The Visionmaker
INTRODUCTION:
a tool-making animal - the highest praise they know
how to bestow. More surely he is a vision-making animal ."1
- Evelyn Underhill
We were born to make a transformational journey filled with untold possibility, a journey only each of us can make individually.
On this journey, we must be prepared to leave the sedate and knowable confines of convention for the wilderness of our original experience. Here, we will be changed forever, and the fire of purpose will infuse our every step.
On this path of heart and meaning, we will encounter forces of change, the power of which should not be underestimated. Nor can they be controlled. We will be asked to face challenges, make sacrifices, and use both innate powers and new resources. We will need to be brave. As well, we will learn to generate action that pierces the status quo and manifests our heart's desire. On this journey, we will become Visionmakers.
Visionmaking is as old as humanity. The first people to walk out of Africa were Visionmakers. We cannot know whether their vision called them to follow herds into unknown lands, or to search for food and water - or whether other forces were calling to them, working through their dreams and imaginations.
Whatever their motivations, these first Visionmakers left a legacy everywhere they went. Those markings - images and symbols of life and death cut into stone, painted on rocks, carved into ivory - stir our hearts and minds to this day. They call out to us to remember who we are, where we came from, and why we are here. By doing so, they also help us envision where we are going.
Visionmaking has shaped the modern world and the entire, kaleidoscopic human enterprise - our life on this planet. Equally though, Visionmaking is also the force that shapes our individual lives. Without a clear, personal vision, we live in a reactionary world - grabbing at what we can to serve our immediate needs, and driven by agendas that are not our own. A lack of vision leaves us in the dark, unable to navigate a meaningful journey in the world.
To connect with your vision is to turn on an inner light: shining from the truth of your own heart, it illuminates your path forward. It also reveals the entire world to be relevant to your journey. Summoned along your personal path, you discover that each step along it is made with a purposeful act.
Vision begins with the heart. As Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen once remarked, "the heart is an organ of vision." It contains the power to see what is most deeply meaningful in this life. At the same time, it connects us with the passion, courage, wakefulness and clear truth that enable us to forge our journey.
As it illuminates our unique path, the heart initiates a journey to fulfill our destiny; by the same token, it leads us straight out of the status quo. The status quo might be described as "a state of stasis where there is neither motion nor development, and where there is no hope of change." For many of us it's a familiar, comfortable road. It doesn't demand a lot. All that it asks is that we conform, go to sleep and go along for the ride.
The status quo of our age has carried us into a crisis of meaning that affects our families, our organizations and communities, and the health of the environment in which we live. As such, the need for Visionmaking has never been greater. Warren Bennis, management professor and author, suggests that we are at a tipping point:
Around the globe humanity currently faces three extraordinary threats: the threat of annihilation as a result of nuclear accident or war; the threat of a worldwide plague or ecological catastrophe; and a deepening leadership crisis in most of our institutions.2
Leadership is Visionmaking in action. The leadership crisis we face, though, is not just institutional. When we lack leadership in our own lives, when we remain stuck in the status quo, we contribute to its stasis. And we feel the effects of that complicity. Sooner or later, our sleep becomes restless. We find ourselves growing angry, depressed, and discouraged. We lose faith that our dreams can withstand the gunmetal harshness of the status quo.
Then one day we partially awaken from the sedation of stasis and find that we are walking the road of lost souls. Cultural anthropologist Angeles Arrien calls this "the procession of the living dead."
Vision is the birthright of every person and every person is a Visionmaker. Everyone has a dream for their lives, whether they are conscious of it or not. Many of us can see parts of the journey we were born to make but feel ill equipped or unable to take action. What is lacking in these cases is the faith that our dreams are more powerful than circumstances and the tools and practices that support manifestation.
Traveling the path of heart and meaning demands something of us, challenges us to grow into our best selves. It asks us to trust, to use our gifts and talents, and build character on the journey. It asks us to change.
Many factors can frustrate Visionmaking; other factors support it and feed it the oxygen it needs to thrive. As Visionmakers, we need the skills to recognize those factors for what they are. With a mastery of those skills, we can navigate the undercurrents that would drag us back to the status quo, and find our way into the open waters of our heart's journey.
If the need for Visionmaking has never been greater, the same is true of the need for the skills of Visionmaking. Those who have mastered them refuse to be conquered by discouragement and despair. They have faith that the world they want is within their power to manifest. They have learned to see and act from the heart, and have grown into the courage that enables them to do that.
THE THREE MYSTERIES
Visionmakers are men, women and young adults who have faced and learned from the three great mysteries of Visionmaking: the mystery of our intimate allies, Death and Destiny; the mystery of the body which is the cradle of manifestation; and the mystery of the cycle through which visionmaking wheels.
The First Mystery of Visionmaking outlines how two forces, Death and Destiny, support us to act with purpose and to pursue a path of the heart that leads us from the status quo to full engagement with meaning. This is the transformational pathway that every Visionmaker must follow to meet Destiny.
The Second Mystery, The Cradle of Manifestation, requires the Visionmaker to gather personal power by embracing the gifts of the body: our originality, the gift of choice and the power of communication. Until we gather these tools of manifestation, we are unable to escape the oppressive gravity field of the status quo and we are entrapped by stasis.
The Third Mystery, The Cycle of Visionmaking, is the set of practices required to turn our hopes, dreams and aspirations to reality. It is not enough to see; we are obliged in Visionmaking to act.
Learning from those mysteries, Visionmakers acquire the skills to realize their own dreams through purposeful acts. By doing so, Visionmakers not only shape their own lives - they renew the world in which they live.
You, too, have a dream to live and a purpose to fulfill. You, too, are a Visionmaker. This book maps out some ancient terrain - the terrain the heart must journey in liberating its truth into meaningful practice. But the journey itself is as new as today. Welcome, Visionmaker. You have taken the first step.
ŠPatrick O'Neill 2008