What Updrafting Can Teach Us
Very simply, every moment we make choices that generate actions, which create our lives and the things in our lives. This is a process called creativity. There is a tendency in our culture to treat the creative process as a big mystery. It’s not a mystery. It’s a practical and predictable practice
. But we don’t control it the way we try to control a bowling ball. It’s a different kind of maneuver and takes a more sophisticated and subtle approach.
The myths:
- It’s all mysterious and uncontrollable.
- Only special people are creative. I’m not creative.
- If you are “lucky”, it happens, and if you aren’t lucky, then it will never happen.
- It’s unpredictable and scary.
- It’s just a mechanical, though complicated, process—make the right set of actions and you will get the result.
The truth:
- Everyone is creating all the time. No exceptions.
- It seems mysterious but it is really a subtle maneuver of consciousness that we can learn to manage.
- There is much of the usual work to be done.
- You ‘engage’ with the arising idea and together you and it evolve the future.
- It’s somewhat unpredictable and therefore an exciting adventure.
- There is nothing to be afraid of.
Let’s Talk Surfing
Surfing, sailing, skydiving, and gliding are all good analogies for Updrafting.
In each of these activities, a current and force (the wave or the updraft) is moving through a medium (the water or the air) and the participant uses their knowledge and skill to choose actions that leverage the moving force to create their experience—the great ride they envision. In a sense, the actor and the arising force are one—the interaction of the surfer and the wave become an expression of the intent.
The ocean waves are moving toward the shore. The resulting wave that hits the shore (and its nature, speed, size, and force) is a result of all the actions that have affected the arising (or you might say arriving) state of the ocean. The wave itself is a momentary expression of all of the actions and motions that have affected the ocean in past moments including wind, currents, earthquakes, swimming dolphins, shifting sands, and crawling worms. These actors and actions each have various capacities to create results, which are changes in the nature of the movement of the ocean. But they all contribute to the end result.
The surfer chooses her interaction with the ocean and uses the power and motion in the ocean to create her experience. To actually surf, she needs to learn the proper stance that incorporates what she knows about the water and its movement, her skill, her balance, and her senses. In the midst of surfing, she has to pay close attention to what is actually happening in the wave. It is a process of inquiry. She is inquiring into the nature of what is happening at a deep and subtle level. She must react moment by moment to what is actually happening with subtle maneuvers of her body and attention. She can’t have a fixed idea of how to stand on the wave or make assumptions about what will happen for the wave is changing in every moment.
Life is precisely like this. The nature of life arising into your experience is fluid and dynamic. We must learn to be fluidly aware while engaging with its arising potential—to catch the updraft or to catch a wave. Then we discover, like a surfer, that our engagement with the potential is exactly what our life is. Life IS the fluid engagement with what happens and the courageous attempt to create something wild, beautiful, and free with our every choice.
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