The world is alive, generous, and waiting patiently for us to figure it out.*
Tom De Blasis

Reality emerges in dialogue, ignites in presence, and unfolds in participation.**
AleXander McManus

We don’t have to slow
down to
listen and
feel and
play, but
we could.^^

*”Autopilot” is how Mindfulness describes moving through our lives without awareness; Theory U refers to this as “downloading.”
**Maria Popova and Claudia Bedrick’s A Velocity of Being;
^AleXander McManus’ Blue Moments;
^^The alternative to autopilot- and downloading-living is to open our minds, open our hearts, and open our wills – and example is the naturalist John Muir who would spend time making the acquaintance of new plants to him, even speaking with them.

But the act of looking at something does not create that thing; neither does the act of not looking annihilate it.*
Viktor Frankl

Staying open-handed, treasuring but not grasping, is critical to the contemplative stance.**
Krista Tippett

Beware the one who squeezes
tightly the name of subject or object;
Welcome the person who appelates
lightly because of what they cannot see and
do not know.

*Viktor Frankl’s The Doctor and the Soul;
**Krista Tippett’s Becoming Wise.

We don’t just get wise by adding and adding. We also need to subtract.*
Derek Sivers

We have to be braver than we think we can be, because God is constantly calling us to be more than we are.**
Madeleine L’Engle

If knowledge survives
learning, unlearning, and relearning, and
manifests itself in heart, soul, mind, and
body living, then it can probably be called
wisdom.

*Derek Sivers’ Hell Yeah Or No;
**AleXander McManus’ FutureU; from Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time.

What we call “mind” and “matter,” “material” and “immaterial,” are not separate realms, but names we give to the patterns that arise in an interactive dance.*
AleXander McManus

Distancing ourselves from the multidimensional world of the senses, coming to label and quantify and classify as our primary mode of knowing, we relieve ourselves from the abundance of these realities and say, with a sigh of relief, “This is only this, and that is only that.**
Jean Houston

If I could slow down, put aside
for a moment
the things that demand my attention but
won’t matter tomorrow, if
I would allow myself to be curious and
to explore this person, this view, this object, this idea, this
interruption,
Then I will understand this world is far from being
a this is only this and that is only that
world.

*AleXander McManus’ Blue Moments;
**Jean Houston’s The Possible Human.

If we don’t create and control our environment, our environment creates and controls us.*
Marshall Goldsmith

Reality, we begin to sense, is not made of things. It is made through relation – through generative interaction, where presence meets presence, where attention touches form, where the seen and the unseen converge.**
AleXander McManus

It’s a relationship.

We find ourselves in enriching and enervating environments –
These are different for each of us: one person’s deenergising space
can be energising for someone else;
We can’t always avoid the spaces that empty us, but the person who
knows and lives from their strengths^ is best able to relate and
co-create with their environments, avoiding damaging or being damaged.

*Ben Hardy’s Be Your Future Self Now;
**AleXander McManus’ Blue Moments;
^We are also creators of our energising or enriching environments.

Regardless of collective affiliations or influences, our challenge. in behalf of the wild soul and our creative spirit is to not merge with any collective, but to distinguish ourselves from those who surround us, building bridges back to them as we choose.*
Clarissa Pinkola Estés

We do not merely exist – we resonate. As light bends to gravity, so too do we bend toward one another.**
AleXander McManus

There is no box for you to fit,
Your true shape is unrepeated light;
Only as light with light shall
we find our belonging together,
Our completeness.

*Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ Women Who Run With the Wolves;
**AleXander McManus’ Blue Moments.

It was the road of trials. In the hero’s journey, it is a time of incredible tests.*
Jean Houston

Freedom means freedom in the face of three things: (1) the instincts; (2) inherited disposition;
and (3) environment.**
Viktor Frankl

Our instincts may not always be true,
Our dispositions not always helpful, nor our environments
nurturing; the easy paths will not
provide our freedom from
that which holds us back from becoming what
we each are capable of becoming –
We must test and question, and be prepared to
let go.

*Jean Houston’s A Mythic Life;
**Viktor Frankl’s The Doctor and the Soul.

The moments you lose yourself in are clues.*
Martin Amor and Alex Pellew

There is only
the moment,
The action,
The other,
Beyond ego,
Even beyond true self,
There is soul.

What are you doing?
Why are you doing it?
Who are you doing it with or for?
When are you doing it?

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

I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.*
John Cage

Derek Sivers’ Hell Yeah or No.

Yes, we must continue to read and write and cipher, but we also need to embrace an education for liberating the ability to imagine, to dream, and to expand the limits of the possible.*
Jean Houston

And we are part of the universe – dreaming creatures made of clay and lightning.**
AleXander McManus

Wallace Stevens wrote about
the pressure of reality and
the power of imagination;^ how
the one doesn’t overpower the other,
But when they converse and co-create,
A new reality is created.

*Jean Houston’s A Mythic Life;
**AleXander McManus’ Blue Moments;
^Wallace Stevens The Necessary Angel.