Catching the Whispers
Exploration 2 What matters most …
This week we’re going to dig into what matters most to you, the values that guide your choices. Moving more deeply into a more poetic or creative life happens through a series of choices. Choices are intimately connected to values. The clearer we are about what matters to us, the more effective those choices will be. We’ll explore how time and the pandemic may have shifted what is core in our values.
I still remember the awed excitement in a friend’s voice when life coaching revealed her hidden desire to write poetry. She had pushed her poetic and creative values underneath a determination to write academic books and articles. And my sheer relief when I allowed that painting mattered to me so much that I had to change my life to make more time for it.
The dissatisfaction and yearning that brought you here is some kind of protest from an important personal value that is not being sufficiently honoured or acknowledged.
Many of our values remain constant throughout our shifting lives. Others arrive as we grow – perhaps we could not have dreamt of them in the lives we had as children, or perhaps they were not relevant earlier. And it may be that your experience of the pandemic has affected what matters to you now. Some of your values may be so obvious to you that you could easily list them. We’ll start by naming those, and then go on to poke around a little and uncover others. Your set of core values, named and collected together, will become a vital tool for the rest of the course, and long after.
In the second part of this week’s exploring, we move on from thoughtful contemplation of what matters most to focus on what our immediate intuitive responses might have to tell us. In my own process of relearning how to hear my intuition, I discovered that I often push away what comes to me instantly, refusing to take it seriously because I need to ‘think about it’, and thereby losing potentially valuable insights or possibilities. Now I realise that I should catch those fleeting responses and swift ideas because they are often true in some unexpected way. The rational thinking can still be done later, but those whispers need to be caught as they pop out. It takes practice to become aware of their popping out or whistling past, and then to register them. Often I only catch a passing whisper by the tail and have to haul it back again to listen to what it was saying (if I may mix metaphors to make the point!). Two tasks this week practise catching whispers before they disappear - one gives a megaphone to the whispers so they can be heard and the other creates a silence so they don’t have to shout. I hope one or both work for you!
Please do Tasks 1-3 in the given order. After that you can choose how to order Tasks 4 and 5 to suit your time. If you want to do the tasks across the week, here’s a suggested spread:
Day 1: Task 1 (45 minutes)
Day 2: Tasks 2 and 3 (90 minutes)
Day 3: Tasks 4 and 5 (40-50 minutes)
And do keep your Morning Pages going!
Task 1 What whispers can you catch from your heroes?
Time: 45 minutes
You need: your Poetic Life Notebook, pens and colours
In this task, we spend some time with your heroes – the women and men, and maybe children, whose lives fascinate you, inspire you, and make you envious. Fictional and real. Family, friends, those you haven’t met yet, and those you’ll never meet. Those who have accompanied you through many years, or those you have just encountered. The ones you’d love to meet, whose feet you’d love to sit at and listen, whose complete book collection you keep on your shelves, whose exhibitions you’d travel miles to see.
The pandemic may have brought new heroes to your attention. I know that Dr Ashley Bloomfield, New Zealand’s Director-General of Health, became one of mine as he appeared on TV every day, explaining what was happening, why restrictions were put in place, and answering questions seriously and straightforwardly. His skills and integrity inspired trust across the population. The resilience of my little granddaughters moving to a new country has been another inspiration.
Take a new double page spread in your Poetic Life Notebook and scatter the names of your current heroes around the pages. Try to put down at least 5. Think about the choices they made in their lives and the qualities that these choices reveal. Around their names, list what it is that you admire about them.
After a while, you may notice themes emerging – you may find a posse of adventurers climbing mountains, or several stay-at-home-in-solitude poets. There may be a show of strength in adversity, or of finding friends in distant places.
With a highlighter or different colour pen, start connecting the threads you discover and circling commonalities.
Now stop and wonder:
How does each of these choices or qualities apply to me?
What have I done in my life that I share with them?
And what do I long to do?
Write, in words or pictures, for 10 minutes, or more, about what you find – write in the spaces on your double page spread, in a spiral or a line, in bubbles or squares.
However you want to put it down, catch these whispers from your heroes, and what they have to tell you about what matters in your life.
Come back to these pages after a day or two to highlight or decorate key points that you have discovered about your own values.
Do tell us about one of your discoveries in the Facebook group!
Task 2 Whispers from the shadows
Time: 45 minutes
You need: Your Poetic Life Notebook, pens and colours
To increase our clarity about what matters most, we are going to turn things around and do some ‘shadow work’. Our values sometimes show themselves most strongly when they are being threatened or ignored. Feeling annoyed or upset about something that happens is a signal of a values-issue. We are going to excavate around some of these moments in order to pull out the values that are being threatened, and notice them as what matters to you.
You can learn lots from working with minor annoyances and challenges. (There’s no need to go into traumatic life events. In fact, please avoid doing that! Please don’t dive any deeper than you need to, and make sure you have any support you require.)
Recall some times when you felt annoyed, challenged, hurt, disturbed, uncomfortable, put down, patronized, ignored, uncomfortable, dismayed, cross, disappointed, upset. Perhaps you have written in your Morning Pages about some recent challenging moments?
On a Poetic Life Notebook page, we’re going to explore two or three of those times. Our aim here is not to rekindle negativity nor is it to blame anyone; our aim is to tenderly explore what in ourselves might have contributed to how we felt, so that we can identify core values that were being challenged or disturbed. Let yourself re-visit those emotions for a few moments, be gentle and curious about what was going on for you, inside you. In pencil, write down some key words that come to mind about what was going on for you in each situation. Then, with a bolder pen, in a colour you love, write a positive statement over the top of the pencilled words that begins:
I value ….
For example: The anger I felt when I was lied to shows me that I value honesty.
For example: The crossness that surfaces when I am patronized as a hobby painter shows that I value my art as a serious professional practice.
For example: I am delighted that my little family is now multi-ethnic, mixed race, and multicultural. It’s a joy and enriching. And I am shocked and dismayed when I hear friends making throw-away racist comments about groups of people in society or in history. The first few times this occurred, I didn’t know what to say in response. As time goes on, I am more ready to speak out, to explain and discuss the issue, and, if necessary, to keep doing this. If I think about my reactions to this kind of situation, I can see two values in conflict. I strongly care about and value equality, fairness, and non-discrimination across ethnicity, race, and culture. Casual racist talk, even when not intended as such, violates this value. My awkwardness at these moments comes from another value that is put under threat here – loyalty in friendship. From my reactions, I can see that the first value matters more than the second, and that both matter.
For example: I recognise that the anxiety that I felt for some years back, when I had sold my house before finding the next one, is an aspect of my need for security. Security is a core value for me that won’t be ignored. Each time since, I’ve chosen to overlap places, planning in the extra cost incurred. I value my security.
Use your colours -
circle your values that have surfaced in doing the shadow work
rub out the words in pencil
make connections between similar values that appeared in different situations
highlight what’s come up as really important for you
Now thank your shadow whispers for their insights - and let them go.
Put on some lively music and dance your socks off.
Or stand in the fresh air and breathe deeply, stretching your arms high above your head, open to delight.
Task 3 Checking in with your Core Values
Time: 45 minutes
You need: 2 or 3 blank postcards, or pieces of thin card cut to postcard-size; your Poetic Life Notebook, pens and colours
Your excavations around heroes and shadows have uncovered many of your core values, and we’re now ready to put them together on one of the cards. If you have come up with lots, choose the 8 that are most important to you right now.
Arrange your current core values across a new card: write, highlight, and decorate to please your poetic soul. (It looks like I could do some more decoration on mine!)
I like using a card because it’s portable. I take mine away on holiday, keep it in my bag when travelling, bring it out when making choices. It’s useful to have this list of values in your Poetic Life Notebook too, so now, or later, spend 10 minutes copying it out there.
As you proceed with making your life more poetic, you may find more values that need to be added. For example, when I found myself painting tutus and pink roses, and, despite my puzzled feminism, feeling huge delight in doing so, I realized there was a value around natural abundance and sensuality that I had been ignoring. Once I had brought it out of hiding, I saw how important it had been throughout my life and how often it had been neglected. Now that it’s uncovered, I can choose to buy roses and paint roses, to buy tickets for the ballet, to enjoy the fabrics I’ve tucked away in boxes and bags over the years – a whole field of poetic delights opens to become part of my life.
Task 4 What would Pablo do?
time: about 30 minutes
you need: your Poetic Life Notebook, pens and colours
This task offers a megaphone to your whispers so that you can hear them better…
One of my painting inspirations is Pablo Picasso. He was not only an outrageously brilliant artist, but outrageous in many ways. Let me say upfront that I do not consider myself an artist at anywhere near his level, and that my values are at odds with aspects of how he lived, particularly in relation to the women in his life.
And yet, with all our differences, in some aspects of being an artist, he does what I want to do.
What I admire and envy in Picasso’s life is his incredible commitment and dedication to his art. One exhibition I went to a couple of years back showed the work he’d done in just one year – it started on Christmas Day, when he went out from the chateau he’d rented to work in the studio he had set up in a huge barn. I walked round that exhibition with my mouth open - I recognised painting after painting, and there were exquisite drawings that showed how he was exploring and developing his thinking and his style. It was incredible to see how much work was done, and how much changed. All through his life, he held fast to his belief that his art was the work he had to do, and that only he could do that.
I look to his outrageous determination, self-belief, and commitment, and want some of that to strengthen my art practice.
I’ve started asking myself, slightly tongue-in-cheek, in situations around my own commitment to making art, or when tempted to say yes to projects that would take me away from the art: “What would Pablo do?”
Often an answer to that question would spring back at me, reflecting his confidence and commitment – he wouldn’t waste his energy doing X or Y; he’d make sure this and that were in place to support the work; he’d have a go; he’d walk away; he’d try again.
Look at the spaces he provided for his work - no kitchen table for him! If I’m dithering over whether I’ll make enough use of a possible studio, and ask, “What would Pablo do?” I might hear, “He’d take it and get on with it”. Or, “He wouldn’t settle for this. He’d find another one with more wall space because that’s what you need now”. I wouldn’t hear him dithering, that’s for sure. I’ve come to enjoy hearing his nudges, and the reminder that being inoffensive and unobtrusive is not the only way to live and make choices.
I invite you to take a new page in your Poetic Life Notebook and choose someone you find **OUTRAGEOUSLY BRILLIANT** in your own poetic domain or creative field. Find a picture to paste in, or draw one. Now write across the page:
WHAT WOULD (name) DO?
Pose some of the questions or issues currently vexing you in your poetic or creative life - difficult choices to make, projects that seem to have stalled, areas of indecision, plans that seem too huge, impossible logistics...
And catch the outrageously brilliant answers that spring back at you.
Perhaps they’ll offer you a fresh slant on some of your current concerns or conundrums.
You’re also free to ignore what they say!
You may also enjoy this blog post about how the sculptor Anne Truitt found inspiration and courage to make work. Her three journals from different times in her life - Daybook, Turn, Prospect - are an enriching read.
Task 5 Lying down whispers
This short activity offers a chance to be noticed to any whispers that might be too quiet to catch in the buzz of the everyday.
Time: 10 - 20 minutes
Lie on the floor, with a paperback book or two under your head (to allow your neck muscles to relax), your knees raised and feet flat on the floor, hands on your tummy if that’s comfortable, and your eyes closed. For at least five minutes. More if you need the wonderful relaxing into the floor that this position allows.
What do you see on the inside of your eyelids? What whispers do you hear?
After getting up slowly, open your Poetic Life Notebook. Paint or draw any images you saw, and note down any words that came to you.
At the end of this week
Well done! This has been a deep-diving week with some important foundations laid. We’ve caught whispers and named your core values from your heroes and shadows. Next week, we’ll use your newly clarified values to review current commitments, all the projects you are responsible for and are participating in. By holding your values up against your projects, you’ll begin to see how you might shift things and find space for the whispered suggestions of more poetic projects.
You’ve allowed yourself to consider the outrageous suggestions of your Pablo Picasso.
You’ve practised hearing the whispering voice of your intuition. If you’ve not been in touch with it for a while, I hope you were happy to re-acquaint yourself with its particular tone and how it offers itself to you. Listen out, and look out, for it every day over the next week.
Keep looking back at these pages in your Poetic Life Notebook, add colour to them. Contemplate what you found in your Morning Pages.