Purpose. Who’s There?

01 17, 2021

“What is happening in this co creation? The give and the take, I am responsible for both. What is the nature of the energy, what is the spirit of the exchange,” I said to no one in particular. 

“Who’s asking?” came the return.

“I am no one other than who I am.”

“Who’s there?” he said.

“I am a Peacemaker.  I am a bridgebuilder, too, and a mediator, a light bearer, a teacher, an appreciator of the grander view,” I said.

“What is your purpose here?’”

“Well, to be honest, it involves all these things.  These are not what I do, they describe my way of doing.  It is my purpose to do life this way.  It’s what I AM…I am more than my narrative thinking experience.  I am more than my physical, sensory experience.  I am more than others’ experience of me.  If all those things were gone, I would still be me.”

“Then it’s the Infinite Self you’re talking about,” he said.

“It is the co-creative possibility of that Self that I’m most interested in experiencing… to its fullest extent,” I said.

“You can participate in creation without always having to be the cause of creation,” he said.  How you participate in creation is your creation; It is your dharma, your purpose, your duty, and it is your passion.  It’s not what you do, but as whom.  It isn’t what gets created that will matter to you in the end, what will matter is by whom, he said.”

“So, I said, this is what’s meant by authenticity. This is what is meant by ‘showing up’ each day. This is how I’ll know my Self?” 

 “Be honest with yourself about your desire or need for self- significance, personal achievement. This is not the same as purpose,” he said.

Hmmm, So as I recount, I may recognize all that occurs in my life as MY LIFE. Take that in, make it part of me. What if deeply felt and genuinely lived satisfaction is as good as it gets? Is that really so bad?   No if-so-then,  or and-therefore…. simply the astonishing now, I thought. Stand in my full stature, take license to occupy fully.  Stand up. stand up in the face of whatever this is that presses down on me.

Then he said, “You know…Until you really have permission, it’s hard to know what you want.”

Even Here

01 16, 2021

Peace even here,” shines in her mind.  As she tried to call back the other shining moments that happened, it’s the questions that burned brightest:

How do I find Peace in this, “I’m not where I want to be, in the not-yet.

How do I approach the dissonance that is here now?

How do I find Peace in this, “I have questions, what does this look like?”

Can I experience Peace without anything changing, facing into the unknown?  I want to do something, but I don’t know what it is; I want community, but I don’t know who or where.

Can I experience Peace where I want the Peace to pull me out of that place, where I want it to make the discomfort go away?

How do I meet this with Peace? What would it be like to bring the energy of Peace to this conversation around meaningful work?

So she closed her eyes and sat in that darkness allowing her mind to go where it would if she turned her attention in the direction of her life’s experience of work– could she bring peace to remembering.  Initially all she could see was the darkened hallway, dim light in each of the rooms there along it.  When her attention moved in the direction of the rooms at once she was in a ‘funhouse’ (a misnomer if there ever was one).  Moving from room to room in the half-light she caught her distorted reflection in the mirror, in one room it was tall and narrow, the next short and wide, a creepily wavey image in the next.  She recognized the shame, the regret, the frustration, resentment, self-pity, and dismay that peered back at her from each.  Her memory of her work was fraught.  Her body felt sick in the stomach and her footing unsure. How would she know Peace here….“even here,” she thought.

Attributes or Original Signature

11/15/2020

“Why do you write,” she asked. “I write to set myself free,” I said.

“Why do you work with horses,” she asked. “To have a lived experience of Unity and Communion with the Divine.”

“Why do you knit,” she asked. “I knit to know myself as a creator of worlds, to bring formless ideas into form.”

“Why do you teach,” she asked. “I teach to love, to be in love in the world.”

“Well then, go ask a friend,” she said. “If I ask for another’s assessment or impression of me, the response can only be based on observed traits and behavior.  It’s a distortion and a story that attempts to express the other’s experience of me in words. It’s downstream of the information that is true and relevant about me.  By the time it’s behavior it’s already too late, it’s clouded by perception and internalized distortions, on both sides.  I’m not looking to shape behavior.  How useful is knowing what another person has concluded about me, and then assume there’s something true about what they think?  Maybe it’s interesting, but is it true or important? Does it help free me to be more of who my True Self is here to be?”

“What is the risk in hearing it?” she asked. “Because it’s speaking to the wrong self, about the wrong self.  It addresses the conditioned narrative-self.”

If I ask a friend, even a really close friend,

“What moves me? 

“What makes my heart leap up and compels me to follow it? 

“What do I find almost too beautiful to bear? 

“What heals me? 

“What catches my breath?

“What makes my heart soar with joy?  

“What stills my inner world so completely that it’s new again for a moment, or a lifetime? 

“What softens me to the world? 

“Whose life do I know of that strikes awe in me…?”

“How could another possibly respond to that?” 

“Also, when I ask another to offer a reflection or assessment or an opinion about what she knows of me, aren’t I repeating a part of the conditioned narrative that got me into this state of uncertainty and confusion about who I am and what I’m here for?  It’s the habit of granting authority and agency to others that clouds my own insight and obscures what I know to be true.”

“But how do you see the parts of you that you can’t see?” she asked. “When I’m looking in the direction of Origin, the silent place before thinking and behavior, the place from which the impulse and aspiration to be arises, then I’m giving attention to that which is aware. When I look in that direction, I see my Soul’s original nature.”

Neither Dissatisfaction nor Resistance

October 12, 2020

It would be a mistake to interpret or characterize this condition as ‘dissatisfaction in my life’.  I am not dissatisfied with my life.  Full stop.  In the early days I claimed that a certain amount of dissatisfaction was constructive.  Without some dissatisfaction we would never change or evolve, or so I believed.  It is completely possible, and far more constructive, or so I now believe, to hold both, deep appreciation for and satisfaction with the present, together with an impulse for something beyond.

I love my life, as it is. AND I also feel a strong urge, one could even say a calling for something.  Something overlooked perhaps.  Something unrecognized. Something emerging, still unseen but not unheard. Something that wants to be.

It would also be a misinterpretation to characterize this query as resistance to who I am and what I’m here for.  I love and find good company in what I know of who I am and what I’m here for.  AND I don’t fully know it well enough to notice if something is being ignored, or dismissed, or not possessed. Maybe a better way to say it is, I don’t know her well enough to always recognize her and what she’s here for.

How do you remember who you are?  I’ve asked, what do I love; what do I value; what inspires me; what do I aspire to; what matters; for the sake of what do I live my life.  I’ve stepped out onto each of these fronts testing for firm ground. Never enough to find real purchase. 

I tried to narrow the scope to a singular, clearly identifiable ‘who and what’, like an elevator pitch.  What I see lately is that there are many aspects, a kaleidoscope of this and that, instead of this or that.  My learned narrative seems full of contradictions, confusing. 

I think of the contrasting stories of a condor and a peacock.

Condor:  Magnificent freedom of flying, soaring, riding the currents of the air stream, that sense of nearness to the Divine, seamless communion with the infinite. 

Peacock:  Magnificent radiance, a beauty that holds as sacred the signature of Origin; completely present to each moment being born into material form, allowing, trusting its intrinsic peace.

Holding these two creatures as polar is also a misrepresentation. Rather, hold them as co-existent, living the principle of mutuality/unity, without covet or resentment, the completeness of a vividly lived experience.

This requires a complete change in perception.   I must release what I’ve held, and seeing freshly, recognize the underlying desire, then earnestly look toward that direction.  The promise of knowing who I am and what I’m here for lies in this new direction.   Answer the call with rigor and discipline, love what I love, take full agency in that, and surrender to the peace of that, a peace which is both the source and the consequence of this agency, remembering, reaching, and returning to it.