Tag Archives: spirituality

The Energy of Asking: How to Create Opportunities

10 Aug

A Field Guide for Possibility

How about an ontological approach to requesting, inviting, and creating flow? – (this from deepdown in the back 80 acres of my mind, where I’ve been away vision-questing for some while now. this being prompted by the Soul Collab I’m co-facilitating with Andreas Mannal. It makes sense to me, but/and I am very conditioned by the Old Mode. hard to shift old habits: teaching causes me to learn: sharing results in dialogues of possibility. That’s pretty much my end-game. We get some new energy going around all the things.)

Well, isn’t that special?

1. The Old Mode: Why Fear & History Don’t Work

When we ask from lack, fear, or “historical data” (past disappointments, proof it won’t work, stories of failure), we:

• Narrow the field of possibility to what has already been.

• Invite resistance (in ourselves and others).

• Unconsciously signal I already believe the answer is no.

Ontological translation: Being “history-bound” is being closed. The world can only show us what we have already known.

2. The Shift: Being Before Asking

It’s always very matchy-matchy… the people, situation, circumstance or event vibes along the ley lines of the energy you bring.  (plant tomato seeds=harvest tomatoes, garbage in, garbage out, etc.)

The same is true of any “ask.”

The ontological order is:

1. Be — step into the stance of openness, curiosity, and invitation.

2. See — perceive from that stance (possibility, not probability).

3. Speak — let the words carry the energy you are already being.

Your “ask” is simply the spoken surface of an already existing energy field you have stepped into.

3. The Stance of the Ask

Think of three energetic postures before you open your mouth (or type your words):

• Possibility: “This could be a doorway to something we haven’t seen yet.”

• Generosity: “This is an offering, not a demand.”

• Adventure: “Let’s find out what happens when we say yes to the unknown.”

These stances change the feel of the ask from “take from you” to “expand us both.”

4. An Ask Formula (Ontological Edition)

Step 1 — Declare the context

Name the shared possibility you’re standing in.

Example: “I’m exploring ways to bring more [beauty / connection / transformation] into the world.”

Step 2 — Invite participation

Frame the ask as a co-creation, not a transaction.

Example: “I’d love to explore with you how we might…”

Step 3 — Leave space

Don’t load it with expectation or attachment to the outcome.

Examples: “What comes to mind for you?” or “Does this feel like something you’d be excited about?”

This creates an open field rather than a binary yes/no trap.

5. The Energy Check Before You Ask

Ask yourself:

• Am I trying to get or am I creating an opening?

• Does my body feel tight or expansive?

• Am I speaking from now/future or from past data?

If the answer is “past,” pause, breathe, and re-enter the stance of possibility.

6. Why This Works

When you are being the possibility, the ask is no longer a test of your worth — it’s an extension of the reality you’re already inhabiting. People, the situation, circumstance or event (all the things) respond differently because:

• There is an invitation rather than cornering.

• There is space co-creativity.

• The energy is light, not needy. Resonant. Redolent. Radiant.

7. A Practice to Rehearse

Before each ask, speak this to yourself silently or softly aloud:

I am the opening
I invite adventure
I release history
This is an invitation to create what was not possible until now…

Then make the ask as if the possibility is already real.

Let me know how this goes for you. I’m in curious/wondering, just because of the possibilities. And, since it’s the Full Moon, and I’m all about that, here’s a mandala I drew, for the full moon. Download and print onto card stock, then color. (There is for sure some shadowing, my erased guidelines. Once colored over, I didn’t notice them anymore.)

“Doing” art is an ancient and rather proven recipe for calming (tf) down. Have at it.

Janet’s Full Moon Mandala Download

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Transcendence in Art: Embracing Limitations to Create

18 Sep

The River and Its Banks: On the Art of Creation and Flow

There’s a place every creator knows — that weightless space where time folds, thought dissolves, and something larger begins to move through us. We call it flow, inspiration, communion, consciousness. Whatever name we give it, it is the same ancient current — the one that turns imagination into form, and chaos into beauty.

We talk about the flow state — that peak experience where artists, athletes, dancers, poets, and dreamers lose themselves in the act of creation.
Michael Jordan on the court. Billy Elliot in his dance.
You, me, anyone who’s ever forgotten themselves inside the moment of doing.

In that space, limits dissolve. Doing and being become one.
As Billy Elliot says, “It’s like ’lectricity.”

Something else becomes present in us — a current that soothes the edges of our limitations.
A new form begins to shimmer into being, and we are lighter for it.
There is joy. Participation. Communion.

It feels like a meeting — between what we call the ego, the form-maker,
and what mystics have called God, Spirit, or now simply Consciousness.
An invisible intelligence, a shared awareness,
an elegance threading through all things.

Evolution itself may not be the blind mechanism we once imagined.
Even Darwin suspected a purposefulness,
a trajectory bending toward meaning

Sri Aurobindo, Thomas Merton — mystics across centuries —
speak not of an absence but a presence:
an intelligence that whispers through form,
inviting us to collaborate in its unfolding.

So I search for form.
A structure that can hold what I perceive in my imagination —
a container for the vastness that wants to speak

Without form, imagination is a flood.
With form, it becomes a river.

For me, that form is often a portrait.
A face. Eyes, nose, mouth — the shared agreements of human recognition.
Style, medium, skill — these are my tools, my chosen banks.

Within that boundary, I wander freely.
The imagination roams the open field —
and when I begin to draw, it is as if something taps me on the shoulder.
A nudge, a whisper, not always words —
more often a feeling, a texture,
like the sense of coarse cloth suggesting how a shirt should feel.

I listen.
Dark here. Light there.
And slowly, the formless takes form.

The ego chooses the shape — based on what feels true,
what I’ve learned, what I love.
But what in-forms the form is not me.
It moves through me.

This is why I prefer the word consciousness to unconscious.
It shifts the image from something hidden below
to something vast — all around —
the field of potential made visible.

Physicist Amit Goswami calls it quantum thinking:
two levels of mind —
the conscious mind of actuality
and the unconscious (or quantum) mind of possibility.

This is the creative dance.
This is evolution made personal.

Today, when the world feels uncertain,
when the old music no longer fits the steps we’ve memorized,
we reach for old structures — familiar hooks to hang our hats.
But that won’t work anymore

What we need is not more problem-solving.
We need transcendence.

Transcendence lives in pure potentiality —
the space where creators walk, barefoot and brave,
to bring something new into being.

Creative acts are born of limitation.
A hard-won truth: I have resisted limits all my life.
Yet I’ve learned —
a river without banks is only a flood.

The creation process is not separate from you.
It is not outside you.

It is your body, mind, heart, hands, and soul.
You are the form-maker and the field,
the river and the banks,
the current and the course.

You are it.

You have IT.

IT is…in you.

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