On Point
(First posted August 29, 2011)
When I was younger I sentenced myself to two concurrent endeavors: working as cop and attending university. When I left police work, I asked what I loved most about it. I found I loved “being on point.” I loved giving myself over to the demands of the moment. These were the events requiring that I be fully present – in real time – during which I relied on my own resources. While on point, I alone was charged with the responsibility of introducing appropriate change into circumstance.
My work-life unfolded into one of providing process facilitation and mediation services. Too, I trained and coached others imparting consultancy to leaders and managers. I entered my vocation because I could not NOT do it. The pull was extraordinary. I found the same love in this work. Doing so simply required that I give myself completely to the moment, to the point that is my place of motion.
Recently, a friend talked about kiteboarding. He said the activity requires much from a person. He explained the process of transitioning from stillness to movement at the water’s edge. He spoke too of the variables and complexities requiring the kiteboarder’s attention. Further, he regaled me with the sport’s delights and perils.
As he talked I was taken to a heartening place of awe, gratitude and excitement. I told him I believed the greatest genius of people lies in our ability to engage complexities, to flex and be moved: to be changed into one doing what we otherwise could not. For a kiteboarder to leave the beach, she or he must become amazingly nuanced and finessed with their attention, timing and actions. These abilities do not issue from others – nor from thought. They instead come from the energetic fields of the moment. If engaged in thought, the moment’s field that informs is not perceived.
Kiteboarding is but one brilliant example of the genius we humans are capable of. Your genius – in any circumstance – requires two initial movements: The first is letting go of the thinking and experience born of the stories of your culture, family and personal history. The second motion requires you to deploy your attention at the behest of the moment – in confluence with Her guidance. (To be accurate, it is becoming one with the movement of the moment. It is the aware conscious deployment of your attention. It is remaining centered in the belly of your physical body and simultaneously being grounded and connected to the center of the Earth – and at the same time – executing the motion given you by the moment.)
Everything in postmodern acculturation and training has taught us to attend instead to our conceptual understandings – those garnered from others. So too, we are to attend to the things we tell ourselves about our direct experience. We are taught to disregard, to forget our direct sensory perceptions – to remember instead the thinking we craft around them. So too, we are taught to center ourselves in our rational conceptual intellect. To only give credence to the measurable substantive realities about us sanctioned by others.
In doing what our culture asks, we give up our genuine center. We give up our ground and the stable base of our sovereignty. In doing so, we render our attention untethered. We neuter our otherwise innate creative resourcefulness. In doing so we render ourselves incapable of doing something of genuine consequence.
We are peoples who have dissociated ourselves from the concomitant gentle stability within the spirited and vital motion present in the fields of ourselves and lives. Expressed differently, the societies and cultures we have made for ourselves have disconnected us from the Life of our lives. We meet life from a “safe” distance. We are the James Joyce protagonist “…who lives a short distance from himself…” This has been our inheritance. It is what we tender. It is what we pass on as legacy.
When I was younger I sentenced myself to two concurrent endeavors: working as cop and attending university. When I left police work, I asked what I loved most about it. I found I loved “being on point.” I loved giving myself over to the demands of the moment. These were moments of being fully present – in real time – during which I relied on my own resources. While on point, I alone was charged with the responsibility of introducing appropriate change into circumstance.
My work-life unfolded into one of providing process facilitation and mediation services. Too, I trained and coached others imparting consultancy to leaders and managers. I entered my vocation because I could not NOT do it. The pull was extraordinary. I found the same love in this work. Doing so simply required that I give myself completely to the moment – to the point that is my place of motion.
Recently, a friend talked about kiteboarding. He said the activity requires much from a person. He explained the process of transitioning from seeming stillness to movement at the water’s edge. He spoke too of the variables and complexities requiring the kiteboarder’s attention. Further, he regaled me with the sport’s delights and perils.
As he talked I was taken to a heartening place of awe, gratitude and excitement. I told him I believed the greatest genius of people lies in our ability to engage complexities – to flex and be moved: to be changed into one doing what we otherwise could not. For a kiteboarder to leave the beach, she or he must become skillfully nuanced and finessed with their attention and action. These abilities and acts do not issue from others – nor from thought. They instead come from the energetic fields of the moment. If engaged in thought, the moment is missed.
Kiteboarding is but one brilliant example of the genius we humans are capable of. Your genius – in any circumstance – requires two initial movements: The first is letting go of the thinking and experience born of the stories of your culture, family and personal history. The second motion is deploying your attention at the behest of the moment – in confluence with Her guidance – to the moment. (To be accurate, it is becoming one with the moment. It is the aware conscious deployment of your attention. It is remaining centered in the belly of your physical body and simultaneously being grounded and connected to the center of the Earth. It is at once and at the same time – executing the motion given you by the moment.)
Everything in postmodern acculturation and training has taught us to attend instead to our conceptual understandings – those garnered from others. So too, we are to attend to the things we tell ourselves about our direct experience. We are taught to disregard, to forget our direct sensory perceptions – to remember instead the thinking we craft around them. So too, we are taught to center ourselves in our rational conceptual intellect. To only give credence to the measurable substantive realities about us – those sanctioned by others.
In doing what our culture asks, we give up our genuine center. We give up our ground and our connection to the stable base of our sovereignty. In doing so, we render our attention untethered. We neuter our otherwise innate creative resourcefulness. In doing so we render ourselves incapable of doing something of genuine consequence.
We are peoples who have dissociated ourselves from the concomitant gentle stability within the spirited and vital motion present in the fields of ourselves and lives. Expressed differently, the societies and cultures we have made for ourselves have disconnected us from the Life in our lives. We meet Life from a “safe” distance. We are the James Joyce protagonist who “… lives a short distance from himself…” This has been our inheritance. It is what we tender. It is what we pass on as legacy.
What I am pointing toward is the presence of an ongoing invitation from Life Herself. The one offering Her assistance to move away from the prosaic existence granted to each of us by our culture. To open instead to the poetics of truly living your own life. To open to the Life that is available to each of us on this planet – irrespective of circumstance. To find the equanimity enabling you to give yourself over to the moment. To shift your attention away from thought and ideas…away from personality and body. To place your attention on the unfolding field of the moment present around you.
It is feeling and seeing the moment’s movement and being moved by it. This is the difference observed when the dancer becomes the dance rather than being the one dancing. It is the musician who has become the music rather than the one performing. Each of us has witnessed these moments if not experienced them personally.
In deploying your attention to the field of the moment, you are moved rather than defaulting to the motion of your cultural programming. When motion is initiated from within your local self (body or mind/memory/personality), you are the dancer rather than the dance. You are the musician – not the music.
Right motion moves you. Right motion begins in and comes from the moment rather than from your story and habit. When moved by the energetic moment – rather than the one you imagine – you are giving yourself over to your own resources. You are connecting to something beyond your local self. You are, in these moments, living out the poetics of your own life.
The cute adage “You must loose your mind and come to your senses.” has relevance in our lives. It counsels us specifically to stop thinking! To leave your thought-based process at precisely the right time. To get out of your imagination. This maxim directs your attention instead to the field of the moment…to the point that is your point of motion…to give what is yours to give.
What you believe to be your own thinking and experience are instead artifacts of your upbringing. They are productions of your acculturation. They are NOT your own! They are but the rendering of the culture’s lyrics expressed through the instrument of your personality – and it – your personality – is of the culture’s intent, design, engineering and crafting.
It is when we give ourselves fully over in collaboration with the field of the moment…It is when we go on point – in real time…It is when we move the motion that the moment hands us…Doing this one draws on one’s own resources. This then, is living out one’s own life! This is when we are being and living genuinely the autonomous life that is one’s own. This is when we are embodying our sovereign unity.
Each moment is different from all others. Nobel laureate physicist David Bohm informed that all knowledge and thought are past tense. If they were ever relevant, that time has past. Insight is what is needed and it comes from the Order beyond our thought, dogma and story. Insight itself only has standing when acted upon in the motion of the moment. Then it too need be released.
I contend the Mystery is beckoning to each of us in every moment. She is asking us to become Her Consort: To become Wisdom’s Consort. In doing so, we become a recipient of Her Creativity. Doing so enables our creative resourcefulness. In giving ourselves over, we express our grandeur. Failing this we merely parrot what society has programmed.
Our greatest strength lies in letting go of the stasis of our upbringing and education. It is the letting go of our acculturation and experience: Going out beyond our thinking…giving ourselves over to the Mystery’s moment: Opening our receptivity and partnering with the Mystery’s brilliant creative Grace. She gives us direction. Whether this occurs while kiteboarding, writing poetry, painting, caring for an infant or taking leadership decisions involving millions of lives…our grandeur awaits.
There are three stories regarding Pablo Picasso. Whether true? I don’t know. If apocryphal, they yet have value for they invite us to remember something important that we have forgotten to remember.
Story one: Pablo Picasso once said: “When I am out of red, I use blue.” (It may have been the other way around…I don’t know.)
Story two: A farmer once asked Picasso: “Why do you not paint portraits like everyone else?” Picasso replied: “Do you know how many of those I had to paint before I could paint these?”
Last story: A woman approached Picasso while he was seated in a restaurant. She asked if he would sketch her. He put pen to napkin and seconds later handed her his rendering. She asked the cost. He responded: “5,000. Francs.”
Aghast, she declared: “It only took you seconds!” To this Picasso replied:”Madame, I have been drawing that my entire life!”
How flexible are you?
What have the “portraits” of your past prepared you to render now?
What have you been “drawing” your entire life?
What moments await the giving of yourself?
Have you let go of the culture’s designs for your life?
Are you living out your own life?
What are the poetics of your own life?
Is there a “Picasso” within you?
When I was younger I sentenced myself to two concurrent endeavors: working as cop and attending university. When I left police work, I asked what I loved most about it. I found I loved “being on point.” I loved giving myself over to the demands of the moment. These were the events requiring that I be fully present – in real time – during which I relied on my own resources. While on point, I alone was charged with the responsibility of introducing appropriate change into circumstance.
My work-life unfolded into one of providing process facilitation and mediation services. Too, I trained and coached others imparting consultancy to leaders and managers. I entered my vocation because I could not NOT do it. The pull was extraordinary. I found the same love in this work. Doing so simply required that I give myself completely to the moment, to the point that is my place of motion.
Recently, a friend talked about kiteboarding. He said the activity requires much from a person. He explained the process of transitioning from stillness to movement at the water’s edge. He spoke too of the variables and complexities requiring the kiteboarder’s attention. Further, he regaled me with the sport’s delights and perils.
As he talked I was taken to a heartening place of awe, gratitude and excitement. I told him I believed the greatest genius of people lies in our ability to engage complexities, to flex and be moved: to be changed into one doing what we otherwise could not. For a kiteboarder to leave the beach, she or he must become amazingly nuanced and finessed with their attention, timing and actions. These abilities do not issue from others – nor from thought. They instead come from the energetic fields of the moment. If engaged in thought, the moment’s field that informs is not perceived.
Kiteboarding is but one brilliant example of the genius we humans are capable of. Your genius – in any circumstance – requires two initial movements: The first is letting go of the thinking and experience born of the stories of your culture, family and personal history. The second motion requires you to deploy your attention at the behest of the moment – in confluence with Her guidance. (To be accurate, it is becoming one with the movement of the moment. It is the aware conscious deployment of your attention. It is remaining centered in the belly of your physical body and simultaneously being grounded and connected to the center of the Earth – and at the same time – executing the motion given you by the moment.)
Everything in postmodern acculturation and training has taught us to attend instead to our conceptual understandings – those garnered from others. So too, we are to attend to the things we tell ourselves about our direct experience. We are taught to disregard, to forget our direct sensory perceptions – to remember instead the thinking we craft around them. So too, we are taught to center ourselves in our rational conceptual intellect. To only give credence to the measurable substantive realities about us sanctioned by others.
In doing what our culture asks, we give up our genuine center. We give up our ground and the stable base of our sovereignty. In doing so, we render our attention untethered. We neuter our otherwise innate creative resourcefulness. In doing so we render ourselves incapable of doing something of genuine consequence.
We are peoples who have dissociated ourselves from the concomitant gentle stability within the spirited and vital motion present in the fields of ourselves and lives. Expressed differently, the societies and cultures we have made for ourselves have disconnected us from the Life of our lives. We meet life from a “safe” distance. We are the James Joyce protagonist “…who lives a short distance from himself…” This has been our inheritance. It is what we tender. It is what we pass on as legacy.
When I was younger I sentenced myself to two concurrent endeavors: working as cop and attending university. When I left police work, I asked what I loved most about it. I found I loved “being on point.” I loved giving myself over to the demands of the moment. These were moments of being fully present – in real time – during which I relied on my own resources. While on point, I alone was charged with the responsibility of introducing appropriate change into circumstance.
My work-life unfolded into one of providing process facilitation and mediation services. Too, I trained and coached others imparting consultancy to leaders and managers. I entered my vocation because I could not NOT do it. The pull was extraordinary. I found the same love in this work. Doing so simply required that I give myself completely to the moment – to the point that is my place of motion.
Recently, a friend talked about kiteboarding. He said the activity requires much from a person. He explained the process of transitioning from seeming stillness to movement at the water’s edge. He spoke too of the variables and complexities requiring the kiteboarder’s attention. Further, he regaled me with the sport’s delights and perils.
As he talked I was taken to a heartening place of awe, gratitude and excitement. I told him I believed the greatest genius of people lies in our ability to engage complexities – to flex and be moved: to be changed into one doing what we otherwise could not. For a kiteboarder to leave the beach, she or he must become skillfully nuanced and finessed with their attention and action. These abilities and acts do not issue from others – nor from thought. They instead come from the energetic fields of the moment. If engaged in thought, the moment is missed.
Kiteboarding is but one brilliant example of the genius we humans are capable of. Your genius – in any circumstance – requires two initial movements: The first is letting go of the thinking and experience born of the stories of your culture, family and personal history. The second motion is deploying your attention at the behest of the moment – in confluence with Her guidance – to the moment. (To be accurate, it is becoming one with the moment. It is the aware conscious deployment of your attention. It is remaining centered in the belly of your physical body and simultaneously being grounded and connected to the center of the Earth. It is at once and at the same time – executing the motion given you by the moment.)
Everything in postmodern acculturation and training has taught us to attend instead to our conceptual understandings – those garnered from others. So too, we are to attend to the things we tell ourselves about our direct experience. We are taught to disregard, to forget our direct sensory perceptions – to remember instead the thinking we craft around them. So too, we are taught to center ourselves in our rational conceptual intellect. To only give credence to the measurable substantive realities about us – those sanctioned by others.
In doing what our culture asks, we give up our genuine center. We give up our ground and our connection to the stable base of our sovereignty. In doing so, we render our attention untethered. We neuter our otherwise innate creative resourcefulness. In doing so we render ourselves incapable of doing something of genuine consequence.
We are peoples who have dissociated ourselves from the concomitant gentle stability within the spirited and vital motion present in the fields of ourselves and lives. Expressed differently, the societies and cultures we have made for ourselves have disconnected us from the Life in our lives. We meet Life from a “safe” distance. We are the James Joyce protagonist who “… lives a short distance from himself…” This has been our inheritance. It is what we tender. It is what we pass on as legacy.
What I am pointing toward is the presence of an ongoing invitation from Life Herself. The one offering Her assistance to move away from the prosaic existence granted to each of us by our culture. To open instead to the poetics of truly living your own life. To open to the Life that is available to each of us on this planet – irrespective of circumstance. To find the equanimity enabling you to give yourself over to the moment. To shift your attention away from thought and ideas…away from personality and body. To place your attention on the unfolding field of the moment present around you.
It is feeling and seeing the moment’s movement and being moved by it. This is the difference observed when the dancer becomes the dance rather than being the one dancing. It is the musician who has become the music rather than the one performing. Each of us has witnessed these moments if not experienced them personally.
In deploying your attention to the field of the moment, you are moved rather than defaulting to the motion of your cultural programming. When motion is initiated from within your local self (body or mind/memory/personality), you are the dancer rather than the dance. You are the musician – not the music.
Right motion moves you. Right motion begins in and comes from the moment rather than from your story and habit. When moved by the energetic moment – rather than the one you imagine – you are giving yourself over to your own resources. You are connecting to something beyond your local self. You are, in these moments, living out the poetics of your own life.
The cute adage “You must loose your mind and come to your senses.” has relevance in our lives. It counsels us specifically to stop thinking! To leave your thought-based process at precisely the right time. To get out of your imagination. This maxim directs your attention instead to the field of the moment…to the point that is your point of motion…to give what is yours to give.
What you believe to be your own thinking and experience are instead artifacts of your upbringing. They are productions of your acculturation. They are NOT your own! They are but the rendering of the culture’s lyrics expressed through the instrument of your personality – and it – your personality – is of the culture’s intent, design, engineering and crafting.
It is when we give ourselves fully over in collaboration with the field of the moment…It is when we go on point – in real time…It is when we move the motion that the moment hands us…Doing this one draws on one’s own resources. This then, is living out one’s own life! This is when we are being and living genuinely the autonomous life that is one’s own. This is when we are embodying our sovereign unity.
Each moment is different from all others. Nobel laureate physicist David Bohm informed that all knowledge and thought are past tense. If they were ever relevant, that time has past. Insight is what is needed and it comes from the Order beyond our thought, dogma and story. Insight itself only has standing when acted upon in the motion of the moment. Then it too need be released.
I contend the Mystery is beckoning to each of us in every moment. She is asking us to become Her Consort: To become Wisdom’s Consort. In doing so, we become a recipient of Her Creativity. Doing so enables our creative resourcefulness. In giving ourselves over, we express our grandeur. Failing this we merely parrot what society has programmed.
Our greatest strength lies in letting go of the stasis of our upbringing and education. It is the letting go of our acculturation and experience: Going out beyond our thinking…giving ourselves over to the Mystery’s moment: Opening our receptivity and partnering with the Mystery’s brilliant creative Grace. She gives us direction. Whether this occurs while kiteboarding, writing poetry, painting, caring for an infant or taking leadership decisions involving millions of lives…our grandeur awaits.
There are three stories regarding Pablo Picasso. Whether true? I don’t know. If apocryphal, they yet have value for they invite us to remember something important that we have forgotten to remember.
Story one: Pablo Picasso once said: “When I am out of red, I use blue.” (It may have been the other way around…I don’t know.)
Story two: A farmer once asked Picasso: “Why do you not paint portraits like everyone else?” Picasso replied: “Do you know how many of those I had to paint before I could paint these?”
Last story: A woman approached Picasso while he was seated in a restaurant. She asked if he would sketch her. He put pen to napkin and seconds later handed her his rendering. She asked the cost. He responded: “5,000. Francs.”
Aghast, she declared: “It only took you seconds!” To this Picasso replied:”Madame, I have been drawing that my entire life!”
How flexible are you?
What have the “portraits” of your past prepared you to render now?
What have you been “drawing” your entire life?
What moments await the giving of yourself?
Have you let go of the culture’s designs for your life?
Are you living out your own life?
What are the poetics of your own life?
Is there a “Picasso” within you?