True Confessions: If I have to choose, I'll take 'impact' over 'nice' any day!

Maybe I’m just getting old and crotchety. Or maybe I’ve been having these conversations for so long that I find myself wanting to make quantum leaps and am unwilling to engage in incremental nano-inching as an authentic expression of human potential. And then, maybe it’s none of that – maybe it’s just that my bullshit detector has become so well honed over the last 20 years that I can no longer (doing)….or am no longer willing to (being)… not see what I see, hear what I hear, know what I know…and say what I have to say.

Whatever it is, I am aware that I am being drawn to equally hone what I do with my life : where I spend my time, who I spend it with and what kind of experiences I am willing/not willing to be part of. This is, after all, my life and no one else can have it!

My perspective on the world – my world – has been changing over the last two years. It started in January 2006 and it continues to flesh itself out with more density and intensity of color, form and content. I am electric with what I sense to be an escalating awakening as living, organic, planetary systems move and shift in themselves and in the way they interact with each other. The changes we are already living are not/will not be incremental, linear and unfolding over time. Like us, they will be unpredictable, interactive and magnificent in their potential; and they will present in orders of magnitude beyond our expectations in their capacity to reshape our world and our lives.

This awareness permeates everything I have become and so, permeates all that I am and do. This results in a corresponding sense of urgency and intensity to create, on the holodeck of my experience, people/events/conversations that are compelling and deeply meaningful for my own evolution, as I believe that my evolution – like that of every other living, organic system – will profoundly connect with and ultimately shape that of the living planet of which I am an integral part. If I am not enlivened, nurtured and urged into aliveness by my own existence, how can I be part of creating that anywhere else?

It is interesting to me that lately, I find more and more people who can ‘hear’ the planet. It is a communication that cannot be explained through language that we know. And yet, in my experience of it, it is an undeniable phenomenon. We are beginning to hear Gaia, from the inside, out as we become unable to not see Gaia from the outside, in.

Compelling and meaningful – these are the essential elements to designing my life worth living. These qualify as those ‘can’t-live-without-them’ ingredients that go into shaping my life in a way that lights me up and leaves me more present, more awake and more enlivened by every breath I take! Not only is this MY life, this life of mine is an essential cell in the evolving life of the planet. Like Gaia, I am unwilling to have it just go on, day after day, through habit and by default, slowly grinding to a halt under the unbearable burden of my/our own individual and collective mindlessness. No life to live is far better than a life not worth living.

More and more, I am discovering how unwilling I am becoming to be in conversations that don’t matter; that don’t make a difference; that are intended to mindlessly fill dead air time and have no other purpose than to put the vibration of sound into what feels like the immense weight of silence.

No longer am I willing or able to NOT see what percentage of my conversations are repetitive…are saying nothing of any consequence…and are a pale reflection of the truth of who I am and my own potential. And no longer am I willing to collude with anyone else because to not do so results in discomfort and chaos.

Every conversation is an invitation for me to choose. Do I choose a bigger or smaller life? Do I choose to tell my truth or to deceive? Do I actually consider a question or mindlessly offer the polite or politically required response? Do I choose to discover something new about myself or do I just push the button and run the ‘me’ that I and everyone else has come to expect? Do I draw back, tone down and hold out on the full force of who I am in the world or do I allow myself to be unleashed into my own potential? Do I edit or do I reveal, unfiltered, what courses through my awareness? None of this need be in aggression or anger, and yet what I am aware of is that an individual truth is often so long denied that when it is finally revealed, it feels like that to so many. It need not be so. It is not the expressed truth that causes this outcome; it is the increasing pressure from decades of its denial that hardens and sharpens the edges of its eventual delivery.

As I pay attention to the vibration of this in my own body, I am beginning to see my world differently. I am noticing and being drawn to those others – wherever they are and whatever their interests happen to be – who are prepared to be outrageous in their commitment to their own vibrancy! I’m finding people to play with who are massive in their potential, strong in voice and shameless in their willingness to wrap their hands around what they want and engage. I am discovering that on the holodeck of my experience, the genius of who I am has created the genius of who they are that I might have others for me to play with.

Long ago in a program experience, someone said to me – in great earnest and with equally great sincerity – “I want things to be different but I don’t want my life to change.” As much as I find this to be wonderfully funny, there appeared to be no awareness on the part of the speaker, of any discord in this statement.

Today, what I know is that, s/he does not stand alone. I have found many in my experience over the last 20 years who have shared this mantra: “I want things to be different…(.i, e. I want other people to change, to stop asking, to be nicer/kinder/more understanding, to finally understand, to leave me alone, to get on with their lives, etc….) but I don’t want my life to change (i.e. I’m comfortable, things in my life are familiar, I don’t want the things I like to be disturbed, I don’t want people to think less of me for wanting what I don’t have, I can’t stand conflict/dissention/chaos, etc….)”. The world is full of people who believe that in order for them to have what they want, they have to wait until someone else changes in order for them to have it; who believe that it’s rude/selfish/unkind for them to insist on their own needs/desires; who are more committed to their powerlessness than they are to their own potential.

Today, what I also know about ME is that I’m not interested in playing that game anymore. We…us…all of us….are running out of time.

It’s like watching nations come together to discuss climate change, behaving as if their lack of willingness/desire/ability to engage and actually DO something different, is not seen for what it is; and that we’re still going to be polite and trust that they know better than we do what’s good for us. They prefer to continue their limp efforts at being seen to be doing something useful than to actually do anything that will make a difference. They also continue to lie to themselves and insist that they have lots of time. Were it not so dangerous, it would be comical in its pathetic irrelevance.

And so, I’m coming to a place inside myself where I’m discovering that I’m losing interest in the conversations that are about wanting to without being willing to. Being able to follows the latter. I’m interested in engaging with those who are clear that: “I’m taking back my life! I’m willing to do what it takes; I’m up for the tough conversations with myself and with the people I love; I’m not willing to look back…and let the chips fall where they may – I know I’ll be just fine.”

That takes courage and a boundless curiosity about our own lives. Ready, willing and able – whether they know how or not – these folks step up to the plate, pick up the bat and are eager to learn how to swing joyously and play this game of life, full tilt! Unwilling to be sacrificed on the alter of good manners (i.e. wait your turn, you can’t say that, don’t interrupt, etc.) ; with a sense of hope and possibility, they are sometimes motivated by a keen awareness that they’re no longer willing to live puny lives. “Enough! I’m getting on with living regardless of what you do!” seems to be what oozes from every pore. Count me in on those conversations!

Far too many of us have already bored ourselves to death – and everyone else we come in contact with – in the name of our so-called love for others, be they our parents, children, spouses, friends, colleagues, etc. When I think of the people I care about, I can think of nothing more powerful in their lives than my willingness to be a living expression of permission to be powerful in my own. My notion of ‘love’ is not based in sacrifice, self-denial and personal limitation. It is driven by the godforce that I AM in recognition of the godforce that each of them is. In that, we share abundance, immensity and great joy for being true to ourselves in the presence of each other. “This is my life and you can’t have it!” becomes a new mantra that defines direction and outlines the power of the responsibility I carry for myself, my evolution and its contribution to the overall evolution of that larger, living system that is Gaia. Accelerated evolution is highly contagious!

So there it is – and I feel so much more connected to myself again. The truth is out: I’m not interested in being ‘nice’! I want to play the big game, for the big scores. I WANT to engage with the people who have been written off by everyone else and yet persist because instinctively, they know there is more. I WANT to be in those raw, prickly, edgy conversations that make people uncomfortable and unsure, that no one else wants to be in because they dredge up their own secrets and self-betrayals. I WANT to engage with those who have given up hope of finding someone to stand with as they move through the dark of their own undiscovered pathways through the chaos of their own potential. I know that the godforce that I AM is a formidable presence and I am willing to engage.

Breathing is good….