What to leave behind?

What to hold on to?

With whom do we walk?

A week ago I was part of a small group exploring the possibilities of futures and these were three questions we posited.

The question isn’t, Do we stay where we are or move into the future?: ‘Everything alive is in movement.’

We live with this reality every day of our lives.  In two days time I will be fifty-five years old.  How did that happen?  While I might wonder, I can’t deny it: life is change, is movement, and, gladly, becoming: ‘The secret heart of time is growth.’

Each one of us is capable of amazing things.  We call it potential* and it’s not easy to get this out, as my friend Steve Earl suggests:

‘It is always hidden within us, ready to leap out but it is
deeply afraid, so we must give ourselves strength to bring
it out.’

We cannot do everything.  We have to leave some things behind.  We must be indifferent to them.

We have to be clear about what it is we want to pursue and why.  These must be our strong preferences.

We need to find the people to journey with.  Who these are may surprise us:**

‘Part of the act of creating is in discovering your own
kind.  They are everywhere.  But don’t look for them
in the wrong places.’^

After eight years of exploration in the city I live in, I’m continuing to answer these three questions about the future, becoming clearer on what I must leave behind, what I must hold on to, and, who I must walk with.  I am very surprised by where I find myself today, but it is good:

‘It is a simple equation: no liminality, no adventure;
no adventure, no mission; no mission, no communitas.’ ^^

(*Recently a group of artists  I’m connected withexplored the basic idea of V=mc² (potential energy) in events which brought artists together to offer their art, and turning what we raised into micro-investment loans to help change the lives of people around the world.  It is a growing story.)
(**The answer to all three questions may surprise us.)
(^Henry Miller quoted by Austin Kleon in Show Your Work.)
(^^From Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost’s The Faith of Leap.  Liminality is the term given to threshold experiences: it can be disorientating, dangerous, marginal, and nquest – it can be any combination of these.  As such, it is neither here nor there, a place of transition.  We can understand places, experiences, people, and ideas as being liminal.  Victor Turner’s The Ritual Process is the classic text on liminality and communitas; Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces identifies how our legends and myths understand such movement to be crucial to Human experience and development.  Communitas is the term given to the community which forms around the mission or purpose: Steven Spielberg and Tom Hank’s Band of Brothers is a fascinating journal for this (I recommend watching it with others, rather than on your own).

This is different to asking, What are you good at?

Both are important questions.  Here’s how they work.

Those around you may be able to see you’re good at some things and not so good at others, and they might advise you to pursue this rather than that.  If you take notice of what they think, for some reason or other, you may end up doing the wrong things for you.

How does it feel? is an energy question.  It’s asking which of the skills you employ will be employed by you with energy and innovation, promising a multiplying of your unique contribution.

I know I have skills that I’ve developed to survive, and others have said they think I do these things well (often the things these people value most).  These things do not energise me, though, but I know others who love these things and perform them way better than I ever could.

This is one of the basic things I remind people of when it comes to identifying what they need to be doing.*  I’m thinking about this because I’ve recently been on the receiving end of someone looking at my skills but not asking How does it feel?  

Whilst it’s important to take seriously whatever someone intends as helpful,** one of the unfortunate consequences is we begin to question our hearts.  John O’Donahue didn’t know just his words would be very helpful to me when he wrote:

‘If you try to view yourself through the lenses that others
offer you, all you will see are distortions; your own light
and beauty will become blurred, awkward and ugly.’

O’Donahue goes on to liken negative introspection to digging up newly sown potatoes every day to see if they’re growing.

If someone is going to help us move towards what it is we must be about with our lives they have to open their hearts to us.  This goes beyond opening minds – which allows someone to recognise what we do and how we do it – towards their discovering something of what it feels like for us.  The thing with becoming open-heart people is that it’s impossible without our willingness to disclose our hearts to the one opening theirs to us.

Behind all of this formation of skill and energy there has been a journey.  This journey has required you that you let go of certain things to be able to keep hold of more important things – different for each of us.  An open heart recognises this and understands how these things cannot be picked up once more – we are moved onward by our journeys.

I have written previously about what Carlos Castaneda called the path with a heart; the reason the path has a heart for you is because it identifies with the beat of your heart.

Here’s one last thing from John O’Donahue, warning us to beware comparing and contrasting ourselves to others and their paths:

‘When you compare yourself to others, you are inviting
envy into your consciousness; it can be a dangerous
and destructive guest.’

(*I ask people to keep two lists as a first reflection tool: one begins “I loved it when …” and contains the things they’ve huge amounts of energy for; the other begins “I loathed it when …” and includes the things people feel sucks energy out of them.  You can read more in Marcus Buckingham’s Go Put You Strengths to Work; also, Austin Kleon mentions sculptor Constantin Branscusi‘s Vampire Test in his new book Show Your Work: ‘If, after hanging out with someone you feel worn out and depleted, that person is a vampire.  If, after hanging out with someone you still feel full of energy, that person is not a vampire.  Of course, the Vampire Test works on many things in our lives, not just people – you can apply it to jobs, hobbies, places, etc.)
(**I always spend a number of days reflecting on the things people say to me but I am careful in how I do this – check out Seth Godin’s connected thoughts which he offers today. )

You probably were.  You acted out of character and you wonder where it came from?

We are many selves and to look on our lives in this way can be both a helpful and healthy thing.

There are those people who appear to cope with all life throws at them, maintaining direction and purpose, but it is likely they’ve established a harmony between their different selves.

When I think about my life in this way, I realise the Me-Now hasn’t replaced any Me from other times.  They’re all still there.  I am the boy from outside the edge of town trying to find friends at school, or being picked on for I don’t know what reason, or the young man making mistakes because I thought there was one way to understand and do things.

I also know I can listen to a news story and be angry, disinterested, compassionate, concerned, almost all at once.

John O’Donahue helpfully writes:

‘The negative does not lie.  It will tell you clearly where
you court absence rather than inhabit presence.  On
entering your solitude one of the first presences to
announce itself is the negative.’

What we think of as negative my be a shallow way of describing the contradictions we find in our lives, between our different selves.  When we embrace these, rather than leaving them in their isolation (turning our internal enemies into friends), we can find the harmony we desire for our lives – a healing of our negatives.  W can then begin to reflect this out towards others.

The saddest thing is when someone is unable to do this, instead experiencing a disengaged life, or worse still, a destructive life.

Erich Fromm appears to be writing similarly  when he describes being fully awake – not simply to our basic needs, or even the things we are passionate about, but to everything and everyone:

‘One sees, not opaquely but clearly, the surface
together with its roots.’

And again, this links in with Otto Scharmer‘s thinking on being present to our world, to one another, and to our future Self (which are seeing means a harmony of all our selves).

Every Human develops their own language – the kind we speak to ourselves, to connect with the truest things about our lives.

This language emerges only in degree with our willingness to enter into solitude and silence.  Fyodor Dostoevsky referred to how people need to find themselves in themselves.

When we avoid this solitude (and the silence within it), we struggle to fully identify with and/or comprehend what our lives are saying to us.

There is the silence and then there is the language.  If there is language before the silence there is the strong possibility this is someone else’s language, second-hand, potentially burying our own.

We think of silence as being empty – and some silences are – but there is a silence which lies at the centre of our lives which is full to overflowing.

When we think of this silence as an emptiness, we are tempted to fill it with comforting, though ultimately, unsatisfying things.

When we hear and live the language emerging from this inner silence, we’re more able to join with others in the deep conversations our world hopes for – because we learn the language the silence is speaking to us.

At the end of all her journeying, the pilgrim* finds herself at the centre of her “soul,” knowing herself for the first time** – soul at least meaning the absolute entirety of everything she is.

After all the travelling of pilgrimage this is where we come to: the discovery that the things we were searching for are more in here than they are out there.   Perhaps this is the place we are most fearful of looking.^  How often do we believe the thing we seek is found in some new experience or circumstance or job or relationship or possession?  But so often it is the desire to know and contribute my whole heart to something?

Towards this, here’s a summary of the pilgrimage which brings me back to the beginning:^^

The pilgrim passes through a portal from what is known into what is not known: to know more of the world, others, and the future Self.

On the other side of the portal we must choose a path of aliveness which may not exist; we may travel this with others or have to walk it alone, but every path is ultimately about bringing aliveness to others.

Pilgrims are movement-people, seeking to bring their greatest aliveness to each day.

We are becoming people of permission, encouraging people to explore the future.

Pilgrims struggle with their monsters within as they journey.

We also avoid shamming – telling ourselves lies about our lives.

Pilgrims know they must live with responsibility towards their world, to others, and to their future Self.

We use playfulness and gamefulness as means of opening up serious matters, and because we want to enjoy the journey together.

Pilgrims are open to be changed by the very best people and ideas – and they guard against the trivial.

We understand we have a contribution to make to the great conversation or story.

Pilgrims keep moving on their path-which-does-not-exist, no matter what.

We know we must keep identifying the things which are most important to us, because there are so many possibilities to distract.

(*I use pilgrim and pilgrimage in a Human sense, that we are all travellers from something, to something, and we use outward experiences to enable inner transformation.)
(**Humans are creatures of endless depth and development, so, perhaps there’s an endless number of these first times.)
(^We can be afraid to look within because we often experience ourselves in isolation – including how we are different to others, rather than like ourselves – but solitude is different to isolation, and means it is possible to be very happy in who we are and know we have something beautiful to contribute.)
(^^Apologies for all the mistakes – these pilgrimage blogs were written quickly on phone or iPad with poor internet.  They are now tidied and re-presented.)

Pilgrimage provides surprising heroes, through whom the future emerges.

They are the ones who have done the hard and hidden work which makes them servants of the future, and of you and I.

This work is focused around a person’s preferences, as Karl Jung pointed as being necessary to develop as a Human; Erich Fromm suggests, ‘the art of living, is to will one thing.’

What is your one thing, your path which leads you to surprise?

As I write, my wife and I are preparing to return home.  The pilgrimage is coming to an end and I have to ponder all the things which have emerged.

There’s often lots more information, ideas, and possibilities than you and I can pursue when we make a pilgrimage or journey with purpose, so we must identify the things which are most important to us.  There are many things which are interesting but what we want to identify are the things which are drivers for us – the things we must pursue.

These are the things which show us the path which does not exist and we must make.

One of the things which had come out again from my own days of pilgrimage is to make possible for others what I’ve been writing about.*

(*Get in touch to find out more.)

What do we do when all there is before us is a path which does not exist?

You know in your heart where your path lies.

You are a pilgrim and you know this is not easy but you know what your life must be.

Keep going.

The Human story began when people asked questions about life and formed their questions into stories which could be shaped and re-shaped as they explored.  Perhaps, when written down, first by hand and then by print, it appeared the story was coming to a conclusion, that we finally knew how to answer some of our greatest questions.

This story, though, continues, gathering all expressions of Human life, seeking to make sense of them.  The greatest Human players in the story lived lives which asked more questions, even when they seemed to be offering answers.

Pilgrims enter into these stories within the Human story, respectful of the past and those who have gone before, open to those they travel with, but knowing they have a contribution to make which is unique, never to be repeated.

The story welcomes you and what you have to bring.

I’ve just completed a day with great people who have become an important part of my pilgrimage.

We’ve been able to share important things from our lives which are helpful to one another – the result of being part of a conversation with purpose towards the future.

Erich Fromm has it that every encounter with another Human changes us this way or that.  What is imperceptible in the single encounter would be more clear to us if repeated many times.  This idea connects with the mirror response we find in Humans, whereby we mimic others in order to connect – we are a connecting species.

Pilgrimage also brings us into contact with ideas and places which also change us this way or that.

There are creative and generous people, ideas, and places, we can be open to and changed by.

There are also trivial and wasteful people, ideas, and places we are careful to influence with creativity and generosity.

And there are all kinds of people in-between.*

In your pilgrimages, be open to as many of the first kind of people as you are able to, and be as wisely generous as possible with all the others.

(*Paulo Coelho’s ‘The Alchemist’ makes a great pilgrimage read.)