The (in)absolute of certainty

In, Creative Transformation: A Practical Guide for Maximizing Creativity, ethicist, scientist and philosopher, John David Garcia states, "creativity is destroyed by inaction."

I get it!

Writing here every morning, awakening without always a clear idea or notion about what I will be writing, is an exercise in trust and action. I trust the 'muse' to flow. I take the action necessary to give voice to the flow.

According to Garcia, when we fail to take action, we fail our purpose. And living without purpose, is to live an unfulfilled life.

It is a vicious circle.

There is no such thing as 'absolute certainty', It is, as Garcia writes, 'an illusion'. In fact, absolute certainty is stultifying. It limits options. To believe I know something with absolute certainty is to suggest there is nothing else to learn, that no new information can be received that would revise my view or opinion or belief about something.

And that just ain't so!

There is always something new to learn, to discern, to understand about everything -- including, and especially, about myself!

When I take the position that I know everything there is to know about me, that I cannot change, or cannot learn something new, I discourage input and creativity. I block myself off from the muse, from the creative flow that moves all around me and within me. I lock myself into a box and shut the lid.

It is, in my experience, one of the most stultifying aspects of thinking 'inside the box'. I am the one who created my box. I am the one willfully (and virtually) keeping myself there.

There is no box. Seriously. There is no box.

We create it. In our minds. It does not exist anywhere else.

And while I can't say with 'absolute certainty' that we can all get out of the box, I can take action to remove the box from my thinking, and to live my purpose, inspire others to take action to remove the boxes from their thinking too!

And that I do know. We all have the power to get rid of our boxes. We all have the power to take action.

And I'm off to an early morning meeting and then back to the dentist. While I was hopeful, it seems the root canal did not alleviate the pain in my jaw. Gotta go take action and create opportunities for well-being in my body.

Namaste.

Upon the wind

The storm had blown through when Ellie and I set out for our walk. Above, rain laden clouds hung like pregnant whales floating in an ocean of grey. A hawk glided on the wind that rustled through the trees whispering stories of the places it had been and wild flowers bent their heads towards the earth offering up their seed pods to be borne upon the breeze.

It was a blustery, beautiful evening for a walk.

Ellie, oblivious to the wind and clouds above sniffed and snuffed her way along the path. In a former life I swear she was a horse. She loves to eat grass and canters like a quarterhorse if let off leash.

Me, I am earthbound, grounded, firmly planted on this great ball of life spinning through space. I am mother earth's child, illusions cast to the wind, reality gripping me in its gravitational pull to keep on trekking, keep on putting one foot in front of the other. There is much to see, and even more to do in whatever time I have to create my path through this world of wonder all around me.

Life is good.

Even when memories pull at gravity, opening doors into another element of the past that lay forgotten on the trail from there to here.

It happens occasionally. Not often anymore, though in the past, these moments came more frequently. Perhaps it is as we move beyond the pale of 'what was' into what is true today, gravities drag looses its intensity as we become more centered in the now.

I think the trigger came in a comment I read in Jim Loehr's, The Power of Story. "Individual and collective disasters happen when we don't examine our story to see if it's really ours anymore." p183 He went on to write about Stockholm Syndrome and wrote, "if you don't start listening to your intuition, you make your evolving story vulnerable to hijacking, to rerouting, to programming."

I have a story from the past that shed light on my life in ways I never could imagine. Sometimes, like storm clouds rolling in from the north, however, it sweeps in to pull me back, to remind me of 'what was and shall never be again.'

And when it does, sometimes, my imagination gets caught up in the thrall of the story swooshing in with the wind, and I begin to vibrate like leaves on the tree rustlings.

The story's pull manifests itself in odd and disturbing ways. I walk into the garage and imagine 'he' is standing outside waiting for the door to roll up. I once asked a security expert if I was wrong to get into my car and lock the doors before opening the garage and he said "No. You live in the inner core of a big city. That's just smart behaviour."

It is a fine line between defying gravity versus living freely in the moment of now.

Yesterday, as I loaded Ellie into the back of my car I waited until I was inside before opening the garage door. Changes in my habitual behaviours need to be observed. I need to question myself -- "what is this about?" "What am I fearing?" "What does this signify?" "How real is this 'fear?'"

I smiled as I pulled out of the garage, doors locked. "He" wasn't there but he was taking up headspace -- and that's a place he doesn't need to be.

I thought about my actions as Ellie and I walked along the ridge that skirts the river valley far below.

What if 'he' was standing outside the door?

There was a time when my daughters feared he would hunt me down and kill me. There was a time when I feared his presence.

But I faced that dragon. Turned into the wind and confronted it head on.

He had already tried that. And more importantly, my life is not the most precious thing I hold dear. My family is.

I learned that through those dark and cloudy days of his walking through my life.

I almost lost my family back then. And then I had the chance to reclaim what I love the most in this world. My daughters and my relationship with them.

To have lost my family would have been more devastating than my life because in losing my daughters, the story of my being a victim would have perpetuated itself through their lives. They would have continued on their journeys believing their mother hadn't loved them enough to turn up, to fight for her life.

I have been blessed. I have had the opportunity for redemption. I have had the gift of healing, a gift founded in Love. A gift more valuable than any I have ever been given. I have reclaimed my relationship with my daughters. Rebuilt my family.

I am truly blessed.

I walked along the ridge last night, wind blowing at my back as Ellie and I walked eastward, pushing me away, away from those times, those dark clouds of discord that veil the beauty of today when I give into the pull to succumb to fear.

I have no need of locking away my heart. No need to put up my defenses to protect my thinking. I open the windows and doors of my mind and set my thinking free to soar, to roam to glide upon the wind like an eagle catching the updrafts.

And in the meantime, when I feel the pull, I'll lock my doors and keep the boogie man at bay. He doesn't deserve the time of day to disturb my peace of mind!

Namaste.

Painfree

To control others is to have power, to control yourself is to know the way. Lao Ma

Relief at last. My dentist drilled and pulled and cleaned out root canals and the pain has subsided. What didn't appear to be the problem was the problem.

Isn't that just like life?

What is in front of our eyes doesn't appear obvious until we open our eyes to the obvious.

Today, over at Faith. Fiction. Friends. Glynn Young writes, "Poet Michael Dickmann, in his latest collection called Flies, confronts and deals with a death too soon. To see how he does it in poetry, take a look at my post today at The Master's Artist."

In The Power of Story, Jim Loehr invites everyone to ask themselves the question, "Am I okay dying a senseless death?"

Reading Loehr and then Glynn's piece on Dickmann's book, I hit upon the obvious answer to a question that has sat on the edges of my peace of mind for years.

The question began to form on St. Patrick's Day, 1997 when my brother and his wife died in a collision. There was lots of mystery and drama around their passing. Lots of unanswered questions. Truths too horrible to face and so we let the details of the events leading up to their death pass and focused on mourning their loss.

But the questions grew.

Did they or didn't they do it intentionally? Did they or didn't they know what the consequences of their actions would be upon their two beautiful daughters and all of us who loved them? Did they or didn't they have the courage to right the wrongs, face the truth, face, as it appeared they would have had to do, the judge and jury and the outcome of what had gone so wrong leading up to that fateful St. Patrick's Day.

In the end, the answer to my question is, the questions do not matter. What matters is Love.

Always has. Always will.

Pain is transitory. At least this pain in my jaw was. When it didn't seem to have a known cause, when it appeared to not have an obvious answer, it's transitory nature was not obvious.

What was obvious was, it hurt. It was affecting my outlook on life. Oh, and I was taking way too many pain-killers.

In finding relief from 'the pain', I have a clearer mind and an opportunity to reflect on the impact of the pain on my daily living. Not good, btw.

I was grouchy. At times. Listless. At times. Staying way too still. At times. And... not breathing deeply. At times.

And yet, at times, I was effective. Engaged. Active.

It all depended upon my level of pain and the degree to which I succumbed to the lure of believing -- if I do nothing the pain won't hurt so bad!

Reality was, if I did nothing, or did something, the pain wasn't really any different. It was just my attitude, and my belief in my ability to overcome the pain that differed.

Like grief.

Immersed in the loss, we cannot see the world beyond the obvious darkness of our feelings of grief.

Beyond the grief, it's obvious it was our dark thinking that was keeping us connected to the truth we desperately want to deny -- we cannot change the circumstances of who or what we've lost. We cannot bring them back. We can only change how our loss impacts our lives -- will it have meaning? Or will it be 'senseless', as Jim Loehr calls it.

And that is the truth I stumbled upon this morning reading Glynn's post.

My brother and sister-in-laws deaths were not 'senseless'. All the facts, proof, details of what transpired cannot change one irrefutable truth. I loved my brother and his wife. Still do.

And there is never anything senseless about Love.

Mother Teresa was right, I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.

I had a toothache. It is gone.

And love abounds. Always did. Always will.

Namaste.

Tooth-ache and other jawing motions

There is but one success -- to be able to spend your life in your own way. Christopher Morley

I have been nursing, or unnursing, however you look at it, a sore jaw for the past month. Okay, not just sore, attention riveting pain that casts a black outlook on my outlook!

It has gotten so bad that on Friday night, while sitting with Liseanne, my youngest daughter, watching a movie at home, I finally said, "Honey, I think you need to drive me to the emergency." I'd taken an anti-inflammatory an hour before, and then another and nothing seemed to be working. The pain had me in tears. We quickly got in the car, got to the parking lot outside emergency and as we walked in I declared, "Honey, We don't have to go in. The pain is abating."

She looked at me in consternation, not quite believing me (she knows how doctor adverse I am).

"No, seriously," I insisted. "It's abating. I just waited too long to take a pill so it had to work harder to make the pain go away."

We drove back home and all was 'well', though she did insist on not going on later as planned.

Now, it's not that I haven't sought medical attention for this pain. I went to the dentist and the verdict was, "Look Ma! No cavities." There also doesn't appear to be any infection or abscess or any other signs of where the distress that would make one believe the pain is tooth related.

My doctor says, if it's not your teeth, it must be... and names some nerve disorder I'm positive it isn't. The cure for this condition is a very harsh drug with not so nice side-effects. It's not a remedy I want to experience.

What I do want to experience is a pain-free jaw. It has definitely shadowed my outlook for the past month. Anti-inflammatories work -- but in the quantity needed to keep the pain at bay, they too have undesirable side-effects. I am on strict medical orders to not go over the limit which is laughable if it didn't hurt so much at times!

I returned to the dentist last week and he thinks it could be a molar that was crowned several years ago. When he taps on it, it is sensitive to touch. And so, in an effort to alleviate the pain, and hopefully solve the problem, I will get a root canal on the tooth he thinks might be the problem, even though it doesn't appear on the x-ray.

Wish me luck.

In the meantime, precious sleep is being lost -- and I am scrounging it where ever I can. Which means, I may or may not be posting tomorrow since I never know when the pain will awaken to steal me away from dreamland!

It's not all bad. It's definitely helped put me on the path to losing weight as eating seems to be a big contributor to the onset of pain in my jaw! :)

and, I've gained an appreciation of people with chronic pain. It is not nice!

Time Unravelling (a poem)

Over at Integral Options, WH shares an interview The Guardian, UK reporter Stuart Jeffries did with Slavoj Zizek. The name of Zizek's book, Living in the Ends of Times intriqued me, and inspired the muse to awaken in poetry.

So, just so you don't think I'm blue or lost in reminiscing old loves and lovers, I truly have no idea for whom or about whom this poem is written. I just let the muse write through me! :)

Time Unravelling

Living in the ends of time
unravelling
backwards
I fall into remembering

you
were so forgettable

I no longer remember
your parting
touch
drifting into a farewell
I have long forgotten

how we met
then said good-bye

did you walk away
or did I turn my back
for just a moment too long

mistaking
the ring
of bells tolling

binding me
in a knot
that could not keep
the matrimonial vows
from coming

undone
I bid you
stay

you bid me
adieu

and walked
away
into a dusty sunset

while I stood facing
the dusty
rose of sunrise
splitting
the back of night.

Living in the ends
of time
unravelling
the knots
that keep me looking
back
I turn towards the sun
letting go
of gravity
pulling me down
with time
unravelling.

Dreams

Each of us has been put on earth with the ability to do something well. We cheat ourselves and the world if we don't use that ability as best we can. Gracie Allen

My eldest daughter is incredibly talented. A singer, dancer, actor, writer, she has a heart of molten gold and a spirit that radiates light and love. She is amazing.

Yesterday, she shared a snippet of conversation she'd had with her 92 year old grandmother, her father's mother. Grammie, as the girls call her, recently fell and is now in a care faciility healing a broken hip. Until the fall, she had been living on her own in her beautiful home on the ocean. It is a place she loves. Cherishes. Has been defiant in her insistence she is capable of living on her own in a house on a cliff over-looking the Strait of Georgia. Her independence is commendable. Her agility, strength and courage inspiring.

And now she risks losing it all. Her son and daughter are talking of moving her back to Calgary because she has no one there to help her or visit her should she need to move into a senior's oriented centre.

This is a woman who is adamant in her right to 'do it my way'. Fierce. Critical. Not-overly optimistic, she has managed to maintain her independence in spite of arthritis and other ailments. While her body may be showing signs of wear and tear of living (at 92 it's kind of to be expected!), her mind is as agile and sharp as it ever was.

"It's the problem with too much talent like your's Alexis," she told my eldest daughter yesterday. "You have too many choices."

I think about the story my daughter tells about her many talents, that any of us tell about our gifts -- where did the story come from?

I wonder where someone begins to believe there is such a thing as a 'problem' with talent or even that a person can have 'too much' talent or too many choices inhibiting expression of one's gifts?

Did this woman of 92 years once have a dream she never lived because she couldn't decide, or didn't have the support to choose the path to her dream instead of the path to marriage and a family?

Does she fear dying with her dream unspoken, unlived, unrealized? Does she regret the path that lead her to a beautiful home on the water yet kept her far from the dream she once held so dear?

I used to spend a great deal of time with this woman. Once. When I was married to her son. But separation, divorce, distance and time pulled the weave of our relationship apart.

I never made the effort to stay in touch, though when her husband died, it was me who brought the girls to the funeral, who stayed with her for the week after his passing to help her move through the initial stages of her grief.

When I was married to her son, I made the effort to temper her negative outlook with my desire to show her the sun. Post-divorce, the energy needed to shine the light on her outlook wasn't there. I turned to shoring up my life, leaving this lonely and embittered woman to fend for herself.

Thoughts of this woman came to my mind this morning as I was reading Maureen's poem, Ways of Losing at her blog, Writing without Paper.

Maureen writes:

/The sink with the last strands
of untouched grey hair, and the room at the end of the hall they took

me to the day I heard my father had died and my grandmother
and my brother, none too old, and my friends, every one too young.

These are some ways of losing, and what we lose we pray for,
sit shiva, clothe ourselves in a fashionable black and pronounce

for our period of mourning. Some of us want process, declaring first

denial, then anger, moving from bargaining through depression,

finally giving in to acceptance. Don't you believe it's so easy as that.
When you lose what you love, you still love what you've lost.

When dreams are lost, do we still love them?

My daughter commented yesterday that if she were not to pursue acting it would be a waste of her education, "I'd be giving up my dream," she said.

"Was acting really your dream?" I ask. "Or was it to make a difference, to reach people and inspire them to live their best life yet? You can't lose what you learned, experienced, the tools you gained, the understanding you have of voice and movement and the human condition that you gained during your years of study."

There are many paths to living our dreams. It's in the living that our dreams come true.

Maybe it isn't that dreams die but that we simply awaken to the beauty of this moment where we are free to make the most of what we have.

Maybe in our dreaming, we nurture the seed of possibility that there is something more than the dream we claimed as a child that no longer fits our truth today.

Maybe, in the awakening of our spirit beyond childhood dreams, we recognize the truth of who we are is more than a child's desire to be seen.

Maybe, we all have dreams we once held dear that need to be cast free on the winds of time.

Maybe in freeing ourselves of dreams that have run past their best before date, we awaken to the beauty of possibility to become who we truly want to be -- beautiful, free, and alive -- in this moment right now living with all we've been given, being all we're meant to be.

What's your story?

He who has a why to live, can bear with almost any how. Nietzsche August is a beautiful month here at the foot of the Canadian Rockies. Summer evening stretches out into deepening shadows holding the heat of day. Skies glower and gleam and radiate purple hues stretched along the ridge of distant peaks. The air shimmers. Dusk creeps slowly into the light.

Last evening, as Ellie and I walked our habitual path along the ridge of a river valley, we spied a murder of craws seated in the skeleton of a long dead tree. Denuded of branches, it appeared dark on gray against the gathering clouds crowding the horizon. The crows cawed as they watched me grab a photo on my Iphone while Ellie grazed in the tall summer grasses, oblivious to the crows and my desire to capture the moment in time.

We walked in an easterly direction as I continued to stop along our way to capture moments, to gaze at the view, to revel in the beauty of the evening. And Ellie, her nose alive to the plethora of smells wafting her way, kept stopping to sniff and explore the scents left trailing on the bushes and grasses along our path.

Every evening we come to the same point on the trail where we know, it's time to turn back. Last evening was no different. We reached our 'marker', I looked at Ellie, Ellie looked at me and proceeded to change direction, pulling me with her for the homeward stroll. (Or at least the stroll back to where the car was parked.)


We walked westward and watched streaks of pink and rose dance upon the mountain peaks in the distance.

In The Power of Story, Jim Loehr tells the story of a client, a top seeded tennis player who lost her passion for the game. "What's your story?" he asked her. "Why do you play?"

"To be number one in the world," she replied.

"So, you become number one in the world. When it's all over, your tombstone reads, 'she Was Number One In the World.' You'd be good with that?"

She wouldn't be good with that and so he asked her to go away and think about it. What is your ultimate mission in life, he asked. What are you all about? What keeps you playing?

When she returned she had the answer, but was embarrassed to tell him. He prodded her to disclosure and she replied, "I want to be sunshine. I want to be sunshine to every person I care about and everyone who watches me play."

"And on your tombstone, it if says, 'She brought sunshine to people everywhere,' would that be okay?" he asked.

And she said, smiling broadly, "Yes."

I read that passage in The Power of Story some days ago, and it has resonated ever since. I too 'want to be sunshine'.

I want to radiate joy and brilliance and beauty and light like the sunset this evening that took my breath away. I want to be sunshine.

I can't remember a time in my life when I didn't want to 'make people feel happy'. When I didn't want to make a difference, in a really positive way, to their lives. Even as a small child I remember this feeling of wanting to touch people's hearts, to make them feel like the sun just broke through clouds and was beaming down on them, lightening their hearts and lifting their spirits.

And that's purpose. That's living this life for me with wild abandon, whole-heartedly engaged in making every moment count. In making every moment worth living and dying for.

I want to be like the sunset this evening. Awe-inspiring. Breathtaking. Deeply moving. I want to radiate sunshine, gratitude, positive energy and joy, in everything I do, everywhere I go.

That is my glorious life story. The one I'm writing today. The one I've been planning to write for many years now but was always too scared, too unsure, too mis-directed, or simply asleep to know it was up to me to release the light within so that the sun could shine from my heart and spill out in gay abandon onto the world around me.

I am finally in that place where I have the courage and conviction and commitment to put all my fingertips, heart and soul up against the pulse of what makes me tick so that I can create wonder and joy in the world around me.

What about you? What makes you tick? What's your story? Is it worth living for? Is it one you're willing to have told when you're gone?

'Cause think about it. Whatever story you are living today, it is the one you'll die with if you don't stop and ask yourself... What's my story? Am I willing to die for it? Am I willing to have it be my final song of life?

We are always telling stories. On ourselves. About ourselves. About the people and places and circumstances around us that are keeping us from living the story we've always dreamed of.

It's time to get real. Real up close and honest with the value of your story, and how it is keeping you from living the life of your dreams.

Go ahead. Ask yourself. What's my story? What's the story behind the story I'm telling?

And then, look deep, dig in, into that place within where the hero of your story isn't a victim of life, but the triumphant creator of a story worth living and dying for.

Can you do it?

I believe you can.

Do

It

NOW.

Namaste.