So You Want To Be A Change Agent?! ...

~ from: "The Far Side" by Gary Larson 

I am a change agent. 

I call myself a consultant, but, I am a change agent, an agent for change. I have always loved the Gary Larson cartoon that you can see above, because, in being a true change agent, there will be a colluded understanding, though maybe not conscious, that you are out to transform the status quo. And, no matter how much confirmation you hear from the people who have asked you for your transformational vision, be it corporation, executive, friend, family member, or even your own excited self who has just registered in the next transformational weekend huzzah!, there will be what I like to call "kickback".

So here's a tip, offered from my own getting-up-from-my-face-in-the-dirt experience: practice listening. Like, no talking. Complete authentic facination with the other's point of view, with no attention to your own thinking from the past. Let it all be said, from them to you. All of it. 

The only question you might ask is: "Anything else?" And then: More listening. Eventually, when the person has emptied their world-of-issue into the clearing space of your profound listening, the only thing that will be left is what is truly real: love, affinity, and brilliant insight into the solution.

Anything other than this profound listening brings a world of drama - including our own personal drama - into the mix. Bull's eyes appear all around, visible targets for escalated dominating monologues, designed to take someone down, to protect the righteousness of our own positions.

Well, true interested listening will act as a calming buffer against all that cacophony of verbal insecurity. No kidding. Try it. It's a practice. 

And if you still choose to be a change agent, the bull's eye will be there, a magnet for resistance to change. But if you listen deeply enough, thereby acknowledging the speaker for the validity of their point of view - which you can honestly see if you are willing to stand in their shoes looking at life from their vantage point - you will deflect and dissolve any arrows or barbs coming your way. And they will see something new that frees them up from a previously constrained way of perceiving life experience.

As a true change agent, the bull's eye will always be radiating from you. But deep listening is like, well, the cool tee shirt you wear that covers it from their view.

Onward!

The Birthing of a Book

My Writing Desk, April 2014

I will be completing my first book and sending it to the publisher this month. It has been a long process! I find I struggle with writing in a very similar way that I struggle with painting, yet also the fulfillment from a writing session well done is the same deep satisfying fulfillment as a good afternoon in the painting studio.

But here’s the thing – a frustrating session is actually also fulfilling. Perplexing, doubts can creep in, yet there is a give and take in the creative process that I find missing in some of the other professional work I do, even though the other work is good work and makes a difference. The form that is being created through the tempering process of my own creative machinations looks back at me and we are in partnership – symbiotically corded together. I get up and walk away, but it works me and I work it until the next sitting. Such intimacy.

The give and take, the working through the possible creative choices, of color or word, activates the muse. The creative muse is the whole realm of inspiration and chaos and possibility. And such vastness of possibility of course could result in making choices that don’t quite harmonize – but you know you will eventually discover the right harmonics as they are thriving in the Eternal somewhere!

Sometimes one feels “stuck”, yes, and we get frightened if we think that we are then blocked. Yet we are freed when we realize that these are the essential periods of waiting, of letting the field of creativity lie fallow to replenish and reorganize from the realm of All Possibility, settling into just the right alchemical mix to produce the gold.

Birthing is the result of creation, which has its own timetable, the mystery of which is perhaps its protection.

“Okay, now here’s a question. Why do we think that being ‘stuck’ is a bad thing? What if ‘stuck’ is what you need to experience in order to be creative? Being stuck, there’s an assumption that there’s no movement, nothing’s happening, you’re in trouble, but maybe it needs to be rephrased. Maybe being stuck is churning and activating and bubbling and growing. … When we say we’re stuck, then … there’s got to be a better way … But you are finding that everyone gets stuck, so maybe we need to have those moments of just not doing anything.”

~ from The Captive Muse: On Creativity and Its Inhibition, by Susan Kolodny

Muir Woods 2014

REVELATION

It was my birthday last month, and I wanted to spend the day with my husband, simply, in the quietness of a nearby majestic grove of redwood trees, followed by dinner at a favorite restaurant overlooking the Bay.

When we arrived at the redwood grove, throngs of people were there, talking loudly, talking on cell phones (what?!), babies crying, teens running around showing off to their crushes. I was very annoyed! It was my birthday and I wanted to be in the quietness of the Ancients!

It was then that I realized that the complaining in my head was as loud – or louder – than the outer cacophony of other people’s conversations! Humility emerged …

As we walked more deeply into the forest, the crowds thinned, and I stood in front of these elegant nobles, listening to the Silence of their timelessness. One thousand, two thousand, thirty two hundred years old … how many histories had they seen come and go?

As I listened, the question arose in me, “What must it be like to stand still for one thousand years?” The silent thunder that emerged from listening that question from the inside out, expanded within me with velocity, such that I had to turn my attention away in less than a couple of minutes. I was taken aback at the limits of my ability to be present to such Silence, such profound presence.

No wonder we make noise, to distract us from the discomfort of profundity, of the timeless eternity of the unknown, the Absolute.

I finally stepped into the world of the great naturalists who have sung the praises of our stunningly beautiful Earth, privately sheepish that I had not previously been as intimately awake to this great sacredness. And yet, now powerfully inspired to cultivate as a practice being with the omniscient emptiness of Nature.

Birth Day indeed!

"All Possibility"

Studios Eleven Gallery

First Friday Art Show

Laura Basha: "COLLAGE"

Please join us at Studios Eleven Gallery 

(Behind Loakal)

for our 

First Friday Art Show!

520 2nd Street

Oakland, CA  94607

Opening Reception: Friday, March 7th, 

6pm - 9pm

Like-Minded Folks and Light Repast!!

(photo from geekfill.com)

~ White Lion ~

“THE BEST RULERS ARE BARELY KNOWN TO MEN”*

“The great ruler speaks little

and his words are priceless

He works without self-interest

And leaves no trace …”

~ *Tao Te Ching

What is true leadership? How does one develop oneself into being a leader, a good leader, a great leader? What are the characteristics of the people we have admired over the years, those who have inspired and mentored and empowered ourselves and others to be their best?

There are many books written on leadership, and many worth reading. I have found for myself, however, that when life has thrown its curves at me, the real ballast that I could count on came from within myself. I have to listen deeply in the darkest hours of experience, for some quiet resonance of insight. There are times when friends and family can assist, but then there are times when one has to walk alone. How do we do this, make choices when there is no outer guidance?

This question has been the source of my last years of work on listening for what we don’t know, and listening for the wisdom that lies dormant yet intrinsic within that inquiry. I work with clients on developing this listening as a practice, as I ongoingly work with myself on sustaining the discipline of this practice. Whatever expertise we have, whatever leadership role we have attained, we are always at square one. The elevation may be higher, but the next unknown and need for awakening presents itself – and there we stand again, at square one, listening to the Silence.

After a workshop I delivered in New York in January of this year, one of my clients sent me a quote that moved and inspired me. These are the words of a courageous and passionate woman  - a true leader.  She has dedicated her life to the protection of the African white lion, a majestic and sacred species that is gravely endangered. Her words move and inspire, and her actions, in the face of many odds, are making a positive contribution to us all.

“A true leader takes the first step into the unknown, without guarantees, without official mandate, without road maps to follow - only her heart and inner knowing of fairness and justice. There are no guarantees. Knowing full well the weight of responsibility in charting the first steps into the unknown, a leader takes these steps regardless. She doesn't wait for human consciousness to be approving or condoning; she takes consciousness with her as she courageously breaks new ground on behalf of humanity. That's the nature of leadership.”

~ Linda Tucker, Saving the White Lions

http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/elist/eListRead/linda_tucker_is_racing_to_save_white_lions_only_7_of_which_roam_free/

The Art of Collage

"What If I Speak My Truth?"  

Laura Basha

Paper Collage, 2004

COLLAGE

“Collage is the twentieth century’s greatest invention.”

~ Robert Motherwell

While artists have been utilizing combinations of mixed media for some time, “collage” garnered attention as its own art form, a medium in its own right, at the turn of the 20^th century, a result of the creative endeavors of Cubists Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque.

These two notary experimental painters coined the term “collage” from the French verb “coller”, “to stick or glue”, referencing the combination of paper, images from publications, fabrics, and other everyday elements into two dimensional artistic expression. Such co-mingling of what was considered true artistic medium along with the common elements of daily life revolutionized what we know as modern art. Taking disparate elements and arranging them into a harmonious whole is quite possibly a metaphor for a life well lived. Perhaps Motherwell was right …

Although collages can be non-verbal commentary on the politics and social conditions of the day, collages, created as works of art in their own right, act also as symbolic tools for revealing intuitive understanding to an individual or to any viewer seeking insight, bringing innate wisdom to cognitive awareness.

The process of intuitively choosing images and arranging them in a particular composition can shed light on many perplexing issues. Non-verbal symbols communicate valuable insight, as our own wisdom often lies deeper than our conscious thought. We are naturally drawn to images that represent the answers we seek.

The question is always preceded by the answer that wants to be brought up to conscious awareness.

I will have an exhibit of a small collection of my own collages during February and March in Oakland, CA*. Some of the pieces in this exhibit are dated, some are not. As the choices for the images emerge from the subconscious, where there is no time, both dated and non-dated pieces express the timelessness of transformation and awakening.

Through collage, one can capture the essence of authenticity which catalyzes struggle: fear of running out of time, exhaustion born of woundings of the heart, aloneness arising from not being heard, suppression from not speaking one’s truth. Through capturing the non-verbal essence in an image, the struggle is released, the essence expressed … the possibility of freedom towards the probability of transformation.

Though some images may be familiar, perhaps sleepwalking is not our fate. What do we hear when we listen for what we don’t know?

What does the naked eye see?

 ~ Laura Basha, PhD

* February 2014: “Nellie’s Java Café”, 1952 Mountain Blvd, Montclair, CA, 94611

* March 2014: “Studios Eleven Gallery”, 560 Second Street, Oakland, CA, 94607