Mary Panttaja

(Continued)

Stillness is not something we experience very often. It is hard to come by.

In fact, the opposite is more likely. Momentum, the strong tendency to stay in motion, predominates most of our lives. (And we are not talking about jogging here, we’re talking about compelling doingness, ongoing activity, mental striving.) Momentum is defined as “the impetus and driving force gained by the development of a process or course of events.” What are our lives if not a continually evolving course of events? And each of those events tends to generate it’s own momentum.

Where does all this motion come from?

• Some of our ongoing actions are truely updrafts, us catching and participating in inspired action.
• Regularly, we start or commit to extended projects—like, say, we have children or an idea for an extended product development effort. Then the momentum of life and work becomes in many ways determined for quite some time, and while it starts as an updraft, habit can keep it moving even if the updraft changes.
• We create many “support” activities in our lives or businesses (cleaning house, keeping the lawn, financial accounting). Sometimes we let these activities take over much of our effort, and over time they can lose their meaning if they don’t relate to the support of an updraft, the support of some inspired activity. Then they just become busy work, sapping our potential.
• Often, instead of catching our updraft, we adopt a goal from someone else. “That looks nice/profitable/doable.” And while, sometimes that puts us on our own path, sometimes it has nothing to do with who we are, and so, for us, there will be no updraft in it and therefore much more effort, though the other guy/company may have really had an updraft.

And I can see that all of these things have played out in my life, some more than others. I particularly fell for trying to do what others were doing because they were having some success—and surely I could do what they were doing. But it wasn’t my updraft and it was a struggle all the way. And I find it easy to get distracted by “life” stuff—fixing the house, keeping the garden, cooking the meals—and while they are an important part of life, it’s easy to let them take over. (A form of keeping up with the Joneses.) (Now sometimes these things are someone’s updraft, and sometimes they are not. Learning to know the difference is important. And difficult.)

An Illustration of the Metaphor

In the spring in northen California, the raptors, red tail hawks particularly, have a beautiful dance they do in the skies above us. They spend hours catching updrafts in the bright sun, partners looping around each other, following, spinning. They are experts at the subtle process of staying in the middle of an updraft. If the red tail hawk set his wings a certain way, deciding in advance what he should do, how he should “act”, what his “action plan” would be, he would glide out of the center of the updraft and lose it. And from there on he would have extra work to do to move upward—he would not be gliding but fighting to create upward movement. But, with a high degree of sensitivity and subtle engagement with the air current, he maximizes his potential in the updraft and soars thousands of feet into the atmosphere.

And this subtle sensitivity is why an internal state of stillness is so valuable.

Updrafts can be roaring storms and when they are, it’s not hard to get into middle of that motion. In fact, it would be hard to resist. But updrafts are equally likely, maybe more likely, to be small shifts in the current. These are easy to miss. And if you miss them, in a short time, you can be way off base. And over time, you can find yourself adrift—without inspiration or meaning, or understanding how you (or you company) got lost.

(to be continued)

(This will be a series of posts.)

This week I am delivering the third major draft of my novel, Illumine, to my readers. This happens about once a year, hopefully not indefinitely. It’s is a moment when the work of that project glides into a slow drift in the current.

The metaphor I am using for the creative process, catching the updraft, is something that I have experienced more fully with this project as my philosophical understanding of the process has been evolving in parallel to the novel work itself. Both projects have been arising together. So one of my threads in this blog is to write about my own experience.

I have talked to many friends in the last few months mentioning my work, and my enthusiasm for it. I usually use a phrase like “my work is really demanding more of my time.” “I have so much that is compelling my attention.” And they can see that the work is a passion for me that pulls me along, or, we should say, I am caught in the updraft. I have seen a pensive look in their eye, and they explain that they would like to find that passion for something. But they are not sure what it is, and they are not sure how they find it for themselves. And, though I have caught the updraft of many projects, few have been as challenging and long-lived as this one. And I can point to the precise moment that the updraft came into my life. The nature of that moment illustrates one of the important parts of catching any updraft, of finding the source of your creative passion.

Stillness

In the story of Illumine, the character George writes this passage in his journal:

“How does one find the dead point? No, the still point of surrender where one’s path arises into the light before you? And you are quiet enough to be in that moment and see the universe present it to you.

How you come to be still is a matter for the gods or your own will. You can push and prod yourself into stillness or you might land there inadvertently or the world might crush you into it.”

In 2001, all of my plans for the future came to a blinding halt—everything ran out of momentum, all the updraft and self-induce momentum fell away. In this case, events in my life came together to create a vast stillness, a profound lack of movement. And in this stillness lies the secret to finding an updraft—to being quiet enough to sense it coming through.

I will continue the story in the next post.