5/22/2010 – Fluttering Mobile Possibilities

It's a late spring morning in Boulder. Its 8:00am, the temperature is pleasantly warm and dry. I’m driving into town. The wind is blowing. Millions of tufts of fluffy cottonwood seeds are being carried on the warm breezes. Instead of a rain of resources, it's a rain of change and possibility. A snow made of pure seeds scatted by the wind. They float at the whimsy of the wind, in a frenzied direction – being swept this way and that. The wind, as if indecisive in evaluating the final destination for its precious gift, is juggling the tufts in playful cartwheels.

The relationship between the wind – the change generator – and the planner and decider is a marriage of mutual interdependence. It’s as if the wind has a directionality and the seeds have the purpose – we need to pollinate the world with ideas, we need the ideas to do things. For ideas to sprout, they must land in fertile soil – into the hearts, minds, and circumstances of people who will help them to flourish. Its for this purpose that the ideas have many copies, and the wind takes them everywhere – for the wind knows that not destinations will be fertile. In the same way, when we wish to spread ideas we have the opportunity to recognize and not be frustrated by the fact that not everyone is ready for our ideas, and their hearts and minds may not be fertile enough for them at a given time.

As I write about this I’m sitting at a café and encountered a strange synchronicity. A game of soccer is playing on TV to the café’s background music which happens to be a strangely fast Eastern European gypsy jig played on accordion. The music evokes the same chaotic playfulness as today’s wind and coupled with the flashing images of the soccer ball being tossed around from player to player – each trying to claim it for themselves in order to propel it in a particular direction - the audio-visual spectacle is entirely comical. The ball is the seed (the plan to win the game of putting it in a destination) and the players are the wind (the motive force behind getting it there), each team arguing amongst themselves, outwitting each other, calculating and stealing the seed in pursuit of their team’s direction. In the larger sense – does it matter which goal the ball goes into? It only matters that it does!

Without a destination, there would be no point of the ball. Without the ball, there would be no point in movement for it own sake either. The player, and the ball. The wind and the seed. The Gallbladder (wind) and the Liver (seed) – each depend on the other. Without one, there is no purpose for the other - the game of “Its better over there than it is over here”.

The pedestrians amidst this chaotic meandering of fluttering mobile possibilities are frustrated and shield their faces while marching in their own previously declared directions - trying to dodge, duck and maneuver through the chaos of fluffy obstacles without becoming caught in the wind’s melee. The people in their cars are enchanted by the vision as if in a spell cast upon them by the Liver Spirit – a dream like trance of fleeting far away images of possibility. Their driving is careful, partly focused, mesmerized and trapped in visions of far away places projected onto the fluff balls passing before their window shields.

We need the plan to have a reason to live - to have a motive behind anything we do. What is action without motive? Is it not chaos? What is motive without action if not despair?

Without that plan, what purpose is there to any activity, to any change we make in the vast universe through our decisions and actions? Without the ball to toss around towards a goal, we would despair of any action we would take. Likewise, if we had a plan but found ourselves without the motivation – the hope would either change into resignation or despair. The very motivate energy of yin and yang would stop interchanging.

The players would stop in the field and look around at each other, and then all would look at the ball in the center of the court – unable to determine how change in the ball’s situation could be accomplished. The gipsy jig would be silenced.

If people have plenty of movement in their sails, but no plan to move by, or to move for – they would exhaust themselves and never generate results. The pedestrians would be caught in pirouettes of wind and would all dance aimlessly into the streets. What a delightful sight that would be – to join the creative dance – each landing in whole new destination after the wind’s subsidence to find themselves with a whole perspective – their own small plans and games given over to the gods.

Alternative those who invent idea and plan one after another without the movement in their sails to pollinate and generate the ideas into the world would end up with a pile of ideas, while manifesting none of them. Both would result in purposelessness and lack of fulfillment.

As all change and movement grinds to a halt, stagnation is the inevitable result. Without this movement in life, it would mean death of life itself.

But where does motivation come from? Where does wind come from? We say that winds come from a direction – a place where they were – and are on their way to a destination – a place they are going. But why do they move at all? What creates the movement? Why move?

Do they run away from something, or go towards something? Do we make decisions and choices as motivated by fear, or as motivated by inspiration? Motivated by something other than pain, or motivated by something more compelling than everything we’ve been able to accomplish so far?

As an aside, it dawns on me that the while the mother element makes the next element possible (resources make planning a compelling vision possible), it's the inspiration of the grandmother element Metal element that gives Wood the imperative to live by. In the same way it seems that the grandparent element informs each grandchild element rules to live by. Metal gives Wood the imperative to manifest ideas which are inspired. Wood gives Earth the imperative to nourish through taking integritous action (empower self-sufficiency in others, and align your desires with action). Fire gives Metal the imperative to create righteousness in the world with compassion. The Earth element gives Water the imperative to expend resources and talents with the wellbeing of all in mind. The Water element gives Fire the imperative to love with wisdom. This topic alone could be one for much further study.

In terms of motivation – fear, or inspiration - what’s the difference? Isn’t the motivation always “Its better over there than it is over here” regardless of whether we’re motivated by the past or the future? So perhaps motivation is in and of itself unemotional, detached, and a servant of the plan.

What motivates us? Desire, or fear? To quote from a website (http://ezinearticles.com/?What-Motivates-You---Desire-or-Fear?&id=33086):

“Fear motivation aims to protect us and focuses on avoiding penalties for failure. It leads to feelings of inhibition (I can't) or compulsion ("I have to."). Desire motivation seeks rewards for success. It leads to volition (e.g., "I can.") and propulsion (e.g., "I want to.")”

Fear is being pulled back into the Water element, so that Wood never fully manifests, whereas Desire is being pushed and compelled forward into Wood which eventually dissolves into and creates Fire – the element of desire, and of the shen itself.

The difference then is hope, and desire to manifest that hope as comes from the idea, the plan, the Liver Spirit, the soccer ball.

Conversely, why do we find ourselves so often in states where we have no motivation at all? We may have lots of plans, but simply cannot initiate any action. The fluff hangs on the branches or all around at the base of the tree – waiting for the wind to sweep it to its destiny – yet the wind never comes.

A soccer ball wants to be kicked by its nature. You give one person a ball, and they will be raptured by it, unable to stop themselves from kicking, throwing, or bouncing it. Give it to another person and they will find it completely uncompelling.

Perhaps its because those who are unmotivated have a lack of desire (no generation of fire), or lack of inspiration (no motivation by Metal).

As for the gods – they must find the plans of the tuffs of dogwood so compelling that they cannot help but call the winds of manifestation to guide them to their destiny.