New Culture, New Ways

"The culture has ways of supporting what it demands by way of the form. So if you say you have a goal for fast cars, big houses and lots of money no one will argue with you that this goal has no essence. If you say instead that you have a desire to experience freedom, to experience fun or to follow your heart's bliss, he can guarantee you that there is probably no officer in any bank that will loan you money for this endeavor. If you quit your high stress lucrative job there are probably not going to be many people in your life that will support your decision unless that job has already managed to give you some life threatening illness.

His message is that in order to create with essence we must discard the culture's ways. First we must stop measuring the results by the form so we must discard measuring amounts of money, or the value of our possessions, especially if we view them as a means of security. We must stop measuring the success or failure to meet a goal. We must stop resisting the unintended consequences or the results we did not expect. Especially we must stop worrying about how others evaluate or judge or view us and what we are doing.

Creating with essence requires that we develop an entirely new set of skills and first among these is that we must be responsible for our own feelings, responding in the present moment to the choices that are truly before us and make those choices based on the essences we hold most dear. We must monitor essence in our lives and examine each moment for opportunities to create more essence. Vitally important is that when the essence leaves an endeavor and we have only our goal and our fear of not achieving it as our reason for staying with something; if we are staying with it for fear of our security we must be willing to engage in a process that will allow us to abandon this investment and move with courage to discover our new dreams for essence." ~ Spotted Eagle on Creating With Essence