Themes

Storymaking is the building of narratives, either true or fictitious, in prose or verse, designed to interest, amuse, instruct, or otherwise enhance a hearer's or reader's life. Wisdom is the ability to think and act using knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense, and insight from the Self and the Other.

The bridge between the mundane and the sacred involves how we change and grow. Transformation is a seemingly miraculous change in form, nature, appearance, character, belief, or understanding that can happen often. Transcendence surpasses one’s way of being in the world, creates an experience of becoming, and presents us with new transformational opportunities.

The heartfelt experience of joy is about what we choose to do. Creative flow is credited to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who describes Flow as a state of mind or an experience that we feel when we are totally involved in what we are doing and in which we lose a sense of time. Resonance is the balance of skills and challenges that is the main characteristic of creative flow.

Dreamtime is the interplay of body and self. As conceived by the Australian Aborigines, it is the ancient time of all things created by sacred ancestors, whose spirits continue into the present. As conceived by Carl Gustav Jung, it is the Collective Unconscious. Other worlds are the personal landscapes available in imagination, fantasy, memory, daydreams, and nightmares where thoughts, feelings, and sensations take control and make time irrelevant.

Mindfulness is a volitional focus of the mind. As Jon Kabat Zinn explains, it is a technique that focuses full attention on the present moment, experiencing thoughts, feelings, and sensations but not judging them. Presence is the experience of being in a body, in a location where no one else can possibly be, to fully and uniquely experience what life has to offer at a current moment in time.