LIFE FORCE LIVING
Thriving in a crazy world
Is there life after sustainability? I thought it time to value the way I want to do the world and experience life in the grandest possible way. I have always thought about it like … going the WHOLE way. How about ... PARADISE? “Being all you can be” really got me when we made that the slogan for the U. S. Army. It helps explain to me how I am somewhat possessed with being, doing, and having it all … and with a personal bias toward doing things of consequence. Like being sustainable.
Although wanting to be, do, and have the best of … what’s possible next …shouldn’t be that unusual … hello! Yet, it seems to be nearly totally over-looked in the world I read about out there. Or should I say underlooked. There is no master template, no comprehensive science, no deep world game for the whole, integral, sensual, and alive human.
There is much talk about conscious evolution but I haven’t seen much of anybody getting at it in the way say athletes do. Where is the decathlon for “being all you can be” anyway? There are so many people who win very fancy prizes for global acts …and they can hardly walk gracefully much less dance. That is such a perfect way to describe the split we experience between the tribal and the industrial worlds. I dare not suggest that their love life or intimacy skills be brought into this too. Right? Lets just let the professional world decide who we shall be after all it has to fit on a resume’. See the trap?
It might be that we never did have an inclination in school to cover too much territory in the same breath. Those positions are hard to defend. Academics can’t differentiate themselves without a field of interest. We all must choose a profession that in fact chooses for us where we place our focus and therefore expend our energy to make it in life. The industrial age with its focus on doing one thing well has been a disastrous excursion into the particular at the expense of the WHOLE. Tribal people used to dance and sing while they worked. How did we screw that one up so badly?
I may be different but very few of the activities I treasure are about having this or going there or harboring tools for a wickedly cool tomorrow. They are acts of attention and focus that bring the full weight of my thoughts, feelings, and choices back to me eventually as satisfying moments. I will bundle some of these personal practices up below and see what turns up as the most valuable:
Strategic assembly. This is basically alchemy in action. This is a name I have given to the holistic approach I have come to use to create solutions. In business they might think of it as assembling desirable product features. I look to build bundles of desirable features for most anything a meal, a room, an outfit, a work plan, a party. These combinations bring me a quick menu and arrange my priorities and service to the world. I can make almost anything happen quickly as a satisfactory set of the First, reviewing the movie that is my life is the beginning of such a mental sequence. Early in the morning my mind plays back the rushes of previous thoughts. I am not yet fully awake for the first run. By the second running I am tinkering with the combinations and generally find a way to see the next set of actions I will take to further each game that I value. By pass number three I am having insights on completely new ways to hold the ideas and excite myself to them.
In the end I illustrate them in some visual verb or map to order the focus and then I highlight the key relationships in the grouping with color or some other graphic convention. Most of what I do is in the end related to this kind of working assembly. Options make sense to me when I strategically group them. They become strategy maps for action. I am not moved by any kind of written set of ideas which just makes life a “to do” list.
Deciding that things are fun or satisfying is key.
Somatic stew. This is a name I will give to the various ways I excite myself physically. Usually this is an early morning still in my bed game. Positioning my body just right to nestle into a groove in the mattress I pull the covers up just right to secure a warming bubble of heat around my skin. I may stretch a little to activate the portions of myself that are not yet in the feeling zone. Then with mental imagination I move energy around inside my skin by picturing the energy and then imagining a euphoria coming from this action. Now I have the kind of physical state of being I want to carry through the day. My interior self is awake with a real quality feeling state anchored in the chamber of my being and I know psychically that life is good.
Mixed Nuts: The different ways I can amuse my self during the day is generally filled with purposeful work or art. The secret for me is to keep the pallet interesting and changing. Three to four different kinds of activities in the same day are normal. Writing down my daydreaming in the morning is often the starter game. Then some puttering around the house and land are included somewhere. Putting things in order. The garden is a joy especially when I can choose from 30 – 40 things to eat or make tea from or then put in a flower vase after a short but rapturous smelling spree. I can trim or prune or rake or generally beautify.
Then I’ll try a team activity with friends like repairing a sailboat or starting a garden or designing a village or even illustrating their ideas. In this mix there is some music some food some jokes some dreams some hugs and some deep listening. When on a job for pay then the variety is harder to arrange but is usually still a good versatile game to play.
Healthy mindset. Being fanatic is only a game I play when on stage. So, being in fervor about toxic this and life saving that are not of interest to me. I listen to my tongue and watch my belly. I have decided I came here with a mission and when it is done I can leave whenever that happens. Spending my life worrying about the various wide range of bad outcomes so rampant on the so-called health circuit is stupidly debilitating and brings its own bad juju along with it. I imagine I am healthy, agile, virile, humorous, engaging and generally get what I imagine. Beautiful intelligent women have hit me on at 68 more than at any other time in my life. I take real stock in things like that.
Arranged relationships and loving-kindness: I have a half dozen men friends and a similar number of women friends. We share mutual respect and mutual interests as adults. Sometimes we work together. Sometimes we are intimate. But that intimacy includes a wide range of honest exchanges like emotional release, long hugs, spooning, empathic light touch, massage and only occasionally intercourse. It is a rich set of experiences. But, nothing is assumed lest the exchange fall into old patterns that automatically lead to sex. Every heartfelt exchange is courteously arranged and agreed upon before with a simple verbal agreement. The secret is knowing the rich middle ground of loving kindness and the many intimate options inside that space.
Holo Holo or auspicious time. This is a very desirable way to function because it demands presence and full participation. Isn’t that kind of aliveness a big factor in happiness? It is off the clock and off the schedule. I know there were times in my life when that was impossible but I make an effort now to get as far from schedule as possible. Holo Holo in Hawaiian translates something like: I travel about without a plan. I will stop and engage in whatever has the juice to hold me. This does not mean I won’t attend a scheduled event. It does mean I focus on an auspicious life of experiences with as much time for reflection on what is needed as possible. One scheduled meeting or phone call in the middle of things can snag the adventure game into a knot. I prefer wondering around in selected venues. Shopping can be fun that way and that’s why we old hunter-gatherers are happy in a mall.
It also means that subtle cues from Universe are important and that totally changing my mind about what’s next becomes a needed art form. The radical news can be an easy shift if I accept that possibility. It also favors the mindset of loving what you get not what you want. I can become Captain lemonade and then enjoy turning shitty moments into something else. Ever notice that bag people are more alive than folks in assisted living? It is practicing freedom and radical change in a way to get the best results by adaptive learning. There is power in making the shift ourselves.
Multiple income streams. This is a way to enhance freestyle living. I begin by simply imagining all the ways I provide value and then putting those as a list on a calling card that says they are being offered as a service. I will adjust prices to work with people I like and do trades creatively to get things I need. Reciprocity or just doing favors is a nice way to have moneyless exchanges and …that can pay great dividends while keeping the burdensome IRS system at bay.
Multiple personalities. Schizophrenia gets a bad rap. People often don’t even have enough of one character in them to have a real life. Having a dozen like I do which can be called polyphrenia only confuses people that I have little in common with. I have sixty-eight skills for which I can receive a professional wage. So, I cluster them in dynamic combinations and give those a broad generic title like social architect, or strategic designer, or vision coach. In this way I can bring more of my essensual selves and more of my large skill base into play. I often focus on the word play of multiple dialects, styles, and mannerisms. Humor and interest result. Each character is better at something than the other characters.
Shameless self-concepts. I am a legend in my own mind and find that I have to be. This is because I live in what appears to be the future to others and most often don’t get recognized for what I am doing. Others simply have no concept for it. Therefore, I assume the responsibility of maintaining my self-esteem in the absence of regular recognition. I choose also to wear rose-colored glasses. In this way I collect the positive working components of any phenomenon I observe rather than seeking to discover its more conversational gossipy short-comings. A good friend once told me he goes to the mirror in the morning and asserts how handsome he is ( You are one good-looking buggah!… his phrase). I am working on that. I believe that I can do anything. I create my vision and then go after it. I divine, I vision, I assemble, I am grateful.
Rapid-prototyping. Soon after I conceive (or receive) a new idea of some sort I make a prototype. I have learned to illustrate in 3D so that at a minimum I can have a blueprint of the idea very quickly. Assembly mind comes easily to me now because I can create a 3D picture in my mind. This isn’t having a photographic mind. This is a simple language function of storing the pictures on the hard drive inside my brain by drawing them and then just calling them to mind as concepts I can then assemble. I built some framework images to enable me to assemble sets of pictures. Often, since I have three acres of land, I can actually mock-up a physical prototype and plop it on the land.
Catalytic thinking. Bucky Fuller gave us synergistic thinking, as a concept to assemble proactive elements together that could become more than the sum of their parts. Catalytic thinking says combine elements in the proper way to create one or more good results and eliminate one or more bad results at the same time. It’s just a more comprehensive approach.
Chaordic process. Dee Hock the creator of visa recommends that you push off into a logical path when creating something… then notice the results… when they don’t meet the needs then drop everything till a new approach appears and push off on that next most amazing path. Work with what you get then change radically as needed. Do this until a refinement of creative adjustments sets in. It takes around seven major shifts to come up with the right solution in a major business like visa.
Today we are attempting ways to become independent from the
challenges around us. Choosing wisely the way we live, eat, and think takes considerable time. But, when we can reach out a little further and expect more from our own decision process then the light on the horizon begins to appear. I feel I am living more in that light now than not. Halaluya! Sustainablity leads to life force living.
Jim Channon
