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115 What glory rises in me today?
Where you look
Dean Graziosi tells an attention-grabbing
story of the white-water rafting guide who teaches the teen-aged
rafters to look where he points. Dean’s story is much more
entertaining than my reflections about chopping wood in articles 32 and
33. He explains that the guide points to the direction of
safety. Rafters row in the direction where they are looking. If
they look at the rocks they are trying to avoid, they will wind
up on the rocks. Indeed, we set our destination by where we
look.
Poet
Yesterday I was treated with a recitation
by David Whyte of his poem “What to
remember when waking.” It was a landmark to me in the study of
starting a day effectively. You might guess that a poet would
influence me more than a goal-setting efficiency coach. The
metaphor of emerging from the night means realizing the vision
for today that we can hold only before the planning takes place.
I frequently need that reminder to be aware of the wide world,
not the treadmill portion. While I love to blog about
perspective, I can lose my own. Then I need inspiration from
somebody else’s.
Our leaders
What do you think Jane Addams and Dr.
King awoke to? I purposely choose heroic figures who had
different roles to play. The one founded or co-founded several
organizations while the other worked in the settings of existing
organizations which became mighty instruments of change. I’m
positive they had one characteristic in common: neither one awoke
to the thought “I wonder how much money I can make today.”
Because they were genuine, these were leaders I can follow.
The poem speaks softly in appreciation of
the inner nature that is “not an accident.” How I wish I could so
poetically appeal to the good inside you. I would arouse in you
the “small opening into the new day which closes the moment you
begin your plans.” Jane Addams surely had to think about her
plans before she accomplished the first public library in
Chicago, the NAACP, the ACLU, and on and on. I’m thinking about
the moment before those items became conscious. What did she see
in herself?
Dr. King responded to public cries for
justice. He felt keenly the need of millions of disadvantaged
people. But I am wondering what he saw before he opened his
schedule book. What consciousness greeted him each morning when
he realized he continued to be alive? How did he see the role
only he could teach us to emulate? What inner light did he trust?
What was it that became visible to us to sustain our confidence
in his message?
Poetic perspective
All my prior articles address the worlds
we are creating. I have parsed them from internal and external
viewpoints and thoroughly examined the importance of perspective.
Today, with a poet’s help, I examine the origin of perspective.
What is our connection with reality which David Whyte calls the
“mountain presence of everything that can be”? Where is our
fountain of strength? While I have placed self and other on equal
footing, I have always been aware that entering the combination
requires having a self. Where did it originate? It does exist.
Mine is there, in the poet’s words, before the moment I
begin my plans. Perhaps a philosopher would use the term “first
cause.” What is it?
By now my regular readers recognize that
I am encouraging you to live up to the potential within you. Your
every self-awareness is a talent waiting to be expressed. The
good you will accomplish originates before you do it: the thing
is created mentally before physically. Conceptualizing is your
moment of actual creation. In the perfect opening we are
discussing, reality is transferring from the unknown “hidden in
your sleep” to its manifestation in the waking world. Do you give
yourself credit for that? Do you appreciate that the world would
be poorer without it? Do you apply it accordingly, with
confidence?
Visible evidence
There are outward evidences or signals of
this deeper, hidden power that lurks in you. What do you think
about when you do not have to think? When nobody is commandeering
your schedule, when you pause to be yourself, where do your
thoughts go? If you think about what you don’t like, you will not
like your world.
Could you possibly be wasting away
feeling sorry for yourself? Those thoughts self-multiply and you
become a sorry mess indeed.
Might you be jealous or disappointed?
Those thoughts don’t strengthen you or improve others.
Do you allow yourself unrealistic
fantasy? “The world” is not a synonym of Santa Clause handing out
everything you wished for.
No, your thoughts, your “first cause,”
constitute the concrete origin of the future to which you commit
yourself. If the unforced thoughts do not rise, you do not rise
either.
Application
If I am a good teacher, you are already
clamoring for this lesson’s homework before I assign it. Your
train has already left the station headed for a destination of
blessing lives of many people. What you realize—what you are--in
the inner space of this fertile moment defines the purpose of
your own creation. It is you, and what you project or make
visible flows from it. You are not a wrecker (described in the
word “fight”). You are a creator (described in the word
“love”).
Are you now going to lay down this
article and curse the world for being evil? I don’t think my
readers are capable of that. Are you going to stop reading so you
can continue unproductive entertainments? Don’t let that kill the
inner seed that needs to grow today. The unseen mind must emerge
from under the cover; no distraction can obliterate it. What you
think and say right now is already creating your world. Your
speech reveals whether your attention is on the wrecking ball or
on the mansion.
Being For Others Blog copyright © 2021 Kent Busse
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