awe truly is all around us, if only we take the time to look* Jonah Paquette
As well as opening doors, the children made dens: the doors allowing access and adventure, the dens permitting retreat and shelter.** Robert Macfarlane
As we grow older, May we not neglect the doors to wander, to wonder, to adventure: Where does your mind go when it wanders? My friend Jason points out that this might be where your heart is.^
With each close friend, relative, or lover, a character evolves a version of himself that he could not bring out all on his own.* Robert McKee
No one sees reality. It’s worth repeating: No one actually sees the world as it is.** Seth Godin
We only become who we are capable of becoming through others, Especially those who are different to us – All the people we read or listen to or converse with around the things that concern and matter to us, And especially those interactions around things we hadn’t even thought about and that matter to them.
Openness is key to creativity – Something we know we’ll need plenty of if we are to save our world, Or be saved by the world – And the good news is that for the most part openness is free; The bad news is that it is becoming more scarce as we compartmentalise society and digitalise our lives – I love tech, but have to acknowledge we are losing contact with nature and humanity and the whole news, as well as reading longer texts and handwriting as a reflective tool and enjoying silence …
Creativity is the practice of keeping an open mind – and the thing about maintaining a practice is, well, you need to keep practising.^
Need: an empty inner space, a potential that craves realisation. At the inciting incident, the writer recognises an incompleteness in her protagonist … She therefore needs to complete her humanity.* Robert McKee
won’t you celebrate with me what i have shaped into kind of life? i had no model … i made it up here on this bridge between starshine and clay** Lucille Clifton
As well as desire, there is also need – the journey finding us wanting; Our urge is to shrink back, Protecting what we have, but, We can embrace our want, and if we do, then there can be what can only be called transfiguration.
The ego is you as you think of yourself. You in relation to all the commitments of your life, as you’ve understood them. The self is the whole range of possibilities that you’ve never even thought of. And you’re stuck with your past when your stuck with your ego.* Joseph Campbell
We need to have more specialists in spirit who will lead people into self discovery. … We are being called into metamorphosis into a far higher order, and yet we often act only from a tiny portion of ourselves.** Mr Tayer
The ego misses the possible, Either because it believes it’s above the possibility, or it isn’t good enough; The humble self that is Mr Tayer, full of awe and wonder, knows that we have no idea what we are truly capable of, and opens to discovery.
All he wants to do is draw. He is, thank goodness, unstoppable.* Jenny Uglow
Desire: a character’s persistent purpose, her unreached goal. Throughout a story’s telling, as the protagonist struggles to put her life back in balance, she pursues her object of desire as far as her emotional and mental powers can reach.** Robert McKee
All I want to do is dreamwhisper and doodle – That about sums it up; How about you?
I may be able to help you answer this question with some dreamwhispering, maybe even some doodling.
I shared recently that I have some places available for early 2024 – I only work with a few people at a time, on a one-to-one basis, And I am now developing this as part of a simple gift economy – Something I have been pondering for a while now^ – And it doesn’t matter where you are in the world.
You will identify, or be affirmed in, all of the most important elements for creating your unfolding story that is about your truest self and the contribution you want to bring to others.
Instead of working on the new year’s resolutions, You could uncover an amazing story: Just drop me a line to find out more: geoffreybaines@gmail.com.
*Jenny Uglow’s The Quentin Blake Book, speaking of Blake; **Robert McKee’s Character; ^If this is for you then I can share more about how this works when you contact me.
Life-as-Fate: If your character looks backward, rarely forward, she may feel trapped in a fate not her own. … Life-as-Destiny: If your character looks forward, rarely backward, she lives life on her own terms, freely choosing her own path.* Robert McKee
Men wanted for hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful, honour and recognition in case of success.** Ernest Shackleton
Allegedly, Ernest Shackleton printed this ad in a newspaper, and had more than five thousand applicants; Perhaps a desire on their part to move out of the soul-numbing into the life-tingling, To move themselves out of fate and into destiny: To prove they were alive.
This desire to pursue destiny is strong within each of us, and one place to begin – not thousands of miles away – Is within, Entered through quietness and attention: In that special silence, you get a strong sense of something that wants to happen that you would be unaware of otherwise.^
When Darth Vader delivered the line on destiny to his son, he had got it wrong, He was talking about fate, but Luke chose destiny.
*Robert McKee’s Character; **Maria Popova’s Figuring; ^Joseph Jaworski, from Peter Senge, Otto Scharmer, Jospeh Jaworski, and Betty Sue Flowers’ Presence.
Thread and bliss are two more words to add to the list of dream purpose meaning must element calling vocation – The word doesn’t matter as much as the question: There’s a thread you follow. It goes among things that change. But it doesn’t change.^
The composting metaphor suggests that mystical awe follows a pattern of decay, distilling and growth.* Dacher Keltner
Every move an infinite player makes is towards the horizon. Every move made by a finite player is within a boundary. Every moment of an infinite game therefore presents a new range of possibilities.** James Carse
Perhaps there is an idea, a thought, a theory, a belief, a paradigm that needs to be removed from it’s hermetic casing so that it might rot and drip its way towards feeding a new possibility
School and work push us to avoid real dreams. Dreamers are dangerous, impatient and unwilling to tolerate the status quo. Existing systems would prefer we simply fit in. The dreams we need to teach are the dreams of self-reliance and generosity. The only way for us to move forward is to encourage and amplify the work of people who are willing to learn, to see and to commit to making things better.** Seth Godin
When we realise that awe is something we all have to increase and develop – and likely in our own quite specific ways – We open up possibility and better.
Awe-based visual design enables us to see the world through awe, locating our individual selves within larger patterns of interdependence.** Dacher Keltner
THIN|SILENCE 
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