Authentic power

"Authentic power is the alignment of your personality with your soul. Creating authentic power is dramatically different from the pursuit of external power. The creation of authentic power is a lifetime endeavor. It requires becoming aware, moment by moment, of what you are feeling and the choices you are making in the moment."

-- Gary Zukav

One of the central themes of this recent visit to Austin had to do with men who have achieved a significant amount of external power re-connecting with their authentic power. As men, asking ourselves to more deeply examine our feelings, to express them completely, openly, and in the moment, especially in our professional settings, and to choose our actions out of our spirit's highest intent is like turning ourselves inside out ... and that's exactly what there is for us to do now. You can feel it in the air, all over the world, in every setting. When we walk through the fire of our worst fears - the fear of embarrassment, of expulsion from the men's club, of losing our external power, of the vast unknown - we get to the other side discovering that our authentic power has actually expanded dramatically out of our commitment, courage, humility, and resolve. This is the dawning of a new age for men, where we learn to listen for and consistently act in accordance with God's guidance, to expand our self-awareness, to embrace our partners as equals, to play with our children, to celebrate our compassion, our creativity, and our freedom, to lead with our hearts and souls, as well as our minds, and to love our lives.

Communicating to ease worry

Anne sent me this wonderful message from home yesterday, in acknowledgement of our timely and effective phone conversation yesterday morning:

"How's this for an appropriately timed quote? Thanks for talking! I love you! me:

'Worry is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.'

-- Arthur Somers Roche"

Over the last few months, we have each had our own personal something troubling us about a matter very big and important to both of us. Being away from each other for a few days in our own little worlds made it possible to "encourage worry." In our conversation together, as our own "trickles" of worry became flowing streams that crossed each other's path and began to merge into a torrent, it might have been time to warn the people down in the valley of an impending flood, had we not found a way to communicate all that there was for both of us and drain the channel just in time to save lives. During my meetings yesterday, as so often happens, I found myself in conversations that were most important to me, my life, and my marriage. They were about "honoring the conversation most wanting to happen, exactly when it most wants to happen." This is a proven way to keep "worry" in relationship to a very thin and manageable trickle. Here's to me and Anne for saving our valley below.

Thank you, Austin.

I am away in Austin today and tomorrow and using someone else's phone line to send this, so I will keep it brief. Yesterday, I was invited into 6 different people's hearts over the course of the day - starting with a rejuvenated relationship (and start-up of a life coaching relationship) with an acquaintance from several years ago, then a rich conversation with two powerful men about God's role in our lives, a visit with a powerful business leader and community leader that touched on the heart of his business, his community, and a possible new venture that would deeply touch his own heart, and finally an inquiry into life coaching with some new friends, a wonderful couple who were gracious enough to invite me into their home and their lives. I am so moved by the path God has chosen for me and so grateful for the wonderful blessings that comes from getting to really know people like this. I want to express my deep appreciation and profound respect for J.A. & R.A., E.M., S.S., B.S., and T.S.

Error and the ego

First, I had someone mention to me on Monday that they would be interested in exploring A Course in Miracles as a personal growth opportunity. Then I had another person share a particular struggle they were having with someone in their life in which they were judging that person as being seriously in error, producing great anxiety and chaos in the relationship. I got the text of A Course in Miracles off my bookshelf, randomly opened it to a page, and starting reading where my eyes landed. They landed on the following (I love how this works.):

"If you attack error in another, you will hurt yourself. You cannot know your brother when you attack him. Attack is always made upon a stranger. You are making him a stranger by misperceiving him, and so you cannot know him. It is because you have made him a stranger that you are afraid of him. Perceive him correctly so that you can know him. There are no strangers in God's creation. To create as He created you can create only what you know and therefore accept as yours. God knows his children with perfect certainty. He created them by knowing them. He recognizes them perfectly. When they do not recognize each other, they do not recognize Him."

Remember ... who you are ... is the driver, not the car.

While you catch up on your reading and consider your feedback to P.A.D.'s message in my "experiment on sharing community" (because I know I have been rather prolific with such "stuff" lately), I thought I'd pull one out of mothballs that I wrote and sent out last year that touches on a conversation that came up several times today - having to do with the distinction between our spirits and our brains, or between our intuitive sense and our rational thought processes. As I lightheartedly suggest above, and reinforce with a few others' quotes below my own, it is our intuition that reminds us who we are and how we fit into the much bigger game called Life.

THE HUMAN RACE

"Our human body is the particular 'race car' that our spirit has chosen in order to experience the full exhilaration and wonder of being alive (i.e.; driving in the 'human race'). Our brain is the on-board computer that defines and manages the integrity of the car's self-concept (i.e.; treats it as a complex, closed-loop system that can be managed via sensory inputs and outputs). This on-board computer is very powerful and, in fact, can operate the car on automatic pilot during most 'normal' conditions, but not very well at the extremes of internal and/or external circumstances, and it really doesn't know where it's going in the grand scheme of things; its focus is solely on keeping the car intact and out of danger. The cars in this 'human race,' although varying in size, color, and all sorts of physical characteristics, are fundamentally the same from an internal 'performance' standpoint. Each has its own unique driving idiosyncracies, little quirks that make driving it adventurous and fun. The course is ever-changing and full of outrageous obstacles and surprises. The race is not about 'finishing' or 'winning'; it is about the sheer pleasure and thrill of the driving (and learning) experience, like the amusement rides at the boardwalk. Our spirit is the driver, and we are connected to a 'collective whole' called God who created the game out of nothing, just for fun, and to teach us to be better drivers on the race course called Life. But when we are in the thick of things out on the course and getting tested, we sometimes forget that, and we rely too heavily on the on-board computer out of fear; i.e.; we lose ourselves and our connection to God for a moment. This can sometimes confuse us and the other drivers into thinking we are actually the cars. The cars can then confuse each other's onboard computers by their physical actions and end up bumping into each other and crashing along the way. Sometimes we can get so wrapped up in the sheer excitement and intensity of this game that we forget that there are other even more fascinating games awaiting us after this one's over. But once we step out of the car after the experience of the 'human race,' we remember and joyfully move on to the next game."

-- Yours truly

"People with high levels of personal mastery ... cannot afford to choose reason vs. intuition, or head vs. heart, any more than they would choose to walk on one leg or see with one eye."

-- Peter Senge

"The primary wisdom in our human experience is intuition. In that deep, mysterious force, the last fact behind which analysis cannot go, all things find their origin."

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The really valuable thing in life (the thing that connects us to the infinite) is intuition."

-- Albert Einstein

"There is something within you that knows much more than you know."

-- Rochelle Myers

The first experiment in sharing community (P.A.D.)

OK, here you go, this is the experiment I spoke of two days ago. This message has two parts. The first piece is a Yahoo Messenger conversation I had with P.A.D. to help him overcome his fear of writing anything about what was going on inside him, now that he's saying goodbye to his previous role in corporate America. I asked him to try it out with another member of this community, Steve, to get it out there with one person who I knew could hear him and understand his feelings, and after facing his fears he came through. If you knew P.A.D. in a business setting, you would not have known this stuff was in there. Please let him know what you think now that you do.

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jws (07:35:06 AM): Receive these words - LIFE LOVES YOU!
pad (07:34:16 AM): yea, yea......sure
jws (07:35:43 AM): So start writing.
pad (07:35:05 AM): don't know what to say.....
jws (07:37:50 AM): Say that you're so scared that you don't know what to say. Say that you're so scared that you're acting like a little child. Say that you're slowly finding out that that's OK. Say the truth.
jws (07:39:31 AM): Your fear reveals that you are approaching a great truth for yourself. I can show you the door, but you must walk through it, Neo.
jws (07:40:30 AM): So what did you think of the quote? I thought it was pretty cool.
pad (07:40:12 AM): It was a good one.
jws (07:42:31 AM): I put you in touch with an absolutely beautiful man last night, and you ran away from him. But he will not run away from you. He's a published poet, but he had to break down some pretty thick walls to be that.
pad (07:41:38 AM): I didn't run away, when the wife calls I go...
jws (07:43:42 AM): Yea, yea, whatever. I have his book of poetry here on my desk. It's called A Journey Shared.
jws (07:44:37 AM): I'm off to go run with the Jakester. Go write something.
pad (07:57:33 AM): Remember when you said that sometimes you would piss me off.....well, you kind of have but it has caused me to write something back to Steve and yourself. I look forward to hearing your response on what you think and if the direction is correct. And, no I am not pissed off anymore.....I love you for it actually forced me to take the mask off and reveal the true me. Thank you buddy.

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Hello back Steve!

So true, what does one say in an email introduction? "I am a Gemini and I love to go to the movies and".......wait a minute, I don't think that is what was wanted in this introduction ... Gee, where to begin ... oh, I know ... fog comes in, kind of like a dream sequence and our story begins:

I have begun an interesting journey. A lot of things have become very clear to me in the "value of life" (kind of like Disney's Circle of Life, only different) over the last year and half and I have just now begun the process being me. Within the last year and half, I lost a dear friend to cancer. My wife said I was a weekend father (which hurt very deep). September 11th happened and I was out of town when my family needed me the most and I so needed them. I define the process of being me as when you let your guard down and take the mask off and reveal "YOU" to the world. For good or bad, the world will see you for who you are and what you stand for in your life. My fears of how the business world would see and treat me if I tell them that my family, friends, relationship with God are the most important things to me in my brief time on this rock. I can be honest and tell you that at one point in my quest for fame, fortune and reaching for the top of the mountain within the business community that I put work first and my family and God dead last. I justified this by saying the long hours and the weeks away from my wife and children were all for them. So I could provide everything they would ever want or need. When all they really wanted was a husband and a father to hold them at night and be present with them. This journey that I have begun is one of the scariest things I have ever done and I constantly have to remind myself that it is okay to be me. Yet at the same time this journey is one of the most freeing moments of my life. Am I afraid of what the future holds for me? Honestly sometimes when I sit alone in my office I wonder if perhaps I should "get back in line" and keep plugging away at a job that took so much from me and my family. Then I look out from my office doors and see my wonderful children standing there wanting to spend a little play time with me and the those questions and fears disappear and daddy's home.

"I am not afraid of the future for I have seen yesterday and I love today!"

(from my friend's funeral - Author Unknown)

P.A.D.

In honor of Mr. Deeds

Yesterday I took my Little Brother, Brandon, to see Adam Sandler's latest movie, Mr. Deeds. In it, the main character is a comically, yet endearingly, amateur-ish poet who keeps trying to get Hallmark to buy one of his poems for their greeting cards. On the way home after dropping Brandon off, with the movie and its central theme about money - plus my recent inquiry into my own relationship with money - swimming around in my head, an amazing "morphing" took place and out popped this goofy little poem. Here's honoring the goofball in me:

Money is like toilet paper;
you only need it when you do (You need to pause and think about that one for a minute? - go ahead, it's OK),
but when you make it the most important thing,
you soon find out that isn't true.

So stop the stress and panicking,
and living life all in a huff,
when all that really matters
is that you have enough ...

to clean up life's little messes
and let you travel near and far,
to eat and sleep and help others,
while simply being who you are.

Somebody call Hallmark! I think I got one for them.