Remember you are mortal.

The fifth elemental truth is: You are going to die.

Every one of us, without exception.

Quantitatively, one minute measures exactly the same for each of us.

Qualitatively, one person’s minute looks completely different to another’s.

We overestimate what we can do with a day – my problem every day.

And we underestimate what we are able to do in a lifetime.

When we use our moments to focus on the negative in ourselves and one another we can get very stuck: ‘focusing on the pathologies of depression, anxiety, suicide, and PTSD was the tail wagging the dog’.*

When we use the same moments to focus on the positive in ourselves and one another we progress: ‘positive expectations allow is to enjoy things more and improve our perception of the world around us.  The danger of expecting nothing, is that, in the end, it might be all we get.’**

This focus of moments on the positive is referred to in several ways, including: positive inquiry, mindfulness, wellbeing, presence, and resilience.  Each of these means provides understands it is possible for our essential Self to learn a positive joie de vivre, out of which our creativity flows.

We can begin to use our time more positively by asking a question.

Why does this happen in this way?
How might we do this better?
What would the world look like if this changed?
What if lots of people got involved in this?
If there are particular skills to move this, that are they?
Who has/have these skills?
If we don’t know anyone who has these skills, how can we find them?
Who do we know with the skills to find the people with the skills we need?
What are some of the obstacles preventing people from using their skills?

The first question isn’t the thing.  You’re not looking to answer the first question, but to find the next question (as I did, above, in a few seconds) and the next – rather than providing an answer.  You don’t want to be the expert when the expert is defined as “the person who has the answer.”  Unless it’s an expert at asking questions.

As neurologist Robert Burton proffers:

“Why did I ask that question? … Every time you come up with a question, you should be wondering, What are the underlying assumptions of that question?  Is there a different question I should be asking?“^

We are beginning to use our time differently.

Memento mori.  Now we can live within a different question.

(*From Martin Seligman’s Flourish.  Seligman is arguing a more critical response to be made in the direction or resilience and growth.)
(**From Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational.)
(^From Warren Berger’s A More Beautiful Question.)

We cannot know another in a few moments.

Even when we know someone, we cannot say this is everything this person will be.

We have a lifetime in which to become all we can be.  Often the best of what we can be we fall into; we react, and respond, and preact to life around us which comes to us in the form of procreation and problems and people and policies.  We dance with the accidental.

As Richard Rohr closes his exploration of the second half of life he reflects on a poem from Trappist Thomas Merton.  These words most caught my attention:

“Be still
There is no longer any need for comment
It was a lucky wind
That blew away his halo with his cares
A lucky sea that drowned his reputation.”*

I make the journey from my small world, towards the edge, to look out into the bigger world of others and more, so I might leave my world and enter theirs, to gaze back upon myself and to see a bigger world from the perspective of another, until this becomes my new world.

Then I begin this journey again: ‘we are created to create.  In an ideal world, this creative energy is to be used to create the good and the beautiful and true.’**

How we see our lives will determine how we treat others.  Eckhart Tolle describes the person for whom lack (scarcity) has become part of who they are.  Each experience for this person is lack.  This is all they can give to others and see in others, but: ‘Acknowledging the good that is already in your life is the foundation for all abundance.’^  Perhaps seeing the good in the lives of others is a place to begin?

‘If I can’t solve this for myself, how can I at least make this better for other people.’^^

I’m not yet what I will finally be.  I must beware being judgemental, cynical, or fearful: this is the world I’ll create for others.  All I can do is pursue the good, the beautiful, and the true.

‘I can tell that there is an undeniable relationship between happiness and resilience.  People who enjoy life make life more enjoyable for others.**

(*Thomas Merton, quoted in Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward.)
(**From Erwin McManus’s The Artisan Soul.)
(^From Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth.)
(^^From Ryan Holiday’s The Obstacle is the Way.)

Do we really want a magical mirror to tell us the truth?

Maybe it isn’t the other person’s fault you feel the way you do?  Maybe it isn’t the organisation getting in your way?  Maybe no one and no thing is holding you back?

‘Nothing can inhibit your second journey except your own lack of courage, patience, and imagination.’*

We already have plenty of mirrors to tell us what we need to know.

Eckhart Tolle points to one when he warns us, ‘How you react to people and situations, especially when challenges arise, is the best indicator of how deeply you know yourself.’**  When we struggle with something in another person we’re identifying something in ourselves, and vice versa.  When a situation is difficult, it is helping us to see our shortcomings.

Sometimes the mirror can be a story someone is telling us or we’re reading which offers us a bigger perspective on seeing ourselves and each another: ‘Story – sacred and profane – is perhaps the main cohering force in human life.  A society is composed of fractious people with different personalities, goals and agendas.  What connects us beyond our kinship ties?  Story.’^

A third mirror – connected with people, situations, and stories – is the future.  When we “get” that we can imagine a different future to our past, and begin to create it – together with others, we break the chain our memories can become:

‘Your remembered experiences then shape what your brain is CAPABLE OF SEEING, as well as what it PREDICTS AND EXPECTS TO SEE.  Your brain relies on its memories to sum up your past and imagine the future.’^^

You’ll have spotted this can mean something positive or negative.  When we colour present experiences with the memories of our past, the destroy hope.  Creating positive future memories is another mirror available to us.

Each of these mirrors enable us to see our true self: important, as we’ll need to embrace the truth of who we if we are to move forward:

‘If you don’t walk into the second half of your own life, it is you who do not want it.’*

Freed from ‘dredging and redredging the tired, boring injustices of our personal lives,*^ which drains us of energy, we can become makers, creators, of something better.

It is not about being perfect or complete, but as we become people who connect rather than disconnect, gratefully seeing all we have, we’ll be surprised just how far we can go; beyond persisting, we’ll persevere: ‘But perseverance is something larger.  It’s the long game … until the end.’^*

We can only live within our limitations, but they are not as scary as we think.  They are only a prison whilst we hide away from them: ‘Every creative endeavour becomes a realisation of both how limited and how unlimited we are.’⁺

The mirrors are already telling you something.

(*From Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward.)
(**From Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth.)
(^From Jonathan Gottschall’s The Storytelling Animal.)
(^^From Sunni Brown’s The Doodle Revolution.)
(*^From Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art.)
(^*From Ryan Holiday’s The Obstacle is the Way.)
(⁺From Erwin McManus’s The Artisan Soul.)

The best questions help us to see more and more, the invisible slowly revealing itself.

From a dualistic (either/or) perspective, questions keep on dividing.

From a nondualistic (both/and) perspective, questions lead us to the greater whole.  Albert Einstein sought a unified field; Stephen Hawking pursues a theory of everything.

‘Whole people see and create wholeness wherever they go.’*

Dualistic thinking is more elementary.  It gets us to the right starting point – here rather than there.  It doesn’t help so much to explore here.

How many squares do you see on the left and then on the right in today’s doodle?

On the left there are sixteen, but on the right there are at least thirty – although there are the same number of squares, whether they are connected or not makes a huge difference.  The best questions take us deeper and deeper without fear of separating and dividing.  Ultimately, we’ll come to see how everything and everyone is one, in a beauty we cannot begin to imagine, never mind articulate.

Einstein pointed out. most people stop looking after they’ve found the needle in the haystack, but he would keep looking until he found the better needle.

(*From Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward.)

Vuja de, as the opposite of deja vu, is “the strange feeling that, somehow, none of this has happened before.”*

Comedian George Carlin developed his comedy around observing the ordinary in a new way.  IDEO‘s Tom Kelley offers, vuja de is being able to “see what’s always been there but gone unnoticed.”**  Future-people see and understand what exists now in ways others don’t.

At the age of sixty seven, Thomas Edison saw things differently.  He was watching all his work go up in flames, as a fire destroyed his buildings.  He sent his son to bring his wife and her friends, to watch the green and yellow flames, saying, “They’ll never see a fire like this again.”^  But Edison saw something else others failed to see – it wasn’t him and his passion being burnt to a crisp – and within weeks his business was up and running again.

In another example, the Dalai Lama counsels, “Learn and obey the rules very well, so you will know how to break them properly.”^^

The art of vuja de is the ability to live in the same world as everyone else yet see it in a different way.  This outlook is so different, it’s often seen as futuristic, opening up the second half of life I’ve been thinking about recently, so:

‘How can I honour the legitimate needs of the first half of life, while creating space, vision, time, and grace for the second?’*^

We all can learn the art of vuja de, though it is not easy.

We will have to be more observant than we are.  In our downloading and rushing existence, we are more conscious of the “bottom lines” of life.

So we slow down, step back, and forget what we know, so we might what we cannot see and we do not know, and make the invisible, visible.

(George Carlin, quoted in Warren Berger’s A More Beautiful Question.)
(Quoted in Warren Berger’s A More Beautiful Question.)
(^From Ryan Holiday’s The Obstacle is the Way.)
(^^Quoted in Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward.)

This is the way of growing and protecting the opening mind, heart, and will as a Human life moves through the first simplicity of childhood and adulthood, into the second simplicity lying beyond complexity.

Maturity seen through this lens is about connecting seeing, feeling, and actioning.  As we continue in this way, we nurture our little-oneness, continually seeking to see more, feel more, and do more.

The alternative is to grow judgemental, cynical, and fearful.

One way opens up possibility, the other closes it down.  Zen Master Shunryu Suzuki described the “beginner’s mind”: ‘In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.”*

Woe to us if we don’t protect little ones, including our own little-oneness: ‘Beginner’s mind is akin to adopting a more childlike mindset.’**

Little-oneness reminds is we never arrive, we’re never the finished article, we must always remain open to  our future Self.

Here are a few practices towards this: ask more questions, meet more people, try more new things.

(*Quoted in Warren Berger’s A More Beautiful Question.)
(**Warren Berger in A More Beautiful Question.)

I know I don’t have to be.  I know I’m capable of more.

If I don’t make my journey through life well, I’ll enter the second half of life having opinions on every thing, every event, and every one, and I’ll just have to let you know – with some resentment and anger.

I can choose to live the unlived life, though:

‘Most of us have two lives.  The life we live, and the unlived life within us.  Between the two stands Resistance.’*

The resistance comes from both within and without, but I can choose to be thrilled, intrigued, saddened, delighted, guided and mentored by the world full of people and  things.  And I’ve noticed how many of those who teach and mentor me are half my age.

We get another chance.  A chance to be who we are at our very best.  Many don’t think it’s possible, sadly – often because they’ve given in to the resistance.**  As for us, it no longer matters what others think or say.  The only thing now is to dance in the second simplicity, living as our lives ask us to, generating life and art from who we are and what we have for the benefit of others – which somehow takes away regrets and puts a smile in our heart.

Francis of Assisi said it well:

“The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better.”^

We are falling into better, the very good, the true, and the beautiful life.

(*From Steve Pressfield’s The War of Art.)
(**This resistance takes the form of judgement, cynicism, and fear.)
(^Quoted in Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward.)

Not a return to the once simple and uncomplicated life.

This second simplicity lies on the other side of complexity and perplexity, embracing all we’ve discovered and not been able to discover: ‘Wisdom happily lives with mystery, doubt, and “unknowing,” and in such living, ironically resolves that very mystery to some degree.’*

Oliver Wendell Holmes declared, “I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.  A mind stretched by a new idea can never go back to its original dimensions.”

Alfred North Whitehead concurred, speaking about “the only simplicity to be trusted is the simplicity to be found on the far side of complexity.”

This is more than wrestling with all the information and knowledge we have.  Erwin McManus proffers how an open life is ‘less about gathering information than it is about expanding imagination.’**

This kind of second simplicity is not guaranteed automatically or by some happy accident.  It can be entered, though, through the disciplines of humility, gratitude, and faithfulness, else we think we have “made it” when we haven’t even begun.  Then, what we have become, we pass on to others – imaginatively, as Erwin McManus reminds us.

What this makes possible is incredible presence, unlike anything we’ve known before: being able to be present to what is – both known and unknown.  We find we’re able to take being present to new levels.  We become producers of presence, making the invisible visible.

One example of simplicity on the far side of complexity would be the transformation of the group or team which otherwise wastes large amounts of time plodding through its meetings because the issue, data, and relationships in the room are not charged with imagination unleashed through presence, or, to avoid this, run to simple answers too quickly.

(*From Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward.)
(**From Erwin McManus’s The Artisan Soul.)

The British tell their history differently to the countries they’ve encountered and engaged in their stories.  Jonathan Gottschall calls these our national myths which ‘tell us that not only are we the good guys, but we are the smartest, boldest, best guys that ever were.*  Nations do this to nurture national identity, but it involves a lot of forgetting.  Our memories are selective.

This is also true on a personal level: ‘Your remembered self is your translation of life.’**

Like maps, these myths select, identify, and remember only the things useful for our particular purpose, repressing or ignoring all the other information – which can lead to damaging and even destructive consequences:

“By accepting such premises it becomes easier to see how appropriate they are to manipulation by the powerful in society.”^

It’s a form of selective amnesia.  Whilst we may try to forget bad things about ourselves, we can also forget really good things.  And our maps may help us to get from A to B faster but they don’t help me to focus on the “me” travelling.

‘Life is a matter of becoming fully and consciously who we already are, but it is a self that we largely do not know.  It is as though we are all suffering from a giant case of amnesia.’^^

Like stories, if we only include the positive bits, it’s a poorer story; we need characters to adapt and change, and for this we need the bad bits to be included too.

Dan Ariely points out three “quirks” of ownership: we fall in love with what we own, we focus on what will be lost rather than what will be gained, and, we think others will value what we have as much as we do.*^  Which sounds a lot like the national myths we began with.

To be attentive to what we’re missing will require we find times times when we can stop doing and to stop knowing the things we own in order to see the more.

‘Remember, the artisan soul finds truth in essence, not in information.  It is who we are that is the material for our greatest work of art. From that essence we begin to discover our own voice, and that inner voice is the declaration of our authentic story.’**

(*From Jonathan Gottschall’s The Storytelling Animal.)
(**From Erwin McManus’s The Artisan Soul.)
(^J.B. Harley, quoted in Denis Wood’s The Power of Maps.)
(^^From Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward.)
(*^From Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational.)

What if you had the opportunity to embark on an adventure of a lifetime – one suited to what you really would enjoy and most benefit from?  A trip to some paradise island, or a safari, or high-seas cruise, or extreme sport extravaganza?

You’d be really disappointed you’d missed out on this offer because you didn’t pick up the call from the unfamiliar number or trashed the email or failed to open the envelope.

But this is exactly the opportunity we’re given in this one life:

“Life is a luminous pause between two great mysteries which themselves are one.”*

We need magnificently wonderful emporiums of travel in which people can identify their adventure, pick up their itinerary and travel tickets and go: where to?, who will we meet?, what will we see?, what will we do?, how will our lives be changed and change others?

Yesterday, I told part of the story of Edwin Land, who created the polaroid camera following a question his three-year old daughter Jennifer asked him.  It resulted in Land ‘distancing himself from his own assumptions and expertise.  For a moment he stopped knowing and began to wonder.’**  Land opened his mind, which led to opening his heart, which led to a thirty year journey of creation.  The Magnificently Wonderful Emporium of Travel is a place for stepping back from what is known in order to wonder and then to take the first step.

‘A significant part of artistic challenge is to go beyond interpreting human experience to be an interpreter of human possibility.’^

The journey from potential to potency requires clarity of purpose and self-mastery towards the future.  Here we find faith helping us.  Faith is not a belief we have or are a part of, but something which changes us towards action which changes the future.

Potential is something we all have, it comes with the possibility of thriving.  To live this potential requires skill times effort.  Skill is made up of talents, effort is produced by character: ‘the role of character and where character enters the equation is as “effort.”  Effort is the amount of time spent on the task.’^^

The emporium’s doors are open to all:*^

“Old men ought to be explorers
Here and there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For another union, a deeper communion’^*

(*Carl Jung, quoted in Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward.)
(**From Warren Berger’s A More Beautiful Question.)
(^From Erwin McManus’s The Artisan Soul.)
(^^From Martin Seligman’s Flourish.)
(*^This idea of a travel emporium is an actual concept I’m working on with others, which I hope to see expressed in some way in 2015.)
(^*T. S. Eliot, quoted in Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward.)