The Way of Nowhere: Eight Questions to Release Our Creative Potential

Welcome

Welcome to our quest.

It is a quest to unlock the creative potential of people and their organizations.

Over the last 12 years this quest has given us the opportunity to work all over the world with some amazing people and organizations. It has been a rollercoaster ride – and continues to be, as we tap into both ancient and modern wisdom traditions.

Along the way we have learned that it is not answers but questions that unlock our creative potential. Therefore the Way of nowhere is a book of questions. Within and between these questions lie insights. When put together in inspiring and innovative ways, these questions, and the insights they hold, have the power to transform.

We invite you to hold these questions in your mind, to work with them, so you too can discover their magic.

making a choice

We reach choice points all the time in our lives. These can be relatively minor – tea or coffee? – or relatively major – marriage or divorce?

You have presumably made a choice in buying this book. You now need to make another: Where should I begin?

releasing my creative potential

This half of the book works with questions that are designed to unlock the consciousness and creativity of individuals. It looks at ways in which we can catalyze breakthrough in ourselves and others, thereby becoming the inspiration and innovation we want to be in the world.

releasing our creative potential

This half of the book works with questions that are designed to unlock the creative and collective potential of organizations. It looks at ways in which we can transcend our organizational limitations and inspire breakthrough innovations within our organizations and through our organizations into the world.

There is no right or wrong way of entering this book.

You are currently starting this book from a personal perspective. We offer you this page so you can pause for a moment and make a conscious choice as to the best way in for you.

Both ways lead to the Way of nowhere.

a beginning

There must have been more than 60 of us sitting in a circle on a patio overlooking a beach on the south coast of Crete. The group was made up of people from all over the world, and we were there to explore ways of transforming organizations.

We were reviewing some of the workshops we had attended earlier in the day and were beginning to propose sessions for the evening ahead. I was feeling nervous, as I wanted to propose a session on a subject about which I was passionate but knew little. Finally I said to the group:

‘I am really interested in how I can stand back and take stock. How I move from one stage of my life to the next. How I can find greater meaning in my life. And I am interested in how I can help other people find answers to these questions too.

I have wanted to do a Vision Quest for a while. I don't really know that much about them but was hoping there were some people in this circle who might, and who would be prepared to share their experience and knowledge … and I would really like to do a Vision Quest while I am here.

So if anyone would like to join me in trying to organize a Vision Quest, meet me in the cave next to the white church on the hillside at 8.30 this evening.’

I had put it out there and all I could now do was see what would happen. I was about to be amazed, and that process of amazement has continued ever since.

I walked up to the cave as the last rays of sun were disappearing. I caught a glimpse of a light flickering inside, and my heart sank as I imagined someone else was using the space. All I could do was to go up to the cave and wait for other people to arrive – hopefully – and then find somewhere else to go. But when I peeked into the entrance, I was delighted to see that an old friend had thoughtfully cleaned out the cave and lit a small welcoming fire.

We were soon joined by a group of eight or so people who could not have been better suited to the task if we had spent months trying to assemble them. Among them were a well-known Austrian Gestalt therapist, a director of organizational development from a global oil company, a German lady who had been studying with the Deer Tribe for many years and an impressive young Swiss man who had recently completed a Vision Quest in the Lokata tradition.

In the 90 minutes or so that we sat round that fire a beautiful design began to emerge of how we might run a Vision Quest. I was delighted. I was also curious about a dark shadow that had remained outside the cave leaning on a rock throughout the meeting. I waited until everyone had gone and then went outside. A young man was leaning against the rock.

‘Why didn't you join us?’ I asked.

There was a moment's silence, then a small sigh and slight chuckle.

‘I am completing a doctorate on creative breakthrough using a Zen process equivalent to that of a Vision Quest. I have run 20 or so of them in the last two years and I came to Crete to get away from it. ’

We spoke further as we walked back down the hill and along the beach and he eventually agreed to help me design and run the process.

We spent the following day preparing and at dawn the next morning the Vision Quest began. Twenty people spent 24 hours alone in the wilderness searching for a vision of their future. As the sun rose the following day, they emerged from the deep gorges of the island, sat on a rock overlooking the coastline and revealed their insights.

At a personal level, I saw how the diverse life experiences of my then 42 years had a theme running through that I had never seen before. And I saw how my job as head of organizational development for a leading UK retailer was in service of this vision.

A few months later, Nick the younger, the shadowy rock leaner, and I were sitting in my garden in Oxfordshire reflecting on our experiences.

‘What if we could get the board of directors of a business to go on a communal VisionQuest, so they could have a collective breakthrough into their future and how to pull that future into the present?’

This time it was my turn to sigh and chuckle.

‘You just don't understand the pressures that the boards of big businesses are under. Nice idea, but it's never going to happen. Anyway, the process is an individual experience, not a collective one.’

A year later we had taken our first board of directors on a ‘PurposeQuest’ to help them break through their preconceptions and orthodoxies and see the uniqueness of their organization. They caught a glimpse of how they could more powerfully return that uniqueness to the world.

In the years that have followed we have deepened and extended our practice. We have been joined along the way by some wonderful people and worked with some of the world's biggest businesses, as well as numerous government agencies and schools, families and individuals.

This book is our way of taking stock. It is an opportunity for us to share some of the things that we have learned so far on what is an ongoing quest.

our quest

How am I playing a creative role in society…?

This question has been important to us as we have sought to find meaning and purpose in our lives and find our place in the world.

We are all happier and more nourished when we live life as a creative pursuit or adventure. We are motivated and energized when others inspire us or when they feel inspired by us. We are enthusiastic when we see each challenge that life throws at us as another opportunity to learn and to grow.

We also tend to feel most miserable and ‘at sea’ when we are disconnected from those aspects of ourselves that are inherently creative and purposeful, when life consumes us and when there is not enough time in the day or break in the routine to do something different. Then we find ourselves trapped in the way things are. We become victims of circumstance, judging life and the people around us in a way that keeps us stuck, burdened and adrift.

Interestingly, it is both what we think and the way in which we think that can get in the way of our natural creativity and growth. Our thoughts are incredibly powerful. They are the way that we co-create with one another and with the world. They co-arise with emotions that are felt throughout our bodies, and these emotions are translated into actions, behaviour and beliefs.1

Thoughts (and their accompanying emotions) are types of energy, and over time they make themselves manifest in form. The thoughts of our grandparents and parents have created our world. Our thoughts, and the way we think them and make meaning of them, are creating the world in which we live now as well as the world our children will inherit. So it may be wise for us to exercise some care and learn more about the power of our thoughts.

Over time our habitual modes of thinking become calcified within the neural networks of our brains. Like water flowing over rock for thousands of years, they carve ruts in our neural networks, ruts from which we find it difficult to escape. They become our paths of least resistance, our way of thinking, feeling, creating and learning. No wonder we find it hard to change!

This book has been designed to help individuals and organizations to overcome these ingrained patterns, to step onto new ground and find new ways of moving forward through life.

You will of course be aware that you can start this book from one of two directions. Whilst this half is based on releasing the creative potential of the individual, the individual and the organizational are two sides of the same coin. We cannot rise to the challenges that face us in our families, our organizations, our communities and our environment unless we unlock the creative potential within ourselves and between ourselves. Therefore each side of the book helps us to look into personal, inter-personal and organizational dilemmas… Here are some of them:

Working in the week and living for the weekends

We spend 60–70 per cent of our lives at work or preparing for work. It would be heartbreaking to look back from our deathbeds and feel that the majority of our time had been spent working on things that hadn't nourished us or enabled us to grow and realize our highest potential.2 So how can we make our life's work more creative and meaningful…?

Arguing for our limitations

Our beliefs about who we are and what we can do are tied into our early experiences of childhood and family. Some of them are self-limiting – ‘I can't sing’, ‘I am not creative’ – and they tend to persist. What would happen if we could break free from our self-limiting beliefs…? 3

Not accessing our highest potential

We access our highest potential when we use our creativity, our emotions, our intuition, our intellect and our physical capacity. Few of us use these innate capabilities to the full. No matter what the challenge, we tend to use the same ways of thinking and behaving to meet it. Most of us are one- or two-club golfers or one- or two-stroke swimmers. What could we achieve if we could access all of our capabilities…?

This is a book of practice. It maps out ways of helping individuals and organizations play a more creative role in society and simultaneously nurture their growth. It contains a collection of questions designed to help us all move into the unknown and transcend our limitations. It enables us to access our natural capabilities and release our unique gifts. And ultimately it reveals a systemic design that helps us to live in greater harmony with each other and with the planet.

It is about how each and every one of us can find our place – a place where we can connect with our own creative life force and weave it together with that of the people around us.

1 Antonio Demasio, The Feeling of What Happens, Vintage, 2000

2 As stated in a paper by Paul H. Ray, ‘The rise of integral culture’, Noetic Sciences Review 37, 4–15, 1996.

3 Inspired by Richard Bach's Illuminations, Pan, 1978.

a book of breakthrough questions

This is a book of breakthrough questions.

Breakthrough questions are like keys to doors. Each door opens us up to a greater aspect of ourselves, making available a wider and deeper reservoir of internal and external resource. This expansion of resource, of heightened self-awareness and self-knowledge, is vital if we want to call forth our creative and collective potential.

Breakthrough questions lie at the heart of the Way of nowhere. They are essential for unlocking our personal creativity. For creativity rarely begins with an answer. As soon as we discover an answer, learning tends to slow down and curiosity diminishes. By reframing an initial insight, intuition or notion as a breakthrough question, we are able to trigger our curiosity. Curiosity creates vitality, and together they generate enough energy to start and sustain the creative process.4

Breakthrough questions should therefore lead us into the unknown. They should create a sense of excitement, enthusiasm and momentum, yet at the same time generate a sense of trepidation and fear. They are designed to reveal their magic over time as we learn to ‘hold’ as opposed to answer them.

Like a Zen Kõan,5 the challenge is to find a way of transcending our intellect,

allowing each breakthrough question to take us over, so we can learn to become the question. It is then, and only then, that we can break through the question. And it is in the moment of breakthrough that we see things we have never seen before, as if by magic … out of nowhere.

This book introduces eight breakthrough questions which are designed to reveal and unlock eight different doors to our creative potential. By working through these questions we can expand our consciousness, evoke our creativity and co-create our future.

Each chapter opens up a different question by offering pointers to insight. We have intentionally refrained from including our own answers to the questions. The insights we have gained and applied to date, on ourselves or with the organizations and communities with which we work, have been what we have needed to discover. You will need to find your own answers.

By holding these breakthrough questions, sometimes lightly and sometimes firmly, you will find they will begin to reveal their magic. Some will reveal themselves quickly, as you connect with those aspects of yourself that are already available to you as a resource. Some of the questions will be more difficult, as you discover aspects of yourself that are less accessible. The chapters that you find harder to engage with are likely to be the ones that will ultimately offer you the greatest movement forward in your quest to unlock your creative potential.

4 Inspired by a lecture by Moishe Rubenstein entitled ‘The role of intuition in the creative process’, presented at the Second Annual Global Intuition Network Conference at York University, Toronto, Canada, 20–22 August 1992.

5 Kõans are riddles used by Zen masters as a means of awakening, for example John Daido Loori, Two Arrows Meeting in Mid Air, Tuttle, 1994.

inspiring-innovation: a personal practice

We can learn to live and work at a higher order of consciousness. This higher order of thinking, learning and creating is necessary if we are to transcend our limitations, embrace our whole selves and contribute to the myriad of systems of which we are intimately woven.

For each of us to make our unique contribution to humanity and to our world, we must first discover our gifts and then find a means of skilfully returning them. Discovering and harnessing our uniqueness lies at the heart of playing a creative role in society. It is how we get to know ourselves and brings a deep sense of belonging, loyalty and pride.

As soon as we awaken to the possibility of our own uniqueness, we are faced with the question: How can I release my creative potential through the work that I do and the life that I lead…?

When I began to engage with this question, one of the first insights that I had was that it was not going to be either easy or fun if I tried to do it alone.

As in any partnership, Nick and I have many similarities and many differences. We are both committed to this question and to expressing our creativity through what we do. We have both dedicated our lives to experimenting with different practices, both ancient and modern, that may help us to achieve this more fully.