“Can you find the patience to wait until the dust settles and the water becomes clear?” — Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
Mind if I do some quick self-therapy?
I’m deep in the process of developing our first full-length course right now, and it feels a bit like being in creative labour:
There’s a baby coming, but it’s not here yet, and giving birth is a messy, painful process.
My mind chews on the material all day long, organizing and reorganizing it, giving it words and then re-wording it, wrestling with a vast, sophisticated topic until it just…
Clicks:
And what was once complicated and confusing resolves into perfectly clarity, setting off a cascade of life-changing insight and creating profound transformation across every dimension of your life.
That’s what’s possible, with this course:
Not a pleasant little shift in perspective, but a revolution in your reality.
And that matters to me. A lot.
This work isn’t some day job, or new-age side-hustle that pays for my nomad lifestyle.
This is an all-day, every day obsession that I live and breathe and bleed for.
It’s my life.
And the intensity of the commitment I feel towards this work is directly reflected in the intensity of the creative struggle.
I struggled with that struggle for many years, and I still do.
It can still be painful, even exhausting at times…
But it became a lot less painful once I realized the pressure of the struggle is what forges the strength of the result:
The force of the contraction is what creates the release.
And to complain about it, agonize over it, or try to make it less painful is to struggle against the struggle itself, which robs the process of it’s inherent creative power.
And so it goes with any type of transformation:
Whether you’re transforming complex ideas into a clear, coherent message…
…Or, transforming who you are now into who you want to be.
Pain and struggle are a sign of adaptation; that something is being broken down so that something greater can emerge.
And the practitioner move is not to lean away from the struggle, but to lean into it.
Or, in the words of a mentor of mine:
To step into the fire and let it forge you.
I look forward to sharing the end result with you, soon…
– T
P.S. I should note:
All this talk of struggle and pressure and being in creative labour implies force, as though the best way to give birth is simply to push harder.
I’ve made that mistake many times, over many years, and I still do.
But paradoxically, results usually only come once I recognize my mistake, and ease off:
When I loosen my grip on the creative process, and become more receptive rather than more forceful.
That’s what I intend to do, today 🙂
It’s amazing how many problems solve themselves when we stop seeing them as problems to solve, and start seeing them as processes that are still unfolding…
