TRANSCRIPT: Notes From Dunfanaghy 10 – Signs
Hi, it’s Megan. Welcome to Notes from Dunfanaghy. Today I am thinking about the fact that our work, our real work, is completely selfish.
And I use the term selfish in the sense of, like, the virtue of selfishness. I sometimes talk about higher selfishness. This idea that, in order to do the work that we can do that is going to contribute the most to the world around us and the people around us, in order to access that work, we have to focus almost completely on ourselves and scratching our own itch and following the spark of aliveness in our own curiosity.
And if we do that, then we end up producing something that has value to other people. Whereas if we take the other approach of going, well, what would be of value to other people, what can I do — we abandon ourselves in that process. We negate ourselves in that process, and we end up creating work that isn’t really work that only we could do. We end up creating work that actually a lot of other people could do. And so, by definition, not our real work.
I often say if your work is not for you first and foremost, then it’s not yet your real work.
And so I was having a conversation with a client today, and we were talking about these notes, and she said, you know, you’re doing it for yourself, or are you? And she said that she was getting a lot out of it. And, like, this question of, when people are getting stuff out of our work, are we doing it for them, are we doing it for ourselves — it can get kind of muddled. But I think that we’re always really doing it for ourselves, that’s the only way it’s of benefit to other people.
And there is like — there’s an idea that is kind of exploding my head a little bit. I am in a place at the minute — this is really, this is really a voice note to myself, I hope you can follow — I’m in a place at the minute where, if I am paying attention, there is useful information and directions for me everywhere. Like out in the world, if I just go and live my life, if I go to the natural world, if I go anywhere, and I’m paying attention, I am receiving signs. Like, oh yeah, that’s that thing, okay, I need to go in this direction. I’m receiving confirmation of things that I’m thinking about and working on. Just like these little signals.
And I don’t really have a theory on what is that, where does that come from. Do we create that within our heads? Is that signal from the universe? Whatever your belief system is, I don’t really care what it is. I just know that I can use it. It’s useful to me in my life. It’s useful to me in my work.
And so I think that one of the things that happens when we all allow ourselves to drop into our real work, and to do our real work, is we are kind of on our own path — scratching our own itch, going down our own rabbit holes, following, you know, in line with the virtue of our higher selfishness, like, following our own instincts to scratch our own itches.
And at the same time, there are lots of other people who are doing the same thing. And so there’s a paradox here as well. Like, in one sense, our experience is — there’s a quote that I remember, and I have looked it up and I can’t find it, but there’s a quote I heard years and years ago, like 20 years ago, that goes something along the lines of: all of human existence has come to be in order to bring you to this moment in time.
And so in some way, like, we all have that experience of — we are the centre of our own worlds, and everything that has come before us has brought us to this exact moment in time and our own lives and our own work. And we’re all kind of having that egocentric experience in the world.
And at the same time, we are all in this constant conversation and collaboration with each other, and if I go deep into the rabbit hole of my work, and if I go deep into following my own curiosity and scratching my own itch, I will dig up stuff that interacts with whatever you’ve dug up in your rabbit hole. And we’re creating this kind of rich, collective body of work, you know, the whole human race.
And also, that we sometimes act as each other’s signs from the universe. You know, like, I think that no matter what you believe, almost everyone can relate to the idea of an animal shows up — like you see a particular bird that means something to you, or you have some kind of encounter with a wild animal, and we can find meaning in that, and we can find clarity in that, like, oh, I’ve been sent a message there, whatever your belief system is.
I think we can all kind of understand that if it’s a wild animal or something in nature, but that’s humans as well. And so we can find these signs and these kind of waypoints in the form of other people and in the form of other people’s work.
And so I don’t really know if I’m going anywhere more than here with this today, but just that I’m trying to hold that image in my mind of, like, we are all these individual little buzzing creatures following our own weird and wonderful rabbit holes, meandering wherever the spark of aliveness takes us. And if you zoom out, there’s millions of us doing that, and we’re interacting, and our paths are crossing, and we’re exchanging information, and we’re cross-pollinating each other. And the whole thing is just kind of magical to me.
And so the last thing I’ll say on this is: every year, whenever I put the retreat together, in past years it has felt like — so it originally felt like the structure of the retreat was born out of the landscape, which is very much — the landscape dictates the shape of the whole experience. But then it has felt like I have been curating an experience for whoever shows up.
And this year, that’s obviously true, I’m curating an experience for the group that is forming to join me on the retreat. I have the distinct sense this year that the landscape, the ancestors — I don’t even know what — it feels like the whole experience is being curated for me as well. So it’s being curated for me, and then the group of people who will show up. And that’s part of the curation. The people who are drawn to come this year are part of that whole process.
And the retreat is — it’s partly the work that I bring to it, it’s partly the landscape and the history and the story of the place, and then it’s also partly the specific dynamics of the group and the interaction of every person’s real work. Like, the whole thing, so much of the retreat, is just this open, ongoing conversation. And we stop regularly to just check in — everyone’s doing the same exercises, but then we check in with what is unfolding for you. And so it’s this four-day group dialogue, and you start to see different people’s work interact, because everyone’s coming from the context of their own story and their own work. And so this kind of tapestry weaves itself.
So, yeah. Take from that what you will.
I am a huge proponent of: if it is alive for you, if you’re curious about it, go and follow it. Scratch your own itch. Don’t worry about — is this useful to anyone else, how might this be useful to anyone else, is this going to make money, are people going to be interested in it. You don’t need to worry about any of those questions.
You focus on the process, you focus on engaging with your work, and all of that stuff figures itself out along the way. And occasionally you might consciously engage with those questions, and that’s fine. But the way that we obsess about those things — we can just set all of that aside. We don’t need it. Our bodies know how to make our work, and our instincts will guide us in the direction that we need to go.
Thanks for listening, and I will be back next week with more.