Playful Communication

It’s infectious, irreverent, and irresistible. The most serious of proceedings can benefit from a judicious injection of wit and humour done with a deft hand. Subtle word play and artfully deliberate vocabulary selection makes the most tedious dissemination of information nutritious and delicious.

Saying what you need to say in a satisfying way creates a Moment with your audience that transcends the mere message content. Communication is not simply transmission of information.

The most beautiful, inspiring and motivational words are meaningless if written in a dead language.

Even the secrets of the universe will disappear when written in the sand.

The most profound of concepts are dismissed when tumbling out of the mouths of babes.

Communication is not just the message. It is the the synergy between the message, the medium and the minds of the sender and receiver. It is the sum of these parts resonating until the tumblers of understanding slide into position and open a direct connection between the mind of origin and the mind of recipient.

There’s an art to it. No less so than the choreographed moves of a ballet or the finessed strokes of a sculpture, the ebb and flow of effective dissemination requires fine tuned awareness and mastery of the nature of the message, the medium, and the audience. A virtuoso is a pleasure to behold in any field, including the orator who holds an audience spellbound during the most mundane of proceedings.

There is a vulnerability inherent in allowing your personality and humour shine through in your communication. It is a risk, to open the window into your playful self and expose it to judgement and critique. There will always be those who seek to dim luminescence and cast a pall over playfulness.

Be brave. Be artful. Be memorable. Be fun. Set a tone which reverberates through your words and into the hearts of those reading them, the sensation of which lingers long after the content has faded.

Because playfulness is a gift from Synergy and the words that tumble out from it are pure joy to behold. No gift should go unopened!

Unadulterated

Funny word. It looks made up, especially in our #hashtag world. It sounds rebellious and childlike.

Yet the Oxford definition makes absolutely no reference to maturity levels, state of mind, or adulthood whatsoever.

Un·a·dul·ter·at·ed/ˌənəˈdəltəˌrādəd/Learn to pronounceadjective

not mixed or diluted with any different or extra elements; complete and absolute.”pure, unadulterated jealousy”
- (of food or drink) having no inferior added substances; pure.”unadulterated whole-milk yogurt”

Concentrated and pure.

That’s what unadulterated means.

If you asked a child to compose a definition for the word, it would be something like “without adult influence” or “not grown up”, possibly “immature”.

And truthfully, a child embodies the word in its dictionary definition and any other possible interpretation of it. They are pure, concentrated energy. As they spend time exposed to adults, their magical wonder gets diluted and dispelled until, for some, little remains by age 17. We adults mix them up with our thoughts, judgements, opinions and information so they become…well…adulterated.

The wise mind is pure, unadulterated wisdom. Straight from the source, Eidolon’s database of the collective observations of the nature of the universe. Stored free of any different or extra elements like judgements or feelings. No inferior components.

Being childlike is pure. Looking at the world without filters gives concentrated experiences of it, leading to intense awareness of how it works.

Become unadulterated.

Manufacturing Gratitude

It’s ok not to be grateful. Especially for something you never asked for. Especially when you do not feel grateful. Especially if someone is telling you to be grateful.

Shame on them.

Gratitude is an emotion. Emotions happen when they happen, not when you tell yourself to feel them. You are sad when sad, glad when glad and mad when mad. Emotions simply are. A product of the material world, they are a sensory response to the current social environment. You can’t tell your fingers to feel warm in a snow storm. You can’t tell your face not to feel hot in the sun.

Why do you think you can tell your feelings to experience gratitude?

Gratitude bubbles up from inside you when conditions feel balanced and satisfactory…TO YOU. Your personal definition of balance or satisfaction may be wildly different than someone else’s, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with your perspective. Being told you should be grateful is being treated with contempt. It is telling you to judge yourself and your feelings, and find yourself guilty.

Beware giving yourself that same message! When you ponder your feelings and determine you shouldn’t have them, you are being unfair to yourself. Try telling your hand not to feel the burner under your palm. Same task, but because we fail to recognize our intangible emotions as an extension of our nervous system, we treat them like a part of our soul.

Emotions are information. Not actions nor facts.

Gratitude is a breathtakingly glorious emotion and it’s understandable those experiencing it want you to feel it too. Fake it til you make it, practice gratitude, choose thankfulness. Great ideas, but missing the point.

Manufacturing a facade of an emotion does generate pathways of practiced nerve patterns. Acting out routines does create habits. This much is true. But the emotion of gratitude is spontaneous and joyful, not habitualized and mechanical.

Funny thing, when it wells out of you, you realize it doesn’t want to follow those practices, routines and habits! Gratitude wants to playfully take you out of your comfort zone into your curiosity. It drives you to tears with its intensity but not to acts of creating lists.

You are grateful, or you are not. There is no try. And that’s just fine.

Dissatisfaction is a sign you are ready to grow. No matter how well-appointed the nursery might be, every child reaches the stage of needing to experience more, explore more, discover more. Gratitude and satisfaction go hand in hand, with imbalance chasing both of them away.

What imbalance exists that is pressuring for change? Curiosity demands an exploration when gratitude is nowhere to be found in a situation. And in the Moment when the source of imbalance is revealed, appreciation will flow through your veins because suddenly the game is afoot and your journey will begin!

So embrace a lack of gratitude as being the summons to the post, where you are to begin a steeplechase toward a higher level of understanding yourself. From discomfort comes growth and after growth comes gratitude!

Arbitrary Timelines

Time is an artificial construct of the material world, a symptom of the short circuit in our brain that prevents us from living in the moment. We don’t need to measure the past or future if fully immersed in the present!

Time is a source of great anxiety and stress. Do I have time for this? Don’t give him the time. I had the time of my life. But when you have a Moment, time melts into nothing. Time flies when you’re having fun. And people who embrace living in the moment accomplish more in the exact same 24 hours everyone else lives. Time is what you make it.

As are timelines. To truly live in the Moment requires trust that all will be well. That deadlines and due dates, even though arbitrary material constructs, will be met not through thinking about them but through forgetting about them in order to focus on the task of the moment. What will be, will be, as it is meant to be. The pieces of the puzzle are there waiting for assembly and will be discovered in due time. Everything you need will be available when you need it, to do what you need to do. Have faith, close your eyes, and keep walking.

Animals don’t read calendars or clocks. The dog who waits by the door at four in anticipation of his master’s return read the concentration of scent particles in the air to predict the schedule, the pattern. Birds recognize the angle of the sun and day length not which month it is for their migration. Sap runs when temperatures are safe for leaf development.

If you must surrender to the urge to set a timeline for yourself, follow the lead of the universe and avoid those c-words, calendar and clock. Look around the escape room that is your life, to find the anchor for your decision. Use your environment to schedule your journey.

Thinking in a matter of months? Well look at that! A new shoot on the Phalaenopsis Orchid will take 4 to 6 months to flower. So when it is complete, you will make your move.

A matter of hours? Gee, I love how the sunlight plays through the stained glass window in the evening. When it hits that shelf, I’ll head on out.

Deadlines and timelines are arbitrary and artificial in the first place. Time only exists in the Mattersphere, and our wise mind knows how to bend both time and space within the rules of the physical matrix of reality. Synergy will make that flower bloom when you are ready to bloom, and that sunbeam shine when you are ready to shine. But only if you trust her by closing your eyes to clocks and calendars when you have the chance to.

Thrills and Chills

Thrill seekers and risk takers are on the right track. Those searches for adrenaline are searches, and seeking is our purpose. To boldly go where your wise mind has not gone before. To add new perspectives and new dimensions to the collective history stored with Eidolon in the Dattersphere.

Living in the Moment feels thrilling, sensuous, and utterly captivating. You are tethered in a limitless universe with boundless potential. If you don’t understand how to maintain that connection by freeing your mind from the material world, then you try to replicate the sensation by freeing your body from the constraints of the physical world through overloading your sensory brain.

An approximation of enlightenment.

When you find your wise mind and begin to live inside it most of your day, you take risks. You put yourself out there. You make yourself vulnerable. You find everything and everyone fascinating and exciting and immerse yourself intently in simple conversations with complete engagement. People ask for some of what you’re on. People want to join you on your journey.

Sharing knowledge and experience is another primal drive for us. To be the scaffold for others to construct meaning around. To light the pathway for others to explore. This urge drives us to post pictures and tweet thoughts, to write blogs and make comments. Hence the thrill in our heart with each new like, each recognition, each view. A different, less blatant type of thrill seeking but seeking nonetheless.

Our patterns have purpose. All of them. We do what we were designed to do. But like all machines, when we are out of balance we don’t function properly even as we strive to do what we were made for. Even the most dysfunctional, toxic behaviours are rooted in a primal function, a healthy drive that just needs tweaking of the weighting to make it effective once again.

Like the laundry washer that has piled too many items on one side of the drum, when we pile weight in our judgemental brain or our emotional mind, we thrash about unsteadily, and the contents of our heart are waterlogged and flaccid. Reaching inside the drum of our head, and repositioning the load, will wring out the extra weight we carry, and allow the current cycle to finish.

And what a feeling it is to be able to reach the spin cycle and release the dirty water of a lifetime of judgement and emotions!

Forrest, Dory, and Anna

Want to see what living in the Moment with acceptance and surrender looks like?

Open the box of chocolates with Forrest Gump.

Find Nemo by just letting go with Dory.

And don’t be Frozen, do the next right thing with Anna.

Each of these characters exemplifies living in the Moment. Living in the moment comes naturally in some cases through birth or early exposure, while in other cases adversity brings it on, or a combination of predisposition and outside forces culminates in a mindful approach to life. But that approach faces ridicule, scorn, and judgement in the doing so. Because from the outside looking in, living in the Moment appears abnormal. Idiotic at times. Vulnerable and stupid.

Yet it works. Not because of smarts or knowledge or strength. But because of faith and trust in the balance of the universe. Because Synergy keeps us safe if we let her. Yet to trust someone we can’t see, to believe in something without proof, to walk blindly through the lion’s den is so incredibly risky, so amazingly courageous, that the majority of people can’t fathom it.

So they see delusion where there is faith. Mania where there is joy. Stupidity where there is serenity. And naivety where there is openness.

Until they hit a boundary with their judgement and find tempered glass where they expected plastic film. Or they witness miracles through their jaded lenses when they expected ignominious defeat. Or feel the power of a Moment of resonance and connection when they expected vapid insouciance.

Once you have met a person with Presence, you never forget how it felt to share a Moment with them. You might shake your head and convince yourself no one could possibly be that sincere and authentic and the longer you are out of touch the more you attribute what you felt to fantasy. Until the next time you’re in their Presence and it all comes rushing back to you like you’d never even left.

Yes, there are mental illnesses which share traits with enlightenment and mindfulness. And those who change from living a life immersed in material pursuits to pursuing meaningful Moments are most likely to encounter disbelief and resistance from their acquaintances. Commiseration is validation and if you choose to no longer engage in misery and resistance your decision incidentally feels like judgement to those left behind.

When you embrace surrender and see things like possessions and money as mere tools for exploring your curiosity and understanding, it creates tension in those who seek comfort and stability in material possessions. There is nothing wrong with finding comfort and joy in worldly things. Beautiful objects and places are treasures to be cherished and enjoyed. Fast, powerful cars are sensual feasts to be experienced and fabulous food is meant to be played with. Money is meant to be used to acquire what you need to find your purpose. You can be wealthy and enlightened, in fact enlightenment tends to accumulate valuables because you are attuned to the gifts Synergy scatters around you so immediately recognize the value in things before others do.

Like Forrest Gump, you develop an accidental, incidental wealth as you simply keep running on your path with intention, delight, and faith. Like Dory, you find your way home by looking for the patterns you trust in. And like Anna, you do what feels right, then the next thing that feels right, until all is right.

Children start in this world filled with trust, joy, hope, and curiosity. By age 17 they wear the lenses of the sensory and judgemental minds and no longer use the wise brain they were born with.

Only by regression can we find ascension.

Final Destination?

Purpose. Reason. Enlightenment. Truth. Seeking these nebulous yet desirable goals gives a sense of structure and direction for those questing.

But they are not destinations. They are vehicles. Riding within truth and enlightenment gives a much more comfortable and scenic carriage on the tracks than the economy car built on thoughts and feelings. Yet that lounge car is merely a tool, not an end in and of itself. No different than having a full bank account yet striving for more money, being enlightened and basking in that state actually indicates that true enlightenment is yet to be attained.

The wise man secluding himself on the mountaintop to meditate on meaning is surely enlightened, though?

No, not if you truly follow through on the meaning of enlightenment. If you embrace what a precious gift life and the senses and feelings give us, then withdrawing from exposure to the senses is to reject the gift. Insulating from the volatility of others is understandable and certainly safe.

And there it is.

Safety.

Boundaries. Physical, mental, emotional. The more rock solid and impervious your boundaries, the safer your core personality structure. The more you can reside within your wise brain. It makes absolute sense.

But it defeats the purpose of having the sensory and thinking minds if you only dwell in the wise mind. You can use the wise mind to tap into the secrets of the universe but Synergy knows learning by doing is the most effective way to grow. She reveals the secrets to those who listen with all their minds.

But what about those great gurus who teach mindfulness and enlightenment? Aren’t they representing the ultimate in human potential?

Yes, sharing knowledge and understanding with others is a primal drive which we were designed to do. Share. Not direct. Collaborate. Not instruct. Mentoring. Not minding. In the classroom, the people with the most experience outside the halls of academia are the ones the students gravitate toward, embrace, and soak up energy from. Leading by experience and example as a role model is the natural means of teaching, while structured lessons manufactured around set goals and defined topics is simply conveyance of information artificially packaged and mechanically received.

Teaching is noble and necessary. It takes great courage to offer of oneself, and is the essence of vulnerability. Yet it too confines the mind by locking in patterns rather than openness and flexibility since the very act of teaching is predicated on concrete, immutable concepts. Mentoring toward fluid skills is enlightened instruction.

To see truth and enlightenment as the ultimate purpose of life is to lose yourself in the luxury of the panoramic dining car and never disembark the train to touch the desert, swim with the belugas, smell the mountains or feel the wind. There is always more to discover, each day, but it requires immersion in the dirty, messy, painful and admittedly dangerous circus of life as a participant, not a leader nor an ascetic.

Judgement Aside

We are who we are. There is no wrong nor right, good nor evil, bad nor good. There are consequences and fallout from our choices, and those cause balance or imbalance, satisfaction or dissatisfaction.

It is our short circuit which leads us to judge. That is not our role. Our role is to live with curiosity and hope, making choices in the Moment that will bring stability to our elemental personality and joy to our Eternal mind.

If we truly embrace Mindfulness and Enlightenment and follow through to the ultimate understanding of reality, then we have to accept that everything is as it has to be. Which means things we perceive as evil or wrong had to happen…thus they are not wrong, they are an adjustment to compensate for imbalance.

Each person acts to satisfy their needs in each moment. Some people are able to do so without cost to others, while some must do it at the expense of someone else. To shame people for these situations is to work against Synergy, to act in judgement and to take a position of superiority. Hubris.

Humility and acceptance cause no harm if given sincerely. False humility, that which feels hurt when not honoured or respected, is not authentic.

True surrender means being walked upon, being martyred, being vulnerable while still understanding there is purpose to the pain and beauty in the sacrifice.

All who live join Synergy in death, their Eternal consciousness freed from the sensory ties and judgements…and temptations…of reality. No matter what they did on Earth, they will find acceptance and comfort. Every act on Earth is an attempt to refine Datter and balance Matter, not elicit evil or judge worth.

To fight the short circuit, to forsake judgement and condemnation, to be open and vulnerable even to those known to exploit and violate, takes immense courage and faith.

And sometimes merely walking out the door in these uncertain times takes incredible courage and faith.

Courage and faith, and patience, get rewarded with peace and joy, in one lifetime or the next.

Walk with hope and curiosity, faith and courage, joy and happiness, and Synergy walks with you.

Schrodinging Everything

Hedge your bets and prepare for all eventualities with the hopes that things will come out hopping when Synergy finally presents the opportunity to open the darn box.

Greeting every day with curiosity, hope and acceptance means being ready for anything in any Moment. Being receptive to whatever springs up on you means you’ll never be disappointed with the chances you didn’t take, the opportunities you didn’t seize or the Moments you missed.

Assume all possibilities are open to you until the moment you know the truth.

This includes options you may perceive as negative. Don’t rule out failure or hurdles…in fact, count on them thus they won’t devastate you. Have Plan A, Plan B, in fact prepare the entire alphabet just in case. The more you understand the parameters and possible outcomes for every decision you face, the stronger your position for satisfaction in a perhaps unexpected form.

We don’t know what is best for ourselves. We don’t know what we need. We often don’t know who we even are, so how can we be certain what is in our best interests?

Synergy knows. But it’s up to us to accept her wisdom and be receptive to her gentle guidance. We blind ourselves with our thoughts and feelings, setting our hearts on things that were never meant to be, because we are trapped in our past or dreaming of our future.

Obstacles, barriers and disappointments are merely rungs on the ladder ascending toward enlightenment and true understanding of self, others, and the universe. Our purpose is to discover our purpose, which can’t be chosen, can’t be predicted, only unveiled.

Every decision has a Moment for making it. Not talking about it. Not planning it. Not dreaming about it. Those are not decisions, those are efforts. Until the Moment of Truth, efforts encompassing all possible outcomes yield the best return on Synergy’s investment in us. So, Schrodinger’s cat is both alive and dead, treat it as such until time to open the box!