Nick Udall - The Way of Nowhere - Eight Questions to Release Our Creative Potential

One of the core teachings at the heart of the Way of nowhereis what we call the Diamond of Consciousness. It was given to us by one of our most influential teachers at a critical point in the development of nowhere. 6 He said it had come to him in a dream and that he had a strong intuitive sense that we should integrate it into our work.

The North of the diamond represents our everyday consciousness . Whilst constituting a relatively small part of who and what we are, this aspect of ourselves takes up a hugely disproportionate amount of our awareness.

The South represents our subconscious , our emotional Self, which is also a very small but extremely influential part of who we are, as it drives our needs and desires.

The West represents the largest percentage of who and what we are. It reminds us that we are forever and always from the Field , 7 part of an interconnected whole.

the diamond of consciousness

And lastly, the East represents that very small and under-developed aspect of ourselves which we have called creative-consciousness . This is our ability to be present and at one with the Field, with our wholeness, and the interconnectedness of all things. Our teacher went on to outline how this capacity had diminished in modern society and how vital it was that we increased our ability to access it to face the challenges and opportunities ahead.

Our teacher also described how the developmental and personal growth work that many people are undertaking today, particularly in West, contributed greatly to cleaning the North and South axis of the diamond. He explained that the cleaning of this space was a prerequisite for tapping into the power and insights that flowed along the West–East axis of the diamond.

When our teacher passed this to us, we instantly recognized that the diamond gave us a new and useful way of looking at what we were doing and an insight into what we should focus on going forward. Thus a vital difference between the Way of nowhereand other developmental approaches is that while we both recognize and work with processes to expand our conscious and subconscious, we do so in the interest of awakening our creative-consciousness – our co-creative Self.

Creative-consciousness is our innate ability to gain inspirational insights from the whole. Such insights often have an ‘ Of course, why didn't I think of that before?’ quality about them, yet they have the potential to bring innovation to the world. They also enable us to move towards being the inspiration and innovation we want to see and be.

This book introduces what we call the art and practice of inspiring-innovation ( i-i). The art is how to apply the virtuous circle of inspiration and innovation to families, communities, organizations and any other form of social system. The practice is how to apply this virtuous circle to the only social system which we can control: ourselves. We refer to it as a ‘practice’ because we literally have to practise it, like yoga or running. We have to internalize it and embody it. The more we do so, the more profound its effects will be, just as a professional marathon runner develops more blood vessels than a sedentary person or a highly experienced meditator's brain structure differs subtly from that of a non-meditator. 8

This book has been designed to trigger this virtuous circle of inspiration and innovation within us, thus significantly increasing our ability to access breakthrough insights. It then supports us in finding ways to turn those insights into innovative form, one continually fuelling the other in constant motion and exchange.

6A gift from RainbowHawk, one of Ehama's grandparents and keepers.

7For an excellent explanation of this vital concept, see Lynne McTaggart, The Field , HarperCollins, 2001.

8Inspired by a lecture by Andrew Newberg, Fred Travis and Antoine Lutz entitled ‘Neural correlates of meditative experience’, presented at ‘Towards a Science of Consciousness’ conference in Tucson, Arizona, 8–12 April 2002.

Our challenge has been to co-create a living practice that is fit for purpose in today's world. From the ancient wisdom traditions we have extracted those personal disciplines and practices that alter the way in which we see ourselves and the world around us. From the modern disciplines we have taken an understanding of the social systems that we co-create and perpetuate and how we can learn to find our place within them. From the world of design we have learned how to turn energy into form, turning these personal practices and social disciplines into innovative processes and liberating experiences.

One of the most influential components of our practice has been the use of ‘medicine wheels’. Medicine (or wisdom) wheels are systemic designs based on an ancient taxonomy of the universe, and over the last 12 years we have experimented with this 35,000-year-old technology and applied it rigorously to unlocking the creative potential of individuals, teams and organizations – with great success.

While we have deep respect and appreciation of the traditional forms of the medicine wheels, which we employ in other aspects of the Way of nowhere, we have developed our own unique set of wheels by codifying our learning from thousands of interventions. Whilst our wheels are inspired by and consistent with the founding wheels, they vary in some important aspects. 9

Wheels are the only tools that we have discovered that simultaneously map and unlock the invisible forces within the self, within a team and within the wider social systems of which we are a part, thereby creating a truly systemic approach to change, development and transformation.

Wheels are an ancient way of mapping life's different energy states. They use the eight points of a compass, each one representing a different energy intelligence . Just as these exist in the outer world, so they also exist within us, because we are a microcosm of the whole.

Each direction can either manifest within us in ways that release our creative potential and interconnectedness or diminish our creative potential and accentuate our separateness.

In this particular wisdom tradition, the liberating energy states are called ‘allies’ or ‘allied robes’ and the diminishing energies are called ‘distortions’ or ‘distorted robes’. They are called robes because they resemble the clothes we wear. These robes cloak us in energy states and patterns of behaviour which we may or may not be conscious of. They exert a powerful influence over us, moving us either towards or away from our co-creative capacity.

We can use these allied and distorted energy states to develop awareness and ultimately mastery of the ways in which we either help or hinder our creativity.

Thus, through awareness and skill, we can learn to accelerate the virtuous circle of inspiration and innovation.

In this book we introduce the art and practice wheels of inspiring-innovation. We use the art wheel as the basis for releasing ourcollective creative potential, in particular through the discipline of organizational transformation, and we use the practice wheel as the basis for releasing mypersonal and inter-personal creative potential. Together they map an inner and outer journey of transformation. They have been designed to help us to look at our consciousness rather than through it as we are normally conditioned to do.