Working empty

Last week I did good work with a leadership team.  They learned a lot, both about material I presented and about themselves, individually and as a team.  It was "good" work--not "great" work.  Certainly not "inspired" work. 

I used to do a lot of "inspired" work.  I showed up.  Before others arrived, I meditated and prayed to "empty" myself.  I asked to be an instrument of God's love.  When people arrived, I worked with them.  What they brought up was the agenda.  They inevitably led me to questions which took us to where the work needed to occur.  Oh, I'd done work before the event.  Usually, I'd interviewed participants and often attended a few of their meetings, but the most important thing I brought to the session was my emptiness.

That was all when I was self-employed.  I was free to be empty, and I was free to be "inspired."
Then I went to work for other employers.  First it was for consulting firms, and then I became a federal government civil servant.  Deliverables and expectations about what those demanded drove my work.  A PowerPoint deck was mandatory, and planned activities were essential.  Workbooks were necessary.  Every minute needed to be planned for and scripted.  Soon the charade started feeling like training and very little like OD.  Every inch of the emptiness was full, and I went from doing "inspired" work to orchestrating "good" work.

The proscription in medicine is to "do no harm."  "Do no harm" is implicit in organization development as well.  I don't think I've ever harmed any person or group. As the world of delivering to expectations drove me though, "doing no harm" became the necessity rather than "healing."

Lyricist and philosopher John Lennon wrote, "Love is all there is."  When I did "inspired" work, knowing that love was all there is was my compass--my true north.  If I emptied myself and held a room in love, the truth of all the things that separated them from love just bubbled up.

At last it is spring.  For Christians, Easter marks a time of rebirth.  Jews remember the passage from slavery to freedom and a new life under God's guidance.  Everywhere people see new birth of animals and plants as the days grow longer.  Amidst all that clutters our lives over the months during which nature passes through its cycles is love.

Now at the time of rebirth, we have time to blow it all away and remember that whatever we do and wherever we go "love is all there is."  If we will let it, all the other stuff will fill us with illusions of what is.  Our job is to empty ourselves and allow love to drive whatever we do.