Creation is the beginning. As we cycle through the evolutionary development of our life, creation is always seeking its presence. It is signified by beginning, renewal, refreshment and so much of what is valued in our daily routine. We also find a deep reservoir of inspiration when we are open to creation. Creative inspiration may seem an easy and rewarding impulse, easier to express than some of the other forms of inspiration. However, without the means to express creative impulses, we may find ourselves caught in a frustratingly brief and aborted process.

What do we need to express our creativity? For some, it is a pure expression using dance, fine arts, music or words. Others may bake, empathize with a child’s play, or design a conceptual or literal edifice. For the creative impulse to remain fluid, it needs to be energized by our inspiration taking a form all its own.

In The Ship of Gold, Gary Kinder wrote about a team of adventures who recover gold from a sunken ship resting in the deepest part of the sea. The success, he recounts, was due to one man’s willingness to open to his dream, his inspiration, and move through all of the associated obstacles:

“You just had to shed old ways of thinking and reexamine old assumptions and do it smart from the beginning. You had to keep diverging, even beyond the point where it all became difficult and confusing. That’s where [he] lives, and he made those around him live there, too, some for far longer than is comfortable for most people. Yet just on the other side of that juncture is where impossibility sometimes vanishes and the world can be seen in a new way. . . if you do that . . .  all kinds of things can blossom.” (Speaking of Tommy Thompson in Kinder, Gary. (1998). The ship of gold: In the deep blue sea. pp. 506-507)

Do you have a dream or an inspiration? What will you do today to recover and embrace the “possibilities” that await you?

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Things fall apart and they should. Everything in life is in an impermanent state of flux. Things end so that new life can emerge. We lose lovers, pets, valued objects, moments, feelings, sleep, friendships, opportunities, and finally loved ones. When things crumble and fall to pieces, new possibilities are soon to present themselves. Thousands of mini deaths inform transformation within the individual psyche, because each of these dying moments gives birth to the process of becoming whole. It is only when we recognize them for what they are and receive their teachings, that we open ourselves to a deeper and more informed opportunity to participate fully in our relationship with life.

“This frail vessel thou emptiest again and again,

And fillest it ever with fresh life.”

(Tagore, R. Gitanjali)

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I once knew a man who believed that he could only do two things at a time. This was not true, of course, he could do many things and he did them well. However, he believed that he could only do two during any given period of his life. He could be a painter and raise his children, but he could not work on his relationship with his wife. Before being married, he was a sculptor and his future wife’s lover, but he could not contemplate marriage and children. As his children grew, he could work to support his family and father his children, but he could no longer do his art.

He lived each day always with an essential piece of himself missing. The stress, over the years, proved too much for his marriage and things fell apart. In later years, he had new lovers, new art, parented his older children; he even wrote a book. However, he continued to only do two of these things at a time never recognizing that:

Little fields have big fields

Upon their backs to bite ‘um,

And big fields have bigger fields

And so ad infinitum

(in Watts, A. The Book)

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“There’s an old story about a farmer who went to the Buddha seeking help for his problems.  Either droughts or monsoons make his work difficult, he complained.  What’s more, he grumbled, even though he loved his wife, there were certain things about her he wanted to change.  Likewise his children – yes, he loved them, but they weren’t turning out quite the way he wanted.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t help you, “the Buddha told the farmer.

“What do you mean?” railed the farmer.  “You’re supposed to be a great teacher!”

All human beings have 83 problems,” the Buddha replied.  “A few problems may go away, but soon enough others will arise.  So we’ll always have 83 problems.”

The farmer asked indignantly, “Then what’s the good of all your teaching?”

The Buddha answered, “My teaching can’t help with the 83 problems, but perhaps with the 84^th problem.”

“What’s that?” asked the farmer.

“The 84^th problem is that we don’t want to have any problems.”

Bayda, Ezra  (May/June, 2002).  Facing you monsters.  Body and Soul, p. 44, 46, & 48.

Are the situations that present themselves in our everyday life meant to be challenges or inspirations? If you were the farmer who complained to the Buddha about his crops, his wife and his children, you would soon learn that it is only by truly understanding the solution to the 84^th problem that one can rest harmoniously in life.

Although any problem can present as an obstacle, impediment, difficulty, or challenge, its ultimate gain is the manner and method in which one rises to inspire resolution. If we were to change the word “problems” to “teachings,” and if we were to take delight in their daily offerings, we could actually greet the day in hopes of seeing ourselves inspired.

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An invitation to: Innovator ~ Artist ~ Entrepreneur

Please be my guest for two + hours of dialogue with those who have similar intentions when caring for both themselves and the world. Within this collective, relational consciousness, your deeper sense of empowerment will be invited to emerge. By sharing your gifts with others, more creative choices will avail themselves when faced with the challenges presented in your own life: career, business, relationships and service. You will experience a renewed connection to your personal value and a clearer vision as to how you are seen and witnessed by others. My wish is that within this context, you will come to understand and take ownership of your talents and larger purpose – benefitting you, the other participants, your business, and society. Please join me.

Thank you,

Dr. Timothy Dukes

the lotus seat dialogue is an authentic process ensuring the operational mandate to place the startup at the apex of purpose, value, and form for successful entrepreneurial, innovative, and creative endeavor.

designed and implemented by Dr. Timothy Dukes, the lotus seat model is a powerful 4-stage process, for individuals and teams of entrepreneurs, leaders, innovators, and artists to launch and grow a new concept, company, business opportunity, or project.

Posted in Clarity, Healing, Progress | 1 Comment »

“Am I being the father that I want to be?” This is so difficult to tell. Do I see my value in my own experience and through the eyes of my child? Do I recognize myself through my beliefs or ideas of fathering or through the feedback that I receive from my partner? Being the father I want to be, as a concept or a belief, is one thing. The other is to focus on the response I get from my child and partner in each moment of parenting. Take a look at the eyes of your child and notice who they are seeing. Does your child see the father she or he wants and needs?

Place this experience of your child into the context of all the other demanding roles you are responsible for fulfilling: provider, care-giver, mentor, bridge to the world, protector, and so many more. And as you do this, make sure to give yourself a break. The best thing about determining whether or not you are a good father is found in each moment of parenting. You never lose your option to make new and different choices. If what you are doing isn’t working, try something else. You get to start over every day.

And the reason you get to start over is that children grow very quickly and they are very forgiving. Show up for your children and being willing to stay connected and feel what is necessary to feel in order to stay present. Now you don’t really have to be there all day. You simply have to be present for them when they need you. It could be to read a story before bed, taking their phone calls during the day, answering a text, being on time for them and simply not disappointing them.

Make the choice to be with your children and they will figure out what to do with you. You will face many challenges, but nothing need take you away from knowing that you have a place in your child’s world that is always available to your presence.

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“There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven but more often I find myself wondering whether, in our heart of hearts, we have ever desired anything else. You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know very well what is the common quality that makes you love them, though you cannot put it into words: but most of your friends do not see it at all, and often wonder why, liking this, you should also like that. Again, you have stood before some landscape, which seems to embody what you’ve been looking for all your life; and then turned to the friend at your side who appears to be seeing what you saw – but at the first words a gulf yawns between you, and you realize that this landscape means something totally different to him, that he is pursuing an alien vision and cares nothing for the ineffable suggestion by which you were transported. Even in your hobbies, has there not always been some secret attraction which the others are curiously ignorant of – something, not to be identified with, but always on the verge of breaking through, the smell of cut wood in the workshop or the clap-clap of water against the boat’s side? Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it – tantalizing glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest – if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself – you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say ‘Here at last is the thing I was made for.’ We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all.”
- C. S. Lewis
The Problem of Pain

(Courtesy of  Whiskey River)

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What does it mean to recognize your worth? In the Purpose and Value section of my website, I suggest that this is one of the benefits of our work together. However, often an inner critic can be so predominate that feelings of doubt and insecurity cloud our feelings of value. We can question if what we say or do really matters. We can feel further diminished if how we are treated by others affirms this.

So what do we do? Well first, recognize that it takes courage to face these obstacles in ourselves. Then begin to start with what you can control, where things are easier, and build out from there. In other words, control what you can and greet with curiosity what remains.

Control what you can: Begin to organize your life in 10 small ways.

1. Get a grip on your sleep patterns. Try to create a sense of rhythm and stick to it for two weeks. Go to bed at a reasonable time and awaken early.
2. Prepare for the day. Have your clothing arranged the night before.
3. Eat a meal and take time to enjoy it.
4. Be on time for your  appointments and meetings.
5. Prepare for today, yesterday.
6. Take the time to breathe with awareness in every situation you find yourself in and remember that we are mostly disturbed when we are making a transition, i.e. leaving this to get to that.
7. Listen deeply to those around you and recognize that they too are moving through their own personal challenges.
8. End your meetings or work periods on time and gain a sense of completion for what was accomplished.
9. Organize your thinking and behavior with notes and create and adhere to your calendar as you move forward.
10. Give yourself a break.

Greet what you can’t control with curiosity:

1. Make room for the unexpected.
2. While arranging your tomorrow, today, factor in an extra 10-15 minutes whenever you are in a transition.
3. Adopt this practice: When things feel outside of your control silently say to yourself; “this too is ok.” Breath and relax.
4. Shift away from your thoughts and return your awareness to your body and simply feel what is going on here.
5. Recognize that a balanced life does not mean that things are easy or that they feel good. It means that you find it within yourself to make room for all that is happening and recognize that as you do this there may be a sense of balance in the background that you can embrace.

So, what does it mean to recognize your worth? As we gain a handle on managing the struggle of simply getting through our more challenging moments we may find underneath it all that there resides a deeper sense of intrinsic worth. We don’t have to invent or produce it. Your worth is a birthright. Allowing it to emerge may reside in those softer feelings of belonging that become increasingly evident as the noise begins to quiet.

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Men at forty
Learn to close softly
The doors to rooms they will not be
Coming back to.

At rest on a stair landing,
They feel it
Moving beneath them now like the deck of a ship,
Though the swell is gentle.

And deep in mirrors
They rediscover
The face of the boy as he practices tying
His father’s tie there in secret

And the face of that father,
Still warm with the mystery of lather.
They are more fathers than sons themselves now.
Something is filling them, something

That is like the twilight sound
Of the crickets, immense,
Filling the woods at the foot of the slope
Behind their mortgaged houses.

-by Donald Justice

(via: @ http://twitter.com/zachbraiker)

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When I think of courage, I often think of my mother – as she sat patiently attempting to thread her sewing needle in a dimly lit room, ceiling light beckoning for a new and brighter bulb. My sister or I would take over the task after so many utterances of; “oh dear, what is happening to my eyesight?” This woman, as a teenager, raised four siblings in the late 1930’s after her father died and faced endless days of caring for others. Her mother worked as a nanny. My mother finished high school, had a brief stint as a newspaper reporter in a small lakeside Michigan town and then, after marrying my father, began her own family of four children.

She got by, through the years of economic challenge, making sure that all of her children ate well and wore clean and pressed clothing. Socks were darned and torn shirts mended. There were other challenges, of course, but the central one was that she lived a life for others while she grieved a life she imagined was not hers to have. You know, the luxury to be able to wake up in the morning and ask; “what do I want to do today.” I know she is not unlike many men and women who face a life that demands more than they have to give, who somehow preserver.

I don’t know how any of us do it, sometimes, -waking up and facing a life that is filled with so much demand surrounded by so much uncertainty. Do we really know if we will live through this day? Whatever we focus on – our jobs, family, health – all of life will change and we will have to find a way to deal with it.

I often wonder; “how do we do it?” How do we live a life of joy and happiness when the inevitable is so close at hand? I think it takes courage. A soft and quiet courage to find a way to release our fears and to embrace the life that we do have as it unfolds right in front of us.

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