Dancing with Life

Wouldn’t you like your life to be more like a dance than a battle?

There is a way to be in the creative flow that allows you to dance through life AND create what you want. It just takes a little change in your awareness and some new dance steps.

Much of the time we can feel very embattled by our lives---too much to do and things often aren’t going our way. We imagine we’d like to be somewhere else, anywhere else. But in reality, we are where we are. We can’t be anywhere else in this moment. And, as it turns out, we are exactly where we are supposed to be. But instead of engaging with our lives creatively, we are often resisting what is happening. That resistance turns our lives into a battleground and we find ourselves daily doing battle with the world. (As if we could possibly win a battle with the world!) Where did we get the idea that we should be in a battle with the world? Wouldn’t it be great to forego the battle, to find a way to engage our lives that has movement and flow, and, yes, still challenges, but that feels more like a dance of partnership with life?

So what would the attitude or stance be that could turn our lives into a magical samba of creativity? There is such a stance and a practice that can free us from our resistance, enabling us to find our footing in the full-engagement dance marathon that is life. The practice is called Generative Creativity which is to imply that it is a practice of creative involvement which generates results, but in addition, it places us in a relationship to life that is freely creative, always engaged, and courageously moving forward into the future. It’s not easy, but once you get the hang of it, your life becomes an adventure. Life becomes your dancing partner.

While this practice includes planning and action, it is more about our state awareness with respect to what we are doing. It assumes that everything in our life is really about creation, whether it is child’s welfare and happiness, an omelet, a first novel, or a business. Everything we do is a creative act that either generates potential for what we want to see materialize or generates setbacks. So the more conscious we are about how we are interacting with our lives the more accurate we can be about generating that positive potential that will result in the lives we desire.

There are two main aspects of this practice. The first is a series of Modes, which are different ways of relating to your creative efforts. They are used together in what we call a Modulation---a way of dancing through the creative process. The second aspect is the nature of our awareness, our attitude toward our creative project and our activities, and our ability to sense and know what is really going on now, and what wants to arise into our future.

Doing the Modulation

In this dance of creativity, there are two parts of executing the dance: Taking Aim and Taking Action. Most methods of project planning and organization focus on the “action” part of the process. This method focuses on creating a powerful trajectory to your goal by taking careful and accurate aim. The trajectory is the flight path to the results you are trying to create. As you create and maintain this flight path your actions will naturally lead you on the path to your creation. Now the modes we will discuss are not necessarily done in a precise sequence, they are different ways of relating to your creative process and you may slip transparently through them in whatever sequence is meaningful. They just define different ways of looking at and engaging with your creative process, your everyday life. A modulation is just the dance through them that is most practical or effective for what you are trying to accomplish. And the modulation will be different depending on the project and the stage it is in. You will have a different modulation through the process if you are inventing a new kind of chocolate cake, than if you are working to organize a grass-roots political movement. The kinds of modes you use are similar, but each kind of creative effort has its own balance and proportion. With some activities, like making an omelet, you will easily and invisibly slide through the modes in an easy dance. If you are creating a business, you will be more methodical. Even if you are doing something as simple as making a single mark on a paper for a drawing you will modulate through these modes as you engage with the process.

Taking Aim

Taking aim is the process of defining a trajectory, the course to our chosen goal. The principle is that a highly refined and well executed trajectory is the most important part of the process because a well defined trajectory has the potential to pull us, our actions, and help from the universe into alignment with our goals. We often fail to realize our goals because a vague or inconsistently define target is very hard to aim at. In this practice, the trajectory is made up of your vision, knowledge, beliefs, capabilities, and awareness. (Notice that so far there are no task lists involved; they come later.)

There are five modes in setting up the trajectory. While in practice you use them in whatever order is meaningful, to get started it is useful to work through the whole trajectory set first, starting with a survey. The project universe we survey is everything you can imagine that will be part of or interact with the creative process.

Survey the project universe. Whatever you desire to create will arise in the world relative to what is already here. To get a sense of what can be accomplished, you need to understand the realities in the project universe. This will include resources (people, places, funds…eggs), capabilities (yours or those of your dancing compatriots), challenges to overcome, competitors, everything relevant in the environment in which this creation is to arise. The elements of interest depend on the project, but you need to know as much as possible about the world which you wish to modify so it will include your new creation. If you are creating a new chocolate cake, what is in the kitchen maybe relevant (ingredients, tools, competing tasks); or perhaps you need to know what exotic varieties of chocolate are readily available. If you want to create the most successful commercial bakery in your state, then you would need to know about more than chocolate. You would survey the industry, the competitors, the wholesale and retail grocery markets, etc. In this mode you are studying and cataloging all the information that will help you define what you want to create relative to the world in which it will exist. It is important to be as neutral as possible when surveying; you want to really see what’s what without a lot of opinion as to what is good or fair or friendly. You want to minimize any distortion of reality by your likes and dislikes, your attachments or your fears. This neutrality is not easy to come by, but as you develop the knack it will provide a great deal of freedom to explore the possibilities and expand your creativity. As you modulate through the other modes, new ideas and information will cause you to revisit the survey mode to refine and extend the information available to you.

Sense and engage with the possibilities. This mode is the most unique. It’s one of those activities in which we always engage, but it’s not usually called out as a formal step. We hide it from ourselves and pretend that everything we do is “logical.” In this practice, one of the most important processes is to engage with your intuition, your underlying sense of what could be. The reality is that the movement toward participation in the creative process is in itself a powerful reflection of something that is attempting to arise from its existence as a possibility into the world of being an actuality. That mere inclination that you have to try something is that thing coming into being. You are its messenger. We can more consciously work with this emerging potential by using intuition and a process called inquiry. To inquire is to sense what it is that we are being compelled to create, what is inspiring us to move forward. Then we inquire into that more deeply: What does this creation mean? What are its possibilities? What are its variations? Where does it want to go? As we carefully engage with the creation and these inquiries, new information will arise that will further define or enhance our ideas. Secondarily, in your inquiry you envision how engaging with the process in different ways will change the potential of the arising creation, exploring different paths to the same goal. The creation will start to grow and live, at least in your heart and mind. It is very important to be free of judgment while you are inquiring. You want your conversation with the future to be uninhibited by old ideas. You want to be free to see, understand, study, and adopt any new creative expressions that come to you. As you deepen you understanding of this new idea, you may need to return to the survey mode to explore newly uncovered territory in the environment.

Envision a result. Here we blend what we know about the project universe and our intuited idea into a defined and illuminated vision. We want to define not only what it is (how it looks, tastes, feels, sounds), but what it means. We want to have a strong sense of what it means to you and to any partners you have in this venture. You want to explore how you will feel when the new creation comes into being. It is also important to explore what this creation means to the world in which it will live, because the meaning of the result to everyone who experiences it is the primary reason for its existence. So how will the people who experience this new creation feel about it? What will it mean to them? For a vision to gather as much power as possible it should incite support and inspiration all along its path, including it’s existence as the end result. In this way, everyone who comes in contact with this creative effort will be enhancing the strength of the trajectory and the realization of the result. Unless it is a very short-term project, like the chocolate cake, you will want to document your vision. To envision your large commercial bakery as a viable business, you will want a lot of information, concepts, and creative ideas wrapped up into your vision. Write it down. Create pictures, diagrams, charts. Make it as vivid and inspiring as possible. View it from every angle and from the viewpoint of all participants and users. Make it real.

Align yourself with the result. Now you must examine your belief in yourself, in the resulting creation and the world in which you must create it. To be aligned with the result is to have a belief structure that implies that this new creation can and will come into being. You must examine your thoughts, your beliefs, and your understanding of the context that you believe to be true. You must concern yourself with any belief or idea that negates your efforts to create: ideas about your ability, the support you expect from the universe (or lack of it), your awareness of what is truly happening. Everyone involved in the project must be aligned in their beliefs and their goals. If you are not working toward the same goal, you will not be harmonious in your actions and not getting the traction you should. When you are working with others you must spend time aligning your efforts and your ultimate direction. In a group, you should find a way to check in with each other and review the alignment of everyone’s efforts, goals, and beliefs. And you should do this on a regular basis.

Embody what it takes to do the work. Now you must assure that you have what it takes to do the work. You must have the right tools, the right materials, the right space, the right people, the right level of strength, and physical and mental agility. You must acquire what you don’t already have in place. This will also include the right support structures: training, classes, partners, advisors, customers. Part of the development of your creative project is to build, develop, or acquire the necessary things for your creation to arise.

Taking Action

Now that we have a trajectory, an illuminated goal and the resources to go after that goal, we can plan a course of action and execute that course of action. We’re ready to get moving, though at key moments through the ongoing process you will consistently shift back into a renewal or redevelopment of the trajectory. For many projects you will be executing modulations at different levels. For example, if I am making a painting I will build a trajectory for the overall creation including what I am to paint and how, and then I will start to do the creative work; but for each stroke of a brush on the canvas, I will do a lighter modulation through the modes: survey what is there, sense what should happen next, envision what that will mean to the painting, align myself with the next stroke, embody it (you have to eventually pick up the paint), then you map the course of action and do it. Of course, if you are experienced you will ripple through that modulation transparently. If you are not experienced, the modulation will help you understand what you need to do to prepare to make that very next mark on the canvas.

Map the course of action. We are all used to making lists of tasks to do and this is one way of mapping a course of action. How deep and detailed the course of action needs to be depends on the project, your experience with the work at hand, and how stable the environment is that you are working in. If my goal is a splendid chocolate birthday cake for a dinner party, I can probably just choose each task as I move through the day, for I know my kitchen and tools well, and the nature of the kitchen and the ingredients is relatively stable. (Or so we can hope.) I can work without a plan. If I am creating the All Chocolate, All the Time bakery facility, I am working in a lesser well-known area. The variables are many and broad: who will be the people involved, what will they bring to the effort, what location will provide the best leverage, how will we ship the product, what will the wholesale and retail environments be at every step? It is a volatile environment. While some short-term planning is in order, things are probably too variable for a lot of formal long-term planning. You might have long term goals, but only be able to plan the tasks within a short-term planning horizon allowing you the flexibility to roll with the changes in the mix of participants and the environment. We must plan as best we can into the future that we see, and we must leave ourselves flexible beyond that so that we can remember to re-target our trajectory to meet any new conditions and opportunities that arise.

Maneuver through the actions required. As you know what is to be done, you do it. The work is still the work. As you do each task you keep your attention on the trajectory assuring yourself that this task is still on that trajectory and that the trajectory you have constructed still aims at the target you envision. The power of this model of the creative process is that it causes us to be aware that the world we live and work is itself a creative result and therefore it is always moving and changing. Our participation in that creative life flow is the dance we are meant to engage. When we fully recognize that the universe is in a flowing, changing dance with each of us as a partner, then we can find an ease and a joyful level of attention in our full engagement with the creation of our lives and the world.

Use all the modes as appropriate to your project. So now you move through the modes, refining the trajectory, correcting misalignments, improving the embodiment, doing the work. Taking aim; taking action.

Awareness is critical

What is awareness? It a state of being in which you pay attention to what is happening, to what wants to happen, to your attitudes, ideas, and actions. You pay attention to everything that is happening in the world outside of yourself to better understand and be deeply aware of the world that you are using as the medium of creation. It is being attentive to more than just our personal reactions to things and to staying open to what is actually happening in the world. You are also aware of your internal reactions to observe whether they are causing you to misperceive what is going on or causing you to incorrectly filter and judge events and actions.

The truth is that many of our concepts and fears are not helpful to the creative process, especially if they are limiting our vision of the possible. In the midst of the creative dance, you will discover that it is not really about you and how you feel or what you think. It is truly about the creation that can become real only with your engagement. We must be willing to see that what is happening in our lives, including the urge to create something new, is what our lives are all about. We must be willing to step up to that engagement whole heartedly unattached to and undeterred by what happens next which is only an interim event on the way to our goal. At the same time, we must also be discerning about our choices and relentless in our discipline of engaging with the dance as a full partner. For it turns out that engaging in this creative dance with our lives is actually the main event. It is what we are here to do and it is our challenge to find the most joyous and innovative way to take our place in the samba line.