A Practice Roadmap
1 Arriving
To become conscious consumers of our own experience, we start by relaxing into the very moment we’ve been running from our whole lives… This one.
2 StoryinG
Here we meet the creative power of the mind: its ability to make meaning of the world through story-telling. The problem? We believe every word we think!
3 Seeing
When we stop gripping our thoughts, feelings and stories so tightly, we see them spaciously and act from wisdom instead of reactivity.
4 Interbeing
Seeing interconnectedness, we gain insight into others. When we find the courage to take another’s perspective, we begin to listen more fully, communicate more effectively, and love more deeply.
5 Creating
Wisdom about ourselves and others gives us the clarity to live & create consciously. Our playfulness is restored and we can tap our insight for artful communication.
6 Connecting
From an expanded perspective, life flows more easily and relationships (even with difficult people) are authentic. When we meet the world with purpose, vision, and energy, it responds in kind.
A Journey of Insight & Creativity
We’ve been doing it since we were born: trekking bright-eyed and bare-bottomed into the wilds of our own experience, trying to understand it, find insight, and grow. We are naturally inquisitive beings.
This inward-looking instinct is balanced with equal force outwardly: we are naturally social beings, too. Whatever private insights we discover along the way – about life, love, and the meaning of it all – we yearn to share with others.
Again and again, through our art and our entrepreneurship, through our relationships and our conflicts, through social media and politics, we are driven both to understand our nature and to communicate what we have understood about it.
This is the essence of human creativity.
Getting Lost in the Jungle
But too often we set out on our journeys of discovery with tools that don’t work for us, or worse – with no tools at all! Navigating alone, we can get lost. There is unparalleled wonder and insight to be found in the jungle of our minds, but down in the underbrush, there lurk our demons, too. Depression and anxiety, creative blocks and interpersonal conflict, guilt and shame, addiction and hopelessness lash at our ankles.
We find that the one thing we ventured to find (ourselves!) is the very thing we’ve gotten lost in. And circling in that wilderness, we can even lose our connection to others. Our primal need to communicate and connect, becomes a lifeline untethered.
At this point, some will turn and run, find the door and slam it shut, vowing never to go trekking in their minds again! But that too cuts us off from our most intimate need to understand ourselves and grow, to find comfort in our own skin, to be genuinely happy.
This is the human conundrum: Do we venture alone into the wild or stay in the comfort zone, slowly calcifying?
A Map for the Journey
The wise like a third option: Find a map that works and bring it on your expedition. There are tools for the journey and footpaths that have been worn by adventurers before us. We can navigate the jungles and swamps of the human mind by relying on the wisdom available to us. And as we become adept at navigating ourselves, we begin to find new, unique pathways through it. That’s when we get to the best part of our journey and actualize our other deep wish: to share our maps with others, so that they might venture too.