The Way of Nowhere: Eight Questions to Release Our Creative Potential. Nick Udall
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what the stars want of me
on Sacred Mountain
Yearning to connect
Whilst some of the key turning points in our lives are predictable, like adolescence, mid-adulthood and retirement, others are part of our own unique journey, like changing jobs or beginning a new relationship. At these important times we have a choice: to keep doing what we have always done or to stop, take stock and reconnect with our intuitive self.
In these moments, we can feel how strong the flow of life is within us. If we are honest, we know to what extent we are living the life we want. At these vital crossroads in our personal or professional lives we can allow ourselves to realize that we may have lost contact with our uniqueness and can reconnect with it. It is like a love that has grown cold but whose passion demands to be rekindled. This yearning has a vital power in and of itself, for it is this very desire that begins to open the door through which inspiration can arise. If we step through, something magical happens. For when we live our lives inspired by our uniqueness, the universe somehow seems to shift to support us.
If we wish to become genuine leaders of ourselves, and subsequently of others, we need to grasp the initiative during these transitions and use the power embedded within them. In this way we can evoke our highest potential, from which we can then begin to call forward the highest potential in others.
See what the stars want of me
The energy of rebirth and renewal is all around us, from the unfolding of a leaf to the birth of a star. It is also within us in our libido and in our urge to contribute to life through our families and our work. Yet what form should that contribution take?
On one level, as humans, we all have the same purpose: to develop and realize the infinite potential of consciousness. Yet we are all also particular manifestations of the creative life force and as such have unique contributions to make. Our task is to discern our uniqueness, use it as a source of creativity and then manifest it in the form of something new and innovative.
The essential ingredient is our unique purpose. In this context, purpose means the difference that we and only we can make.
The clues to our unique purpose are encoded in our life. Who we are and what we have done are not accidents. We can use the tremendous power of our analytical minds to remember the path we have walked and to extract from it the initial insights of our uniqueness. Then, having armed ourselves with our yearning to connect, we need to shift our consciousness and create a space for inspiration to arise. We need to ask the stars what they want of us.
On Sacred Mountain
Sacred Mountain is both a place and a metaphor for a state of consciousness. As a place, it points to any environment or activity where the conscious mind can be quietened and we can play with new possibilities in ways that utilize our intuitive and creative capabilities.
‘Intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life, where the histories of all people are connected and we are able to know everything because it is written there.’ 1
Places of great natural power and beauty are particularly conducive to this, and we can achieve similar effects through drama or creative art. It's like imagining that the stars have a message for us which exists beyond the realms of everyday language. These messages manifest as symbols, designs, coincidences, patterns and shivers down the spine. So first we have to create the conditions for these messages to reveal themselves and secondly find ways of making meaning of them.
As a state of consciousness, Sacred Mountain is the moment when the space between our separate selves and our interconnected selves collapses and, for a moment that can feel like eternity, we become one. This phenomenon has been described by different cultures for thousands of years. Atman, satori and nagual are some ways of referring to it. More modern names include the Knowing Field and the Implicate Order.2
For some spiritual paths, the attainment and maintenance of this state is the ‘name of the game’. Yet the Way of nowhere does not pursue this state for itself but rather as a source of insight and guidance that can be brought into the world.
These inspirational insights into our unique purpose change not just what we do but who we think we are.
These breakthrough moments are themselves as important as their content, for peak experiences become unique and personal resources for us to call upon for the rest of our lives. They help us tap into the inspirational wellspring of life as we embark on the voyage around the inspiring-innovation wheel, transforming our lives into a creative adventure.
Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist, HarperCollins, 1993
Atman (Hindu); satori (Buddhism); nagual (Earth Wisdom); Knowing Field (Hellinger); Implicate Order (Bohm).
distortion: attachment
wanting evidence
the gardener nurtures each bloom with mindful care
Wanting evidence
While the allied energy in the East of the inspiring-innovation wheel is inspiration, the distorted energy that holds us back is attachment.
We meet this aspect of ourselves when our knowledge of a particular subject or our perception of our social position prevents us looking at life with fresh eyes. ‘Expertise’ is great when it informs what we are enquiring into and supports those with whom we are working. Yet the energy of the expert can also be deadening. Instead of being able to play with possibilities, the expert may want evidence that conforms to a pre-existing pattern of thought and very quickly dismiss anything new. So we become attached to what we know or who we think we are and unconsciously fearful of the unknown. Ultimately, we become attached to an ego-driven view of ourselves in which we see ourselves as superior to others because of our very expertise.
When we become attached to a particular view of ourselves, we often seek to reaffirm our position by surrounding ourselves with like minds and come to only really value their opinions. Thus our attachment keeps us separate from people who do not share our worldview.
In this mode we tend to shut ourselves off from non-analytical information, take on an air of aloofness and struggle with emotional contact with others. Instead of becoming more connected, we become isolated and retreat into ourselves, hanging on to our ‘expertise’, our rigid worldview, with ever-greater degrees of desperation.
When we allow this distorted energy to dominate, our life tends to lose its magic. We fall into the trap of doing what we have always done and are increasingly dismissive of anyone who suggests another way. Yet this is often what is most needed.
One way of overcoming this energy is to learn to recognize when it arises. We can learn how it feels to be ‘wearing’ it and familiarize ourselves with the situations that trigger it. We then have the choice to take it off by calling forth our allied energy in this direction – our uniqueness, our intuition and connection with the creative life force.
And this is a valuable aspect of the wheel. It is much easier to invite a new energy to arise within us than to stop being overcome by a distortion. It is very