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I have the pleasure of working with an insightful and talented woman. Darylynn Rank entered my life in a weekend of coincidences where I met a man who went to the same high-school as I did, and graduated the same year I started. We never met until about a year ago. This might have been not so strange except for the fact that we were at his creative camp in Caltus Lake BC, and went to high-school in Guelph ON on the other side of the county. Darylynn was a workshop presenter for “finding your creative voice”.

Since then the course title has changed, however I have be privately working with Dari for some time. She is an exquisite navigator of the tides of experience, and is helping me find my own boat and ore to sail mine.

Now to the point….

For those of you living in BC; are willing to travel to Langara College; and have a desire to get through writers block or simply need to find the creative power to start hitting the keyboard, she is open to share her insight with you. Check out langara.bc.ca for her course Discovering The Writer Within.

I love cartoons. I don’t love every cartoon, but there is always at least one or two that peak my curiosity. Lately, the top on my list is Avatar: The Last Airbender.

The premiss is simple. Take a world where there are four nations: Earth, Air, Water Fire. In these nations there are those born who can mould the element or “Bend” it. But there is one, The Avatar, who can Bend all four.

There are loads of great lessons that come out of a 30 minute story. But today I made a connection. The Avatar is a Renaissance Soul ( or for some of you a generalist) . Here is a society that is built on specializing in one element. And here comes a single individual that is looked up in this world to be able to bend several elements.

Unlike the story, I think that we have thousands of Avatars walking our streets and roaming our world. They have in them the ability to bend more then elements. One might bend Music and Math; another Leadership and Sewing. The combinations are endless. What can you bend?

I did it again! I missed the first day of Spring last year, and I missed it again! For others it might not be a big deal, however Spring Solstice is one of the most important celebrations. Why? New beginnings; rebirth. There is a reason why it’s called “spring cleaning”. It’s the real New Year. Nature wakes up again; refreshed. As a tradition for the spring I read over the story of Jumping Mouse. So many lessons so many analogies.

I’m not too big on the whole new years resolution thing. The idea of making a list and going through it one by one seems to constrained for me. Life, to me, needs flexibility. And so a few years ago I came up with the idea that I think has been doing good for me. It combines the focus for change, like the list, yet keeps it flexible. The idea crept up from my teachings of the native Spirit Guides. The Guide is an animal that embodies lessons that one should learn. Normally stumbled upon through meditation, observation or starvation, these guides are used as a focal point. How does the animal walk, sleep , talk, eat and generally live. By learning about these behaviours one can then take lessons for ones own life. i.e. “cat’s sleep a lot and I harley sleep at all and feel exhausted. Maybe I should sleep more” or “when snakes shed their skin it’s slow, and deliberate; often uncomfortable for the snake. So for my own personal transformation, I should keep these aspect in mind: slow, deliberate, and uncomfortable”.

No one needs to have mystic forces choose a guide. No, you don’t need to starve yourself in a forest for days to find one. Matter of fact, my last years guide, the snake, was one I chose while driving in my car. It was was completely deliberate and logical. I knew that for the next year I wanted change - personal transformation, and so with some thought I came up with my guide for the year: the snake. To help I bought a necklace with a symbol for snake. It was my reminder when I looked in a mirror, what I wanted to learn. It was something to play with as I stared out thinking. It was used to focus my thoughts.

This year, I’ve come up with my next guide: Fire. I stumbled upon the idea while looking at various personal horoscopes from different regions. I found that all of them are Fire signs: Ojibwa, Aztec, Chinese, Traditional Greek. Fire, Fire, Fire, Fire, Fire. And with some more though I realized that this would be a good focus for the year. Not as intentional as Snake, yet still powerful. So burn baby burn, bring on the fire.

Read an interesting post. Must be the lack of morning coffee and it might be my personal insight into jazz. I saw this quote

“The humble improv”

Now in turn it seems that I read the quote wrong. The quote is actually from Wynton Marsalis, “The humble improve“. However, what I thought the quote was is still true. The humble really do improv.

In addition to Rajesh’s observation that: “If you lack humility, chances are that you think that you don’t need help and may not be OPEN to learning new things which in turn will limit your growth.”, being open to learning new things also means being open to falling flat on your ass. Learning is awkward and messy. There are times when we get it and fly and others we we bomb and die. In that way it is a lot like jazz improv.

An interesting point crept up yesterday in The Chrysalis that I had never thought before. I had just finished reading my homework, and everyone was taken aback. At the time of reading it, I was moven to shake and even a tear or two crept out. I guess, I to, was taken aback by the piece. But, there kicker of it all is while I was writing it, it was just something I did. I did not emote the same reactions as reading it nor did it really feel all that challenging. It seemed ordinary.

It brought up an interesting point about our own personal reaction to ordinary. Ordinary are things that we know, and things we experience on a regular basis. So often we take things that align perfectly with who we are as ordinary. It’s like breathing and blinking, it’s so fundamental to your existence that you might not even notice it.

I believe that everyone has something extraordinary in them, they just have to look for it. So often when I sit and look for mine, I’m thinking of things on the end of the spectrum, things that I don’t know yet or things I want to know. Those are necessary things to look at, but one can’t forget the in between; the ordinary. What are all the things you do in a day? What are the things that you do that come naturally? Maybe write an activity log for a few days and see what things are common, and seriously take a moment to look at them. Can any of these things be that passion, that extraordinary thing?

I was reading an article in Fast Company the other day. The article, by the same title, was discussing our nature against change. You would think that if you were given the choice to change or die, change would be only nature. However, the article goes on say how although all say they want to change, how in truth, few ever do. The article triggered a thought into my own dilemma. I can change my bedroom, change the look of my site (btw: what do you think?), move to new places, but the fundamental things I want to change, remain the same. So how is it that one makes change?

First, I think you need to have sweet sweet time. Change is never easy, it hurts and sucks. It’s like shedding skin. Take a look at every creature that sheds skin. If you could ask them how it’s like to loose that layer, I’m sure all of them would take a puff on there smoke and same, “Man, it sucks”. It’s full of pain and awkwardness, just take a look at our own puberty process. Everyone knows how bad it really is.

Second, a really good time machine. You know that feeling of going around, and around in a circle. That feeling of chasing your own tail. You think I’m just doing the same thing over and over again. You might also think to yourself, “this is pointless, I’m not going to….[fill in the blank]” Well, this is where I’ve taken a thought from Dari. Some might say it’s a circle, but if you look at the path, it’s more like a spiral. Sometimes the spiral is wound so tight, that it overlaps, like a snakes coil, and other times there are leaps and bounds. But there is still motion. There is still progress towards the desire or outcome. But, only with a really good time machine do we ever see the progress. It never feels different at the time. You ask anyone in the process of change…ask a teenager, go ahead, ask them how there change is going? If the answer you get isn’t “F*&@# YOU” or “What are you talking about?” I’d be surprised.

Thirdly, rinse and repeat. It might be an old school train of thought, in a way it is. But how often did you write, or read, or type over and over in school Even crappy typers can eventually type extremely well with 2 fingers given enough time and practice. Musicians need that repetition, if not, there joints just won’t stretch the bridge of the guitar, or that octave and a bit stretch. If they don’t practice, they can’t focus on the melodies in their head during a song. Instead of being in the moment and enjoying the beauty that is coming from them, they are questioning, what’s the next note? Repetition can do magical things to people. However, repetition needs will power like no other. It’s hard sometimes to work on something everyday when there are so many other wonderful things to be doing.

Most of all, there must be the emotional need. There must be a driver; a drive; a goal; an outcome. Something needs to point the way. And, when the article was proving that death wasn’t good enough, I was first taken aback. How could dying not be good enough? And the more I though about it the more it made sense. Everyone dies. It inevitability makes for an impossible struggle. Wether it be 2 years or 20 years, it ( or they, if you’ve ever seen Dead Like Me ) will always catch up with you. There is no triumph. I bet that the people who made a change, found that driver. They didn’t change because they were running away from death, they changed because they wanted something from life. Something they wanted deep in there core. So what is it that you want from life? You’d be surprised at how much time, effort and clarity you get when you are working on something that means something to you.

I’ve been looking at the word focus….

• Close or narrow attention; concentration
• To concentrate attention or energy
• direct one’s attention on something

And I’m reminded of a quote from The Princess Bride:

“You use that word a lot. I do not think it means what you think it means”

The other day in The Chrysalis, we covered off a topic Dari like to call Breaking The Silence. It’s a very personal thing but ultimately the message is this: As you grow up and learn and absorb you take in cues either directly from things like verbal teachings or more indirectly from things like social observations. These cues tell you what you can and cannot talk about. Of course everyone has their own person things that they “can’t” talk about. However, if you ever want to be a creative individual you can’t stop. It might never go away completely, after all psychological conditioning isn’t something that goes away completely, but what you can do, is recognize it so that you can move past it. Creative people can’t have a border around their creativity just like wild animals with fences aren’t wild anymore.

For me, while we were going through the exercise I was reminded of a story about “The King of Togo Togo” ( I’m still trying to find a copy somewhere ). At first glance it’s a wonderful harmless story. The idea is that everything is alive, even grass is a good one, and one I truly relate to. But when looking at it in context of this, it makes you think. I know I have topics that I just don’t talk about. I won’t talk about. I don’t share, and I keep locked away deep inside. Is this lesson that “each blade of grass whispered to the other” teaching that there is no real place of solitude and one can confide in? Does it teach that rather then venting, one should just never speak? Did the story actually have an impact on me so much that my SIlence is a verbal one?

Of course, all these questions can’t all be answered in one blog post, but they are things to wonder. I really do wonder the implication the lessons of “silence” had on me. The funnier thing is most of them I sought out myself. But I guess now is the time I need to really evaluate the lessons I’ve learned and do a good spring cleaning on them, so that I can completely Break the Silence.

A quote come up from last nights creative class. I thought I would share

I am Protennoia the Thought that dwells in the Light
She who exists before the All
I move in every creature
I am the invisible One within the All
I am perseption and Knoledge, uttering a Voice by means of Thought
I am the real Voice.

Trimorphic Protennoia
(Triple-formed Primal Thought)