If This Archetype Chooses You – Armor up. It’s coming. Are you feeling muzzled? Do you dream of battles? Do you wake up angry? Worried? Afraid? Do you gnash your teeth while you sleep? Do you love proving others wrong? When others speak are you eager to jump in and “set them right”? Is your favorite word, “No?”
Resistance is Never Futile – We become creatives for a reason. But what kind of creatives are we? After all, we can’t make our contribution unless we know who we are. Strangely, we get a lot of push-back on this seemingly basic investigation. First, there’s enormous cultural pressure against us defining ourselves while international corporate overlords compete, waging schemes to entrap us into fighting for them. It’s enough to gnash anyone’s teeth.
Creative Challenge – We must be protective of our special gifts. Specify under what circumstances you are relaxed, happy, creative and “In-Flow.” The ‘flow” state is “bliss” – your brain oozes alpha waves as you sink into some interesting exploration, losing any sense of time and feeling at one with the universe. Suddenly, we are experiencing the pleasures of “Eternity” while still very much a part of this sphere. Is “flow” achieved for you through music? Dance? Composition? Reading? Sex? Some lucky people access this state through meditation alone. It is certainly worth a try; meditation is very good for your brain.
Creative Danger – The danger of Eternal Resistance is that it becomes reflexive. Our Resistance must be chosen, carefully thought out and promoted by History and Fact.
Creative Opportunity – You are a work of art. Your whole life, your experiences, your very dreams, have brought you to this moment. Your resistance to invasion, to malformation, to co-option, to corruption, has blossomed into an individualized focus that must defeat their blander, blunter, self-serving opposition. You lose nothing – gain everything – by becoming yourself; a unique creative nonpareil who has never existed before and will never exist again. You are the opposite of a faceless soldier, you are rare, sui generis, customized for this moment of space and time but perfected for eternity. What fears are left to surmount? What can you dream?
Models & Mentors – ‘When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty” – Thomas Jefferson
“Every moment of resistance to temptation is a victory” – Frederick William Faber
“To fly we must have resistance” – Maya Lin
“The history of liberty is a history of resistance” – Woodrow Wilson
“The more important an activity is to your soul’s evolution the more resistance you will feel” – Steven Pressfield
#Haiku: Counter-Pressure
First – Relax; Melt; Slide; Upend Onslaught; Be attacker’s Banana peel
If This Archetype Chooses You – It’s Time to Release Your Power. Do you dream of fantastic feats? Sports? Circuses? Meritocratic competitions? Or are you held back from “fear standing up in front of the class?” Your psyche yearns to muster passion, the fuel for courage. Passion is what propels us forward when it would be safer to hang back. Why?
Passion Makes You a Creative – From your youngest years, you recall that boiling collision inside of you, caused by shaming, praising, and an endless re-directing. It is in maturity that we begin to make sense of our passions and to see clearly that not everyone is born with the same ones.
Define Your Passions – Passions evolve while you grow in character as a person. We are constantly re-defining “The Problem”, as well as the Self with which we see the problem. You will “graduate” from one passion to another until you find Compassion, its highest form. This life trajectory is cause enough for Celebration.
Passion’s Worth Defending – Intense caring means you’re staking out ground in the universe. The desirable – justice, truth, art – whatever it is – is so important it needs advocates. You become aware that it’s under attack from people who, for personal reasons of their own, find its existence inconvenient. “Those who fail to stand up for something will fall for anything.”
Passion Gives You Courage – Defending anything is extremely scary. You can expect to experience every sort of pushback. Studying all these possibilities is the beginning of your education as a creative.
Have You The Courage of Your Passions? Sometimes we want something concrete, but most of the time it is the adventure itself that we really seek. We long to be transformed into an athlete of endurance who can far further faster, learn more better and imagine deeper and more vibrantly.
Fear is a Reaction, Courage is a Decision – Even if you don’t like to fight with your fists you must fight with your mind, with your longing, with your desire. So much is impossible, yet humanity attempts the impossible every day, and a surprising extent of the time, we succeed. Our well-being, our future, depend upon this passion and this courage. Be as wily as a serpent and as gentle as a dove so that your power morphs to encompass the difficulties that you face.
Broken Creatives – Will your heart and your courage be broken? Many times, says the fable. But light comes in through the broken places. You will flex and bend. You will evolve and grow. Your passions will change. You will rise above your passions. Your courage will strengthen and evolve. YOU WILL FLOURISH and the beauty of your effort, of your dream, joins together with all the other glorious human resolutions and accomplishments to power the planet.
Creative Danger – Derailment is common. It is endemic. It is not the end. We live in a capitalistic society where some deliberately harness the passion, the courage, the imaginations of others to benefit only themselves. It is heartbreaking to put all your keenest insight into discoveries and achievements that only buy baubles for billionaires. Soldiers can find themselves giving everything for Very Bad Ideas. Artists watch their best installments torched and trashed. All of us face the shock of old age – if we are lucky. You need a shock absorber to upgrade your courage.
Creative Opportunity – The hum of the universe provides the refreshment we need. There is still much peace and beauty in the green places, and the eyes of children provide all the light we need. To be strong requires exercise – Push-relax, push-relax. Nutrition has the same requirement. There’s a time to eat and a time to fast and each of those spaces is holy. The less we take, the less we require, the finer tuned becomes our mechanism. The more there is to share. Share with holy people who recognize and honor the gifts of God, not those who try to inspire hate, divisiveness and violence. Naturally we have sore places – we are creatives! We all need to give and receive the magical healing of a loving touch. Let that courage be your passion.
You Are Not Alone – Someone has your back. Find out who: among the people who love you, among historical figures, famous thinkers and contemporary philosophers. If you can’t find a group, start a group. True friends give each other courage.
Models & Mentors – “Courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen.” – Brene Brown
“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage” – Anais Nin
“Be brave. Take risks. Nothing can substitute for experience.” – Paulo Coelho
“It takes courage to become who you really are.” – e.e. cummings
“Courage is contagious” – Billy Graham
#Haiku: Devourer of Hearts
Scaling hearts For final judgment: Soured hearts Desiccate; Passion hearts Burgeon
If This Archetype Chooses You – Suffering isn’t eternal. Your ultimate ecstasy is guaranteed. But what is your definition of paradise? Some people want to see their enemies suffer. That’s what the view looks like – in hell. But if you wanted to find your own bliss, where would you look? Dreaming of a tropical getaway? Is your definition of heaven raised consciousness or lack of consciousness? Would you want to know what is happening in the world or would you want to be removed from the world? Can you really be happy if you know there is suffering anywhere?
If There Is a Hell, Multiverse Declares Its Opposite Must Exist - As we mature, we can choose to either elevate or denigrate our consciousness. We are creating “heaven”, or “hell” – our choice. Which direction are you tending? Which direction do you want to go?
Are Creatives Heaven Material? When we are young, we obsess about whether we are really liked or loved, whether we are really “popular.” As we get older we slowly realize that people like/love to the extent of their own spiritual and emotional ability/depth. Shallow people offer very shallow love – nothing can take root there. It can flip in an instant. They “forget” because there’s nothing there. If the whole purpose of life on this planet – a struggle by any standard - is for humans to become more closer to God then we are being challenged to create the kind of emotional and psychic depth that sees ”inside’ - understands and accepts everyone’s struggle, everyone’s challenge.
Creative Challenge – Bliss is a scientifically provable psychic state of timeless ecstasy mapped by “alpha waves” which can be seen in the brain. This state is called “flow”. We drift outside ourselves and belong to the universe. It is the condition called “mastery.” This is such a happy state we long to cultivate and re-experience it, which we can do from immersing ourselves in art, meditation, love, sexual/emotional union, or deep thought.
Creative Soul – Non-Creatives bounce between a fussing self-obsession and living entirely in and through other people. The poor things. Neither condition is optimal, although there are times in our lives when these states are necessary or unavoidable. Why should we ever leave our paradise and re-enter their wretched world? Because transforming suffering into knowledge is the creatives’ superpower. Balance – sometimes called moderation – becomes the creatives’ operative methodology. Creatives learn to be IN the group, but we are not of “the group”. We do not subjugate our brain to the “group mind” but contribute our educated, enlightened brain-power to it. Creatives elevate the group with the our Soul power even when others try to drag it down through thoughtless replication of idiotic non-ideas.
Self-Lessness is A Terrible Fate - Some people choose to never develop an individuated self. They pass from group to group, trying to “fit in” and quell their inner voice that warns. “this isn’t right.” Creatives call attention to violations of our basic human mandate: developing a soul that is worthy of God.
Creatives are Individuals Who Become More and More Unique - You are on a hero’s quest: you are the hero and the quest is for your Soul. This is both an inner and an outer quest. We have responsibilities from birth onwards; when we come to consciousness we can clearly see we are our brother’s/sister’s keeper. We are our own keeper, too. Mistakes – sometimes devastating ones – are expected. It’s a dangerous world and we will meet more than one predator looking to make a meal of us.
Creatives Know Where They are Going – Elevate, denigrate or disintegrate. Your choice: every minute of every day. consciousness. “Heaven”, or “hell” – your choice. Which direction are you tending? Which direction do you want to go?
Creatives Know Bliss – Bliss is the haze that comes after successful efforts. Bliss is the creatives’ prize. It comes not only from doing well, but from intending to do well and shaping your soul and purpose and ideation toward Wellness.
Creatives Choose Heaven We must be wily as the snake and tender as the dove. Because in the end, it’s all about Love. The more you give, the more you feel. The more you give, the larger your capacity for ecstasy.
Models & Mentors – “Follow your bliss and walls turn into doors” – Joseph Campbell
“In a state of bliss – everything is love” – Deepak Chopra
“Joy is a connection to what matters – a sustained sense of well-being and inner peace” – Oprah Winfrey
“I need not sell my soul to buy bliss” – Charlotte Bronte
#Haiku: Bliss
You and I Merge; Evanesce; Solids Deliquesce: Fire, Air Acquiesce.
Time to consider your ideal partnership contract. What would it be like? Have you been dreaming lately about weddings? Love, proposals, marriage? About The One that got Away? About partnership enterprises in general – video gaming, tennis – where an Ideal Partner/Helper’s got your back?
Creatives can’t make it through life without a partner. We’ve got friends who come and go, sometimes special ones, but they’ve got obligations of their own. What if we had a Perfect Friend who made our Best Life their priority? What if we were not only willing to do the same for them but to promise this in public?
Everybody Deserves Somebody – We come into adulthood with strong memories of familial dependence. We are all attracted to caretaking behaviors and easily seduced by promises to read our minds and give us what we really want, even if we haven’t figured that out for ourselves. Then hormones click in and we discover Desire. Not only for bodies, but for Persons, Lives, Individualities. Other people are a spice, other people are a medicine, other people are a distraction – everything our lives appear to be lacking. What if we could combine all these needs together in one appetizing human package?
Creative Challenge – We rarely ask our friends to change their lives for us. They are VERY rarely willing to do so. But a partner is someone to actively plan a life with. You get to talk through all the Wants, the Possibilities, the Fears. Heady stuff! The challenge is to know Yourself well enough to make any sort of honest statements about who you are, who you CAN be and who you want to be.
Sometimes Allies Need a Long-Term Contract – Lives are uprooted. Possessions are shared. Long term strategy results in map-merging to create a new – but more exciting – map. If you’re a giver, learn your limits. Because takers don’t have any.
Someone Needs to Take Your Back – As the great mystic Emmanuel Swedenborg pointed out, each one of us is only half an angel. You need someone to cover the things you can’t cover. And if you were planning to start a creative family, you need more than a partner, you need a spouse.
Spouses Teach Honesty – The person who knows you best doesn’t put up with a false front. You literally force each other to get to the root of emotions and behaviors that will open up your psyches not just to each other, but to the world and to yourselves. The spouse who falls in love with you and forgives you finally allows you to fall in love with and forgive yourself.
Staging, Experimental Life Lab and Boot Camp – we get to try out our ideas on each other. The Beloved Other is a Mirror and a Coach. The purpose of existence, the purpose of YOUR existence – suddenly becomes clear.
Creative Danger – A substantial number of partnership contracts fail. We all know this but we keep trying. Then there are the partnerships that evolve into Something Else, a Financial, Real Estate or Caregiving unit that is very necessary but also pretty far from what we had in mind originally. Our challenge remains the same. Is it possible to both know and be known? Can we find our Soulmate? Does such a creature exist? Is it possible to evolve with another soul to a higher plane of SuperSoul? Disappointment and betrayal are all too often the apparent outcomes.
Creative Opportunity – Soulmates DO exist! They DO evolve. We WILL change our life for another and they will change, blend, merge with us. Any interaction with another requires communication, boundaries, honesty, planning and “rules”. I put rules in quotes because a good partner keeps “transforming” the game and we keep transforming ourselves to meet it. The best way ever to honestly know yourself is to keep conscious, subconscious and unconscious in alignment. Purposeful dreaming, journaling and planning is the best way to achieve that goal! Get out your Training Journal and start with absolute honesty, realizing that tomorrow you may see things differently. Accept it!
Models & Mentors – “It’s not lack of love but lack of friendship that makes for unhappy marriages” – Friedrich Nietzsche
“What counts in making a happy marriage is not compatibility but how you deal with incompatibility” – Leo Tolstoy
“A happy marriage is a long conversation which always seems too short” – Andre Maurois
“The secret of a happy marriage is finding the right person. You know they’re the right person if you want to be with them all the time” – Julia Child
#Haiku: Marriage: Partnership
Merged. Eyes when I can’t see – Two extra hands; Relay race – Inspiration.
If This Archetype Chooses You – How are you at delegating? Do you often dream of Getting Help? In this fantasy, you are engaged on any difficult task and Some Competent Dreamboat shows up to assist. Do you dream of villages and businesses that run seemingly effortlessly – everyone like the mailman, the crossing guard, the fruit seller, the fireman – setting about their Daily Chores like characters in a children’s book? We’re all nostalgic for that Perfect World of cooperation that never in fact, existed or can exist because we are all the stars of our particular story. Exactly as it should be. But you, right now, need cooperation and luckily, as it turns out, everyone needs cooperation to survive.
You Don’t Have to Do Everything – It’s an enormous relief when you first realize you’re not responsible for everything. Children are very solipsistic thinkers – they “assume” magical responsibility not just for parental divorce but for World Wars. But we are tiny cogs in a huge enterprise. Every task we assume is part of something much bigger. We are surrounded by helpers, if we could only see it.
Creative Challenge – In life we have Group Tasks and Individual Tasks. The challenge is to figure out which is which. Social pressure tends to ‘erase” the importance of our personal, individual tasks because the daily round is so overwhelming. Yet we must cling determinedly to our Personal Goals of Maturation, Mastery, Learning, Finding Meaning & Bliss, Growing Love. Cooperation surrounds us in all these challenges if we could only access its benefits.
Know the Game – Unfortunately capitalist societies are based on competition and scarcity. Politics maneuvers us into seeing others as competitors for scarce resources, instead of willing hands helping us build. No wonder Main Street is falling into disrepair, volunteer activities go begging and community resources are depleted! Without a sense of community we can’t see each other as anything but rivals. When looking for co-operators it is wise to re-visit our previous Wisdom warnings about avoiding people who seek not helpers but hostages.
Avoid Spirit Crushers – Memorize these threatening warnings of an approaching hostile takeover. Don’t ask for anything from these people. We can’t repeat these dangers often enough: Write these down!
• 1. Manipulation: Toxic people often use manipulation to get what they want from others. They may guilt trip, threaten, or lie to manipulate others into doing their bidding.
2. Emotional Abuse: Toxic individuals may use emotional abuse to control and dominate their victims. This can include name-calling, belittling, and constant criticism.
3. Lack of Accountability: Toxic people often avoid taking responsibility for their actions and may blame others for their own mistakes.
4. Self-Centeredness: Toxic individuals are often extremely self-centered and may prioritize their own needs and desires over those of others.
5. Lack of Empathy: Toxic people may have difficulty putting themselves in other people’s shoes and understanding their feelings and perspectives.
6. Passive-Aggressiveness: Toxic individuals may exhibit passive-aggressive behavior, such as giving the silent treatment or making sarcastic comments.
7. Inconsistency: Toxic people may be inconsistent in their words and actions, and may promise one thing but deliver another.
8. Disregard for Boundaries: Toxic individuals may disregard others’ boundaries and may continue to push for what they want even when told “no”.
9. Gaslighting: Toxic people may engage in gaslighting behavior, which involves manipulating someone into doubting their own perceptions or memories.
10. Physical Aggression: In extreme cases, toxic individuals may exhibit physical aggression, such as hitting, pushing, or kicking.
Stay Away!
Creative Opportunity – If you manage to avoid the above, you will meet Your Best Friends Ever! People who really have ideas and ENJOY HELPING. This is even more important than Getting “the job” DONE! Because Cooperation often redesigns the job in a positive, healthy way. Real friends last for life and they change YOU. Reach out for advice and cooperation to all who treat others with respect. You won’t be successful ALL the time – no one is – but you will learn so much in the course of finding out How to Live In the World and Who to be.
Creatives Know How to Lead – Creatives understand strategy and dividing tasks into steps. Creatives see into the heart of personal and personnel problems because they have confronted their own issues of courage, baggage, physical challenge and fear.
Creatives Know How to Play Their Position – For my part to work, your part needs to work. Division of labor knits efforts into a harmonious whole. Everyone gets a chance and everyone is satisfied with the result.
Creatives See the Entire Field – We know how to change course to give our best efforts their best chance. We know when to retreat and regroup. We understand the psychological build-up and the necessity of down-time, debriefing, and re-supplying. Everyone must feel that they are of value and no effort is in vain.
Models & Mentors – “The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation” – Bertrand Russell
“Coming together is a beginning, keeping together is progress and working together is success” – Henry Ford
“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants” – Isaac Newton
“Alone we can do so little. Together we can do so much.” – Helen Keller
If This Archetype Chooses You – His or Hers? Creatives Express All Genders. Are you an empath? Do you identify easily with multiple avatars? Are you happiest with fluid roles in a relationship? Do you dream of the fetish trophies of gender; makeup, wigs, shoes, sports equipment? Do you have frequent “freedom” dreams: flying, swimming? Waking up damp, pulses pounding?
Love Opens Creatives – Empathy Ennobles Creatives – IS there an “opposite” sex? Deep empathy makes us worthy to be our own romantic partners, the subject of our lifelong pursuit. This is nothing but the honorable, deepest desire to truly know oneself AND others; to master selfhood and compassion before leaving the planet. C.S. Lewis says we are not a Body with a Soul, we are Souls with a Body.
Creative Strategy Requires “Becoming” the Other – Strengthening our imagination, we see through the barriers raised by the fearful and the pugnacious. What is “winning”? Empaths double – triple – multiply our vision, our power, and therefore our souls.
Don’t Fear Gender – Creatives who perform “gender specifics” are limiting themselves. Creatives who look for opportunities to expand their reach encompass the powers, the delights, the ecstasies of all humans. What we absorb, we reflect.
Creatives Don’t Fear Physicality – We express ourselves with this gloriously gifted, given body, coming through this gloriously gifted, given world. We expect, even worship, Transformation. Woody Allen says bisexuality doubles your chances to get a date on Saturday night. Anything wrong with that? Creatives never “force” themselves to perform sexually; that is subjugation.
Creatives Move Slowly to Absorb, Interpret, Comprehend – We desire to see, to know, to experience everything. Always move as slowly as you feel comfortable with, keeping all options and emotions alive. The “sexual revolution” was a lot of fun, but it was spoiled for many by a witless prejudice against “reserve.” Revulsion, instinctive distaste and doubt tell us plenty. We are on this earth to hone our “gut” instinct as well as our sensitivities. Gavin de Becker, danger specialist, reminds us that fear is an insight, an intuition, a God-given “gift.” Honor it.
Creatives Educate Themselves on Risk – Dangerous “bad sex” stories start with substance abuse, usually undertaken with a nervous desire to get into a more relaxed or even transcendental state; but all it actually does is skip over the “informed consent” that is such an important feature of identity and will. Predators with a need for speed drug their prey! Afterwards the complex feelings of violation and shame can take a lifetime to deal with. These facts mean we must study “trust” BEFORE we study sex. What is trust? Safety? Honor? Let’s work on those issues while we develop a free space to evolve, experiment and grow.
Creatives Seize Opportunity – Fresh interpretations of “gender“ make this a glorious time to be alive. I can recall when gender was a prison sentence of compulsion and rigidity! Now it is an invitation to live more fully, to experience oneself and others more richly, to participate in that fruitful, heavenly life for which we all yearn.
Models & Mentors – “The great gift of human beings is we all have empathy. We can sense a mysterious connection to each other” – Meryl Streep
“Leadership is about empathy. It is about relating to people for the purpose of inspiring and empowering their lives” – Oprah Winfrey
“The capacity for empathy leads to a genuine encounter I which heart speaks to heart” – Pope Francis
“I believe empathy is the most essential quality of civilization” – Roger Ebert
“Empathy has no script…there is no right way or wrong way…there is only listening, emotionally connecting, communicating the incredibly healing message ‘You’re not alone” – Brene Brown
#Haiku: Ambisextrous
Fresh birthed – Splash Into you Drenched, Once Halved, now Wholed – Doubling multiplies Us
If This Archetype Chooses You – You are standing on the edge of possibility. Imagination tells us what COULD be. Potential alerts us to the possibilities. In the multiverse, physicists assure, everything is happening somewhere. The stick-colored, dead-seeming chrysalis contains nature’s most beautiful sprite, the butterfly. The invisibility of potential discourages predators by daylight, but at night, the chrysalis opens and we are free.
Remember: You Contain Multitudes – You orchid is still asleep What kind of flower will it be? You are the apex of your family tree. Walt Whitman is describing us, as well as himself, when he says he contains “multitudes”. Be wary of the “restrictions” others place so confidently upon you. Question them. Be the first in your family to — do something. Because you ARE the first in your family to be you. You are unique. In day dreams and night dreams, on conscious and unconscious levels, you explore all the odds and contingencies.
Don’t Be Sidelined – People we love, need and admire, keep trying to pin us down. They want to get to “know” us so they can “rely” on our sameness. They want us to stay where they left us, like a coat or umbrella. We willingly place limits on ourselves, just to be accepted. But you are unrestrained in your wild and dreaming imagination.
Preserve Your Inner Wildness – Think of the story of Max, who voyaged overnight to play with the Wild Things until he finally decided he wanted to return to his safe, warm, familiar bed. Every action you perform, every thought you think, suggests and then creates its opposite or “shadow” as Jung would say. Free yourself to consider all the alternatives. Then Creatives fly above them.
Creatives Are Warmed by Inner Fire – Creatives don’t listen to the limitations others have set on them. Who would believe that dried up chrysalis is going to turn into a magnificent butterfly? Yet it will. You have the butterfly within you. When you concentrate, you can feel its wings stretching and expanding.
Can We Lose Ourselves? Will we become Peter Pan who was replaced and now can never come home? Fear is a valid reaction when danger is about. But danger is triggered by lack of escape. Keep all your psychic escape hatches open.
What Fable Do You Cherish? We tell ourselves stories. Harry Potter, Narnia or Marvel? Expand it outwards. Insert yourself. So many discoveries have been made from and through fantasy fan fiction they are too numerous to mention here. But allowing yourself to dream is key. Imagine you are outfitting your inner butterfly. What colors? How about all colors, constantly changing?
Creatives Are Quick-Change Artists – Creatives might become a butterfly or a snowflake or an orchid or some new form that hasn’t been created yet. Creatives are avatars. We keep ourselves in peak readiness to accept the universal challenge. We realize life is a dance, we can adapt to its steps and offer steps all our own.
Creatives Protect Their Potential – Others will constantly try to constrain and define you and herd you into their enclosure. Don’t go. What you will become is not up to them, it is not even up to those who mentor and love you. It is up to you.
Creatives Protect the World’s Potential – The young, the aged, the helpless, the teacher, the crossing guard, the medic, the harvester – these are people who shepherd the universe into a positive becoming. They are occupied with vital work and can’t protect themselves or those they help. Life’s creatives will protect them. The forces of destruction are all around us, the universe can’t afford to waste a scrap of its positive potential.
Models & Mentors – “The only person you are destined to be is the person you decide to become” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Consult not your fears but your hopes and dreams. Think not about your frustrations but your potential. Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed but with what it is still possible for you to do.” – Pope John XXIII
“Our essential nature is one of pure potentiality” – Deepak Chopra
“Accept whatever comes and meet it with the best you have to give” – Eleanor Roosevelt
#Haiku: Chrysalis – Potential
Unrecognizable: Disguised – Prototype Unbeing Becomes You
If This Archetype Chooses You – You’re always ready to bounce back. Have you been dreaming or thinking about your childhood? Your conscious mind is “mining” your subconscious for guides to the way you feel now. Did you pick the wrong path, and if so, why? Can you summon the effort to go back and fix it?
“You’re as Young as You Feel” is a true saying! Ever met a “young” seeming old person? They are interested in everything. They are not frightened by new ideas. They don’t talk endlessly about their illnesses, complaints, how the world has gone to hell. They look forward to the future. The nature of “resilience” is that you “spring back”. You can actually use mistakes as energy, to improve your map-making. Surely you’re familiar with ”resistance training.” You get better muscles that way!
Creatives Are Battle-Tested – How to feel “young” when life keeps beating you down? The way to improve your resilience is to improve your philosophy. Do you believe people get old, they can no longer participate in the rat race, are shoveled under and it’s over? There’s an inspiring pep talk for the locker room!
Creatives are Resilient – Creatives are young forever. Combine that with the far-seeing wisdom of planning and experience and you have a Superpower.
Love and Intelligence REQUIRE Wisdom – Adopt a philosophy that gives you hope. This is easier to do around young people. Grandparents cling to grandchildren. It’s good for both of them.
Don’t Get Stuck in a “Feedback Loop.” Don’t hang around depressing, toxic people who mouth depressing, toxic notions. In our society, old people are shunted off onto sidings, gathered together in communities that focus on “nursing”. Depressed yet? Re-orient your mind to focus on “health.” Resilience is a requirement for wounds of all types to heal.
Creatives Preserve the Hope of Youth – Hope is the creative’s religion. Life will always win out, will grow even against despair.
Creatives Preserve the Joy of Youth – Fighting difficult battles (even with oneself) means the relaxation afterwards feels extra delicious. Creatives can play with anyone because they are still their child-like selves. That is part of what we are fighting for.
Creative Opportunity – In a famous letter to Ann Landers, someone who wanted to go to medical school bewailed that they would forty years old when they got out! Forty! Landers asked, “How old will you be if you DON’T go?” “Wise” people are those who realize HOW YOUNG THE REST OF YOU really are, who are complaining about being “too old” to do what you want to do. You have plenty of time, because ALL time is NOW. Your new mantra? “Spring back.”
Creatives Never Give Up – Surrendering can be a strategy. It is not giving up. There may be snow on the roof but there is plenty of fire in the fireplace. Sometimes, however, it is good to keep our fires to ourselves. We know how to bide our time.
Models & Mentors – “Reasons for hope – our clever brains, the indomitable human spirit and above all, the commitment of young people when they’re empowered to take action” – Jane Goodall
“We don’t even know how strong we are until we are forced to bring that hidden strength forward” – Isabel Allende
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal, it is the courage to continue that counts’ – Winston Churchill
“Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny” – C. S. Lewis
#Haiku: Reincarnation through Books
Multiple lives – Rising youth – Thriving age – Released death; re Peat; re Learn
If This Archetype Chooses You – You must consider the unseen. Are you dreaming of reversals? Sudden surprises or a creeping sense of unease? Upsets? Do you wake with a sense of having forgotten something important you almost understood?
Something’s Not Quite Right – Ever have that sneaking sense you’ve wandered into a masquerade? We are trying to learn the rules, but the rules keep changing. Someone’s moving the goalposts. By the time you’ve arrived, the “promise” has “expired.”
Impostor Syndrome – Are we the fake, or is it everyone around us who’s faking it? “Fake it till you make it” is definitely a rule. But is the game worth playing? Your Training Journal reflects the Creative Reality. Meditation will reveal your wholeness to you.
Activate Your Spidey Senses – First, have a self. This ought to be the easy part! Everyone has a self – right? If only! From our earliest memory not only was “love” conditional but ALL rewards were. We wanted to find out who we really were and what we were capable of but it never seemed the right time. Let’s start by taking our suspicions seriously – you’re not paranoid if they’re REALLY out to get you.
Creatives Are Sensitive Instruments registering seismic shifts and deep tectonic disturbances below the threshold of consciousness. Something always IS “going on” and you have studied long enough to be alert to the many warning signals! This can be exhausting. We long for relaxation, peace and quiet, a clear blue sky without a single cloud.
Creative Challenge –The key to intelligent management of dissonance is to think of the world as an orchestra playing a symphony. The more able we become to distinguish the varied instruments and musical lines the more we will appreciate and enjoy the experience. Balance is key. We schedule regular periods of rest and renewal.
Creative Danger – Avoid a “bunker mentality.” The universe has many bunkers, but it is bigger than any single one. We must cultivate a hierarchy of response. We get out of bed in the middle of the night for a fire alarm, not a phone notification. Don’t allow yourself to become dismissive and numb but seek out advice and encouragement from others who understand a healthy growth process. All of us live in groups, curate your group to promote intelligent awareness in an atmosphere of hope. Dissonance and dormancy are not doom.
Resistance Is Never Futile – We each will be given a chance to spend our night on the watchtower, but you don’t need to spend every night there. Consider dissonance and discord invitations to accept maturity. We are putting away childish things. The sky is NOT falling, but the climate is under legitimate scientific threat. Strategize ways to band together with like-minded members of your community to take useful action. This is an opportunity to show self-love, as well as love for the group, the environment, the world and the future. The attitude, “I care about you so I’m going to take care of you”, keeps us sensitive to the message of Universal Love that is always waiting breathlessly to embrace us.
Suit Up for the Long Haul – There’s a reason you are attracted to the ‘dissonance” archetype. You can sense something moving just out of your peripheral vision. Someone in your closest circle is lying to you. Do you know how to check for honesty? Test for reality? Check their pasts. Interview their friends AND their enemies. Are they pushing too hard? Trying to “sign you up?” How do they treat wait-staff? Do they speak disrespectfully of others? What’s their philosophy of life?
When It’s Too Good to Be True – That often means the trap is just about to be sprung. Creatives must learn to think for themselves.
Models & Mentors – “When you light a candle, you cast a shadow.” – Ursula K. LeGuin
Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to fads, trends and popular opinion” – Jack Kerouac
“Better to fail in originality than succeed in imitation” – Herman Melville
“If you don’t fit in, you’re probably doing the right thing” – Henry David Thoreau
“Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth” – John F. Kennedy
#Haiku: Depth Psychology
Substrata Dissonance? Game on! Unearth yourself – Transect core Meanings
If This Archetype Chooses You – You’ve been mothering yourself, now make friends with yourself. Are you good company? Have you been fearing time alone? It is vital that we carve out time to reflect on all that is happening to us and the part we play and want to play. Our dreams alone could fill a shelf of books – plus we have to cultivate, curate and care for our daytime creative. Sometimes we have other people to care for and relationships to manage. We need to learn how to be our own best friend.
Your Mind Is Your Most Important Tool – Sun Tzu reminds us that all battles are won and lost in the brain. Your mind determines your experience which controls your mind which develops your experience in a perfect feedback loop. In a culture based on “likes” from strangers we are all too ready to hand the reins of our brain over to some algorithm. Advertisers, influencers and partisans do NOT have your best interests at heart. We must learn how to turn that feedback loop into an upward trending spiral.
After the Party Comes Cleanup – We have been taking control of our routine, our trajectory, our dreams and our thoughts. Now we need to develop self-confidence. Frustrated Creatives devour themselves. We need to trust, not fear, our responsive reactions. This takes practice – “reps” in the words of the physical trainers. There is no need for two weeks alone on the Appalachian Trail (nice as that would be) because we are already alone inside our heads. Check your voices: what are you saying to yourself? “Good effort” or “Idiot”? It matters! Many of us treat ourselves worse than we would treat any other human (or animal.) That must change today.
Creative Danger – We are not proposing a life without feedback or a divorce from reality. If you really were your own best friend, you would protect, not exalt yourself. You would strategize towards health and having something worthwhile to share, not secrecy and isolation.
Do You Hate Your Thoughts? – A recent poll discovered that most people would rather experience electric shocks than spend time alone with their thoughts, doing nothing but thinking. Just as mapping your future is a Creative’s job, so is mapping your brain. Make yourself a person it’s a pleasure to spend time with. You are not lonely when you enjoy your own company.
Your Training Journal Is Your Mirror – It anchors you with its reflection. It is not necessary to write long pieces – lists or single words are adequate. Visual thinkers may want to sketch out or paste in pictures. Your Training Journal answers the following questions: Where Have I Been? Where Am I Going? Who Am I? Meditate 20 minutes a day on these issues.
Creative Opportunity – find a voice you respect and admire on which to model your new internal voice. Can you check with this person that you are on the right path? We all need a life coach or a cheerleader in our corner. Learn to enjoy time alone by building in rewards – indulging in nourishing hobbies as simple as walking and reading. You don’t need rocket science, you need a healthful day to day peaceful retreat inside your own head.
Ask Yourself What You Take For Granted – This is the part of the picture that’s hardest to see. Because we take it for granted! Here is where your study of models can be helpful because you will be surprised by other people’s automatic assumptions. For example, some people assume being a creative means putting yourself at the mercy of fickle public taste, whipsawing between hedonism and rejection in an atmosphere of deprivation and hardship, but to me, Creativity is the peace of totally owning oneself, exploring one’s ideas and being responsible for oneself. It is serfdom to the malignant or shallow minds of others that spells suffering and hardship.
Gratitude Practice – Gratitude must be part of your everyday practice. Give thanks for this wonderful body, with its aches and cuts and bruises, as it eagerly shapes itself according to your efforts. Give thanks for the freedom of your mind. Give daily thanks for the honor of being a Creative.
Models & Mentors – “Loneliness is the poverty of self – Solitude is the richness of self.” – May Sarton
“The happiest of all lives is a busy solitude” – Voltaire
“Solitude is necessary for creativity” – Picasso
“The best thinking is done in solitude” – Thomas Edison
#Haiku: Selfish Armor
Imagination untrammeled – My alone time’s For your protection
Alysse Aallyn 