A sneak preview of my talk at the Mind Body Spirit Festival this morning: If transitions are the space between one identity and another, one picture of ourselves and another, then turning points happen at the moment that we allow ourselves to let go of the old identity and allow a new identity to find us.
Do new pictures and identities find us or do we find them? It’s like this: when we’re living at the level of our surface imagination, that imagination that is based on past experiences, on fear, on social norms, on all that we have been, we will always feel that the devil we know is better than the devil we don’t know.
But when we allow ourselves to sink into a deeper level, into the level of the genius imagination, the imagination that writers, scientists, artists, and visionaries know, it is as if we spread our net, and our new visions swim right in.
And once we have a new vision, there is no going back. Or rather, there is no going back without seriously harming ourselves. Burnout happens when the new is calling, and yet we put our head down and refuse to listen to the whispers of the soul, and drive ourselves firmly in the old direction.
The biggest single requirement for sinking into your deepest most creative imagination is that you are willing to listen to whatever truth swims up to meet you. As it says in the I Ching, the ancient Chinese book of wisdom, It is only when we have the courage to face things exactly as they are, without any sort of self-deception or illusion, that a light will develop out of events by which the path to success may be recognised. That’s the turning point. And then you only need to follow that light, to take firm resolute action. That’s your new beginning.