Changing Places

Nice thoughts on creating life versus getting stuff from Christine Kane.

Creating vs. Getting | Christine Kane

The laws of creativity apply to everything - not just to works of art.

The gift of practicing art is that it teaches the creator how to create, and how to be a creator. Over and over again, the artist learns the process of making things - including the obstacles that arise, the futility of forcing the flow, and the joy of allowing inspiration. This practice has been nothing less than revolutionary in my own life.

That’s because I grew up learning more about Getting than I did about Creating. And I’m not alone in that. Most of the life lessons we’ve all learned are about Getting.

We gotta get rich, get approved, get things from people, get a job, get a life, get laid, get publicity, get someone to do something, get approval, get high, get married, get a loan, get good grades, get a clue, get into college, get up, get down, get out.

Get it?

Getting is an epidemic. It makes us grab at life. It takes us out of the present moment. It makes us powerless. It forces us to manipulate our own spirits so that we can manipulate the situation. Getting requires that we use our precious creative power to get, rather than to use it for its primary purpose, which is to Create. When we misuse this power, we become contorted. We block the flow. The focus is on “out there” rather than “in here.”

When we become Creators, we turn the whole thing around. Everything becomes an inside job. We experience true power. We create our lives.

This is one of my early Tao postings, from November 2004.

_______________________________________________________

Beginners acquire new theories and techniques until their minds are cluttered with options.

Advanced students forget their many options. They allow the theories and techniques that they have learned to recede into the background.

Learn to unclutter your mind. Learn to simplify your work.

As you rely less and less on knowing what to do, your work will become more direct and more powerful. You will discover that the quality of your consciousness is more potent than any technique or theory or interpretation.

Learn how fruitful the blocked group or individual suddenly becomes when you give up trying to do just the right thing.

Tao of Leadership

____

I think a lot of people are running around with cluttered minds these days. We worry about what to do about the direction the country has taken, we worry about how best to deal with personal situations in our lives, we worry about work, way too much. Perhaps the way to unclutter our minds is to stop worrying and start taking more direct action. Talk to the people around you, find out their real concerns and help them find some answers. Take your own problems and solve the ones you can, without worrying about whether you are creating the optimum solution. Get out of your head for a while and take a walk somewhere full of nature.

For me, my uncluttering spot is in my garden. I go outside and wander in the garden for a bit, and find myself feeling better about things. No matter what worries and concerns I have, they are small compared to a day full of sunshine and flowers and growing things. It helps living in San Diego where I can almost always count on a beautiful sunny day.

I think Americans really have a disease about getting things right, though. We want to live in the right house, drive the right car, send our kids to the right schools, live the right moral values. Yeah, sure we do. But how many people do you know who are simply happy with their lives? How many don’t worry about having enough money, even though we are among the richest people on the planet? Do you hear many people saying, “I have enough, I think I’ll just relax this year and not work too much?” No, we just go on with our disease, not realizing that if we stopped caring about having the right things and living the right way, our lives would be so much easier and better.

Perhaps that’s why I’ve come to focus on what is left. What’s left of my life, where I would like to go, what I would like to see, how I would like to live. Not what other people think is right, or even what I may think is right, but the things that are left out of most people’s lives. Beauty, simplicity, artful living instead of filling our houses with cheap crap. Time spent learning and growing instead of watching TV or spending yet another day working at jobs we hate to buy more stuff we don’t need. Why can’t America be about spreading fun and laughter instead of spreading war and trying to control everything? We have enough, people. Let’s learn to enjoy it, instead of wanting more. Unclutter our minds, our houses, our lives, and let’s learn to live again. Let’s share a new American dream - one about making life fulfilling again instead of filling our gas tanks, bellies, and houses full of crap.

I am reposting this since I had to be reminded of it today. ;^) With much thanks to Martha P. for whacking me upside the head. Namaste!

_________________________________

Crimson light through pine shadows.
Setting sun settling in the ocean.
Night follows the setting sun.
Day follows the fleeing moon.

All too often, we tend to think of absorption as a static thing: Water is absorbed into a sponge, and there it stays. But true absorption is a total involvement in the evolution of life without hesitation or contradiction. In nature there is no alienation. Everything belongs.

Only human beings hold ourselves aloof from this process. We have our civilizations, our personal plans, our own petty emotions. We divorce ourselves from process, even as we yearn for love, companionship, understanding, and communion. We constantly defeat ourselves by questioning, asserting ourselves at the wrong times, or letting hatred and pride cloud our perceptions. Our alienation is self-generated.

In the meantime, all of nature continues its constant flow. We need to let ourselves go, enter freely into the process of nature, and become absorbed in it. If we integrate ourselves with that process, we will find success. Then the sequence of things will be as evident as the coming of the sun and the moon, and everything will be as it should be.

Deng Ming-Dao, 365 Tao

I think humans fail to be absorbed in Tao because they are usually so self-absorbed. For me this was wanting for other people to see my viewpoint, instead of recognizing that theirs was just as valid. I tend to step outside myself more now, and see my viewpoint as if watching someone else, or a character in a story. Then I can see both sides of an issue, and the issue itself, and that it does not have “sides” at all, but is merely part of something larger, perhaps a part of shifting positions that have been in play for years or even decades.

It took me a long time to realize that everything is really about process. I was a software developer for years, and always had a process, and then watched as that process deteriorated and people stopped being trained as engineers. They would just hack things together instead of follwing the process of development. I went back into software QA and process management, trying to rebuild that process where I could. Now, I work on the process of my own life for a while and watch it in nature, in people, in all of life around me. I am fascinated watching the process of political change that is taking place in this country, one most people are unaware of. And so it brings me to Tao, because Tao is about process, and how things happen and how they change.

So, time to stop being alienated, and become absorbed. Not self-absorbed, but absorbed in nature and Tao. No need to feel alienated when you know you belong.

Read this article if you are unfamiliar with the wonders of Smithfield.

After I read it, I threw the bag of Smithfield bacon crumbs out of my fridge and will never buy their products again.

As bad as Tyson. This is not food. This is garbage - for us, the workers, AND the animals.

Paula Deen Human Rights Day

Next Monday is International Human Rights Day, and Justice@Smithfield supporters plan to commemorate by drawing attention to human rights abuses at Smithfield’s Tar Heel Plant. Working conditions at the plant rank among the most brutal in the United States, and, in years past, were even profiled by the international watchdog Human Rights Watch.

As many of you know, television chef Paula Deen has become the paid public spokeswoman for the company. This holiday season, you’ll be seeing her face turn up on pork products at your local supermarket, many of which originate from the plant in Tar Heel. With such high visibility and influence within the company, we believe that Paula is in a unique position to steer the company toward a more humane path. But we need your help!

On Monday, December 10
Contact Paula
Ask Her to Be a Human Rights Leader for Smithfield!

Call Her Up at her Savannah Restaurant:
(912) 233-2600

Or Use the Email Contact Form on Her Website

For the past two weeks, Paula has been traveling the country to promote her new recipe book. At every stop along the way, from Washington to Chicago to Minneapolis to Portland, supporters of Smithfield’s Tar Heel workers have been asking her, very publicly, to stand up for the rights of the workers. And word is starting to spread. Last week the Chicago Sun Times ran a column asking her to “put reality on the menu.” And in an appearance on NPR’s Diane Rehm Show last Wednesday, the final fifteen minutes were entirely dedicated to worker abuses at the plant. [listen]

On Monday, December 10th, supporters will be welcoming Paula back home, with a Human Rights Day demonstration in Savannah, Georgia. If you’re in the area, or you know folks in that neck of the woods, you can join up with them at both 11:30 A.M. or 5:30 P.M. on the corner of Whitaker and Congress Streets in Downtown Savannah.

For everybody that can’t make it to Savannah, please take a moment to call or Email Paula personally, and ask her to be a leader for human rights at Smithfield!

WakeUpWalMart.com - The Truth About Wal-Mart and Food Safety

Wal-Mart is the #1 importer of Chinese goods. So, after the spree of high-profile recalls and outright bans on dangerous Chinese products, wouldn’t it be logical for Wal-Mart to take the offensive against unsafe imported goods? Shouldn’t Wal-Mart stand up for the safety of American consumers?

Wouldn’t you?

The truth is that Wal-Mart is putting profits over people - again - by blocking laws requiring disclosure of where food comes from. Instead of looking out for consumer safety, Wal-Mart is watching its own bottom line.

Even among nations, Wal-Mart is China’s sixth largest trading partner: it buys more Chinese goods than industrial giants like Germany and Britain. This gives Wal-Mart the power to demand safer products from its Chinese suppliers. Unfortunately, it has demanded nothing more than lower prices, and has tried to cover up the consequences of its race to the bottom.

As consumers, we have the right to know that the products we buy are safe. Don’t let irresponsible corporations like Wal-Mart cut us out of the loop.

Amidst seemingly endless recalls of dangerous products, Wal-Mart has tried to keep American consumers in the dark.

Let’s shine a light.

Dynamic quality is unpredicatable, and impossible to replicate. Quite possibly, it is the uniqueness of dynamic quality that makes it so intense or meaningful for us. Moments of dynamic quality occur seemingly at random: a spectacular sunset, a red fox walking out from the woods to stand gazing into your eyes, the fairyland of a tree freshly dusted in snow, the sudden arc of a meteor across the sky. These may be dramatic moments, but there are others less dramatic but equally powerful: the sound of a child singing softly to herself, the silky feel of a dog’s ear sliding between your fingers, the warm pressure of a body curled lovingly around your own, the sweet smell of rain in the spring.

Moments of dynamic quality, moments with the potential to move our very souls, are all around us. Though unpredictable, they require only one thing from us in order to experience them: We must be available. Because it resides in your response, dynamic quality is everywhere you are, if you are open to the experience, willing to seek it out, interested and alert to what is happening within and beyond yourself. Sweepstakes promoters have it all wrong: In life, you must be present to win. If we are glued to the nightly news, we will not see the sunset.

Suzanne Clothier, Bones Would Rain From the Sky