We are not separate from this arising world? So what are we individually in this big picture? And, more importantly, how do we participate?
We embody two important things:
- We are the expression of everything that has gone before, what you might call a result;
- And we are (really “are” and not “have”) the potential for choice and action to generate the potential for what will come next.
Everything is perfect (as in an accurate result) as the expression of every creative (potential generating) act that has every happened; and in the same moment there is a wealth of new things to try, new structures, forms, and capacities to create. Nothing is “wrong” and everything is up for improvement.
Most of us live in our worlds as a result; that is, instead of knowing our bodies, our minds, and our lives as an ever changing potential, we think of ourselves as something that happened, something that is stuck and has a problem. It is possible to learn to focus on ourselves as the choosing and acting dynamism in the universe. As we do that, we understand that we can live at the level of causality knowing that we are part of the causal component of our world.
You are Your Arising Potential
The model tells us that you are a portion of the arising potential of the universe embodying the creation of something new. You are that. It is not your “reason”; it is your being. Reason implies to us that you can choose what or why. But in reality you can engage with your potential arising or you can resist what is coming into being through you. You can try to choose something else, only to fight against the current.
Imagine a musician who is brilliant, dedicated, a magical performer, and a generous performing partner. This musician has dedicated his entire life to becoming a creative expression. As such, he is a clear embodiment of a creative force, totally and completely engaged in the realization of creative power. He is a generative being in a volatile state bringing something wild and surprising into being in the world.
In the most practical way, he IS this musical expression arising. He is the music itself. You can sense it in the performance and in his entire life, which is one of exemplary engagement; he is fully engaged the arising potential that is exploding into expression through him. His experience is that he just “has” to make music and the more he engages with it the more it arisies. We can view musicians as the embodiment required for music to arise into the univers and our experience. And the music is the embodiment of a greater expression of the experience of being human and one particular expression of our possibilities.
We each have some engagement with life that is arising with us, a role to play, a gift to give. Not all of them as dramatic as being famous musician, but all critical to the unfolding of the universe. We are the confluence of possibilities arising as a creation, which can perceive, choose, and act. This is the unique capacity of a human being, and a powerful role in the expressive nature of our world. Optimally, we don’t dedicate ourselves to something outside of us; we choose to powerfully engage with who or what we are, whatever it may be.
Our musician is a more overt creative expression in which his consciousness is totally engaged with the arising potential, enhancing and reinforcing it with his creative choices, enabling the whole thing to arise like a blaze into being. Some of us are more visibly a creative expression, but all of us, with whatever expression arises, are in support of the arising whole.
This is what an engaged purpose is—a human fully expressing the arising potential that is moving through them.
Note: One of my inspirations is the musician Mark O’Connor. When you watch him perform and read about his work and life, you come to realize that here is someone who is maximizing his potential and creating something wondrous in the world. Here is the link to his My Space page and some of his wonderful music.
The universe is really one continuity in the process of becoming, but we perceive things, people, organizations
The truth is that it is all continuous—that it is one universe arising into being as itself. But it appears in the Actuality as an infinite number of separate entities.
The understanding that we are separate is an illusion of the creative process. Individual expression and action function in the universe the same way multiple colors are used by an artist to create a single image. Each object that we identify as separate is just a focus of activity (locus of information), which is functioning as a seemingly separate as part of the dance. It has its own arising potential and persistence, and its own ability to act. But they are only seemingly separate from the whole.
So an entity, an object, a person or an organization is the expression of information about its current state of being, its potential (possible future states), and a localized ability to choose and to act. The potential of an entity is arising into being as the entity and its environment. It is a flow of becoming that has complex structures of change and persistence. That is what we mean by updraft. A group of entities (a family, a business, a bus full of travelers) comprise a confluence of their individual potentials creating more complexity and expanded abilities to choose and to act.
The Concept of Persistence
Some things have a great potential for persistence, that is, they stay around in fairly static states. Other entities (both objects and people) express wide variability in their patterns of persistence, sometimes chaotic. Water can be water for a very long time, but the form it takes on is a chaotic structure.
The world of objects embodies a vast range in the qualities of persistence, though we can see with careful observation that nothing is perfectly persistent. The Himalaya mountain range, while seemingly a fixture for time immemorial, is changing every day as tectonic plates shift and surfaces crumble. The planets shifts, the sun burns, the waters flow. Everything is changing and the variety of changeability is core to the fabric of the world. Humans also embody this variability in persistence and changeability.
So what is persistence? It is the preponderance of likelihood that something will stay the same. A rock is more persistently a rock than a flower is a flower. And the opposite truth is that something that is ephemeral, fleeting, amorphous has the likelihood and ability to change. It is easier to change your thought than to change the color of your eyes; the thought has a smaller preponderance of persisting. Something that is very persistent has a lot of potential to remain the same, and therefore it requires a lot of accurately generated potential to change it. Something with little potential to remain the same does not require the same effort.
What is most persistent about a person? Which parts of a human being express stability? Is it:
- Bones? Muscles? Teeth? Brain?
- Personality? Emotions? Knowledge?
- Ideas? Beliefs? Intents? Thoughts?
These attributes represent a great deal of variability in persistence, but none of these are the most persistent attribute of a person. The most persistent element of a person is the process that causes the person to come into being—the ongoing becoming that creates a focus of activity, which we call a person. Each of us is the arising result of a process of becoming. And everything about us has more or less persistence. Our bones are more persistence than our hair. Our beliefs are more persistent than our thoughts. My location on the planet is more persistent than my emotions. We are a complex mixture of elements that express a wide variety of stability. This particular complexity is what defines us a human. And freedom in the elements that are highly ephemeral—the ease of potentiating change—are where the possibility of evolution is most available.
Moderate persistence is required for creative expression and the ability to evolve. A tree needs to maintain its existence as a tree in the midst of growing. A person has to maintain his existence as a person to evolve his capacities. There must be enough stability to perceive, choose and act; but enough dynamism to evolve. If we are too rigid, we cannot learn. If humans were so chaotic that we had no persistent pattern, we could not express what we might have learned. Evolution is the process of changing our relationship to the world in a way as to express a moderately persistent way of being in the world that, over time, continually shifts into a greater capacity for engagement and understanding.
We live on an edge between chaos and static order—this is where creative choices have meaning and evolution can proceed.
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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