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Do you feel as energized as the last time you were really on a roll? the last time you felt like a three-year-old?
If you do, do you want to support for generating even more energy?
If you don't, do you intuitively sense that no one can know better than you how to get back to that state?
One of the biggest factors that prevented my big vision--a theatre of
the homeless--from becoming fully realized was the energy drain of
answering other people's "What's wrong?" questions. It's not that
they were trying to drain my energy, but the very nature of something
about our minds ensured that their questions would do this. Add
to those the "What's wrong?" questions I was asking myself, and my
concerned parents, and I had a very considerable energy drain. Any
question that is framed with the assumption that something is wrong,
and that we can find what it is and fix it, automatically gets
processed only by the analytical brain, and therefore depletes
emotional energy.
You may have the sense that I am telling you to
change your thinking, and if so, this in itself will be tempting you to
ask a "What's wrong?" question of yourself: "What's wrong with my
thinking?" (Do you feel your energy going down as you ask this
question?) I am actually not telling you to change your thinking.
I think the way you think is perfect.
At the same time I also know you can have more energy. I am
describing what happens, not telling you what to do. I am not
adding to your stress.
Much of the way you ask yourself questions is based
on what our culture and others have taught you, by example or in your
schooling. In the public school system and many of the private
schools as well, we're taught to use the analytical brain to process
questions. The intuitive brain processes 1,000 to 10,000 times faster than the analytical; it also cannot be deceived, and its processing replenishes emotional energy.
This is why schoolchildren are almost universally seen as bored with
school (which, incidentally, is something that, to the inventors of it,
was "scholia"--a luxury, leisure, fun even). While you're sitting
there in math class processing questions analytically at 1/1000th of
your potential speed, your other brain is idling, and you can't
completely forget the felt sense that you could be going much faster, and being emotionally replenished.
The fact is that our culture isn't evil either; it's
an unfortunate fact that the analytical brain is much more assertive
than the quiet, accurate, intuitive brain, and the conscious,
analytical brain thinks it knows the facts and goes on to teach others,
such as children, how to think, and to design systems of education
based on its processing. The analytical brain thinks it's doing
the right thing when it eradicates older cultures too in its effort to
make progress.
Now, you're probably asking yourself, How do I shut off my analytical brain then? Wrong!
Actually, that's not wrong either. Once again, I
was simply dramatizing a point. You likely expected me to say
"Wrong!" based on your past experience. In fact, I don't actually
think you're wrong. It's very reasonable to ask this question,
and if you've seen any self-help literature on tapping into your
intuition or "getting out of your head" or "getting in touch with your
heart," you've seen that it's almost universally suggested that the way
to do this is to shut off the analytical brain. This is also how
much of Buddhism gets taught in the West.
However, "stop your analytical brain" is not what I'm saying.
What I am saying here is if you change how you use it, you get
more benfits. I am telling you that there is a way of using
the analytical brain that is energizing, that taps us into the
intuitive brain's input, and allows us to have the advantages of that
inner knowing's accuracy, speed, and energizing power. A portable
tap into intuition and inspiration is precisely what can allows
visionaries to do things like found theatres of the homeless easily and
effortlessly, while even having time left over to recycle and watch The
Simpsons. This tool, once internalized, can be brougt with you
anywhere--into a ritual in the woods or a classroom in Altgeld Gardens
or a business meeting or the writing of a web site. It's so simple that
I really wish the teachers I'd
encountered in the numerous dharma talks and classes and workshops I'd
gone to in the years before I attempted the theatre of the homeless had
known it. In hindsight, it's so obvious, so simple, and so fun that it seems inconceivable that it didn't already penetrate to more
areas of our society.
What's the catch?
"I can't attain my dream without struggle," you say, "I don't deserve
that while people are starving and being colonized and shot at and
blown up all around the world."
To this I can only say, it won't hurt them for you
to think better, and it won't use up any natural resources. It
may be (as you've doubtless heard said by others) you can help the
people being blown up a lot more readily by having the best self-care
you can. This may not have rung true for you in the past because
you saw very clearly that, although you indulged in some self-care, you
still hadn't gotten much closer to the dream, and intuitively sensed
that you weren't getting much accomplished even by that (that was my
feeling). Or you may have found this idea exploited by others, or
find some other objections. But regardless, thinking better
doesn't take more time, but less. And lastly, the strongest
argument for being effortless in your service is that you can do a lot
more of it. The biggest problem I see my clients face is the
uncomfortable feelings that increased success and happiness coming at
them arouse. (I'm not being flippant, this is a serious issue
that our culture doesn't tend to look at much, that feelings of
deserving are strongly conditioned by diminishing experiences in early
childhood, and this requires a great deal of support to handle.
What people do when faced with more benefits than they think they
are deserving of is to minimize--with the analytical brain--the value
of these benefits and to disbelieve their efficacy.)
More helpful, however, is to recall the successes of
real visionaries. I look at people like Malidoma Some, Peter
Sellars, Peter's Seeger and Schumann, Alice Miller, Mary Oliver, and
others of their ilk and I see people who have excellent self-care and
are also providing extremely high-quality service to the
world--service of that resonating, passionate, radical kind I truly
want
to be providing. (They have another secret that contributes to
their feeling of deserving, I believe, but at any rate it is NOT asking
"What's-wrong?" questions.) And they are also very able to feel
compassion; they
are not less feeling, or less thinking, for being effortless
high-performers.
That's why the work of Patricia and Kurt Wright,
inventors of the intuition-based system of management (for self or
project)--which is like the most brilliant dharma talk I ever read
articulated combined with the most fun game I ever played--seems to me the one most useful gift I can pass on to the determined visionary.
It is a gift that will never insult your inteliigence,
never disappoint your curiosity, and never inauthenticate your heart.
I "use" it in revising poetry, fiction, the articles on this site,
and the set of things I do in relationship to the people in my life.
Finally, although I believe this is incredibly valuable, I also don't claim to think that you need it. I
don't know you. I think the fact that you are wasting some of
your emotional energy is perfect too. When, and if, you want to
do something you're not already doing, that wasted energy is where the
resource will come from that you can use to do that thing. I am
pointing out the existence of this lost energy so you can see
credibility in the idea that you
can do whatever it is you're dreaming. I do not wish to add
to your sense of
pressure to change something about yourself. That's the
analytical brain's approach, the intuitive has no interest in fixing.
Why am I not giving it away for free?
It takes work to pass this on--and I need to be paid something for my
work. It's not just information, it's also experiential learning, it's
95% likely you need me, or someone as good at this as I am, to get that
experience. I am making it as affordable as I can, but you need
to make an investment in this work too, and the currency for that
investment that the bank and the grocery store accept right now is
money. (I am open to considering exchanges also--especially
organic produce!--but reserve the right to offer my services to those
who can pay in the way I require.) My vision is that this work
gets passed on, in 99.99% accurate form, to all poets, visionaries,
green businesspeople, and community builders on the planet by the year
2050. For that to happen, it has to be done right.
For a free sample 30" session, please call 917.648.3993.
Thanks, and thanks for being part of the solution.
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917.648.3993