Tag: mystery

The “KISS your BLISS” Effect

You’ve heard “follow you bliss,” right?

“Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls.”
― Joseph Campbell

“If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.”
― Joseph Campbell

[This is wiki link for the scoop on Campbell]

Campbell wrote “The Power of Myth”, “The Masks of God”, and “The Hero of A Thousand Faces” among many other works and was an American mythology professor, writer, and orator best known for his work in the fields of comparative mythology and comparative religion.

Follow your bliss refers to a path you take. The journey and the making of a hero.

(video is cheeky and humorous summary of what happens in a Hero’s Story)

It’s the journey of every great person and every life well-lived also.

herojourney

(photo source)

My offshoot and focus is “KISS your BLISS”.

Why? Because nothing’s more active than that (and it rhymes, which is a nice mnemonic device).

This is the name for the moment you cross the threshold to adventure and finding your purpose. It’s when you decide you have a deeper calling in this world and living from your core is what counts most. I’m crafting a book on this right now and it’ll be out this fall. I hope you’ll come back for more details soon.

You will find that once you embrace your passion and gifts and kiss them full on the mouth a switch happens. At that point the sides fall off your holding cell and it turns into a go kart. You pick up speed, scream in delight and your passion is infectious.

Make no mistake: It is a risk.
There is true danger involved.

At the KISS POINT you will gain two things:

1. A following–people you splash with your passion who come for the ride, guide you, or cheer you on.

It is also characterize by new and better-fitting opportunities unveiling themselves and new connections and relationships  emerging. You’ll “be on to something” with all kinds of vague but palpable mystery that whispers of the divine. You’ll feel “in the flow” with new energy and a revived sense of purpose.

2. The devils–people (or systems) who are threatened by your passion or jealous of it because they are lacking it and feel empty.

The obstacles will be new too and formidable. You’ll feel a target on your back and a strange level of animosity that has no proper explanation except that which points off the map to something cooperative and moved by the otherworldly trying to thwart you and divert your path. Weird, I know.

This is the Kiss your Bliss Effect.

Sound at all familiar?

How-To: Take a Break with WHIMSY

Sometimes when we’ve been working hard or spinning our wheels, rest it what we need most.

But, never forget about WHIMSY!

This week I was working on a new project and I could just tell I needed whimsy.

What is it exactly?

Whimsy is caprice. It’s playful or humorous behavior. It’s the opposite of work and taking yourself too seriously.

If you are burned out, give it a try.

Here are some ways: 

• Do something you did as a kid (a game, an activity, a piece of art, hopscotch, legos, build a card house, color, whatever you want.)

• Whistle. (People don’t whistle much anymore. It’s a crisis of scarce whimsy. Just pick something and do it.)

• Create something for nothing but the fun of it. No one even has to see it. Exuberance and a no-holds-barred attitude is key!

• Sing or hum or play an instrument.

• Whatever made you belly laugh last time? Do that again.

• Tell a friend or family member a funny (or whimsically embarrassing) story and invite one from them.

Just 5-10 minutes of pure whimsy works wonders!

What did I do? I made something whimsical. I call it a “Whimsy Box”.

(People have said that just looking at this makes them feel a creative burst coming on!)

Each Whimsy Box is one-of-a-kind and tells a story.

It’s part art, part whimsical tale, part conversation piece, and part interactive inducer of creative tsunamis. Some Whimsy Boxes have a bona fide riddle about them or mystery to solve. Others play music, make a noise, have moving parts, or light up somehow–like this one!

whimsybox
(Sorry…this one is SOLD. If you’d like one, though, contact me.)

So, that’s how I took my break.

What will you do?

Official Launch of “Game For Adventure” @Kickstarter

Snail Mail gets an upgrade.

It’s official. I have an genuine Kickstarted project accepted and LIVE.
Backers make this creative project happen and get rewarded in the process.
Or click image for promo video:
LAUNCH PAGE

Is God our Cupbearer?

From the poem of Mechthild (of Magdeburg, 13th century) translated “The Flowing Light of the Godhead” we get a fascinating picture of God-Three-in-One (in Book II).

God as Cupbearer

[Cupbearer] noun chiefly historical or poetic/literary
a person who serves wine, esp. in a royal or noble household.

At first blush it may seem insulting to consider God in this servant role. Yet, God has always treated his people like royalty. He has always been the God who serves.

Former slaves in Egypt, the wandering Israelites were to be donned in fashions or regalia of the priestly class, and participate in many temple priestly rites and rituals, no matter their social class or gender. Unlike the pagans gods of the region, Yahweh–the living God–instituted numerous festivals and feasts, not for his pleasure and consumption, but for his people to enjoy.

A cupbearer tastes the drink and food before the king does. Utmost loyalty and devotion are required. If food is spoiled or poisoned, the cupbearer will pay the price, saving the King from harm. Didn’t God do this for us with our sin?

A helpful image in worship and prayer may be to envision God (Trinity, three-in-one God) as Cupbearer, Cup (becoming a broken cup pouring out life for us, in the sacrifice of Jesus the Christ) and the Wine from the Cup, as the healing presence of the Holy Spirit.

It is because God has served us so well, become broken and died from the poison we should have gotten, that we may be healed and redeemed by his Spirit, like healing Wine.

Have you heard this comparasion before? Does this visual help you? why or why not?

Thoughts? Comments?

The WHY questions…

It’s quite possible that my parents inadvertently trained my brain to be more philosophical then it might have been ordinarily.

I remember countless times after doing something naughty or foolish, my parents would ask me a daunting question “Why, did you do that?”

I’m not sure what kind of answers they were expecting. I would wonder why they would ask that.

Those answers were far beyond what my child brain could tackle.

Inwardly I would think, “HUH? Well, that’s a good question, I guess. I probably should have asked why to myself before I did it. It seemed like a good idea at the time. How should I know why I did it? Do they know why? If so, why don’t they just tell me? Will there be some kind of quiz later, or something? If they do know why, why did they looked so puzzled? And basically pissed off. Am I supposed to figure it out for them? …..ugh. But, now that I’m thinking of it, I do wonder why.”

I would usually answer, “I don’t know.” Deep inside I would wish and hope the scrutiny would not last too long. (It probably would lead to a “spanking” a.k.a. whoop the daylights out of me.) But, I also thought, if I did know, wouldn’t truthful answers incriminate me? What could I really come up with in all honesty, “because I wanted to,”?

Mainly through the sheer number of inquiries, I developed the feeling that the answer to “why” had importance. I started on a path toward “hack philosopher”…

“Why would people wish to put meat into ball shapes?”

“Why would chewing gum before supper truly ruin supper itself?”

“Why was, ‘because I said so’ considered an acceptable reason for adults to give me, but never good at all for me to reply to them?”

When troubles or suffering would come, I would instinctively ask “why”?

Maybe learning a lot of things would give me these sought for questions. I tried that a bit. (I still love roving around libraries on a quest of discovery.) After a good deal of learning, one day it came to me:

“Almost all the really crucial questions that ask ‘why’ have quite unsatisfactory answers.”

Or, the answers get debated widely, and are rarely agreed on. Or, the “answers” have the kind of complexities that don’t make one feel better about things. At all.

All this preparatory ‘why’ work…for what? Zip. More or less.

Instead of those sorts of questions, I moved on. “What does asking why tell us about us, and why we should want to know in the first place?” That seems like a much bigger question, with the kind of answer that will make a difference.

We want things to make sense. We want purpose and something to believe in that won’t let us down. We want to count on something. Will a concrete answer provide this? It seems most concrete answers only produce more questions. Of course, I was only satiated with pat answers for a short time.  (I do believe I was also trained to understand that challenging  answers was either a lack of faith, or a flaw in character.)

It’s been a new path for me to have a certain serenity that understanding may begin when the intricacies that the why questions remain in creative tension with discovery and mystery.

And so “why mystery?”

For me, it’s about knowing things in terms of relationship, not facts. The facts can be manipulated, massaged, or up for grabs. But, true trust, based on an ongoing and lavish love, surmounts what facts never satisfy.

God is why.

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