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.

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.)

Surrendering the Past

 A couple weeks ago I wrote about "being present"--really being awake in our lives and fully conscious of our spiritual growth opportunities.  Ever since the other "being present" has been gnawing at me: being in the present.    Being in the present means not being in the past and not being in the future, but being in the moment--in present time.

One of the affirmations I'm working this six-month cycle is "I surrender the past, leaving only the present."  Surrender is an interesting word.  Surrender implies that we are willing to fight till we have nothing left to prevent giving something up.  For many, if not most, of us, we go to the mat to hang on to what has been.  Hanging onto the past robs us of the present, and the present is the only place that we can make change in our lives.  Hanging onto the past prevents us from moving forward.

Spiritual discipline is the very act of choosing to be present...again, and again, and again.  Spiritual discipline--being the student--means choosing to try something that is hard that we've tried before in the past and maybe failed at once or many times.  But today, we can start new.  Today we have a clean slate.  Today is the day that we can rewrite our stories to be the person that we are becoming.

In The Alchemy of Fear I wrote that our "has been" engage in all out battle with  our "becoming."  As who we are becoming gains strength, our "has been" fights to retain who we have been in the past. The present is uncharted territory.  In the present we can start afresh each day.  Our "becoming" in the present holds out the lure of success.  Only if we lose sight of what we are becoming can we slip backwards into the past. 

I said yesterday that I finally had recaptured the vision of the author, spiritual guide/coach, and professional speaker that I was for so many years.  That is what I am "becoming" again.  Even though that was a life I had before, I know it will be different this time--even better than I can imagine.  I eagerly surrender who I have been  to embrace who I AM "becoming" in the present.