Ever Forward

Your life is asking something of you.

2011-01-17T10:59:00.001-08:00

Jesus told his followers to be "perfect as the Father is perfect."

At first glance this seems pretty outrageous, but glance again.

If you have perfection as a goal, excellence as your standard, you
will always have work to do. You'll face your own inner obstacles:
those fears and preconceptions that hold you back. You'll face
circumstances beyond your control, which you'll have to meet with
creativity. If you're not sitting still, you have work to do. Your
life will be, by definition, a work in progress.

Operative word: work.

Maybe you're trying to build something. Maybe you're like me and
you've set your sites on attaining creative freedom through getting
paid to do what you love on your own terms. Maybe, like me, you're
willing to spend the rest of your life trying to make that happen,
even if you can only spare 30 minutes a day. (You can spare more than
that. Sleep less.)

For me, this is the perfection Jesus was talking about: to live in
freedom, supported by my creativity.

Awesome dream. Build that.

Jesus was just commenting on getting the most out of life. He was
saying, "You've always got something you can be working on." What he
meant was "Your life is asking something of you."

Asking what? The answer is in your circumstances. Whether it's your
job, your relationships, your dream, there is always further to go,
more to discover, more to achieve. As long as you are alive and
kicking, perfection remains a process. It's synonymous with living.

Or it should be.

If you feel pulled toward something greater, more fulfilling, more
awesome, set out. If you don't, maybe you're not aiming high enough.
If you don't, no matter what you've achieved, I'm guessing you're
capable of more.

Ever forward.

Your life is asking something of you.

2011-01-16T19:06:00.001-08:00

Jesus told his followers to be "perfect as the Father is perfect."

At first glance this seems pretty outrageous, but glance again.

If you have perfection as a goal, excellence as your standard, you will always have work to do. You'll face your own inner obstacles: those fears and preconceptions that hold you back. You'll face circumstances beyond your control, which you'll have to meet with creativity. If you're not sitting still, you have work to do. Your life will be, by definition, a work in progress.

Operative word: work.

Maybe you're trying to build something. Maybe you're like me and you've set your sites on attaining creative freedom through getting paid to do what you love on your own terms. Maybe, like me, you're willing to spend the rest of your life trying to make that happen, even if you can only spare 30 minutes a day. (You can spare more than that. Sleep less.)

For me, this is the perfection Jesus was talking about: to live in freedom, supported by my creativity.

Awesome dream. Build that.

Jesus was just commenting on getting the most out of life. He was saying, "You've always got something you can be working on." What he meant was "Your life is asking something of you."

Asking what? The answer is in your circumstances. Whether it's your job, your relationships, your dream, there is always further to go, more to discover, more to achieve. As long as you are alive and kicking, perfection remains a process. It's synonymous with living.

Or it should be.

If you feel pulled toward something greater, more fulfilling, more awesome, set out. If you don't, maybe you're not aiming high enough. If you don't, no matter what you've achieved, I'm guessing you're capable of more.

Ever forward.

God wants us to thrive. If it does not help you thrive, it is not of God.

2010-12-30T11:47:00.001-08:00

The point here is to have life to the full. Of course that doesn't mean a life without struggle or a life without challenge. It does mean having a perspective on struggle and challenge that help you to grow, to improve your your surroundings, and to contribute in positive ways when change is needed.

Or to simply enjoy a good thing while it lasts.

This message is all over the place in the Christian gospels. Jesus himself said, "I came that they might have life and have it to the full."

But you don't need to be religious to participate in this idea. All you need to do is begin the process of learning who you are, of discovering what you have to offer, and of revealing that to the world without fear or hesitation.

Apply this to your work life and you will thrive in your career. Apply this to your personal life and you will thrive in your relationships. Apply this to your creativity and you will thrive in your projects.

God wants us to thrive. If it does not help you thrive it is not of God. If it does, it is.

Ever forward.

How's the view from your deathbed?

2010-12-09T06:35:00.001-08:00

The deathbed perspective is a great way to evaluate the decisions you make. When faced with risk or opportunity, consider how you will feel when you look back from your deathbed at the choice you made.

If there is an upside to death, it might be the surgical precision with which it can help you sort your priorities.

Ever forward.

Consider the evolution of awesome

2010-11-29T06:05:00.001-08:00

Awesome is a great word. It used to mean "eliciting awe," and implied a mix of inspiration, fear, exhilaration: like I felt the time I used my pocket knife to free a huge buck deer that got it's antlers tangled in the ropes supporting a pine tree. It was awesome.

When I was a kid, awesome took on "lower-case A" status and came to mean "cool" or "really good." All the kids were saying it and that use has stood the test of time. I have a coworker who uses awesome to indicate satisfaction with the successful transmission of an e-mail.

But I think awesome is becoming new again. Today if often means something like "stands out in a very special way." It carries the implication that you're being super effective just by being yourself. And that's the key: being yourself is a very important part of it.

This is encouraging. It means that every single one of us can and should be awesome. It means that being awesome is no more difficult than simply being who you are, striving for your dreams, developing your talents, overcoming your fears, spending your energy trying to bring out into the open as much as possible of what you have to offer.

Do that and you will elicit awe, that mix of inspiration, fear and exhilaration. Keep doing it and you'll find yourself surrounded by others who do too. That's where we're headed: from Awesome, through awesome back to Awesome again.

Ever forward.

Success hounds your steps intent on devouring you and showing you that you were right to keep going.

2010-11-22T13:14:00.001-08:00

Success shadows failure where ever it goes. People who never give up understand this. The people who work every day to bring what they have to the world keep doing it because they understand this truth. Sure they experience failure, defeat, discouragement. They may even get overwhelmed. But they endure because of an abiding sense of possibility.

Failure and discouragement imply their own opposites. If you fail, it's because you stuck your neck out. If you're discouraged it's because some inspiration motivated you to try.

Be warned. You are being hunted. Success hounds your steps intent on devouring you and showing you that you were right to keep going.

Ever forward.

What's the point of not being awesome?

2010-11-16T13:15:00.001-08:00

Is it is easier to not live up to your potential? What about all the envy and armchair negativity that goes with it? Tuning out with television can take the edge off, but the sense of unrest and frustration that comes from rotting potential is always a grating, uncomfortable feeling that never really goes away.

Is there some benefit in not bothering to be awesome? Is it really harder to strive for your best, most creative, most incredible?

I really don't think so.

Ever forward.

Imagine if creativity for its own sake were an agreed upon and highly regarded social value.

2010-11-01T11:29:00.001-07:00

Evolving your freedom and taking chances on your passion are the best things you can do for yourself, your loved ones, and for the world.

Consider what you think and feel inside. What happens in there that you don't like? What is about you that stands in the way of you? Of you prospering and thriving, of you unleashing your creativity, of hatching and achieving your dreams?

Who wouldn't want to unlock their best possible self? The one that doesn't hold back on being awesome. Imagine a world where all of us, or even most of us, are doing that work. The result would be a world so totally different, a society so transformed, that I don't think we'd even recognize it.

Imagine if creativity for its own sake were an agreed upon and highly regarded social value.

Ever forward.

Don't miss your chance. It only comes around a hundred times a day.

2010-10-28T06:14:00.001-07:00

Whether you're working on the project of your heart's desire or getting chewed out by your boss, you have chance to make something great of your circumstances. It depends on three things:

Your sense of self
Your alertness to opportunity
Your idea of great

Ever forward.

Your job is more than just a career, it's the training ground of your soul

2010-10-25T11:06:00.001-07:00

Don't be a pushover. Be someone who creatively pushes back. Rubbing up against personalities, against the unimaginative, against the threat of losing your job: these things are the context you've been given to polish yourself and deepen your maturity.

This is your mythical adventure.

Express yourself fully, then let go. Then refine how you express yourself and try again. Realize that this or that project is not who you are, but it is a chance to show who you are. One way or the other you're doing that.

You spend at least eight hours in that place, with those people, doing those tasks. This is your chance to become a champion human being. And it might even lead to a promotion.

Ever Forward.

What I really need to do is be.

2010-09-08T04:14:00.001-07:00

There seems to be a difference between the real world and the one where I spend most of my time.

2010-08-27T11:39:00.001-07:00

We live on a planet in orbit around a star. Shouldn't that blow your mind?

2010-08-12T05:13:00.001-07:00

With futility out of the way the sky is the limit all over again.

2010-06-15T18:21:00.001-07:00

make an act of love for your craft.

Where there is no love, put love, and there you will draw love out.

Creativity can be brutal and the sense of futility can wear you down. Sometimes we have to labor at what we love rewarded only by the belief that doing so is good.

Sometimes you just can't feel the love, as the hackneyed saying goes. But there is a less tired saying, at least as true: "Where there is no love, put love, and there you will draw love out."

That was St. John of the Cross, the 16th century Spanish mystic. An accomplished poet, St. John is still considered one of the greats of the classical Spanish language. Safe to say he knew the trials of creativity.

It takes a long time and a lot of discipline to distill your motivation for creativity down to the simple satisfaction your derive from it. The simple sense that doing it is good. So it's a real drag when that sense disappears.

But it happens.

The answer is to give something back.

Make an act of love for your craft. Let it know you still believe in it and remind yourself in the process. Artist? Teacher? Entrepreneur? Do something fresh and risky that goes beyond "the work." Attempt to write in a new style. Teach a new subject. Make a hire for talent rather than experience.

Inspiration is just a connection to the perpetual newness of things. Sometimes we get disconnected. Where there is no love, put love. Take a chance on your craft. Put a little something on the line. Demonstrate the fact that you love your craft and the futility will flee. With futility out of the way the sky is the limit all over again.

Ever forward.

As you explore your talents you uncover hidden bits of brilliance found nowhere else in the world.

2010-05-27T08:00:00.001-07:00

When you use your talents, you start to make time for them. You realize that no matter how busy you are, you can make a little time. Your talents will reach a higher place on your list of priorities, among the other things that really matter.

Your talents have a special place on that list. Even among your relationships, your work, your health, your family. Your talents are there to help you stay connected to your deepest self. When that connection is strong, all those other things benefit too. They get more of you at a time, because more of you is available.

As you explore your talents you uncover hidden bits of brilliance found nowhere else in the world.

That's got to be worth 30 minutes a day.

Ever forward.

Your dream, your passion, is woven into your being from the start.

2010-05-26T04:49:00.001-07:00

A sense of self is the ability to know yourself when you see it.

With a strong sense of self you are able to find yourself at any given moment under all circumstances. You're able to manage your weaknesses and access your strengths. You're able to remember your values and your true motivations no matter what is happening around you, no matter how you feel emotionally.

Your dream, your passion, is woven into your being from the start. Your life gives it shape. If you haven't found it yet, cultivate your sense of self and you will happen upon this dream like a hidden treasure. You will know it like you know your own face, because it's part of your self.

If you do the work, this discovery is inevitable.

Ever forward.

Your dream is the whole of your life and you have the whole of your life to make it happen.

2010-05-25T04:30:00.001-07:00

It's hard to wait for something when there is no guarantee it will happen. Add to that a conviction that seeing it done is parcel to your very being—a divine mandate, an inner command—and, for you at least, it's kind of a big deal.

This experience is a central aspect of dream building. It's the fear of slow.

Doing the work your dream requires is actually the easy part. At least for me. I'm always happiest when I know what to do next, however tedious or difficult it might be. The hard part is the waiting. The hoping. The balancing of detachment and commitment. I live with the sense that I must not rest. I cannot wait.

And yet sometimes that's exactly what my dream requires.

To live life fully you have to trust In the timing of things. It's inexplicable and maddening, but it's true. Using the time you have as wisely as possible is often the best you can do, even if it's only half an hour.

If you're really following your dream and being true to the other vital details of your life, that half an hour will be enough. If you're really plugged in to who you are, what your part is in the great hum of the universe, then what needs to happen will happen and your dream will be achieved.

Somehow.

If you're like me, you'll never give up so that's not an issue. But if you're like me, the fear of slow might drive you insane along the way.

Recognize that if your life is basically in balance and half an hour a day is all you can spare for your dream, then it's enough. The universe will do the rest. Remember that your dream is not that novel you're writing, your dream is the whole of your life and you have the whole of your life to make it happen.

Ever forward.

Death at the door

2010-05-20T07:33:00.001-07:00

There is a kernel within you that only exists because you do.

2010-05-19T06:47:00.001-07:00

Be mythic. Be the stuff of myth. Be the one who ventures out, driven by vision, by a dream, by the promise of a prize that can only be got on the long end of struggle.

You can do it in your spare time. Get up early. Go to bed late. Do what you have to do, this is urgent.

Everybody has their own myth to live and yours is unique to you. It lives in your talents and aspirations. Those things are there for a reason—to provide you with a place to begin.

There is a kernel within you that only exists because you do. It's a single moment in all the long history and future of reality. It has never happened before and it will never happen again.

You are standing there at the On switch.

Be mythic.

Ever forward.

Failure is not failure if done properly.

2010-05-18T05:10:00.001-07:00

Failure is information. Failure tells you what you are not, and knowing what you are not is crucial.

Take Hangman. The game, Hangman. You start out knowing nothing, literally, about the word you're trying to decipher, except the number of letters it takes to spell it. Most of the letters you will guess are wrong. You fail and your turn is over.

But you've also learned a little bit about what your objective isn't.

Dream building is like Hangman. There's too much detail in life for it all to be relevant to your dream. The process we call failure is actually the gradual removal of what is not your desired outcome. Think of it like a sculpture: the stone that is not the statue falls away, a little at a time, until the statue is revealed.

Failure is not failure if done properly. If done properly, failure is a technique for finding the most direct path to fulfillment.

Ever forward.

Roots and flowers

2010-05-14T05:54:00.001-07:00

Into light or into darkness?

2010-05-13T12:26:00.001-07:00

What does excellence look like?

2010-05-12T08:47:00.001-07:00

When in doubt, love others.

2010-05-11T08:10:00.001-07:00

Being good to others conjures up a rudimentary confidence that you can build on. If you are faced with a situation where you feel weak or insecure, take a genuine interest in the people around you. It actually dispels the insecurity, stops the self scrutiny and creates true emotional stability that is not forced, fake or put on.

Once you've established this basic relaxation inside, you can enjoy your surroundings. And you can, if you choose to, begin to incorporate that basic confidence into other areas of your life, other circumstances, by learning to nuance it and adapt it to the variety of situations you encounter each day.

You can take it to work. You can take it to the gym. You can take it on vacation or to a cocktail party. You can even learn to use it when you're stuck in traffic.

When in doubt, love others.

Ever forward.

The strength of weakness

2010-05-10T09:06:00.001-07:00

Awkward moment.

2010-05-06T06:45:00.001-07:00

Midlife can be the most powerful, most productive time of life

2010-05-05T08:16:00.001-07:00

Midlife gets a bad rap. Too much negative spin. People start trying to disguise the fact that they are gaining ground on life. Very often we look back with regret, or even horror at how we've spent the time so far. Missed opportunities. Errors in judgement. Embarrassing moments etched forever on the memory of the universe.

Hogwash.

You can't take the wisdom from an experiences as you have it. You need hindsight for that. There's the beauty of midlife: you've actually got something to look back on. How many people, in their 20's and 30's are actively applying the wisdom they gained during puberty? Not many.

Sure, it was a time filled with life lessons. Of course. But what 35 year old looks to those lessons in times of stress? Your 20's and 30's on the other hand, are filled with useful information you can't really access until, well, midlife.

At midlife, you get to "know now what you wish you knew at 20." You can start over, or keep going, putting into action all the lessons and experience of two decades of adulthood. You can do something completely new, or do the same thing with refreshed vigor and purpose.

Crisis? Nonsense. Midlife can be the most powerful, most productive time of life if you let it be what it really is: an opportunity.

Ever forward.

Make a game of being awesome on the job and you will drastically improve your experience.

2010-05-04T09:30:00.001-07:00

The workplace can provide all the challenge you need to grow as a person. You spend most of your time there. It's your context. It's your primary observation deck for witnessing how you interact with life.

Pick your biggest challenges. Boredom? Repetition? A boss who never approves anything? A coworker two cubes over who cranks away on his apple as if he were the only man on earth like clockwork every lunch time? Or maybe it's more personal, like fear of making presentations or suggesting new ideas, or difficulty getting to work on time.

Growth can happen any time there is discomfort or dissatisfaction. Find ways to enter the challenge on purpose. Redirect break room conversation away from complaining to something constructive and interesting. Exceed your boss's expectations on the simplest report. Fine tune your e-mail skills. Set your freaking alarm clock.

Make a game of being awesome on the job and you will drastically improve your experience. You'll become less susceptible to the small stuff. You'll discover abilities you didn't know you had. You'll see your coworkers in a new light. You'll realize there is life all around you.

Your cubicle is a wonderland.

Ever forward.

A new earth

2010-05-03T05:25:00.001-07:00

The false peak

2010-04-30T05:57:00.001-07:00

It's a painful discovery, maybe even overwhelming. You struggle. You sweat. You devote large amounts of time, energy, maybe even money, to reach a desired end, a mountain top. You do the work, you make the sacrifices, you reach the summit, only to discover it's not the summit at all.

The first thing you see when you stand up, eager to take in the results of your dedication, is another peak, still far off, and even taller than the one you just climbed.

This can be a bitter moment.

Quick as you can, adjust your perspective. Do this by turning around and looking down at the ground you've covered. There's a lot of it and you're to be congratulated. The peak you just climbed has given you the gift of expanded vision. Now you know more about who you are, what you can do, and what you're really trying to achieve.

That distant peak may not be the end, but it's your next objective. And maybe it has to work this way. Maybe you're true desired end is so big you can't even imagine it unless you've done the impossible time and again.

Ever forward.

Mindcage

2010-04-29T05:07:00.001-07:00

Try not to keep death waiting

2010-04-28T07:44:00.001-07:00

Truthshine

2010-04-27T07:37:00.001-07:00

Real passion is a fact-facing, cold-blooded willingness to endure failure in the quest for a desired end

2010-04-26T06:53:00.001-07:00

It's hard not to get emotionally invested in an opportunity. And that can make disappointment all the more bitter. But it's vital to stay passionate and excited about a prospect if it really lines up with who you are and what you want. That energy can't be replaced in the striving for a successful outcome.

Positive attitude keeps you moving, keeps you sharp, and helps you recognize and respond to opportunity. But it's easy, when that opportunity arises, to suddenly become nonchalant, distant or "detached" in an effort to dampen the blow should things not turn out as you hope.

This is the wrong approach. It was your passion that got you to this point in the first place.

Of course you don't want to fantasize or start building an imaginary future. That's just an effort to avoid the fear of disappointment. Instead, face that fear, accept the possibility of failure. But also factor in the possibility of complete success.

Above all, stay invested, excited, eager. Walk in with your chin up even if it means getting clocked. This could be the very thing that sets you apart from the competition and you should carry it with you into the prospect, express it to the decision makers.

Real passion is not delusion. Real passion is a fact-facing, cold-blooded willingness to endure failure in the quest for a desired end.

Ever forward.

How to find your dream

2010-04-21T07:59:00.001-07:00

What kind of fuel do you burn?

2010-04-20T07:28:00.001-07:00

Negativity is like fossil fuel. It doesn't burn clean, it's bad for the environment and there are limits to how far it will take you. Using it it creates conflict, but it gets you through the day.

Positivity on the other hand is like solar power. It's abundant, clean, and highly efficient when properly tapped. Using it tends to create a sense of harmony.

It's harder to achieve positivity because it doesn't make use of the old, entrenched processes. Instead it requires innovation and change. But as it turns out it also makes both of these things easier to pull off.

Ever forward.

On positive thinking

2010-04-19T07:37:00.001-07:00

"Let it be true." A new cartoon from the Ever Forward blog

2010-04-16T08:12:00.001-07:00

Do it even if you'll never make a living at it.

2010-04-15T04:25:00.001-07:00

So much divides us from our talents, and therefore from our dreams. A huge part of living well, of thriving, is gaining access to your talents. For some, just doing that much can take a lifetime, but doing that work is every bit as praiseworthy as pulling off a best selling book.

It's just not as noticeable to strangers.

In fact it might be a greater accomplishment because of the seeming thanklessness. And you find yourself really appreciating the little steps forward. It's a grueling process filled with struggle, failure, revelation and little victories. But it's how you become you.

Develop your talents. Endure the frustration. Build your dream. Do it even if you'll never make a living at it.

It's who you are.

Ever forward.

Who are you when you're not looking?

2010-04-14T05:59:00.001-07:00

A world view is more than a belief system or an agenda. It's what comes out of you automatically—when you meet a person different from yourself, when you're exposed to a new idea. It's what makes you angry or sad or afraid or happy. Your worldview is so present you don't even know it's there most of the time. It's what you really think, beneath all your efforts to think a certain way.

It's who you are when you're not looking.

By observing your responses to things, without pretending they are anything but what they are, you can uncover your worldview. Some parts of it are reliable and trustworthy. They help you thrive. But other parts of it are in serious need of repair. They stand in the way of your happiness.

It's vital work trying to learn the difference between what you really think and what you've been told to think.

Ever forward.

"Cult of the Round Hole." A new cartoon from the Ever Forward blog

2010-04-13T06:04:00.001-07:00

Religion is useless to you if you reduce it to a moral code

2010-04-12T07:22:00.001-07:00

Religion is useless to you if you reduce it to a moral code. You don't need religion for that. All you need for that is a todo list. (Or a todon't list.) All the "you need to live this way" or "you need to believe in this" parts of religion are just people putting their own spin on the information.

Any worthwhile religion is trying to tell you that there is way more to being alive than meets the eye.

We have all these capacities and possibilities that we don't pay much attention to, but which we can access and incorporate into our daily experience with just a little bit of work. Illustrating that work and pointing to those possibilities are what religion is really for. If your religion can't or won't do that for you, find a new one.

Ever forward.

Love constantly raises the bar, rejects mediocrity in all its forms and opposes the status quo.

2010-04-08T06:31:00.001-07:00

Real love is very hard to do. It requires that you overcome your limitations and that you require others to overcome theirs. If you're not working to overcome your limitations, you're not loving yourself. If you're not requiring it of others, you're not loving them.

If your idea of love is sentimental or wimpy abandon it. Remember that it's love that drives a mother to die for her child. Love constantly raises the bar, rejects mediocrity in all its forms and opposes the status quo.

If you have a dream you're trying to build, or a goal you want to achieve, there is no fiercer weapon in your arsenal than real love for the world around you.

Ever forward.

Fear and doubt come from certainty.

2010-04-06T08:45:00.001-07:00

Fear and doubt come from certainty—the certainty that what you're doing will not work, that your chosen road leads to failure. But this amounts to predicting the future. To tell yourself that the future holds failure is no less a lie than telling yourself that success is assured.

You simply don't know.

That's why they call it the future.

For some reason, for many of us, the default lie—the one we choose to tell ourselves—is the negative one, the "it won't work" one. The fix is to train your mind to believe that anything is possible.

Anything.

To do that you must be willing to accept the possibility of outrageous success just as willingly as you accept the possibility of disaster.

Ever forward.

Staying positive is a skill

2010-04-05T07:45:00.001-07:00

Staying positive is a skill. It takes reflexes and endurance. It also requires the suspension of disbelief—the same ability that allows you to enjoy a science fiction film or book.

You need to be able to reject the so-called realism with which you have been programmed. Instead of saying "that could never happen" you have to be willing to let it be possible.

Think big. Dream like the wind. Do the work it takes to make your dream happen. But above all else, believe it is possible.

Ever forward.

Death and resurrection is more common than you think.

2010-04-02T07:53:00.001-07:00

Death and resurrection is more common than you think. You might already have done it a couple of times today. Each time you push yourself beyond your limits, you die a small death and rise to slightly new life. It happens when you weather hesitation and do something risky, like asking for a raise or saying "I love you" for the first time. Regardless of the outcome, you've just become more than you were before.

You can engage in this process on purpose every day. On the job, ignore office gossip, or better yet, change the subject in an undeniable way. Send a shock wave of positivity through the room. You'll become a beacon for others who secretly feel the way you do but won't take the risk. In your relationship, don't ignore chances to be helpful and supportive, no matter how you feel. Let yourself show the little affections that keep the air clear. Counter bad moods with gently persistent positivity.

In all situations, read your hesitation as an opportunity to take a chance.

Be bigger than the possible failure.

If you do this enough you will be happy.

Ever forward.

New cartoon from the Ever Forward blog

2010-04-01T11:50:00.001-07:00

New cartoon from the Ever Forward blog

2010-04-01T11:27:00.001-07:00

New cartoon from the Ever Forward blog...

2010-04-01T11:19:00.001-07:00

Posted via web from Ever Forward

Ten-second survey, 3 random questions, totally anonymous

2010-03-31T06:41:00.001-07:00

A totally anonymous survey from the Ever Forward blog.

Click here for the survey.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Forget heaven.

2010-03-30T12:10:00.001-07:00

All the directives we pigeonhole under the heading of morality—compassion, forgiveness, love—are just as good for you as they are for the people you point them at. Love others for long enough, with enough dedication and selflessness, and your dream will emerge. In fact you'll need it to keep loving. It will become how you love and continuing to love will feed it. Loving others and fullness of life become the two players in a self-fulfilling prophecy.

That's the best-kept secret of religion. So secret, in fact, the religions themselves seem to have forgotten it.

Forget heaven. Religious teachings are far more geared toward reward in this life than anybody seems to realize.

Ever forward.

Competition drives innovation. Love does that, too.

2010-03-29T10:43:00.001-07:00

People look to the free market to demand the best of what we have to offer as a society.

Competition drives innovation.

Love does that, too. It demands our very best—in how we treat ourselves and others, in how we go about our work. Practicing it clears away the debris that hinders our fullest progress. It's not just a nice thing to do. It's a form of energy that can be harnessed.

Societies, businesses and individuals would do well to adopt love as an organizing principle.

Ever forward.

What would you be doing if you did not have to make a living?

2010-03-25T06:32:00.001-07:00

The big payoff would be great—to build something with your creativity that actually pays your bills. That's the big dream for a lot of people.

It's a good dream.

But what is the driving force behind it?

As I get older I realize that the little moments of success, or even a big payoff are not the primary goal. We only attach financial payback to success because we live in a system where it takes money to survive. But what would you be doing if you did not have to make a living? Would you be pursuing your dream if you were wealthy?

I know I would.

You do your dream because it's who you are. It's your foundation in sanity. Financial remuneration only ensures you the freedom to keep building your dream.

Quest for your talents. As life passes—if you're lucky—you'll realize that you simply don't have time to mess around with not being who you really are.

Ever forward.

Jesus was not a moralist

2010-03-23T06:48:00.001-07:00

Jesus was not a moralist. He had no interest in people's behavior, except when it hampered fullness of life. He taught love, compassion and forgiveness, but not in some dogmatic vacuum.

He taught these things because he knew that if we did that kind of work, we would be forced to engage our obstacles. He knew that our potentials and dreams would come pouring out of us to irrigate the world with creativity and refreshed priorities.

It hasn't really worked as a social platform because it hasn't really been adopted as one.

Ever forward.

Different starts now

2010-03-22T06:54:00.001-07:00

If you had it all to do over again, what would you do different? Nothing? Everything? One thing in particular?

Of course you can't change the past. But you can make it work for you. If something haunts you, or bugs you, or just makes you roll your eyes, take a look at where you're standing right now and do the opposite. Or, something that amounts to the opposite.

To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. You can have a say in that opposite reaction, even twenty years later. Whatever it was you did, or didn't do, it changed the course of your history and that change is still taking place every day.

Step in an work with it.

The fact is, you do have it all to do over again.

Different starts now.

Ever forward.

Symbolic possibility

2010-03-19T07:29:00.001-07:00

When you set off toward your dream, expect it to elude you and take on disguises. When you reach it, it will probably look a little, if not completely different from what you first imagined.

This is because the thing you first imagined was a symbolic possibility.

That means it's a representation of what you really want. It symbolizes your fulfillment. It's there to keep you focused and motivated but it's not the only shape your realized dream can take. You dream might end up looking exactly as you imagined, or it might not.

As long as it contains the essence it symbolizes, it doesn't matter.

Ever forward.

Love pushes you into your limitations face first and without mercy

2010-03-18T07:40:00.001-07:00

Loving others has a namby-pamby reputation. Somehow we got the idea that if you love others you can't get ahead, because it's antithetical to healthy competition.

The truth is, when love is the priority you can't sit around. You have to be on your game.

I'm not talking about about romantic love or peace-freak love. I'm talking about the efficacious desire for the well being of another. Mix that into your desire to succeed and you'll become an innovator and an enemy of the status quo.

Ever forward.

There are four kinds of dreams

2010-03-17T07:22:00.001-07:00

There are four kinds of dreams: wish dreams, pipe dreams, real dreams and the status quo.

Wish dreams are the kind that can never come true: "I wish that had never happened." Or that are completely contingent on someone else's behavior or thinking: "I wish so and so would stop doing that." Or on long shots so long that although they may be worth shooting for, they have no real purchase on reality: "I wish I could just win the lottery."

Pipe dreams are the kind that could come true, but never will because you're not doing the work. "Wouldn't it be great to have a t-shirt shop at the beach?"

Real dreams are the ones that you can feel, the ones you know will happen if you just persevere, do the work, stay sharp for opportunity, and don't listen to nay-sayers.

The status quo isn't a dream, but it occupies the space of a dream and consumes the same resources.

Of these four states of mind, only one is not a form of madness.

Can you guess which one it is?

Ever forward.

Ten-second Survey about homeless people. 5 yes or no's. Totally anonymous.

2010-03-16T07:24:00.001-07:00

A totally anonymous survey from the Ever Forward blog.

Click here for the survey.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Every insecurity is like a sentinel standing guard over possibility

2010-03-15T07:34:00.001-07:00

We tend to think of insecurity as something to be avoided, something to hide from others. That's the mark of an insecurity fulfilling it's purpose, which is to keep you safe by protecting you from failure. It does this by discouraging risk.

But new value in life, new capacities, new benefits and talents, are only got to through risk. Every insecurity is a sentinel standing guard over possibility. Hidden behind every insecurity is something worth having, something worth facing the sentinel.

Insecurity divides you from your potential. If you venture the risk in spite of the insecurity you will create circumstances in which you can thrive. Risk by risk, effort by effort, this is how we achieve our life's goals.

Ever forward.

Your dream will start to shape your experience in its own image and likeness.

2010-03-12T07:23:00.001-08:00

Each concrete act you make in the direction of your dream creates other details in your day that are relevant to your dream also.

More and more with every new concrete act you perform, your dream will start to shape your life in its own image and likeness. That's how you get what you want out of life—you envision it, do the work it requires, and make room for it.

Ever forward.

--------------------------

Take a ten-second survey

Ten-second survey on no particular theme. 3 yes or no's. Totally anonymous.

2010-03-11T07:17:00.001-08:00

A totally anonymous questionnaire from the Ever Forward blog.

Click here for the survey.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Ignore all the little tributaries where energy can be wasted, in favor of the primary goal.

2010-03-10T07:22:00.001-08:00

In The Art of War, Sun Tzu teaches that killing the enemy is not the objective of a military campaign. The objective is to take territory. To do so without ever drawing a sword is the pinnacle of expertise for a military leader.

Ignore all the little tributaries where energy can be wasted, in favor of the primary goal.

That is the spirit of forgiveness.

Ever forward.

Online counseling via Skype. Watch a four-minute video about my approach

2010-03-09T08:11:00.001-08:00

A counselor is a personal trainer for your heart and mind. If you're willing to work and take an active role in your own growth and prosperity, I can help you.

Skype makes it easy:

You don't need to be local
Counseling happens in the privacy of your home
Video conferencing is an option
Record your sessions for future reference and listen on your ipod
Telephone conferencing is available. You can call my Skype number from your mobile or land line

Contact me at petertcrowell@gmail.com to set up a consultation. We'll talk about your goals and decide if we're a match.

Here's a four-minute video about my approach:

It's way easier to let idiots be idiots when you deliberately try to forgive.

2010-03-08T06:07:00.001-08:00

A spirit of forgiveness can make it a lot easier to get through the day. It's way easier to let idiots be idiots when you deliberately try to forgive. It's also a lot easier—and more effective—to stand up for yourself when necessary if you do it with a forgiving attitude. It helps you stay on point and not get sidetracked by the need to defend yourself on every little detail.

Forgiveness is not taking it on the chin. Forgiveness is allowing your passion to continue to flow in the face of ignorance, injustice or abuse. It's remaining faithful to your dreams and goals by not allowing the energy they require to be diverted.

The point is to experience inner prosperity without obstruction.

Shrug it off. But mean it.

Ever forward.

About Me

2010-03-05T14:26:00.001-08:00

Husband, father, former monk. I also sort of play guitar.

Posted via web from Ever Forward

Ten-second survey about God and religion. 5 yes or no's, totally anonymous

2010-03-05T06:02:00.001-08:00

A totally anonymous questionnaire from the Ever Forward blog.

Click here for the survey.

-----------------------------------------------------------

By making choices in your life, you throw a harness on your circumstances.

2010-03-04T06:12:00.001-08:00

By making choices in your life, you throw a harness on your circumstances. You start reining them into line and making them work for you. Decide to take up the violin. Carve out the time, make it a priority and the rest of your life has to accommodate.

It happens all the time with the priorities you did not choose. Why not with the ones that come from your heart? When you start to exercise your passion, the important things you do every day will stay important, but the things you do just to fill time will start to move aside.

Ever forward.

--------------------------

Get notified or start a conversation:

Mailing list

Chat group

The gift of unemployment is that your fears and attitudes are suddenly exposed in a way you can address.

2010-03-01T07:49:00.001-08:00

Try to imagine losing your job as the parachute behind a dragster—something sudden and drastic that arrests your momentum. It's intended to get you dealing with the things in your life that need the most attention. What, specifically, does unemployment have to teach?

Losing your job places you under a unique brand of stress and brings up unique thoughts and feelings. What are they? And what are you doing about them? What actions are you taking in response to losing your job? What words do you use to describe your new situation?

Stop and look.

I had three basic, unforgettable responses when I lost my job:

"We'll never be able to buy that house, now!"

"But my wife is pregnant!" (Because of the biggie: "What about health insurance?")

"What am I supposed to do now? The market for my skills is saturated!"

These responses showed me that I have insecurity and confidence issues in at least three areas—finance, safety, and my own creativity. So, my work is to develop strength in those areas. The gift of unemployment is that your fears and attitudes are suddenly exposed in a way you can address. And that's how you get stronger.

Take a look at your day to day experience. What happens when you follow the prevailing wisdom regarding job loss? You try to develop that hobby, or spend time in a cafe, or going for walks. What happens when you try to reinvent your career? Maybe you're just too stressed to get into these things fully. Maybe you can't enjoy yourself or relax, even when you've done all you can for the job hunt.

You need to understand why.

Maybe you're convinced you have no right to enjoy yourself until you get a job. If that or something like is true of you, don't view it as silly or irrational or nuts. Admit it. See it as true and do something about it. Under the stress of unemployment, the inner mechanisms that prevent you from enjoying your life and finding your fullest happiness come out in the open where you can deal with them.

Unemployment strikes at some foundational insecurities but it does not create them. It just shows them to you. They're inside you all the time, affecting your behavior and your decisions. From the moment you lost your job everything you do will alter the landscape of your life and impact your happiness. It's important you begin to see what's going on inside you so you can exercise some measure of creative control.

If you lose your job, the universe does not want you in that job anymore. It wants you somewhere else. Facing the fears unemployment brings up can help you figure out where that is.

Ever forward.

Quick survey about your happiness. 3 yes or no's. Totally anonymous.

2010-02-26T10:46:00.001-08:00

I'm curious about how people are doing out there, so I thought I'd ask.

3 yes or no questions. Totally anonymous.

Click here.

Thanks!

Ever forward.

The key to living a satisfying life is how you respond to the life you're living.

2010-02-23T08:13:00.001-08:00

You come back from the coffee station with a new stain on your shirt to find your coworker crying because she's just been laid off. So, you take her to lunch at Chili's to cheer her up and everyone has margaritas and when you get back to the office your e-mail account has been deactivated. Is that an echo of the Mexican Hat Dance you're hearing? No. It's the sound of the ax dropping and it's not what you had in mind when you left the house this morning.

In the teaching of the Tao, the 10,000 Things is everything that happens in your life, good or bad. You win the Super Bowl pool. You get a speeding ticket. You have a ridiculous blind date. Your alarm clock goes off. The 10,000 Things is how the Tao shows itself to you, and losing your job is one of them.

By itself the 10,000 Things is just a bunch of stuff that happens. How you interact with it is the key. Your responses to the details of your life have an effect on what happens next. Consider that speeding ticket. What happens if you give the cop static for pulling you over? What happens if you just accept it as the consequences of your actions? Very different potential outcomes.

Your present situation combined with your response to it gives birth to new circumstances to which you must respond. From the moment you lose your job, everything that happens in your life, for the rest of your life, will be the spawn of unemployment.

The key to living a satisfying life is how you respond to the life you're living. Not only does responding creatively improve how you experience your circumstances, it helps you change them for the better. With each choice you make you alter your landscape just a little. By responding creatively you take some control over the direction of your life.

It's not complete control, of course. Life is risk and there is always uncertainty. It's like a rudder on a boat. It helps you deal effectively with a current you can't control. At some point you have to trust the current but this is much easier when you know how to handle the rudder.

Interacting with the 10,000 Things is a skill you can develop. Over time you learn to recognize and respond to opportunity you could not see before. You can even learn to create opportunity out of circumstances where it may not be obvious. It takes time, but it's really just a matter of beginning, of making mistakes and persevering, and it begins where ever you are right now.

Just lost your job?

Start there.

Ever forward.

The Te of Unemployment

2010-02-16T10:09:00.001-08:00

Te (which sounds like day with a really hard d) is the virtue of following the Tao. It's an active effort to cooperate with what life hands you instead of resisting it. The result is a more fluid experience of life with less conflict and greater responsiveness to opportunity. In fact, practicing Te enables you to evoke opportunities from circumstance, as if they were hidden there waiting to be found. Like Easter eggs.

It's the power by which the Tao creates transformation. When an acorn becomes an oak tree, that's Te. So, to practice Te is to participate in the process of transformation, instead of just being a passenger. You make the most of a situation by bringing out all the potential it contains.

The Te of Unemployment sounds something like this: "Being out of work brings opportunity you should try not to miss."

Sure, there are lots of unemployed people, but there's only one unemployed you. In the Tao of Unemployment, you lost your job because it's part of your path. You are the only one walking your path, so the situation is full of opportunity and potential intended just for you. Unemployment and you make a unique combination not repeated anywhere.

How you deal with it is totally up to you. That's why Te is a virtue—it's something you really should do, no matter how other people react to the same situation. It is uniquely yours no matter how many other instances of it occur. And that's why it's a gift. Something about the experience of unemployment is exactly what it takes to reveal the next phase of your life, which, if you let it, could be incredible.

So, Te is your part of the equation. You can dive in and learn, or you can resist. Te is diving in. It's how you find and activate the opportunity and potential in your situation. Resistance is anything you do that prevents you from finding those things. Fear, anger, laziness, desperation—feeling these things is normal. To give in to them is to resist the Tao. To explore and learn from them is to practice Te.

What do you want your life to look like over time? Will a new job give that to you? What do you want to be true of you when a new job finally comes along? What thing of value can you get from unemployment that no other experience could give you?

What are the gifts?

The treasures?

Eventually you will find a new job. But what happens then? The opportunities contained in unemployment will no longer be available to you, and you could miss out on something you really need in order to be happy, job or no job.

Ever forward.

The Tao of Unemployment

2010-02-10T08:51:00.001-08:00

If the Tao is the Way (and it is, I looked it up at Wikipedia) then it must lead somewhere, into something. That something is this: the constantly expanding awareness of what reality is capable of, and how to deal with it. Following the Tao makes us ever more available to the lessons of experience, which makes us better at life.

So, what's the Way of Unemployment?

I haven't had a full-time job for eighteen months. It's been a long painful grind. Interviews and opportunities come and go like mirages and in between are these long stretches of hot sand. Sometimes just staying positive is rigorous work. But you have to become at home in the shadow of unemployment. No matter what your situation, you have to get creative, because job or no job your life is happening.

Much of the popular advice about unemployment relates to finding a job or reinventing your career. That's logical and smart. More personal is the advice to enjoy the time, go to a cafe, pick up those water colors, or spend time with the family. Also, very good advice. Less is said about all the information you can gather about yourself.

The stress of unemployment brings out the truth. It's filled with indicators about how you live your life. An honest look will reveal all the repair work you need to do on your personal foundations, and all the potential for growth, healing, and positive inner change. Unemployment is an opportunity to explore your fear, to understand your expectations of life, to get a feel for your relationship to success, to your dreams, to the people you love. It's a chance to evaluate and strengthen the your connection to yourself—the connection that exists completely independent of your career goals.

If you don't have a connection to yourself independent of your career goals, that may be the greatest thing the Tao of Unemployment can show you.

Of course losing your job is a chance to take a new direction. Of course it's a chance to evaluate the path you've taken to this point. But it's not just about reinventing yourself. It's about "who the heck are you to begin with?" You can't reinvent something until you understand what it is already. If you look, you'll find out who you are right now. If you're honest you'll see the opportunity. You'll see where you are strong, where you are weak, where you are fearful, where you are brave.

There's an old saying: "When the disciple is ready, the master will appear." That's the Tao of Unemployment: unemployment is the master and it appears because you are ready to learn what it has to teach.

Ever forward.

You need to trust who you are.

2010-02-05T07:49:00.001-08:00

Ten years ago I went through a family systems therapy intensive. It was eight days long and a lot happened, but here's what I remember most: I blew my own mind. My mind was blown—by me. I experienced my own beauty in a completely detached, objective way and it was awesome. There was no denying it and no getting all puffed up about it. It was a simple experience of the truth.

Conditions were such that the past and future where nowhere to be found and I was fully awake in the now. The result was the blazing, white-hot beauty we all have, but which seldom shows fully on the surface. The experience carried with it complete certainty that this was the most basic me—the fearless me, the incredibly happy me that results from just being me.

I've never felt it quite so fully since, but that's okay, because I know it's there and the experience can't be taken away. I have seen the me that lives in the now—not in the future or the past. I don't see it as often as I'd like to because I spend too much time in those other places.

The struggle of the day to day is far more important than the big deals of life. In the big deals, we mobilize, activate, and use our inner resources. But in the day to day, shadows creep in slowly and dim our view gradually. Stress, fear, insecurity, mindlessness, or just plain laziness—these things grow unnoticed until we're lost in the surface static, disconnected from ourselves in the now. I have wandered in that static for long stretches, but I've also seen the gold beneath the tarnish.

We all want to be awesome. We worship the awesomeness in others, too often at the expense of our own. Well, you can't change the fact that you are awesome any more than you can change the color of your eyes. But you might not have access to it. Maybe you've never felt it. You can tell yourself "I'm awesome," but you might not really believe it. Maybe the thing that keeps you from habitually exhibiting your awesomeness is the fact that you don't really believe it's there. Do you? Answer honestly. Nobody has to hear it but you. If you pretend to believe in your own awesomeness when you really don't, you're lost. But if you can admit to not believing in it, you can turn things around.

To fully penetrate the now there must be no residue of the past or future on your thinking—whether a specific memory or an attitude that influences your behavior. Each moment must be given the chance to shine, to be perfect and fully new. You need to constantly relax in this way, without expectations or demands, without fear or fantasy. Even if you have waited long for something and grow weary of the waiting, fear and desire must not be allowed to tarnish the pristine quality of this next emerging moment. When you can achieve that, whether through therapy or meditation or just by accident, you allow your own awesomeness to emerge.

You need to trust who you are. You need to trust your inclinations and talents—even the way you look has something to do with your particular brand of awesomeness. Nobody can be you better than you can, and the world needs you as you, or you would not be here.

Ever forward.

Moved back to posterous

2010-01-27T07:58:00.000-08:00

I wasn't quite satisfied with blogger, much as I love Google. So, I moved the blog back to Posterous.

If you're interested in following along, click here.

Or paste this into your browser: http://www.everforward.posterous.com

Thanks!

Myth mind seeks the adventure of the now

2010-01-11T09:21:00.001-08:00

As a navigational term, attitude refers to the orientation of a craft, an airplane for example, to a particular point of reference, like, say the runway. A bad attitude can mean a crash landing. In it's origins, attitude is connected to the word aptitude, which means "general suitability."

More broadly, attitude is how you go about life. It's the sum total of all you have learned and experienced, coming together to provide the basis for your response to a given situation. It's your angle of approach, your posture, your orientation to a particular point of reference.

Your attitude is a crucial influence on how you experience reality. What you get when you enter a circumstance is almost always a reflection of how you entered, what you brought in with you. Entering a situation is like coming in for a landing. In life as in air travel, a dysfunctional attitude can lead to trouble.

Too often, attitude is involuntary, unconscious. We operate on autopilot. It's bad news if a plane tries to land on autopilot. No less so for people. If we enter into circumstances from a bad direction, we're in for a hard time. Attitude can be very subtle so regular evaluation is very important to understanding why we experience life as we do.

Pilots have instruments for this evaluation, and if they don't use them landing the plane can be tricky. People have instruments, too: the memory, intellect and will. Clutter in these faculties gums up the perspective and causes problems with your angle of approach. Once you're in a difficult spot it's hard to get out, because of the clutter in your instruments. With a distorted attitude you just don't see clearly, you can't perceive the truth, so you can't act accordingly.

The goal is a habitually useful attitude. It doesn't have to be rosy or constantly cheerful. Realistic is much better. But realism has to allow for the miraculous and the extraordinarily positive, or it's not realism. A realistic attitude factors in all possibilities as legitimate and therefore allows you to genuinely apply energy toward positive goals.

An attitude check is a simple choice: how will I address this person? How will I deal with this situation? How will I handle this adversity? When attitude becomes uncontrollable, when you can't adjust it, there is work to do. The application of faith helps clear away fear and fantasy about the future which affect how you meet the present. The application of hope clears out regret, anger or humiliation about the past, which also affect how you engage right now. The application of love starts the ball rolling by firing up the will to make a change in attitude.

The best attitude is the myth mind. With the myth mind, everything becomes a quest, an adventure. You start to set goals with an eagerness about working toward them. The task of clearing the debris from your memory, intellect and will is itself an adventure that requires a mythical understanding. Imagine yourself as an abandoned space ship with monsters lurking onboard. You have to clear out the junk, kill the monsters and take control of the bridge. Do you want to get off the planet of insecurity and negative inner experience and head for more prosperous regions? Then you must decide to undertake the task of taking back your ship, and set about it with a stout heart and a willingness to struggle.

Simplistic but useful.

And with the will cleared of debris, the myth mind can function as the primary navigational tool in life. Myth mind seeks the adventure of the now, and recognizes that the now is always an adventure. Where ever you are, whatever you're doing, you're up to your neck in adventure because you are trying to achieve something, something great, and nothing that happens to you is unconnected from that goal. Getting out of bed is the next thing on the list of items that will land you that perfect job, or that sense of peace. Do it. Do it well because how well you do it determines the outcome of your dreams.

Ever forward.

"Mark my footsteps, good my page. Tread thou in them boldly."

2010-01-04T07:26:00.001-08:00

"Good King Wenceslas" is a Christmas carol written by John Mason Neale. It's based on the life of Wenceslaus the First, Duke of Bohemia, who lived in the tenth century.

Metaphorically, Wenceslas is Jesus. Like the story of Jesus, the song is a portrayal of transformation with deep insight into the inner workings of reality. Like the teachings of Jesus the song reaches down into the mythic structures of basic human experience -- the place where the demands of life are revealed to be life giving.

The song tells the story of a king and his page who venture the winter night to bring gifts of basic comfort to a poor man. They spotted the man gathering firewood far from home on St. Stephen's Day, the day after Christmas, and along their journey to reach the man's house, the king's page is overwhelmed:

"Sire the night is darker now,

and the wind blows stronger.

Fails my heart, I know not how,

I can go no longer."

It's not a complaint. It's a simple observation of the reality of his situation, which is radically different from complaining. The words read like a prayer. The page is standing in the truth, the only place in which real prayer can happen, and the only place from which transformation is possible. His circumstances have driven him into consciousness in a way the comforts and safety of the king's castle never could. Out there, in the snowy woods, the page finds opportunity.

Here's a line-by-line translation from the song, turning poetry to prose. First, the king's reply:

"Mark my footsteps, good my page."

Translation: Remember that I've walked this ground, too. I've felt what you feel. See, those are my footprints. Remember what I've taught you and do what I do.

"Tread thou in them boldly."

Translation: Give it all you've got. We're on an errand of love. Trust in that.

"You will find the winter's rage freeze thy blood less coldly."

Translation: Life can be hard and that's just how it is. But if you love as I do, you'll find strength, creativity, good cheer. You have to do it to understand.

And the resultant miracle:

"In his master's steps he trod, where the snow lay dinted."

Translation: The page went for it.

"Heat was in the very sod, that the saint had printed."

Translation: It worked.

If love is the efficacious desire for the well being of another, the good king has nailed it. And so has the page. The key here is that one line, "tread thou in them boldly." That's the "efficacious" part. You do what it takes. With that in hand, the storm cannot stop you. Love transforms and from it springs extraordinary possibility. In the struggles of life, commit acts of love. The amazing will happen.

Ever forward.

Acts of love can only take place in the now.

2009-12-21T08:52:00.001-08:00

Cluttered memory and intellect result in problematic patterns of thought and behavior. With debris piled up in these faculties, we start out on the wrong foot and things get worse from there. If you can't perceive a situation clearly, you can't manage it effectively. When the very mechanisms by which you perceive and respond to reality are cluttered with distortion, you can't possibly achieve your dreams. It will be very difficult even to know what your dream is.

The will is crucial to taking control of your situation. You must work. You must act. You must undertake the process of healing, of unlocking your dreams. This happens by engaging in reality. You do that by going where reality lives: the now. The will is the faculty by which you return to the now. From there, and only from there, you can address the clutter in all three parts of your perspective.

But the will itself can contain impediments to its own effectiveness. Acts of faith and hope meet with resistance when the will itself needs cleaning out. Two examples of clutter relevant to the will are slave mindedness and blaming. Slave mindedness is when you insist you are trapped by your circumstances. Blaming is when you spend too much time trying to identify the source of your obstacles while doing nothing to change them. You always have a choice, and understanding your clutter is just another form of clutter if you do nothing about it.

More broadly, clutter is anything that hinders communication and full life. If it provides you with a reason to linger in the past or fantasize (in a positive or negative way) about the future, it is clutter and it will have negative effects on your life and your day-to-day experience. Identifying your obstacles is crucial. And understanding their origins can be helpful in devising a strategy for dealing with them. But clearing away the clutter is the important thing and anything that hinders that is the result of a distorted, distracted will.

The accompanying discipline for this is love.

Acts of love can only take place in the now. The old theological definition of love is "the efficacious desire for the well being of another." That should be expanded to include yourself, but efficacious means you do something about it. A real act of love cannot be mindless. It can't be distracted. As a discipline for adjusting your experience, the act has to occur in the now, without reference to the past or future -- that means you do it for the sake of doing it, not for some purpose of gain.

As you perpetrate acts of love, real love, you will grow in the habit. That means you will habitually find yourself in the now, because that's where love happens. The clarifying effect this has on your perspective is a happy byproduct. There is an almost chemical effect when you start exercising love. It begins to dispel self doubt. It instills confidence (eventually). It overpowers fear, ascribes purpose, creates balance, and above all enables you to perceive yourself, and others, as you and they really are, but without judgement. Love and judgement cannot coexist in the same perspective. In place of judgement (which is the final justification for all distortion and the destination toward which all distortion tends), love injects compassion and forgiveness, empathy and conscience, which themselves have a vivifying effect on the perspective.

Fueled by the momentum love generates, faith and hope become more possible, more sensible, more effective. The world becomes a place of possibility as well as of trial. The truth of things, the luster of reality, begins to reveal itself amid the twisted demon faces of fearful experience. The true substrate of reality becomes perceivable and invites the will deeper in. The will meanwhile becomes more and more capable of love, more and more inclined to it, and begins to reverse the cycle of fear-begets-fear to a new cycle of love-begets-love.

The masters have always taught this. Love is a force of energy, an aspect of reality, a process found in nature every bit as actual as osmosis, gravity, or the fusion at the heart of the sun. Once unleashed, love splinters into myriad benefits each with it's own special effect on the world, on reality, on experience. And it all begins with the will.

Ever forward.

You really need to make this trip, just like you really need to live your life, so you organize your emotional approach and go for it.

2009-12-14T06:57:00.001-08:00

The degree to which hope is present in the perspective is determined by the experience of the past. In the three-part model of memory, intellect and will, memory is the place where all experience is contained and "remembered." Remembering can be actual remembrance, but more often it takes the shape of unnoticed thought patterns or behavior. It's the impression or echo of past experience repeated in our current interactions with reality.

Distortions of the memory fall into two categories. First, the memory can be filled with actual negative or damaging experiences. More insidious are the potentially neutral or even positive experiences that were distorted as they came in through the cluttered intellect and stored in the memory as negative. In this way, self hate begets self hate. Self doubt begets self doubt. This ongoing distortion is an after effect of genuine negative experience. It's like a reverberation taking place in the perspective and it continues to run on until we do something about it.

Hope is the discipline by which the clutter of the memory is cleared out. By exercising hope you can redirect the energy of your mind in a positive direction, a constructive direction that leads to peace and prosperity. In this respect, hope pertains to the past, because your outlook is based on past experience.

It's very important to distinguish hope from hopes. Hope can save your life. Hopes can kill you. But hope is there to keep you grounded with respect to particular hopes because it's a means of relating to distinct possibilities. If you're trying to get a job, you have a particular hope. If you don't relate to this hope in a constructive way, you'll not only be devastated if you don't get the job, but your experience of life up until that moment will be grounded in an illusion, and therefore pass you by. By applying the discipline of hope, as opposed to entertaining hopes, you take stock of your attitude and ensure that it is not being influenced by past experiences. You hope for the best, for a particular outcome, without investing in it your identity or sense of well being.

Where faith is like a method for navigation, hope is more of a particular point on the map. Where faith is a preparedness and willingness for whatever comes, hope pertains more to the specifics, it's a response to a particular detail. So, for example, when taking a road trip, you would exercise faith because you don't know how to get where you're going, and you would exercise hope because you've only got a quarter tank of gas. You really need to make this trip, just like you really need to live your life, so you organize your emotional approach and go for it.

And that's what this three-part model is for: organizing your emotional approach, clarifying your perspective, knowing where you're coming from, working with what you've got. Of course there is a lot of overlap between faith and hope. You can always use the butt of a screw driver to drive a nail, or the claw of a hammer to open a paint can. But regarding faith and hope as tools, each with their own best use, can be amazingly helpful.

Although hope is a means of organizing your relationship with the past so that it does not hamper your future, it does this by helping you reenter the now. The future does not flow from the past. The future flows from right now. That's why it's so important, more important than anything, to be grounded. No matter how bright your prospects all you really have is right now. The truth is, the future does not exist no matter how well you prepare for it.

Real preparation, really aiming for your targets in life requires a clear understanding of who you really are. With the discipline of hope you can remove the hinderances of the past that clog the memory with fear and doubt. This takes a burden off the future. It will leave you focused, undistracted, quick to respond to opportunity and able to recognize it when it comes. It will allow you to genuinely believe that the best can happen and will leave you open to extraordinary possibility. And it is not possible to be open to possibility, except through hope in the now.

Ever forward.

The expectations we impose on the emerging now are decorated with our ideas about the future and shape our experience of life.

2009-12-07T07:13:00.001-08:00

The three parts of the perspective -- memory, intellect and will -- each have a corresponding discipline by which they can be cleared of distortion. This is an idea from medieval patristic theology. Memory is cleared by hope. Intellect is cleared by faith. Will is cleared by love.

The distortions that clutter the intellect tend to pertain to the future. Ideally, the intellect would be constantly occupied with the now, but when it's cluttered with particles of fear or insecurity or distracting desire it goes out of tune. Reality is always right now, but the now seems to emerge from somewhere. Now. Now. Now. That somewhere is the future.

A cluttered intellect is more concerned with the future than with the now that emerges from it, because the clutter consists of harsh or happy ideas of what the future might hold. The expectations we impose on the emerging now are decorated with our ideas about the future and shape our experience of life. If the intellect is cluttered with negativity like self hate, self doubt, or fear for example, it will stamp each new experience with these characteristics as it comes through. This puts a negative hue on every experience we accumulate.

That's no way to live.

Even worse is that it happens unconsciously. It's just there having its effect. It's amazingly subtle and works slowly, over time. Unchecked it will lead to bad decisions, painful situations, repeated patterns of abuse, neglect, complacency. It can perpetuate addiction or simply result in a general immobility in life which creates basic dissatisfaction. It can only be stopped on purpose and even then it takes a long time to truly make the adjustment.

Enter faith.

Faith is a tool for altering the intellect so that it no longer accumulates distorted versions of the emerging now, but the emerging now as it really is. Faith is doing. Faith is a sense of adventure. It means the willingness to experience the now as it is. The only way to do that is to return to the now and directly face any pain, fear or insecurity that lives there so that it doesn't create distortion. That's what clutter and distortion of the intellect really are, after all -- the difficult feelings that we leave unaddressed. They prevent us from seeing things as they really are.

A cluttered intellect will get stuck in the future, mired in some harsh or happy fantasy, leaving you ineffective. Faith is like a shout from the now, a message from your full self, calling out to the partial self in which you have become trapped. It says something like "Hey! There's more to you than that fear you're feeling! Come back and see for yourself!"

The key is belief in the possibility of another quality of experience, belief in transformation through practice, and remembering your strengths. It's more than just thinking positively. Positive thinking has its place, but it can easily slip into denial or fantasy. Applying faith means experiencing what is really going on for you, in truth, here and now, and from that position of clear honest appraisal, determining to evolve out of weakness into strength, out of distortion into clarity, out of aimlessness into vision. Your full self, your whole self begins to emerge and lead the way. You address your entire perspective, the whole of your inner condition, not just some particular situation. (Although particular situations do provide clues for the work you need to do, they tend to be symptoms, effects of the distortions of intellect that can no doubt be found all across your experience if you look for them.)

Applying faith means you recognize the need to return to reality, to what is, to what you can say for sure, even if that means saying "I have no idea what's going on here." Applying faith means you detach from this or that feared or desired outcome, do your very best, and allow your situation to unfold. You proceed without an idea to rely on recognizing that you just can't know the outcome.

This makes you more effective in coping with exigency, and it allows for unforeseen or extraordinary possibility. You stand there willing, ready to work with whatever turns out, diligently present in the now. If there is fear or distracting desire, you remember that you cannot know the future, so any notion of it is false. You recognize that the impulse to flee the now is just a reaction to difficult feelings that live there. If you stay and meet those feelings, you get your power back. You become effective on your own behalf.

Ever forward.

You are the sorcerer and your life is this amazing, magical, powerful thing with no regard for itself.

2009-12-03T05:22:00.001-08:00

Enhancing the sense of self is an act of housecleaning. With the clutter removed, what remains is who you really are. Much of the mental anguish we experience, the tension and anxiety, the lack of well being -- the difficulties we face while finding our place in life -- have their origins in this clutter.

The clutter consists of small invocations, diatribes even, intended to get your attention. They pertain to four areas: yourself, others, the past and the future. It's interesting about the now that it can never be a thought. A thought about the now is not the now. So any time there is thinking in your head that is not needed, for some task or bit of recall, you are lost in clutter, you are elsewhere than in the now.

Much of the time the clutter is painful. It may be a harsh memory or some fear about the road ahead. But it can also be a simple fantasy, a wish or hope that gains too much traction in your perspective. It's helpful to consider the perspective in terms of three parts: the memory, the intellect and the will.

The memory consists of all the experiences you've ever had. It is the past, right up until one second ago. The intellect is the mechanism by which those experiences are gathered in. First you perceive it with the intellect, then it gets cached in the memory. The will is what you do about the information you take in through the intellect.

Memory distorts the perspective by cluttering it with inaccuracies, and recalling those inaccuracies in the form of memories: about ourselves, about others, about the past, or about the future. Intellect distorts the perspective by twisting experiences as they happen. It is colored by distortions in the memory which contains confused versions of experience. The will is what you do about your situation at any given moment. With a distorted memory and intellect, the will is misdirected with faulty information, and we behave badly or in ways that do not serve us.

Much of the time all this happens without our knowledge because we tend to live outside the now. While we're out, things get out of control. Think of the mops and buckets in the Sorcerers Apprentice. When the sorcerer steps out things go haywire. You are the sorcerer and your life is this amazing, magical, powerful thing with no regard for itself. It's up to you to manage it and you can't do that from outside the wizard's tower of the now.

It all adds up to fallacy. Lies. About ourselves, about other people, about the past, about the future. These lies come to make up our perspective and we live cut off from reality, even while appearing to be reasonably functional. But the lies reduce our access to the now, the home of reality. The door closes on the only place where you can find the truth about yourself, cultivate it and allow it to show, in order to access the full range of your possibilities and experience your Utter Self.

Imagine a world filled with Utter Selves. A world where everyone, or even just most of us, were living at full measure, using our talents, sharing our gifts, building our dreams, wielding God through acts of love and compassion, and holding these things as a priority.

Ever forward.

Do what is you through clear knowledge of who you are.

2009-11-28T06:35:00.001-08:00

The sense of self helps direct the power of choice. Choice is amazingly powerful. Each choice we make, however small, is packed with the future. Habitual mental and emotional clarity is very, very important. Each choice you make creates new circumstances, requiring more choices. Original choice starts the ball rolling and subsequent choices result in the details of your life.

If original choice stems from your nature, from your fullest self, the choices you make will lead you into circumstances that are good for you. Your outer life will reflect that inner order. You will engage in satisfying commerce with your surroundings and situation. Begin with your nature and you will come back there. Too often original choice stems from fear or from some other distortion. Invariably, the chain of subsequent choices leads into circumstances that are not satisfying. Begin in fear and you will come back there.

The law of choice-begets-choice can lead you into a mess, but it can lead you out again.

The path of bad choices begins with a vague or weak sense of self, a lack of connection to the what-is of you that can only be found in the now. Learning the skills of self can take a long time. Few of us really get it from the beginning. Most of us make
choices based on something other than your nature. So, you have to deal with your situation while trying to redirect the momentum of your life. All of a sudden you have a huge amount of work to do because you've clued in to the fact that your situation is not what you want and that only you can change it.

Above all else it is our nature to grow. So, even when we operate in a way that reflects our nature, we're in for struggle. Knowing who you are does not eliminate the challenge of being who you are. But it makes you more efficient. It sharpens your instincts an engrains confidence. It helps you to not just face the work, but get the work done. It's not possible to fully grasp or predict the implications and potential outcome of each choice you make. It is possible to know what feels right, to check in with that habitually, and then to trust it. When that process is working, you've got your sense of self.

Sometimes choices made firmly from my nature will lead me into difficulty, struggle, darkness. Sometimes, usually even, the harder path is the right one. The difference is in your ability to hear your heart speak, to hear the "inner command," to hear yourself calling from down that dark path, to do what is you through clear knowledge of who you are.

Ever forward.

Cultivate your humility and you will shape a situation compatible with your nature.

2009-11-19T07:18:00.001-08:00

Cultivate your humility and what is true about, the what-is of you, who you are, will sprout. Cultivate your soil, your humility, and your creativity will happen like a flower on a tree. It will become as irrevocably true of you as the color of your eyes. Cultivate the now and opportunity will sprout. Cultivate your humility and you will shape a situation compatible with your nature. All things will fall into place and you will have what you need. You will have access to yourself and be able to share yourself with the world. This will make a world conducive to this process. You don't have to "do." You will find yourself doing. You simply have to be. The doing is a by product of the being. But being is not easy because who we are is painful as well as magnificent. If you think just being is easy you probably aren't doing it.

Escape from this process is tempting, subtle, easy to do and hard to recognize.

When you choose a fantasy of what you wish would be over what is, you cease to function. When you choose a fear or a memory of what you wish had never happened over what is, you stop perceiving reality. You are not connected to, not even seeing the world around you. You may as well be watching television. Your vision, your dreams, are clues to who you are, markers indicating where to put your energy. But even these can provide escape. When you lift off into hopeful or hopeless tripping on your dream without staying connected to the now, your dream, your precious vision, has turned on you and led you astray. The way to subvert this hijacking of your dreams by the escape mechanism is to cultivate the now, cultivate what is true about you, and to constantly reestablish contact with it through practice. In this way your dream stays rooted in the ground of your being, which is rooted in the Ground of all Being.

And that's the real trouble with escape: it prevents your god self from emerging. And it's sneaky. It happens without you even noticing. A mind trained to escape will always and habitually seek a way out of the now. Often for no good reason. A mind trained to escape will abandon some perfectly nice experience in favor of a fantasy, possibly even a negative one. This mind is just doing what it does: escape. But if you cultivate the soil of your self by staying connected to it through practice, by enduring the sting of painful self knowledge, the glory and challenge of your destiny and the full revelation of your self-in-the-world will flow out of you like water from a fountain.

Ever forward.

The full self is what you find every time you enter the now.

2009-11-15T14:55:00.001-08:00

The tree of self grows from the humus or soil of your being: humility. In humility, the tree grows. Practically, this tree is your thoughts and behavior, the choices you make, and the situations in which you allow yourself to become involved. Once you are an adult, there is no aspect of this tree that is not your responsibility. But this responsibility is not so easy to manage. It requires a strong, clear sense of self.

The sense of self functions just like the sense of humor. A sense of humor is the ability to recognize funniness when you encounter it. With a strong sense of self you recognize yourself. You are able to find yourself at any given moment under all circumstances, manage your weaknesses, and access your strengths. You feel your way, reflexively, into the truth about yourself no matter what you feel, no matter what is happening around you. From the place of self you can endure or enjoy any situation fully.

The full self is what you find every time you enter the now. That's why going to the now is vital for inner growth. Only there can you see what you really need. Nature and life provide access to the now through pain, shock, sudden joy. But the sense of self helps you find your way back there on purpose. What you do every time you step into the present is reestablish your connection to yourself. A lie cannot live in the now, in the now there is only 'what is.' There is only truth. It's like a place we wander away from. While we're gone we experience all kinds of illusions, cravings, dissatisfactions, distractions. When we return we find reality happening. We find the truth. We find the self. It may be unpleasant, even unbearable, but it's real.

But the now is also the seed bed of realization. Any possibility is just a possibility until it takes root in the now. Once that happens, the merely possible becomes actual. Real change, real growth, real relief from suffering, real joy, take place only in the now. A strong sense of self is connection to the now, where all the information we ever need is available. With a feeble sense of self, all experience of the now is reduced to a default minimum and deliberate access to the now is difficult. As the sense of self grows, so does the ability to access and remain in the now.

Rooted in the self, in the now, a person can distinguish between the subtle forces of distraction and the steady hum of reality unfolding. With strong sense of self the negative people and situations become easier to see, to manage or avoid. People who would hurt or manipulate you can't approach undetected. You will know that this man or woman is not for you, that this situation is not for you, and you will have the strength to act on your own behalf. In the same way, you will know and respond to good things, healthy situations. You become heliotropic toward the sun of healthy, creative life.

Much of the difficulty endured by the weak sense of self simply disappears when that sense of self is strengthened. Bad situations are nipped in the bud and do not trouble you. You may not even recognize them. You may never have known them for what they were, but you will feel their absence in the form of freedom, peace, energy and a tendency toward joy. Life will still contain vicissitudes, but you will not confuse these vicissitudes with the length and breadth of reality. And you will not confuse them with yourself. This posture will become more and more stable as your sense of self grows. To cultivate the soil of humility is to nurture the sense of self. If you do this the weeds of distraction wither and die. Your weaknesses become accessible and available to development. Your strengths move to the surface and stand at the ready. The lies you have heard or told yourself about yourself are deactivated, gelded of power, and cease to be operative in your choices and attitudes. When you cultivate humility, you develop a soil in which only truth can grow.

Ever forward.

Self begets self.

2009-11-15T14:54:00.001-08:00

The Old English language used the same word for tree that it used for truth. The word was treow. The word humility shares its Indo-European origins with the word humus, soil. Taken together these facts form a useful idea: just as a tree grows from the humus of the forest floor, so the truth grows from humility, the soil of our being.

Truth here has nothing to do with morality or who's right and who's wrong. It's truth about the self, what is true and what is not true about me. Who I am, and who I am not. Truth in this case means simply 'what is.' Knowledge of this truth comes from taking care of the soil of our being, the humus of self, humility. It comes from bearing witness to what is actually going on in my inner condition, and in my outer life. It means discovering and accepting the good and the bad without judgment, avoidance, or attachment.

To do this frees me to simply be who I am, which will allow all my potential to rise to the surface uncluttered by the desires or illusions I have about myself. Self begets self. When I cultivate humility, the truth emerges, enabling more humility, and so more truth. This cycle of self is continuous and leads us into ever deeper knowledge of ourselves, through ever deeper revelation of who we really are.

It's a painful process, a mythic process, because it requires a passage through death. You have to allow little parts of yourself to fall off and die. But these little parts do not die in vain. They fall to the ground of your being, decompose, and return to your inner soil the energy they previously consumed. This energy can now nourish the truth of who you really are. We tend to think of letting go as loss. But it isn't. To let go of something that you can't have, or that doesn't serve you is to give it a chance to become something you can have, that does serve you. In this way even my delusions can be helpful, and my broken dreams can help enhance my life. But it's painful. It's a dying. Unless the seed falls to the earth and dies... .

The ground of our being is supported by the Underground, the Divine. In the deepest place the soil of self mingles with the Soil. This is where the primal energy comes from, up through the soil of self into the roots of the tree that gives shape to that particular expression of God which is me, my life. This tree is you living through the seasons of your life, letting your leaves flower and fall to nourish you at the roots with energy originally derived from the Divine. To tend the soil where this tree grows is to foster access to that Energy. In this way the tree becomes strong and beautiful with roots that reach deep and limbs that stretch and flower to their fullest.

Ever forward.

Maturity is pure self engaged without obstacles in maximum being

2009-11-15T14:53:00.003-08:00

Humus is soil which cannot become any more basic. The corresponding state in a human being is maturity. Like humility, maturity is basic-ness. Maturity is pure self engaged without obstacles in maximum being. It's the full blending of attributes, the full integration of energies, capacities, darkness and light, into a fully functioning whole self that has itself and its relationship to the Divine as its frame of reference in relating to reality. The mature person is symbiotic with others and within herself, and functions according to the now.

But since the word mature is a verb as well as an adjective, it is a process as well as a state of being. The human experience is both. We experience and exhibit maturity in moments, and we go through it all the time, ever more deeply, ongoing. Full maturity requires exposure to more and more aspects of the self, and the acceptance of those aspects into the fold of the whole. This process, this search, is the mythic path, the road to the god self deliberately undertaken.

In maturity, no single aspect of a person is can dominate. Fear and strength work in balance, in reference to the whole. In this state, the great creative power of the universe flows freely through a person. Whether that person is angry, sad, confused, happy, does not matter. These things are felt, expressed clearly and fully, without the snags of hesitation or embarrassment, and above all without apology. The full self is present in the mature person, with all faculties and capacities at the ready. This person is part and parcel to the creative power of the Divine, capable of and inclined toward the small, daily thoughts and actions that manifest the Divine in the world.

What is often taken for maturity is merely solidification. It is acquiescence to -- even the championing of -- the status quo. But real maturity is the ability to function in the status quo while sustaining a deep, real belief in and commitment to its undoing. Real maturity enables you to work with functional hope of success toward the unlocking of magnificence, toward the transformation of the world into that venue of human greatness it is meant to be. The mature person is receptive to the clues and promptings of the Divine in his own unfolding, and through that to the unfolding of the unfinished creation.

A mature person has come from the childlike ability to perceive the world with wonder, through the trials and rigors of the status quo, full circle to wonder again, but with knowledge of the obstacles in his mind and heart that hinder the fullness of his life. This person has undertaken the mythic path. This person remains in a state of readiness for the extraordinary, even while grappling with the monsters of the status quo. To believe yourself capable of anything requires maturity, because only with maturity can we be open to possibility in a world where possibility is the enemy.

Ever forward.

In a world where there is no humility, there can be no humanity, and God remains invisible.

2009-11-15T14:53:00.001-08:00

The word humanity derives from the same Indo-European origin as the word humility. Humanity is the thing most true about each of us. We are all human. Before nationalities, before politics, before religion, philosophy, or even myth, there was humanity. Humanity, human-ness, is the thing from which all these other things proceed. Underneath the things that separate us, the learned things of division, there is the thing that binds us together, the innate thing of unity.

But humanity is not a given. It exists only as seeds until we decide to make it happen, until we decide to grow it, to spread it around and remove the obstacles to its fertility. So humanity is our most basic characteristic, but without proper care, it dies. A world where humanity is dead is monstrous and cannot be managed. We are bound together by our humanity, for good or ill.

The seeds of humanity are the same for us all and by cultivating these seeds we can make a world that prospers filled with individuals who thrive. It only works when each person, each human, propagates humanity by tending the seeds in their own day to day. These seeds draw life from the soil of our being, the humus, humility, which is irrigated in the deepest, unseen strata by the Divine.

Compassion and forgiveness are the seeds. The general act of planting them is called love. These seeds lie dormant until we cultivate the soil in which they grow, humility, our most basic state. If we do that, humanity is the harvest. This harvest nourishes a flourishing world of creativity, prosperity, communication, mutual benefit.

By cultivating humility we begin to contend with the grubs and nettles that stifle humanity: our lack of compassion, our lack of forgiveness. In the absence of humanity, fear and judgment grow instead. These things hinder fullness of life, dream building, satisfying relationships, a prosperous world. But the interesting thing about the seeds of humanity is that by planting them, we transform the soil in which they are planted -- namely ourselves and therefore the world. The grubs and nettles of fear and judgment find no nourishment in tilled humility sown with compassion and forgiveness. They whither and disappear, leaving room for humanity to take root and grow.

The alternative is the world where the seeds of humanity are not planted, the soil of humility not tilled. In that world we are cut off from that deepest strata of our being, the layer where the Divine first mingles with us, first begins to reveal itself to us by giving us the being through which we perceive it. In a world where there is no humility, there can be no humanity, and God remains invisible.

Ever forward.

Humility is the soil from which the god self grows.

2009-11-15T14:50:00.005-08:00

The word humility is often taken to mean something like submissiveness, subservience, or low self esteem. Maybe passivity, not standing up for yourself, holding yourself back, or even self negation. These are distortions, misinterpretations of the outward appearance humility can sometimes present. Humility is seldom recognized for what it really is -- a state of pure possibility, of receptivity to true creative power.

The word humility shares its linguistic origins with the word humus, as in earth, soil, the forest floor. Humus is more fully defined as soil that has so decomposed that it can't break down any further. It is the most mature, most basic soil. This is the true nature of humility. Humility properly understood is the soil of who we truly are, our most basic state, the place where possibility lives. To be humble is to have access to the ground of your being. To cultivate humility is to cultivate that ground. The more humble we are, the richer that ground will be. It is the soil from which the god self grows.

Humility is the attitude, the mental and emotional orientation that accompanies and makes effective the practice of the present moment. To practice the present moment is to tend the soil. Humility is the state of mind and the necessary posture for participating in the creative power of the Divine. It is the state of connectedness to your own potential, and the state of readiness for the action of the Divine in your life. There is no delusion in humility, no avoidance, no self hate, no judgment of self or others. There is no room for these things. Humility is perception cleansed of these distortions, and action purified of the falsifying effect these things have on our motives. To the mind characterized by humility, everything simply is. Humility is a state of undistracted consciousness. And that is the most powerful thing in the world.

The power of humility is in its practice. The practice of humility brings release of the self from the prison of ego, preconception, judgment, delusion, hesitation, fear. Humility is the basic human orientation of cooperation with the Divine, and provides the basis for all patience, kindness, love, compassion, forgiveness. These things are all emanations of divine power. It is only through humility that we become capable of them, and through their practice, capable of manifesting God, of unleashing the god self on the world.

And humility is the mental state most receptive to reality and to extraordinary possibility. So, it is humility that makes possible the realization of our dreams. It enables cooperation with the Divine in their achievement. Humility is the ability to let your dream be shaped according to what is, and to be joined to the great dream that is everything. In humility you can find your true place, your true expression, free of ego-driven demands on what those things should look like. Humility is the ability to respond without resistance to the role of the Divine in your unfolding.

Ever forward.

Myth itself caught in the act.

2009-11-15T14:50:00.003-08:00

The Boyne Valley, north of Dublin Ireland, is home to a place called Newgrange. There, in the middle of a field, stands a tumulus. At two-hundred and fifty feet across, and forty feet high, it spans an entire acre and is thought to be at least five thousand years old. On the southeast side an entrance opens into a sixty-foot passage that leads to a beehive shaped chamber, twenty feet high, at the heart of the mound.

Each year at the Winter Solstice, the darkest day of the year, the first rays of dawn strike a specially crafted window above the entrance, and the stones shape the light into a point on the ground. As the sun rises, this pointed band of light grows longer and longer, creeping along the floor of the passage until it reaches the chamber, sixty feet inside. There it proceeds to drive out the subterranean darkness with light bright enough to read by, and sustain the light for more than a quarter of an hour. Then, the chamber fades to darkness again, and the line of light recedes back down the passage just as it came.

To see the event on the day of the solstice you literally have to win a lottery. But I've twice been to Newgrange, twice followed the sixty foot passage to the chamber within to see the electric-light simulation. It makes the point and it leaves the imagination to feast on what the real event must be like.

Just building the tumulus was an act of mythic magnitude. There are ninety-seven stones surrounding the base of the mound, and each would have required a separate adventure just to find it, never mind bring it back. Each one weighs about eighteen tons and came from as far as twenty miles away. The quartz that adorns the entrance (literally tons of it) probably came from Wicklow, seventy-five miles to the south. All this at a time when Ireland was a vast primeval forest and it was dangerous work just hiking to the next village. And it would have taken at least three generations to plan and build the tumulus, so the visionaries never saw the completed project, and the people who finished it may never have known the visionaries.

All that effort. A one hundred year project that must have impacted the time and resources of an entire society, in a world where time was precious and resources hard won. Just to fill an underground chamber with light? I don't know what they meant by it, but Newgrange remains the greatest symbol for the mythical nature of human experience that I have ever come across. Better than any actual myth I've read. So simple, as basic as it gets, and yet so complete. There is no human situation for which the illustration is not relevant. Light literally penetrates the earth and fills the darkness with illumination. It is us. By taking the mythic path we enact this process in our own lives. We allow light to flood the inner self and bring into view that which was before hidden in shadow. And so much remains hidden.

Earth, stone, light and darkness. Human striving. Myth itself caught in the act.

Ever forward.

We are all worshipers in the Cult of the Known

2009-11-15T14:50:00.001-08:00

Fear and judgment surround us like a fence. We live inside this fence, in seeming safety, keeping the fence itself at a distance. This is the Cult of the Known. We revere the known and stay inside it because the only way to go outside it is to venture through our own fears and move counter to our own judgments. We are all priests in the Cult of the Known, and we construct worldviews in homage to it, in hopes it will keep at bay the forces beyond the fence.

But any world view is just a set of opinions. These opinions may be shaped by experience or preference, maybe by example or pressure from others. But opinions they remain. No matter how progressive or expansive the worldview, it's still a closed system ultimately surrounded by the fence of fear and judgment. In the end, it's fear and judgment that give shape to any worldview.

Some of us are very good at accepting others. And it's a good thing to constantly expand your world view. But even better is to dispense with it altogether, to stop looking at the world through a lens and just start looking at the world. If we had no fear or judgment we would have no worldview. We would have only an adventurous spirit and a tendency toward acceptance and compassion. All we could do would be to reside in the now, take situations as they come, and respond from the heart.

That's why the masters have always warned us against opinions. "Do not judge," Jesus said. It's one of the few commands he actually gave his followers. He recognized the human cult of the known and knew it had to be dismantled. This seemingly simple command, so easily reduced to a mere nicety, carries in it all the power needed to transform the individual and the world.

Fear and judgment prevent that.

Once you recognize your fears and judgments, you recognize the edges of your perspective. This recognition often happens through disturbance. When our boundaries are assailed by something challenging, a religious or moral difference for example, we can feel disturbed. Very often this awakens fear and we resort to judgment. Not discretion, not compassion, but self-preserving rejection of the thing causing the disturbance. Also known as judgment. Judgment is simply a technique for dealing with fear. It doesn't cause growth or healing, it just takes the edge off and in the end it helps fear to grow, or worse, converts it into hatred.

By pushing through fear and judgment we push our own envelope. We reject the Cult of the Known in favor of adventure beyond the fence. By embracing the disturbance and upheaval of challenge at our borders, we evolve our worldview into obsolescence. The best world view is not to have one. Without it acceptance of others and self is inevitable. Without it we can exist in a state of constant surprise. We can live here, now, and manage the details as the heart commands.

Ever forward.

The mythic path and the No. 15 westbound

2009-11-15T14:49:00.001-08:00

Riding the bus can reveal some interesting things about how you live your life. Suppose you need to get somewhere important, like a job interview, and you have to take a trolley, a bus, and a train. Suppose further that you're not familiar with the public transportation system in your city. What's your attitude? What's your approach? Do you plan ahead so that you'll have a clear idea of the timing, and what to expect? Do you wait patiently at the stops? Do you assume, until presented with evidence to the contrary, that you'll make all your connections and arrive on time?

This is the mythic path in a nutshell.

On the mythic path, you have a pretty clear idea of where you're trying to go, and it's important to you. You have vision. The way to get there is unfamiliar and holds its share of uncertainty. The better prepared you are, the more you'll be able to relax. But apart from preparation, all you can do is respond to circumstances. Those circumstances can take time to emerge, so you have to be patient. And how you proceed depends on what those circumstances look like, so you have to trust. If you're really good at patience you're less likely to go crazy in the waiting, and you'll be alert to changes in circumstance. If you're really good at trust you'll move forward assuming it's all going to work out, until you hear otherwise, at which point you'll deal with it. You'll also be better able to weather disappointment, enjoy progress, and learn from setbacks.

The way you respond to the seemingly ordinary experience of taking a multistage public-transit journey to a job interview can reveal a lot about how you go through life. Do you work on the assumption that everything is going to work, or do you work on the assumption that everything is going to go horribly wrong? The answer to that question is extremely important.

Ever forward.

It is far better to be driven mad by vision than to go mad for lack of it. Yet one or the other awaits us all.

2009-11-15T14:48:00.001-08:00

The sense of possibility is one of life's major gifts. It makes all the struggle valuable. But striving for vision will bring a form of madness, a level of focus that helps you keep going in the hard times. A willingness to endure, to continue, after a rest perhaps, but always to continue. This toil leads somewhere. It is the mythic path.

But its nemesis lurks: the madness that accompanies lack of vision. This madness dulls the sharpness of being, results in the status quo, and puts a negative, hopeless connotation on the word "dream."

It may have been mad of Odysseus to leave Calypso's island. The struggle ahead of him was epic. But his vision would not let him rest. And the alternative was worse. The alternative was madness combined with stasis, resulting in a world of shrinking possibilities.

Ever forward.

The mythic path begins and ends in the present moment.

2009-11-14T10:45:00.001-08:00

The present moment can be like an arena of battle. If it were always a pleasant place to be we would never leave it. But the truth is the present can be a rigorous experience. The present is where reality lives, and reality can be hard. In fact, reality can be hard even when it's good. Most experiences, from the bitter to the delightful, touch on limitations that make it hard to fully experience life.

The present moment is an entrance into the tunnel of transformation. The mythic path begins and ends in the present moment.

All my insecurities live in the present, that's why the tendency to escape it, into some form of distraction, is so strong. It's hard to stay in your body, on the ground, when what you are feeling is painful. It is by remaining in the present that we truly experience who we are. It is there -- in the present -- that we are strongest, most effective at engaging the painful parts of experience, and most capable of fully experiencing joy.

Ever forward.

Life is Making

2009-11-14T10:44:00.009-08:00

J.R.R. Tolkien wrote a poem called Mythopoeia. That's pronounced myth-o-pee-a. In that poem he builds on the Nordic idea of the storyteller as "maker." He refers to poets and storytellers as "legend-makers," "little makers" who participate with their craft in the Divine Making of creation.

Looking at the world as it is, it's hard to think of humanity as participants in the act of divine creation. But yesterday I helped out with a creative writing workshop for kids, run by the Spells Writing Center in Philadelphia. As always, I was struck by the quiet, undeniable energy of children bent on creation. There's nothing quite like a child rapt by the vastness of possibility. That clear-eyed face, frowning with concentration, peering into imagination, oblivious for a time of the pen and paper, assures me that it's the kids, not the adults, who stand the best chance of saving the world.

We grown ups are great for making changes in how things work. We make a difference in that we choose which messes to clean up. We do this in the world and in our inner condition. That's important, but it's not what I mean. Kids with access to creative time and space, who have guidance and encouragement are changing the very fabric of human consciousness. They're not doing repair work, they're laying foundations that are healthy to begin with. An army of kids who create will fashion an army of adults who can really lead. They are, literally, creating a brand new world.

But kids don't think about that. They just create for the sake of creating. A kid will write a two page story complete with an illustration just because she wants to. That's the most powerful form of creation there is. The kind that needs no reason, has no purpose. A vision forms in the child's mind and he follows it. That energy is raw and enough of it will shake the ground. This is the missing ingredient in adult society: pure creativity for its own sake.

But we adults can do it, too, if we want to. We just have to work at it. We have to let go of the need to make money at it, or to be good at it. We have to become at ease with the sense of exposure that goes along with any act of creation. I'm certain it's just a simple lack of practice. You can get good at expressing yourself. You can become fearless in developing your talents. You can reap the benefits of daily acts of creation. But it takes practice.

It's important to look at society as the sum total of the personalities it comprises. If we keep encouraging kids -- all the way to adulthood -- to spend time creating, exploring ideas, discovering their talents and abilities, we will change the world. We will stop the wars. We'll figure out poverty and pollution, because we'll have raised a breed of decision makers who can see. At long last we'll have a generation of true human beings, a tribe of people who know who they are because all along the way they've been doing what it takes to find out.

Ever forward.

If you want to penetrate the Underworld of your being, you have to face the Hydra.

2009-11-14T10:44:00.007-08:00

According to legend, the Hydra was a nine-headed beast that guarded a gate to the Underworld. Hercules faced it as one of his Twelve Labors, and found that each time he managed to cut off one of the heads, two more sprang from the wound to replace it. Maybe worst of all, one of the heads was immortal and even Hercules could not destroy it completely.

This legend provides a great metaphor for the mythic journey into the inner condition, and the struggle involved in uncovering and liberating the self. The Hydra's immortal head symbolizes the ongoing nature of the struggle, and the fact that we must, unavoidably, experience our fears and exhibit our dysfunctional behaviors in order to progress through them into wholeness.

That is the mythic path.

If you want to penetrate the Underworld of your being, you have to face the Hydra.

The Hydra can't be killed. However bitter it may be to simply experience fear and insecurity, the real strength of these things, the real strength of the Hydra, is its ability to engage us forever, to keep us fighting at the entrance of the Underworld without ever going in.

As a symbol, the regenerating heads reveal the futility of responding with brute force to an encounter with insecurity. Too often we respond to our fears by attempting to bully ourselves through the experience. This lack of self compassion strengthens and invigorates the Hydra. To berate yourself for your insecurity is to feed the Hydra. To reject yourself in favor of the opinion of others is to feed the Hydra. To constantly give fresh battle to the heads of the beast helps the Hydra fulfill its mission: to prevent you from entering the underground of your being, and to keep your God self from entering the world.

We have to circumvent the power of insecurity and pain -- the power of the Hydra. To do that we must experience these things, go through them, and keep going. You have to follow the trail of the Hydra back to its lair, to the source of its strength, in the Underworld.

Ever forward.

The hunt for liberation starts with yourself as you are right now.

2009-11-14T10:44:00.005-08:00

When you tread the mythic path you will endure many rigors. The first is this: you can only begin where you are. The hunt for liberation starts with yourself as you are right now. This is far more challenging than it seems at first. To see yourself, really see yourself as you are can be brutal. You will need to admit at least to yourself, that you’re still afraid, still angry, still capable of inappropriate behavior, whatever it is that's true of you. But self acceptance is the very bottom line. You have to accept the shape you're in. Only then can you grow, heal and become transformed. You must not blame, judge, hate, ignore or in any way reject yourself. These things result in staying put in your weakness, your limitation, and your pain.

On the mythic path, it's likely that your first task will be to treat yourself with compassion. No "don't be stupid." No "why are you such an idiot?" No "don't be such a baby." And above all no "other people have it way worse than you." Developing the ability to respond with compassion to your own insecurity could take a long time. You need to be prepared for that, and willing to do it because until you do you won't grow. You can yourself be the worst, angriest, most negative nay sayer you will encounter. You can yourself be the greatest danger you will face. But on this journey you cannot afford to make an enemy of yourself. And unless you practice the art of self love and compassion, you will.

Ever forward.

If we choose to pursue comfort we may achieve it. But we will not discover life that way.

2009-11-14T10:44:00.003-08:00

By deciding to view life as a mythic endeavor, we accept the hard work. No mythic goal was ever achieved without pain. That's a big part of what makes it mythic. Those who will not struggle cannot live a consciously mythic life. If we choose to pursue comfort we may achieve it. But we will not discover life that way. We will not uncover who we really are because to do that requires certain specific things, all of which bring struggle. We must discover and develop our talents. We must apply ourselves to creative expression that is more than occasional. We must attempt build a dream based on the impulses of our hearts. And above all we must love one another. A mythic endeavor requires the construction of an interior life, with an awareness that habitually interprets my exterior life and discovers there meaning and trajectory.

when we allow ourselves to show forth, the little things we fear will go wrong tend to burn up in the fire of our beauty

2009-11-14T10:44:00.001-08:00

The name Odysseus is taken to mean "Son of Pain." It's thought to be based on the "middle voice" of the Greek verb odussomai which means "to feel anger toward, to rage or hate." The "middle voice" is important, because it means that all the rage and hate is a two-way street. It's not simply taken or received, it's both. The one doing the raging is also raged against.

In his version of The Odyssey, Robert Fagles makes an interesting clarification in his notes to the text. He points out that the verb odussomai resembles another Greek word: ôdinô, which according to Fagles means "to suffer pain, especially the pain of labor -- as the rigors by which the hero brings his identity to life."

Fagles regards the word Odysseus to mean "'man of pain' but both active and passive, doing and done to, agent and victim both, inflicting and bearing pain yet somehow born himself in the process." One of Fagles' citations points to a margin note found in an old manuscript of The Odyssey. The note "of uncertain but ancient date," occurs alongside Odysseus's description of a boar hunt he went on in his youth. (Book 19 in The Odyssey.) The boar wounds Odysseus and Odysseus kills the boar. The note, in Greek, is a comment on the meaning of the scene. It reads: "When he grew up -- when he odysseused."

This ancient commentator turns the name itself -- Odysseus -- into a synonym for growing up. Each of us could just as easily insert our own name to describe our process of growth and emergence. Everyone except me that is, since my name has already been hijacked and now means the exact opposite of the point I'm trying to make. Thanks.

But it's important that one of the oldest western documents we know of, one of the pillars of our perspective has long been recognized to contain this basic truth: we become who we are by taking and inflicting pain. The story, among other things, is a tale about emerging from the acquired details of what we have been taught, and uncovering from that dross the natural glow of who we actually are.

Odysseus is his own frame of reference. He's a bit of a loose cannon, but he's doing it. Each of us needs to become his, her own frame of reference. I'm talking about the reflexive, habitual ability to choose for ourselves, based on our own experience, and according to the deep stirrings of our own hearts. Regardless of what other people think. We have to be able to do so honestly and without pretense. This is a vital ingredient to full life. Building that frame of reference into a trustworthy instrument is a big part of the task. And it's during that process that mistakes get made. Once we're up and running, we tend to treat people with the kindness and respect that goes hand in hand with true individuation. That comes when I feel secure in life, and security only happens if I dive in and undertake my personal odyssey.

One of the hallmarks of being your own frame of reference is the willingness to make mistakes. Those of us who fear making mistakes also fear being ourselves. We don't want to get it wrong. And as a result we do. We get it horribly wrong. But when we allow ourselves to show forth, the little things we fear will go wrong tend to burn up in the fire of our beauty. This crossing over can seem terrible. It can seem like a raging beast to be defeated or outwitted.

Odysseus just goes along, in search of himself, being himself with abandon, until he arrives home to his Penelope. He's proud of who he is. One of his objectives in life is to be known as Odysseus. Along the way he hurts people and gets hurt. He does some brutal things and undergoes some real brutality. He makes some terrible mistakes that get people killed. But it's a story, a dramatic portrayal. The Odyssey uses extremes to describe what it's like to be a person: one misstep and you can get hurt. Another misstep and you can hurt someone else. The important thing about Odysseus is that he's doing it.

Here in the twenty-first century, we share with Odysseus a common objective: to be known for who we are. The only way to do that is to be who we are and there's the rub. Sometimes being yourself brings pain: for yourself, for others, or both. Most often it's because someone can't take your radiance. When you are yourself you're a light in the world, regardless of how you feel. Any difficult feelings are simply a result of the conditioning you've undergone. If you exhibit confidence you are a true menace. People who lack confidence will be unbalanced by your presence. If your real self happens to be noticeably different from your surroundings you will undoubtedly arouse the fear of those who can't handle or have not discovered their own individuality.

You will experience alienation, fighting, hurt feelings and the insistence that you stop being yourself. It can happen in social groups, between friends, and most especially inside the family. It is this potential for discomfort and pain that keeps many people from ever experiencing who they really are. This means they are cut off from their own true potential, forced to reject or deny their own dreams and feelings. This is no way to live. But it's very common.

This unnatural state is the breeding pool for cruelty, disregard and greediness. Without access to our true selves we cannot act or even think on positive behalf of others or the world around us. We become acquiring machines. Anyone who is kind, who cares and exhibits concern through action, that person has some kind of access to herself which fuels her goodness. A shoot, a seedling of her true nature lives in her heart. The mythic life consists of cultivating that seed. Look at the truly cruel: they are cut off from themselves. Look at the truly loving: they have full access. Most of us are somewhere in between.

One of the hardest things to learn is that the hurt feelings of others are not your responsibility. Other people's feelings are THEIR responsibility. It's typical that we place responsibility for our pain on others. It's typical, and it's wrong. I do not advocate deliberately hurting people. I advocate courtesy, respect and kindness, but all the while being yourself. When that arouses the pain in others, as it inevitably will, that pain is theirs to deal with, not yours. Like Odysseus, you're just being yourself.

The idea of rejecting yourself in favor of protecting someone else from their own feelings is destructive. And it's disrespectful to the other person. When you seek to protect them from life you're saying to them, "You can't handle life as it really is. You need me to make this decision for you." If you were to actually say those words to that person, you'd probably make them angry. By leaving them alone with their feelings you're saying to them, "I trust that you are capable of managing your own feelings as a fellow adult in this world, and you don't need my protection."

When a person experiences their feelings, that person has a chance to grow, to become more free, to release more of their radiance into the world. It's not up to you to make people grow, but you have no right to stand in the way of that growth out of some arrogant belief that you know what is best for them. Or worse, out of some knee-jerk response that makes you try to avoid an awkward situation simply because it's awkward, regardless of the fact that it helps someone else avoid reality. That's the worst form of self preservation, the kind that serves no one, including yourself. The kind that, in fact, robs everyone involved of a life-giving experience.

To give birth to our true identities as people of light and goodness, we have to live. And living is hard if you really do it. It's a risky, tricky, messy situation we're in. It's called the human condition. Huge structures and systems have been contrived to avoid it, to fabricate an alternative. But you can't long escape the deep pool that underlies all experience, not if you want to have life to the full. The ones who thrive here, the ones who walk with confidence in their being are the ones who accept that and just dive in.

Ever forward.

The mythic life leads me into deeper knowledge of myself

2009-11-14T10:43:00.005-08:00

The motive for engaging in life on mythic terms is the Utter Self. It's the self we dream about, the one that is free and confident in all situations, even in failure. The Utter Self is what lies beyond our limitations, it's the prize for engaging and enduring those limitations with courage and perseverance. It is our potential unlocked. It treats everyone with respect, kindness and forgiveness because that's how it treats itself.

If we live mythically we will always be setting off on new adventures, constantly engaging new challenges to our inner safety, and constantly discovering that we are more then we thought we were. The Utter Self is the prize at the end of each of these quests, and it is always worth the struggle. As life goes on and we connect more and more with the Utter Self, it leaves more and more of itself behind, visible in the everyday world. As we proceed along the mythic path, we become more powerful, more grounded, more naturally ourselves. We unleash the Utter Self upon the world.

The mythic life leads me into deeper knowledge of myself. It gives me access to areas of my being that are always there, but of which I am not always conscious. The more self aware I am, the more potent I am in carrying out my own life. The more readily I can tap and maximize my strengths and build on my weaknesses, the more clearly I can connect with and participate in my life's path. I become more present and more capable of opening up to the influx of divine energy that is constantly flowing through me, seeking to take the unique shape that only I can give it. The more deliberate I am about this process, the more it will manifest.

There is an old Hopi saying (borrowed by President Obama early in his campaign): "We are the ones we have been waiting for." The meaning of this saying is different for each of us and hangs on our ideals. It's valuable to ask what it means to you, because it's a great window into the relationship between who you are, and who you want to be. What are you waiting for? What is that elusive ideal and what does it mean that you feel it's absence?

"I am the one I've been waiting for." This goes straight to the heart of the mythic life. All benefit flows from connection to self. Any good I can do for my neighbor or for the world begins with that vital connection. But I have not been merely waiting for it. I have been searching for it. In the mythic life, I have gone in pursuit of it. I endure my fears, my anxieties, my insecurities, my limitations, all in the effort to find it, to release it into my life. The Utter Self.

It is me I've been praying to -- that part of God that is me. There is an aspect of myself that is connected to God at all times. All the true spiritual practices are intended to open up the flow of this interchange, me with my God-self, me with God. All true myth tells the story of how this can be achieved. It is the most basic pattern of reality as we experience it in this life and it's symbols are everywhere. Birth and death. Sleeping and waking. The cycles of the seasons, the planets and the stars. We make passage after passage deeper into our selves, dying all the deaths large and small that slowly leave us bereft of our illusions, so that we may begin to perceive the truth and live in freedom from the lies born of fear.

I am the one that I've been searching for.

In the movie Angel-A, Andre askes the mysterious woman who has been helping him if she is an angel. She tells him, "I'm you. I'm you as you really are." We are all angels, beings of power and light. Our struggle here is meant to show us that, help us discover that, to assume that role in the world. It's different for each of us, but our talents and dreams are clues to what it will look like when we find it. The Utter Self is simply me as I really am, my God-self, as I will discover time and again along the mythic path.

Ever forward.