The Balast of Tranquility

As I talk with people both in my coaching practice as well as in my studio space with other artists, the conversation of loneliness arises. There is a valuable needed respite in being alone, however, there is also a different experience one can have from experiencing long periods of aloneness.

Sometimes aloneness with one's thoughts can breed a loneliness born of the feeling of isolation, and as much as we value and are amazed by the miraculous creations emerging from the world of technology, this isolation is augmented by an ever increasing reliance on technology as opposed to personal interaction.

It isn't always noticeable, but such isolation is a high price to pay for advanced communication development. A discontent, a malaise, a needless negativity can arise from such loneliness, and energy is expended in dramas that could be utilized for authentic self expression, contribution, and growth.

Some measure of peace of mind, some access to tranquility, is needed for the evolution of consciousness, the awakening to creativity and possibility, the realization of health and well being. And this peace of mind needs to come from within, from Center to circumference if you will, to be powerfully dependable in the midst of any circumstance. Any tranquility based on externals is a false sense of peace, for any third force that so intends can shatter it in an instant. Practicing tranquility generates a foundational balast of peace in the midst of loneliness, confusion, excitement, any of the fluxtuations of life experience.

"The Attentiveness of the Creative Mind ..."

~ evening sky over the SF bay, 2/14/12

"One of my ongoing questions is: "What am I not seeing?"
Whenever I enter into a dialogue with a client, or put myself in a course for ongoing growth and development, I forget what I know in a sense, so that I can hear newly. I practice "getting amnesia" regarding my intellect and memory and then I do my best to listen from a place of "not knowing". From this vantage point I always get a fresh perspective, and I am then open to others' points of view, am willing to be a neophyte, and so I always "see" a new way of considering a previously well-rooted and oftentimes well-grounded concept. With high intention to get an insight about one issue or another, I find pretty much anywhere I look will do if I am listening for what I don't know. ...

Now, what if we were to listen to our own intellect and acquired knowledge the same way? What if we were to listen to the inner silence of what we don't know, the inner wisdom of "not knowing", with nothing on our minds but a complete curiosity for what we haven't been hearing? It is as if we have been listening to the cacophony of our own thinking with such an enamored fascination that the flute music of inspiration has been essentially drowned out. Yet when we can turn our attention away from that educated inner monologue, what can emerge from the stillness is a distinct resonance of wisdom. Implicit in this resonance is an answer to the question that has been raised, an emergence of a solution to the problem, a new realm of possibility that is equally-everywhere-present but which has been obscured by our own attachment to what we know.

This is the walk of the artist, the attentiveness of the creative mind ...."

~ © 2012 Laura Basha, PhD, excerpted from The CGT 2010 award-winning paper