Throw a great big wrench into global society and the world slows down. With less human activity, wildlife is returning to cities and the air is cleaner. The earth is even vibrating less. What will we do with this slower pace?
Some are pushing to get the race pumped up again. And there are a lot of real problems people have to figure out how to deal with now and for the future since COVID-19 isn’t likely to be the last world-stopping event. But, rather than hurry past this time, why not use it to create new possibilities?
Photo by Christina Leimer
New ideas come out of a quieter time and pace. Stillness is the home of the imagination. Science and spiritual traditions agree. The Harvard Business Review encourages business leaders to play, to allow themselves and employees time to reflect to help possibilities emerge. Imagination, they say, is needed to shape the new environment. Shamans agree.
In American culture, it’s difficult to slow down and back off trying to fix a problem or come up with a solution. We believe it takes great effort and will. We have to “do” something. All the time. That’s a cultural bias that has far-reaching effects. Like so much human activity that the planet vibrates more.
In his book Courageous Dreaming, anthropologist, shaman and teacher Alberto Villoldo distinguishes between will and intent. Will is what we use “to try to force the world to conform to the way we think things should be, while intent is the mechanism by which we dream creatively and courageously.” (p. 67) “Will corrects and fixes things after they’ve manifested, but intent shapes things before they’re even born.” Both intent and will are needed—but at the right time.
With intent, we ask a broad question or hold a desire without specifying a particular tactic and then let the answer or condition unfold in its own time and its own way. Villoldo gives as an example the shamans he trained with in Peru. Their intent was to disseminate their teachings to the West. They didn’t develop a plan for how to do it, seek and evaluate potential messengers, or decide how they’d measure their success.
Instead, they took advantage of opportunities as they came. Villoldo was there doing research for his dissertation. He didn’t see himself as a potential shaman, spiritual tour guide or teacher. But the shamans saw him, and others, as a potential spokesman and nurtured it. They didn’t pressure, always leaving the decision—the will—and the way up to Villoldo.
When shamans say “dream the world into being” I take it as a more poetic way of saying let’s allow time for imagining and let our actions grow out of that receptive state. Lighten up, instead of bearing down. Can we?