Detangling the Web of Core Relationships

As we proceed with building a corpus of MyStory tales, our most memorable and thematic life stories, I am reminded of Carl Jung’s significant record of his own ‘depth’ MyStory explorations in The Red Book.  Jung used active imagination (contemplation) techniques to sink deeply into his personal unconscious realm, to explore and interact with his internal archetypal personae.  After engaging with each archetype long enough to glean its message for Jung’s emerging, more fully integrated Self, he artistically created a colorful Mandala image and wrote in his Red Book (journal) about what he had learned. Jung recommended that anyone likewise interested in actively promoting their own individuation and integration of Self would do well to create their own ‘red book’: their own journal about their archetypal parts of Self, their own exploration of the Life Themes and character shards of their ever-emerging Self.

So that is what your MyStory is intended to be: your compilation of meaningful life stories that reveals the deep character of your dynamic Self.

For my part I find myself moving forward with my MyStory reflections to the Life Theme of personal relationships, which is a key theme for me, as it is for many.  My most significant Relationship theme stories are rather too personal to write much about in a public blog, but some of the most transformative of these are fodder for deep excavation and I can share at least some shards here which I will explore more deeply in my private MyStory journal.  In the process of exploring Life Theme lessons and insights, it is vital to detangle the curious web of relationships that have emerged and developed over a lifetime (at least!), to date.

Donna/ Don

To know me at all deeply is to know something of my relationship with Donna (pseudonym here).  This relationship has evolved since I was 17 and continues even after this dear friend’s passing around six months ago.  I will share some of what I can here, embellishing further in my private MyStory logs, seeking to unravel through layers of import to better glean kernel messages from this relationship for my Soul journey going forward.

I met Donna when I was 17.   A good high-school friend, Larry, himself a budding poet and close comrade in our drama club (the actor who played the soldier dying under a tree in Viet Nam as recalled in the previous post), approached me in the hall one day at school, and with his signature panache said:

“Say Yes!”

“Yes,” I responded faithfully. “What did I just agree to?”
“Fencing!”

Thus began a journey that has woven through my life ever since, both in terms of wonderful adventures with fencing throughout my college years and into my life overall, and through my relationship with a dynamic, uniquely gifted lifelong friend, Donna.  She was the instructor for a ten-week class in fencing at an arts center in my home-town (where I have returned to live recently, in part for the sake of reflecting on this deep relation).

So, Donna, and fencing (the latter a theme I will explore separately down the road).  Donna is one of the most dynamic persons I have ever known. I feel most fortunate that after the ten weeks of our fencing class, she invited the students to order some equipment and I ventured to her apartment one Thursday after school to pick up a mask, glove and foil that would launch my later fencing career (on a college fencing squad), and that would initiate one of my most influential friendships. We began a conversation that afternoon that developed and evolved such that even in my current active contemplations and dreams, I still visit with this dear Soul friend.

Donna became a mentor and friend over several years throughout my last two years of high-school and through my college years in Buffalo, continuing by phone and letters after that.   She took interest in helping me explore and develop my own creative and spiritual awareness.  I shared my journals with her and she gave me lists of books to read and discuss, as we met weekly for the next two years, every Thursday after school.  As Avatar portrays for a close connection, Donna “saw me,” and in turn, I now realize, I saw her, as Soul, too.

Some shards of memory from those initial several years of my connection with Donna

• Books and poetry, including:  Camus’ notebooks and The Stranger; Schopenhauer’s Either/ Or; Yeats’ Selected Poetry of W. B. Yeats (much of which I memorized) and The Vision; Nightwood by Djuna Barnes (whom Donna knew in NYC while an actress there); The Moveable Feast by Hemingway; Anais Nin’s diaries and Seduction of the Minotaur; The Chalk Garden play (the first work we discussed); and The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell (the second). (These and others set me up very well for my English major studies to come in college.)
• “Who is the real LW?”
• Fencing: Donna’s visit to my fencing club, where my early coach was also one of her friends; Our team’s (and my own) placing 9^th (by 2 pts from 7^th) of 125 or so university fencing teams in intercollegiate nationals, 1975
• Visits to Donna over college breaks and over summers
• Visiting Donna at a hospital’s mental health ward when she was in for ‘nervous breakdown’ and MPD was diagnosed (see below)
• My own poetry about our friendship through the years; her mentorship continuing through my undergraduate and Masters study college years

Flash forward: to my early doctoral study times in Arizona, some ten years or so into our friendship.  One night I felt a clear inner call to communicate with Donna.  We had long shared an unusually ‘psychic’ connection. The next morning I dialed her number (she by then living in Florida) from a pay phone at the Anthropology building at ASU:

LW: “Hello. Is Donna there?” (her housemate/ partner had answered)

K: “Who is this? Yes, Just a minute…”

D: “Hello?” (a deep voice at the other end of the line;

 was this a friend who was to tell me

of Donna’s recent passing?)

LW: “This is Linda…”

D: “Yes, hello!” (It was Donna; as I listened more closely

I recognized my Friend)

D: “I have changed my name, Linda.”

LW: “Okay.” (I took out pen and paper, ready to write down

Donna’s new married name.)

D: “It is Donald. You have called on the very day

before I am going for my final operation.”

I had not communicated with Donna for nearly a year, so this conversation brought quite a surprising revelation about my dear mentor and friend.  Lots had developed that I have mostly not recorded above that led Donna to this transformational choice.  She had experienced several years of eventually successful therapy after a diagnosis of Multiple Personality Syndrome.  A highly talented actress and theater director, Donna had developed a panoply of at least eleven distinct personalities since around the time of my sophomore year in college.  She had first been diagnosed with ‘nervous breakdown’ episodes, then her MPD condition fully emerged. She underwent a successful hypnotherapy program, but it revealed that Donna’s core personality was actually, at least after the integrational therapy, Donald.  So, after the requisite year of transgender living and hormone therapy–during which it was discovered Donna had had a blue bracelet applied after birth, with a surgical “correction” such as more babies than most of us realize still receive—doctors unanimously approved Gender Congruence Surgery, and Donna transitioned ‘in place’ in Florida, to Donald. This baby then, raised as Donna, had never been fully comfortable in that persona. Donald was central to this Soul’s outlook and personal consciousness.

Okay, so the first time I met Donald in person was the summer after that revelatory phone call.  When I saw him (as him) for the first time, at the airport when He came to greet me, inwardly I felt myself stating over and over: “That’s it!”  There had always been a sense of something mysterious and unusual about Donna’s persona—like there was always something hidden, something so unique that other than her amazing intelligence and creative virtuosity, I could never pinpoint. But seeing Donna as Donald ‘made sense’ of some of that mysterious quality.

My connection with Donald continued though not at the level of closeness I had shared with Donna.  Yet I found through the many years to follow something unexpected in my own internal, spiritual life: dreams of visiting Donna, as Donna, developed into a frequent feature of my very active dream life. (I have long felt there should be a clinical interest in such dreams of the friends and allies of ‘sex-change’ cases.)

The first dream: I go to a house and knock on the door. A man opens the door, and I ask if I can visit with Donna. He says no, but I can see her if I go to the patio. I am then on a patio that reminds me of a classical Greek villa (a courtyard surrounded on at least three sides by its house).  Looking up to the top of a small knoll just beyond the house, I see Donna standing there, and she sees me. She sends like a girl scout down to give me a message. (Later I realized the other residents of the house included Donald—who had answered the door—and Donna’s other MPD personae. She had been sort of expelled from the assemblage.)

Another significant early dream: I see Donna at an intersection, a crossroads. I could tell she was in some pain; that something had been ripped out from her right shoulder. Around the same time a dream of seeing Donna at another crossroads, where two pathways were to diverge. Her path was binary, one person (Donald) moving off to the right, and Donna herself to the left. She held up a placard (like in a a Brecht play I had recently read, Mother Courage), with one word: Eternellement. (I felt she showed me this as a sign of our enduring spiritual connection.)

images aare from pixabay.com

Then over decades, similar dreams of Visiting Donna:  I would visit her at an apartment overlooking a pond with a walkway around it.  We would talk as we had in our earlier year visits. We would sometimes play Scrabble or some sort of game while overlooking the pond. (I felt that this apartment setting was like a “purgatory” sort of existence that Donna had to endure so long as Donald continued in his occupation of their erst shared body; that Donna would not be able to “move on” until Donald’s passing.

NOW: I maintained a connection with Donald through nearly forty years, visiting with him twice and more regularly (though not so deeply) after he invited me to play Words with Friends with him, where we sometimes would Chat, for around 15 years.

Donald had an excellent life experience, as a behavioral health liaison and eventually a director there, still active as an actor and director in local theater productions, and with a long-term partner for over twenty years.  He experienced a lot of physical health hardships, as do many on long-term hormonal treatment. He dealt with joint problems then also cancer over a long duration until finally he transpired, some six months or so ago.

Yet my dreams of visiting with Donna continue. Only once so far, shortly after his passing, Donald communicated. He said there was something he had wanted to tell me. (I hope that would have been that he had always remembered the depth of our friendship.)  I went to visit Donna recently at another apartment setting, but she was in a car in a garage with several people attending to her (it felt like she was in distress because she was still not being allowed yet to move on.) And last week, a sweet though brief visitation with Donna in the dream state, to suggest we will continue to be in touch…eternellement.

******

And you? What have been some of the deepest, most transformative relatioonships in your life? I invite you to write in your MyStory journal, to explore and plumb the depths of your core relations.

A Contemplation Seed on ‘Anti-Gravity’ (for Better Endings)

Imagine: You live in a world where “gravity” does not exist. Instead of perpetually falling toward heavier matter, you rise or move about in any direction at will, according to a Law of Assumption. You simply assume a viewpoint at whatever vista you allow; even multiple viewpoints at once, if you wish.

You perceive as a conscious, distinct, unique and aware point of view, with no fixed body yet you may try on or project whatever self-image you choose.

You are Soul, the IAMTHATIAM. As Soul, you may occupy bodies to experience the gravity of this world, see? Yet the IAMTHATIAM is able also to transcend the pull or warp of embodied life situations or addictions.

From the Soul perspective, IAMTHATIAM is free insofar as It (I/ you) chooses to rise above the grooves the body falls along.

I/you can dream, meditate, contemplate, reflect, refresh and renew, at will.

I composed the above contemplation seed after watching a Science Channel program about how difficult it has been as yet for scientists to develop antigravity propulsion that would allow space travel without the need for expensive and burdensome fuels. I see this as a metaphor for our experience as embodied Souls going about our existence in the physical realm of matter-energy-space-time. So, let me continue:

Whatever is the Matter in your life circumstances or habits, you can rise above the density as a point of view that Sees, Knows, and that may Be or become whatever It will accept or imagine. When you are able to See where you are at, how you got Here and where you appear to be headed, you have the freedom of choice to make changes and/or to learn from the course upon which you have embarked.

This is why assuming some time-out-of-time daily to dream, to contemplate actively, to deeply imagine or visualize, to journal, to Center, to practice whatever techniques you may choose to attain greater Self-realization or higher awareness may open your capacity to review, to reflect, and to project forth from a more creative, ‘better endings’ perspective.

images are gratefully free from pixabay.com

Such an ‘Antigrav’ perspective is neither a panacea nor an escape from the necessary consequences of our matter-bound courses of action already in motion. We live and hopefully learn from our experiences, which is after all the core value and benefit of Gravity. Still, we can rise above to observe the Moment, to exercise our ultimate independence beyond the worldly illusions of solidity.

Better Endings to All!

The Principle of Better Endings

I have been posting to this blog site of Better Endings, in various editions, for well over seven years. In the process of developing ideas for the blog, I have come to understand how “Better Endings” is more than a literary device. It is a principle, a creative faculty, inherent to each of us as human beings because of our capacities for imagination and rational thought. We are capable, through language and memory, to reflect on our past, to mindfully experience our current thoughts and actions, and to anticipate and plan for our future. 

We are never ‘stuck’ in the present moment—or bubble—of time. The philosophical admonition that we live ‘only in the present moment’ means different things to different people, but I find for myself it is not really about the Present tense or about time (or spacetime), at all.  To be grounded in the Now can mean simply focussing your attention fully on what you are experiencing. If I travel to a past event through memory or imagination, I am Here-Now. If I recall a dream to explore its meaning, I imagine myself back in that experience to ‘replay’ it, and I am Here-Now. If I consider my future potentials to choose my best path forward, as I ‘preview’ a future potential, I am Here-Now. And if I reflect on a full process of how some event or attitude or situation has emerged, unfolded, and resolved (or its forward potentials), viewing that entire process as a single extended Moment is also being Here-Now.

The Principle of Better Endings allows you to regard and conduct your life as a transformational process of Becoming: where have you been, where are you currently, then where are you headed in relation to where/how you would most desire to Be?  To develop the talent of future prospection—like mining for gold!—it is helpful to reflect on past events and situations to ferret out what has worked and what could use some tweaking for going forward in a direction most in keeping with your current goals or with your sense of mission and purpose.  The principle of Better Endings lets you choose how you will respond in a current condition so you can ‘aim’ to achieve a ‘better’ future condition for yourself and all concerned.

If we think of ourselves as locked within some bubble of the Present (like in a level-balancing tool), then we might think of our lives as like floating on a raft being tossed about on the open seas of chance or circumstance. Hang on!  We might say, “I don’t make plans; I like to let things happen and Go with the Flow, wherever Life takes me.” (If you have set the flow in motion in a particular, desirable direction, then yes by all means!) I get the dynamic randomity of that and the sense of surfing on the waves of life experience to develop resourcefulness and spontaneity in the journey or process of living, day by day. “The journey is more important than the destination,” someone framed in this perspective might propound. I totally agree with that idea!  Still, how we engage in the Journey is part and parcel of living a fruitful, dynamic life.  “Following Your Heart” to “Find/Live Your Bliss” requires more from you than ‘just getting by’ or waiting to see what will happen next.

Here’s the deal, from the perspective of the principle or faculty of Better Endings as I have come to understand it from practicing the art of ‘better-endering’ through the last several years:

If we regard ourselves as bobbing along through life in a Present spacetime-bubble, there is no reason for the future to be any more than a further unfoldment and extension of habits, conditions, and circumstances we have accrued along the way. We may become trapped in this Present bubble of time.

When I began the journey of conducting research that ultimately led to my book providing Life Mapping tools, Your Life Path (2018), I was inspired by a dream.  One morning as I woke from sleep, I saw a white placard with bold black letters pasted right between my eyes, that stated:

YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE TO REALIZE YOUR DREAM, NOT JUST FOR GETTING BY.

What a wake-up call!  This dream vision led me on a quest to discover for myself what is my Dream and how can I realize It. This led to my research on life mapping as I piloted every step of that emerging process before sharing it with others. After teaching from that process for several years in a humanities course about Myth, Reason, and Your Life Story (co-taught with an historian of mythology), my book and more importantly the workbook for Your Life Path (2018; you can download the workbook for free from the right panel), this process has now led further for me to a new book manuscript (now with my agent) of the title, Better Endings!

images are from pixabay.com

In the last three and a half years I have moved three times, following my own heart to realize aspects of my Dream. This shows how flexibility is an important component of applying the principle of Better Endings. There are no limits to this principle, of course. As we apply it to situations and choices in our lives, engaging with this principle of Better Endings helps us realize the manifold potentials of the Present Moment.

The future is not fixed or necessarily determined by past choices or conditions.

You are free to exercise your faculty to reflect on the past, to review current conditions, and to choose your direction forward, to Realize Your Dream!

Travel Preparations–the Big Move

Travel, especially for relocation or a Big Move, can be an act of Life Transformation.  It lifts you out from whatever conditions have become routinized and familiar, offering new potentials for adventure and change. Because this is such a momentous occasion, a successful Big Move is deserving and requires major preparations. Preparations allow time for envisioning the adventure or the new life conditions you aim to manifest, so the more you prepare, the better for all your future prospects!

This past two weeks I have been preparing my house in Colorado to go on the market tomorrow as I will be relocating Back East at the end of July. “Staging” has been a major undertaking. New bathroom sinks, some new furniture for my next location, basically gutting and tilling the back yard, steam cleaning carpets, and cleaning and polishing/ renewing all interior surfaces as with a fine toothed comb, every nook and cranny.  It has been like digging myself out from the comfortable, cluttered space I have created as my haven this past twelve or so years.

The process of returning my house to its pristine state in preparation for its own new occupants has allowed me to gradually come to better awareness of the reality that I am already now all but retired (officially June 30) and that I truly will be moving to a new location altogether. I will be two and a half hours from one dear sister and maybe six or so from another and eight from my brother and sister-in-law: much closer to family than this past nearly forty years. I return to New York state, which was foundational in my formative years; it will be nice to be able to travel as an adult to places I always wanted to explore more fully in my youth. I bring with me my dear Soul companion, Sophie (Shitzu/Yorkie) and my dear feline Soul companion, Emily.

images are from pixabay.com

I find that preparing for such a big move benefits from lots of time in contemplation and journalling. Inner preparation is just as important or perhaps even more so than the outer activity.  Moving carries such rich potentials for creating the future you choose to manifest that it is vital to check in with your feelings, thoughts, and goals. Nowadays with the internet it is so easy as well to look ahead at the place and resources to which you will be moving or traveling. This allows your imagination to soar and scout out your destination, even before you arrive.

I welcome YOUR Comments and your own Travel or Big Move Story. If you would like to Guest Blog your story, you can simply email me at lkwatts@uccs.edu.

 

Re-Vision a Relationship (Past, Present or Future)

For our final February weekly post about the Life Theme of RELATIONSHIPS, I invite you to consider how you might wish to have changed or to currently ‘tweak’ some aspect of a meaningful relationship in your life. With the divine gift of imagination, you are capable of effectively “re-visioning” your relationship events; past, present or future.

It may help first to consider if there is a PATTERN about some of your relationships that you would choose to alter if you could.  This is an active exercise; it is about what YOU CAN/ COULD have done differently–or would do differently today–that might have lead to some different results.  Re-visioning a past event or situation can have a profound influence on your current disposition when it comes to actions or decisions you could be contemplating now, so that you can avoid pitfalls of the past.

The strength of this exercise is that it brings your present awareness to bear either on a past situation or more mindfully upon a present set of circumstances.

So do this with full exercise of your (re-)constructive imagination. Once you have identified a pattern you would wish to change and you have remembered a particular moment in a particular relationship which itself you feel you might/’should’ have enacted differently in retrospect, imagine yourself IN THAT MOMENT again. This time, change  the conversation or the action knowingly, with the awareness you have since gained. Journal or internally dialogue with the other person in this relationship moment. Let him or her speak, and respond or initiate your own conversation as it could have been rather than as it was.  Listen to the other person and see that they listen to and hear you deeply.  Continue the scenario in your imagination until you bring it to a new level of resolution. As you emerge from your reverie, give yourself time to reflect on how the future might have been altered from this re-visioned exchange.

I find that when I do this re-vision the past technique–and I have often as a life mapping tool (see right panel)–it really feels as if not just the memory of the event but the actual event itself HAS CHANGED. I feel less attachment afterwards to the initial triggering moment and better equipped to approach any similar situation in the present or future.

I welcome YOUR Comments and Story!

Relationship Better Endings

When I coach people through a Life Path Mapping process, during a reflective phase I ask them to consider how they have managed transitions in their lives.  For each major Turning Point they have identified with their life mapping, I ask them whether in retrospect they wish they would have done anything differently and, if so, what might have transpired.

Most life mappers tend to say they would not make any changes in their past decisions or choices, because of all the subsequent change that also would have occurred.  They have learned from whatever has happened, so why look back?  Yet, those who do entertain this almost taboo thought experiment find it illuminating because it helps them to focus on what really are their core values and long-term goals.

Significant relationships often bring about Turning Points in our lives.  Entering a new relationship, with another person or with a pet or with new colleagues as you assume a new role in your career, opens many fresh opportunities for growth and development. It is like you have pressed a REFRESH button, although of course soon you are likely to encounter similar situations and challenges you have faced before. How will you approach this similar challenge this time?

 

One way to ‘trouble shoot’ fresh relationships is to review your past.  Take stock of the strengths you bring to these new relations as well as the patterns of inhibitions or difficulties you have encountered before.

Here is a Better Endings journaling tool you are welcome to entertain:

Reflect upon a relationship from your life history that was never well resolved or that continues to be troublesome in some respects, or one that ended poorly.  Consider that situation as a STORY.  Now then, change that story.  Imagine and/or journal about and re-write the ending or a better resolution of that relationship. What might have happened or could happen differently?  

images are from pixabay.com

(After my own reflections today): If you find on reflection that you feel there is nothing about your past relations that you COULD have changed (as that is how it seems they were meant to be), still you can look ahead and contemplate what changes you might make as you approach a new relationship or to improve your present relations.

The more attention you give to how YOU might improve your past relations, the better prepared you may be to go forward with a new attitude, welcoming the new opportunities before you!

I welcome your Comments and Stories!

Contemplative Hopping (Internal Threshold Crossing)

Story 1:  Yogic Flying

Sometime in the late 1970’s, a group of Transcendental Meditation practitioners first stunned the world with their release of video (before the Web even!) demonstrating “yogic flying” or “hopping” while in a deep meditation state of consciousness. They would levitate and shift position on their mats apparently as an exercise of Mind over Body.

Yogic Fliers reveal that we are capable of controlling the body directly through thought or Mind. What else can we take away from their example?

Story 2:  Conscious vs. “Unconscious” States of Consciousness

For a graduate school assignment in linguistic semantics one week, our professor asked us to compose better semantic accounts than standard dictionary references for a related set of terms.  I chose CONSCIOUS and UNCONSCIOUS and compiled a wide range of definitions in order to sort these out and arrive at a holistic semantic analysis. What I discovered was that any state of consciousness that is not “conscious” or a “waking state” perception or experience people tend to lump together under the very large umbrella of “unconscious” in American English parlance.

Included under the far-reaching semantic domain of “unconscious”: unconscious, subconscious, dream state, daydreams, ‘other side’, Mind, (unconscious) thought, brain synapses, Self, soul, precognition, memory, lack of awareness. What I noticed about this wide range of concepts is that, simply put, Americans comprehend on the whole very little about anything they cannot directly See, Hear, Taste, Smell or Touch. All the rest, which in my view is the whole-enchilada iceberg under that tiny tip of “conscious” sense awareness, is lumped together as “unconscious.”

As one who has engaged in daily, active contemplation and dreamwork for at least 44 years, I have discovered that the “Inner” is much more vast and is much more open to exploration and freedom of experience than the “Outer” realm of matter and conscious awareness.  There are many (perhaps infinite) levels of consciousness beyond the outer physical senses and body, and you are free to explore this diverse multiplicity of states and levels of consciousness through various modes of meditation, contemplation, active imagination, dreamwork, prayer, paranormal investigation and/or mindfulness techniques.

That which is BEYOND the physical body states is neither defined by the mind nor contained or controlled by the Brain.

Implications for Contemplative Hopping—Internal Threshold Crossing

Using Jung’s approach of active imagination, a mode of contemplative envisioning and inner action, I encourage you to try your beyond-the-physical wings!  You do have them, at least figuratively speaking.  Dreams of flying (with or without wings as they are usually not needed!) are a very common early mode of inner travel or shifting of attention inwardly.  Explore an inner landscape, for instance, of an outer place you will soon be visiting “out here.”  Or actively contemplate the results or consequences of some anticipated move or action by yourself or others.

When I  was to make a big move from Buffalo (East) to Arizona (‘Out West”)  some 38 years ago, every night I asked to be shown something about the life I was about to embark upon plus I asked questions to trouble shoot this grand adventure. I was shown four people I would later meet (independently of one another) along with some glimpse of their role in my upcoming life.  I was also shown that  the experience would not be without its hardships but they would be necessary (karmic, let’s say), and when I later experienced what was foretold in these dreams very directly, I had been forewarned so was better prepared to meet the challenges.

images are from pixabay.com

Let’s call your active inner explorations (past, present or future) to be forms of inner Threshold Crossing. I like to say, you don’t have to die or nearly die in order to explore the Heavens as well as really anything/ any state your Heart desires. Sages like the poet Rumi, actually, encourage us to “die daily.” This means you have the spiritual freedom to explore and investigate beyond the limited reaches of brain-mind or body.

See? I welcome your comments and stories!

Cross the Threshold to Your Greatest Adventure

The greatest adventure is living life fully in the NOW (see “Alternate Futurescapes” recent post). Now then, the NOW is not necessarily but does include the Present of time-space. NOWness as well includes your own Past and Future lived and liveable experience (as arrays of possibilities) and the total range of possibility arcs in this lifetime, in parallel (e.g. ‘past or future lives’) and in the mulitiverse at large! Have I blown your mind yet? What the heck am I suggesting here? Yes, that You, as a Soul divinely gifted with a capacity for perception and vision–i.e., your creative, active imagination, not just your mental memory banks or existing synaptic networks–are free to explore, examine, and create forms from formless substances; you as Soul are indeed a Creator of and in your own worlds.

So, I encourage you to exercise your innate freedom of consciousness! You needn’t hesitate to daydream, and pay attention to your nighttime revelations as well as to those waking dreams that bring a message to you in the moment. If you were to lock your keys in your car, for example, how might that be a waking dream for you? Maybe it is telling you to pay closer attention, or not to close yourself out of a potential vehicle for moving forward. Take that job offer, for instance, when this sort of waking dream symbol occurs.

images are from pixabay.com

Crossing the threshold to your Greatest Adventure signifies living your life to its fullest potentials, Now, and Now too, and also NOW! In this sense the nature of your life event may be less important than how you experience, frame or respond to it.

Life is transitory: its constructs of imagery, form and emotions ebb and flow as your consciousness focuses or directs your attention (or else as we react, based on former constructions; so, far better the former).

So now, take heed and celebrate every blessed moment, not only in this lifetime you are creating but in the Wholeness of Life Itself.  The mystic sages tell us, and I do believe, that in the most ultimate awareness of truth, Life of Itself is only LOVE.

Love (or, Spirit) is: “…that thread, so fine as to be invisible, yet so strong as to be unbreakable — which binds together all beings in all the worlds of God, in all universes, throughout all time, and beyond time into eternity.” (Paul Twitchell, The Shariyat-Ki-SUGMAD, Book 1).

I enjoy and welcome your Comments. I also invite you to send your own stories on these themes that I will post or reblog with a byline for you, by sending them to my email at lwatts@uccs.edu.

Alternate Futurescapes: A Crossing-the-Threshold Tool

As Shakti Gawain presented in her excellent book, Creative Visualization, it can be of utmost value to put into practice your divine gift of Imagination when you wish to manifest positive attitudes and experiences in your life. The quality of your consciousness affects your capacity to create the life of your dreams, and you are responsible and therefore free to establish and maintain a positive state of consciousness.

In my book YOUR LIFE PATH, I will be providing 75 self-discovery Tools you can engage with as a life mapping process that will let you review your Life Story; reflect on your Life Themes, Life Chapters and your archetypal parts of Self; and also engage in future prospecting or what I like to call Future Casting.

One fun Future Casting technique to help transport you via creative visualization to Cross the Threshold into a desirable future is to journal or creatively represent in any medium a set of Alternate Futurescapes:

Write in first person (I), present tense(from assuming a NOW perspective)about a possible future that is desirable to you because it fulfills your sense of your Life Purpose, Values, and Goals. Describe the conditions you have established in this Futurescape of your fertile imagining. Where are you, what are you doing, what relationships and activities are prominent in this Future dream-come-true. Describe in detail the distinctive features of your Future landscaoe of consciousness. The more descriptive you can be, the more you can assume a perspective within this possible future; the more of a probability it becomes!

Now then, envision a different alternate futurescape, maybe one even more desirable than the first, more ideal. Or imagine where you will arrive if something you need to change currently you do not change. Write several of these Futurescape scenarios, perhaps limiting yourself to one page each.

Later, look back at these Alternate Futurescape scenarios you have described. Are there some common denominator factors that your more desirable futures share? Can you further envision a pathway to bring about the most desirable future conditions you have imagined?

images are from pixabay.com

If you can conceive of a desirable future you can perceive a path to attain that.

I welcome your Comments and I invite you to share your stories!

Making a True Departure / Shifting to Here-Now

I recognize a distinction between the Present as a current moment in time-space and the Here-Now as a spiritual focus. The NOW experienced in contemplative spiritual practice is a liberating orientation while the notion of Present from a time-space frame of reference is artificial and can be self-limiting. It is a matter of perspective or more accurately it depends upon where you place your attention. If we accept, as I do, that time is an illusion or an artifice of context, then as we shift our focus of attention such as to look ahead with creative visualization or to re-envision a former state of being by reactivating a stored memory, we can focus our consciousness in such a manner as to alter our Present reality. From this angle, the Past is NOW, the Present is NOW, and the Future is also available NOW.

When I was first in college in Buffalo, New York, I had a friend Ann who was an artist specializing in sculpture. Ann created this amazing piece of conceptual art which was comprised of a five foot tall vertical array of multicolored fabric cords with simply a one foot tall plexiglass tube around them. The art was interactive so it invited you to change the position of the tube up or down along the colored cords, slightly compressing the bundle of colors as you would shift the transparent tube. To me this has always been an excellent metaphor for the practice of contemplation or active imagination. We simply shift our consciousness from Here-Now to another Here-Now to OBSERVE; we focus our locus of attention as we choose. We thus can place and activate our consciousness in any dimension of Nowness at will.

pictures are frompixabay.com

Locked within a Time orientation, the Present is a bubble from which we never seem able to escape. The freedom to Act is in the Now. To bring about a true change of life conditions as in realizing a desired future that is a true departure from present conditions requires only a subtle shifting of your attention to a Now of your imagining.

See?

I welcome your comments and viewpoint.

Time Travel? You ARE a Time Machine!

Following up from my previous post on “How to Burst Your Bubble,” we are all of us time travelers!  We have the capacity to transport ourselves to any NOW of our imagining via our divine gift of creative visualization.

All the theoretical debate over whether time travel is possible or whether we could ever develop a Time Machine is interesting yet unnecessary. We HAVE a Time Machine built into our very Beingness, though only a few of us humans (anyways) have learned how to willingly tap into our timespace travel capacity.

Am I speaking of Memory? Only as a repository for dead image storage, though we may utilize a stored memory as a launching off pad for our “inner” time travel adventures. Some speak of the Reactive Mind; that houses memory images that, if reactivated by encountering a similar experience to one that affected us earlier in a traumatic or dramatic way, could trigger or reactivate past synoptic associations. Memories can be pleasant or painful, beautiful or horrendous. But if we are only talking about ‘dead’ mental images, this is not the sort of time travel I am referring to .

Lift yourself above the Time Track via your fertile IMAGINATION and go to visit one of the experiences you hold in your memory banks, but this time deposit yourself back into the event actively and re-vision it. This can be a form of time travel.  “Daydream” or creatively envision a desirable future state of consciousness and deposit yourself into that specific possible future to look around or make changes Here; this can also be a time travel excursion.

What I mean by “get above the time track” and “deposit” yourself in the Now of your aware choice so you can explore and bring back your fresh memory of perceptions from there, is just that.  I like to think of Timespace more as an OCEAN than as a linear arrow; your consciousness then is like an OCEAN LINER—or better yet, a SEA GULL!

Mystics and self-development gurus say emphatically that you CAN create your own future. Time Travel via consciousness-surfing, as you will, is a timeless (hah!) method. Establish a thought mold of a desirable future state so you can steer your consciousness to eventually sail mindfully into this future-state harbor.  IMAGINATION is your Divine capacity of Consciousness Itself.

How do I “know” this to speak so confidently of your essentially BEing your own Time Machine? It would take more than this full month of posts on our theme of Departure to explain.

Some evidences from my own life experience include (with brief annotations):

Prophetic dreams (lots of them, very clear and later realized precisely):

Example:   When I moved from Buffalo, NY to Phoenix, AZ in 1979 I asked questions of my Inner Guide in active contemplation every night for the previous year. Every night I then dreamed about what I would be experiencing as I traveled to Phoenix and what I would encounter there. I met three people very clearly in my dreams whom I later recognized from those dreams and who became close relations in Phoenix.  I was shown that I needed to make this trip partly to meet these people.

Revised memories from direct re-visioning:

Example:

In my upcoming book Your Life Path I include a life mapping Tool that I call “Re-Vision a Past Event.” I practiced this myself by re-visioning a traumatic encounter with my father when I was 17.   By depositing myself back into a memory of a time when he physically beat and demeaned me over a trivial matter, I was able to journal a dialogue with him (1^st person, ‘present-Then’ tense) just following the encounter. We both got to communicate with each other about what had “just” transpired, so we both came to a clearer understanding of both of our points of view and motivations and we forgave each other in that re-visioned dialogue. I can say that since re-visioning that experience, its memory is forever altered in my consciousness!

‘Future Casting’ now coming to fruition

When I was a teenager I would often daydream. I would usually find myself on a small rowboat, drifting under a blue sky while reading a book. Guess what? In around 18 months I am relocating after retirement to a lakeside community!

Future casting is a concept I use in Your Life Path to recommend journaling “Alternate Future Scape” scenarios.

Other Examples:

Other timespace ‘travel’ modalities I have experienced directly include:

Parallel life awareness, past life awareness, lucid dreaming, and Soul Travel (Out of Body Experiences including  a Near-Death experience).

images are from pixabay.com

Remember please, you are NOT your Body but your Consciousness has a freedom to explore beyond your Body’s sense-limitations.

I welcome YOUR Stories and Comments!

The Body-Life of Soul and Crossing Over

It is so interesting and humbling to observe how blogging works within my life now. 10:45 Sunday PM, reflecting on the week’s topic and, again, how it relates to conditions in my  life as well as connects  with readers’ lives. This week, for example, is about utilizing the ARTISTarchetype to help Cross the Threshold of experience… Sunday (earlier tonight) I wrote of this in relation to Nanci Griffith’s rendition of “Across the Great Divide” and how this could relate to the divide between life and death with regards to the character played by Julianne Moore in Still Alice. Then my sister Lee called and  let me know that my mother, Betty Watts, is facing her own great divide even in this moment; she struggles at a nursing home with late stage Parkinson’s and now they are asking to insert a food tube because she is having too much difficulty swallowing even the pureed diet she has been restricted to for over a year already. We all know (five children, plus her extended in-laws and by now 6 grandchildren and several great grandchildren, and friends) that my mother’s time on this earth in her current body is limited and fragile. All her children have been planning to be with her July 4, but now it appears that may be optimistic; we must let her go as smoothly as we can so she suffers as little as possible.

Life in an embodied state is such a gift of Love, especially near its close; what else? Think about it for a moment. We are Soul: magnificent, eternal Beingness with the divine gift of conscious awareness, channeling through these very limited body states in order to learn, but even more so in order to give and to receive love.  In the end, it is only Love that matters. All else is imagining and manipulating form and substance, exercising thoughts, struggling with emotional conditions tied to the body states. Only Love is real, in the beginning as well as at the time of Crossing Over, transitioning from Form back into Formlessness (or into another, less dense form), from limited, dense matter to pure spiritual energy again, as the cycles of Life continue to flow endlessly like the waves of the Sea.

Which brings me to the next serendipitous connection: tonight before coming to bed I saw that showing on TV was THE LIFE OF PI. Also about Crossing troubled waters, this book and film are about spiritual awareness and specifically about using the power of IMAGINATION to survive nearly insurmountable, life threatening odds. Pi survives by his faith and the resourcefulness of his imaginative faculties. We never even really know for certain what the character Pi endures after he is cast adrift upon a lifeboat when an ocean going merchant vessel  with his family on board has sunk, so transformed is his outer experience by his creative perceptions. Does Pi really survive with a Bengal tiger on board the lifeboat, or in the end is that a metaphor for enduring a very rough passage with a murderous chef?

Always at the most challenging moments, Pi calls out to God with GRATITUDE for his life, for the opportunity to have existed with awareness even unto what could be his imminent death. After every such outburst of faith and gratitude, though unsought, God or the universe itself provides gifts that allow Pi to endure yet another storm of turmoil.

So we can all learn from the Life of Pi to trust and to rely upon our innate powers of imagination to see us through the best as well as the “worst” of our times in bodies. Remember, for instance, to DREAM and to ENVISION what your next step shall be.

These bodies are themselves vessels; but we are Soul, not bodies; Soul on  a Great Journey of Love.

Enough then. May Blessings Be to All. Goodnight.

Spelunking Your Cave

IMAGINE there is a vital, vast, accessible CAVE deep within your own unconscious layers of Self. Today I invite you to visit this cavernous realm of your Psyche and to explore its dynamic potentials.

This Cave is available whenever you feel a need or desire for Descent; it is a place you can retreat to for shelter against the storms and shoals of life. It is where you in your Descender mode may have a hidden place of repose.  It reminds me of the secret forts and special treehouses I built with my siblings and closest friends as a child. Was there a place like this you and your friends used to go to (or, still do) for a special getaway?

A Visualization Technique: Spelunking Your Cave

I invite you to engage in an Active Imagination form of Inner Adventure.  Close your eyes and simply envision visiting a Cave–or a hidden fort or other secret place–deep within your own realms of Imagination. Find this secret space, and Explore! Please bring a flashlight or torch or some other source of illumination, and you can build a cozy fire within your cave.

Explore this space fully. Is anything written on the walls?  Would you like to write something? There is charcoal available. Are there artifacts left there from your own earlier or others’ use of this space? What artifacts are these? What is their meaning to you now?

If your Descender part-of-Self lives in this space or comes here sometimes, meet with him or her; you can engage in conversation and interact. Allow him or her to show you around, or listen as s/he tells you a story.

After you have discovered much of meaning to you in your Cave or place of repose, you can return to your normal awareness and make a record of what you have experienced and learned.  You might wish to journal or to write a letter to yourself about your Cave Adventure. You may create an art piece or a poem or a mandala representing something significant about this Inner journey. You may wish to talk about it with a loved one.

You are welcome to share your insights or a story about your experience here!

Magical Thinking or Manifestation? Seeing, Knowing, Being

Is the future (or many possible futures simultaneously) a parallel reality? On Tuesday I linked this blog to physicist Brian Greene’s YouTube airing of The Illusion of Time (check it out!) If time is ultimately an illusion, then different time frames—e.g. yesterday, today and tomorrow—can be considered Parallel Realities. That means when you learn how to shift perspective, the future is perceived as an Alter-Now, as is a past moment or “memory”; for everything is Now.

What imaginative and practical implications might we draw from regarding “the Future” as an array or matrix of Alter-Nows? Personally I believe this opens a pathway from the actualized Present to the to-be-actualized Future that we desire to manifest by conscious intention. You can set a specific future condition as a destination; not to be arrived at, but rather to “manifest”. This is what the credo “Live Your Dream, Now!” within the approach I’ve been presenting of Life Mapping is all about. Set a course, Cosmic NOWness Sailor, and Go (Just BE HERE)!

This past Sunday I read an engaging, passionate blog from Rachel Mankowitz in which she discusses Hope as potentially merely a matter of “magical thinking.” Hope, though, can be channeled effectively via the “law of manifestation,” which may only sound like “magical thinking” by those who do not believe in the power of their own intention and imagination. I know Rachel does so believe; in tandem with her dear dog companions she continues to apply her intentions with skill and hopeful steering.

I have invited a fellow writer, Denise Naughton,to share her insights with us today about the spiritual Law of Manifestation. I have been in helpful writing classes with Denise as the teacher where we have studied this “law” as a definite, dynamic process. In my own life, I have always been strongly motivated by the almost magical-seeming process of moving a project from the point of conception/ideation through gradual implementation into outward manifestation. Nothing compels me more in life than to facilitate this Law of Manifestation in everything I have “set my heart upon”.

So, as a gift to you all, here are insights from my good friend, Denise:

The Law of Manifestation

What is the difference between manifesting and magical thinking? As I heard one person describe it: magical thinking is here’s my plate where’s my dinner, while another begins by imagining what dinner will look like, how it will come to her, what it will taste like, etc. Think about the little girl in “The Little Princess”. When she and her friend were hungry and cold, the little girl sat down and described everything from tea in a cup to a fire in the grate. She tasted it, even pretended to eat and drink, and what happened? She and her friend woke up to a transformed room. In the story we know how it came to be, but that’s also part of manifesting—not devaluing the gift because it didn’t fall out of the sky.

I’ve been studying two books titled The Flute of God, by Paul Twitchell, and The Science of Being Rich, by Wallace D. Wattle. Both are similar in describing the principle of manifesting. It’s not important why I’m studying this principle per se except to say that I just love seeing how it works. By “studying” them, I mean when I finish the books I begin reading them again because manifesting is not about what I think consciously, it’s about what I believe unconsciously.

Both books bring out three principles about manifesting—seeing, knowing, being. This translates into, first, imagining what I want. Second, having confidence in the universe, Spirit, or however one wants to term that which is larger than we are, that this will come to me. And third, living as if I already have it, I have accepted the gift, etcetera.

One day I was walking a very busy street in San Francisco. I was having a daydream about receiving an Oscar for a terrific screenplay that was made into a film. The film was up for an Oscar as well as the writer and director (this is all imagination). I imagined the gown I was wearing, and the speech I was going to give. I walked up the street carrying my newly received statue. I was there, not on the street where I was walking. Before I knew it cars were honking. I couldn’t understand why. Traffic was flowing smoothly, and then I realized that I had put myself so into the moment of my Oscar acceptance that drivers were seeing me that way. There was no doubt that’s what was happening.

I end this with something that I also read to myself every day. It’s a composite from aspects of both the books I mentioned. I don’t need to be worthy of any experience in this life. I don’t have to earn it or get it as a reward. I just need to accept it. I simply learn to accept my good and that good comes to me here and now. I learn to collapse time and remove the barrier between my desire and me. Life is nothing but a series of experiences, and whatever I want I can have. After all every person is having right now what they subconsciously expect to get.

Denise Naughton is an author, a public speaker, and a Ph.D. Candidate (ABD) at Union Institute and College. She is completing her dissertation on Jungian archetypes related to stock characters in Australian film.

 

 

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Thanks, Denise!

To all, I invite your Comments and Stories!

Future Casting

I would like to introduce the notion of Future Casting as a mode of creative visualization. Consider you stand before a blank canvas that represents your future. In fact, imagine you have a stack of empty canvasses, of various sizes, available to you. Take one and put it on an easel; this represents the blank screen of your mind (unless you prefer a physical canvas and paint or other artistic media).

Now then, focus inwardly on a desirable future scenario. Represent that scenario on your empty canvas or blank page.  Draw, paint, place text, finger paint, place collage images, or do anything to ENVISION your future scenario. Consider this is but one of several possible futures.  Complete one and put it to the side (so you can see it, though). Now, start another.

Your Alternate Future-scapes can be similar to one another, with tweaks or special features with each one; or, they can be very different, representing radically different future conditions or options. The only guideline is to allow yourself TOTAL FREEDOM in your imagining. This is a FANTASY adventure, not necessarily a practical one at this stage.

After casting two or more of these Alternate Future-scapes, review them, one at a time. Contemplate their message to you. Then, take a walk! Or, do something you enjoy to relax and allow these ideas to percolate or to “incubate” in your consciousness. When you come back, try writing about (or simply use active imagination/ contemplate) any of these alternative futures. You can journal about this over several days, refining ideas, and you can ask yourself what kernel of future reality have you implanted here.

Be mindful with this practice. Intend to clarify some aspects of the direction you may go in order to realize your Best Case future scenario. Nothing is written in stone nor should it be. Allow Your future envisioning to remain flexible, yet allow some coherent ideas to form around which the rest may flow.

I did this a few months ago and the results were profound. I now know where I am likely to retire and what that will be about.  Having a clear idea of where I am heading helps me to now prepare in that direction, always remaining open to further information.

 Quantum physicists like Brian Greene now tell us that the future may reach back to us as we reach back to the past; that is, there may be “waves” of probability coming to us in the Present from the Future as there are also memory waves to and from the past.

Future casting, then, is a matter of perceptual exploration.  If the future is an array of unlimited possibilities more narrowly framed as a set of probabilities connected to present conditions, we can project a future in keeping with our creative intention to move in a direction of our choice. To move beyond the threshold of the Present leading inexorably into consequences or a chain of events outside our control, we only need to stop, look, and Imagine!

So I encourage you to go Future Casting!

I welcome your Comments and Stories.

Childsplay and Active Imagination Techniques

 

I consider myself to have been very fortunate as a child to have shared a best friendship with Karin, who was as much interested in creative imagination and adventure as I was. We were so interconnected through “childsplay” of various forms that when I remember my past in this life, I often say that my Childhood WAS Karin (…later extending to Barb, Diane, Ro, Pattie, Franco, Sebrena, Kery, Jan P,  Jan J, my sisters, Corinne, Gianmichele, Zvia, and Kathleen; gratitude for all these human companions, plus always my beloved pets!). But Karin and I had a special latitude in our very actively imaginative play, from when we were around 7 to 12. She lived with her mother in a beautiful, woodsy area in Pennsylvania; there were willow tree vines on which to swing across a creek, and lots of little green clearings within circles of large trees that made excellent forts, or rooms, or spaceships, or hiding places, or worlds. We played outdoors a lot in her yard: we played WWII soldiers, Indians (never cowboys), spies, and horses (that was my fave; we were just horses, wild and free, or one of us–playing a human–would rope and befriend the other, leading to many high spirited adventures!) Then indoors, when not practicing our violins together (we aimed to play “Santa Lucia” together at Carnegie Hall one day), we built elaborate universes, mansions made of Golden Book walls filling the upper and lower areas of a ping pong table at my family’s home. We created lives there for her Barbie, my Ken (yes, always the tomboy…); and we would weave adventurous, intricate life stories for our alter selves extending for over months at a time.

I am glad I had Karin as my playmate, along with family and other friend adventurers throughout childhood and beyond. I don’t remember ever closing down this creative flow and in fact I can gratefully say it has continued always, through writing, dreaming, daily contemplations, daydreams, reading, and travels. Compiling the Life Paths Portfolio Handbook as a self-help toolkit, based on coaching people who have used this method for their own life mapping adventures, has helped me remain engaged with my own Active Imagination playground!

One vital tool for using active imagination as a personal growth and development sandbox is to establish an ongoing “Archetype Dialogue” contemplation and journaling practice, which I highly recommend for anyone. This is what Carl G. Jung engaged in, which he in fact called an active imagination process. For Jung it resulted in his The Red Book: Liber Novus, and it spawned his general approach to understanding and working with “Archetypes of the Unconscious.”

We all can have some access to our unconscious archetypal sub-selves—what I like to call our ensemble cast of mythic characters–through engaging our imaginative faculties and by remaining attentively engaged with our dreams. While some psychologists and others who have read of Jung’s forays into his Unconscious Archetypal domain through active imagination and journaling concluded this was evidence of Jung’s own psychological imbalance, he countered that since he was in control of when he would engage his archetypes and since he used these inner encounters to gain a more balanced and integrated Psyche, quite the opposite was true. Joseph Campbell similarly has cautioned that when people do NOT attend to their inner archetypal impulses, that could result in a form of ‘schizoid’ split in a person from “not listening to” their own inner selves, or Soul.

 

 Many scientists, artists, and writers have likewise relied upon active imagination to keep open to the Creative Wellspring within each of us that allows us to be adaptive, flexible, playful, creative and productive in making of our lives that which we would fashion out of choice rather than only of necessity.  It is said that Edison never slept more that 20 or so minute catnaps at a time in order to stay primed at that creative aperture of consciousness between waking and sleeping.  Many artists share how their ideas have come through visions either sought or unexpected, as have scientists such as Kekule, who in 1890 dreamed of a snake swallowing its own tail and thereby developed a model of a benzene ring. Crick, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA with Watson, theorized it is important to use dreaming to ‘forget’ our non-productive or fixed ideas so that the subconscious mind can better explore and reveal its secrets.

The book and recently released film Heaven is for Real adds a spiritual dimension to the practice of active imagination which I believe is also very important.(Or, read Proof of Heaven by Eben Alexander in this same vein.) OOBE’s, NDE’s, and some forms of dreaming (e.g. lucid dreams, prophetic dreams, past-life dreams, etc.) can reveal to us that there is so much more to Reality—and life and death—than can be understood by physical science alone.

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What are some favorite ways YOU exercise your Active Imagination?

Where does it take you to?

I welcome your Comments, Insights and Reveries!

PLANTING SEEDS

Sunday’s post introduced the Life Path Mapping weekly activity of “Seeking a Vision”.  The journaling or contemplation post, WHEN I GROW UP I WANT TO BE…, invites you simply to plant a seed about the values you desire or aim to realize in your life from the perspective of how you wish to unfold your Personhood. Of course, this is only metaphorically a form of Vision Quest…which as an authentic practice would involve a ritual ceremonial context and an arduous physical as well as psychological and spiritual ordeal. But it is vital to look inwardly to envision that which you are aiming to unfold in your Life Path in order to Plant a Seed that sets the goal that you wish to nurture and manifest.

Ellen Langer, a PhD Harvard psychologist and author of a book titled Mindfulness, was interviewed this week on National Public Radio. She is interested in how the way we TALK about possibilities influences our attitudes and behavior. She distinguishes between whether we ask “CAN I?” when we approach a goal, versus “HOW CAN I?”  to accomplish that same goal. Planting a Vision Seed sets up something we CAN unfold to; then our mind and spirit are free to discern and to facilitate the Means.  Although we might have the faith of a mustard-seed that all that is in our highest nature and interest WILL manifest, when we consciously shine the Light of Attention upon a worthy goal, this allows us to mindfully and flexibly steer our process in the direction of nurturing that seed and realizing the Growth we are aiming to unfold.

I also invite you to reflect on how you would have answered the prompt: When I Grow Up I Want to Be… both when you were young and then Now, and then to reflect on how and why those answers might differ as well as how they are similar. When I ask this in Life Path coaching, people often tell me they are necessarily more “realistic” and more “practical” today than they were as a child, or that their increased responsibilities preclude earlier idealistic ambitions. What I find though is that what they wanted to be as a child has archetypal aspects to it which might still be part of their adult desires, if less obviously idealistic. For example, “I want to be a Superhero” might be a child’s reply. That could be expressing the desire to develop the potentialities of a Warrior or Healer or Communicator archetype (I will introduce a special set of 12 primordial archetype images later in this process).  So, if you now still do wish to be a soldier or Guardian of some sort, or a doctor/healer or a writer/communicator, you may yet be intending to realize these same important aspects of your unconscious interests and potentials. I will say these archetypal impulses define aspects of who you ALREADY ARE, so it makes sense and is very realistic that you can develop and more fully materialize these essential components of your intrinsic Self.

So, WHAT/ WHO DO YOU WISH TO BECOME; WHY; and later you will be invited to focus on HOW CAN you germinate and fully manifest your natural potentialities? Do feel welcome to share if you like!

Television Better Endings

By now we have applied Better Endings as a principle to a wide range of topics, ranging from creative revisioning of movie endings and historical events to personal decisions, childhood events, and conversations.  We have been finding that putting this principle into action in one domain can carry over onto others.  Better Endings as a general principle can help us to be more mindful in day-to-day life as we realize we always have a choice, moment by moment, to proactively construct a path to the most desirable outcomes for all concerned. This allows us from our present vantage point to be cognizant of the past while attentive to where we wish to be heading from Here (and how to get there). If we go back to one of our earlier realizations from this blog, the Present is a doorway to alternate future ‘worlds’; so our choices Now can adjust the aperture or likelihoods for future conditions.

This week we return to a creatively playful theme of Television Better Endings. When I was in my teens I remember maybe the first time I ever thought of the principle of ‘better endings,’ when the television series The Fugitive ended. Finally Dr. Richard Kimball could get back to his life; the one-armed man who had ransacked his home and murdered his wife (for which he himself had been wrongly accused and imprisoned) was captured. Kimball’s innocence was affirmed; he was a free man. Well, that’s a good ending, if fairly predictable; it tied up loose ends of the story so the series could end. But I thought it would have been deviously fun if at the very end, after the newly accused man was safely behind bars, Richard Kimball might be walking along a private California beach near his home in the moonlight, and he would unscrew his own prosthetic arm and fling it into the sea!

So, Better Endings as a principle applied to television doesn’t necessarily have to be ethical; but still, what might my The Fugitive ending say about me (or, one you might write or ‘right’, about you)? Maybe I just saw Richard Kimball as a man of mystery to the end. For him to have finally, once and for all, outsmarted the deputy marshall Girard who had hounded his footsteps through the whole series would seem to have been justified, albeit in a twisted way.  As a teen I suppose I wanted Kimball (or the actor David Jansen)’s freedom more than anything else.

Most of the television I watch these days is either informative (e.g. Through the Wormhole, The Universe, programs on Stonehenge, etc.), sci-fi oriented (re-runs of Star Trek NG), or historical. The only series I pay any attention to any more is The Big Bang Theory, which I have become rather addicted to since my last cross-country drive.  I’ll have to play with these a bit to be able to offer any fine applications of Better Endings to such fare or others.

How about you? What television shows or series hold your attention these days, and why? How might they or a particular episode end ‘better’ or how might earlier TV stories or series have ended more to the liking of your creative re-imagining?

Have fun! I invite all Comments, story suggestions, and Stories!

Change Your Dreams, Change Your Life!

Dreaming.  What a mysterious, profound topic. We speak of dreaming as a state of consciousness producing visual activity while our bodies are in R.E.M. sleep. We also speak of our Dreams, as goals we strive to achieve. Day-dreams are flights of the imagination we take while awake, that may help us to envision the fulfillment of our desires and can help us problem-solve in a non-directive way.  Thomas Edison reportedly never really slept; he took catnaps for around twenty minutes at a time to stimulate his creativity and productive dream activity. Lucid dreams allow us to be aware while we are dreaming in a manner that can help us achieve visionary truths, prophetic visions, or to answer questions we are striving to understand. And some speak of “waking dreams” as a form of synchronicity: when an outer event or situation can be interpreted as one would interpret a meaningful dream symbol; bearing a meaningful message.

I dreamed I was a butterfly, flitting around in the sky;

then I awoke.

Now I wonder: Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly,

or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man?

                                                                                                                                – Zhuangzi

Zhuangzi’s famous riddle reveals a paradox about dreaming. This paradox unifies all of the facets of dreaming mentioned above. If our outer life is as much of a dream as our nightly dreams, which quantum physics and many mystical religious traditions tell us it is, what does that mean for us in terms of what we can do with dreams to fashion “Better Endings”…(or, not)?  Dreaming—whether in our waking life or while ‘sleeping’—is imaginative and constructive. It can allow us to also “de-construct” what might only appear to be fixed or predictable. If we can DREAM something, we can in one manner or another bring that dream into our Reality.

Have you ever awakened from a nighttime dream and felt disturbed about how it ended (or you awoke before it was complete)? One very effective “dreamwork” technique you can use is to go back into that dream and either finish it as you would prefer for it to end, or change the ending! So, here is a connection to our principle of Better Endings. Dreams are the very fabric that our lives are made of. Since you are ultimately the Dreamer of your own life circumstances and conditions, this means that with free will and focused imagination and creativity, you can create the life of your dreams. Well, we do anyway, so we might as well aim to fashion the life we choose to live. Working with our dreams—outer ones and inner ones—brings amazing opportunities. If we can change how an ‘inner dream’ ends, by means of our creative imagination, we can also bring about Better Endings in outer circumstances and conditions, here and now. I do not mean to say that everything is possible, since the conditions we have already created in our lives due to longstanding habits or even genetic predispositions will not quickly or easily “dissolve” just because we dream that they will. Even so, envisioning more positive conditions may lead us to insights or practitioners that can help us to heal or change our habits over time. We are still subject to the constraints of the world we are in, but we can always effect changes in our conditions and attitudes.

This week I invite you to DREAM of Better Endings! And as always, I welcome all of your insights and stories! Poems, random thoughts, artwork, lyrics…all are INVITED!

A Few of Your Favorite Things

This week I’m inviting EVERYONE to “lighten up” a bit with Better Endings. Our topic is CHILDHOOD MEMORIES.  Let’s use this week for us to review and recover some of the happier moments of childhood. That’s not to say that children’s lives are always happy, of course. But “to look through the eyes of a child” is to discover …well… IS TO DISCOVER!!

I’m going to jump-start this week by posting what is normally a Tuesday’s writers’ prompts list today. I invite you to remember this week, whenever you can, to look at life through the eyes of a child—your own Inner Child, or if you prefer, one of your own or known children.  How would a situation look differently to you as a Child? What would matter, more or less?

So, here’s a list of topics that you can write about, talk about, or use for active contemplation/ imagination. Poems, artwork, photographs and music are also very welcome! I invite all comments or insights, and I will publish your stories or artistic expressions if you’d like to send one in! With my own childhood heart and eyes “Wide open”, I’ll share EVERYTHING (within polite reason) that you would like to pass along!

• Friendships
• Pets
• Trips
• Family
• Creative play
• Places:  woods, derbies, horse farms,  trees
• Bicycling    (or: tricycles, pogo sticks, go-carts, stilts, skateboards…)
• Reading (favorite characters, favorite series)
• Writing (diaries, poems, Mother’s Day cards)
• Movies
• Plays
• School
• Scouts
• Music
• Sports
• Clubs
• Treehouses
• Horses
• ANYTHING ELSE that comes to you!

Since those of us now adults sometimes are forgetful of what we knew so much better as a child—how to exercise the Imagination with Freedom and how to Explore EVERYTHING–then remembering our Child’s viewpoint can definitely bring Better Endings to us Now!

Have FUN!

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I offer my deep gratitude to Brenda Davis Harsham for yesterday’s stellar story that I simply re-blogged here, Choices for the Soul. This site reached a record of Likes yesterday due to Brenda’s generosity. Thanks to her and to everyone who has chimed in! I hope you might enjoy the focus here with our theme of Better Endings!