Seeking All Sides of a Challenge

On November 11, the Veterans' Day holiday, I had the opportunity to participate in a simulation of The Bigger Game.*  If you imagine a room-size game board that roughly approximates a Tic-Tac-Toe grid, you will get the idea.  On each of the squares is written a word.  At the start of the game, the facilitators instruct participants to survey the words and to choose the one to which they are most called.

I was probably the first to choose, and I moved to "Hunger."  Now while I might have been a little physically hungry, due to oral surgery two days earlier and limited intake of solid food, but that was not the reason I chose "Hunger."  We were told that "Hunger" is that "deep 'fire in my belly' impact that must be satiated."  I felt it in my soul, and I've felt it for a long time as I've increasingly lost myself in my work.  Choosing "Hunger" was a no-brainer.

Yesterday, after my post, I went to my over-flowing bookcase filled with unread books.  I usually like to start one of my retreats with inspirational reading, and I was immediately drawn to Yearnings, by Rabbi Irwin Kula.  The book was copyrighted in 2006 and the pages were yellowed.  Like many of my unread books, I am not sure how long I'd had it.  Yearnings seemed to follow nicely my call to "Hunger" in The Bigger Game.

I am not sure that Yearnings ended up being exactly what I expected, but as always occurs when I allow myself to be led, it has nudged me in places that I needed to explore.  Although the book makes references to several faith traditions and some non-religious traditions, the rabbi leans heavily on stories from the Abrahamic faith traditions.

In explaining the creation "poem," as he calls it, he relates that the phrase that is most often translated into "Where are you?" in English at the point when God comes to the Garden of Eden after Adam and Eve have eaten from the Tree of Knowledge might more accurately be translated as "Where are you in your becoming?"  Rather than asking a question with a one word answer, God is asking those he has created a question about where they are in their process of knowing themselves.  I was quite moved by this question, and I have used it several times to guide meditations in my retreat.

Later in the book, Kula talks about the Ten Commandments in a different way than I've generally heard them discussed.  Rather than being edicts, we are encouraged to explore our actions around each of the 10 topics fully and completely: to look at them inside-out, if you will, and really understand the ramifications of what is being asked from each "edict."

"Where are you in your becoming?" is particularly poignant for me as I have thought about a number of questions with which I've openly wrestled in this blog.  When coupled with exploring every side of a topic, my meditations have predictably taken me to places I'd rather not see in myself, like arrogance, Narcissism, and even selfishness.

The two topics with which I've often grappled in this post that kept coming up in my meditations when enlightened by these new perspectives were those of getting "stuff" I didn't want and scheduling time with people rather than being spontaneous.  I realized that there is a major flaw in my understanding about what to do with divine guidance that we receive.  Is that perhaps, I've asked myself, why Choice Point, my long unsold book on the topic of walking moment-by-moment as we are guided, still gathers dust on my shelf?

What moved me as I explored each of these topics more fully was what the people who want to schedule and want to give me stuff must feel.  My spontaneous approach is fine for a single person with little family, but when I think of one friend with a very busy job involving travel, two grown kids and a husband to keep up with, and an art interest she is growing, I thought how terribly selfish of me. I should want to work with her to find a time when she can be available.  When I only thought about my relationship with God and where I was to follow, I totally neglected her needs.  I am so sorry!

Similarly, when I thought about the people who persist in giving me stuff, I recalled how as children we had a special aunt and uncle who refused gifts.  They were younger than I am now, but I am sure that not unlike me, they were at that stage in life where they really wanted to live smaller.  When they were not much older, they sold their larger home in Ohio and moved to a smaller one in Florida. From my current perspective, I totally understand their desire to avoid adding "stuff," but I really didn't when I was 9.  I really don't want stuff, but looking at the concern from different perspectives has been humbling.

Now, back to the question about "Where am I in my becoming?" For today, I am certainly becoming more humble, and I have new perspectives to bring to what seem like easy questions to me. In The Alchemy of Fear I wrote about who we are becoming as a solid endpoint.  "Becoming" as a process offers me much more opportunity to grow and fewer excuses to not get moving.

In the bigger Universe of "Where am I in my becoming?" I have a still-unwinding, albeit very different, perspective on what it means to follow guidance.

I am reminded of an image I used to create on stage when I was delivering a speech.  It would start with a single heart (Valentine kind.)  Then I'd draw another...and another...and another.  Finally, I would connect them with a ribbon and say that every person in the world is connected through that ribbon, heart to heart to heart.  That image now takes on new meaning.  Rather than a one dimensional relationship to divine guidance, I now see a complex, multi-dimensional relationship in which we are all supporting each other in who we are becoming and how we will change the world.




*The Bigger Game: www.biggergame.com. Our game was facilitated by David Andrews (davidtoddandrews@gmail.com) and Catherine Allen (catherine@allenimpactgroup.com.)