Personal Mastery

I had the privilege again yesterday of assigning one of my all-time favorite books - The Fifth Discipline, by Peter Senge - as a reading assignment in someone's Life Plan, primarily because of the elegance of the book's description of "personal mastery." I was reminded of this topic twice yesterday - first by the very character and nature of the man I was working with, R.T., who heads up a local non-profit organization, and second by the courage and humility of a dear friend and local business leader who faced a very tough leadership challenge the day before, as he shared his initial, and then more considered, response to that challenge with me.

Here's to you, R.T. and D.P.! You are beacons of the powerful message offered below in your honor.

"People with a high level of personal mastery share several basic characteristics:

They have a special sense of purpose that lies beyond their visions and goals. They know why they're here. For such a person, a vision is a purpose-driven calling rather than simply a good idea.

Personal mastery goes beyond competence and skills; it goes beyond spiritual unfolding or opening, although it requires all these things. It means approaching one's life as a creative work, living life from a creative as opposed to a reactive viewpoint.

They see 'current reality' as an ally, not an enemy. They have learned how to perceive and work with forces of change rather than resist those forces. They are deeply inquisitive, committed to continually seeing reality more and more accurately. The juxtaposition of vision (what we want) and a clear picture of this 'current reality' (where we are relative to what we want) generates 'creative tension,' and the essence of personal mastery is learning how to generate and sustain this creative tension in our lives so as to maximize one's own growth.

They feel connected to others and to life itself. Yet they sacrifice none of their uniqueness. They feel as if they are part of a larger creative process, which they can influence but cannot unilaterally control. And people with high levels of personal mastery are continually expanding their ability to create the results in life they truly seek by tapping into this larger creative process.

People with a high level of personal mastery live in a continual learning mode. They never seek to 'arrive.' Sometimes language, such as the term 'personal mastery' itself, creates a misleading sense of definitiveness, of black and white-ness. But these people know that personal mastery is not something you ever 'possess.' It is a process - a lifelong, self-disciplined way of living.

People with a high level of personal mastery are acutely aware of their ignorance, their incompetence, their growth areas. And yet they are deeply self-confident. Paradoxical? Only for those who do not see that in this life 'the journey is the reward'."

Career planning - be yourself

The key to a successful career is realizing that it's not separate from the rest of your life, but is rather an extension of your most basic self. And your most basic self is beautiful, compassionate, free, fun, healthy, honest, loving, open, peaceful, strong, thankful, understanding, etc.. Don't pursue any career or work activity that causes you to abandon yourself - not for any expedient result (fame, money, pain avoidance, promotion, etc.). It's just not worth it. Instead, bring "all" of who you are to anything and everything you do, and then let God handle the result. He will anyway, with or without your help, so you might as well "go with the flow" once you've really "shown up."

As I've written the above, a poem comes to mind that I offered as a gift to a friend this week - someone with whom I just completed a personal vision as part of a Life Plan, someone who I see as moving boldly into a new era of her life in which her whole self begins to show up in powerful new ways, especially in her marriage of 30 years. In honor of M.M. and that moment we shared, I want to share that poem with all of you. And since offering it to her, it has come to my mind in numerous other conversations this week with B.B., M.B., S.D., F.F., S.F., R.L., P.M., D.M., D.P., J.S., B.M.S., and M.U., all people who are choosing to fully "show up" in their lives - for themselves, their families, their friends, their co-workers, and their customers. Enjoy this beautiful tribute to your self-discovery and emergence.

Now I Become Myself
Now I become myself. It's taken
Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people's faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
"Hurry, you will be dead before--"
(What? Before you reach the morning?
Or the end of the poem is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!
The black shadow on the paper
Is my hand; the shadow of a word
As thought shapes the shaper
Falls heavy on the page, is heard.
All fuses now, falls into place
From wish to action, word to silence,
My work, my love, my time, my face
Gathered into one intense
Gesture of growing like a plant.
As slowly as the ripening fruit
Fertile, detached, and always spent,
Falls but does not exhaust the root,
So all the poem is, can give,
Grows in me to become the song,
Made so and rooted by love.
Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I live
All of myself and do not move.
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun

-- May Sarton

One last synchronous thought. I received a small book in the mail last week - a gift from an unknown sender. It's a beautiful book about loving life, and as I was waiting on one of the above of you yesterday morning, I read it over a coffee and ran across a passage in which the author, as a young boy, met Rudyard Kipling as an old man (the author of my favorite poem of all time, "If"), and in that meeting a profound truth was shared that the boy would (and did) always remember throughout his life. The line transfixed me. It read as follows:

"No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself."

On doing and becoming

"There is nothing about which every man is so deathly afraid (and outrageously excited) as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming in the world."

-- Siren Kierkegaard

This is just a little "wrestling with one of the big issues of life" with my second son, Mark, as he turns 21 today. Happy Birthday, Mark! I know that you are capable of "doing and becoming" anything you choose, and I am your biggest fan and will be wildly cheering you on from the sidelines, no matter what that is. Of course, I would love it if you became the "voice of the Flyers" (I know you would, too.), so that you could get your old man and brothers free tickets. :-)

I love you, pal!

Don't look for others to heal or save you.

Our job in life is not to desparately seek love for ourselves so that we might feel better, but rather to seek out and remove our inner barriers to being loving of others. Our dreams cannot ever be fulfilled through another person, just as our healing cannot ever be found in another person, but only in our discovering and expressing our own loving attitude toward others and the world. God's love is ever-present and unconditional, but we only earn our unique personal experience of it as we heal ourselves through compassionate, forgiving, and loving action, especially where that is challenging for us. We get to richly "experience" God's love for us the closer we get to "being" that love.

A special tribute to my dear friend, P.D., on his birthday

"Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not. As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith."

-- Galatians 6:7-10

"Nothing is easier than saying words. Nothing is harder than living them day after day."

-- Arthur Gordon

Wow! I don't think I need to add anything to these two, either for P.D. or anyone else. What perfect bookends, and you are living them, my friend. Happy Birthday!

To my Dad

My message is simple today:

I love you, Dad, and I'm proud to be one of the many beautiful expressions of your life.

Love,

Jim

P.S. Happy Father's Day to all of you great Dad's out there.