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(((alchemy of chaos)))

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
Bucky Fuller

Creation and Space

Just as chaos and transition are siblings, and just as alchemy and integration are siblings, space and creation are siblings. As soon as there is space there will always be arising energy, which is creation. The difference in space and creation is that in space we made it a point to be with the space and emptiness without trying to fill it up, and in creation we will make it a point to be with the potentiality for creation by injecting spaciousness. Creation is being aware of the direction or current of that arising energy, and what that might mean, or what you’d like to make it mean by choosing to bring it into focus. Space is witnessing, creation is focusing. Buddhists say that this interplay between space and creation is our whole existence. Space, and the arising energy from that, is what creates form. This is the basis of life. 

I believe that when we are aligned, we create what we most need to see or experience. Alchemy of Chaos is that for me. But in order to create this, it had to simultaneously create me. We step on the path of creation and it becomes the path of transformation. We are transformed by devoting ourselves to the path of creation. It works every time. In the midst of cohort 4, I am learning more than ever. You’d think by now that I would have this down to a science. But that’s not the point. In fact, it misses the point. My current truth is that the science and magic of alchemy is in never knowing. The answer is in the riddle itself. The opportunity to marvel at the mystery for a lifetime? That sounds like a blast to me. Yes, there is temporary exhilaration in the solve. But inevitably our minds, hearts, and spirits will again move towards the beckoning space that exists just beyond our grasp. Why? Because it grows us and shows us who we are. We find ourselves along the pathway. Every step is an evolution, every turn a new perspective.

I am a fervent student of life, and this is my life curriculum. I keep discovering and re-discovering that Alchemy of Chaos will overlay onto whatever life, whatever vertical, whatever subject matter, whatever pathway that is willing to plug into it. And it will reveal and transform whatever it is to the extent that one is willing to give oneself over to the process it takes you on. It is ever evolving, morphing and changing at the exact rate that I morph and change, always creating and answering my perpetual questions, one step ahead, beckoning me from behind the next closed/invisible door I choose to open.

Creation and Constraints

Boundaries and constraints, and ceilings and containers, were a recurring theme in our conversation, and in my 1:1s leading up to session. Boundaries help define the scope or space that the creation arises out of, and constraints (to a certain extent at least) provide what I imagine to be the rubber bumpers at the bowling alley so that you don’t get plunked into the gutter before your creation has a chance to launch.

I also think of another part of that Camus excerpt that was read at the opening of session, and it goes like this:

”Perhaps the greatness of art lies in the perpetual tension between beauty and pain, the love of men and the madness of creation, unbearable solitude and the exhausting crowd, rejection and consent… On the ridge where the great artist moves forward, every step is an adventure, an extreme risk. In that risk, however, and only there, lies the freedom of art.

The loftiest work will always be the work that maintains an equilibrium between reality and rejection of that reality, each forcing the other upward in a ceaseless overflowing, characteristic of life itself at its most joyous and heart-rending extremes. Then, every once in a while, a new world appears, different from the everyday world and yet the same, particular but universal, full of innocent insecurity — called forth for a few hours by the power and longing of genius. That’s just it and yet that’s not it; the world is nothing and the world is everything — this is the contradictory and tireless cry of every true artist, the cry that keeps him on his feet with eyes ever open and that, every once in a while, awakens for all in this world asleep the fleeting and insistent image of a reality we recognize without ever having known it.”

Creation is Perpetual

Creation is making something that was not there before. It can look like everything from art to opportunities to companies to ideas to ways of being. There was not something, and now there is something. Boom. Creation. Just like that series of 10 minutes at the end of session. Before the breakout rooms, our group dynamic was something. In an instant, in the presence of truth, it became something else, and most all of us could feel that <thunk> feeling of landing into something new and unexpected.
And as Loren said, “Death is not an end - it is the beginning of a process. What are you willing to let shift and to be transformed and birthed into something different?”

Creation is happening all around us at every millisecond. I think that is one reason why it feels so good to walk through a forest with reverence, because there is so much creation. And it reminds me that I am made of the same essence...that I too am creating at all times, whether it’s conscious or not. And that I myself am also a creation. 

Attuning to Creation

Recreation = play = re-creation. I love the thought that play brings us into our lives, and that another word for play is recreation. Recreation is re-creation. Could it be that easy? That recreation, creation, and re-creation are all accessed in the frequency of play? Creation is something you attune to, not something you do. It’s something you allow to emerge, not something you force. 

Liz Gilbert talks about creativity in Big Magic, and I particularly love the way she frames the concept of “genius.” She basically says that the way genius was originally defined is that it is a separate entity from ourselves with which we collaborate in order to create things. Genius is not a characterization of a person, it is something that comes to us, blesses us with its presence, and leaves again. So people back in the day did not say “She is a genius.” - they said “She has genius.”  Meaning, she has genius now, and perhaps that genius will leave her soon. The reason this really works for me is because it allows me to strategically detach my identity from the creative output. If I allow my self or my identity to be entangled in the things I create, the second those things are judged or criticized or praised, it affects me and my outlook on myself. If I am healthily detached, it does not affect me as deeply. What this then does is it increases my agency and my ability to create with liberation and higher levels of wild abandon, which is what is required if I am ever to put anything out in the world. I need to be free within it, and free from it.

Responsibility to Create

There is an energy current - a river if you will - of billions of years of momentum that makes creation an imperative. If we leave nature alone, if we leave the planet alone, if we leave our humanity alone, everything errs towards creation. Just as an acorn begins as a tiny seed and expands into something ever larger and more complex, we begin as a cell and expand into something ever larger and more complex. Ideas operate the same way. Jungles operate the same way. So, this current of billions of years of momentum, this river of creation that our universe flows from and to and within, this is the river we belong to when we create. We are with the flow of the river, and we are carried by it. We are all creators. We create our lives with every breath, with every thought. Some of us create through writing, some of us create through painting, some of us create through parenting, some of us create through entrepreneurship, some of us create through gardening, some of us create through activism, some of us create through chefing, some of us create through being a present and generous friend - the list is endless. When you refuse to create, you are trying to stand still in a river that is forever and relentlessly pushing you in the opposite direction, or we are actively fighting against this current, and this can make us sick. So, when you allow yourself to be exactly what you are - a creator - you heal yourself.

As innovators, we have a responsibility to create. My favorite thing about the word responsibility is that it is made up of response-ability. The ability to respond. So creating could be framed as the ability to be present, stay aligned, and respond. Respond mindfully and presently to the world around you. This is creation. Absolute creation is being present, no effort needed. Like children. We have had a cathartic experience of telling the truth, new seeing, new ability to be present with what is. And we create from that integrated place. 

Creation is Becoming

True creation feels like a collaboration with that which you are creating, and in the process of rising to the occasion of creating this thing, you must allow yourself to be changed by it…because it is in your becoming within that process that you will ultimately reach this new expression of original creation. So much of how you are creating with intention, meaning, and direction is found in your ability to pay attention to who you become in the process. It’s like taking a leap, and at the beginning of taking the leap your entire focus is on getting to the other side. But then, at some point in midair you might realize that making it to the other side is irrelevant, because right now, you’re flying. Creation is presence and breath.

Creation is Not Knowing

Not Knowing gives rise to Creation. 

Those who say they don't know, know. Those who say they know, don’t.

The not knowing is the key. There is a lot of energy spent by so many trying to know things. Trying to know facts, details, each other, ourselves, trying to know definitions, unknowable things, helpful things, destructive things. But it is increasingly apparent to me that at the height of knowing, one discovers that the not knowing is not only the ultimate truth, it is the ultimate pathway to ourselves. If we already knew everything, what’s the point of a life? What’s the point of exploration and discovery? The most switched on humans I know are those who are always living in the exhilaration of discovery of self, of ideas, of each other, and of the world. We do not seek in order to find, we seek in order to understand that seeking is our truest nature, and that this particular reality we have set up for ourselves is built for us to think we do not know some vital truth - existential or not - that we need to know, and so we are motivated to keep architecting our lives, our initiatives, our communities, our teams, our buildings, our understanding. We set ourselves up to think that there is something to know, so that we keep expanding our consciousness, but “arrival” at the ultimate “knowing” is to understand that it was always about not knowing. The experience of remembering is euphoric, and life is the process of remembering, and creation is the method of discovering amidst it all. Not knowing is the reason we find purpose in being architects of our realities. In building beyond what we understand, we come to know. In order to remember, you must first not know. In order to become, you must first unbecome. In order to have mastery of form, there must be deformation of mastery.

What can you commit to “not knowing” as you continue to pull the threads of creation in your life?

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(((moonshots)))

Creation <> Actively Killing Ideas

One of our most valuable creative habits with Innovation is our willingness to kill, to abondon our ideas. Innovation teams start each day assuming failure is the norm. It’s very easy to work on simple things axnd show some progress, but that doesn’t teach you the hard things that you need to understand deeply to solve the problem in the long run. So innovation teams typically identify their biggest risks, and make those into the team’s creative milestones; knocking down a major risk will unlock more permission to grow the team a little. 

Kill signals are another one of our important tools. These are metrics that a creative team agrees on when the project starts, which, if you reach them (or in many cases, fail to reach them in a certain timeframe), indicate that, “We should walk away from this project now.” This makes it easy for teams to remain intellectually honest and make tough decisions when they’re faced with difficult results and leave new room for other creations.

Moonshot Compost

Over time the accumulated insights, prototypes and experiences mingle, become “moonshot compost” that inspires and nurtures the next crop of ideas and experiments. 

This is one of the greatest benefits of Killing ideas. While you may be venturing into an undefined creative future, you’re not starting from an entirely blank piece of paper.

Failure

True creation, like the one that moves you, is birth through failures, pain, and chaos. Because innovation is a probability and possibilities game, not a deterministic one, Moonshots are difficult because the odds are against you. Failure isn’t necessarily due to some sort of ineptitude, or that you need to get your act together. Even if you try your best, such moonshot innovation follows the science of complex systems, and many, many will still fail.

I know failure is an overused word, but you need to make sure it is embraced in you and the teams. As you live through it and its learnings, it leads to new superpowers. If you design against failure, you will soon be playing catch up games.

The only real failure is that of not trying, of not learning anything. Embrace learning!

Unleash Radical: not just Incremental Creativity

Dream Big! Unleash not just radical presence, but radical creativity and thinking! Play with madness and let it transform you. As Loren said, true creation comes from the rejection of complacency. It comes from the courage that another world is possible and the bravery to leave safety, to leave comfort, to fight for it.

Being radical doesn’t mean to create overbuilds (empathy, emotional, collaborative, or thinking,...) but going x10 and being audacious in all that it is. Dreaming that things are possible, working to improve the lives of loads of people, remaining relentlessly focused on your inner presence, co-creating with the universe, with action and urgency, real technologies and real-world impact. 

What I’ve come to realize is that our main creative battle is against fear and the strong gravitational pull toward conventional ways of thinking and behaving. All of us have been conditioned for years not to fail, not to be vulnerable, and to minimize risk. 

So the number one job leading through innovation chaos is helping Innovators reset and free themselves from these invisible but pernicious constraints so they can free up their potential. Helping teams break away from the ordinary and into the unexpected and unknown.

Don’t look for a Creative playbook

Creation in Innovation is  inherently unpredictable and risky, and things zig-zag more often than they roll in a straight line, but we surf this chaos and we accept that uncertainty is the price we pay for the opportunity to shape the future. 

So don’t look for a playbook when you create and find inspiration anywhere. Creation is a state of being you forget while you are creating.

Change your perspective, ask a different question, start over. Often, if you step back and apply enough audacity and creativity, the new perspective you get makes doing the impossible, possible.  Be willing to go into places that other people haven’t looked or have decided are too hard. Throw out old assumptions. 

No idea is too crazy to suggest and no effort is too sacred to change or end. Unchecked optimism fuels our imaginations and dreams. It can lead us to places both amazing and awful — and that’s the point. Play with madness. A terrible idea is often the cousin of a good idea, and a great one is the neighbor of that. 

But, as we build and make progress, we apply enthusiastic skepticism, and, at all times, we remain emotionally ready to walk away so we can move on to the next promising idea.

It’s ok to be afraid. Being more audacious isn’t about having zero fear. It’s about being able to work through the fear. It’s also worth noting that audacity doesn’t mean recklessness. We’re not audacious for its own sake; we’re audacious because we want to make the biggest impact we can.

Be ready to unlearn and undo many paths to learn again, serve, reconnect with the humans and their purpose. beyond the moon and the shot. Nothing is set in stone and the faster we iterate to get things right, AND wrong, the higher our chances in successfully solving some of the biggest challenges we face today.

Create Teams of chaos pilots. The lone inventor having a eureka moment is largely a myth; innovation comes from great teams. This doesn’t mean innovation by committee or consensus. It’s about committing to working together and having each other’s back, because the macro is the micro, because where we’re going, we know it’s going to be dark and bumpy a lot of the time. 

Finding your Inner Artist

People from all walks of life are experiencing shared, global crucibles. And through that mutual experience with fear and isolation, exists a unique opportunity. If the first Renaissance could emerge from the darkness of the Black Plague, then it’s time for a New Renaissance to unite us in ways never before imaginable and come up with new Moonshots.

And the power of creatives and artists is immense. A lot of creative opportunities can have a great social good causes (mental health, racial discrimination, healthcare, etc), brining creative themes to life in an organic, human and engaging way. 

Finding your inner artist and how it expresses itself is super important to dig into the creation journey. Unlock the inner artist, What is your inner artist? How does your inner artist express itself? How do you feed your inner artist?