Southwestern College Santa Fe, NM
I’m really liking a practice I’ve been doing: noticing what’s about to be born. This works both alone and in conversation.
Alone, this practice goes with reminding myself that I don’t know what I’m going to do next. Not knowing makes me curious about it. What actually am I going to do next? I start paying close attention, noticing what’s about to be born.
I become a channel for the evolutionary creativity of the universe, which is about to bring something into being. It’s will manifest something through me, if I pay attention and get my intellect out of the way (the intellect that thinks it already knows what’s going to happen next). I’m not a practitioner of Zen, but I imagine this is what beginner’s mind is all about—letting go of knowing so we can actually discover. It’s a constant process of discovery.
In conversation, the practice works the same way—but now it involves two people. If I want to participate in a co-creative conversation, I must pay attention to what’s about to be born next through us. I will need to feel into the space between us—our relationship, or the field of our “we space”, and pay attention. Then I’m not just verbalizing my thoughts and opinions in a mindless kind of way (as so often happens).
Photo THE BIRTH (by whologwhy) is used under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
