Experiencing our own glory

After a coaching session yesterday morning with two men who I admire and respect very much, who together are working on clearing a few temporary obstacles to the rich experience of their friendship, one of them stopped me from his car and handed me a note he had scribbled down and was going to leave on my windshield. It read as follows:

"I am awed by what just happened, what I just created, what I just said, and your guidance in showing me the door so that I could step through it. As Morpheus said in The Matrix, 'I can only show you the door. You have to walk through it.'"

These are the golden moments of coaching, the currency of my life, those moments when I can help another person remove the obstacles to the experience of their own glory, and in so doing I get to experience my own. Thanks, S. & H., for allowing me to serve and share this wonderful exchange between you. I love you both.

Tending to your garden (just for you, R.C.)

"The inner life is like a garden that we often forget has been planted, and it will bear all the fruit that we could ever want, once we stop and think to tend its needs."

During my latest Life Planning experience with a relatively new coaching client, she indicated how much she loves gardening and lamented about how little time she gets to spend doing it. I was struck by the gardening metaphor and how perfect it is for her Life Plan and all of our lives. Gardening takes time, you have to get dirty, you must take care of all of the seemingly little, but very important things, and then you must be patient. The outward rewards when a garden is in full and glorious bloom is for all who see it to share. It makes people happy. But it's the gardener who receives the inner reward of the joy that comes with the entire process - being in nature, touching the soil, breathing in the smells, caring for life in its unfolding, learning about how God works, applying the lessons, watching the results, learning to trust the whole design. This inner joy is available in tending to the garden inside ourselves as well. All of us get this beautiful opportunity to revel in the process of tending to our own gardens, but it takes our time and careful attention for it to bloom and bear fruit. It takes being in our own nature, touching our own hearts, including the pain and sorrow there, caring for our life unfolding, learning about our connection to God and all that is, applying our lessons, watching the results, and then learning to trust. Invariably, when we get it right, according to God's plan, the garden explodes in all its glory and makes people very happy. But it's the gardener that gets to revel in every step of the process, knowing what's to come.

Test of character / Expansion of mind

"The true test of character is not how much we know how to do, but how we behave when we don't know what to do."

-- John Holt

I just got this one from S.F. a few days ago, and it just really hit home on a very important theme for me today. It's becoming more obvious every day, in reading or watching the news, that as a human race we clearly don't know what we're doing in so many arenas - business, education, family life, government, health care, religion, etc.. Or, it might be more pertinent to say that we know "how to do" a lot of stuff, but it ain't workin' in so many ways we are just now awakening to. We are observing ourselves in a sometimes comical, sometimes tragic array of embarrassing calamities. The measure of humanity going forward, and the test of our own character, will be in how we behave from here, given that our minds and hearts are being blown open by events, feelings, and an unprecedented ability to share them all, and ...

"The mind, once expanded to the dimensions of larger ideas, never returns to its original size."

-- Oliver W. Holmes

Be you, the peaceful warrior.

"To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting."

-- ee cummings


To "be you" in this world is a hard thing to do. There are so many distractions and seductions all around you, screaming at you to package yourself up for maximum surface-level appeal - to add this, eliminate that, fix this, redo that. When we try to hide some dark aspect of ourselves that we don't like, we only see that darkness in others. When we pretend we're all light, we actually diminish our light. There does not appear to be much visible support for simply being all of who we are. When we can be with all aspects of ourselves, we are free to choose what works in our lives and our relationships, which always brings us closer to God. To "be you" in this world requires a "peaceful warrior" mentality - you need both the strength and stamina to stand up for yourself relentlessly in the face of your life's happenings, as well as a calm stillness that allows you to listen and observe. Victory comes through a fusion of powerful intention and peaceful surrender to the flow of God's plan for your life.

Survival vs. Magic

Have you ever experienced the scenario where a business's survival appears to be at stake, and the very well-intentioned leaders are out on the road "killing themselves" trying to save it, while also demanding that others in the company "kill themselves" in the same pursuit, or else they might risk being considered unworthy of "keeper" status? You've seen this dynamic before, right? Yes, most of us who have worked in corporations have been in this situation at one time or another, and have been on one side or the other of this argument, at least one time in our careers. And since September 11 it is an all too familiar scene. Well, if you think about this in a calm and rational way, why would anyone wish to "kill themselves" to merely "survive" a difficult situation, especially when long-term survival looks like continually "killing yourself?" The only thing I think any of us would ever risk "killing ourselves" for is for the belief that a dramatically better, in fact magical, life is possible. And, as I shared a few days ago, the most powerful way to strengthen any such belief is to ACT consistent with it, even before the belief is totally solid - that ACTING on a belief produces the reinforcing evidence that strengthens that belief. The only way for great leaders to inspire people to "kill themselves" for the future of a business is to "kill themselves" and their own egos to live that dramatically better life RIGHT NOW, before the belief is widely and solidly held. By being a beacon of the possibility of a dramatically better life, that actually INCLUDES a more healthy and self-sustaining business, based on universal principles vs. ego or Wall Street principles, you can tap into a level of human potential that can literally blow away the scarcity thinking that suggests that "survival" is the thing for which we must all "kill ourselves." Before asking others to do this, be sure to offer, and then show them something that makes it worth the risk, something magical and unlimited. Choose that better life, live it boldly and courageously, be who you really are. Do it for yourself, and because so many others are seeking out those who can become an open invitation to a better life and a better world. And, as for customers, "build it, and they will come."

Be the strong bow while celebrating the arrow.

"You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The Archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the Archer's hand be for gladness;
for even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable."

-- Kahlil Gibran, from "On Children"

In my morning with Jake yesterday, during our walk around the coffee shop with my friend, D.P., with whom I've just started a coaching relationship, a wonderful awareness hit me. As a coach, we form "reciprocal learning agreements" with those we coach. There is as much or more in it for the coach as for the person being coached. As we were watching Jake together, D. and I began to notice that babies do not have all of the awareness we have regarding how to protect their growing little bodies from harm. They count on grown-ups for that, while they focus their energy on celebrating life and their spiritual connection to all that is. For example, Jake loves to walk up to every tree on the property and pat it lovingly, looking up at the sunshine through the leaves. He does this to EVERY tree. Now, interestingly enough, adults do not have all of the awareness that babies have regarding how to fully honor our re-awakening spirit and to protect it from the harm that our brain and ego can cause. We can enter into a "reciprocal learning agreement" with our children and count on them to show, and thereby, teach us how to celebrate our lives and our spiritual connection to all that is. Rather than squash the life and spirit out of our children in our frenetic race to gain and protect our "physical security," such that they are doomed to repeat that process as they become adults, why not honor and celebrate each other as the bow and arrow honor and celebrate each other in the Archer's skillful hands. What a fun deal! I'm off to go hug a tree. Thanks, Jakie!

Celebrate the magic!

“What is the secret? The presence of God in everybody and everything -- in you yourself, in everybody you even look at, in animals, trees, rocks, loss, events, circumstances, everything. You look for and find the saving, thrilling, waiting presence of God there -- no matter what else seems to be there -- it is there, looking back at you, answering you, calling to you. Find it. See it. Hear it. ‘Find Me’ -- that is the door… You can come upon it any moment -- because you carry it with you -- it’s within you. And the way you start is to decide with all your might to find it. And almost at once it begins to appear. And by and by, you find that everything you do and say springs from the center of you and so is true.”

-- Celia Caroline Cole

"The more you become aware of your own center, the more you can open up your boundaries and expand."


-- Richard Rohr

Over a nice breakfast yesterday with a new friend, after a morning jog around Town Lake in Austin with Jake, I got to tell the story again of my search for God and for my way home. It was the first time I actually heard His voice and knew that that was what I was hearing, and then actually followed the guidance being given. It was about 5 years ago, in Fairfax, VA, and I was gently instructed to take a young man I worked with to lunch and ask him why he seemed so sad. Do you remember, J.F.? That conversation, the ensuing trip to your home in Boca Raton to meet your amazing wife, the eventual connection to B.P. and Forever Spring, the deep journey inward, and then my whole world exploded open. It hasn't stopped, J.; it has actually accelerated. It is shattering my boundaries and my mind. Clearly, You and D. have touched more lives than you'll ever know. Thank you for participating with me in what I once called a miracle and now know from one experience after another; it's just how God works.