Immovable Wisdom

"It is very important to develop a state of mind called "immovable wisdom." It means having fluidity around an unmoving center, so that your mind is clear and ready to direct its attention wherever it may be needed." - Takuan

Conquer distractions today. Observe how your mind wanders.

Find a focus and let your mind run its route. 

Take a few moments to feel Gratitude.

Exercise your sense of smell and remain alert to changes during its saturation.

Listen to the day's cacophony. Turn it into a symphony.

Find Your Playground

"Zen is to have the heart and soul of a little child." - Takuan Sōhō

             

To inspire himself, novelist William Gass wanders outside taking photos of rusty, derelict and overlooked places. D.H. Lawrence liked to climb mulberry trees naked to enerigze his creativity.

What do you do to draw on your sources of inspiration to arouse your creativity cycle?

Wisdom grows when you expose yourself to intrigue.

Fnd your playground amidst challenges. Strive beyond struggles 

to discover capacities building inside.

Move Your Camera Mind

Today, move with your camera mind. Use two lenses: a zoom and a wide-angle. Zoom in on a task. Example: Use the sensation of water when washing your hands. Is it warm or cold? Narrow your attention to the edges of where you feel the sensation. Shift to a wide-angle lens. Capture sounds, a view in front of you, space behind, and the ground beneath your feet. Identify joyful colors and textures.  Where do sensations mingle? Alternate back and forth between narrowing and widening your focus. Notice how this attention affects your experiences during the day. Feel gratitude for nature's details. Applaud the sunset.

GO MIP - Missing in Play

"The face of the wise man is not somber or austere, contracted by anxiety and sorrow, but precisely the opposite: radiant and serene, and filled with a vast delight, which often makes him the most playful of men."  - Philo

In the study of playfulness, researchers attempt to isolate and define play as an internal state of mind rather than a mere description of how someone acts. Charles Darwin studied the playful mechanics of tickling. Sigmund Freud wrote about the role of play in emotional development. Most psychologists, interested in play, focus on children rather than adults. Even animals play.

According to a group of researchers at Pennsylvania State University, people who exhibit high levels of playfulness have a predisposition to becoming spontaneous, outgoing, creative, fun-loving, and lighthearted. They cope well with stress, lead active lifestyles, and succeed academically. 

In Play, Playfulness, Creativity and Innovation (2013), British researchers Patrick Bateson and Paul Martin determine playful activities. For them, this means: “cheerful, frisky, frolicsome, good-natured, joyous, merry, rollicking, spirited, sprightly [and/or] vivacious.” 

Research suggests that child’s play helps children “practice” for the real world. They learn to solve problems and deal with emotions they might encounter later in life. We can teach ourselves to incorporate it into our lives.

Mary Ann Glynn, a professor at Boston College, discovered in a series of lab experiments and surveys, that playfulness in adults connected to “innovative attitudes” and “intrinsic motivational orientation.” When Glynn asked study participants to compose sentences using a specific set of words and told them to treat the task as work, participants exhibited less creativity and figurative thinking than people who approached the same task as play.

University of Illinois associate professor and playfulness expert Lynn A. Barnett, finds that playful people are less likely to encounter stress in their lives, and that when they do, they’re better at coping with it. 

“People who are playful don’t run away from stress, they deal with it—they don’t do avoidance,” Barnett said.

In a separate study, Barnett found that people who scored high on her playfulness test were much better at entertaining themselves when forced to sit in an empty, boring room than people who didn’t. “The low-playfulness people hated it. They couldn’t wait to get out of there,” said Barnett. The high-playfulness test subjects actively enjoyed staying in the boring room, even though surveillance camera footage showed that they didn’t do anything but sit still while they were in there. “They were just in their heads—they entertained themselves.,” she said.

Even those researchers who think of playfulness as a personality trait suspect it’s a malleable one, which people can develop in themselves if they want to. 

We need to engage in the pleasures of playful activity.

This could include games, dancing, pulling pranks, singing, enjoying musical instruments, or making other people laugh. 

Engaging in a little silliness adds to overall well-being.


Laughter conquers all.

Get on the path of playfulness. Find a playful way to express your day. 

Make a Difference

Today, ponder and write about three areas of concern you have about life in 2019. Take a local or global approach to cultural or political issues, the environment, or the human condition in general.

Promote what works in positive ways.

Move into blue sky thinking. What suggestions do you have from a workable approach to challenges?  Devise wild solutions to our mega issues. Dig into creative problem solving for ways to succeed beyond negativity.

It all begins with individual choices. If each person took responsibility for his or her own personal universe with respect for others, the results would change.

Begin by redirecting your attitude when faced with adversity. Think and write: in what ways will I solve this . . .

Pick up one piece of litter.
      Offer assistance to a stranger.
             Share a smile.
                  Show positive energy when tackling problems.

Write on! You will make a difference.

As Long as You're Upright

Blaga Dimitrova, Bulgaria's celebrated poet, novelist and playwright wrote:

As Long as You're Upright
Don't forget to rejoice.
The wise trees whisper
as they crash on failing knees
under the ax.
Don't forget to rejoice!
As long as you're upright,
as long as you encounter the wind.
As long as you breathe the heights.
As long as the ax slumbers.

Daily, the media throws "news" at us in the form of disasters, disorders, and disarray.  Rarely do we see headlines that inspire. How do we survive each day with a positive attitude in this culture of negativity?  How do we remain upright?

Poetry leads us to search for our center and travel outward from it to make connections  We can do this in a tone of whininess or search for what works in our lives and in the world.

Nature provides endless possibilities from dawn to dusk with marvels for our enrichment. Inhaling with all our senses gives perspective.

Blaga presented her Ars Poetica as a challenge to writers:

Write each of your poems
as if it were your last.
death comes with terrifying suddenness
You have no right to lie,
no right to play pretty little games.
You simply won't have time
to correct your mistakes.
Write each of your poems,
tersely, mercilessly,
with blood - as if it were your last.

Today consider life from a Positive perspective. Write your Ars Poetica from a place in nature.

Hir a Thoddaid - Write a Welsh Poem

The Thoddaid (TOE-thy'd) is a Welsh poetry form. It includes a combination of end rhymes and internal rhyming.

Rules:

- Six lines
- Lines one through four and six have nine syllables and share the same end rhyme.
- Fifth Line has 10 syllables.
- There is a "B" rhyme somewhere near the end of the fifth line and beginning the sixth line.


Beyond the breakers there forms a glow
where a pause in the waves looks like snow
as a sunbeam marks shadows for show
along its stream feathers move below
then flapping soars an osprey way up high
captures sky wonder for a wild blue show.

Write a nature Thoddaid. Mention a flower or bird. Or use them in a title and do not mention them in the poem.

Sleep's Mysteries

During the first stage of sleep known as half-sleep,  rapid, electrical activity is replaced by slower, higher voltage activity. Sleep specialists cannot pinpoint the precise moment of falling asleep because the transition from relaxed wakefulness to sleep is so gradual.

Two types of waves (alpha and theta) occur together on the sleep monitor for several minutes, each seeming to fight for attention. In the transition, called hypnagogia, the individual is a passive spectator of random associations, neither awake nor asleep.

by Rachel Israel

Artists, scientists and inventors such as Charles Dickens, Albert Einstein and Johannes Brahms experienced moments of creativity during times of half-sleep. Thomas Edison napped in a chair holding steel balls. When he dozed, the balls dropped onto pans on the floor and awakened him suddenly. This aroused ideas of discovery.

by Christina Simon

Sleep scientists do not understand the causes and implications of these creative surges. They search for some connection between creativity and alpha-theta brainwaves or between creativity and intense visualization.

Most theorists believe the half-sleeping mind, removed from rational categories, can integrate opposites and accept uncertainty. For example, as he rose out of bed one morning, Einstein realized space and time are not separate entities. 


Our cognitive restrictions loosen in half-sleep allowing for unusual and illuminating associations.The space between sleep and the edge of awakening remain mysterious and symbolic. Meanings shift and deepen to create possibility. Taking advantage of sleep's nuances may nurture creativity.

Keep a notepad by your bed and notice thoughts and feelings during sleep time. Do you feel creative notions appearing if you awaken suddenly?  Write your first thoughts and feelings upon awakening. Where will they lead?

Take Aim

"The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it."  

~ Michelangelo

Most projects in life require a target, aim and follow through to the goal. When we feel energized in a flow, we keep going. Other times we stop inches from the finish line and feel the frustration of an incompletion. 

How do we learn the timing of when to push or relent?  Often distractions become vital to forward progress. Self-trickery may force us into solutions not considered if we're too focused on the task. 

All writers face times of struggle when the words move in slow motion. They defy us in a spurt, bubble or a trickle from the pen when we want Niagara Falls. We need to understand our process and give ourselves permission to aim lower at times. 

The lower aim might move us into a different direction of productivity. Often a barricade to an unreachable goal enables us to change aim and devise other creative means.  

To disagree with Michelangelo, the low accomplishment might keep us going in preparation for our shot to the moon.  W. Clement Stone wrote, "Aim for the moon, if you miss you may hit a star."

During a challenging project when you feel stuck, take a break and move into a boring area of life like laundry or refrigerator cleaning. Pay bills. Take a power nap. 

Playtime becomes necessary. Force the brain to escape. Walk in the garden and look for elephants in flowers. Soon, ideas will percolate and you'll find a way into the gush of words.



Write about aim. Ponder times you have set goals and discovered ways to reach them you never thought possible. 

How did you persevere beyond doubts?  

When you backed off and let your creative powers take over, what did you learn? 

Into the Flow

"It is better to be a hopeful person than a cynical, grumpy one, because you have to live in the same world either way, and if you're hopeful, you have more fun." 

- Barbara Kingsolver

Kingsolver also wrote, "Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you want to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer."

Identify where energy needs release for creativity.

Enhance the flow.

Relax the tweaks, unravel snarls.

Cut through the nets where the art of wonder tangles.

Flap into fantasies with diligence, zeal, and purpose.

It takes effort to progress past the quagmire of life's onslaughts.

Follow the flow with a suggestion 
from Lao Tzu to enjoy 
your greatest treasures:
simplicity, patience, and compassion.

Travel's Opportunities

Choose a direction and wander a path.

Pause and linger. 

Indulge in the mystery of a transition that looms. 

Pay attention to the feelings that arise as you visualize the experiences awaiting along each path. 

Some areas are paved; others require movement on leaves or grass.











Alter the direction of insight.
Change it to let curiosity finds its way.

Barriers and bridges beckon. Where do they lead? 

Call on memories of water crossings for guidance. 

Engage in all the sounds and scents on the journey.

Develop stories from observations. Watch where specters seem to appear.

Let imagination and curiosity combine to energize a sense of wonder.

Notice Tones of Travel

Let come what comes, and accommodate yourself to that, whatever it is. 

- Henepola Gunaratana

Notice what other travelers neglect.

Search upward, to sides and edges while following a line.





Levels of relaxation require a surge downward for refreshment. 

Scents of hollyhocks attract a friend.
Emotional color blooms
        around each connection.

Moments in movement arrive,
                  with speckled sounds of rain.

Ways to relate abound on street corners.






Taste pleasures the spirit.

Food for the eyes arrives in rainbow hues.

Blue spreads enticements on its plate.

What happened after angry gnomes dragged Sir Hilchen to the top of Kedrich and imprisoned him there?

Buildings rise as clouds dance the tales of swans.

Sun's evening twirl signals time for rest to replenish curiosity.

Night slides in with shapes and shadows.