The Way of Nowhere: Eight Questions to Release Our Creative Potential. Nick Udall
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hold the frequency
poor hungry ghost you miss implicate order through time and over pain
how am I releasing the magic of the moment… ?
Imagine each moment as a package of perception containing a magic gift. It's the present of the present. We can choose to throw this gift on the pile marked ‘past’ or we can store it for later on the pile marked ‘future’. Yet if we access the power of presence, we can tear off the wrapping paper and grasp the gift immediately.
Like all the best presents, the gift of the moment is very simple. It is appreciation. We begin to appreciate the beauty around us, the beauty of our friends and colleagues. And finally, if we are very lucky, we might even begin to appreciate ourselves.
This question therefore asks us first to monitor the extent to which we are experiencing the magic of the moment. We cannot release something that we do not know is there! Secondly, it challenges us to use this appreciation of the moment to release the creative potential that exists in the space between us and all things. This space is full of potential – potential for new and deeper relationships, potential for new learning and insights, and potential for new ideas and pathways to the future.
The question also heightens our awareness of the habits and addictions that cheat us of this magic by distracting us and draining us of the energy that presence requires.
Best of all, this question opens us to the magic of the now and here.
allied: presence
form to essence lights our luminous selves hold the frequency
Form to essence
When we were young, our mothers often had a strange sixth sense about us. If we had done something wrong or if we were worried or hurt, they seemed to know immediately. ‘How did you know that?’ we would ask. ‘It's written all over your face,’ they'd reply. Because of their deep care and love for us, they had developed a quality of attention that enabled them to sense what was going on almost before we did.
Some people have this skill naturally and others learn to develop it. Some forms of psychotherapy, counselling and coaching have powerful processes for enhancing it. People who have taken this skill to a high level have a strange magnetism because they can look beneath the surface of life. They are not as seduced as the rest of us by the form of things. They are less distracted or fooled by words, actions or behaviour.
Beneath these outward forms lies our deeper self, our essence. People who are truly present are far more aware of their own essence and that of those around them. They attend to how people are feeling and the quality of their relationships. The most insightful can then name what they see with skill and compassion and in doing so alter the balance between form and essence.
We all have the potential to empathize with those around us to the extent that we can feel their feelings and think their thoughts. We can learn to listen to one another as if we were hearing from a part of ourselves. When this capacity achieves its fullest expression it can seem uncanny, almost mystical.1
Lights our luminous selves
The rational analytical data that dominate our perceptions (if we let them) are hugely valuable. Yet in order to really see beneath the surface of life, we need to find a balance between the rational and the intuitive. The key to this balance is our perceptual intelligence.
Our perceptual intelligence is our awareness of what is happening through our senses – what we are seeing, what we are feeling, smelling, tasting and hearing. We also have other, more subtle senses that can enrich our sense of each moment – the way our skin is feeling, the powerful inner rhythms of our heartbeat and pulse, our sense of ourselves moving through time and space, and our sense of our inner selves.2
Unlike our rational intelligence, our perceptual intelligence is, by definition, based in the now. We see now, we hear now, we taste now. As we learn to focus on the information that is streaming in through our senses, we can balance the analytical with the perceptual and create a space for intuition to shine through.
This requires that we interrupt our internal dialogue, the incessant self-chatter that causes us to mistake what we think or feel for who we are. As we learn to control this and find that quiet still place within, we find a deeper source of happiness, a source which lights our luminous selves.
Hold the frequency
There are many masters (and mistresses) of these states of awareness who are far better qualified to write about them than we are. The wisdom traditions that inform the Way of nowhere are held by keepers whose role is to maintain the purity of this wisdom and the practices that they are based on.
We have tremendous respect for these keepers and believe that their role will become ever more important as we rise to meet the social and cultural challenges that face us. Yet our role is to be practitioners, to find ways to apply these ancient and modern wisdom traditions to the lives we live now. The practice of presence is a good example of this.
As we practise presence, it heightens our perceptual intelligence. We can then apply this perceptual intelligence to the transformation of our close relationships. When we become present we learn to take responsibility for how we feel. We can then stop blaming our husbands, wives, partners, mothers, fathers and colleagues for how we feel and start sharing our feelings with them in order to learn more about ourselves in relation to one another.
If we can achieve this, we often find the intimacy and the oneness that we crave, because we have stopped blaming one another for its absence. Suddenly our families and colleagues become sources of profound personal growth. It is difficult work, because our personal defences can easily take over and anger can fill the place where presence should be. Yet if we can be present, we can appreciate one another more fully and enjoy a more creative relationship. We naturally move into a space where we want to create things together.
In groups, presence has the capacity to intensify the energy field of the circle and therefore dramatically improve the conditions for the achievement of collective breakthrough. Presence is the prerequisite for genuine dialogue to take place. A truly generative dialogue arises from the space between people as new meaning and insight flow between and among the circle of people.3
Profound breakthroughs are usually accompanied by powerful emotional experiences whereby members of the group completely reframe a perspective on behalf of everyone, and everyone knows and feels it. They are in communion. Yet this deeply creative space is fragile. It collapses under the weight of the ego-driven needs of an individual or group. Such ego-driven thoughts stream in when the frequency of consciousness of the individual or the group falls below a certain rate. Thus for a creative dialogue to be maintained, it requires at least two or more people to maintain a high degree of presence.4 This practice, the ability to hold the frequency can alone transform the innovative capacity of any social system, whether that be a family, a sports team, a business team or a wider community.