The Road To Certainty Travels Through UnCertainty

March 23rd, 2011 by Kathleen

‘The only way around is through’… Robert Frost

We are gluttons for Certainty.  We want to know….. anything, everything and all of it.  We spend a lot of time researching, thinking and figuring out.  Our minds and heads get a good workout everyday.  In a rapidly changing world, we have learned to work around obstacles, divert interruptions and overcome conditions and circumstances.  We’re adept at pushing through and carrying on.  We take it upon ourselves to lick our wounds, pick up our pieces, and in the spirit of Humpty Dumpty, put ourselves back together again.  Good for us, we say.  Kudos to our resilience.

In the wake of all that is happening in the world, I am wondering about Certainty.  Is it a fleeting thing or something we can come to as a way of living?  In the face of all that is literally shifting individually and collectively, is Certainty actually calling us forward, asking us to consider it in a new light?

Is the experience of Certainty really elusive or is it always waiting for us to travel the road to its door?  Does that road demand a willingness to experience what is NOT certain at all?

We each have a fallback position when we are faced with any version of uncertainty.  We retreat.  We rethink.  We retry.  We run.   And we do it time and time again until we can run no more.  The earth shifts.  The tsunami hits.  The revolution cannot turn back.  Now what?

In the face of all that is NOT certain, who are we?  Who can we be?  Can we wade through the chaos to a place of knowing within?  Is the greatest act of courage our willingness to fully feel the chaos, make our way blindly through the confusion and follow the process as it shows up?  Can we travel through unCertainty trusting its path to Certainty?  Be it minute or enormous, can we find that place in our being that can hold the destruction necessary for new creation to emerge?

 

What Do We Mean When We Say, ‘Be Specific’?

March 18th, 2011 by Kathleen

‘First decide what it is you want to express or possess.  This is essential.  You must definitely know what you want of life before you can fish for it.’….Neville, 1941, Your Faith Is Your Fortune

We often hear that the challenge of life is accessing all that we imagine.   Hence, we place our attention and our effort on the work of accessing.  Applying our skill and our energy, we focus and take action in support of attaining our end result.  So what’s the problem?  This is a reasonable, even admirable pursuit.  Right?  Well, maybe not.  In our race to the finish line, we can find ourselves running inadvertently toward something we have only half considered and distinguished.  How does this happen?

We are not versed in the art of imagining.  We take for granted that we have distinguished what we are pursuing and that both essential tangible and intangible factors will be met.  Often, on achieving our target this just isn’t the case.  We’re left less than complete and fully satisfied.

We find ourselves ‘fishing’ without a clear sense of what we’re seeking and what would be its perfect fulfillment.  The second practice of QuintessentialYou Design addresses this common oversight and goes one step further.

Taking a position of emergence, the practice of Specificity has us determine both the tangible and intangible elements of Desire.  It requires us to take time to feel and articulate the ethereal experience of Desire as well as understand and name the substantial aspects that characterize its physical form.  This practice guarantees clarity with respect to both the evidence and essence of Desire.

Regardless of our ideal expression of anything, it is the combination of perfect evidence and perfect essence.  Anything less than the fulfillment of this relationship leaves us with something that isn’t quite right.  We’re left with something that manages to appear as we imagine it and yet, somehow misses in providing the experience we have intended.  We’ve all been there at one time or another.  Half of the equation just doesn’t cut it.  We find ourselves compensating for or rationalizing about that ‘something missing’.

Essence and evidence work hand in hand.  One correct element without the other leaves us wanting and wondering.  Either the characteristics we see don’t match the qualities we imagine feeling or vice versa.  Only when both are satisfied do we find that certainty becomes available.  If we have not considered this fact before and take a moment now to try it on, we will undoubtedly see choices we’ve made that fall into one of these categories.

What essential factor was missing from your Desire experience?  Given evidence of Desire fulfilled, what missing element deemed it less than perfect?  Do you practice Specificity for both essence and evidence aspects of Desire?

Do You Nurture Or Negate Desire?

March 7th, 2011 by Kathleen

Desire is essential.  Arising in the absence of perfection, it is a necessary practice.  In acknowledgment of what’s not perfect, we spark and initiate Desire, presencing a pure ‘I want’….QuintessentialYou Design DevelopmentConversation

I am not speaking here of the never-ending menial wants that drive our every day lives.  I am not referring to the trends we think we need to follow or the myriad of items to which we are introduced through advertising mediums and marketing programs.  My reference is to Desire that begins as a hint within us – that tiny spark we hardly notice and barely pay attention to.  It’s that single seed trying to sprout amidst “I can’t” or “not me” or “there’s no way”.

Often, we don’t even know what the seed is.  We’re unable to name it or find a place for it and yet, it persists.  Just as frequently, it shows up as a memory of a past yearning not fulfilled.  It’s there in our language and conversations as we reference it to make a point or compare it to something currently occurring.  If we pause long enough, we can identify the actions we took to change or eliminate the circumstances that we think caused its demise.  We recall the results of the actions we took or perhaps more accurately, the non-results of our activity.  If we have a good relationship with feeling, we can distinguish the experience of this Desire-not-fulfilled, no matter how long ago it took place.  We remember because it is this experience that captures the lack and absence of Desire.

On the other side of the coin, consider a current Desire.  We can see it clearly against the backdrop of what’s not perfect.  If we take a moment, we can articulate what in our environment or approach is inconsistent with the fulfillment of this Desire.  We can sense what we want – what will fulfill this Desire.  We can imagine it and get in touch with the experience of this fulfillment because it captures the presence and possibility of Desire.

Lack and absence or presence and possibility  – Negating or Nurturing – We choose the stand from which we create or dismantle Desire.  Held prisoner by our individual versions of doubt and fear, we negate what we set out to fulfill, leaving the seed without a chance to take root, grow and blossom.  Feeling completely the presence and possibility of pure Desire, we penetrate the Self with our individual experience of fulfillment, nurturing the tiny seed, giving it the nourishment it requires to generate emergence and ultimate expression in visible form.

Desire is akin to creation.  We negate what we cannot carry and sustain.  We nurture what we embrace and hold through the experience and process of development.

Do you nurture or negate Desire?  How do you practice Desire?

 


Are You Living Committed Or A Commitment To Living?

March 1st, 2011 by Kathleen

‘In my old way of operating, I was very clear about my capacity to commit to something.  Commitment meant being highly disciplined in sticking with something…. This is the kind of commitment where you seize fate by the throat and do whatever it takes to succeed.  It was only later that I began to understand another, deeper aspect of commitment.  This kind of commitment begins not with will, but with willingness. … The underlying component of this kind of commitment is our trust in the playing out of our destiny.  We have the integrity to stand in a ‘state of surrender’, knowing that whatever we need at the moment to meet our destiny will be available to us.  It is at this point that we alter our relationship with the future.’…. Joe Jaworski, Synchronicity: The Inner Path Of Leadership

The most common meaning we give to ‘commitment’ attaches it to something – a circumstance, condition or result to which we give our focus and energy for ultimate success.  Through culture and upbringing we have been taught that this is our way to make it in the world.  We question and even criticize those who seem to wander through life and make their way inadvertently on the journey.  Is it really ‘inadvertently’?  Or does this approach expose a different perspective worth considering?

Alternatively, we might distinguish commitment as the way in to who and what we are.  From this vantage point, it is NOT what we do.  It is NOT the agreements, contracts, goals,  objectives, mission, vision, or values we are dedicated to or obligated to achieve.  This version of commitment does not live in will, determination, or strategy.

In this context, there are three considerations that frame commitment:

We do not make commitments – Commitment makes us.  What does this mean?  Each one of us is the embodiment of a commitment.  The fulfillment of this commitment comes by way of collaboration with the expression we are.  Checking in with ourSelf, we have to determine if we are ready and willing to inquire, give this idea consideration, and discover the hidden commitment that has a hand in making us who and what we are. 

We do not have commitments – Commitment has us.  Is this saying that we should simply eliminate those goals and promises we have to ourselves and others?  Not necessarily, but this context does give us something to think about.  It offers an inside out way of viewing commitment and seeing what really has us and what we are being called to explore.

We do not fulfill commitments – Commitment is the fulfillment of us.  Yet again, the concept sounds a little backward.  It holds commitment as a force that gives us power rather than our power being held as a force used to achieve commitment.

With an inherent focus, action, experience and offering unique to each individual, commitment demands collaboration.  It is a process.  It is not a direct path to a defined result.  This version of commitment is a life-long winding journey to fulfillment.  We can define this commitment.  Its foundation is there in our memory, sparked when we are asked questions that initiate recall.  It is alive in what we most want for ourSelf and in innocent childhood experience that first broke an innate promise recorded in our being.  We may not have been aware of the promise at the instant it was broken.  That doesn’t mean it wasn’t there embedded in the design of each one of us.  In the Blueprint that is quintessential you and quintessential me, it maintains its place and its relevance to the life we are living today.  Once revealed, it simultaneously releases and gifts us.  As we integrate what had a hold on us, we turn it into something we are now holding.   Herein, ‘living committed’ to something transforms forever.  Working hard to produce a result melts into the discipline of witnessing and collaborating with each expression that comes our way along the path.  Pure desire takes precedent.  We exude willingness and fluidity.  We collaborate with Life.  We are a Commitment to Living.  Fulfillment is the promise.

Are you working hard at living committed or are you a commitment to living?  Do you recall an innocent childhood event that was the turning point in your belief that life is perfect?  Is that turning point still an influence today?