These are notes from one workshop Kasha gave.  She was not able to get more written before she got too weak.  This workshop was about creating your life and are her notes to herself.   They are here just in case something in them jogs a useful memory in you.  A lot of these notes are her notes from Robert Fritz's books "Creating", "The Path of Least Resistance" and "Your Life as Art" which she found very helpful in living and creating her own life

• Leader: Concept, enrolling others, clarifying --> Vision
• Manager: Co-ordinate, Plan (risk mitigation, organizing)
• Implementers: artists, creators, innovators:  Create components
• Coach: sidelines view, observer, experience, relationship, ideas, questions

• Two types of people :-D      Really we are both Performers and Learners.
• Performer: Discovers natural talents and abilities, pursues activities designed to express these, becomes competent/expert, intent is to find secure place for herself.  Avoids incompetence and failure.  Emphasis is on always do well, never do poorly, be perfect.  In this mode you can only do what you are already good at doing.  Elephant story.  They never attempt to accomplish anything that might fail.  Avoid unknown regions of themselves.  Chained to invisible poles.
• Learner:
  • Mistakes are cool, man!
  • Perfect performance is not an issue.  Life is a work in progress ... all of it.
  • If something is worth doing, it's worth doing poorly until you can do it well.
• In creating, frustration is part of process:  You can either learn or you can quit.
• What is important is if Involved not if happy!  Involvement does not demand a return on investment!  It is its own reward.  Satisfaction will cycle but involvement will stay steady.
• Stretch, consolidate, stretch ...

• Equilibrium: competing forces, concept, belief in the middle --> don't get what you want, resigned. Here is reality:  you have aspirations.  You are where you are now. What do you have to believe to want what you want? Who do you have to be?  What do you have to think about yourself?  Your beliefs are irrelevant to the creative process.  Don't try to change beliefs, just be more true to observing reality more accurately.  What is relevant is how competent you are, how well you can learn, your ability to observe reality, your ability to focus.  These skills can be developed over time.  As you create, you will get better at creating.
• Oscillation: competing forces, goals in opposition --> get beat up, bruised, trying VERY hard, confusion
• Anything that is conflict driven will be working SOME of the time, for short term results because the action is designed to reduce the intensity of the conflict.  Since the conflict is the driving force, it will always lead to less action.
• Compensating strategies:  Stay within area of tolerable conflict. Conflict manipulation (go toward opposite of what you want to create momentum toward wall of what you do want).  Willpower manipulation (just do it, inspire the troops, together we can do it--Attempt to overpower structure with determination, vigor, willpower.
• Advancing: moving forward toward creating Vision.  Deepen goal, or make one goal and the other part of process/action plan, or remove concepts/beliefs from structure.
• Anything that has Vision/Outcome/Results as driving force will not run out because as you take action you will want the result.  Action does not reduce energy, it creates momentum!
• CANNOT be about what you DON'T want!  That is conflict/problem resolution.

• Stress
  • problem, solve, relieve tension, pop problem, solve, relieve tension, pop problem pop pop pop
  • strategies WITHOUT visions
  • remove the word PROBLEM from vocabulary replace with question:  what is the outcome you want?
  • Problem->action to solve->less intensity of problem->less action to solve->problem re-occurs.
• Creative
  • step toward, relieve tension GAIN joy in creation

• Definition:  Create:  to originate, to bring into being from nothing, to cause to exist.  Nothing into something.
• We tend to move from something -> something else -> something else
• Not equivalent to creative. Unusual, inventive.
• There are moments in creative process when creativity is present but many more when it is not.
• BLANK PAPER exercise.  Wallet, purse.  Start with nothing and just be with blank paper.  In mind put together what you are going to create (2 minutes).  Now create it.  (2 minutes).  Clear off.  Do again. 
• How close was actual to imagined?  Did you like your creation?  How did you feel?  What was your life like during the time you were creating it?
• Creative Process
  • Start with nothing.
  • Concept.
  • Vision (take time, not first come==best)
  • Current Reality.  Where are you in relation to your vision.
  • Take Action/Strategy (what stalls us:  what a guarantee that their actions will work, that they won't mess it up.  Believe that planning everything will guarantee success and perfection!)
  • Adjust, learn, evaluate, adjust!
  • Build momentum.  Add energy and focus to next steps and next project/vision.  Use deadlines to organize NOT manipulate.  Organize to achieve because you want it not because of pressure.)
  • Always have a place to go.  End each creative session by answering the questions "what next?"
  • Completion. DECLARE IT IS DONE.  no endless polish, finishing touches.  Energy shift from pace really accelerating especially at end to done is disorienting. 
  • Live with it.  Now you have a new relationship with it.  You are its companion.  Release it into the world.  Like a child leaving the nest.  You are its audience.  Let it move you and speak to you in different ways.
• Concepts
  • Start with nothing
  • You formed a general concept.
  • Moved to specific vision.
  • Held tension as you compared each newly-emerging CR to the Vision.
  • Took action to bring Vision to desired result.
  • Lived with the creation for a bit.
  • Created another ...
• Passion, Joy, Love (generative Love, not responsive) 
• Conception:  is it for the Love of It or to solve a problem, remove something you don't want.
• Think about what you want to create, not what it says about you.
• FEEL IT in your body!

• CR process VISION
• CR - you do not create this!!! :-D
• Process - you do create your experience
• Vision - you do create your vision

• Facts, Experiences, Speculations, Theories, Models, Beliefs, Assumptions, World Views, Concepts, etc.  We process information comparatively.  When we try to see reality we compare and then see what we expect to see.  We look for a match.  Start with Nothing.
• Finish WATER exercise.  Write down on piece of paper what you think has been going on with the water. Gather and pass out.  Have other's read them outloud.  Just a tension-resolution system, water in pitcher->water in glasses via arbitrary order and amount.  What did you think about it and how did you feel.
• Speculation -> Observation (start with nothing, observe only what is there)
• We don't like the unknown!  Sometimes we can see the vision but not the process therefore that is unknown and we become afraid of it.
• Speculation gives us a sense of security and continuity.  It is fed to us via the media constantly and taken as a relief: they think that probably ...
• Speculation obscures true tension. 
• We dance around in a ring and suppose.  But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.  Robert Frost.

• Start with nothing.
• Reality exists Independent of our perceptions.
• Our tendencies, traits ... include them and allow them to exist.
• Reality is:  You sometimes do not know what is going on. You know what you know.  You don't know what you don't know.  Don't fill in the spaces. Pay attention to what you know and don't know.
• You are here.  Map.  Directions.
• Be precise about reality, it is a master creative skill to discern it.
• Beliefs about self are not based on reality.  There is no accurate way to define someone.  Who has the absolute authority to determine what a person is?
• Concepts:  Right world view.  If you have the right one, they will know how to act, what direction to go, what meaning their lives should have, and what their assignment is in life.  Answers required for Great Mysteries.  The more you fill yourself with concepts, the less in touch with your life you become.
• While the mind can perceive reality well, it doesn't care if the resolution it seeks is based on fact or fancy.  To the mind, speculation can seem as factual as facts when it is trying to create equilibrium. 
• We have to learn to tell the difference between what we ACTUALLY OBSERVE in reality and the concepts we impose on reality and OUR FILTERS/JUSTIFICATIONS.
• Leave beliefs out of structure
  • You want something
  • You are where you are in current reality
  • You are willing to take the necessary steps to bring it into being

• When we are unfamiliar with tension as a force and ally, we attempt to resolve it pre-maturely and synthetically.
• The unknown brings up control, power, authority issues and causes some to detach, uninvolved.
• Many people do not easily master their own creative process because they distort reality.
• pre-conceived ideas, ideals, biases, beliefs, conflicts fill in the unknown and make it less threatening.  But the cost is HIGH.

• Learning is a way of life. And while many people like learning for the sheer joy of it, the most difficult aspects of learning are often not fun.  It is easy to learn when it's entertaining, recreational, and engaging.  Not so easy when you must confront embarrassment, discomfort and distress.
• Digging deeper into ourselves, reviewing some of our most basic concepts and premises, rethinking our values and finding our own sources of inner strength are helpful.
• If you choose to learn the deeper lessons life wants to teach us:
  • Ask question then Be open.  Radio Talk Button ...
  • Set up tension.  Don't answer it ... (mind accessing databanks).  The tension sets up a dynamic in which the learning takes on a special function.  It serves to ersolve the tension in favor of the fulfillment of the goal. 
  • Be in the un-know.  Even if you think you know, assume you might not.  Be in the un-know rather than "in the know".
  • Don't stop.  Ongoing lifetime process.  Let them enrich your life.
  • Look at what you are trying to create -- are you more worried about what it says about you or are you truly interested in it.

• We create in the moment and our creations reach fruition on into the future.  In the creative process we are touching, connected with our future.  Look 6 months from now with two different scenarios: start this creative process - start nothing new ...  what is possible?  How long can drifting and "transitions" last?  Eight years!!!

• Responsibility vs. Feeling Put-Upon
• This is not about calling your life art and therefore hoping it will become more of what you want.  It is about the principles that all artists must use to produce art.  Through your actions, learning, imagination, desires, experimentation, observations, self-discipline, training, acquiring skills, clarity, and work, you can transform your life.  Only when your life becomes your creation, can you experience it as a work of art and experience yourself as its artist.
• The mechanics, orientation, and spirit of the creative process, together, form the generative force that transforms a life, enriches it, fulfills it, makes it whole and involved, makes possible the deepest desires that the soul, mind, and spirit cherish. Your life as art.

• Understand what you want to create and process experience you want
• Know reality - paint tube green?  need blue ...  Eliminate the concepts you have built into your life.
• Establish structural tension
• Move forward.  Actions vs. Activities.