Awakening - the beginning of the path inward

"Awakening begins when a man fully realizes that he is going nowhere and does not know where to go with that information."

-- Georges Gurdjieff

The last few weeks have introduced many new beginnings - new coaching relationships at the first moments of awakening, and this is the driving emotion, that feeling of waking up lost and not knowing where to turn. It is the most sacred time, the time to listen inward to one's own wisdom. This is the time for me as a coach to help a person listen to themselves vs. to me. It is seductive to think that I might have an answer for someone in pain, but the elegant, simple truth is that we all have our own answers when we take the time to ask and to listen for it.

"If you do not ask yourself what it is you know, you will go on listening to others and change will not come because you will not hear your own deepest truth."

-- St. Bartholomew

Feeling pretty clean

"God brings men into deep waters not to drown them, but to cleanse them."

-- Aughey

Hmmmm, do I feel clean enough yet? :-) The water sure has felt deep and turbulent at times lately, but I trust God's hand in the "cleansing" process.

The power of intention

"Intention is a powerful force. Coming from a Latin word that means 'to stretch toward,' intention is the initial bending of your mind toward a target. It is the force that permeates the journey and the goal. A story from the medieval Christian tradition illustrates intention: A traveller came to a worksite and saw two men carrying stones. One man was working listlessly, with a sullen expression on his face, while the other man was cheerfully singing as he busily carried stone after stone. 'What are you doing?' asked the traveller of the sullen worker. 'Laying stone' was his reply. 'And what are you doing?' the industrious worker was asked. 'Building a cathedral' was his inspired reply. This is intention at work. Intention precedes and inspires vision. Intention lives in the zone between potential and action, organizing the diffuse energy of potential and bringing it toward reality. Intention is also the ability to hold a visionary context in which all of your specific visions are organized. Inspired leadership is the ability to work relentlessly from the zone of intention, so that your very being brings forth visionary thinking in your colleagues."

-- Gay Hendricks, Ph.D., from The Corporate Mystic

I will be supporting a group of 4 committed and talented people this afternoon in their visioning work to create an inspired new enterprise. They have done the preliminaries, really getting to know each other deeply and gaining clarity on what they can expect from each other in moving forward. And today is the day to focus on setting shared intentions from which their inspired vision can emerge. As I was sorting through my own thoughts and preparing my intentions for supporting them, I happened to have a lunch on Monday with two of my favorite people from another local company, where one of them (who happened to be their CEO) handed me a copy of The Corporate Mystic and the accompanying set of audio cassettes, asking if I had read it. It just so happens that I read it years ago in the formative stages of Revolution Consulting, and the book sits prominently within my range of "vision" on my bookshelf right here in my office as we speak. So, I just pulled it off the shelf and opened it randomly to p. 61, and there it was, "What is intention?" That's how today's quote (above) came to be chosen. And now for my intention for this afternoon's work: "I am committed to holding up a compassionate, loving, and supportive mirror to these four individuals as they merge their personal ambitions and dreams into an inspired shared vision together, in which they each see themselves celebrated, fully leveraged, and profoundly valued for their contribution to the success of SLANT and all of its customers and participants." Thank you, D.P., for this just-in-time trigger to look in this book for inspiration. Thank you, SLANT co-founders, for entrusting me with this role, and thank you, all of you out there, for simply being here reading this and infusing your interest, good wishes, and support into the birth of a new enterprise.

Practicing what we preach

"How different our lives would become if we would take time during the day not to think about the attributes of God and the moral law we espouse, but to make the love of God and the love of our neighbor experientially present in our hearts & souls and our actions in relationship with others."

-- Bishop Fulton J. Sheen

I have an interesting experiment for you to try out. The next time you find yourself talking about God or your spiritual beliefs, take advantage of a real-time opportunity to examine the extent to which you are "being" those beliefs while you're speaking about them, especially if you're speaking with someone who has slightly different beliefs than yours. It's a fascinating experience, and it's at those very moments when you can make your most compelling argument for your beliefs, by actually giving the other person a living experience of the God you love.

Avoid blaming others

"A man may fall many times, but he won't be a failure until he says that someone pushed him."

-- Elmer G. Letterman

When we take on difficult new challenges in life, like committing to the heroic work of claiming full responsibility for our experience of our world, we are bound to fall many times. Awakening has a steep cost. We will not be able to do it while "being right" about things and "looking good." Much of what we thought we knew will be proven untrue in ways that make us look and feel like little children. And then we'll realize that that is exactly what we are. Learning to live consciously is daunting work. When confronting the magnitude of this work, with its frequent pitfalls and humiliations, it is seductively easy to blame and judge others when the path gets especially difficult. This is the toughest part of the work - claiming responsibility for all of it in the midst of these moments.

Peace in life

"Peace does not dwell in outward things, but within the soul; we may preserve it in the midst of the bitterest pain, if our will remains firm and submissive. Peace in this life springs from acquiescence to, not in an exemption from, suffering."

-- Francois de Fenelon

I live a peaceful life, but not one that is free of suffering. I have not learned to avoid or eliminate suffering in my life; I have learned to be at peace with my suffering - to see it as the important thing that it is. I have earned it with my life experience. It reminds me of my humanity every day. It fuels my continual growth. It gives me access to my greatest joy. It has delivered me to my peace through my complete "acquiescence" to it.

Real conversations

"We need people in our lives with whom we can be as open as possible. To 'have real conversations' with people about what we're up to may seem like such a simple, obvious suggestion, but it involves great courage and risk."

--Thomas Moore

Over the last few years, if someone were to ask me what one thing I bring to people and communities, it would be the courage, openness, and vulnerability it takes to have "real conversations," to deeply inquire into what might really be going on. And the more we're willing to go there as human beings, the more "reality" continues to open up to us. It's very difficult work, being awake, open, and vulnerable as a way of life, because it's so seductively simple to distract ourselves with the surface-level "minutia" of daily life, but in the end it's the only way to truly experience life to the fullest, with both hands on the steering wheel and both eyes on the road.