Introduction to the Practice (1 of N)
The Practice
The Practice is, of course, about what to do. There are two parts to the questions we ask:
- What should I/we be doing?
- How should I/we go about being successful at it?
The answers to both questions come from engaging in the practice. You see, knowing how the world works (the model) doesn’t tell you what your role is to be in all of this. And though having the right stance helps you to be ready to do the right thing (and may ultimately be all you need to do), most often, we are going to be making decisions about how to best go about our work. So understanding the basis of a creative relationship to our work gives us the right tools to pick up as we move through the process. It can also help us to teach, diagnose, and realign any creative process.
Ultimately the practice brings us to a state of full engagement with our work by reorienting us to the truth about our relationship to the world. We find that what we think of as control does not exist, and that, even so, we are never disenfranchised. We are always a part of the creative team that generates the future. And we discover another exciting truth—that our lives are an adventure just waiting for our full participation. The goal of the practice is to give us an active, adventuresome approach to life and all of our “projects”—to put all creative efforts on the same level as planning our greatest adventure.
Why This Practice Is Valuable
There are many methods taught for moving through a creative or development process, and most of them help us to improve our odds. This practice is a little different in that it derives from a very specific philosophical base. But it also is the same, in that it is attempting to guide us into a more effective and powerful relationship to our work. Many components are consistent across various practices: strong visions, appropriate action, sensible planning.
Here are a few elements of this practice that are unique to its orientation. Though we’ll go over the details later, it has a strong focus on:
- Our awareness of the environment in which we are working and the whole array of possibilities (known as the arising potential)
- Paying attention to all levels and sources of action
- Leveraging existing potential to create your goals instead of thinking we have to (or can) create it all ourselves
- Maintaining the most powerful relationship to the process (the stance)
- Maneuvering quickly and efficiently; and knowing how to discover what maneuver is appropriate
- Enabling the emergence of natural organization and management structures.
