The strange thing about life is that though the nature of it must have been apparent to every one for hundreds of years, no one has left an adequate account of it. The streets of London have their map; but our passions are uncharted.*
Virginia Wolff

One of the most important parts of growing up is to see ourselves as we really are instead of assuming we are what our parents and teachers told us we were.
Corita Kent

When people share with me the things
they love to imagine and do,
I have experienced at times a
sense of awe;
It reminds me to mention how you
may find the awesome inside of you
as well as outside.

We will likely wonder where that has
come from, but
when the realisation causes us
to grow in the
goodness of our being and ways,
We can be sure that we have encountered
the awesome:
Awe is the feeling
we have when we encounter the
monumental or immeasurable.
We experience a sudden
shrinking of the self,
yet a rapid expansion of
the soul.^

As Richard Rohr reminded us
a few days ago,
The soul is bigger than us,
Being our connection to every one
and every thing, as
David Whyte alerts us:
If we had very little in
the way of attention for the world,
then we actually had little in the way of
real existence.^^

Let us not be surprised, then, that
in finding the awesome within, we are
propelled outwards into an
astonishing day:
When we shift our mindset and
open ourselves to the awe of
daily life, we may
find opportunities to be
wowed
are all around us.*^

*Dacher Keltner’s Awe;
**Corita Kent and Jan Steward’s Learning By Heart;
^Nick Caves’s The Red Hand Files #157;
^^David Whyte’s Crossing the Unknown Sea;
*^Jonah Paquette’s The Wise Brain Bulletin: Mind Bending Awe.

Clichés grow in the barren mind of the lazy writer. … Create a story that only you could write.*
Robert McKee

Awe is a feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your current understanding of the world.**
Dacher Keltner

Presence
Vastness
Transcendence

This world is exactly the place you need to
leave the cliché behind and
begin the story
you are capable of.

If I can help with some
dream whispering,
Let me know.

*Robert McKee‘s newsletter: Why Story Needs Your Unique Vision;
**Dacher Keltner’s Awe.

How does awe transform us? By quieting the nagging, self-critical, overbearing, status-conscious voice of our self, or ego, and empowering us to collaborate, to open our minds to wonders, and to see the deep patterns of life.*
Dacher Keltner

We have it within our power to induce in ourselves a state that is ideal for learning, creating, and engaging in other kinds of complex cognition: by exercising briskly just before we do so.**
Annie Murphy Paul

How important awe is to finding
our place within life, and life
within us;
Humans have such power,
Yet without awe –
In the universe, in nature, in people, in ideas, in accomplishments
(awe is all around us) –
We can misuse and abuse this horribly.

*Dacher Keltner’s Awe;
**Annie Murphy Paul’s The Extended Mind.

Enjoy your obscurity while it lasts.*
Austin Kleon

If you follow the way of integrity far enough, you life may go beyond our culture’s definition of “normal” – not because you’re departing from reality, but because you’re connecting to it.**
Martha Beck

Obscurity can be a wonderful place for
exploring and playing,
To come up with something new that would
not be possible in the
limelight.

When we know the kind of place obscurity is,
We can visit, or
replicate it, when we
want to or need to.

*Austin Kleon’s blog: A message for graduates;
**Martha Beck’s The Way of Integrity.

A role is not a character. A role simply assumes a generic position in a story’s social order (Mother, Boss, Artist, Loner) and then carries out that role’s tasks … .*
Robert McKee

Whether a story is to be marked for grownups or children, the writer writes for himself, out of his own need, otherwise the story will lack reality.**
Madeleine L’Engle

The role comes scripted from
beyond us,
The character comes endlessly
unfolding from
within.

*Robert McKee’s Character;
**Madeleine L’Engle’s Walking On Water.

Your soul is much larger than you! You are just along for the ride. When you learn to live there, you will learn to live with everyone and everything else too.*
Richard Rohr

I am not going to attempt
a definition of the soul,
I only know that people
of all kinds of beliefs
use the word to describe
the biggest iteration of a human
they can imagine,
Which I guess is the point:
Greater expressions made possible
through connection to the
other.

*Richard Rohr’s Immortal Diamond.

The purpose of freedom is to free someone else.*
Martha Beck

I am not free if
I do not somehow seek to free others;
We often think about freedom from,
But freedom to may be more important:
For you to move into your fullness and
me to move into mine.

*Martha Beck’s The Way of Integrity.

More than ever, more of us have the freedom to care, the freedom to connect, the freedom to choose, the freedom to imitate, the freedom to do what matters.*
Seth Godin

To know yourself, you must recognise your rock-bottom inner self, compare your dreams to reality and desires to morality, and from that base explore the social, personal, private and hidden selves that complete your multifaceted humanity.**
Robert McKee

Whilst Confession is a personal
expression of faith in oneself,
And Communion with others allows for
the uncovering of the more within and
co-creation without,
The third critical C focuses these things within
a daily practice –
Activeness, as Erich Fromm named it;
Fromm also wrote about how
none of us are absolutely free, but
it is our responsibility to work out just
how free we are.

*Seth Godin’s It’s Your Turn;
**Robert McKee’s Character.

We need to allow ourselves to pursue hunches, to discover … nonobvious pieces of information and even more important, non-obvious relationships between new information already in our memory. … we need to give ourselves time to make new images and move them around inside our heads, and on paper, in new arrangements.*
Peter Turchi

nothing changes in the absence of tension**
gapingvoid

I am glad that I’m not the person
I was at twenty one,
Or thirty three,
Or fifty six –
Although each of these Geoffreys
is still a part of me –
They have helped me to who I am:
I am sixty one,
and I am also four,
and twelve, and twenty-three,
and forty-five,
and … and … and …
If we lose any part of ourselves,
we are thereby diminished.
If I cannot be thirteen
and sixty-one simultaneously,
part of me has been
taken away.^

I have changed,
Through complexity and randomness,
Through exploration and discovery,
Between the old and the new,
Life.

*Peter Turchi’s A Muse and A Maze;
**gapingvoid’s blog: Change sucks, or does it?;
^Madeliene L’Engle’s Walking on Water.

You can still get hold of my colouring book Slow Journeys in the Same Direction: A colouring with a little mindful purpose.

You may want to pick up a copy as a little gift for someone, or even for yourself. I’ve also kept the accompanying Slow Journeys website alive for some extra resource.

It’s always been a great price at only £5; here’s where to get it from.