Throwing Your Dreams Ahead of You Through Ever-Shifting Tides: A Practice
Brooding-clouds-san-juan-del-sur-2012-05-24
It's midday as I write from the table outside my room in the quiet new hotel I moved to in San Juan del Sur, and the clouds just broke. The rain clouds have been competing with clear skies lately and they like to sweep in with little notice to drench the land. The odd thing about so many of these rain storms, though, is out there on the fringes -- totally blue skies and bright sun. And just a couple hours before I walked down the street (Americano in tow) on a perfectly clear and mild sunny day.
It's the start of rainy season in the tropics. The temperatures are fairly consistent year-round here so this period is called 'winter.' I love the impulsive inconsistencies of this weather, it reminds me of our very human nature.
The weather never stays constant, the earth doesn't stop turning, the tides continually rise and fall. So should we not also be wild as the wind, ever changing in our thoughts and perceptions...? Perhaps it makes sense that we truly never stop shifting. Though we may become sadly stuck in our ways, in truth, there are no real constants in our body, heart and mind.
Other than the lack of predictability in life, there really are no constants in this existence -- except perhaps that of our innermost spirits, but let's leave that one for another day -- and yet I find myself wishing and waiting for a consistent flow of brilliance to share with you. For this fountain of essential clarity and wisdom to funnel orderly into my brain, make sense of everything I know, and create a systematic way of presenting it in such a way as to make the biggest positive impact in your life, but also satisfy the innermost yearning of my own heart of hearts.
But alas, my yearnings are in vain, and I'm left with this veritable feast of shifting tides and temperamental outlooks, punctuated by occasional flashes of brilliance and moments of clarity. Oh, to follow the thread all the way home....
On those rare occasions I actually do manage to find that thread home, and produce work that makes a real cumulative impact, I fear it's wasted by the daily changes in my perception. I hardly remember who I was one week ago when I wrote that last piece on taking space for life, which was actually well received, but in truth I don't really want to go back there. Each of these present moments are the greatest moments I've had the privilege to live. And as I dive into the inner truth of that it just ripens into more and better.
But if I don't build on what I've produced, and I don't pay attention to what makes you tick, am I not creating castles out of sand...?
Or perhaps the best work I've produced thus far, as it seems to come from some nebulous secret hidden fountain -- or even a creative daemon of sorts, of which I have little idea as to how or why or when it chooses to tap my shoulder and flow through me -- has somehow created its own cumulative wave of impact outside my control, and I'm in some way receiving the rewards of that now. Despite having written a whole book and countless thousands of words on the subject of flow, I'm still at a bit of a loss as to how this all works. But surrender, I say. Sweet surrender.
There IS one idea I've been playing with since this weekend, and I want to share it with you, but I'm anxious to get out now -- the sun has come out brightly and the rains are gone again. The ocean calls. So I'll have to return shortly to finish this off...
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OK, I'm back from my mini mission -- change money, buy lunch, eat on the beach, feed leftovers to dogs, sunbathe, eat ice cream cone, walk to the fisherman's port, take pictures, discover a new strip of hotels I hadn't noticed...and now I'm back. Here goes....
I was out at one of the beach bars with one of my good travel buddies after a long day of surf when it hit me...
Suddenly a wave of good feeling came over me -- I saw myself out on the waves, paddling hard in the water to get through the choppy breaks. I saw the front of my surfboard ahead of me and my single-minded determination to get out to the good waves. There's this focus in there that's amazing, and I started bringing it into my reality as I stood there half in the bar and half out in the ocean. The waves had taken me out, and I felt the great hope and determination, and the feeling of strength and beauty in that clearly determined striving. I saw the clarity and purity of this way of being, and I saw that this is a beautiful thing to bring into life.
At that point it became clear to me that the reality I had been living in was lacking a clearly defined and self-determined driver to walk me through. By 'driver' I mean what it is that's coming through me to walk into and towards, what I'm seeing ahead of me as I walk, and what I leave behind in the wake that follows. I'd been struggling a bit with my day-to-day reality because of a tendency to over-empathize with the local Nicaraguans and perceive their outlooks of me in their town and country. It had entered my consciousness and consumed a large part of the best of me, the ability to float through the oddest of circumstances with a high positive energy flow.
But the most important part of 'choosing the driver' is consciously determining what it is you're walking into.
It reminds me of this quote from Carl Jung that Danielle LaPorte once paraphrased in an interview I did with her. Something like, "You throw your dream ahead of you and you walk into it..."
I love that idea, but I also think it's a really valuable thing to use and remember in life. And I think that due to the changing winds of my temperaments I'm sometimes throwing the dream out all around me and dissolving some of its power, instead of purposefully ahead of me. Can you relate to this at all...?
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The last thing I want to leave you with is a little plug on the magic of mini missions -- one which you can use to deliberately practice this throwing the dream ahead of you and walking into it.
I'm finding it really awesome to pursue mini adventures that involve walking and taking a small trip of some kind. I don't think you need to go far, but you should go somewhere that holds the potential for some kind of reward that brings you real joy. The pursuit of that reward on your mini adventure is key. Walk with light and keep the energy of what you want to bring in the world ahead of you -- project it forward, ahead of you on the path you walk, and allow it to guide you as you walk. It's very magical the kind of serendipity that happens when you listen to your heart's call and go on a mini mission.
That's all -- mini adventures. Try it out any day and see what happens. You might be very pleasantly surprised.
With Love,
SATYA
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