In practical terms. three rules of thumb are especially useful for harnessing the power of patience as a creative force: The first is to develop a taste for having problems. … The second principle is to embrace radical incrementalism … The final principle is that more often than not, originality lies on the far side of unoriginality.*
Oliver Burkeman

*Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks.

The dream of convenience is premised on the nightmare of physical work.  But is physical work always a nightmare? … Perhaps our humanity is sometimes expressed in inconvenient actions and time-consuming pursuits.*

*Seth Godin’s The Carbon Almanac.

You were sent to the earth to become a receiver of the unknown.*
John O’Donohue

*John O’Donohue’s Eternal Echoes.

The question then is how to get lost. Never to get lost is not to live, not to know how to get lost brings you to destruction, and somewhere in the terra incognito in between lies a life of discovery.*
Rebecca Solnit

*Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost.

Much of the introduction to the field was a playful activity, and the learning at the beginning of this stage was much like a game.*
Benjamin Bloom

*Angela Duckworth’s Grit.

The urge to make something is a precious energy.*
Martin Amor and Alex Pellew

*Martin Amor and Alex Pellew’s The Idea in You.

We don’t often use the word “humbling” as a verb, but we should.*
David Brooks

the world is large, but in us it is as deep as the sea**
Rainer Maria Rilke

*David Brooks’ The Second Mountain;
**Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters on Life.

Interiority refers to a richer perceptual universe and awareness of self.*
Peter Senge

*Peter Senge’s The Necessary Revolution.

Characters empower us to reflect, to know ourselves from within and without.*
Robert McKee

Soul teachers … talk openly and honestly about what is actually going on … .**
Martha Beck

The stories we read or watch have to be
way more interesting than our own stories,
The characters need to be more compelling
than real life so that we stay engaged, and
finish the book or movie or box-set:
The more specific, dimensional,
unpredictable, and difficult to understand,
the more fascinating and more real a character seems.
The more generalised, more consistent,
more predictable, and easy to understand, the less real,
the less interesting, and more
cartoonish she seems.*

What these characters highlight for us is that it is possible
to leave the real, or ordinary, world for a while each day,
So we might spend a little time in a special world in which we
contemplate how to develop ourselves
as characters that are
more specific, dimensional, unpredictable,
More complex,
Before returning to the real world,
But it’s a new real world –
Different.^

*Robert McKee’s Character;
**Martha Beck’s The Way of Integrity;
^This is what dreamwhispering proffers.

What am I? Everything that I have seen, heard, and observed. I have collected and exploited. My works have been nourished by countless different individuals, by innocent and wise ones, people of intelligence and dunces. … I have often reaped what others have sowed. My work is the work of a collective being that bears the name of Goethe.*
Wolfgang von Goethe

You are unrepeatable,
Anything but a copy,
And yet, the reason for this
is your openness to others and all
around you –
Teachers and guides
Are not only human.

Perhaps so far unnoticed,
We now lean into this path, and
the only term that has come to me
so far for walkers of this path is
The Wise.

*Lewis Hyde’s Common As Air.