So, thanks for the birth­day greet­ings, kind words, and also thanks for the finan­cial dona­tions to the cause.

I am so appre­cia­tive of your con­tacts, and gen­eros­ity. In fact, today’s arti­cle comes from two quotes from readers.

I don’t know how many of you use an RSS reader to read my blog posts. Since they also auto­mat­i­cally go out as e-mail, I sus­pect the vast major­ity of you read the e-mail ver­sion. I’m quite addicted to RSS feeds, though, which I read using Google Reader.

I sub­scribe, presently, to 95 blog feeds. Now, clearly, I don’t read 95 per day—as some blogs pub­lish tech and news updates hourly. I scan the head­lines, browse my favourite writ­ers, and read likely 1 or 2 %.

Inter­est­ingly, or not, there are a cou­ple of themes attract­ing my atten­tion these days—sim­plic­ity and com­plex­ity. As these are top­ics dear to my heart, I thought I might add my 2 cents.

The Addic­tion to Think­ing

Com­plex­ity comes from think­ing. Or bet­ter, rumi­nat­ing. Rumi­nat­ing is chew­ing one’s men­tal cud.

One of the dan­gers of “too much” cre­ativ­ity is the end­less gen­er­a­tion of com­plex­ity (oth­er­wise known as bull­shit…) Many cre­ative peo­ple are inac­tive, sim­ply because of the sto­ries they are weav­ing. They are wait­ing, wait­ing, for the muse to arrive, to take their hand, to light the path, and to guar­an­tee the results.

Sto­ry­telling itself goes on inces­santly, for all of us.

If you believe that one, have I got a story for you!

The issue is whether we will yield our lives to our stories.

I spend long hours with my clients, attempt­ing to help them to dis­en­tan­gle the webs of their delu­sion, try­ing to help them see the boon­dog­gle they have cre­ated. For most, it is hard to see the for­est for the trees.

The rea­son? We, in addi­tion to sto­ry­telling, do a ton of meta-commenting. This is the process of describ­ing what is going on in our heads in a dis­em­bod­ied voice, which is hell bent on prov­ing the truth and valid­ity of the story being told. And remem­ber, it’s a story!!!

One client thinks she is log­i­cal, fair, and prac­ti­cal, and that her ex is air-headed, self-serving and imma­ture. She sees her every act in these terms, and can­not imag­ine how he could accuse her of being cold, con­trol­ling, and manip­u­la­tive. This is because she sees her ver­sion of her story as true—in other words, NOT a story she made up.

This is a clas­si­cal def­i­n­i­tion of foolishness

And thus, the first quote, and the title of this arti­cle:, sent by a friend:

Here is the lat­est from the lit­tle soul who lives in my house,

“You never know unless you know.“
Jonah, age 5 and 3/4.

Clearly a wise, Zen soul.

Know­ing is dif­fer­ent from think­ing. Know­ing is wis­dom, as opposed to the stack­ing of “facts.” My client, above, is a fact stacker. She has a pre-conceived opin­ion, as above, and each inci­dent is forced to fit, per­fectly, into her belief. Her “fact-checker” is her own mind, as it meta-comments. She refuses to ‘know” that her belief is just a story she invented, which has no inde­pen­dent real­ity. She is thus stuck, and oblivious.

Let­ting go of our assump­tions, stories—our men­tal gymnastics—flies in the face of the West­ern assump­tion that life is meant to be sliced and diced into a pablum. Mas­ti­cated into a paste. Then force fed to every­one around us.

You never know, unless you know.

I think my path to this point started in earnest back in 1986, with a trip to Find­ing in Scot­land, accom­pa­nied by the ever-lovely Dar­bella. We went to see the giant radishes. *smirk* I ended up buy­ing “A Course in Mir­a­cles” in their book­store. I even even­tu­ally taught a course on the course.

The line I most love is, “I could have peace instead of this.”

Once you know peace, absorb peace, float and swim in peace, you see that your think­ing mind has no inter­est in mak­ing things dif­fer­ent. The think­ing mind equates “bet­ter” with more proof of just how bad things or oth­ers are. Know­ing, on the other hand, is dis-interested in proof, and is invested in peace.

Peace, as we say, is not compliance.

Look at Gandhi. He broke the back of the British Occu­pa­tion, and never raised a fin­ger in anger or accep­tance. He talked, walked, gath­ered salt. Notice. He got off his butt and walked.

We have the end­less oppor­tu­nity to act. To act, not from some dumb story we’ve con­cocted, but with both integrity, and humour. To drop the sto­ries, the eva­sions, and the blam­ing, to, in other words, “Let every­one (includ­ing our­selves) off the hook,” and to work from a place of deep, inner knowing.

Many peo­ple equate wis­dom with analysis

Not so. One guy I know is heav­ily invested in chang­ing his tune. He used to obsess about his sup­posed lack—money, rela­tion­ships, career. Now, he obsesses about see­ing abun­dance every­where. End­less dia­log with him­self, ana­lyz­ing every thought. I sug­gest he have a breath, and then make tea.

The other quote, from another friend, from an arti­cle on Robert Glenn’s blog:

“Chuck Close defined the atti­tude a lit­tle more closely: “Inspi­ra­tion is for amateurs–the rest of us just show up and get to work.”

I’ve been writ­ing this blog since 2006, and before that, an e-zine that I began mid 1999. I also have writ­ten a cou­ple of books, etc. Never, once, did I wait for inspi­ra­tion to hit before writ­ing. I sit, I have a breath, and I place my fin­gers on the keyboard.

Now, sure, some arti­cles come a bit more quickly than oth­ers, but if I just sat here, hum­ming “Ohm,” and wait­ing for the bird of inspi­ra­tion to fly up my nose, I’d be a fool. I may be at times fool­ish, but never do I wait.

Show up. Get to work.

What the hell are you wait­ing for?