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

Joy is the Standard

My mother's husband made his transition this past Saturday, and my three sisters and I are working together to assist our mom in finding a new place to live, as it is apparent that she, being elderly, cannot live on her own any more.

So I was thinking about Joy, and how to access it in the midst of such challenging circumstances as grief and life transitions. The thoughts we each pay attention to do create our own life experience as well as our experience of life. So the question is: what am I thinking? To what thoughts am I paying attention?

We have longings and desires, we have hopes and dreams, yet many times we are at a loss as to why these longings are not present in our every day experience. We want these experiences, these circumstances, these material objects, these conditions we are longing for, because we believe they will bring us contentment and happiness. So it is the contentment and happiness we seek. It is the longing for freedom and joy at the heart of it all.

So, what thoughts are we paying attention to? What feelings do the thoughts we are thinking elicit? Are we paying attention to the thoughts of what we desire, or are we paying attention to the thoughts of worry or lack? Thoughts are things.

If we are dissatisfied with our life experience, what are we thinking - really. And if we don't know what we are thinking, what is happening in our life experience? I am looking around at the manifestation of my thoughts.

The true measure of our success in life experience could be the joy we feel in it. What are we paying attention to that brings the result of manifested Joy?


"Whatever you love, you are."
~ Rumi

© Laura Basha, PhD, 2012

2012: Awakening to the Spirit of Our Earth

~ Montreal Garden, 2004 ~

"The grass grows in the fields, and the leaves on the trees, and every year they are, in great part, renewed. So that we might say that the earth has a spirit of growth; that it's flesh is the soil, its bones the arrangement and connection of the rocks of which the mountains are composed, its cartilage the tufa, and its blood the springs of water.


... its breathing, and the increase and decrease of the blood in the pulses, is represented in the earth by the flow and ebb of the sea; and the heat of the spirit of the world is the fire which pervades the earth, and the seat of the vegetative soul is in the fires ..."

~ Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519)

Merry Christmas!

~ Sophie's Tree ~

"Truth is the Greatest Good
and
Love is the Highest Truth"



Wishing You and Yours a Joyful Christmas and Holiday Season!

Soul, Heart, and Body One Morning

There is a morning
where presence comes over you,
and you sing
like a rooster in your earth-colored shape.


Your heart hears and,
no longer frantic,
begins to dance.


At that moment
soul reaches total emptiness.

~ Rumi

May the Light of this season unceasingly radiate through you and yours.


~ Love and Blessings ~

Birth of the Christ

~ Detail: "Creativity" by Laura Basha

"Soul receives
Only from soul
Its secrets,

Not from
Any book

Or
Eloquence

Nothing else,

Nothing
You can ever hear

Or ever do.

~ Rumi