Allowing vs. trying hard
Using Teddy Bear Talk Support can help with doing more allowing and less trying hard.
Getting something down vs thinking something up
Here is a quote from Julia Cameron's book The Right to Write
- One of the simplest and smartest things I ever learned about writing is the importance of a sense of direction. Writing is about getting something down, not thinking something up. Whenever I strive to ‘think something up,’ writing becomes something I must stretch to achieve. It becomes loftier than I am, perhaps even something so lofty, it is beyond my grasp. When I am trying to think something up, I am straining. When, on the other hand, I am focused about just getting something down, I have a sense of attention but not a sense of strain.
To see this quote put into the context of Teddy Bear Talk Support go to More_about_Teddy_Bear_Talk_Support#Getting_something_down_vs_thinking_something_up_mode
You can’t try to feel. You have to let yourself feel.
Here's an excerpt from the tennis player Andre Agassi's autobiography. Stefanie and Andre are now married, and Stefanie is probably better known as Steffi Graf than as Stefanie Graf.
... I limp to the side and ask for an injury timeout. A trainer re-tapes my foot, but the real blister is on my brain. I don’t win another game from that point on.
I look up at my box. Stefanie has her head down. She’s never seen me lose like this.
Later I tell her that I don’t understand why I sometimes come apart—still. She gives me insights from her experience. Stop thinking, she says. Feeling is the thing. Feeling.
It’s nothing I haven’t heard before. It sounds like a sweeter, softer version of my father. But when Stefanie says it, the words go in deeper.
We talk for days about thinking versus feeling. She says it’s one thing not to think, but you can’t then decide to feel. You can’t try to feel. You have to let yourself feel.
Agassi, Andre (2009-12-16). Open (p. 326). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Playful participant vs controlling dictator
From the Bringing out the Best in Ourselves chapter from the book Fostering Reasonableness: Supportive Environments for Bringing Out Our Best [1]
"imagine yourself not as a controlling dictator of [your] mental processes but instead as a playful participant."
While we can’t control what’s going on in our subconscious, we can feed it with certain inputs or at least put ourselves in the right conditions to let our brain resolve the issue subconsciously. Such inputs might come in the form of the thoughts we nurture, activities we engage in, and the places we choose to visit. For example, when tackling a difficult task, one could consciously consider some alternatives and allow time for them to gestate. When the subconscious has finished processing, the answers bubble up to our consciousness. Such a mechanism underlies Boice’s (2000) recommendation to new faculty members to start before feeling ready and quit before feeling done. Different types of inputs may also be helpful. Problem solving may be aided by a long walk to take a break in a natural setting (Ivancich, Chapter 5; Sullivan, Chapter 4). Sometimes, providing less information may be an effective approach (Johnson, 2012; R. Kaplan, Chapter 2). Since the subconscious is out of our control, it may feel risky to rely on it. A helpful framing may be to imagine yourself not as a controlling dictator of our mental processes but instead as a playful participant.
Forcing vs. allowing
- Courting the muse
- Willfully making something happen
- Forcing is one type of trying hard
- See if you happen to get lucky
- Let your subconscious get to participate more
Third Things
From: https://nickross.me/the-four-quartets/
Third Things: Using poetry as practice
‘Mediated by a good metaphor, the soul is more likely than usual to have something to say.’
The principle of ‘third things’ come from the work of Parker J Palmer and The Centre for Courage and Renewal. Using third things might best be described as ‘soul work’.
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Parker describes third things as follows in his book, A Hidden Wholeness
"In Western culture, we often seek truth through confrontation. But our headstrong ways of charging at truth scare the shy soul away. If soul truth is to be spoken and heard, it must be approached ‘on the slant.’ I do not mean we should be coy, speaking evasively about subjects that make us uncomfortable, which weakens us and our relationships. But soul truth is so powerful that we must allow ourselves to approach it, and it to approach us, indirectly. We must invite, not command, the soul to speak. We must allow, not force, ourselves to listen.
“We achieve intentionality by focusing on an important topic. We achieve indirection by exploring that topic metaphorically, via a poem, a story, a piece of music, or a work of art that embodies it. I call these embodiments ‘third things’ because they represent neither the voice of the facilitator nor the voice of a participant. They have voices of their own, voices that tell the truth about a topic but, in the manner of metaphors, tell it on the slant. Mediated by a third thing, truth can emerge from, and return to, our awareness at whatever pace and depth we are able to handle — sometimes inwardly in silence, sometimes aloud in community — giving the shy soul the protective cover it needs.
“Rightly used, a third thing functions a bit like the old Rorschach inkblot test, evoking from us whatever the soul wants us to attend to. Mediated by a good metaphor, the soul is more likely than usual to have something to say. But the fact will count for nothing if we fail to recognize that the soul is speaking or fail to pay attention to what it says.
“What T. S. Eliot said about poetry is true of all third things: ‘[Poetry] may make us . . . a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves.”
... The invitation is simply to read the poem and notice which words, sentences or phrases touch you today and speak to your experience. ...