Ideas and inspiration are much like plants. Usually they don’t require our attention to grow by themselves in nature, and some of them, like dewberries, are even sweeter and more delicious when picked on their wild thorny bushes than in a neatly groomed garden. But when we want to save ourselves the hunt for the fruits, there is mutual benefit found for both the hungry human and the plant in a gardening cooperation.
However, no matter how stubborn and greedy humans may be, nature still has its say. When the soil isn’t adequate, or when it isn’t time, then, no point in digging to stretch the roots, like traditional Chinese wisdom says. And in the reverse, no matter what, it’s amazing how these smallest things grow when you trust they will.

A while ago, we found one of these little seeds packages full of sunflower seeds that we could plant. As we needed some soil and pots, we went to a store, and found some other seeds that sounded like fun to have and so we brought them home for a little experiment. And in the end, we also planted radishes, coriander, peppermint and lemon balm, some edible flowers and cherry tomatoes.

But like I said, when it’s not time, it’s not time. The sunflowers started to show up promisingly, but too early for the sun and warmth, they soon perished one by one despite all efforts. After all, huge flowers wouldn’t have been very practical in an apartment anyway, so perhaps it’s was a good thing…
Radishes, by leaf standards were a mild success… Too bad we’re supposed to eat the roots Well, at least the leaves are said to do good in a soup, so it’s not all lost
Coriander and mint, after a long wait finally showed up, as well as the lemon balm.

And in the middle of these, silently, the tomatoes started to show up too. Growing more and more as the days lengthened. And quickly requiring to be staked to be assisted in their growth. There the fun (some would say “make-shift” means ) began.

We had some skewers in the fridge, so, with some little plastic bags ties, they were all propped up for we thought enough time to give us respite.

But once the idea’s firmly rooted, and it finds encouragement in our acts, it only strives to develop. And in our case, by inches

So we decided to find something bigger to tie them up onto… To no avail.
But we got resources…

And a few spare clothes hangers that could help

The night after this strange and fun installation was made, I had a lovely dream, where I was waking up to find the tomato plants in full radiant white bloom. There was a feeling of accomplishment in that dream as if a response of appreciation was mirrored back at me…

Frankly, I don’t know if we’re to eat any fruit from these tomato plants, but at least it was a fun process… And I guess that’s the point
Like for this plant, there is no “official” or “must-do” way to grow these magical ideas into something, and sometimes, you have to invent new ways of creating a fertile environment for them, even if it doesn’t sound practical of even rational… And you find out in the end that the fun is in the putting together of all those tools you got at home, at your grasp, into something new and profoundly meaningful to you…

Coincidentally, this morning, I found something in my mailbox sent by a friend, while we were discussing a similar subject with another one across the globe :

You are unbounded in what you can create. It is all a matter of energy and recognizing the importance and the significance and the powerfulness of energy and how it is directed for that is what creates all that you can do. And all of the magic in your reality. […]

And acknowledging yourself is very important. Acknowledging your accomplishments, regardless of what they are, is very important.

But it is also important to pay attention to the process. For what creates the greatest obstacles in what individuals want to create in their magical expressions, is, when they pay too much attention to the goals or to the outcome and sacrifice paying attention to the process, for the process is what actually creates the magic ~ Elias

This week-end has been providing two interesting experiences with the same message for me.

The first of them was during a chat session with Arkandin. In these sessions, there is usually a lot of palpable energy zooming around, and we are using the pooling it provides to answer some questions we may have.

Most of the time, Arkandin’s answers are a nudging for each of the participants to be using of their inner senses, and for each to find the answers by her/himself. In contrast, sometimes there are answers provided which seem quite baffling at times.

In one of the questions that I had, I was provided with such a baffling answer. I was asking about a strangely recurrent mustard-green colour, and was given more than I expected. This colour was apparently linked to someone.
Always keen on playing the game, I was trying to connect with that person, not necessarily to check the “accuracy” of my impression, but more in order to feel by myself the subtle differences in my inner processes. The very light twinges or energy surges that occur when I feel “cold” or “hot” in regards to that answer.

That night, all I drew was a flat energy. A blank feeling of “I don’t know who the heck is that person”. All of the people I knew I tried to connect to that colour didn’t just feel “right”.

When Arkandin clarified that we didn’t yet know physically that person, it again all fitted together. I didn’t really care if that person was someone I would meet or not, or if she was even “real” , because I knew the answer was in line with my inner guidance system.

And once I reconciliated Arkandin’s answer or direction with my feeling, everything started to flow once again in relation to answers. I could connect to an essence tone for this person, and also with probable locations etc. I was no longer stuck, because I had changed my assumptions.

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The second occurrence was a more technical one. I was looking on F’s blog and noticed that the recent comments on the sidebar didn’t display the relevant article link.

I first thought it related to the WordPress theme that was used, which sometimes may dysfunction with some plugins, and need appropriate fixing, so I started to look into it, only to be unable to find anything to fix.

After trying some other themes for the blog, I finally noticed that it happened for all the themes, and so wasn’t due to the theme at all! It was just because the post wasn’t labeled…
Hahaha, I thought, cunning Finn

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These situations have been prime examples for me of how we sometimes think we don’t know, but regardless still provide ourselves answers and still have a guidance mechanism in perfect working order. It just requires being paid attention to.

That’s the only pitfall

One of the most compelling prowess of our current society is our ability to be more and more able to process huge quantities of information in a single day.
Just thinking of how many people we come in contact with through meetings, emails, TV, radio, newspapers, all over the world in a blink of an eye.

We have learned over the years to become efficient multi-doers or, as informatics slanted people would say, “multi-tasking”. A more appropriate word would be “multi-dimensional” or multi-aspects.

As the Shift in consciousness is progressing, we are indeed becoming more and more aware of the multi-dimensionality of all of our aspects.
What do we mean by “aspect”? An aspect would be akin to type of program designed to accomplish certain tasks.

When we started our group fiction, we had some characters available, or shall we say, focuses of attention. But very soon, as their adventures unfolded, some of us felt the need to invoke new aspects of themselves in different settings to solve certain kinds of issues in a very specific manner.
So they naturally introduced “new” characters or focuses of their attention into the story.

The magic in it, is that it adds a new dimension which enhance the whole experience. Because sometimes some problematics cannot be easily “solved” (we use that word very broadly) inside a given set of structures.

If we digress for a moment, we will take an historical example of this methodology to illustrate this. Till the end of the XVI^th century, some equations were thought to be impossible by mathematicians. For instance, such a “simple-looking” equation as x²=-1 (equivalent to x²+1=0 : what is the number that, multiplied by itself and added to 1 equals zero?) could not be solved for them.
It took a man to say, let’s suppose that there is a solution to this equation, that I call, an imaginary number, and I label it “i”. And let’s play with it, and see what happens.

One of these men (Rafael Bombelli) had just in fact added a new dimension to the previously uni-dimensional realm of mathematics. And the “complex numbers” created in incorporating this new dimension were in fact perfectly valid, and even though not “visible”, they would greatly facilitate solving some equations.

A visual example of how adding a dimension can simplify some understandings of complex transformations

So, if we pay attention, we easily see that we are constantly adapting our personality structure to incorporate a wide variety of aspects.

The point of the Shift in consciousness is that we gradually become aware all at once of these aspects that were previously displayed in a linear fashion. Or if we take the example of the group story, when we want to continue to write the story, we are writing it in all directions at once.
For all of our focuses of attention.

It may seem a bit redundant at first, but the genius of it is that it is not. We do not need to write it for all of them. We only need find the perfect outlet for a specific direction of exploration, and it will shine the light of the answer in all of the others, be they aware of it or not.

In progressing into that Shift, in being present to our movements, we can easily tap into the currently activated outlet or aspect of ourselves, enacting a specific exploration.
The challenge in that is that it may not happen in a way we were accustomed to do it, because we were not taught to look at these “hidden” other-dimensional aspects. So sometimes we experience frustration, sluggishness or feelings of being “empty”, only because our current attention is not in line with our most perfect outlet.

When I created these spaces for self-expression (some of which are listed in the blogroll on the sidebars) I was aware that I was creating new outlets for explorations of me and of others —just as many many individuals are doing right now, may it be through social networks like Myspace, Yahoo 360, Multiply etc. or through personal blogs, or through websites etc. etc.

Now, when I post things, I know which of these spaces is the most perfect outlet for my expression (as in choosing to express through writing, through music, through painting, through sculpting, through cooking without the need to do it in all of these manners).

Bearing that in mind, the proliferation of the means of expression might seem daunting at first, if not overwhelming. How can we keep track of all of these multi-dimensional aspects?
It may be quite simple in fact. It only requires that we focus our attention to the stream of the conscious exploration; in being present at the contact point of the expression and the dimension(s) in which it is expressed.

It is possible. All I needed was not necessarily to streamline all my outlets, but to streamline where I put my attention. Shifting the dynamic by drawing to my attention rather than away from it.

And its objective manifestation is as simple as one address where I aggregated all of these flows of expression into one focus of attention. And I know that I can express in any of my preferred streams, and it will be here without any effort required but put my attention to the unified multi-dimensional stream.

Internet is a fantastic and creative way we got to reflect the intricacies of our creations, and also the ease with which we can manifest.

Think of how easy it is to order the last book or DVD — even if it has a very discreet distribution on some remote part of the world, there is always a means to get it.

Back from a trip in Malaysia in the Cameron highlands (see pic) in 2001 (shortly after September), I was so enthusiastic about the atmosphere, the images I had in my head of that gorgeous part of the Earth, that I wanted to order some of the B.O.H. tea they produce locally. A little googling, et voilà, a few weeks later, I got some mandarin flavoured tea and other delicacies, right in our dead-and-alive hole without much of a trouble.

On the contrary, when we are beginning to get accustomed to so much ease and rapidity, it can be extremely frustrating when things don’t happen as quickly as they could.

Yesterday was a disconcerting day, because when I was setting up this site, there was a time frame were the new addresses were propagating on the worldwide web, and there is no way to control the process or know exactly when it will be right.

At some points, other people could see the new addresses but I couldn’t yet, because it had not yet propagated to my ISP (Internet Service Provider).
But, the fun part was that I could use a proxy (another computer somewhere on the Internet which allows me to “see” through it) that was able to get the new redirection right.

In any case, there is a moment where it’s all about trusting that everything will fall into place, and relax into the process. Just like when Windows asks for a nth reboot after having installed some new updates, just when you’re in a middle of a conversation and it slows down everything to the point of making nothing work at all.
The good thing is that being such a geek, I can move my attention to another computer, and let the Windows one do its stuff in the background without worrying.

And it works. It’s not necessarily quicker, but at least it’s much less annoying…

Back to the Internet metaphor, there is something that struck me with the address relocation episode, and that’s the fact that you don’t always see the same thing as the others depending on where you are on the web.
When I was in China, it was quite funny at times, because I was always wondering whether or not what I was seeing was filtered out (though I could still use proxies, as I explained before, to make that sure).
Back in France, where things are not supposed to be filtered out of political, religious, or such other bias, I tended to forget that, and mainly stopped questioning what I was seeing.

This morning again, everything seemed to be so slow that I wondered where was the “weak link”. After all, it could be anywhere. It could be some technical defect into my own connection, or of my ISP connection, or the host of the website, or even in the worse case, something related to the Internet cables (like it did happen in Asia some time ago).

Apparently, looking at the connectivity stats of my web host, it seemed like it was due to some repetitive attacks from bots on some of there servers which had slowed down everyone hosted on these servers.

Bots are not evil… (they spell with a B like beliefs). They are doing automatic tasks, and very effectively. I link them to how much I am present to myself, and how many automatic reactions I get towards certain beliefs…

How did the web-host solved these attacks? Well, good thing you ask. By rerouting the bots to another server…

Moving your attention again, and let things fall into place…