Tuesday 18 March 2008

Being the change

Have you ever got to a point in your life and thought, "Hmm - not sure what to do next, not sure I want to carry on doing what I'm doing, not sure I want to go back to doing things the same way I've done them before. I want something different, something that I can feel true to, that reflects me as I am today"?

Sometimes there's a feeling of having "missed the boat", or of not being able to recognise which river the boat is on.

This is something like I'm feeling right now. It can be very unsettling, and can induce lots of uncertainty. It can even feel like a total crisis in self-confidence.

Typically our reaction is to fight it, struggle against the tide of the river that we find ourselves in, find familiar patterns in work and life which may not be ideal, but which we can at least relate to.

An alternative approach is to "go with the flow", not to fight, but to watch and wait calmly and curiously, and see what emerges next.

This approach demands a lot of patience, and not a small amount of faith in the fact that something WILL emerge, it has to, because our minds are endlessly creative and resourceful. What we've got to get good at in this circumstance is paying attention to what our minds are coming up with and turning our attention to it in moments that don't feel like struggle.

The title of this entry is "being the change". What I mean by that is to take heed of what our minds are quietly urging us to do and moving in sync with that. In order to be successful in this practise we need to have greater mindfulness, greater awareness of our thoughts, and be able to distinguish between the qualities of our thoughts. (Bizarrely, I notice that being mind-ful is actually to have our minds empty of distracting thoughts. Funny that.)

For me, when there is struggle I experience thoughts that seem to shout at me in my head. They are impatient and exasperated thoughts, with a breathless quality, over-eager in their enthusiasm and over-ambitious in their scope. It is also frequently very difficult to remember from one moment to the next what the thought was, so flimsy and unenduring are they. These are thoughts whose voice sounds like an over-bearing parent or teacher, who wants to see more achieved than they have been able to achieve for themselves. If I read these kinds of out-pourings in my journal they come across as being mildly hysterical, the hall-marks of a desperate and over-worked thinking process.

Conversely when my thoughts are true and on target they have a quieter, more effortless and timeless quality. They have a calm, sustained endurance and a simpler message. Like a quietly insistent and uncomplicated demand. "Just write, just write, just write." When I take heed of these thoughts my journal is full of ideas, paragraphs, narratives such that I can pick and choose from to shape my stories and my work.

I know that as long as I keep believing in the resourcefulness of the human mind, keep paying attention to the quiet, enduring messages I receive, and develop my practise with conviction, commitment, discipline and rigour, then I can avoid that feeling of disorientation and lack that my busy, fearful thoughts like to grab hold of and worry like a dog with a rag.

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