Brush and canvas. Paint.
(First posted December 19th, 2012)
“Over the world goes a graver storm. It sets its mouth to our soul and blows to produce a note. We dread that the storm will blow us empty.” ~ Tomas Transtromer’s “A Winter’s Night”
Life’s moments ask something of us. Rigidities of thinking impede our hearing, our responding. Unaware, we are hunkered down within the illusion of our understandings denying the true nature of our natures: that of responding affirmatively to the opportunities life grants us. In the shelter of our denial moments pass leaving us bereft in the prosaic character of our cultures and ancestral heritage. In this we perpetuate the limits of our pasts.
The storm persists. In moments when decisions offer themselves to be taken, may we be blessed by loosing our minds, by coming to our intellectually indefensibility senses, by taking unpopular decisions: Those at odds with who we have believed ourselves to be, at odds with what we have known, how we have lived. May our decisions move us into greater currents beyond what we understand. May we consent to life’s moments moving us into the very forces that will either bring us fully alive, or kill us … those forever changing us.
In the best of circumstances, decision taking is complex. We are in the company of unknowns. Choices insist on being taken. We want our decisions to be right, to achieve only desired results: No side effects please. We want guarantees. In their absence many of us avoid taking decisions thus rendering us motionless, and as such we choose by not choosing. Equally perilous, decisions taken but unexecuted shunt us into a purgatory of an existence where we often stay for years.
To heighten our aversion we know that decisions are irrevocable whether taken with or without intelligent awareness, or a deep sense of knowing. Once taken, they must be lived and lived with: Wishing we had chosen another option worsens our realities. Choices taken lead to other decisions: We will take them or not.
Decisions change the course of our lives. Yet we cannot know the future. We cannot know the outcome of our choosing. We cannot know, nor ever know the myriad of choices and options available in each moment. No choice is right or wrong, yet each has intended and unintended consequences: Some to our liking and some not.
Some decisions usher us into turbulent initiatory processes in which everything is at stake: These are the most helpful ones. So too, they are the ones we most resist, the ones prompting our reluctance. I wonder: What if going into the storm renders poetic joy as well as its other outcomes? I wonder.
Others around us, our cultures and our thinking favor the safety of what they and we have known! What if that safety is illusory?
There is more for each of us: The storm is our escort. It must be entered. In this entering we let go of the banal and assumed comforts bequeathed us in our upbringings and educations. The peril lies not in the storm but rather in perpetuating what we have lived.
To be blown into the sovereignty of our own lives we but need to let go of the expectations of others. Let go of the impositions of another’s intent for us. Let go of fearing another’s criticisms, judgements and fears, those that have guided our decision processes in the past. We are to ask ourself: Who am I? What is important to me? What promise do I long to creatively express? What will I do to live a life of my own expression? of my own design? one of saying yes to the Mystery’s moment?
I, like you, stand at the threshold of decisions the Mystery is inviting me to take. There is only now.
Life’s moments ask something of us. Rigidities of thinking impede our hearing, our responding. Unaware, we are hunkered down within the illusion of our understandings denying the true nature of our natures: that of responding affirmatively to the opportunities life grants us. In the shelter of our denial moments pass leaving us bereft in the prosaic character of our cultures and ancestral heritage. In this we perpetuate the limits of our pasts.
The storm persists. In moments when decisions offer themselves to be taken, may we be blessed by loosing our minds, by coming to our intellectually indefensibility senses, by taking unpopular decisions: Those at odds with who we have believed ourselves to be, at odds with what we have known, how we have lived. May our decisions move us into greater currents beyond what we understand. May we consent to life’s moments moving us into the very forces that will either bring us fully alive, or kill us … those forever changing us.
In the best of circumstances, decision taking is complex. We are in the company of unknowns. Choices insist on being taken. We want our decisions to be right, to achieve only desired results: No side effects please. We want guarantees. In their absence many of us avoid taking decisions thus rendering us motionless, and as such we choose by not choosing. Equally perilous, decisions taken but unexecuted shunt us into a purgatory of an existence where we often stay for years.
To heighten our aversion we know that decisions are irrevocable whether taken with or without intelligent awareness, or a deep sense of knowing. Once taken, they must be lived and lived with: Wishing we had chosen another option worsens our realities. Choices taken lead to other decisions: We will take them or not.
Decisions change the course of our lives. Yet we cannot know the future. We cannot know the outcome of our choosing. We cannot know, nor ever know the myriad of choices and options available in each moment. No choice is right or wrong, yet each has intended and unintended consequences: Some to our liking and some not.
Some decisions usher us into turbulent initiatory processes in which everything is at stake: These are the most helpful ones. So too, they are the ones we most resist, the ones prompting our reluctance. I wonder: What if going into the storm renders poetic joy as well as its other outcomes? I wonder.
Others around us, our cultures and our thinking favor the safety of what they and we have known! What if that safety is illusory?
There is more for each of us: The storm is our escort. It must be entered. In this entering we let go of the banal and assumed comforts bequeathed us in our upbringings and educations. The peril lies not in the storm but rather in perpetuating what we have lived.
To be blown into the sovereignty of our own lives we but need to let go of the expectations of others. Let go of the impositions of another’s intent for us. Let go of fearing another’s criticisms, judgements and fears, those that have guided our decision processes in the past. We are to ask ourself: Who am I? What is important to me? What promise do I long to creatively express? What will I do to live a life of my own expression? of my own design? one of saying yes to the Mystery’s moment?
I, like you, stand at the threshold of decisions the Mystery is inviting me to take. There is only now.