2016–Just Sayin’

​Many cars have GPS. You know how they work: they chart a course from our current locations to our destinations. They continuously calculate the relationship between our here and now and our desired there and then—and re-choreograph our movement when we veer off. We do this in our lives too. I’m curious whether the places we seem bent on going are actually the places we imagine them to be? I’m curious too about being goal directed by things out there versus meeting our deeper needs. Just wondering…

​GPS records our starting points. It remembers. No matter our present situations or seemingly similar destinations—because each of us have differing points of origin—we can never compare our experience, positions nor degrees of progress with others. What do we need in order to let go such comparisons? I wonder…

…The safest and easiest way to drive at speed through sharp or broadly sweeping curves requires fixing our sight on a moving point. Where we place this moving point depends on:
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1) which side of the road’s centerline we drive on,
2) whether we’re on a multi-lane road,
3) whether the curve in front of us bends to our right or left.

In North America we drive to the right of the road’s centerline. Here on a road having one lane in each direction approaching a right bending curve, we need look to the painted line near the right edge of the road in front of us. We must fix our sight on a point on this painted line as far into the curve as we can see—and continue moving this point into and around and through the curve—and beyond as the road straightens.

Were we to look elsewhere instead, our systems would take us there. If we become aware of this change in course we would need to exert additional force to again move in our desired direction. Sometimes we right ourselves. Sometimes no.

As we coordinate our systems of attention and intent (navigating curves elegantly in our own ways) by seeing that moving point in front of us—and connect these with our mind, body and environment, we more graciously approach the contours our journeys bring—whose changing conditions we only discover by approaching and moving into and through them. In our connecting we join larger forces informing our motion, applications of effort and creativity.

—In this flow—we are the Mystery’s graceful escorts.

How and where will you look this year?