O’Donohue

It surprises us,
catches us unawares, how
the realised Self does appear out of living for self, but
in living for others –
Growing from independence to
interdependence, from the ego or little self
to the True Self,
Gifting our lives to others:
To the warrior,
greatness is not the product of ego but of
service.
If you live for your self, you can
settle for less.
If you live for others, it requires
all of who you are.**

I came upon six canons of the Eastern Artist
according to Joseph Campbell, and
I thought there could be some
fascinating transposing of these into the service of
the other – the most imaginative art we bring into the world;
I leave them for you to play with:
1 Before beginning, feel the rhythm of what is being drawn,
2 Find the form: the line produced must be a true, living line,
3 Be true to nature’s rhythm in what is being drawn,
4 Find the colour of energy and inertia, light and dark,
5 Find the right placement of the subject in the field,
6 Use a style appropriate to the subject.^

May you have the grace of encouragement
To awaken the gift in another’s heart,
Building in them the confidence
To follow the call of the gift.^^

*John O”Donohue’s To Bless the Space Between Us;
**Erwin McManus’ The Way of the Warrior;
^Joseph Campbell’s Myths to Live By;
^^John O’Donohue’s Benedictus: For a New Position.

The thing is, feedback is a gift. Feedback transformed into generoous and useful criticism is priceless.*
Seth Godin

It is difficult, challenging, and yet extremely necessary at the time of wounding to revision our situation so that its larger story is revealed. This means, first of all, that we stop repeating to ourselves the data of the local events or personalities that have caused us pain. This is not to deny the facts but to move out of the easy seductions of tunnel vision into the broader landscape that reveals potent opportunities for growth. … tell the story again – not as a repetition of historical detail, but as a myth in which the wounding is only the middle of the story, the ending of which is the birth of a new grace.**
Jean Houston

This is not about writing a more
positive story using
your difficult and painful experiences;
It’s about what the story opens up for
you to do that
nothing else, so far, has
been able to, and this
for the sake of others.

But we are complex beings, and so are our challenges.
Simplistic solutions tend not to work for
the multilayered nature of our sorrows.
We must accept the complexity,
and the fact that untangling our inner knots will take
time and effort.^

*Seth Godin’s The Song of Significance;
**Jean Houston’s A Mythic Life;
^Anna Katharina Schaffner’s The Art of Self Improvement.

What I’m really concerned about is reaching one person.*
Jorge Luis Borges

To wake the giant inside ourselves, we have to be faithful to our own eccentric nature, and bring it into conversation with the world.**
David Whyte

This is not for everyone,
But it may be for you;
You will know if
there is something more of you
waiting to emerge, to
be born.

It is to this
I awaken each morning.

*Austin Kleon’s Keep Going;
**David Whyte’s Crossing the Unknown Sea.

Take a moment to enter the Doodle Zone … the the doodler’s breathing slows; her heart rate decreases; her mind relaxes; her focus sharpens. She find herself momentarily a picture of relaxed tranquility amid the hustle and bustle of daily life. She also find herself surprised at the insights that result from this seemingly insignificant endeavour.*
Sunni Brown

I didn’t mind the wait –
In fact, I hoped it would go on a little longer,
I became more aware of the people around me,
Their interactions;
Getting the drinks became more of an experience.

The Doodle Zone is everywhere;
All we need to carry is a plain paged notebook
and black pen, and, best of all,
Everyone can doodle.

*Sunni Brown’s The Doodle Revolution.

Resist chronology
It will always impose itself.
Break the flow of time once it begins.
Better yet, resist it from the start.*
Verlyn Klinkenborg

To migrate away from the named places (territories whose topography was continuous with memory and community) to the coasts (unmapped islands, the anonymous forests) was to reach land that did not bear the marks of occupation. It was to act out a movement from history to eternity.**
Robert Macfarlane

To be peregrini, wanderers, is a matter of heart
and soul;
Otherwise we would have to cast our flimsy craft
upon the chopping waters, and wait to discover where
winds and tides have taken us.

There are timeless places to explore all around us,
In the eternities of reading, or
spending time with a fascinating other, or
working on some art or artisanship, or
wandering through sagely nature … .

*Verlyn Klinkenborg’s Several short sentences about writing;
**Robert Macfarlane’s The Wild Places.

What is the new horizon in you that wants to be seen?*
John O’Donohue

*John O’Donohue’s Benedictus.

There is only to be a continuing search for more – as of a mind eager to grow. … a world of change, new thoughts, new things, new magnitudes, and continuing transformation, not of petrification, rigidity, and some canonised found “truth.”*
Joseph Campbell

Cultural change often affects the young first.**
Jean Twenge

Until more recently in human history,
There have always been myths, guiding stories
to help us navigate our existence and potential,
Mythologist Joseph Campbell concluding:
Mythology is apparently
coeval with mankind.*

Tied with our understanding of who we are
and the contribution we bring,
The old myths are no longer able to serve us as we need them to,
And whilst we continue to advance on the outside,
Our inside worlds can be unexplored, unsuccoured, even
scary places.

My sense is that some of the old myths,
Re-imagined, will nurture us,
But each of us is capable of shaping our own myth, most likely
Woven with the more timeless from the ancient that always allowed
For this cocreating to be the best of ways, understanding that we are
shapers, makers, artists, imagineers.

A morning when you become a pure vessel
For what wants to ascend from silence …
To reach beyond silence
And the wheel of repitition. …
In order to come to birth
In a clean line of form,
That claims from time
A rhythm not yet heard
That calls space to
A different shape.^

*Joseph Campbell’s Myths to Live By;
**Jean Twenge’s iGen;
^John O’Donohue’s Benedictus: For the Artist at the Start of the Day.

Why are we not better than we are?*
Eric Trethewey

We probably are,
But it’s all about the editing.

Editing takes time,
It’s focused work
on our own that
takes our vital energy with the
door closed.

And the great thing about being tired of our story
is that stories can be edited.
Stories can be fixed.
Stories can go from dull to exciting,
from rambling to focused, and
from drudgery to read to exhilarating to live.**

*Maria Popova’s The Marginalian: Why Are We Not Better: How Poetry Saves Lives;
**Donald Miller’s Hero On a Mission.

Each society and each individual usually explores only a tiny fraction of their horizon of possibility.*
Yuval Noah Harari

What I think is that a good life is one hero journey after another. Over and over again, you are called to new adventure, you are called to new horizons.**
Joseph Campbell

The realisation that our lives are stories
comprising a number of significant elements that
we may arrange in a number of different ways, makes it possible
for our experience of life to significantly alter:
Whether we like it or not,
the lives we live are stories.
Our lives have a beginning, middle, and end,
and inside those three acts we play many roles.^

We may have tried to alter our lives before, and
this has not been our experience –
A different role, a different place –
But what is needed is to look beneath the surface of this story:
The secret to diagnosing a problem with a broken scene
lies in its subtext.^^

To find our deepest joy meets the world’s
greatest need, wrapped in
talents, environments and values, is to
open new horizons:
Being more vulnerable,
we reach out, we extend our hands
and your hearts to others who are wounded.
It is only at such a pass that we grow into a larger sense
of what life is about and act, therefore,
out of a deeper and nobler nature.*^

If the story doesn’t work,
We can go to the subtext again,
rewrite it, begin over;
There are no rules as to how many time we can do this, and
eventually our new horizon will open:
Pathfinding is at the core of creating
with significance,
and finding the path is largely the work of
finding non-paths
until the path is evident.^*

Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm
For your soul sense the world that awaits you.⁺

*Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens;
**Joseph Campbell’s Pathways to Bliss;
^Donald Miller’s Hero On a Mission;
^^Robert McKee‘s newsletter: The Secret to Fixing Broken Scenes;
*^Jean Houston’s A Mythic Life;
^*Seth Godin’s The Song of Significance;
⁺John O’Donohue’s Benedictus: For a New Beginning.

Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always –
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing no less than everything) …*
T. S. Eliot

Knowledge allows us to get our bearings, but it’s imagination and action that give its the forward motion we need to start and finish.**
Bernadette Jiwa

Knowing how stuff gets in the way of life-in-all-its-fullness,
Jesus of Nazerath
encouraged his disciples instead to seek the kingdom –
And it’s remains true that there’s more than the latest fashion and
quirky restaurant;
they’re fun but they don’t deed our sense of
destiny,
Our greater story:
The basic story of the hero journey
Involves giving up where you are,
going into the realm of adventure,
coming to some kind of
symbolically rendered realisation,
and then returning to the field of normal life.^

But to know our destiny is not enough,
We must put it into action, and
this is not easy at all;
Joseph Campbell identifies three outcomes to
the returning to the normal life with the
realisation we have discovered:
There will be no reception for it, and so we give up and
return to the “fashion and food,” the “bread and circus” life;
We only give the world what it wants (serving food and fashion with our discovery); or,
We slowly teach the world what it is that we are returning with –
It is in the actioning that we’ll figure this out.

Viva el reino.

*David Whyte’s Crossing the Unknown Sea;
**Bernadette Jiwa’s blog The Story of Telling: Start to Finish;
^Joseph Campbell’s Pathways to Bliss.