Finding Without Seeking.

How to get what you want.

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"BUNNY" In 10 magazine winter 2007 issue. Rick Owens “EXPLODER” F/W 2007

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been searching for something. What that something is, is hard to say. All I know is that my eyes stay stuck to the horizon for longer than they should, that they flicker across a crowd like I’m expecting to find someone I know, that they look with hope towards the unknown of an approaching corner. It’s like expecting the imminent arrival of something lost. It obscures itself in every venture, friendship, endeavour or place. And everything I find in its place, is never quite that it, that I was initially looking for. 

This week, I find myself in the forests of my youth, where the autumn-stained trees maintain their ancientness despite the encroachment of the technological world. A goldfinch, black and yellow wings, a cherry-red face, whizzes passed me and lands on the grass to peer up at me with curious specks. Its feathers rustle breathlessly, so silent I have to strain my ears to hear them. The finch inspires something in me, and for once I stop looking and instead sit in nature’s amphitheatre to let the world turn around me. Ha! As if, somehow, I’m immune to the earth’s axis. I perch upon on an uncomfortable stump, hold my tongue, clear my mind, and let the wind run through me. When I open my eyes, deer have congregated in front of me, and despite the paranoid looks they give in my direction, they mostly ignore whatever funny-shaped tree they believe me to be. 

I don’t know why, but I decide to follow them, the deer. The sky darkens. Clusters of trees begin to look like mountains; technicolour bushes eclipse into black obliques. Mist settles like dew between the grass. Nature’s colosseum shapes itself within a break between the trees, antlers clash in cracks like wooden swords colliding. A fight between two males in the dying of the light¹ sparks a wonder in me. Crack, and the antlers collide stuck, then one of them shakes loose and retreats before another crack constricts them into combat. Crack, as my foot breaks a dead twig. The deer swing around and look into trees with an anxious fervour—it’s culling season after all. False alarm, it’s only me. I’m unarmed. Actually, I’m disarmed. 

The light dips below the edge of the world and for a moment neither sun nor moon grace the plains. I’m left alone with these paranoid deer, with my own sinking mind, with the tireless wind and I realise, it’s all in me, every perception of the world comes through me like light through a looking glass. I can’t prove any of this real because I’m seeing it from behind my own eyes. It comes to me then, like a buoy bobbing up to the surface of the water, how ridiculous this notion of searching is. Many times, I’ve held off surrendering to the moment in return for anxious alertness I deem vital to securing my goal. It’s like visiting a party and remaining strung up— waiting for your boss to walk through the door to give you a hard time, but he never comes. You miss everything by sorry anticipation.

One single question shifted mountains within me this week. Its truth allowed me to receive everything I’ve ever wanted, instantly. It’s changed the way I view my goals.

Delivered by the great and powerful Grayson Hart. Ex-pro rugby player, businessman and modern-day philosopher, his conversation on the Josh Lynott podcast centred around his upbringing, lessons learned and the importance of ‘inner-knowing’. His ‘journal prompt’ at the end of the podcast went as follows. 

‘If you have everything in this world that your mind tells you that you need to be peaceful, happy and content— what would that feel like? Go to that feeling.’

If you sit upon this question, I mean seriously— close your eyes, breathe and feel the sensations that the acquirement of these externalities have upon your physiology, you’ll notice that it’s all here right now.

This feeling does not lay at the peak of some lofty goal or the end of a lonely road. When we strip away the material physicality of our goals, we are left with unwavering presence. The funniest thing is that by feeling the inner shift from searching to being, you will find yourself immeasurably closer to your goals.

The more life I live, the more I think that to be is the state that provides the most steady joy to us humans. In creative terms, this is synonymous with being in a flow state. When we are in complete congruence with our craft, so much so that we no longer think about what we’re doing, we become a vehicle for the work to come through us. The same way flow is a tool for creative development, imagining a state of being that provides us with everything we need to be peaceful can provide us with a fast track to its reality. There is a clear distinction between deceit and imagination. What is required to make this technique work is to surrender to the feelings that well up in us, to let them wash over us and to return to the infinity of the moment as a birthing ground for new change. We become that which we feel. So, give yourself everything. Allow yourself to receive it. What does it feel like to be it, now?

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What I’ve Been Up To.

• I released two commercial directing projects, one with Skepta and Puma, and another with Priyanka Chopra for Johnnie Walker, check them out along with more of my filmmaking work here.

• Kafka has been on my night-stand for quite a while now, and I’ve been enjoying getting settled into the third novel I’ve read by him, ‘The Trial.’

• I’ve been recovering from the flu, which has, for what its worth, reminded me of how easy it is to take life for granted when I’m healthy.

Things I Read This Week That Are Great.

1. “As you were” (i of vii) by

   Will Boucher

2. Author Insights with Roman Newell by

   Jim J Wilsky

3. ‘The Last Fight’ by

   Layla

4. ‘12 Questions for Emma Stern’ by

   Gordon Glasgow

5. ‘Back To School’ by Matthew Davis

See you soon,

IL.

1. an ode to Dylan Thomas’s poem, ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’