The Pendulum - Tapping Into The Eternal You

Level 5: Master Player

I look to my left ... there's a man in a slick blue ankle length cloak, clasped in the front with gold, wearing a mask with tall horns.

I look to my right. There a woman sits very clearly looking like a Sith lord.

I'm in a room surrounded by characters from various fantasy and sci-fi settings ...

And everyone is looking calmly at the panel seated at the front.

The panel consists of two Sci Fi writers and a scientist.

They are discussing HEISTS.

Quite vigorously I might add. The scientist above the other two appears to be quite enthusiastically interested in the subject of heists.

I recently spent a weekend at a scifi / fantasy convention which held a heavy focus on the writing of scifi and fantasy (whether that be a short story, novel, screenplay, script, etc).

And I watched many of these writer panels unfold.

But something curious started to happen to me.

"But what about heists in Scifi?"- The question filters through in various forms.

I sit in the audience and watch as if on another layer of reality, before me amidst the thrum of back and forth discussion, illuminated is the character of being human.

The panel is full of experts who make this craft a living.

To them, the reason something works and why they do it is almost completely separate from what it is they are doing. SciFi writers they may be, but why the thing they are doing works doesn't have anything to do with SciFi.

The split is obvious to me,

Like I'm standing in the matrix, with the panel explaining philosophy and principles, and the audience asking about tools and tactics.¹

One group saying "what's important is why" and the other saying "well what about what?"

Sometimes the questions hit the panel and they don't know what to do in the disconnect ... What makes a heist in Scifi?

In my head I respond - ‘the same thing that makes a heist anywhere else, only the technology and atmosphere are different.’

Except no one realizes that is what is going on.

The endless struggle of the creative to explain how they are creative and make amazing things, butting up against the endless struggle of the "wants to be" trying to figure out what they need to do to be like the creative.

Take out the word 'creative' and put in any type of person who has dedicated themselves to a deeper meaning, mission, or craft in their life.

More fundamentally ...

The unifying theme across every panel that I witnessed, in the context of writing a story, writing characters, figuring out details - whether it's a heist or a con, whether it's in space or not, whether there's a unique language or not - whatever the end details (the tactics, the tools) ...

The professional writer always comes back to this one idea ---

Let the writing tell you what needs to be.

Let the characters come out of the story.

Let the world inform the plot and the plot inform the world.

Let the society emerge from the characters and the plot and the world and then let them re-inform one another.

A great story is not CREATED, in the sense of how you build something - like putting together a lego set.

A great story emerges from the consistent receptive creation of the writer as they live the experience of unfolding that story into words.

In short, you write NOT TO MAKE SOMETHING but rather you write TO ALLOW SOMETHING TO BE MADE.

Dear reader,

Walk with me for a moment.

Before you dismiss this article because it appears to be about "writing" ...

Let me hit you over the head with the blunt instrument of directness:

I'm talking about writing because it's my field of expertise, and it's a lens through which I can communicate "the real lesson."

This article uses the subject of writing - but IT IS NOT ABOUT WRITING.

Just like this next bit is about Golf,

But it is not about golf.

The Authentic Swing

"Who are you Junah? Who, in your deepest parts, when all that is inauthentic has been stripped away? Are you your name? ... Are you your roles, Junah? Scion, soldier, Southerner? Husband, father lover? Slayer of the foe in battle, comforter of the friend at home? ... Are you your virtues, Junah, or your sins? Your deeds, your feats? Are you your dreams or your nightmares? Can you hit the ball with any of those? No? Then who are you?"

- The Authentic Swing, quoting The Legend of Bagger Vance - by Steven Pressfield²

I've read and followed Steven Pressfield for many years. Many of the ideas and messages he had to share resonated with me. I've spoken of his concept of Resistance before, which I found powerful.

I decided, in the midst of writing this article, to revisit The Authentic Swing.

Something about it called to me again.

Different man. Different river.³

I didn't realize just how different.

I remember reading this book before and finding the ideas interesting.

Now though,

Now it all makes sense.

In a tingles-up-my-spine kind of way.

I am Neo in the Matrix, as I now not only "get" what he is saying, but I can see the deeper meaning and context in and between the lines while I am reading.

I can see the structure around the words that make the words more deeply meaningful than I ever saw them before.

The main idea aligns so alarmingly strongly with what I'm going to reveal to you later in this very article,

That I felt it irresponsible to not share what it is I saw and discovered.

I'm going to do my best to give you my insight from my experience reading - as opposed to just telling you what's in the book. As such, I recommend you go read it yourself.

The Authentic Swing is a book about writing that is not about writing.

Pressfield weaves the unveiling of the deeper process of his own creative journey with that of characters from his book - The Legend of Bagger Vance.⁴

The conflict of a man attempting and failing to come out on top in a golf tournament, with his caddie (Bagger Vance) taking him on a journey that is seemingly anything but about golf ...

Like Obi Wan who's main message to Luke is "trust the force" (an example Pressfield uses as well) - It's not about the battle out there, it's about the battle in here.

And THAT book about Golf is not about Golf, it's about the discovery of your true self.

When I first read the concept of "The Authentic Swing" being, in essence, your unique way of living and doing - your unique self - I can faintly recall nodding my head thinking "yea that makes a lot of sense.”

Reading again this time,

What started to hook me in hard was a distinct thread that appears in the first half of the book ...

The real story is revealed to the writer (Pressfield) when he participates in the act of writing. A message that echoed so strongly what I had just heard at the convention,

I kept digging.

"The trick to writing, or to any other creative endeavor, is that once you start, good things begin to happen. You can't explain it. You don't know why. An energy field is created by your love, your will, your devotion, your sweat. This energy field draw to it like-minded particles."

Goose bumps.

For me anyway.

Because I know exactly what he is talking about, and how to access it intentionally.

Pressfield says

"how does this happen? I don't know. but I've been doing this for forty years and it always seems to work."

I know Steven. I think you actually do too.

And I'm going to show you. I'm going to show ALL of you.

I thought in the moment "Yes! I Have it! This is the thing!"

And then it got better.

"The philosophy that underlies the idea of the Authentic Swing contradicts the Western ideal of education, training, and evolution. It rejects the axiom that 'you can be anything you want to be.'"

YES. I know that philosophy. I grew up with that message in my head.

I can be ANYTHING I put my mind and heart to.

Isn't that such a wholesome message?

Isn't that so empowering?

FALSE

It's not empowering.

Because IT'S NOT TRUE

You can't "be anything or anyone" - YOU CAN ONLY BE WHO YOU ARE

"According to Bagger Vance, we can only be who we already are. If we find ourselves lost or tormented or in pain, the reason is that we have somehow become estranged from who we really are, from the ground of our individual being."

And your JOB

Is NOT to discover who you are or can be ...

It's to figure out who you are NOT and chip away at all that is not your true self.

Pressfield calls on Plato to introduce the idea that "the golf swing is not learned, it is remembered." In other words, all that makes us unique is not learned, it is remembered.

I like this perspective.

We are all born with everything that we are and it is through the growing of life that societal, social, family expectations layer on top, build up and hide our true selves.

Our task is not to make ourself into anyone or anything, it's to do whatever is necessary to remove all that is not you.

"Our salvation lies, then, in getting back to that source, that Self."

Pressfield rounds it out - the struggle of all of us through life is very clearly the search for our true voice, our true self, our full potential.

But it doesn't end there ..

The Field and the Knower

Yet again, I invite you to read Pressfield's book, because I'm not going to divulge the magical way he called upon The Bagavad Gita in order to write The Legend of Bagger Vance,

(The concept which, as a writer, has me geeking out)

However,

I'll share this quote (which Pressfield gets from Bagavad Gita)

"Know that all that is flows from the union of the Field and the Knower."

HELLO

Does that sound at all familiar?⁵

Let me give you some more on this from Pressfield:

"Writing is weird medicine. You sit down not knowing what you believe and you get up knowing. The active of writing, or the pursuit of any art, is that adventure by which the Knower injects himself into the Field. You go in not-knowing and you come out knowing."

Ringing any bells NOW?⁶

Pressfield said one more thing which tied it all together for me.

"The story of The Legend of Bagger Vance is the story of a man who, after years of resisting, finally listens to his own inner voice. The mentor ... character is the part of ourselves that has access to the Quantum Soup, the Divine Ground, the dimension of the eternal. That part of ourselves is the part that we write from, paint from, make movies from. It is the element from which all creativity derives. What saved Junah is when he stops resisting this part."

In a moment, I'm going to show you why this gave me goose bumps.

The Pendulum

Since our March 2024 TGA Event⁷, I have been carrying concepts within me that were revealed there.

SEE THE TGA EVENT SCHEDULE HERE

At the event, I did not try to "solve" all the questions and ideas that came to me. Rather I accepted them, wrote down the ones that made me go "huh" and then let them sit.

I left the loop open.⁸

I let that uncomfortableness marinate within myself, allowed it to be, tried to forget about the ideas.

And in that practice they kept coming back to me in the world.

Throughout my creative life, I have been dancing around understanding who I really am, what that means in terms of what I do and create, and how to actually live a life of full authentic creation.

I can only see it now, how many times I heard all of these ideas said and yet couldn't fundamentally really feel it or explain how to access it.

How many times I heard "all you need to do is write."

Yes but ...

There's both more, and there's less.

Because what I've found is not just how to call upon The Muse on demand, but the core process by which I can with consistency and reliability chip away at all that is not me, and tap into The Eternal power whenever and wherever I happen to be.

To enter into flow whenever I want, wherever I want, if even for a few relative moments in time

This concept is elusive.

Its the kind of thing where, as soon as you try to close your grasp around the idea, it disappears as if you've just closed your hands around smoke.

Yet today I will attempt to gently grasp it for you.

Heres how to access The Muse - ON PURPOSE - to unlock your connection to the infinite and chip away at all that is not you, so that you may discover your true self who has always been there.

We are always in one of two states.

Implementation and Receivership

Think of this like a Pendulum. I invite you to consider my lovely artwork depicting this:

(my notes directly from The TGA Event, March 2024)

Implementation first because it's both the easiest one to explain, and also the one where most people get stuck.

Implementation is building.

It's putting your energy and focus into creating something, typically something specific.

Dr. Jeff Spencer⁹ talks about this space as being where we are Goal Focused.

Implementation is draining. Implementation takes a lot of energy and focus and does not leave room for anything else when you are in it.

A lot of people get stuck for much of their lives in Implementation.

It's easy to get stuck there, because all it takes is a consistent perspective that you need to be doing something.

Receivership is the other swing.

Receivership is the space where you regenerate. Where you gain your energy back.

It is where you explore and discover.

It’s where you slow down and let go and STOP “doing.”

It's where you create space to cut away that which you no longer need.

Where you can chip away at that which is not your true self.

And for me,

It is where I write my best writing, where I hear from the muse, and where the clarity of understanding always arrives, if I allow it.

This is the power to access the muse, flow, focus, receptivity, god, whatever you want to call it - on purpose.

When I learned this concept initially at The TGA Event, I had the quick realization that for much of my life I have had the perspective that writing is done in IMPLEMENTATION.

Because I saw writing as DOING something. The doing of creating a thing that needed to be created. Whether that was a paper for a class, an article, an email, a bit of copy for a client, etc.

I saw creating things as building things.

Long before I understood this Pendulum, I always sat in the space of Implementation to do most of my writing.

And typically I'd say this was because I was sitting down to write something specific.

You can possibly see how confusing that can get.

How can writing be anything OTHER than implementation if you sit down to write specific things unless when you sit down to write you only write aimlessly.

Remember that part at the end, where I said Pressfield's words gave me goosebumps?

He talks about Living on Two Levels at Once where we are all subject to this nature that one voice in us has access to, what Pressfield calls …

"the Quantum Soup, the Diving Ground, the dimension of the eternal. This is the part that we write from, paint from, make movies from - the element from which all creativity derives."

The other part is the part that DOES.

We all spend so much time resisting the part that has access to the eternal (as does Pressfield's characters), because it requires that you let go, stop resisting, stop trying to be anyone other than yourself, shed all that is NOT you, and just BE.

It’s much easier to “do” - and society certainly likes you to think that’s the important part.

I made the same mistake that Junah makes in Bagger Vance. For much of my life I resisted the part of myself that would allow me to chip away and see my true self - I resisted Receivership.

And I saw this.

And I saw Receivership and Implementation.

And I realized.

NOW, I have figured out how to willfully access the Eternal for the power of my own self creation.

Maybe because I've been chipping away at all that I am not, and that is only leaving that which I am and in that which I am I can see the space where it is possible to willfully access The Eternal.

To be in Receivership.

To WRITE in Receivership.

I know this is true because every bit of the words I've written here have all come to me from some place I could not see before I started writing them. I just started, and I let myself be in a space of allowing that power to flow and the message to come through me.

But it can't be all Receptivity.

The truth is there is balance necessary.

This article is example enough of that.

Because while I have spent the FAR FAR majority of my time writing this article in receptivity - hours and hours ... spilling thoughts and connecting ideas and accepting the gifts of understanding and clarity that appear only when I am in a state of receptivity.

At some point I will have to stop and go into Implementation to finish putting the article together in the end.

To publish.

Because there is work to be done. There is a message to be shared. New understanding and insight to be had.

And this brings us back full circle.

To The Field.

This is why we must oscillate between the two points of The Penduluum.

Just as Pressfield says about The Field ---

"The act of writing, or the pursuit of any art, is the adventure by which the Knower injects himself into The Field."

I would extend this to say, the act of discovering your full potential, of learning and growing, is "the adventure by which the Knower injects himself into The Field."

We know this all too well in The Guardian Academy.

You can't learn and grow if you do not Engage the Field.¹⁰

This is the full energetic cycle that you must embrace. It's not just about knowledge and understanding, it's about using this process to rediscover your true self who has been there all along.

I can't tell you how to do this.

I can only tell you how I do this.

For me, I've learned that I do my best writing and creation when I am in a state of receptivity. When I can let go of making something happen, and shift into allowing something to happen as I put myself in this space of writing.

And as I write, I chip away at all that is not me, and the writing reveals the truth - yet again back to my favorite quote from Flannery O’Conner - “I write because I don’t know what I think until I see what I say.”

That’s true IF I’m writing in Receivership.

It really is tapping into a flow of energy and connection to something beyond anything I can consciously comprehend.

And just like Pressfield experiences with The Muse, when I am in that state, the truth comes to me.

Or rather perhaps,

The truth of myself is revealed to me.

I write in receptivity because I can write endlessly, ceaselessly, with full passion and joy in this state. I can do it in the morning when I am in "my best writing state."

I can do it at 1 am after being awake for 18 hours because I just let myself be in Receivership and then not only do I not spend energy, but I actually gain it back.

I can do it in the middle of an intensely loud, sound pounding, light show display art exhibit (ask me another time) ... because when I enter into Receivership and allow what comes to come, nothing else matters.

I spend as little time as possible in Implementation.

But I go there, and I go there with full force and intention.

I take what I've discovered in Receptivity, and put it fully and completely into The Field with Implementation.

Because THAT experience will feed back into The Eternal, when I return back to Receptivity to write more.

An endless cycle of learning, growing, and chipping away at all that is not me.

Perhaps you will find that perspective and framing useful as well.

Discover your own state of Receptivity .. and then when the time is right, swing back into Implementation.

Just don't get stuck in either point.

Here’s how I think about making all this happen intentionally:

To be in Receivership is to be in a space of ALLOWING not DOING.

When I write in receivership I write without specific intent, outcome, or goal.

Rather I’m writing to see what will show up when I write, and I allow myself to write whatever bubbles to the surface, knowing that ultimately I’ll get where I need to go if I listen.

Perhaps I’m writing as a way of communicating more directly with myself - and that certainly requires receptivity, because the true message isn't made, its re-discovered.

Maybe you don’t see a direct connection with "the thing you do" -

But I think ultimately being in receptivity is to be in a space where you allow what happens to happen. And where you’re open to receiving that connection to the eternal.

In THAT space, you find clarity of who you truly are. Because the message that shows up reveals around it all that is not you.

Maybe you need to write to do that.

Maybe you just need to do whatever it is you usually do, but without a goal focus.

But if you can be in that space, I think you'll find yourself inevitably chipping away to reveal the true you that’s always been there.

What happens next, do you think?

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Can you see for yourself what it’s like to operate from a state of Receptivity?

Can you see yourself getting stuck in one or the other?

Do you feel like you can’t access that eternal soup, like perhaps you’re stuck in doing and not being?

Do you feel like you struggle with taking the ideas you have and implementing them?

Engage the field & Share your real life experience or perspective. Your contribution improves the value of this post for everyone

Comment below, let’s have a conversation. No ideas or questions are off the table. We’ll do our best to answer them all. Never discount your contribution. It could be the exact thing that someone else needed to hear.

Live to Learn. Give to Earn.
The Guardian Academy.

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1. From Form to Function: How To Think Your Way to Clarity

2. Steven Pressfield - The Authentic Swing

3. Different Man, Different River

4. Steven Pressfield - The Legend of Bagger Vance

5. Engage The Field

6. Stepping Into The Arena [Invite]

7. TGA Event Schedule

8. TGA Foundations: Open Loops and Learning

9. The Cornerman's Corner [Welcome]

10. The Arena #1