On a quest, the process of transformation is at least as important, maybe more so, than the destination we’re trying to reach.* Sunil Raheja
“So far” and “not yet” are the foundation of every successful journey.** Seth Godin
“But it’s true!” So what, Badness is true, but we don’t want more of that, We want more goodness – Humility, gratitude and faithfulness are truths that show much promise. The best truth transforms us in this direction and is always a work in progress. If I see you’re really trying hard with your truth then it may well set me a little more free.
The best stories are vulnerable but not raw; they come from scars not wounds.* Bruce Feiler
Almost everyone is screwed up, broken, clingy, scared, and yet designed for joy.** Anne Lamott
The things we’ve got wrong, The messes we’ve made, The errors we’ve perpetrated, The flaws that adorn and decorate our lives, These work against us, Dictating our teleos, Reducing our options – Right? It seems not; There is not only reality but also imagination – Story, And when these play together, something wildly wonderful emerges.
Mythology opens the world so that it becomes transparent to something that is beyon speech, beyond words – in short, what we call transcendence.^
As our circumstances change, we need to tell our stories differently in order to bring out their timeless truth.* Karen Armstrong
That’s what humans do: we make and remake our stories, abandoning the ones that longer fit and trying on new ones for size.** Katherine May
Our ego, or false self, is the enemy, restricting, constricting us to be less than we can be. Each one of us struggles with false versions of our self, Sunil Raheja’s^ four signs of egocentricity helping us to see just how: Playing the comparison game, Defensiveness, Needing to display our brilliance, Needing to be liked and accepted. These shape a story we find ourselves living within, But the good news is that we can tells our stories differently. It is possible to be the brilliant and unique person that you are, Shaped by humility and gratitude and faithfulness. Perhaps counterintuitively, These remove the restrictions, Setting us free.
Acknowledging the reality of the extended mind might well lead us to embrace the extended heart.* Annie Murphy Paul
You have the right to remain silent. But I hope you won’t. The world conspires to hold us back, but it can’t do that without our permission.** Seth Godin
I’ve been asked to write a blog about doodling at Christmas, So I thought to share one of the things here that I’ll be including: Doodling extends the mind. And by Annie Murphy Paul’s argument, Potentially the heart – I would also add the will. Here’s Paul’s list of mind extensions: Interception (being more aware of what our body sensations are telling us), Movement, Gesture, Natural settings, Designing built environments, Space of ideas, Thinking with: Experts, Peers, Groups. Doodling appears as an expression of movement, When we are stuck with text, we can keep our hand – And our mind – Moving with a doodle. When we’re doodling, we’re listening, We’re moving with what we’re listening to:
One study found that people who were directed to doodle while carrying out a boring listening task remembered 29 percent more information than people who did not doodle, likely because the latter group had let their attention slip away entirely.*
There are lots of other reasons why doodling is good for us, But I thought you’d like to know this one and have a play.
Art is what we call it when we are able to create something new that changes someone.* Seth Godin
Our society doesn’t teach us how to be an effective giver of gifts. The schools don’t emphasise it. The popular culture is confused by it.** David Brooks
The maths are straightforward: There’d be a whole lot more good things in the world if we were looking to give rather than get – Things we haven’t even imagined as yet. Another dimension to this is that we don’t set up places to give what they can, because of “imposter syndrome” or “stereotype threat,” We all miss out and the world is a poorer place. But the fact is you’re in the game, And that changes everything.
Puhpowee, she explained, translates as “the force which causes mushrooms to push up from the earth overnight.”* Robin Wall Kimerer/Keewaydinquay Peschel)
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters to what lies within us.** Henry Stanley Haskins,
English does not have a word for the specific energy of a mushroom but Potawatomi does. Each person should have a special word to describe their own unique energy. A word can sometimes help us to see a thing more fully, Not only what something is but what it also can be; Find your energy, Name it, Live it, Bababoom!
when we listen to a story, our brain experiences the action as if it was happening to us* Annie Murphy Paul
Julia Cameron’s morning pages help unlock something inside. Not the muse or a magical mystical power, but simply the truth of our chosen identity. If you do something creative each day, you’re now a creative person. Not a blocked person, not a striving person, not an untalented person. A creative person.** Seth Godin
Stories are not only for entertainment, Research is showing that we learn more when the facts are presented as a story, We also remember more. It’s why dreamwhispering doesn’t bring a person to a list list of talents, energies and values, but to their story. When we write these down, not only do we find clarity, We also find intent: On your marks, Set, Go.
The human soul is hungry for beauty; we seek it everywhere – in landscape, music, art, clothes, furniture, gardening, companionship, love, religion and in ourselves. No one would desire not to be beautiful. When we experience the Beautiful, there is a sense of homecoming.* John O’Donohue
Living a good story … is more like writing a good story. And writing a good story happens when a writer has created the disciplined habit of sitting down to do the work.** Donald Miller
A collage usually involves pictures being used to create a new image, But why not do the same with words? I am encouraging people who begin dreamwhispering to firstly find and commit to some form of writing out their experiences and thoughts, also bringing the best of what they are reading or listening to, and also mixing some doodles in. Writing connects our inner and outer worlds in powerful ways.
Tackling the correspondence problem involves breaking down an observed solution into its constuituent parts, and then reassembling those parts in a different way … an ability to apply that underlying principle in a novel setting.* Annie Murphy Paul
We don’t want to feel less when we have finished a book; we want to feel that new possibilities have been opened to us.** Madeleine L’Engle
When the pressure’s on us or on a system, we see the truth of how things are:
“Connais-toi pour t’ameliorer” (“Know yourself to improve yourself”).^
Then follows the decision: Do we accept this or do something about it? If we want to do something about it, A good place to begin is by copying others, To imitate those who are ahead of us. Dreamwhispering does this, Borrowing from anywhere and everywhere. This is solving the “Correspondence problem,” How that over there might work over here. Of course, we’re doing this all the time in many small ways – Such as changing something about yourself after reading a book; What this is suggesting is that we do it in big ways, too. To be able to innovate in this way is itself a creative act. Towards copying, Don’t see the way something is being expressed or used as being the only way; even words used for a totally different purpose than the one you have in mind can inspire and guide:
When you get past making labels for things it is possible to combine and transform element into new things. Look at things until their import, identity, name, use, and descriptions have dissolved.^^
Whatever the reality you are facing, There is something, somewhere, Waiting to improve things.
It is about discovering and living all that we are intended to be, with awe and wonder.* Sunil Raheja
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.**
To live in awe and wonder is our mission, Our quest. Yet there is no such thing as a “quest superstore” in which we browse the shelves until we find the quest to suit us best of all (job done), Even though our education system suggests this is how it is – We must try things and notice things and pursue things.
It is not objection to say that a man is not merely a person in general, but a person finding himself in a particular situation. … He only exists by changing himself, and only by remaining unchanged does heexist.^
Alain de Botton speaks the truth we need to hear:
good art is the sensuous presentation of those ideas which matter most to the proper functioning of our souls – and yet which we are most inclined to forget, even though they are the basis for our capacity for contentment and virtue^^.
There is something in each of us that matters deeply to us and which we cannot shake, Even though we may sometimes forget, And when we do then we must go to the deep places of our lives:
Though so much else is in motion in the mind and the senses, the hidden heart never loses sight of us. If we ever feel lost or overwhelmed, all we have to do is become still and listen in to our heart and we will soon find exactly where we are.*^
THIN|SILENCE 
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