To Thine Own Self Be True

As I settle into the final day of my Winter 2017 meditation retreat, two lessons have emerged in countless forms.  The first and most constant has been the question: "Where am I in my becoming?" Interrogating me in almost every thought, its answers have taken me closer and closer to my Truth.   The companion haunt has been the challenge to move away from my viewpoint and explore whatever comes up from every perspective.

I should not be surprised then that in my morning meditation on my last day that they once again present themselves to take me deeper. Most of all, they have distilled to its essence most of the challenges with which I've grappled over these days.

Over the course of this retreat, when I've meditated, I've slowly and deeply breathed in "Where am I in my becoming?"  My exhales have also been slow as I breathed out the name of God.  Today I was surprised that with each exhale what came from my inner voice, "To thine own self be true," Polonius's admonition from Shakespeare's Hamlet.  Polonius continues:

            "And it must follow, as the night the day
            Thou canst not then be false to any man."

Over the last day and a half, I'd been accumulating "material" for a forgiveness exercise that I often facilitated with coaching clients for my Intentional Living Intensives.  Three lists are compiled:

• Those people you need to forgive
• Those people you need to ask for forgiveness
• Things for which you must forgive yourself

I've done the exercise many times with clients and a few times previously with myself.  I've never witnessed a time when the results weren't dramatic.  So, it shouldn't be a surprise that as my theme for yesterday was "Trust and Relationships" that the forgiveness exercise came to mind.  I'd expected to do it last night, but when I did my sundown meditation, my guidance was that the time wasn't yet right. I spent the evening probing other aspects of my consciousness, adding a few more items to my lists along the way.

As I shared in my post of two days ago*, I was chagrined to think how selfish I'd been when I explored the topic of scheduling time from the perspective of those who wanted to schedule. Since then, I've learned something surprising from almost every lesson I've had in front of me when I examined it from different perspectives.

When "Where am I in my becoming?" was coupled with "To thine own self be true," my forgiveness exercise changed dramatically.  Now, my guidance was to look at these lists from the perspective of what my role was in creating every one of these situations.  While I don't think I had much role in eliciting my mother's treatment of the newborn me, every other item on my list, I could have influenced if I'd been true to myself.

There are a companion pair of saws that are often used among self-help practitioners:

• We teach what we need to know
• We write what we need to learn

Over decades, central foci of my work have been to communicate, listen, ask questions, dialogue--learn from each other, and collaborate. Whether I've been facilitating workplace Bickersons, strategic planning, or culture change or writing a book or this blog, these topics have always been central to my work.  When I looked at my forgiveness lists, I could almost always have influenced the outcomes if I'd done just those things...but I hadn't.  I hadn't to my own self been true: I hadn't been true to what I knew in my heart. And, I hadn't be doing what I'd been teaching for decades.

Years ago when I was facilitating an intentional culture creation exercise with a small group of leaders from Hewlett-Packard for their newly created Line of Business, a key player and the person who had hired me for the exercise came to me on the first break.  She asked me, "Do you know what your gift is?"  Duh! I stumbled.  "I guess I don't."  She continued to say, "You are a master at asking questions."

At the time, I thought it was a dumb gift.  Since then, a number of people have made observations about how a single question completely changed how they'd looked a challenge.  I don't think it is such a dumb gift now, but as I revisited my forgiveness lists this morning, the most common failure on my part was the failure to ask questions--before I got into a situation, when I was in it and something didn't feel right, when someone did something that didn't add up.  I've just made assumptions, which often times were incorrect and which eventually resulted in something hurtful occurring.

All of that brings me back to "Where I am in my becoming."  On this mapless journey of spirit, I am at the place of honoring my Truth...honoring what I know in my heart.  When I am present, I can no longer point a finger without recalling there are three more pointing back at me. If I don't ask the questions that will help me know whether the assumptions I am making are accurate ones, who will? In the clear daylight of open communication, I can be true to myself and true to those with whom I am in relationships.

*"Seeking all Sides of a Challenge," 1/3.