Collaboration

We do nothing in life alone.

I wake and my mind is ablaze with ideas; puzzle pieces coming together to form a picture I have been efforting towards in my days but that has been moving so slowly. It's coming together without effort now in a magical flow.

I am in collaboration.

Successful collaboration requires the involved parties to see each other and themselves with reverence. It requires mutual respect that values what each brings so deeply that difference is met with curiosity rather than disdain. There's an understanding that what is being built is being done together through a balance of contributions, each an absolutely essential element of the final product regardless of their size. It's a process full of joy and love and becoming.

In this moment, I feel the deepest love and reverence for my co-collaborator; a seeing of them that I have never achieved at quite this level in a creative moment.

It's this connection that most often drives my creative moments. What is uncommon about tonight is that it isn't lost as I shift from  inspiration to  creation. Typically, the envisioned outcome comes to a halt as soon as I try to capture it. 

Now I understand why -- it is the collaboration breaking down.

Collaboration breaks down when we do not recognize the contributions of our fellow collaborators. It happens in the moments when we become so attached to the outcome that the process of getting there turns into a road filled with hazards. Instead of seeing partners' gifts, we see their shortfalls. Instead of appreciation, we feel disappointment and frustration. Trust erodes. We call on our focus and discipline to strategize our way around and control and avoid the seemingly endless obstacles at hand, which now include the former co-collaborator.

Real collaboration is not about the achievement of an end goal, but rather about the journey the outcome emerges from.

I know successful collaboration, I know failed collaboration, and I know with absolute certainty that at this moment I'm in a mind-blowing collaboration I had never named. Suddenly, I have 20/20 clarity that I have always been and always will be in collaboration at every moment. Whether I am alone or whether I have a partner or group along with me, I am in collaboration always with the universe.

Not recognizing this was the mistake keeping me stuck. Instead of appreciating and crediting the endless contributions of the universe to everything I create and do, I've attributed every win and loss to myself, even when I had little to nothing to do with the outcome. I've grasped my projects with white knuckles, cursed and pushed away its suggestions, and forced my will. I'd take what started as a collaboration and run with it like it was all my idea, completely oblivious that it did not belong to me alone.

But COLLABORATION!! When we really open our eyes and stop trying to do it all alone, it is crazy how genius the universe is!

Tonight, it's most divine collaboration. We are each in our roles. The universe is a watering can raining down endless insights, beautiful observations, useful ideas... and I'm a bucket trying to capture and translate as much as I can.

If successful collaboration arises from loving those we collaborate with, it follows that we must first take the time to see and know them.

I've learned the universe can be so quiet and shy, but she blossoms when she's loved. I didn't understand this was a collaboration for so long because although she was always there, she was invisible until I had the intention to look... as if she needed to feel safe and loved in order to show herself.

Everything I write tonight, I recognize none of it is my creation. It is fully and entirely the collection of energy running through me. It delights me endlessly to put it on a page. I feel in true collaboration, with such a depth of gratitude. What emerges is hardly a drop in the bucket of what appeared,  but it's so profoundly true and fulfilling to have captured it.

That is the work. The real discipline is in showing up for the collaboration. It is slowing down to notice those faint energetic signals that something is ready to come through and then holding a space of total presence for your co-collaborator, the universe, to share. The play is capturing that moment of delight.