Читать книгу The Way of Nowhere: Eight Questions to Release Our Creative Potential - Nick Udall - Страница 41

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.