The human imagination can not be programmed by a computer. Our imagination is our greatest hope for survival.* Keith Haring
The earth is your customer, and many people will be aligned as you serve it.** Seth Godin
The important word in the title is “we.”
The human imagination is incomparable, And what occurs when Imaginations get together is nothing short of exponential; We’re discovering more about human community and about ourselves: The who-ness of someone can never be finally named, know, claimed, controlled or predicted.^
It’s a cause of relief. You get to give up on something that was always impossible – the quest to become the optimised, infinitely capable, emotionally invincible, fully independent person you’re officially supposed to be. Then you get to roll up your sleeves and start work on what’s gloriously possible instead.* Oliver Burkeman
The awakening of individuality is a continual unfolding of our presence.** John O’Donohue
Getting ready for the day – Wash, dress, breakfast, help others, Gather everything you need to take with you – Ready?, Or forgotten something?
How do you prime yourself for the best day today can be?
Intention gives us the power to describe and name possible futures. And possible futures help us claim the path we’re willing to work for.^
Priming enables us to more than reactive, To respond, or better still, To protect: Freedom comes from not being the direct reaction of your environment.^^
We speak of being our best self, but better than this is to be our true self, And a little time at the beginning of the day set in the most natural way for us – Perhaps quietness, journaling, reading, walking, Listening to inspiring music or a thoughtful podcast – Prepares us to be our strongest self and to make our contribution.
If you are using one of these ways or another, You already know the benefit: If not, Why not give one or other a test run for a week, or two?
Maybe we struggle to justify something like this to others or to ourselves, but as Seth Godin reminds us: Mortals must do what they are here to do or they will become cranky.*^ And no-one wants your cranky or mine: They want us to do that beautiful thing we are here to do.
Imagine a team member with all the traditional vocation skills: productive, skilled, experienced. A resumé that can prove it. A fine baseline. Now add to it. Perceptive, charismatic, driven, focused, goal-setting, inspiring ad motivated. Generous, empathetic, and consistent. A deep listener, with patience.*
But if we’re seeking a liminal state, the significance of getting from here to there, then we’re in a mode of discovery, not driving a train on a single set of tracks.* Seth Godin
To young children, of course, nature is full of doors – is nothing bt doors really – and they swing open at every step.** Robert Macfarlane
Fossicking is rummaging, searching, prospecting.
The dreamwhispering I get up to is about foraging through the hidden and/or unexplored parts of our lives, Delving beneath the surface of the obvious and familiar to the unnoticed or undervalued, Out of which emerges a richer story.
By the time we come to the end of a journey of conversations, there’s an agglomeration of thoughts, feelings, expressions, and possibilities to be sifted through; Every one can lead to somehere, to something, to someone – Smorgasboardian possibilities.
Many indigenous peoples share the understanding that we are each endowed with a particular gift, a unique ability. Birds to sing and stars to glitter, for instance. It is understood that these gifts have a dual nature, though: a gift is also a responsibility.* Robin Wall Kimmerer
To this quality of aliveness, the shan-shui artists gave the name zi-ran, which might be translated as “self-ablazement,” “self-thusness” or “wildness.”** Robert Macfarlane
That thing you love doing – which interests you so much that you have invested and sacrificed to hone it across the span of your life so that it defines you – That is what we need; It is where significance lies: the future we imagine is just that: not an alien anything, but what we imagine, what we can imagine. And often it’s what we can’t imagine that we’re most in need of.^
We need to see the subtle difference between the truth and the true. Truth is about accuracy, whilst being true is about intention.* Erwin McManus
The dream of prayer and art is to come nearer, even to slip through to dwell for a while in the vicinity of the essence.** John O’Donohue
Yesterday, my wife and I found ourselves on the wrong end of the M6 motorway being closed all day; It wasn’t that we had an impossible task returning home, but it was going to take longer and put on a load more miles.
If you find yourself wondering if you’re in the wrong place, Or doing the wrong work, or you’ve made a critical mistake, Or have lost that sense of purpose that once was yours, The good news is that returning to where you need to be is not impossible, It’s just inconvenient, and yet, Being true to yourself is always worth it.
(This is Friday’s blog and doodle (30 June): I must have got distracted at the important part of actually posting it! Apologies.)
Without mythic keys we have neither culture nor religion, no art, architecture, drama, ritual, epic, social customs, or mental disorders. We would have only a grey world, with little if anything calling us forward to that strange and beautiful country that recedes even as we try to civilise it.* Jean Houston
Whenever we attempt something difficult there is always a sense that we have to wake some slumbering giant inside ourselves, some greater force as yet hidden from us.** David Whyte
All that we think of as human life Resides upon story – Stories we tell ourselves collectively, and individually.
David Whyte tells us that work is a story that provides us with safety from “the wilder, nonhuman forces of existence,”** And Robin Wall Kimmerer’s telling of the Skywoman myth assures us that we will survive: we are always falling … spinning into someplace new and unexpected. Despite our fears of falling, the gifts of the world stand by to catch us.^
Our stories help us to understand our falls, To pick ourselves up, And to keep going.
Whyte goes on to ponder the modern-day lives that have become mythical for us: Parks, Churchill, King, Mandela, How they were simply living into or upon their own stories – Something we too must aspire to; Not to live their lives, for we cannot, But to daily live upon our stories.
conversation (n.) mid-14c., “place where one lives or dwells,” also “general course of actions or habits, manner of conducting oneself in the world,” both senses now obsolete; from Old French conversacion “behaviour, life, way of life, monastic life”
In the farmhouse all those years ago, I stumbled into conversational intimacy with a stranger and felt the whole course of my life pivot in the encounter.* David Whyte
Conversations are becoming endangered – Texts and voicemails and tweets are pushing them to the edges of our lives, Small screens in buggies cause us to wonder where the skills will be learned.
We are losing the “I had no idea we were going to talk about this when we began” for “I’ll tell you what I think (and I’m not interested in what you think)” – At-ness not with-ness.
I have a sense, though, that conversation will make a comeback because we are human, and this is where we desire to live most of all: I’ve found that every want can be distilled down into one: connection.**
(Dreamwhispering is, Firstly and foremostly a journey of conversations.)
THIN|SILENCE 
You must be logged in to post a comment.