It's been a while since I've posted, and while I could use the busy holiday season as an excuse, it would be just that--an excuse. While I often figure things out as I write, I have been restless and unfocused and, quite frankly, I just haven't known how to get started. Once or twice I've actually sat and stared at the computer, something that has never happened with this blog before. Over the last 24 hours, pieces have come to me. I still don't have a clear picture but I have enough to get started and feel my way along.
Last night at midnight...I actually looked at the clock, and it was straight-up 12 a.m....I finished watching a movie I'd been given for Christmas. It wasn't a great movie, but not a bad one either. What clicked last night was that several plot lines in the movie said the same thing: you're never going to get what you want if you don't stop doing what you've always done and risk doing something completely different.
That wasn't the first time I'd stumbled onto that theme this week. I've actually been proofing The Game Called Life before it becomes available as an eBook. I have been reading my own words, or more appropriately the words that moved through me a dozen years ago onto the screen of my computer. Three of seven steps to what the book describes as "living a prayer" are to: ask for guidance, follow fearlessly and risk greatness.
I haven't been so good at getting guidance recently, not because I think God has stopped handing out guidance, but because I think I've been afraid of what I'd hear. I've stopped asking. When I've followed fearlessly before, I have thought that I lost and lost big time. However, all I lost was money, retirement savings, other assets, and a business that I loved. It is true that I was homeless for a while, but thanks to the grace of a couple friends, I never slept on the streets. And while I was down to my last $300 with $600 in "must-pays" due, that was very moment that I got a job that made the situation moot.
From a very human perspective, I was terrified when I'd followed fearlessly, but I was really never in harm's way. I was so terrified that I have been unwilling to go there again. I stopped asking. It hasn't been a conscious decision, not one I even recognized until today, but a decision nonetheless.
What I was feeling before I watched the movie last night was that 2014 had been a fallow year. In the farm country, where I grew up, a fallow year is one during which the land has been plowed and harrowed but left unsown in order to restore its fertility. Several places in the Bible, we are told to allow the land to be fallow, usually every seventh year. For much of the year that is about to end, I've felt a restlessness. I've written about it here.
As I watched the movie last night, it became clear to me that until I was willing to let go of my security-focused existence and really turn my life back to God, I would probably continue to be fallow. In fact, I think I've fallow for much longer than 2014, unwilling to risk following fearlessly.
This morning our pastor seemed to speak directly to me. He said that God promises maximum support but minimum protection. He said, "There are no Kevlar vests," when we follow God's path of growth. He was right. I had had maximum support: I never slept in the streets and a job came when I absolutely needed it. (And not one second sooner.) But I'd also had minimum protection: my material assets vanished.
The pastor continued to say, "Growth is necessary. If we are not growing, we experience distress." It is our responsibility he said to create situations that require learning and growth. Just the kind of thing that happens when we "ask" and "follow fearlessly." Just the kind of thing that happened when I gave up my unsatisfying, minimum-wage teaching job to come to Washington to find consulting work that I had long loved.
The pastor talked about growing in our relationships. That was actually a theme in the movie as well. It suggested that we each have to give up how we've done relationships in order to grow into more satisfying and more rewarding ones. At this point, I am unwilling to risk losing my home and retirement again, although that day may be nearer than farther. However, I think I am willing to risk doing relationships differently. I don't really know what that means, but I am "distressed" at lying fallow any longer. I am certain that if I am willing to "ask" again, I will find out what it means.
Showing posts with label risking greatness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label risking greatness. Show all posts
Sunday, December 28, 2014
Monday, January 13, 2014
Risking Greatness
In my book The Game Called Life, spiritual guide/guardian angel Helen explains to Lizzie, the person she is helping, the steps to "living a prayer in the real world." The "real" world is the spiritual world, as opposed to the "fictional" world, which is the one in which most of us think we exist. Step Six is "risk greatness."
She says: "I am not speaking of greatness in fictional world terms where people reach a high level in their worldly work or make a lot of money. Greatness in the real world means speeding the evolution of humankind." Later she explains why "greatness" is a risk.
"Greatness itself isn't the risk. The risk lies in the willingness to consistently answer a call that usually cannot be understood. The path to greatness requires players to do things that they may never have been done before or at least to do them in unconventional ways."
In recent days there seems to be a magic that as soon as I publish one blogpost, a related idea pops into my head which builds on that post. After yesterday's post on vulnerability, I realized that what I'd really been writing about was risking greatness. Am I willing to be personally vulnerable in order to evolve humankind?
I've crossed that bridge before. Leading from the Heart and The Alchemy of Fear were not exactly conventional business books. I knew at the time I wrote them that I was exposing myself to criticism from traditional management audiences, as well as more conventionally religious readers. I couldn't prove what I was about to write. I had no data (and still don't) that leading and working from our spiritual cores and making the increase of love be our motivation would help organizations, but I'd seen it. I knew what I knew. I could evolve the way we work. So, I wrote, and many people read. Both books received some official recognition, but in serving the spirit world, I did marginalize myself for a long time in the management consulting world. It was as if that community thought that my left brain evaporated, as I wrote what the right brain told me.
Then came The Game Called Life which explained "how the world worked" in a somewhat unconventional way. Life is a game, but most of us just don't know the rules. The Game and Choice Point, which hasn't seen the light of day beyond a small circle of friends who have been deeply moved by it, not only flew in the face of many conventional religious beliefs but also are contrary to many popular "New Age" teachings. I couldn't prove it, but I knew what I knew, so I wrote.
I've stood in front of audiences and shared deeply personal parts of myself because I thought that doing so would help others sustain their own spiritual journeys.
Although I am not sure that anyone would say that I achieved greatness in the normal world (what Helen would call the "fictional" world) context, I still hear from people who were empowered for their own journeys by the words that have moved through me. While it was a risk to take on these major constituencies, my spiritual center told me that it was my work to do.
Have I been vulnerable? Of course. Would I do one thing differently? Never. If vulnerability is how we find God then each of those writing experiences have been other worldly. I have surrendered to the words that wanted to move through me. I have learned for the first time as I read what was on the screen in front of me. To surrender so completely is by definition risking and vulnerable. And, only twice have I felt closer to God than when I am writing.
I stand at the precipice of vulnerability, ready to jump,...again. I am ready to risk greatness in the hope that I can have the teensiest role in evolving human kind.
She says: "I am not speaking of greatness in fictional world terms where people reach a high level in their worldly work or make a lot of money. Greatness in the real world means speeding the evolution of humankind." Later she explains why "greatness" is a risk.
"Greatness itself isn't the risk. The risk lies in the willingness to consistently answer a call that usually cannot be understood. The path to greatness requires players to do things that they may never have been done before or at least to do them in unconventional ways."
In recent days there seems to be a magic that as soon as I publish one blogpost, a related idea pops into my head which builds on that post. After yesterday's post on vulnerability, I realized that what I'd really been writing about was risking greatness. Am I willing to be personally vulnerable in order to evolve humankind?
I've crossed that bridge before. Leading from the Heart and The Alchemy of Fear were not exactly conventional business books. I knew at the time I wrote them that I was exposing myself to criticism from traditional management audiences, as well as more conventionally religious readers. I couldn't prove what I was about to write. I had no data (and still don't) that leading and working from our spiritual cores and making the increase of love be our motivation would help organizations, but I'd seen it. I knew what I knew. I could evolve the way we work. So, I wrote, and many people read. Both books received some official recognition, but in serving the spirit world, I did marginalize myself for a long time in the management consulting world. It was as if that community thought that my left brain evaporated, as I wrote what the right brain told me.
Then came The Game Called Life which explained "how the world worked" in a somewhat unconventional way. Life is a game, but most of us just don't know the rules. The Game and Choice Point, which hasn't seen the light of day beyond a small circle of friends who have been deeply moved by it, not only flew in the face of many conventional religious beliefs but also are contrary to many popular "New Age" teachings. I couldn't prove it, but I knew what I knew, so I wrote.
I've stood in front of audiences and shared deeply personal parts of myself because I thought that doing so would help others sustain their own spiritual journeys.
Although I am not sure that anyone would say that I achieved greatness in the normal world (what Helen would call the "fictional" world) context, I still hear from people who were empowered for their own journeys by the words that have moved through me. While it was a risk to take on these major constituencies, my spiritual center told me that it was my work to do.
Have I been vulnerable? Of course. Would I do one thing differently? Never. If vulnerability is how we find God then each of those writing experiences have been other worldly. I have surrendered to the words that wanted to move through me. I have learned for the first time as I read what was on the screen in front of me. To surrender so completely is by definition risking and vulnerable. And, only twice have I felt closer to God than when I am writing.
I stand at the precipice of vulnerability, ready to jump,...again. I am ready to risk greatness in the hope that I can have the teensiest role in evolving human kind.
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