Positioning

The poet places himself where the future becomes present.*
Lewis Hyde

Who can remind me that the journey is possible, and offers support when I need it? Who are my teachers, my mentors, my sponsors, my awakeners?**
Roger Dilts

Some position themselves for power whilst
others position themselves for service –
The former can lose their power,
The latter will always be powerful.

*Lewis Hyde’s The Gift;
**Stephen Gilligan and Roger Dilts’ The Hero’s Journey.

There is only the path

When the ego steps out of the way, the soul neither wins nor loses. The soul triumphs over nothing and cannot be defeated. Nor does it comfort us in our losses. These are matters of ego and therefore matters of indifference to the soul.*
James Carse

So your threshold is the point at which you’re going to go into new and challenging territory that you’ve never been in before, and there’s no turning back.**
Roger Dilts

Perhaps there are no thresholds,
There are only the paths that leads us through –
Formed by each self’s “innate exuberance,”*
Often self-unnoticed, yet we have each been walking this way
for all our lives.

*James Carse’s Breakfast at the Victory;
**Stephen Gilligan and Roger Dilt’s The Hero’s Journey.

The longest journey

The ego is the dualist in us. It is the habit we have of seeing ourselves over and against someone else … As ego, my wealth, intelligence, moral goodness, social class are what they are in contrast to the person next to me.*
James Carse

In the pursuit of knowledge, every day something is added. In the practice of the Tao, every day something is dropped.*
Lao Tsu

In the gag, the celebrity asks,
“Don’t you know who I am?”,
The person out of whom they are trying to gain some favour replies,
“Why, don’t you remember?”

To remember who we are,
We must forget;
We let go in order to let come
An ability requiring a lifetime.

*James Carse’s Breakfast at the Victory.

The everyday spiritual

In medieval monasteries, the art of copying and illuminating libraries of manuscripts, of putting wisdom and prayer to paper, was seen as a spiritual process in itself.*
Kassia St Clair

It’s not that your personality itself becomes stable but rather that your routine environments and social roles lock you into habitual patterns.**
Ben Hardy

Many a working day hold the sort of elements that can be reimagined as spiritual practices;
You continue to do the work, but are also connecting with what is deeply important to you –
Win/win.

The way you speak to someone,
The composition of emails,
How you use the walk between departments,
Reading information,
Making decisions …
Whatever you identify,
It’s worth contemplating how you might use it
to connect to the deepest you.

*Kassia St Clair’s The Secret Lives of Colour;
**Ben Hardy’s Personality Isn’t Permanent.

Just a doodle 139

Look Look Look Look Look Look Look!  I’m running away with my imagination.*
Ruth Krauss


*Ruth Krauss’ Open House for Butterflies;
**The doodle is a one liner – doodled with only one line without lifting the pen from the paper, made with the small group at the University of Central Lancashire recently. I have included a vectorised image for you to print off and add your own colours to, or, the best is to create your own one-liner.

To do one’s best

Biological destiny is the material which must be shaped by the free human spirit. This, from the point of view of man, is what it exists for.*
Viktor Frankl

Imperfect and proud of it.**
Seth Godin

You are irreplaceably imperfect –
Viktor Frankl’s words,
Out of which your creativity and beauty emerges;
There are perhaps two requirements:
A determination to overcome the disablements and
obstacles of your destiny, and
an endeavour worthy of endless pursuit^
Which may emerge from the struggle to
shape your destiny.

*Viktor Frankl’s The Doctor and the Soul;
**Seth Godin’s blog: Craft and imperfection;
^Katherine Morgan Schafler’s The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control.

Just a doodle 136

The person who has overcome greed does not cling to any idol or anything and hence has nothing to lose: he is rich because he is empty, he is strong because he is not the slave of his desires.  He can let go of idols, irrational desires, and fantasies, because he is in full touch with reality, inside and outside himself.*
Erich Fromm

*Erich Fromm’s The Revolution of Hope.