In Part One of this series, Spotted Eagle discusses the Principle of Vision, describing how “vision” is different from a goal and how great visionaries see their world.
In Part Two, he discusses how limitation and uncertainty serve our creative vision.
In this post, he describes how limitation, uncertainty, purpose and essence are vital to any intention that has the potential to deliver a fulfilling outcome.
In any now-moment, the universe lays before us only certain potentials and not others, and it also gives every actualizable potential a set of natural limitations. An experienced potter understands this. She realizes that potential outcomes which can fulfill her intention to create something out of clay are not unlimited. The clay is what it is, nothing more or less. Clay, like any material, has certain characteristics that limit what can be actualized from it. This is not a problem for the artisan potter because her imagination does not resist the clay’s natural limitations. She takes these limitations and her own level of skill into account as she cultivates her vision for the finished piece.
The artisan potter also knows, before she begins her work, what purpose she intends the finished piece to serve. While she may have a very clear goal for the finished piece, she also understands that uncertainty will make its own unique and valuable contribution to what results. She won’t know until the door of the kiln opens after firing whether or not the pot is even still intact.
Unlike the artisan potter, a person who is fixed upon his goal for the future will see uncertainty as his enemy and struggle against it in fear that his desire for the outcome will not materialize the way he had imagined. He may invest a great deal of energy and become rigid, striving to achieve his goal. He may eventually achieve it, but very often he arrives at his destination exhausted, only to find the joyfulness he had hoped to receive is not only absent from the process of achieving his goal; it is also absent from the result.
Intention is integral to vision, and if it is to serve our creativity even in creating our lives, it must necessarily take into account purpose, essence, natural limitations and uncertainty: the unforeseen, unanticipated and unimagined. Only vision honors these mysteries. Only vision can dance with the uncertainty through which the evolution of any creation takes shape.
Intention that is flexible enough to respond to real-world challenges has a realistic potential to succeed and result in a fulfilling outcome. When we hold a vision for our lives, like the artisan potter, we know the purpose we intend our vision to fulfill. We know the essences we want to experience. We have made a realistic accounting of our available resources and whatever natural limitations are actually present in the now moment. When our intention is set in this way, vision serves to free the investment of our energy so that it can deliver into our lives an outcome that is in alignment with our purpose and which carries the potential to deliver an experience of the essence qualities that give the result meaning and make it fulfilling.
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