The feeling of things. Vision. Aliveness.

Something good is going on.

It’s hard to put into words, but that kind of makes sense, because this thing that’s going on has to do a lot with navigating life by feelings, visuals, non-linear-or-lexical methods.

It’s related to the annual review process I’m doing, which is something adapted from Jon Young and Tom Brown Jr. (and Grandfather, Tom’s teacher) that is a little different than a more modern idea of an annual review or new-years resolution session. It actually seems more related to the idea of “Vision” and vision quests. Connecting to your higher purpose, but in a very practical way. The first of the series of questions/investigations, is something along the lines of “what lights you up? What are you doing when you feel really alive/connected?” And the prompt that really got me with that was, “really relive these events/times when you felt connected and alive, feel them.”

I’m familiar with this approach from various classes I’ve taken with Tom, but for some reason it really hit home, and navigating the answer to this question became so much more vibrant and powerful, accessing the answers this way. If I’d just tried to remember such times, it would be easier to confuse myself. Did that actually really light me up, or did I just think it was supposed to? And going by the feeling, it’s more likely I’d uncover something surprising. “Oh yeah, I guess that did feel really good, I didn’t even think of that as something that could count as a thing that lit me up.”

It also makes it much clearer. There’s no questioning, is it, isn’t it? I’m reliving the memory and either I’m feeling it, or not.

Another thing that came out of this-

(much of it comes from a specific podcast episode, I should include that here:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tracking-connections/id1738301682 )

-was the idea of looking back over your day, or even a practice session or some smaller chunk of time, and asking myself: “if I could live that, do that, over again, what would I do differently?” And actually, to some degree, reliving it. Like practicing doing it the better way. Rather than just intellectually identifying the better way. As teachers of young children, we often do this, “ok, let’s practice lining up the right way again.” And another thing I remember Tom and others talking about, is experiments where basketball players would very vividly imagine practicing shooting hoops. The imaginary practice was actually quite effective at improving their technique, as long as they did it very vividly, with lots of details, as close to actually doing it as possible.

I don’t think I’ve actually done that myself, weirdly enough, but just the idea of it has gotten me to slow down, in the moment, and be aware of what I’m doing, and weather it’s what I want to be doing, in a much more naturally, deeply, and powerfully self-reflective way. It’s been genuinely changing my behavior in positive ways, to an unusual degree, enough that I’ve noted it down to remind myself that this is a powerful tool for me, that I should remember. 

One of the weird things though, going back to the beginning of this post (I’m actually writing it in my journal first/currently) is that I don’t really understand logically how the teaching (reflecting on your day/a practice session and asking/visualizing what you could do differently/better, if you had the chance to do it over again) somehow turned into this self-awareness and reflection leading to better, more mindful choices and actions in my life. But I do feel how one led to the other. There is specific feel, that the one had, that I then transferred over to how I’m going through my own life, even though I’m not doing the specific action suggested.

As I said at the beginning, it’s a little hard to explain in words, because the whole thing is happening from a non-word place. Or at least... perhaps more precisely, there is a non-word conveyance, that is riding along with the words, that is what is powerful and being translated to something different from what the words are saying. It seems kind of like... some metal bars, with scented air currents flowing along around them. Metal bars = the words, and the scents are the non-verbal feelings somehow related. But the metal bars are changing for some wood beams, while the scents are staying the same, flowing uninterrupted from one to the other.

Weird image I know. As I said, words are a bit of a translation. Poetry might be a better medium than simple description.