HOW TO STAND IN YOUR POSSIBILITY

It was the first day of our training program and we were all waiting for the coach to arrive and start teaching. The participants were professionals from all walks of life and it was the peak of popularity of Ontological Design and Experiential Learning workshops which created awareness about new ways of being and showing up in life.

I never forget that day because when the coach arrived he went directly to the white board and wrote: WHY ARE YOU HERE?! The whole class was staring at him and we were all speechless as if we needed more explanation. After a few minutes of silence he asked the class to stand up one by one and to respond to his question starting with the front row. We were about twenty or twenty five participants and our answers to his question were more or less the same thing, ranging from wanting to improve our life, to perform better, to succeed, etc. When we each delivered our response he would ask us to sit down and he would continue with the next person. At the end of this exercise we realized that he has not been happy with any of our answers.

While we were trying to cope with our anxiety and disappointment in ourselves he came a bit closer to us and said: THE ANSWER TO THIS QUESTION IS VERY SIMPLE. YOU ARE HERE BECAUSE YOU WANT TO BE HERE. IT IS YOUR CHOICE TO BE HERE. AS SIMPLE AS THAT!

I was in awe because nobody had thought about that. It was about the importance of the choices we make and the stand that we take with our words. He then wrote on the white board: MY LIFE IS MY CHOICE BECAUSE, I AM THAT EVERYTHING ELSE IS!

That was the start of an exciting and dynamic training program about standing in our possibility vs. clinging to our stories and fears.

Here is the essence of the lessons learned:

1. We usually think of possibility as options but it also means a state of being, a context for something to be created and a domain in which new options become possible. I can be a story about my fears and doubts or be a possibility that I stand for. Living out of possibility gives me access to the extraordinary.

2. What I see as possible or as achievable determine how I think, manage, talk and act. I should be able to distinguish Being from the action of thinking. This is the distinction between what I think and who I am. That is when the Being takes over.

3. Possibility is a declaration and my words create reality when I speak it. The confidence comes from what I am standing for, which is making a difference in other people’s life. My declaration and words can also free the best in others.

4. If I have fear it is because I am thinking about a story, something that happened in the past. If I keep saying that “this will not work out” then I bring it to myself and I let my future be determined by my past. I should give up the fear in order to be my possibility. I should constantly ask myself - what do I stand for.

5. Possibility involves others, it is not personal and it includes everyone else. The question is who I have been being in my community. Have I been resigned or in action. I should confront my cynicism and resignation and give those up to become enrolling. I should be able to find out how I have been stopping myself and how I can teach myself to fly. I should invent other possible ways to be.

6. When I am enrolled in my possibility there is compassion for self and others, there is effective listening and hearing the concerns of the members of the community. I cultivate authenticity and openness and people feel that they are being taken care of; otherwise, there will be boredom and nervousness which will stop my self-expression and my meaningful efforts.

I would like to briefly add here that I personally chose to stand in the possibility of Vitality and Self-Expression which was the challenge I needed in order to get out of my comfort zone. Given the socio-cultural background where I came from, this was not an easy task to do but my stand and my declaration enabled me to stop shying away from people, to live my life fully, and to impact other people’s life in a big way. In other words, I learned to fully and authentically express myself in a way that forwarded the freedom and self-expression of others.

To be continued.....

IN SEARCH OF REALITY

I have always been curious about the realities of life and existence. I used to read and document the views and comments of my favorite writers on specific concepts or topics and then delve into what they had said for hours, even days.

The philosophical definition of “reality” is “something that exists independently of ideas concerning it.” Considering this definition one could assume that the sunset is the “reality” and a painting of it is what we make of it.

Here are my notes of what some writers have painted of “reality”.

David Spangler - The universe is ultimately the manifestation of non-physical, non-material possibilities, and the dominant view of science now is how much we don’t really know about the nature of reality. On atomic and sub-atomic or quantum level, reality is a joint creation or product of the participation of observer and observed. Reality is continually co-created. We perceive only what we think or believe we can perceive. The world is as hard as we wish it to be, or as open, fluid and expanding as we can embody.

Chogyan Trungpa - The human potential for intelligence and dignity is attuned to experiencing the brilliance of the bright blue sky, the freshness of the green fields, and the beauty of the trees and mountains. We have an actual connection with reality that can wake us up and make us feel basically, fundamentally good. The problem is that when we begin to realize that potential goodness in ourselves we often take our discovery much too seriously. We might kill for goodness or die for goodness, we want it so badly. A genuine sense of humor is having a light touch, not beating the reality into the ground but appreciating reality with a light touch. The discovery of basic goodness is the realization that we can directly experience and work with reality, the real world that we are in.

Susan Howatch – We live in the world of movement, of change, which is reflected in the words “past”, “present”, and “future”, but beyond this world is another world to which we are inextricably linked but which we can only dimly perceive. This world is kingdom of values, the absolute values of goodness, truth and beauty, and it is these unchanging values present in our changing world of time and space, which reflect the other world, ultimate reality, which is beyond space and time.

Rick Fields - For the ordinary man whose mind is checkerboard of crisscrossing reflections, opinions, and prejudices, bare attention is virtually impossible, his life is thus centered not on reality itself but on his ideas about it.

Hugh Prather – What an obsured amount of energy I have been wasting all my life trying to figure out how things “really are” when all the time they weren’t. There are no absolute for something so relative as human life. The measure of communication is trust. Insofar as I hide any feeling or experience, I separate myself from knowledge of reality and the love of others.

Gary Zukav - Quantum physics was born of an intense and cumulative effort to understand the nature of physical light. It is possible to build a device that reveals wave-like nature of light that causes light to produce phenomena that can only be produced by wave. It is also possible to make a device that detects particles of light, as though they were tiny pellets, and to measure the force of the impact of each particle. Yet it is not possible for light to be described as a wave phenomenon at the same time. In other words, it is not possible to describe the nature of light – literally, the shape of physical apart from the experimental apparatus that is used to determine it, and this depends upon the intention of the experimenter.

The dependency of the form of physical light upon the intention of the experimenter reflects in a limited but accurate manner the dependency of the form of non-physical light upon the intentions of the soul that shapes it, just as the nature of physical light itself reflects in a limited but essentially accurate way the nature of the light of the universe. The true human condition in its most perfect form has no secrets. It does not hide, but exists in clear love.

Allan Watts -  Intelligence is not a separate, ordering faculty of the mind, but a characteristic of the whole organism-environment relationship, the field of forces where in lies the reality of a human being. Nature is a field of relationships rather than a collection of things. If the fundamental energy and impulse of the universe were not blissful, the whole system would have ceased long ego.

Elizabeth Heich - We are able to shift our consciousness into the past or into the future at will. In other words, we are able to experience the past and the future as present. And with the same case we can free ourselves from the hindrance of space and move our consciousness to any place we wish. In this condition there is no “here” and no “there” but only omnipresence. For past and future – here and there – are only different aspects, different projections of the one and only reality, the eternal omnipresent.

Buddhism - Considers “I” an idea of incorrect perception of reality. The teachings deal with truths which go entirely beyond the merely rational, unfolding a transcendental vision of reality which altogether surpasses all our usual categories of thought. There is a belief that we have the capacity to penetrate directly to the heart of reality.

Ray Grigg - There is mystery because there is not-knowing

                     Yet beneath each knowing is the next not-knowing

                     So each knowing deepens the mystery

                     Yet even in knowing there is the mystery of knowing

Well said as a conclusion!

To be continued….