Recently, I had an email exchange with a wonderful woman who is both courageous and curious about her own potential, knowing only too well that she will be the model for her children to discover their own. Over the past few weeks, she has been listening to the ‘Decloaking and Living Authentically‘ audio materials and likely heard my comments re my own long history of ‘traditional’ talk therapies. Comments that referenced how after years and years of this approach, I could talk the talk but when push came to shove, I would collapse back into old patterns of response that did not serve me.
My view? Each of us is free to choose whatever path calls to us to engage. For many of them, I can say: been there, done that, bought the t-shirt. I got tired of the struggle of it all… the tedium of it all… and finally just surrendered to my own inability to intellectually-dominate myself into my own potential! In that moment, my life changed.
I share with you part of what I shared with her, for you to do with as you see fit.
“As I read your words, I become aware of a distinction that exists in our perceptions of what it means to evolve.
There are (at least!) two ways to see the world.
Imagine a circle surrounded by dark and empty space. One way, is to know that I am the circle… looking out into the darkness and seeking to identify how I might behave in response to the darkness and the emptiness that surrounds me.
Another way, is to know that I AM the dark and empty space…. knowing that the circle I notice exists inside me and is a creation of my own making. I look at the circle and I wonder: how else might I choose to shape this expression of my Being, as it seeks to better know itself?
I have no problem with talk therapy. In truth, I am a great supporter of all conversations that allow us to make our way back to ourselves. The challenge for me is that in all therapies that I have engaged, I was encouraged to believe that I am the circle… needing to find ways to adapt to the dark and empty space that surrounds me. Now, I know that I am the dark and empty… and immensely powerful!… space; that I am able to explore and shape and discover the potential of the circle before me. For me, that has been a much more potent place to stand.
I no longer spend time working out or working through my parents, my brother, my parenting, my ageing Mom, etc. I no longer seek to lament or dissect why I (or someone else) did/said something and whether it was right/wrong. I focus on exploring how, no matter what presents in my world, there is great genius is its unfolding; and intelligence that lies in helping me discover more about my own potential.
Points of view. Same relationship: circle and empty/dark. I choose the point of view that allows me the greatest expanse from which to reconsider my Self.”
I’m not interested in the small lines of enquiry. I’m not interested in incremental and tiny steps forward. I’m looking for those massive leaps that make it possible for me to have a single moment in time BE the gateway for me to enter a new paradigm. And as much as I was taught/we have been taught that such things do not exist, I can honestly say: they were wrong.
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