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(((moonshots)))

Transition requires Patience

Innovation is a door to a major transition, a door into new Vision.Transitioning allows you to move into a new paradigm – understanding that many explorations will fail! Don’t try and end transition too rapidly, because you might miss the next great moonshot or creation.

If you narrow the possibilities in your transition too soon, you can become so attached to your idea because you saw it as a destination, not a transition, that will you find it hard to pivot away, and transition into something that does truly serve your new vision. Good transition starts from a place of humility, insatiable curiosity, and admitted ignorance. As opposed to trying to “be right.” And the result is making the unseen - the invisible - more visible.

Specially in this current times of social unrest, change and chaos, making the invisible more visible to more people feels like a very required work, especially in our current cultural and societal landscape. Acknowledging the transitions we are going through and calling them out! If a moonshot or your next innovation venture is about looking beyond where you can actually see, the telescope is a “cone of uncertainty” pointed at the future. The farther out you look, the harder it is to make accurate predictions. In fact, experts are consistently less good at predicting how things will play out than people going in with a learning and curious  attitude during transition.

Transition and StoryTelling

"Magic lies in the belief of the untold story."
Astro Teller

Storytelling helps identify new Moonshot ideas. By structuring the storytelling process during a transition, you can unlock great creativity, reframe, stress-test and pivot Moonshot ideas. 
An idea only gains a following and support if people can relate to a good story, and how better to do that than through an emotional and engaging story?

Some of the best Story Telling traits that enable readiness to creativity and transcendence are those stories that predispose people to "openness to experience" (receptivity to new ideas and aesthetic experiences) or to "absorption' (proneness to mental imagery and fantasy). 

What experiences trigger Innovation in Transition?

“This longing you express is the return message“

People who are in a transition state of mind are also in a state of mind that predisposes them to creativity and to states of awe and spirituality, and kind of wonder. Creative people, they know that there’s something more shining and beautiful over there and they want to bring it over here by bringing something into being. They are acutely aware of the gap between the desired world and the one that we inhabit and the desire to fill that gap: The TransitionIn transition you Long: The word longing, we think of it in our culture as being a kind of passive and helpless state, but the etymology of that word is to reach for something. You’re literally getting longer as you reach for something. So that’s what creative people are doing. 

What I’ve learned is that this tradition of sitting with the transition  – what you are leaving behind and what you don´t know yet, the known and the unknown, it’s been with us for centuries and has inspired many to innovate and create. 

Music Evokes Creativity

Here is the Moonshots team playlist :) 

Why is it, do you think, that minor key music elicits what some would consider sadness others find as a creative booster during transition? as examples, Turkish music, Persian music, Greek, Portuguese, or Arabic music? What is it about sad music in Minor key that could be so moving as a transition? The nature of minor key music is that you don’t have resolution, and I think that’s the nature of being in Transition. That music evokes different triggers for each one, but the value is it could be the root of our creative impulse. 

Pain into Beauty

What if we are creatures who are born to transform and transition pain into beauty and that helps innovate? 

Tim Chang, for example, is a venture capitalist who's helped birth some of Silicon Valley's most successful start-ups. Over the years, Tim observed that people build companies and teams that reflect not only their values and strengths but also what he calls their "core wounds." 
The House of Beautiful Business conference, co-founded by a thinker and dreamer named Tim Leberecht, the German American is dedicated to the idea that in the age of smart machines and algorithms, "being human is the ultimate differentiator."  The conference, whose agenda includes a night with a salon called "Melancholia, Sadness, and Grief as the Ultimate Taboos and Surprisingly Productive Forces in Business."

When we talk about creative people who transform pain into beauty in innovation, it doesn’t mean you have to be doing these things on such a grand scale. You can be doing them on the most minute level and you’re still going through that same mechanism of taking pain and turning it into something else. It’s the mechanism that matters.

The Little Things

It’s the little things. It is the little things in the Transition that matter for innovation. 
Leonard Cohen line is, “There is a crack in everything. That’s where the light gets in.” And it’s this idea everything’s broken, everything’s beautiful simultaneously.  And in transition we try and find the light in the cracks for new innovation visions to emerge.

Kabbalah, the idea that all of creation, all of being was originally one vessel of divine light that then shattered. And we’re living now in the world after the shattering, but the divine shards of light are still all around us. And the goal is to just be discovering the shards and picking them up wherever we can. And the amazing thing is that you are going to pick up completely different ones from the ones others would notice. 

What stories evoke innovation and creativity during transition?
Those featuring a sense of Unity? 
A Voice or Vision? 
Synchronicity? 
Awe? 
Awareness of Passing time? 
Being close to death?

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(((alchemy of chaos)))

outer experience -> inner adventure

I’m still not over the fact that this first-time-in-2300-years planetary transit happened on the day of our Transition session, within 5 minutes of the time our session ended.

The three components are:

• Mars - the fighter - this asks you about what you are fighting for.

• Uranus - the liberator - this asks you what you want to be free of.

• North Node - destiny - this asks you what your magnum opus might be, and how it might be tied to each of the previous two.

Transition can be a magical place where, because of the nature of the nebulous and the nuanced, it’s easier to become, it’s easier to let go, because less is certain and set in stone. Transitions - in our view this week at least - can be understood as opportunities to engage in a deeper conversation, one that allows us to catch up with the part of ourselves that is probably already standing on a new frontier. The goal is to ultimately use a transition to utilize uncertainty and difficulty to move beyond the boundaries of a smaller, defended self and into a larger more generous participation with the world, however painful that might be. Because fully participating is what we are here do y’all.

Transition ignites significant outer experiences, and that outer experience triggers an inner adventure. And then, going on that inner adventure is what allows you to become the you that completes the transition. Using this lens in your breakout discussions, tell a 3min story of transition, potentially the one you did in your analysis. Spend half your time giving the story/context, and spend the second half either describing the psychology of your inner adventure, or outline how this transition revealed a vision or belief for what is possible.

In 1:1s this week, truth came up a lot. What is truth, how do you define it, who gets to ultimately decide, can multiple divergent and opposite truths coexist, and if so, what does that look like or how do we cultivate the conditions for that? Is truth movable? As we evolve, does our truth evolve too? Is this liberating or limiting? Are movable truths connected to innovation, alchemy, and possibilities? Why or why not?

Invisible -> Visible

Making the invisible visible is very present right now. In the midst of a transition, yes, but also in life. Also in society. Making the previously unseen - the invisible - more visible to more people feels like the work of the collective especially in our current cultural and societal landscape. Acknowledging transitions and approaching them in this way allows us to practice the art of living. 

And speaking of the art of living, as someone in the last round pointed out - is there ever a time/space/place in our lives that isn’t in transition? 

Is being “in transition” another way of saying “I am alive, I am living?” 

If transition is a definite characteristic of any life, why then are most of us - myself included - so resistant to it? Is it the newness of expansion? Is it the letting go of what is old? Is it the uncertainty in the middle? Is it a wariness about potential demise? Or something else?

Transition = shedding layers. Allow the moment of transition to move you into a new paradigm of yourself. Let go of the shackles of past definitions - of self or of possibility - when you are in transition. You are not your past, unless you insist that you are. The paradox is that letting go of past understandings of possibilities is actually what makes room for the new possibilities to enter.

This isn’t about getting to the end of the transition. It is about expanding within the unknowing in the midst of the transition. To allowing comfort in the discomfort of something foreign or new. The point is not necessarily to arrive unscathed from point A to point B, and then you’re done. Transition deserves to be a full experience. To allow all the dimensions of what is involved makes whatever is on the other side more fruitful. The point of a transition, and being with it generatively, is to understand who you become within that process. The more attention you put on that, the less attached you are to the actual outcome or “arrival” - and judging the outcome as good/bad/right/wrong - which then gives the invisible the opportunity to be known through your new eyes.

The Agony of the Leaf

“The Agony of the Leaf” is the term used to indicate the unfurling of the tea leaf during steeping. This can be quite a dramatic and beautiful stage in the brewing of tea, and with some teas it is one that can be quite wonderful to watch if the tea is brewed in a glass vessel. This is an important element of the process, and one that is severely compromised if the tea is constrained in a tea bag. The tea is unable to fully expand and move in the hot water, limiting its potential for releasing flavor. One thing you never want to subject a tea leaf to is constraining its expansion during brewing.

The tea is us. The tea bag is life constructs, old paradigms, beliefs, or limiting stories. The hot water is life.

Unfurling into ourselves through transition can feel like agony. But it is the pathway for us to reveal our essence, our flavor, our medicine, our gifts…just like the tea leaf. The nuanced and the nebulous can be rocky paths to navigate if we have too much resistance built up about “how it should be.”

Thresholds

David Whyte is a poet who spends quite a bit of time on this topic. I’ve been inspired about how he talks about thresholds because it is similar to how I’ve felt/known the truth of thresholds in my own way. To me thresholds are absolutely tied into transition because with our transit over a threshold, we transition into a new world, a new reality, a new way of being, a new opportunity, a new self. And also, as I shared about the moment in the field walking through the wooden arch, these worlds are also all connected to each other. New paradigms in the life of an individual or a society most always are accompanied by difficulty, confusion or a sense of losing our grounding. In the midst of challenging complexity, personal or political, how do we navigate rough waters? To navigate this threshold we must find a deep, internal solid ground to maintain a conversation with the intangible, the numinous, and the just about to happen.

Origami

There was an example that came up in a previous transition session about origami. One of the more common refrains in introduction to origami classes is an emphasis that it is one of the few transformative arts, compared to more constructive arts (adding paint to a canvas, or adding clay to a pot), or more deconstructive arts (sculpting an object out of marble). Near the end of a 70-step fold process to make an origami rose, there is this step that is called crumpling, where you smash the paper down. You have to have faith - and it’s terrifying - that all of the little pressure lines in all of the 70 previous folds will hold up. And not only do you have to crumple it, you have to crumple it with pressure, or else it doesn’t work. The process of transition is eventually having just enough evidence that it will be okay, so that you can make the choice to crumple the system. The fearful part in the moment of transition is if you crumple wrong, you might destroy everything, destroy all progress. But layering on faith of having folded the paper a couple times, you can crumple with confidence.

The Jar of Marbles

Transition is related to the energy of chaos, but transition is more defined by constraints and opportunities. We can see things more clearly in the energy of transition. It has a current to it - a flow and a direction - that is not present in chaos. 

My suggestion is that transition, whether forced or chosen, is like what happens when you take an open jar of marbles and throw them upwards into the air. Prior to the toss, the marbles are sitting in their density and in their exact place. It’s difficult for them to get from one side of the jar to the other. And then, this amazing moment happens where all of the marbles are thrown up and out. I picture transition as a slow-mo version of those marbles that suddenly have all this space to move around, to change it up, to be in new positions. Suddenly they can move with ease around each other instead of forcing a movement with difficulty if they were trying to shift themselves while being jammed up next to all the other marbles. 

Transition is the opportunity that happens when the marbles are at the peak of their upward motion. There is an energy of perspective, of agility, of fresh positioning, and of choice. But first you have to be willing to throw the marbles up in the air. Capture the energy and current and flow of transition. 

Don’t resist against it or try to get to the other side of it too quickly, because you might miss the perspective. 

Don’t try and end transition too rapidly, because you might miss the discernment to choose anew. 

And don’t worry about the jar being there when you land, because you might find that you like the new landscape of the expanse of hardwood even better. 

Vision in Transition

Accessing vision is a version of “space between.” We are still cultivating that skill of sitting with the unknown and nonlinearity so that the “big bang explosion into a new universe” moment can happen, however we are much more turned towards possibility rather than how we were in Space. In Space we looked at being with the nothingness, the emptiness, to find and feel the fullness. The difference in “the space between” in the context of space, and “the space between” in the context of transition, is that in Space we are committed to being with the emptiness. In Transition, we are aware of our collaboration with or invitation to what might be next. Hence, the relevance of “loving awareness” mantra from the pre-work - it is our job to be aware of what’s coming in, rather than just working to be with the nothingness. 

In the midst of transition is when you are usually most open to receive or access a new vision. But vision cannot be forced. It has to be Seen. Loving everything we are aware of is key especially in transition, because it is in transition that we are most likely to cling to what was, or rush towards what we think is next. But if you cling too much or rush too fast, you might miss the whole point. You might miss the true doorways and gateways. If you aren’t fully present with the transition, you might miss your ability to truly See. 

Accessing vision - especially in the midst of transition - requires availability and curiosity to allow what’s next, not necessarily openness. Openness is like going to bed with your front door open. Availability to something allows you to ultimately use your discernment about whether or not you choose to invite something in.

Let’s not make this about passion, and instead make it about curiosity. The stakes make it much easier to flow with what is coming to you rather than measuring everything against the idea of passion. Let’s also not make this about finding your purpose - that word can actually be so heavy and can snuff out possibility.

What is it to transition with expansive awareness? To transit to a new way of being, a new idea, a new mind, a new reality?