Leaning over the embankment, an invitation beckons me to release my hold and dive into the water below. The pond ripples, responding to the whips of wind cascading over its surface. I see myself, then, in a mirror as fragmented light.
This past week has been a trip off all sorts of learning, glory, opportunity, and challenge. I’ve been following a book, “The Highest Goal,” by Stanford business professor Michael Ray. He is an incredibly insightful man and the work he has done in his Creativity in Business course is reflected through this book. Each chapter is effectively a prompt to view and engage with life in a new and novel way, such that my engagement becomes more naturally rooted in the truth that drives me, that fuels my most inner yearning. How curious it is to write in one sentence a thought so lofty that it requires a life to actually dance it out.
Such is the work I’m aiming towards: life defining.
“What gets you up in the morning?”
My toes squirm, I re-adjust my seating position; I don’t have a direct answer to this question. It’s unsettling, to consider the underlying motivations for my existence, to ask such eternal confounding questions as “Why do I do what I do?” and “What is my highest goal?” These are pressing, perhaps soul-wringing explorations. Stirring up these waters invites a wealth of mind-chatter, likely a deluge of judgemental thoughts about who I am, how capable I am, how I have performed or have been perceived, how likely it is for me to become more free, how obligated I am to certain things that I feel tie me down, how I’ve failed in certain regards, how I’ve misinterpreted calls to action and missed opportunities and been misled in my pursuit of God’s heart…. These questions, provocations, doubts, fears, anxieties swim through me. Ray talks a lot about the VOJ, or the Voice of Judgement. The important thing in doing work where we open ourselves up to thoughtful introspection and self-healing is to not let the VOJ derail our efforts.
We sell ourselves short. Far too often. Even our great fumbles are a platform for growth. I have a new semester of school coming up and I’ve got so many pots cooking that there is bound to be something that boils over, gets charred, gets undercooked… you name it. There also will be things that end up tasting glorious. I love to cook. I romance the art of cheffing. To dance in the spirit of culinary creation, celebrating the inherent beauty of foodstuffs and openly embracing the magic of synthesizing flavors through any myriad of methods is a blissful waltz. I perhaps feel most in tune with the nature of creation in this rhythm, for I become the creator: romancing potential into existence. It’s my creative dance, one that surfaces in lesser or more profound but distant forms across areas of my life.
This becomes my best answer to these deep prodding questions: I live to love (unconditionally celebrate) the heart of creation.
There is a certain youthful glow I feel from those who live in or around this approach. Their energy is infectious and time spent with them is invariably inspiring. When we live from a posture of inspiration, where the things we pour our life into have inherent meaning that compel us with optimistic curiosity into the future, we spread this energy without even intending; it’s infectious.
The more I lean into such a walk of life, the more curiously intriguing, fun, and challenging this life becomes. I end up with more questions as this pursuit carries on, and so the journey necessitates a quest for calmness of soul. To press into my highest goal and usher a reality into my life ripe with awakening, I have to be with peace in all things.
Peace stills the voice of judgement.
Last week I was given a new charge with my work at Upkey.com. As a student on the Illinois Institute of Technology campus, my role is broadly to serve as a brand activator: get the right folks invested into the vision of the company so they pull it into the culture of their tribes. More or less. Well, turns out the answer is more, for I now get to pursue a very fascinating opportunity to create compelling content leveraging our network across Chicago. It’s the kind of open-ended invitation to dance that leaves God-like room for creative autonomy and organic growth. I’m recognizing a pattern in my life, something I’ve certainly been aware of for some time. Truly, it’s tied to one of my greatest giftings: near unbridled faith in where we can go in the future. Thinking about it makes me smile. When I am given a seed to plant, my imagination jumps to visions of how that plant will grow, and how its seeds will lead to the fruition of vast gardens and orchards and new ways to produce sustenance and oxygen for life on other planets… You get the picture: I paint a vastly profound work of art in my vision based on a simple, non-descript seed.
Two interesting things happen here. One, the vision gives me the energy I need to move forward on the project. I have left multiple employers and institutions for lack of holding a strong vision for my work. The more I live, the more I see the importance of holding vision, being flexible in it, and being disciplined in the small stuff. This is where the second interesting point comes in: the disappointing reality of time. There is a general law of seed--time--harvest. Seeds don’t instantaneously germinate into fields. In my mind, however, they do. Tied to my perception that is half rooted in eternal consciousness, existing beyond time, some of the laws of this physical reality still take me by surprise. Here then comes the ever important role of peace. After I got this opportunity to a new kind of dance with Upkey, I dove into the ocean of visionary thought. I spent the better part of my weekend exploring what this means to me and where it could go. I drafted up a compelling outline for how the concept may evolve over time. This isn’t exactly what my team needs right now. Given that I haven’t even begun producing the actual content, its evolution over time could bear no resemblance what-so-ever to my plans.
So there’s two thoughts I have regarding this. One: it’s not what my team needs but it is what I need. I need a vision-rooted compass for the work I do. I have to know that as I invest my energies into an enterprise, those energies are feeding towards something I can celebrate, effectively bringing me closer to God’s heart… ushering more of what I love into the world. Two: I can’t know all the things. It is fruitless to expend all my energies creating maps of tomorrow when the pathways must be built for that tomorrow to exist. Peace enters the scene as faith. When I am in the flow, where the work is affirming my passions and I feel the synergy it has with other areas of my life, I have got to trust and have faith in the unfolding. With me at the helm, of course it will evolve in a way that I will celebrate. That is, if I am present. My organic intuition to respond in the moment and act from my heart will build the world, the life I love. The longer I dwell in a sweet-state of hope and expectation for the glory of tomorrow to unfold, the longer I will wait for the unfolding. In truth, I will die waiting with that attitude.
The chapter of Michael Ray’s book I am currently in is charging me to “not worry and just do it.” In the past I haven’t viewed my tendency to get visionary as worry. Truly, we need visions to guide us… but not to consume us. It is neither healthy to live in the past nor in the future. Our place, ever and always, is in the present. The mission, then, is how do we thrive in the present?
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| Michael Ray: "The Highest Goal" |
I mentioned intuition and responding in the moment. There is a natural unfolding that occurs when we release worry and act in the flow of things. To do so takes a calm sense of peace, assurance, faith in the unfolding. I can vouch for it, knowing that across the history of my life things have gone swimmingly the more I acted from a posture of celebrating the present (wisely). We can bring wisdom to the table of the present by building into our life such richness as meditation. Before I decided to write this, I meditated for the first time in many days. My mind was rushing with noise about things I needed to do, how I want to start shipping more things, more frequently, to show people in my life that yes I am getting work done and not just musing over in Gabeland. But there was a slight imbalance… my mind was so noisy. I certainly know I wasn’t entertaining the idea of sitting down for an hour+ to write.
I recognized the need for stillness, I read a short chapter in Sakyong Mipham’s “ Turning the Mind into an Ally,” and I simply sat and breathed for a little bit, hardly for ten minutes. Thoughts rushed into my awareness and I just kept on breathing, shifting my attention back from new thought to centered on my breath. Incredibly, with some small level of intentionality, I opened the door for a wave of peace that freed me to express myself to the tune of 1600 words.
The pond has since grown calm. Leaning over the embankment, the surface grants me new perspective of myself, the sky, and what it means to be still.
