Here’s the thing: the story you think is too small to matter is often the one that changes everything.* Bernadette Jiwa
These are your precognitions: whispered memories of a future that remembers you. Let them lead you. Not with force, but with the subtle gravity of something sacred calling you home. AleXander McManus
It’s not big, nor is it noticed by the masses, But this is your story, Unrepeatable, beautiful, alchemistic.
In a contest between “I Have a Dream” and “the advancement of creative dissatisfaction,” we all know which words win. The emotional ones. The ones that speak to a universal human experience: dreaming and yearning for something more.* gapingvoid
Emotion alerts your cognitive unconscious to the events you need to remember because they contain info that might come in handy in the future and allows everything else you experience to evaporate into the ether as if it had never happened.** Lisa Cron
Martin Luther King Jr. was about to tell his audience to “go back to [your] communities as members of the international association for the advancement of creative dissatisfaction,”* But he paused, a friend on stage asked him to tell them about his dream – The rest is history, and more: The dream is still alive today.
Our emotions may get us into trouble at times, leading us down false paths, But we need them – Vulcans can only exist in Star Trek’s imagination, At best they would only be a chaotic species – We’d struggle making even simple decisions without them.
Which brings us to the importance of dreams, And how they play upon our lives, The emotions they evoke, Prompting stories we want to explore beyond the hard facts of life; Dare to express your dream, then follow where it leads.^
*gapingvoid’s blog: No Emotion, No Justice; **Lisa Cron’s Story Or Die; ^Let me know if I can help with dreamwhispering: geoffrey@thinsilence.org.
If myth accomplishes only one thing, it is to expose human beings as multidimensional creatures … No one volunteers to be insignificant. No one yearns to be powerless and without purpose. The self craves one thing: to express its potential.* Deepak Chopra
Each day holds opportunities to do something purposeful and significant; These actions may be small but we don’t know where they’ll lead – Permission isn’t out there, It’s within us.
Humans are smart because we have evolved to connect with other brains.** Matthew Syed
If you read books on different topics an different genres at the same time, your brain can’t help but find weird connections between them.^ Austin Kleon
I’m not claiming to be smart, But I do hope to be smarter through being open to others for the sake others.
Every morning, I am met by a random group of writers and thinkers,^^ and I never know what’s going to emerge.
*The bookshelf doesn’t have to be a physical one; it can be digital, visual, audible. **Matthew Syed’s Rebel Ideas; ^Austin Kleon’s blog: Letting books talk to each other; ^^I have a shelf of twenty eight open books at the moment, which shuffle as I read from about four of these each day, together with around three or four blogs. Today’s randomly included Richard Rohr, Matthew Syed, Bina Venkataraman, Adam Kohane, Seth Godin, Gabe Anderson, Deepak Chopra, and Austin Kleon.When ideas are coming together within us, we are shaping our permission to do something – we don’t have to wait (something that spills over into tomorrow’s blog).
To tell great stories as fast as possible. That’s my jam.* Hugh Macleod
Be a monomaniac on a mission to be truly great at something difficult. Pick one thing and send the rest of your life at getting deeper into it. Mastery is the best goal because the rich can’t buy it, the impatient can’t rush it, the privileged can’t inherit it, and nobody can steal it. You can only earn it through hard work. Mastery is the ultimate status. Striving makes you happy.** Derek Sivers
Identifying the thing we want to do – The must to work at and deliver to others – will leave us feeling alive and emitting power-stations of energy; We’re thrilled to have found something so meaningful and satisfying, but what we do won’t be for everyone: We must find those it is good for.
You’re either the person who creates energy. Or you’re the one that destroys it.^
It takes an initial tender vulnerability (“wounding”) to defeat our ego and to open us to full consciousness – which must include the scary unconscious.* Richard Rohr
Rather than ignoring the negative emotion of regret – or worse, wallowing in it – we can remember that feeling is for thinking and that thinking is for doing.** Daniel Pink
You don’t have to turn away from the pain.^
Notice where it places itself.^^
Does it have a shape, a colour, a texture?
Listen carefully: What is it trying to tell you?
What do you want to ask it?
Now you’re thinking; soon you’ll be doing.
*Richard Rohr’s The Tears Of Things; **Daniel Pink’s The Power of Regret; ^The Ego does not want to give up its pain; Eckhart Tolle names this “the Painbody”; ^^Noticing helps us to move from being the victim to being an agent.
Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen.* Robert Bresson
Ego breaks open – then you see what you really are.** Ram Dass
Beyond Ego there is Self, Beyond independence there is interdependence, Ego is necessary, but is not our continuing journey, The greatest adventure comes through the connected Self.
Drawing isn’t such hard work but seeing is.** Tom Vanderbilt
You can’t see what your group can’t see.^ Richard Rohr
Seeing is for life,^^ It is an infinite game skill – Seeing what is rather than what we think there is: Everything we are is a potential filter for seeing the world – It will take the whole of our lives and a lot of effort to see things clearly; For this I need your help
*This is always more than visually seeing; **Tom Vanderbilt’s Beginners; ^Richard Rohr’s The Tears of Things; ^^Art is primarily about seeing, providing a metaphor for life: the better our seeing, the better our living – not in comparison with others but for the sake of others.
laconic: /ləˈkɒnɪk/ Laconic is an adjective that describes a style of speaking or writing that uses only a few words, often to express complex thoughts and ideas
Let them wish you talked more. Let them wonder what you’re thinking. Let the words you speak carry extra weight precisely because they are more.* Ryan Holiday
The willingness to speak necessary words and make haste towards silence is an invitation to conversation.
The creative process is not a part of one’s life but life itself and all that it throws at you. For me, it was like the creative process, if we want to call it that, found its real purpose.* Nick Cave
The linear way is wildly out of sync with the lives we live today.** Anne-Laure Le Cunff
In a Mindful Doodling session I offered at a local university only yesterday, One of the participants shared how they thought their first doodle should be perfect but it was scrawl.
I loved this word as soon as they spoke it; When we’re beginning something, or playing with an idea, or trying to come to terms with something life has thrown at us, Our first attempts will nearly always feel like scrawl, But it’s how creativity begins, and beginning is more than half a win.
THIN|SILENCE 
You must be logged in to post a comment.