The Direction of Intention

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Where are you? On what mountain are you standing? From what point of view are you asking questions about your life, power, and creativity?

If you believe that you are standing on a mountain of deficiency, your fulfillment will look like a distant meadow. It is some other place. Every question you ask will be asked from a place of deficiency and reinforce the idea that what you want is some other place outside of you. What you see is separation. The story structure that you buttress holds the notion that there is an arrival place, another mountain or meadow – some other place called creative or happy or fulfilled. In this story your focus is on an outcome or result that resides somewhere out there in the future.

It can be scary to step out of an outcome focus and into a process focus because control is the sole aim of an outcome focus. To show up and be seen you must first relinquish your illusion of control. Letting go of control feels a lot like stepping into the unknown. It is. Creativity is nothing more than your capacity to step into uncertainty. Creativity is the blossom of a process focus. Power is possible when you stop controlling and start collaborating.

Every story is told from a specific point of view. Choose your story.

Where are you standing? What is the mountain of assumptions upon which you stand and relate with the world?

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267.
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All creative limits or blocks originate from some form of separation: you have cleaved a part of yourself and locked it away in the closet. Or, you have put manacles on your impulses and fear what might happen if you release the restraints; what will people think of you if you give full voice to your thoughts, ideas, perceptions, dreams and desires. What part of you fears annihilation if you show up as you are? What part of you fears being seen?

Fear has a lot to do with the need to control and control has a lot to do with your access to power (your creative impulse). Fulfilling your creative potential begins with allowing yourself to be seen – not as you think you ought to be but as you are.

Spend a week gathering information about the story you tell yourself and mining your assumptions. Recognizing where you are, identifying the mountain of belief upon which you stand is a necessary first step to bridging the separation. Watch out! Separations are slippery and express as false comparisons (with whom do you compare yourself? Why?), false expectations (do you need to be perfect? Do you have to do everything yourself? Why?), and false investments in stories (what achievement will make you valid, valuable, or whole? Why?). What stick do you use for self-measurement? Just gather information, without judgment, and see what you discover.

Is there a gap between the life you live and the life you think you live? That’s the first separation to bridge.

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169.
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Straying beyond the boundaries of your assumptions is called divergence. We see what we expect to see; we see what we believe, so it is more difficult than you might imagine to truly diverge, to truly see things beyond what you expect to see. That is why problem solving in complex situations (anything to do with people is complex) is so problematic: with the problem solvers comes the assumption set that created the problem in the first place. Most solutions to problems will only serve to complicate the problem.

When working with people wrestling with their creativity, it is inevitably the assumption (belief) that they are not creative that needs challenging. It is not the skills. It is not the eyes or the hands. It is the foot on the brakes, the hands around the throat of their creative impulse.

Divergence is nothing more than challenging your assumptions. Creativity is nothing more than honoring your capacity to step into uncertainty – to see what is there and play with what you find. Stepping into uncertainty requires releasing control (taking your foot off the brake, taking your hands off of your throat, not listening to Mr. So-n-So who told you 20 years ago that you couldn’t sing/draw/dance).

Make a mess. Take a step. Fall down. Throw it away and start over. Be wrong and celebrate the dropped balls. What could be more miserable than to be human (the greatest storytelling creature in the history of the planet and maybe the universe) and believe that you are not creative?

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168.
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Self-made prisons are thought constructions. There is a term for self-imposed limitations: Premature Cognitive Commitment. It goes like this: place a big chain around the leg of a baby elephant and fasten the other end of the chain to a big tree. The baby elephant will eventually stop pulling on the chain; it has learned its limits. As it grows, all the elephant handler need do is replace the chain with ever-weaker bits of rope tied to smaller and smaller trees. Eventually, all that is needed to contain the elephant is a piece of twine and a small stick pushed into the ground. Despite the reality of the twine and the twig, the elephant will not test the boundary; it has learned and internalized a limitation.

The belief that you are not creative is a premature cognitive commitment. The intellect will tell you to stop pulling on the chain because the data has shown that it does no good to pull; you are not going to make a living as musician/dancer/painter/writer so you must not be creative. Stop pulling. You’ve learned that you have to know “how” to do something before you attempt to do it; you have to know the place of arrival before you take a step. Stop pulling.

Intuition does not think its way into limitation; it feels its way into freedom. Intuition likes to wander over the next hill to see what is there – even if it went there yesterday. Intuition will never stop pulling because it will see the chain as an opportunity for play. Intuition engages with what is there, not what intellect thinks is there. In a healthy creative process, when your focus is truly on the process, the intellect is in service to intuition. Focusing an impulse is a radically different action than controlling an impulse. Intellect wants to control, intuition wants to create. Can you distinguish between focus and control? Can you feel your way beyond the boundary?

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163.
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I can’t help it – it is what I’m writing today so it is dominating my thoughts. More writing from the CreateNow Workbook. This is from what I’m writing for week 3 of the course:

Where are you? On what mountain are you standing? From what point of view are you asking questions about your life?

Before reading further do this exercise: On a piece of paper draw a pyramid. What themes, labels and judgments do you layer on yourself (good enough or not good enough, lacking or abundant, resilient or fragile,…). Write the labels, themes, and judgments in the pyramid. Now, draw a small stick figure (this is you) standing on top of the pyramid. What you wrote in the pyramid is your point of view; it is the screen through which you sift your experiences.

If you believe that you are standing on a mountain of deficiency, a pyramid of worthlessness, your fulfillment will look like a distant meadow. It is some other place. Every question you ask will be asked from a place of deficiency and reinforce the idea that what you want is some other place outside of you. What you see is separation. The story structure that you buttress holds the notion that there is an arrival place, another mountain or meadow – some other place called creative or happy or fulfilled. In this story your focus is on an outcome or result that resides somewhere out there in the distant future.

Look at the words in the pyramid. Are any of the labels absolute? Are you always good enough, not good enough or just sometimes? Are you poor every moment or just when you think about it? Are you abundant all the time or is it passing? Is it true that you are not creative enough? Why is this label your statement of being, your identity of choice? Do you even know what perfect is? Why is any of it fixed, absolute, or true?

None of the labels, themes, or self-accusations matter; what matters is that the labels locate you in a story of resistance; resistance to being where you are. Do you think you need to be some other place or some other person in order to find fulfillment? Your point of view, the mountain upon which you stand is called separation. You’ve separated your self from your self; in this story you will always look somewhere else for your answer and your fulfillment.

There is another way but it requires you to stop resisting where you are, cease trying to be something that you are not. It requires you to shift your focus from outcomes and investments in control. It requires you to focus on process and creating quality relationships. What would it look like to show up without justification, explanation, masking, hiding, or apology? How can you show up alive and 100% in?

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