When a person starts to suspect that an entire system is mistaken and destructive, what does that person do next?
Unfortunately, I’m not clear on that yet. I think it might be different for everyone (other than the requirement to step off the system’s crowded train), and each person’s challenge to find out, if they feel like it. Perhaps it’s each person’s greatest challenge, and it has been ever since humans started thinking; an archetypal quest. A quest that does not in any way serve the interest of the system we are currently in, so it gets played down or even forgotten.
But those who develop a taste for freedom have to do something about it, right? When I look at what free people are doing in their diverse ways, and try to make sense of how my own version is emerging, I notice two common processes: Motion turning into a Mission and Craft turning into a Medium.
Motion
The search for truth. The inner journey. Not staying static. This trip, available to anyone should they wish to go, is a leap into the psychological and emotional unknown, which is what happens when a person switches off auto-pilot, starts thinking for themselves, and begins to notice the enormous personal and cultural elephants in their room. As far as I can tell, it involves – it requires – being utterly lost; that is the root of its creativity. Things happen when I step off the recommended path. I begin to notice things I never really noticed before, and care about things I never before cared about.
Whenever it happens that the wide angle provided by Motion narrows into a tighter focus, this may be the Mission presenting itself, offering its invitation.
Craft
I have tried not to stop and ask myself whether there is much sense in all the time I am spending writing, drawing cartoons, whittling, making fires in the woods, tracking deer footprints, writing and telling stories, slapping a drum and all the other experiments I have been carrying out. I have just enjoyed falling in love with these activities and immersing myself in them.
And I have begun to understand that when a Craft gains a sense of purpose beyond enjoyably passing the time, it becomes a Medium (social justice through cross stitch? It’s possible – see here).
And when a Mission is projected through a Medium, then you may really have discovered treasure.
I can’t say I have any Mission, or that I am adept enough at many of my odd collection of offerings for them to become effective Media… but it will happen, inevitably… I just can’t predict how.
As with all mysterious things, magical combinations of don’t happen in a linear way, but by committing to trying to live open- and whole-heartedly.
So today I am satisfied with delighting in my Crafts, and embracing whatever my Motion entails, and having faith that this in itself is enough. And not to overextend myself to worry about Missions and Media as they probably operate without me even being aware of them anyway.
Mysteries are cheeky like that. I’ll focus on what I can influence, and put the rest in the hands of the gods.
