Here is a guided meditation to ensure that The Four-Chambered Heart is strong, clear, open and full.  It is best to explore these questions daily, but Sunday is a good day for reflection for Visionmakers who are busy pursuing meaning all week long.

• What is my heart directing me to act upon at this time? Where am I strong-hearted?  Where am I weak-hearted?  How does weak-heartedness impede my journey?  How do I remove or navigate around the obstructions I am facing?

 

• What am I clear about in my relationships and tasks?  What steps can I take to manifest my heart’s desire? Where am I doubting, lacking clarity, uncertain or stuck?  How do I bring greater clarity to bear on my tasks and relationships?

 

•  Where am I open-hearted to other people, accepting of my experience and receptive to the flow of life’s abundance?  Where have I closed and hardened my heart?  How do I resolve, rectify or repair these situations?

 

•  Where am I fully engaged in my tasks and relationships?  Where am I half-hearted?  Why?  What actions do I need to take to re-engage the full heart?

The Visionmaker’s Guided Meditation brings improved results with practice. Learning to still the mind through patience and practice, the Visionmaker becomes attentive to the quiet voice of the heart and disciplined in following it’s guidance.

© Patrick O’Neill 2008. All rights reserved.

“Where the heart is willing, it will find a thousand ways.  But where it is unwilling, it will find a thousand excuses.”

–The Dayaks of Borneo

Visionmaking requires deep engagement – the full application of every ounce of personal power that a human being has at his or her disposal. Personal power comes from the partnership of heart, intellect and will in support of purposeful action. Anything less than a full-hearted commitment to act will fall short or miss the mark.  Half-heartedness is the enemy of Visionmaking.  It robs us of our potency and diminishes our impact.

Deep engagement comes to those that have heeded the call of the heart and have made the commitment to pursue a path of meaning.  Meaning is  deep recognition of quality and value that awakens the human spirit.  Every human being yearns for a meaningful and purposeful life. It is as instinctual to the human spirit as the journey upstream is to the salmon. Meaning is always a journey, never a destination.  A Visionmaker accepts this paradox as a locus of transformation and abandons personal ambition for the experience of full immersion in what is most meaningful– to self, family, friendship, work, and community.  When we actively pursue meaning in our lives, we become Visionmakers.

Most people live in half measures. The crushing weight of routine, boring work, and abandoned dreams tears the fabric of the human spirit allowing vitality to leak away in a steady drip.  While it’s happening, we convince ourselves that everything is normal.  We tell ourselves that we are tired and have too much to do.  Our jobs are so demanding, the kids are exhausting, the times frenetic and volatile.  Drugs, alcohol and tv are used to manage depression. It isn’t so bad, we say.  Isn’t it what everyone feels?  Aren’t we supposed to just get through the day?

Perfect conditions for half-heartedness to take root and carry us to disengagement. The America mythologist, Joseph Campbell warns us of the peril that we face when we turn away from the heart, which is the source of deep engagement:

“Refusal of the summons converts the adventure into its negative.  Walled in boredom, hard work, or “culture,” the subject loses the power of significant affirmative action and becomes a victim to be saved.  His flowering world becomes a wasteland of dry stones and his life feels meaningless…Whatever house he builds, it will be a house of death; a labyrinth of cyclopean walls to hide from him his Minotaur.  All he can do is create new problems for himself and await the gradual approach of his disintegration.”

Deep engagement demands that our connection to purpose and meaning is far greater than the morbid gravity field of routines. Original and direct experience of living on a path of heart and meaning is never routine, hum-drum, boring or monotonous.  Such original experience is the raw material that feeds deep engagement.  It is a headlong encounter with life that demands we apply every resource, every faculty that we have at our disposal.  In this kind of encounter, we can never remain the same. Complete transformation is the demand and the result of such deep engagement with life.

A Visionmaker is insatiably hungry for life’s experience–for a direct personal awareness of and engagement with the world.  To be a dynamic force in the world, especially in these times that are calling out for positive change, is a destiny worth pursuing.  Our families, organizations and communities deserve our best…and our best is only available through deep engagement.

© Patrick O’Neill 2008. All rights reserved.

This is a response to Justine Durrell’s question from my last post, The Source of Purposeful Acts.  Justine wondered how to develop all three intelligences–emotion, intellect and will equally without over-relying on a natural strength. This is a terrific and difficult question to answer in a concise manner. 

To begin, it is important to do a fair self-assessment of strengths and challenges. Many of us have received feedback to help us understand our competencies. Also, we may see styles in others that we are more or less comfortable and familiar with. Often, we are drawn or repelled by styles that mirror our own strengths and challenges. These are important clues to assist in recognizing which power(s) need more attention and development .    

Teachers, mentors and coaches are also excellent resources to assist in assessing and developing balance and excellence in all three domains. But Reflection is the most important vehicle to explore personal development and growth. As Visionmakers, we have a responsibility to do our own work and not over-rely on the guidance of others. Also, we should never be overly independent and isolated from help and feedback. Striking a balance between doing our own work and asking for help is the Visionmaker’s way.

Next, there must be a commitment to ongoing growth, especially when we have routines and patterns of accomplishment.  It’s easy to rely on our strengths, especially where our natural aptitudes are easier to access. But this approach would be like an athlete training only one part of the body.  Eventually our strengths become weaknesses when we over-use them and don’t take a holistic approach to development.  

As well, we discover that some strengths are better suited to certain situations than others: heart, intellect and will all have their appropriate use, situations, timing and place. Therefore, it is imperative on a journey of meaning that we have access to the full range of aptitudes, gifts, talents and qualities that are native to each of the powers.  My chapters in the Visionmaker that deal with this specifically are in the second section: The Cradle of Manifestation.

The Heart

In The Visionmaker, which will be available next year, I suggest that the heart is an organ of vision. Instead of looking outside of oneself for answers, the Visionmaker turns his or her gaze inward and reflects on the state of the Four-Chambered Heart. The Four-Chambered Heart, as taught by Angeles Arrien (see the link to her website), consists of the full, open, clear and strong heart.  When we are full, open, clear and strong-hearted we are able to see what is profoundly meaningful and as a result, able to answer the navigational question: “What.” Half, closed, doubting and weak-heartedness obstructs vision.

Through daily reflection, the Visionmaker examines the state of the heart, addressing and removing the obstructions to ensure vision is 20:20. Unfinished business, past hurts, grudges, fears, anger, jealousy, withheld communication and unresolved conflicts are brought to closure, wherever possible. The Four-Fold Way, by Angeles Arrien, is an excellent resource to assist in the development of the heart.  

Intellect

The intellect actively engages two faculties in planning the “How” on a path of heart and meaning.  The first is cognition. It is principally concerned with harnessing the pragmatic and practical aspects of the journey.  The second is the imagination. It is concerned with ideas, images, and dreams that are signposts of the way.

There are eight aptitudes that require development in cognition, or what Visionmakers call The Way of Knowing:

• awareness

• attention

• probing

• understanding

• reasoning

• analysis

• judgment

• memory

The imagination, or The Way of Dreaming, requires attention and development be paid to ten portals:

• dreams

• images

• symbols

• creativity

• possibility thinking

• stories

• myth

• ritual

• art

• memories

The Ways of Knowing and Dreaming, working together, convert possibilities, through actions, to positive impacts. Therefore both need our attention. One without the other reduces our capacity to manifest action effectively and efficiently.

Will

Will is the capacity to make something happen. It is the business of the will to convert the dialogue of the heart and mind to the fire to act. That capacity depends on three essential components: energy, power and timing.  

Energy comes from purpose.  It requires deep engagement, concentration and hard work to access the energy necessary for manifestation. One must be 100% committed to the journey and learn how to use faith and trust to keep the fire burning. My chapter, Destiny’s Fire, deals with this practice extensively.

Power is that energy directed on the internal or external environment through intention. The more effectively thoughts, emotions and feelings transform to energy, the greater the fire generated. The greater the fire, the more power is available. And, with more power comes greater impact.

Timing of the execution of a purposeful act is every bit as important as energy and power.  One can be as clear as a bell about the heart’s direction and have all the energy and focus in the world, but miss the proper timing. Readiness, economy and efficiency are required to ensure that when the right timing for action occurs, a Visionmaker is ready to act.

Justine, the three powers form a dynamic partnership.  A Visionmaker is a serious student of this combustion system of action and develops each of these resources recognizing that the only sustainable pathway for action comes from a harmonious balance of the trinity. Hope that helps!

© Patrick O’Neill 2008. All rights reserved.

Emotion, intellect and will are the three intelligences that produce purposeful action.  These three powers are a single system, rather than opposing forces.  They are interdependent, much like the components of a combustion engine.

The relationship between emotion, intellect and will has been hotly debated for centuries.  The basis of the controversy is a flawed hypothesis:that emotion and intellect are opposing force in a grand battle to command the will.  As though the will were a plow horse for harness by the fittest master!  Proponents of the intellect as master claim that facts and data are the only reliable source for action and that feelings are irrational and dangerous. The advocates for emotion maintain that reason alone dehumanizes mankind and fosters unethical and inhumane conduct. A Visionmaker understands that each power has an individual but interdependent function.

Emotion, which means “causing movement” helps answer the question ‘What’.  What is meaningful? What has fire? What’s worth pursuing?  What will I live my life for, that will provide the experience of feeling fully alive and used for a purpose greater than the ego?

Intellect provides the ‘How’ to the emotions ‘What’.  It is the power that imagines, acquires knowledge, reasons, solves problems and analyzes choices.  If emotion is the vehicle that connects us to what is most meaningful, the intellect plans the journey.

The will is the capacity to make something happen. The energy, power and timing to act with purpose is the will’s contribution to the dynamic partnership.  Ultimately, the will is the means by which human beings deliver vision to form.

Emotion, intellect and will, united in support of a common destination, help us perceive, understand, make choices, and take action.  These are the critical components of purposeful action and the source of all breakthroughs. A Visionmaker develops emotion, intellect and will equally. Each must be understood, respected and applied in partnership to generate a purposeful act.  

The holy trinity of emotion, intellect and will, when applied to action, creates a fire that scorches convention and gives birth to form. As Bertrand Russell writes: “Instinct, mind and spirit (emotion, intellect and will)* are all essential to a full life; each has its own excellence and its own corruption.  Each can attain spurious excellence at the expense of the others; each has a tendency to encroach upon the others; but in the life which is to be sought all three will be developed in coordination, and intimately blended in a single harmonious whole.”

*The material in parenthesis is mine.

© Patrick O’Neill 2009. All rights reserved.