I thought somebody might like to know what I think about when I am laying around just thinking. Of course, like everybody else, I do a lot of thinking which isn’t really thinking. I also do the kind of thinking that is way more like spinning your tires in a snow drift; the kind of thinking where you worry about what you are going to say or collect evidence for what a stupid person somebody is or what a dumb thing you just did – all that sort of thing. I do lots of that, not unlike everybody else, and I try when I notice it to not get stuck there.
Right now, when I don’t know what my life can look like in the next few weeks, I could get myself pretty depressed pretty fast doing that kind of pseudo-thinking. But that is not really what I wanted to share today.
I feel very blessed with the quality of mind that I have. Many, many years ago I recognized that the enjoyment and enlightenment that is available to me through my mind, (and I guess potentially to others), is so great that it is more than worth my while to not mess up my mind with drugs, TV, movies and other nonsense producing stimuli. I don’t mean to be egotistical in any sort of way. I just recognize that I have a doorway to a very different sort of experience. I learned this, by the way, as part of my studies at Landmark Education. I am saying that for those who wonder why I have spent so much time and money in that pursuit.
What I realized probably in about 1992 was that I have no direct access to thinking, but that I can set an intention for what I would like to think about and if I hold to my intention eventually the right sort of thoughts start to come through. It is like I am the owner of a faucet that I cannot turn on or off by myself, but that I can design and redesign over and over again so that I have access to the quality water that comes through. Funny, eh!?!
Much of this kind of thinking comes through as me telling myself stories. One of my favourite stories is imagining myself as sitting on a riser in the power and contribution course being interviewed by Helen Gilhooly and explaining how I have unfolded my Impossible Promise – World Peace Through Inclusion.
Ok, lots more Landmark stuff, I know. Power and Contribution is one of the senior courses in the Wisdom Unlimited division of Landmark Education, I took this course in 2005 and it was in this course that I began to take seriously that perhaps I could be a world leader in peace. Don’t get me wrong, I continued to resist the whole idea of it and still do in some ways, and never really took it on until 2007.
Helen Gilhooly is possibly one of the most remarkable human beings on the planet. I love her for her capacity to listen. Over and over I have seen her create the context for transforming someone just simply by listening to them – not coaching, not advising. I myself have benefitted by a number of such interactions with Helen, and I hold her as a model of who I aim to be, yes, even in Cycle 3.
So in this fantasy, the story I tell myself, Helen is interviewing me in front of the new class about how my Impossible Promise is unfolding. I am telling her that although the course was very valuable, at the same time I have not pursued my promise in the ways that the course workbook would seem to recommend. In this interview I have enough time to explain that it has always been important to me to unfold and understand Inclusion in a way that conforms to the actual capacities of people who get labelled severely disabled. So, almost instinctively, I have turned away from opportunities to build complex projects and organizations, and sought instead to find a pathway that relies on creating relationships and draws on the gifts and contributions of the actual people who are involved.
It is not that the course was of no value at all – quite the contrary. The course caused us to deeply look at the resources that others provide, and the importance of relationship, and noticing what has already been done in the world relative to our vision and the value of having goals that can be measured. In particular, it was the measurement aspect of the course that finally opened the door for me to commit to my dream, because I realized that if people even just started to measure the peace making aspects of inclusion then it would have achieved a level of legitimacy in people’s eyes that would take it beyond my lifetime.
So, back to thinking. As I tell myself these stories I get to see where I have actually limited myself or where there might be a new way to express myself or where there might be a resource I might be ignoring. Like painting the same picture over and over again, it never is exactly the same, and each shift teaches me something about what is possible.
I forgot to say how I redirect or reshape the faucet. It is a matter of holding a question. When I ask a question and hold onto that question with intention in a short matter of time the thoughts, stories and answers begin to flow.
In the realm of thinking question and dream are the same.
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