“All I need is to be struck by your electric love”
– “Electric Love”, BØRNS
Growing up in the 21st century Creative Class economy, there are more would-be artists and filmmakers and writers than ever before. It seems every entrepreneur emerging from business school has some slick new idea in a well-designed package – craft beer, craft fedoras, craft websites in a craft font about craft pickles.
Maybe it’s evidence of human consciousness itself evolving – finding and colonizing ever-smaller niches with better aesthetics and more sophisticated organizing principles. Or maybe the whole thing is annoying and self-indulgent and if I have to drink another elderflower martini in another faux-industrial craft hipster bar I swear to God I’m gonna throw a McSweeney.
Contemplative Circuit Training
Except … what if the ground is being set here for a more important organizing principle to emerge? One that draws energy and inspiration from the creative impulse, but channels it instead towards innovative acts of helping other people?
Time to get recklessly Utopian for a few paragraphs – please click on this link for our maddeningly poppy and optimistic newsletter listening anthem. Ok good, nice synth drum beat, here we goooooo …
“Coming down the mountain ….”At CEC, we Activate. We round the contemplative circuit, the one there in every tradition that doesn’t suck. First you go up the Mountain – you meditate and practice, you connect to your ground (which also happens to be everyone’s ground), you work on all those neurotic limiting patterns that make you clutch and grasp and seize and wheeze (“that’s mine, I punch you!” etc) – and as you progress you start to experience this sweet little paradox. If at the start it’s our own stress and unhappiness we work to address, at some point – if we’re genuinely opening – the direction of concern reverses. Energy formerly bound up in self-interest starts to get re-directed towards others.
Which brings us to the second part of the circuit: coming down the Mountain. What else are you gonna do up there – eat a million sandwiches? Hell no! We’re humans – we’re here to party. Or let’s rephrase that, were here to clean up the post-party mess.
“Baby you’re like lightning in a bottle …”Things are moving so fast these days we don’t get the luxury of perfecting ourselves, whatever that means. Call it contemplative circuit training: we need to learn to go in – and out – in a single motion.