I have been posting my articles on Medium, an online platform, for the past two years. This morning I was tallying up what articles were well read, well thought of… and was pondering if I should write articles that people like, or if I should continue writing articles that people need. Articles that only I can write… writing those is more fun for me.
I can look at the question through many different “filters”… integrity, i.e. being true to myself. Being true to my principle: “Never doing anything for money that I wouldn’t want to do for free.” or the newest distinction for me: project mode vs process mode.
Wanting more article likes is project mode. Writing articles is being with what I am writing, and the articles will produce the results they will: this is the process mode.
Learning
Learning new things is both exciting, and humbling. More humbling, in a way, than exciting. I never really want to learn anything new, not about myself, not about life, not about people, not about anything. I already know enough, says a part of me… and I break out in hives (figuratively) at the option of learning something new.
And then, when I do learn something new, I have to process it, and rebuild my self-view, maybe even my world view. It could be fun, but it really not pleasant.
If you consider that this is what I ask from other people, for a living, I could be viewed pretty “inauthentic”… looked in one way. I don’t think I am, I feel the pain it cost people to learn something new, and have compassion: see where they are at and am willing to help them through.
Yesterday’s article on the two hemispheres of the brain
Yesterday’s article was the result of a huge learning, and I didn’t hear any echo until this morning. Even this morning it wasn’t any talking about what I wrote: instead I got an example of how it is true, that when you move from the high mind-share, high about-me score, you have creativity and joy available to you.
What I didn’t see, and one of my students taught me, is that the project mode, when you are hellbent on getting the result, and put up with the process that you’d rather not have to go through, you are in the mind: the only place the future exists, you are in about-me mode, and you are in left-brain mode, even if you are doing “art”. Of some supposedly joyful thing, like a game, or sex, or a conversation.
When you shift into process mode, you are in the present moment, and that is definitely not mind. Mind doesn’t even know about the present moment.
This traditionally project mode student of mine did this shift, and for the first time he experienced joy and creativity (his one art is songwriting, he has others) and called his state: “I am better than ever.” The joy was tangible in his voice.
And that joy, that “being hooked up” to the divine source of joy, creativity, transcendence is available all the time, not like the project mode that has a time and a place and a duration… what most people seem
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