The Tin Man may represent the mechanisation of our reality of which the loss of heart is the worst to bear. It is easy enough to get oiled and get moving, but without heart there is no impetus to keep going.** Jean Houston
These weren’t their three words – Feeling lost, they HAD checked the app to see where they were; Their three words – where they needed to be – awaited, They only needed to follow their heart.
Which three words describe where you need to be, and/or to be doing?^
*What3words is an app that “grids” the world into 3×3 metre squares. As long as we have a connection, we’ll never be lost. **Jean Houston’s The Wizard of Us; ^The three words represent whole environments or worlds of activity.
This means that we can be moved only by persons who are not who they are; we can be moved only when we are not who we are but what we cannot be … We can be moved only by our veils. We are touched through our veils.* James Carse
The idea that we live in a mental model of reality, rather than reality itself, is fundamental to the philosophy of William Blake … although the world appears to be outside of you, what you experience as the world is created in your mind.** John Higgs
Force believes the veil to be reality, Touch allows that this may not be so, Surprise is touch’s child, A sign that something new may appear – Perhaps we do not grow through certainty.
I have trained my own reality to be very fluid, moving back and forth between ordinary and extraordinary realities, local and archetypal worlds, implicate and explicate worlds.* Jean Houston
The challenge is to keep doing something different, something harder and scarier in every way than the thing you did before … to do something more difficult each time.** Francine Prose
And before we know it, We’ve stopped, Stopped moving, and, Being fixed, life closes in around us when it ought to to be opening up and astounding us.
I need only 4% different, difficult, risky, scarier to avoid a world becoming too familiar and reducing, Or to unbelievable and large for me to contemplate – Only 4% to be fluid and Lost in wonder.
Your life is quantum, You live here ordinarily and also somewhere else, imaginally, Your life in myth stretching, Opening and unfurling this local world.
Numerous fMRI studies have shown that when you’re lost in a story the same areas of your brain light up as would activate if you were doing what the protagonist is doing.* Lisa Cron
Man begins to be human only where he has the freedom to oppose bondage to a type. For only there, in freedom, is his being – being responsible; only there “is” man authentically, or only there is man ‘authentic.’* Viktor Frankl
You are not a type, You do not have to receive the script, nor the others that will follow, You can choose to say, No thank you.
Resistance is the beginning of your responsibility and the freedom to be Your own kind of unrepeatable imperfection, which is always for something, for someone, Some Yes please that must follow, Yes to life.
We might name this your dialogue with the pressure of reality through the power of your imagination, Shaping your place in the world.
You will know its weight, but it is your sweet weight, Your joyful burden.
How goes your imaginative conversation with reality?
Notice the order – from solitude to community to ministry.* Henri Nouwen
Our sense of self is not a discrete thing, it turns out. It is perhaps better thought of as a story. It is a story of who we are, what we are like and where we are going, and as such it grows out of our history, our relationships with others and our goals for the future.** John Higgs
When in our flow, our bliss, Our sense of self is lost to us, And when we give ourselves to nothing, We reappear in the past, present, and future of our stories; Whilst we may rehearse these when we are with others, it is only when I am alone that my pondering is deepest.
The only ways we can avoid [creativity’s] insistent energy are to continuous;y mount barriers, or to allow it to be poisoned by destructive negativity and negligence.* Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Awe spurs us to be kinder and more compassionate. It makes us happier and less concerned with materialism. Experiences of awe spark curiosity within us and help orient us to what truly matters in our lives. In short, awe changes us in the most incredible ways.** Dacher Keltner
Background, Upbringing, Limitations, Openness, Noticing, Curiosity, Interests, Developed talents, Beliefs, Experiences, Narratives – All of these are happening all of the time in our lives, And all of them provide an incubator for creativity.
Here’s another year, free of charge, For letting it out, Perhaps removing the barriers, or overcoming the negativity; A good place to begin is in being open to awe: The universe, local nature, art, stories, people, inventions – Witnessing the good things all around us, and just having to join in.
Scientists and linguists believe that words are not only a window into who we are and how we believe, they also play a role in shaping these things.* Naomi Bagdonas and Jennifer Aaker
Dan McAdams** is introducing me to the word imagoes for describing the main characters in our life stories.
These fall into two types: The agentic and the communal.
The agentic characters are comprised of warriors, travellers, sages, and makers.
The communal characters of lovers, caregivers, friends, and ritualists.
It’s likely that we’ll especially prefer one from either of the lists, to have a sense of self in the larger world and our smaller worlds.^
It strikes me that we find these lists echoed in different ways.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi writes about our need for exploration, but also for conservation.^^
Christian Schwarz introduced me to this concept more than twenty years ago in his interplay of the dynamic and the static.*^
So, I’m wondering whether, not only might we focus on an imago from one list, but balance this with a supportive imago from the other.
Have a play: choose your two, Identifying which is prime and which is supporting.
We see how important words can be for seeing who we are and then shaping who we are.^*
(Important note to self: Always be playful, Never allow yourself to be trapped by a word, term, or definition.)
The soul has nothing to say. It’s essential silence makes voices possible but it has no voice of its own.* James Carse
The soul is my deepest and most silent being – It has made possible the writing of the last line, Allowing this and other thoughts to arise, Not directing, impelling, but giving my thoughts their space; I grow this silent part of me by not interrupting, not filling, nor explaining, so that it provides the space for everything else, and hence, it is not empty but full.
THIN|SILENCE 
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