Reinvention Week 6: Remembering the Burn

As I continue my process of working from within to reinvent, I am thinking back to Burning Man, a carnival of experience that can't help but activate one's Warrior of Aliveness. Drawing 50,000 or so people now each Labor Day week in the desert of Nevada, Burning Man is an experiment in living--and creativity--unmatched on the planet right now. What do you need to burn that will help you feel more alive?

Let me share a piece of my experience a few years back, in a story I call...

Letting It Burn

It was Sunday, the last official night of the week-long festival in the desert known as Burning Man, and rumor had it that they were going to burn down the Mausoleum.

Aaron, Jess, Bea and I headed out from our camp on our miraculously still functioning bicycles. The Mausoleum was one of the most beautiful structures I had ever seen on earth, and attending its destruction would be the perfect ending to a week of unprecedented experiences for me and my friends.

Darkness was descending as we pedaled toward the great desert Playa. A sandstorm kicked up out of nowhere, and we put on our goggles and masks and headlamps, as we had done several times in the past few days. But the airborne sand thickened to such an intensity that we soon had to abandon our bikes and set out by foot. Unable to see more than a few inches in front of our faces, our hands on each other's shoulders so not to separate, we slowly walked in what we hoped was the general direction of the Mausoleum.

Now, the truth was, even during daylight, the Mausoleum had been extremely difficult to find in the vast desert. We kept walking, assuming we would run into some of the thousands of other Burning Man participants we believed to be nearby. But minutes turned into miles. The sand was unrelenting, and we came across no one. I drank my last sandy swallow from my water flask. We had lost all bearing of where we came from and where we were heading.

“Do you think we should turn around?” Aaron asked, slight panic creeping into his voice. It was hard for us to hear each other, both because of the sand muffling all sound except its own blowing and because we spoke through surgical masks or bandanas over our mouths.

“Does anyone even know how to get back?” asked Bea. We would have looked at each other for the answer but we could see nothing and already knew the answer was no.

“Let's keep going,” I said. “What choice do we have?” So we kept moving, four voyagers making our way through what felt like a cave in the middle of the earth, somewhere in the great expanse of the Nevada desert.

* * *

The adventure began a few days before: We were lucky to find perhaps the last available RV in all of Northern California, and six of us first-timers packed up and headed out from San Francisco to Burning Man, the week-long festival-carnival in the otherwise uninhabitable desert of northern Nevada. Read the rest of the story here.

Reinvention Week 5: Poetic Interlude

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Let Me Tell You Something

What if I lifted both of my arms
up from the sides of my body
dug my elbows into the wall
and catapulted myself forward, feet first
toward you?
Would that lure you from the whirl?

What if you were distracted by a fly near your eye
and you turned to see my body falling on its spine
my body crawling one vertebra at a time
toward you?
Would that disturb your pattern of chatter?

Let me tell you something:

I would like to tear the colors off my skin
and spread their yolk over my face
until I spit rainbows

I would like to turn to the wall,
arch my body
and throw back my head,
until you see the spidery reflections of my lashes on the ceiling,
until they fall like warm sugar into your eyes
and become questions you already know
the answers to

I would like
to love you

~Adam Shames

Reinvention Week 4: Mission Mantras

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I'm in the process of reinvention and I'm asking the question: What does it take to change my internal identity in such a way that sustained change--real reinvention--can happen? I went inward and Eastward last week to yoga and a yogi, and was left with the message to create my own mantras.

Now when I just write the word "Mantra"--which simply is a repeated, often sacred phrase or sound used by meditators for thousands of years to create transformation--an automatic thought is activated in me. Actually several. That I am risking embarrassment by sharing this. That I live in Chicago and no longer Northern California, and I shouldn't make people here cringe. That I should worry about my reputation as a professional consultant. That I should give up this "reinvention" idea because as much as it sounds good and is what "all innovators are doing" it requires changing something within, which is hard to talk about or admit to or do at all without worrying about a whole host of implications.

You see, I have many automatic thoughts whose goals appear to be to keep me in a life of safety, resist any risk and change, and shut out any ideas of living a more impactful life.

And I know you do too. So I'm asking you--yes, you, reading this right now--what automatic thoughts do you have that are keeping you small and safe? And more importantly, if you could silence those thoughts and live from an identity that would be closer to your real calling, what identity would that be?

Despite my automatic thoughts shaming me for weakness at having to resort to mantras, those thoughts are full of crap. My goal is to be a Warrior--not Worrier--of Aliveness. A warrior must use whatever can work to achieve his mission. And I just don't see how I can change my internal chatter without the proactive, creative act of re-wiring my messages to myself. Think about it--what is stopping you from being more of the YOU-you-want-to-be in the world? In large part it's our internal mantras, our repeated phrases born of protection and fear. So my goal is to change them.

Here's my challenge to you: Send me some of the mantras befitting the identity you want to live out of. You can share them anonymously (or not) via comment or by email to me. I want to hear them. And I need to create and hear mine, again and again, to myself, every day, in order for transformation to happen.

While historically a mantra can be anything from a simple sound or phrase or a more detailed affirmation, right now I need my mantras to reflect my mission. What does it mean to me to take on this identity I'm calling a Warrior of Aliveness? I need to be reminded, again and again, of who I am and what I am up to in this world. So here are some of my mission mantras that I am repeating again and again, morning and night, to rewire my automatic thoughts. What are yours?

To live as my most awakened self To help others live more as their true selves To discover and follow my passions To feel more alive and be in the moment To eviscerate the needless negative To stretch others and myself to actively make a difference in the world To say yes to that which enlivens To take out my sword and slice the saboteur who keeps me closed and small To be and help others to be a creator and not just a spectator To open my heart and feel more, rather than numb myself To be excited about life To bring more love into the world To experience the world and try new things rather than hide To release the negative and embrace positive To get off the leash of my monkey mind To be in the now rather than escape and distract myself To speak the truth and help others speak their own truth To take bigger risks To be a model for possibility To embrace change To stop pleasing others at the cost of my own principles and passions To express myself boldly, creatively and confidently...

Reinvention, Week 3: Seeking the Power Source

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Since continuous "reinvention" has emerged as a hallmark of innovation in the 21st century (and I'm overdue for one), I'm in the process of attempting an actual reinvention. It's Week 3 with a new identity--which I'm calling the Warrior of Aliveness--and I've quickly realized that to think differently and be guided by a real shift of belief from within, I need fuel. I need to plug into some kind of power source befitting a Warrior to keep the process on track.

In my 20s, I remember reading the 20th century spiritual classic Autobiography of a Yogi, which introduced many westerners to eastern enlightenment through the life of Paramahansa Yogananda, the first yoga master of India to take up permanent residence in the West. Maybe, I thought, I needed to revisit Yogananda's wisdom to find a renewable power source.

I started by going to several yoga classes, which have generally revealed that I am pretty fat and lazy, with an unfocused mind that tends to drift and fall into its default, un-warrior-like patterns of distraction and complaints.

So to up the ante, I visited the local Kriya Yoga center here in Chicago to get some inspiration from Swami Kriyananda, the foremost living disciple of Yogananda. I was witness to a live feed via Skype of the old bearded man himself, who has many thousands of followers throughout the world. I listened intently to him for a message that could fuel me or at least steer me in the right direction. The Warrior within awoke as Kriyananda suggested that a life worth living is one in which you discover and pursue a mission worth dying for. You can't let yourself be limited by the "web of words," he said, referring to the cultural mindset around us. "Instead, create your own mantra."

Create my own mantras. Yes.

My inner guidance flickers and changes its message too often. Becoming a warrior is in large part mental, I know, and right now the natural "mantras" of my monkey mind are not empowering me. They change, they doubt. They point out how ridiculous I am. They sabotage with excuses and grievances that sound legitimate but do nothing to improve the quality of my life.

I know that to be equipped to battle for my own aliveness and the aliveness of others, I must think differently and be fueled by a different mindset. But, as Kriyananda reminded me, I have to create it. I have to choose this mindset. I have to rewrite my mental script in such a way that loose wiring becomes hard, and doubt insists on clarity. My power source must, at least in part, come from newly created mantras of my own design.

All right, Warrior, time to create.