“Time and enclosure"--this is the unofficial mission of the MacDowell Colony for the Arts. Founded in Peterborough, New Hampshire in 1907 it is the oldest artist colony in North America drawing 250 residents each year from the United States and abroad. The Colony is a place where artists can go, free of any expectation or obligation, to create and to do their work.

The next time you are trying to decide a difficult question or make a challenging choice, spend a few minutes considering all that you gain from each choice. Then trust your instincts to guide you into action. Usually we know the answer, but are fearful of the consequences or the implications of action.

In learning there are two paths that take us to transformation. Both can move us into our preferred futures and each are essential for learning and growth. These two paths are intertwined, and when in balance make our lives easier and more fluid. When braided together these paths become critical allies for personal movement and change. But when out of balance they can hinder our inner development and cause either misery or numbness.

The poet Rumi wrote, "Out beyond ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing there is a field. I will meet you there." The question, of course, in this time of separation and anxiety is how do we make our way to the field of agreement that Rumi spoke so eloquently about? Lately this "field" has felt a world away . . . separated by differences of religion, politics, rhetoric and violence.

Recently I spent some time with an old friend, playwright and actor, Arlene Hutton. Here is what she said: "In improvisation, the key is to say 'yes' rather than 'no'. When we say 'yes' we open the door to possibility and creativity. I was doing an improvisation exercise called "The Yes Game" where no matter what is said to you, you must respond, 'Yes, and...' The goal is to follow the thread and see where the conversation goes. I started the game."

Last year I was in a Shiva temple in southern India. Coming down a long set of incense laden stairs I came across the poorest human I had ever seen (and that is saying something in India). He was somewhere between sixty and eighty--hard to tell given his condition—and wearing a filthy red loin cloth which barely covered his emaciated body. He was also a leper and so had parts of his hands, feet and face missing. His only possession was a dirty wooden begging bowl.

Sky diving is an intense experience. Standing on the wing at 10,000 feet, and realizing that there was no way I could climb back in, that was a moment. This experience is one of many from my younger years. Flying trapezes, race car driving, walking on fire, cliff jumping, these are all some of the many things I have done to create an intense "buzz" in my life. This buzz helped me feel alive, and in some ways supported my love of learning.

We are mostly space. "Mostly" as in 99.999% space. The chair you are sitting in and the computer you are looking at may seem like hard-edged objects against your skin, but at the molecular level the boundaries are non-existent. All matter is permeable and ever changing with no atomic difference between animate and inanimate. The energy between our atoms is what gives us the sense of existence.

I’ve been thinking recently about what I need to stop chasing so that it will now chase me. Physics calls this "creating a field of allurement". Every atom has an energetic charge, and it's this charge that creates a sense of mass. Amazingly we are 99.999% space. So what makes us seem solid? The energy that "holds" our atoms together. Since all energy either has a positive or negative charge, i.e. attracts or repels, "creating a field of allurement" means to set the charge in a way that will bring what we want closer. We do this through our intentions.

Martin Buber, the great Jewish theologian said, "There are three principles in a man's being and life. The principle of thought, the principle of speech, and the principle of action. The origin of all conflict between me and my fellow men is that I do not say what I mean and I don't do what I say."

Holding creative tension refers to the ability to stay with the discomfort of the moment—the tension—rather than moving into premature action, emotional withdrawal, or a state of paralysis born from fear. When we can stay in the moment of discomfort, it is often where deep change occurs. Management theorist Peter Senge says, “Creative tension comes from seeing clearly where we want to be, our ‘vision,’ and telling the truth about where we are, our ‘current reality.’"