As chaos mounts in the perceptible world, I’ve been listening for new ideas about what to offer here.
To my surprise, I’ve noticed that some earlier techniques can be dusted off and repurposed, used in new ways, in the new environment. I’ll offer links to them here, with possibilities for working with them in times of great disruption – disruption coming from the outside, rather than from deliberate self-changes sought during inner work like writing, meditation, goal-visualization and the like.
The first one that came to mind was a four-square method for decision-making (Quadraphonic Choices). I’d been using it so long as a mental habit, years had passed since I’d needed to physically generate the four squares to see all dimensions of a choice. Then recently, when unnerved by seeing I had a real choice in something that previously would’ve been automatic or compulsory, the “imaginary” four squares didn’t feel solid enough: I got out a sheet of paper and inscribed the decision-making grid. Revelations bubbled up from it.
Revelations have always come from the four-square, but this time it was different: (1) I was able to see how radically I’d changed since the last time I’d pondered such a question, (2) I was startled to see how much more intense the interaction with public culture was, in outlining my priorities, and (3) I realized I could use the grid for even the smallest, inconsequential choices, as a way to see and maybe modify the larger pattern of my unconscious choice-making; i.e., use a microcosmic activity, as a model, to generate insights into how to relate to the larger world, how to make even larger decisions based on the current moment, not just ancient unexamined patterns and practices.
Another one that keeps popping up is the “triangle” conceptualization – a way to hold polarities and their transcended point of communion in awareness as a unity. This is a way to not lose beauty in a fraught world, a way to be sensitive to suffering without being overwhelmed by it, a way to develop a higher-vibrating fluidity that can keep flexing and flowing through all kinds of disruptions. It’s described in Generating Quality Time.
When I considered these old blossoms, feeling them burst with new life, I remembered another favorite post – about how all kinds of seeds regenerate within us, on their own schedules, in response to seen and unseen energies in our environments: All Seasons, All the Time. May it remind you of something wanting to bloom in you now.
Photo credit: Lisa Fannucci via stockxchange