Thank you Renee for this eloquent and elaborate response. I'm going to meditate on this for a long time. I couldn't have asked for a better response. This answer resonates within the knowing in my heart on so my levels. Thank you for being a role model and showing us how disciplined compassion can open up the portals of creative power.
Thank you for this insightful sharing, as resonant with the essential truths of human experience as it is powerfully innovative and deeply your own. Your writing is so quotable but this gripped me the most: "we can only do so by merging to the sound of compassion’s silent call that echos in our bones. To allow compassion to breathe us into her center-less center of her heart." 💖
Wow, Renee. Such beautiful words—I can hardly articulate how they spoke to me. They went deep into my core, and I now feel absolutely pulled towards that "still point." I recognise that both grief and joy allow me to create. I guess being at one with this and sitting within this, is key. In particular, I keep thinking about how "silence between notes creates music." So much to ponder and consider. Your words bring depth to my day. Thank you for sharing.
It's nuts how long it's taken me to realize that *stillness* is the key to living a fulfilled and joyous life. All the going, the business, the chaos - I love it because it keeps me from having to turn inward and find self compassion. With stillness comes breath. With breath comes calm. With calm comes quiet. With quiet comes creation.
I love this post - NEVER doubt your abilities as a creator, a writer, or a woman. You are so strong and it's so brave of you to allow us to learn from your experiences.
I really appreciate this post. Chaos was one of the first things that drew me to meditation, mostly because I was constantly living in it and grasping for anything that offered stability.
I learned that chaos is a law of nature, a place of phase change. To exist in chaos is to exist at the edge of change. The change exists to ultimately bring balance of energy, like being at the surface of a pot of boiling water - slightly one direction leads to high energy gaseous state, lifted to the clouds; slightly cooler settles back into the liquid water that sinks to the surface.
My personal experience taught me that true chaos was a life without meditation or study, fumbling through life simply surviving. Every day was a struggle to grasp anything. To be honest, it *felt* creative. I truly did have to be resourceful and creative, just to gather necessities for survival. But that wasn’t creative growth, just creative maintenance.
Having found meditation and contemplation was an accidental by product of one grasp for stability, which ultimately lead to a settling of internal chaos. The creativity that flows through me now is more subtle and more supple. No longer am I scrambling to find a safe place to sleep, but instead and experiencing creativity that contributes to humanity, even if only in my small life-unit.
The internal chaos has settled, but chaos continually swirls around me, just like in your analogy of the eye of the tornado. Chaos of others, society, the planet, weather, animals, and other natural struggles of life.
When I contemplate chaos, these things resonate come up:
On an individual level - chaos is internal and interpretive.
For some, chaos seems to spur creativity. So many artists thrive in chaos without any launchpad. Although they frequently fizzle and burn out early, their impact on society is felt long-after they are gone. Often most appreciated by those who experience(d) similar chaos.
For others, chaos is terror. It causes a great deal of crippling fear, and leads them to seek refuges, trying to hide away from all things unstable.
For those in the middle, who have relatively stable lives with bouts of interaction with chaos, it causes a phase shift. Like a tornado destroying a structure will lead to a new more-stable structure being built.
On a larger societal level - Chaos shifts, forms, and destroys nations, communes, and religions. It shifts the global consciousness perspectives slightly one direction or another.
On a planetary level - Chaos is global heating, or a large meteor collision, & other mass extinction events. Supernovas, galactic collisions, etc.
Chaos is everywhere. It is quantum. It is universal. It is a method for establishing balance, a swinging of a pendulum.
Having studied these things about chaos and meditating frequently on them helps me settle the chaos within that stirs periodically. Something about seeing the larger pictures makes my internal chaos so much more minute and manageable. This is the result of the contemplative-meditation portion mixed with the study portion that enables me to sit in the eye of the storm.
Thank you Renee for this eloquent and elaborate response. I'm going to meditate on this for a long time. I couldn't have asked for a better response. This answer resonates within the knowing in my heart on so my levels. Thank you for being a role model and showing us how disciplined compassion can open up the portals of creative power.
Thank you for this insightful sharing, as resonant with the essential truths of human experience as it is powerfully innovative and deeply your own. Your writing is so quotable but this gripped me the most: "we can only do so by merging to the sound of compassion’s silent call that echos in our bones. To allow compassion to breathe us into her center-less center of her heart." 💖
Wow, Renee. Such beautiful words—I can hardly articulate how they spoke to me. They went deep into my core, and I now feel absolutely pulled towards that "still point." I recognise that both grief and joy allow me to create. I guess being at one with this and sitting within this, is key. In particular, I keep thinking about how "silence between notes creates music." So much to ponder and consider. Your words bring depth to my day. Thank you for sharing.
It's nuts how long it's taken me to realize that *stillness* is the key to living a fulfilled and joyous life. All the going, the business, the chaos - I love it because it keeps me from having to turn inward and find self compassion. With stillness comes breath. With breath comes calm. With calm comes quiet. With quiet comes creation.
I love this post - NEVER doubt your abilities as a creator, a writer, or a woman. You are so strong and it's so brave of you to allow us to learn from your experiences.
I really appreciate this post. Chaos was one of the first things that drew me to meditation, mostly because I was constantly living in it and grasping for anything that offered stability.
I learned that chaos is a law of nature, a place of phase change. To exist in chaos is to exist at the edge of change. The change exists to ultimately bring balance of energy, like being at the surface of a pot of boiling water - slightly one direction leads to high energy gaseous state, lifted to the clouds; slightly cooler settles back into the liquid water that sinks to the surface.
My personal experience taught me that true chaos was a life without meditation or study, fumbling through life simply surviving. Every day was a struggle to grasp anything. To be honest, it *felt* creative. I truly did have to be resourceful and creative, just to gather necessities for survival. But that wasn’t creative growth, just creative maintenance.
Having found meditation and contemplation was an accidental by product of one grasp for stability, which ultimately lead to a settling of internal chaos. The creativity that flows through me now is more subtle and more supple. No longer am I scrambling to find a safe place to sleep, but instead and experiencing creativity that contributes to humanity, even if only in my small life-unit.
The internal chaos has settled, but chaos continually swirls around me, just like in your analogy of the eye of the tornado. Chaos of others, society, the planet, weather, animals, and other natural struggles of life.
When I contemplate chaos, these things resonate come up:
On an individual level - chaos is internal and interpretive.
For some, chaos seems to spur creativity. So many artists thrive in chaos without any launchpad. Although they frequently fizzle and burn out early, their impact on society is felt long-after they are gone. Often most appreciated by those who experience(d) similar chaos.
For others, chaos is terror. It causes a great deal of crippling fear, and leads them to seek refuges, trying to hide away from all things unstable.
For those in the middle, who have relatively stable lives with bouts of interaction with chaos, it causes a phase shift. Like a tornado destroying a structure will lead to a new more-stable structure being built.
On a larger societal level - Chaos shifts, forms, and destroys nations, communes, and religions. It shifts the global consciousness perspectives slightly one direction or another.
On a planetary level - Chaos is global heating, or a large meteor collision, & other mass extinction events. Supernovas, galactic collisions, etc.
Chaos is everywhere. It is quantum. It is universal. It is a method for establishing balance, a swinging of a pendulum.
Having studied these things about chaos and meditating frequently on them helps me settle the chaos within that stirs periodically. Something about seeing the larger pictures makes my internal chaos so much more minute and manageable. This is the result of the contemplative-meditation portion mixed with the study portion that enables me to sit in the eye of the storm.