Sunday Musings - August 20, 2023
Getting out of the way
Many of us have explored how to open to growing emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually. We may have heard the advice to get out of our own way. How is it that we get in our own way preventing growth; of positioning ourselves to take a step towards realizing our potential; of opening to what is possible?
Most of us have been accumulating a list of limitations; a list of restricting lies since we were very young. Items on this list may include:
All progress - all creativity - requires that one ignore or let go of many if not most of these stories, of opening to hearing, seeing, feeling, smelling, imagining beyond them. Some describe this as a meditation technique of quieting our minds. Others may describe the process as emptying one’s mind. Still other may phrase it as getting out of one’s way.
Most of us as infants and very young children -barring neurological or other birth limitations - are open to all possibilities. We have unlimited faith in all possibilities. We freely ask why and how. We did not arrive with rules or limits. We also did not arrive with fear unless we learned it in the womb. A few of us might have arrived with the inability to experience a mirror image of what is considered outside of ourselves which might limit our experience of others. Some might have arrived with other issues including an addiction to certain drugs. A few of us brought in our DNA a talent such as the ability to compose a symphony at a very young age.
Most of us arrive with with the ability to be open to experiencing the world as one of possibilities. We arrive excited and mystified by our experience of ourselves and the world. Strangers can visit via the screen we call the television. Voices can sprout legs and travel whatever distance it takes to reach grandma and grandpa.
For many of us our goal as adults is to let go of any fear or anxiety about what we might see, hear, touch, or otherwise experience; to reclaim our childlike openness while holding on to adult knowledge of what we know to be facts; facts such as fire burns, driving can be dangerous, there are unhealthy people who deserve our compassion, we need to respect the earth so it respects and cares for us. Father Greg Boyle would say we need to hea; returning ourselves to ourselves.
Nearly every creative venture begins with emptying one’s mind. If one fails to do that one might reproduce the creation of another, but one will not create something new. Creation is perhaps a misnomer. Creativity calls forth what has always been there and possible to experience The creator of the phone did not invent or create sound waves or the ability of sound to travel. The move from sound over wires to traveling through air from tower to tower required another level of letting go of what had previously been considered limiting facts. The ability to see a video camera small enough to explore the interior of humans and allow for the performance of complicated diagnosis and repairs required a letting go of learned sight/imagination. The ability to allow a musical instrument to unleash the notes to visit each other in a new arrangement or order requires a letting go of what one has been taught. Juxtaposing a photo of Marilyn Monroe alongside of a soup can and insistent both are art required a courageous and perhaps seemingly ridiculous leap which many would critique or discount as the act of creating art.
Advances in medicine, new ways of envisioning the responsibility of the village to raise a child, new forms of communication, expanding how we view sexuality and gender, teaching machines such as computers new skills, envisioning environmentally friendly and affordable ways of moving from one place to another, or how to more fairly share resources requires getting out of the way; emptying/opening our minds to the possible which has previously seemed impossible.
Perhaps our mantra might be: “I know nothing. I see nothing. I feel nothing. I hear nothing. I open myself to the freshness of knowing, seeing, feeling, hearing.”
Written August 20, 2023
Jimmy F Pickett
coachpickett.org
Getting out of the way
Many of us have explored how to open to growing emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually. We may have heard the advice to get out of our own way. How is it that we get in our own way preventing growth; of positioning ourselves to take a step towards realizing our potential; of opening to what is possible?
Most of us have been accumulating a list of limitations; a list of restricting lies since we were very young. Items on this list may include:
- Stories we created when we thought we knew what others were saying or thinking.
- Stories we made up to explain what we did not understand or know,
- Stories we heard from others, sometimes including parents, about us; stories which may or may not accurately reflect what was intended to communicate.
- Religious stories reflecting age old and current theories about who we are, where we have come from and what the God we posit requires.
- Religious or mythical stories about what is moral or immoral based often on a limited or outdated scientific information.
- Stories defining or limiting gender, roles, sexual attraction, music, painting, dance, architecture, and a host of other aspects of our being.
- Stories of what is possible regarding our relationship with the earth and the universes.
- Stories about our own strengths and limitations.
- Stories about power, love, economics, and a host of other subjects.
All progress - all creativity - requires that one ignore or let go of many if not most of these stories, of opening to hearing, seeing, feeling, smelling, imagining beyond them. Some describe this as a meditation technique of quieting our minds. Others may describe the process as emptying one’s mind. Still other may phrase it as getting out of one’s way.
Most of us as infants and very young children -barring neurological or other birth limitations - are open to all possibilities. We have unlimited faith in all possibilities. We freely ask why and how. We did not arrive with rules or limits. We also did not arrive with fear unless we learned it in the womb. A few of us might have arrived with the inability to experience a mirror image of what is considered outside of ourselves which might limit our experience of others. Some might have arrived with other issues including an addiction to certain drugs. A few of us brought in our DNA a talent such as the ability to compose a symphony at a very young age.
Most of us arrive with with the ability to be open to experiencing the world as one of possibilities. We arrive excited and mystified by our experience of ourselves and the world. Strangers can visit via the screen we call the television. Voices can sprout legs and travel whatever distance it takes to reach grandma and grandpa.
For many of us our goal as adults is to let go of any fear or anxiety about what we might see, hear, touch, or otherwise experience; to reclaim our childlike openness while holding on to adult knowledge of what we know to be facts; facts such as fire burns, driving can be dangerous, there are unhealthy people who deserve our compassion, we need to respect the earth so it respects and cares for us. Father Greg Boyle would say we need to hea; returning ourselves to ourselves.
Nearly every creative venture begins with emptying one’s mind. If one fails to do that one might reproduce the creation of another, but one will not create something new. Creation is perhaps a misnomer. Creativity calls forth what has always been there and possible to experience The creator of the phone did not invent or create sound waves or the ability of sound to travel. The move from sound over wires to traveling through air from tower to tower required another level of letting go of what had previously been considered limiting facts. The ability to see a video camera small enough to explore the interior of humans and allow for the performance of complicated diagnosis and repairs required a letting go of learned sight/imagination. The ability to allow a musical instrument to unleash the notes to visit each other in a new arrangement or order requires a letting go of what one has been taught. Juxtaposing a photo of Marilyn Monroe alongside of a soup can and insistent both are art required a courageous and perhaps seemingly ridiculous leap which many would critique or discount as the act of creating art.
Advances in medicine, new ways of envisioning the responsibility of the village to raise a child, new forms of communication, expanding how we view sexuality and gender, teaching machines such as computers new skills, envisioning environmentally friendly and affordable ways of moving from one place to another, or how to more fairly share resources requires getting out of the way; emptying/opening our minds to the possible which has previously seemed impossible.
Perhaps our mantra might be: “I know nothing. I see nothing. I feel nothing. I hear nothing. I open myself to the freshness of knowing, seeing, feeling, hearing.”
Written August 20, 2023
Jimmy F Pickett
coachpickett.org
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