Tapping Into The Universe

Every had a feeling that made the hair on your arms rise up–in a good way? A dream that seemed important, and then chunks of it started happening in waking life? A coincidence that you knew was a special moment? Yeah, me, too.

A sundial seen on my morning walk. It’s fastened onto a tree stump, and fastened in such a way that it can’t tell the time correctly. What does that tell you about how you see time?

You and I are kairomancers–people who recognize special moments and make the most of them. Kairos, in Greek, is an opening that allows for something special to happen. If you remember Homer’s Odyssey, the hero fires his flaming arrow through a dozen ax handle holes to prove his skill.

Today’s kairomancer sees small openings and opportunities and makes the most of them.  What kind of opportunity?  Here’s an example: I was teaching in Washington, D.C., and had just gotten off the metro.

At the top of the escalator stood a man who was clearly lost. I used to live in the area, so I asked if I could help. Worst case scenario, I could sympathize.

The man was looking for an office in the building I was teaching in that day. Lucky guess, I thought. We walked to the building and I walked him through a maze of hallways and showed him the office. I then taught my scheduled class. At the end of the day, as I was packing up and ready to head for the airport, when Mr. Lost walked back into the class. He was friends with someone who had enjoyed the class. He wanted to know if I could create a custom class for his team. I could. I did. And I would never have had the opportunity if I had not stopped to ask if he was lost. That’s kairomancy in action.

I didn’t ask him if he was lost because I was hoping for a job. I asked because it was likely I could help. The rest unspooled on its own. Worth the risk of being helpful.

Sure, you can call it synchronicity, but I don’t think it’s random. I think we get tiny threads of opportunity and if we pull the thread, we may discover meanings that work out to our advantage. You can call it responding to the universe, living life awake, or even praying for success. I call it kairomancy because the man I learned it from calls it that.

This is the cover of the Robert Moss book that started my work in kairomancy.

Robert Moss is the author of several books (and workshops) on dream work, coincidences, and, well, kairomancy. One of my favorites is Sidewalk Oracles, Playing with Signs, Symbols, and Synchronicity in Everyday Life. The book is a series of stories, games, and experiments that you can do every day to enhance your intuition and help make yourself more aware of signs and symbols in your life. “Instead of walking through life tuned in to an unproductive inner soundtrack, the kairomancer feels the sidewalk she treads, hears the messages awaiting receipt, and sees the extraordinary in the ordinary,” Moss says.

Moss tells us to “marry our field,”–to look for ways to work deeply in the area that interests us. For me, that is working with words and symbols, helping other people to speak and write clearly enough to be heard. We all long to be heard and understood, but we often can’t do it because we don’t have the tools or we don’t understand the rules.

Here’s how I learned to “marry my field.” Every morning, I walk three to five miles. I do it for medical reasons, but somewhere along the line, I realize that distance walking every morning made me feel more alive, more calm, more ready to deal with the problems that life brings people who teach what they do. Ready to face the to-do list of the day.

While walking, I saw symbols. I listened to my intuition. And slowly, because I paid attention,  I created ways to become a pass-through for my coaching clients. They became more attuned to their own power, their own strength.

In the next few blog posts, I’m going to talk about what happens on my morning walk. Come along, if you’d like to. It’s never boring. And if you keep a journal, you might find some new ways to write about your life, too. Let’s go!

—Quinn McDonald is a writer and creativity coach. She helps people discover the deep longing inside and connect it to a life’s work.

The Universe Says “No” Sometimes

The dream first. I was standing in a tall building, looking out over the mountains in Phoenix. A voice behind me said, “This is a higher calling.” I looked around, and I was standing in a room of packing boxes. A poetry book was on a box next to me. I’d probably been reading it.

The next morning, I wrote down the dream, and indulged in an ancient kabbalistic meditation on the creative spirit. Then, to work. And hard work it is, writing my new website. I’m on the third draft, and the webmaster is trying hard to stay polite and the account executive is probably going home to stick pins an a voodoo doll of me. I don’t blame her. But I won’t put up a website that isn’t well done. So. It’s hard work.

The phone rings and on the other end is a poet whose books I’ve read and whose writing and teaching I admire. A wonderful conversation later, I discover he teaches a course that sounds as if it were designed for me. Two years and I’d have a certification in healing through poetry. I want to do that. It sounds perfect. It matches the dream!

I check into the price, and it is more than I can afford. Way more. Of course, the price is worth it, that’s not the point. But both of our cars are more than 12 years old, one of them has more than 200,000 miles on the odometer. The family room needs a new floor. The carpet, even when clean, looks like a plowed field waiting to be seeded.

Sometimes the dream is not a sign.

It seemed like a good time to turn over the problem to the Operating System of the Universe. I went back to work. OK, I may have mentioned it whined a little on Facebook. I should have kept my fingers concentrating on the website.

The emails began to trickle in: “Jump and trust. The money will show up as you fly.” “The universe will provide you the money. Sign up!” “This is an investment in the future, just do it.” “The dream was a sign! Go now and the money will come.” “Write a love letter to money!” Oh. I’m not big on blind trust. I noodle some numbers, and nope, it’s just not feasible right now. That happens, too. Even in an enlightened universe. Sometimes the Universe says, “No,” even if you have a dream.

The next step was also interesting. “You didn’t try hard enough.” “You didn’t trust enough.” “Maybe you didn’t deserve it after all.” “You are playing small.” “Write another love letter to money.” Wow, so if the universe doesn’t deliver, suddenly it’s my fault. What happened to blind trust?

I have a few days left. Maybe the Universe will write me a check. But if it doesn’t, I’ll have to be disappointed. There is nothing wrong with disappointment. It does not reflect on my character, my will or my ability to manifest. It simply means that something I wanted it out of my financial reach. That happens. Even to deserving people.

Tomorrow there will be more webwriting, but mostly workbook writing. Sometimes the Universe helps you by letting you deal with loss and then move on.

—Quinn McDonald trusts in the Universe, even when the answer is “No.”

Living a Portfolio Life

Writing a blog is fun, inventive, a chore, impossible, and, well, just like real life–a mixed bag.

Lots of ideas can fit together like a mosaic.

Smart people, who care about Search Engine Optimization and marketing businesses like mine, keep telling me to pick ONE audience–art journalers, writers, life coaches, training developers, instructors, workshop leaders–and write only to them. “It will focus your energy and give you a better audience,” they explain.

Perhaps. But I don’t DO one thing–I live a portfolio life. I do several things, all of which I love, and all of which connect through my heart and soul. They don’t need separate websites any more than I need separate desks.

Seven years ago, I vowed not to make my art pay the mortgage so I could do the

Creating your own reality happens only when you take the time to do it.

art I wanted, not just what sold well. That gave me huge creative freedom,  less creative discipline that I needed (another whole blog post), and a lot of work in different areas.

Corporate clients who were bothered that I was also an artist expressed concern. I told them that if I was not meeting their expectations as a corporate trainer, we should speak to that point so I could create better results. No one spoke up. But I know that in the corporate culture, creativity is called “disruption” and that the name itself doesn’t sound great, even if the effect often is.

So the blog continues to jump from topic to topic–training, art journaling, workshops, demos, ideas, life problems, coaching issues–just like real life.

But I’m open to different ideas, and if you have one, let’s hear it in the comments section. Or tell me how you decided to limit your blog (or not). To check out different ideas:

• Julie Fei-Fan Balzer posts photos of her creative adventures every day on her blog.
• iHanna takes us on visual journeys through her daily life on her blog.
• Seth Apter often talks about other people’s art on his blog, The Altered Page.
• Tammy Garcia is a peripatetic artist whose website (Daisy Yellow) covers a vast variety of art topics

Meanwhile, I’m getting comfy with the different kinds of work. I’m re-doing my website (every website needs an update every 18 months or so) and am open to new ideas.

–Quinn McDonald has opened the window of her mind. She’s got a head cold and is hoping for a drying breeze up there.

Power in a Manifesto

Jenna*is one of those artists who surprise me time after time. She has a real grasp on the throat of her inner critic, and she has big plans. That’s always a good combination.

What surprises me is not that Jenna never stumbles, falls, makes mistakes, slides into the morass of crankiness or wraps herself around her axle–she does all of those things. What surprises me is that she doesn’t make up stuff. She keep her life and her place in it in focus.

She does the three thing that makes coaching successful:

1. She gets up again, after every slip, trip, and stumble. People who stay down discover that others step over them on their way to their own plans.

2. She doesn’t make excuses for herself. She analyzes her situation and learns from it. That doesn’t mean she won’t do it again, but she will learn something different from it. The more you learn the more tools you have to move ahead to your goal.

3. She starts the fix with herself. “What do I need to do here to make my situation better?” “What do I need to do to move my plan forward?” No waiting for the magic wand. Choosing your own moves allows you to feel in charge of the direction and speed of travel. I’m pretty sure that’s a law of personal physics.

Here is her Personal Manifesto she wrote last week. Right underneath it is her

*   *   *   *   *

I want to be an artist.

I want to live somewhere so beautiful that even in the wind and rain I am drawn to go outside and revel in the sights, sounds and smells and take those into my studio to inspire what I do.

From whipup.net

I want to have an abundance of time to sketch and refine and develop my own ideas so that I produce art that is meaningful to me.

I want to develop a discipline and a regular habit of creating art.

I want the company of a mentor or teacher who can help me improve and encourage my achievement.

I want my art to be good enough to sell in an upmarket gallery, not a market stall.

I will be confident and able to put myself amongst other artists whose work I admire.

I want to feel passion at the colors of a sunset and joy in the colors of pebbles.

I want to continue to explore and play, but I want to find my niche, my craft, my calling.  I want to develop my skills and get really, really good.

And I want to feel so caught up in the moment that the act of creating art is almost a spiritual experience.

I WANT TO BE AN ARTIST: This is my manifesto.

What do I need to get there?

•  A space
• Discipline
• Practice
• Encouragement
• Financial support
• Customers
• Determination
• Health
• Belief
• Persistence
• Energy
• Courage

The Result:

•  Happy
• Energized
• Fulfilled
• On purpose
• Worthwhile

*   *   *   *   *

That’s a lot to want. And a lot to demand of oneself–to know what you need and what you have to do is a brave first step in getting it. But it takes courage to declare yourself. And even more courage to declare yourself to yourself.

What would you declare about yourself?

On Wednesday, I’ll give some pointers for writing a personal manifesto–and how to make it happen.

–Quinn McDonald needs to work on getting more sleep and choosing her commitments more carefully. That is what she is declaring.

* Not her real name. Coaching clients are promised anonymity. I have her permission to use her manifesto in this blog.

Creativity: Light and Dark

The guy looked like Grizzly Adams without the smile, but complete with suspenders and wild beard and hair. I worked in a very conservative company as the marketing  VP of writing, and he was a freelancer, hired for his creativity by my boss, who found the non-corporate look exotic on an outsider.

Sometimes creativity discovers new worlds, sometimes creativity discovers empty galaxies. Photo credit: JimKSter

Getting to the point, I loathed him. He sent in assignments on his own time schedule, often handing work directly to my boss, so I didn’t know it had arrived.  He  made fun of me for sticking to a schedule. He told huge tales (none of them verifiable) of amazing deeds in the service of his country,  implying shadowy connections to black helicopters and secret missions. He had scars to show, both physical and psychological. Frankly, to me, the scar looked like a Sunday morning bagel cutting accident. He insisted it was from hand-to-hand combat is a dangerous country where even the air was deadly.

He got a lot of attention for being “creative.” His bad behavior and poor social skills didn’t matter because he saved my boss from daily tedium. For my boss, relief  balanced the havoc wreaked on every project he touched–an the clean-up was my job. All-nighters to create salvageable content  meant little to my boss, who waved to me as she went home at 5 p.m. With wide eyes, she re-told stories of how the creative genius slept, as he claimed, on the floor with a knife under his pillow. War scars, you know.

My boss adored him and slyly suggested I was jealous. Maybe. They paid him a lot more than they paid me. In more than one case I said, “Please let me hire someone who is not quite as eccentric and a lot more reliable.” It never happened. He gave creativity a bad name. He’s long out of my life, but the incident reminded me: there is a dark side of creativity. And it’s not always bad or weird.

Creativity is often describes as a light, cheerful gift. Not always.  Mondo Guerra (Season 8 of Project Runway) nailed it when he publicly  said “I feel like this gift and talent is a curse to me sometimes.” In a corporate setting, creativity can easily be considered a mental aberration by a supervisor. Creatives can feel like outcasts in an environment where creativity is directly related to ROI.

Creativity has deep roots in unhappiness with the status quo. With willingness to go against the grain. With certainty of purpose. With the idea that the creative ideas are better than what exists now. That’s tough when your culture values individuality only if it fits in with what already exists.

Creativity has roots in “other-ness.” There’s a lot of responsibility attached to it.  While risking reputation for an uncertain result, the creative has to explain how the result is useful and why the risk is worthwhile. And, of course, sometimes the creative is wrong, and the risk taken can make the job vanish.

Creativity is absolutely how change comes into the world, but it is not the preternaturally cheery, holy, shamanic gift it’s painted to be. It has a dark, difficult, mean side, and that needs to be honored, too. It’s not for everyone or every place. When you choose the light, you choose the dark. One does not exist without the other. In fact, knowing dark is how we recognize light.

–-Quinn McDonald is a writer and creativity coach. Last night she had a dream about the Grizzly Adams guy. She’s still not over the experience.

Photo credit: JimKSter through Creative Commons.

The Commonplace Journal

The instant Kaisa from Valkoinenponi mentioned it, I recognized the Commonplace Journal.  For me, it was a book I had seen before, with the words Vade Mecum printed on the cover, that my father used. It was a small notebook, and he took notes in it. About the weather, numbers and measurements he needed to remember, quotes on prices and on wisdom. Vade Mecum means “Come with Me” in Latin, and the book went most places with my father, the original life-long learner.

In the early days of printing, Vade Mecum became a name for books that published information–general or specific–in a variety of topics. They contained medical information, wieghts and measurements, and recipes for healing, cooking, even alchemy.

Vade Mecum had another name, starting in the 15th century: Commonplace books and Zibaldone. These notebooks were a combination of a scrapbook and a note-taking device. Students who were studying by apprenticeship would sketch or write information for their professional learning into the books. As the students became masters, they would allow the next generation to learn from these books. In the 1600s, most college students learned from the professors through keeping a Commonplace Book. Oxford University and Harvard taught via Commonplace Book well into the 20th century.

When I was in college, I created a Commonplace timeline in my room. Every time I learned something in one field, I’d mark it on the timeline–when it happened, who did the work. I’d add notes from other fields. By the middle of the year, I could tell you that while Bach was studying music, Peter the Great was building St. Petersburg (later Leningrad) and that 9,000 people died in England in a huge windstorm with gusts that reached 120 mph. The timeline wrapped around the room. The arts, music, science, literature–all trailed around the room, helping me understand the relationship between politics, culture, and science.

I still keep a Commonplace Book. It holds quotes, book titles, ideas. I wish it looked more like Count Laszlo’s private diary in The English Patient (the 1996 movie made of Michael Ondaatje’s book). You can see a glimpse of it at the 4:00 mark in the trailer. But it is, well, commonplace. It is also the reason that I can’t keep an art journal without words as the origination source. I understand books without words, just colors or images when others do them, but for me, words create the book. And the image.

I love the idea of important pieces of learning and experience caught in one book. Paging through it, I can remember so much of where I was and what I was learning.  You can start your own, but if you already have one, please leave a comment about what you keep in it.

–-Quinn McDonald is a romantic at heart. But don’t tell anyone; it’s hard to be a level-headed creativity coach if people think you are a wild romantic.

Creativity and the Sunday Sermon

Meg is a creative force in my life. We’re not the same religion, not even close, not

The Mender’s home on Sundays.

even on the same planet, religion-name-wise, but we are sisters of soul restoration. Meg is deeply creative and stitches her creativity into the lives of those who pass by. She catches a raveled edge of fear and smooths it back into the fabric of a life. She sees a button of calm about to unravel and fall into anger and stitches it back onto the soul to hold the garment of strength buttoned to the edge of calm. Meg is a creative mender of souls.

Meg is a Baptist minister and I  . . . am not. I had quick ideas about what “Baptist Minister” meant, just like people had quick ideas about looking at me and thinking “fat, her own fault.” So I put down fast judgment and took a deeper look at the mender’s heart.

This morning I visited, via the interwebs, Meg’s church. I read her sermon, called God’s Laundry. And there I met healing for the Boston Marathon, for Connecticut’s dead, for the mess of killing and anger and hatred we are stewing in. I watched her mending needle darn its way between unraveled hearts and love. Meg’s dream, told, is what deep writing is about.

I struggle with Hope, as I think it gives false security. And I struggle with Faith, because it is hard for me to accept without question. But I did not struggle with this loving dream, told at the right time. I thought you would enjoy it, too, no matter what religion you are. Interpret it in your own way, it still comes out to creative love.

—Quinn McDonald didn’t ask Meg about this before publishing it. Quinn is vaguely aware that if she is struck by lightning today, it will be for her lack of religion. She steadfastly believes however, that she is walking in creative love because, while not religious, she is a believer in doing spiritual laundry.

No Safety Guarantees

After the police arrested the Marathon Bomber in Boston, one of the students interviewed said, “Now we can go back to our life. We don’t have to be scared anymore. There is nothing to fear.” He’s so very wrong. The idea that two bombers caught make the problem go away is a false one. And every time a terrorist attack occurs, we (understandably) want it to be over so we can have our lives back. Go back to what we were doing before we had to think about dying. But that isn’t real, and our lives have changed forever already. There is no going back. There is no closure. People died. People had their legs blown off.

And still, there is a huge difference between living IN fear and living WITH fear. When we live with fear, we understand the world around us is unsteady and not in our control. We promote kindness, compassion and understanding because that is what we can do at the individual level. We understand that death is not within our control, and that someday we, our family and friends will die–maybe of old age, maybe of disease, maybe because a terrorist bomb found us.

Fear, from beaconblog.com

When we live in fear, we become suspicious, angry and controlling. We trade essential freedoms for the hope of safety, and wind up with missing freedoms and no guarantee of safety.  We refuse to think about death as anything except a cruel cheat, and something that happens to others. And we lose our creativity.

Fear is the big scourge of creativity. Fear robs us of flexibility, agility, choices, and the glory of uncertainty. When we live in fear, uncertainty is the enemy (along with almost everything else.) Instead of spending time in creative thinking, we spend time in isolation, developing rationalizations for “them” and “us” thinking. Anything different, unusual, or non-conforming is suspicious, maybe even dangerous.

The very root of creativity is in different, risky, and strange. There are many countries whose citizens have had to adapt to war–Somalia, the Sudan, Mali, Palestine, Israel, Pakistan, Afghanistan–all have innocent citizens whose lives are directed by war they don’t want, and don’t agree with. But yet, there they are, in the middle of a war, still trying to feed the family and provide a normal life for their children.

Creativity is both exciting and calming, involved in giving up and expanding anew. But let fear in the studio, and it vanishes. Fear makes you small. It takes courage to be creative. But it’s worth it.

—Quinn McDonald’s mother was lost to fear. She doesn’t want to follow in those footsteps.

Insomniac Falls Asleep

Sleep, in the Jewish mystical mythology, is not just a time for physical rest. The soul returns to its Maker, who keeps it for rejuvenation. The moment of waking is the return of the soul to the body. If the Almighty decides not to return your soul, you don’t wake up.

There is even a special prayer said upon waking up that thanks the Almighty for rejoining body and soul for another day. I find the idea of having my spirit buffed up, the dust shaken off it, setting it up for a new day a wonderfully relaxing one.

Sometimes, when I can’t sleep, I imagine the Almighty searching around, having misplaced a group of  40 souls like I misplace my keys. Finally, the souls are found, accidentally dropped behind a random divine thought. They are lovingly picked up, and 40 insomniacs drift off to sleep at last.

–Quinn McDonald is a certified creativity coach who writes and sleeps through her own dreams.

The Needle Dream

Here is the dream I have had three times in the last two weeks:

I am sitting at the laptop, getting to write something–nothing clear in the dream.
Next to the computer is a tapestry needle, threaded. Like all tapestry needles, it’s bigger and heavier than a sewing needle. I pick up the needle, and notice the thread is not regular thread, it’s words. There is a long thread of words on the needle. I don’t know what they say, but I know what I am supposed to do.

Needle and words. ©Quinn McDonald pen, ink, watercolor. 2012.

I pick up the needle, and carefully begin to stitch it though the computer screen, where the words begin to stitch themselves into a story. Somehow, the story seems to be three dimensional, as if I were stitching an event.

As the needle comes up toward me, I notice is it covered with uneven, etched letters. Looking closely, I see they say “mender.”

[In waking life, I have always shrunk from being a healer. Others in my coaching class talked about being healers, of having sacred powers, of being shamans.  They were certain they had been called. I did not doubt them, but was not one of them. I did not feel worthy to heal, or called.]

In the dream, Paul Simon’s song, “Fakin’ It” begins to play.  Part of the lyrics are, “I’m such a dubious soul,
And a walk in the garden
Wears me down.
Tangled in the fallen vines,
Pickin’ up the punch lines . . .

This feeling of fakin’ it–
I still haven’t shaken it.

Prior to this lifetime
I surely was a tailor, look at me…
(“Good morning, Mr. Leitch.
Have you had a busy day?”)
I own the tailor’s face and hands.
I am the tailor’s face and hands . . .”

As the song plays, I continue to sew the story, and I am filled with the knowledge that I am not a healer, I am a mender. Fixing tears in the sky, rips in souls, gathering the frayed edges of unraveled lives. I cannot heal, that is the work of those who need to be healed. My work leaves visible stitches, the mended part will always show, but it holds together. Knowing this comforts me in the dream, and I continue to stitch.

—Quinn McDonald is a writer and a creativity coach.