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There were a series of incidents that blew me over the
threshold into this retreat. One was something the
poet David Whyte said a friend, Brother David Steindl-Rast,
told him: "The antidote to exhaustion may not
be rest. It may be wholeheartedness. You are
so exhausted because all of the things you are doing are
just busyness. There's a central core of
wholeheartedness totally missing from what you're
doing." Whyte said that from that moment on
everything changed for him. He realized there were
courageous conversations he had to have, because his work
had become too small for him.
Listening, I became aware of the courageous conversations
I needed to be having--with myself. But how could
this be possible when I couldn't even hear myself
think? In the following weeks, all around me, in the
media and in corporations, I kept hearing three phrases
that wouldn't leave me alone: "the meaning
void," "Time is the new poverty," and
"whatever" (said with a slack jaw and a shrug of
limp shoulders).
How can any of us find our way to wholeheartedness in a
meaning void? I knew that time was something we gave
ourselves or didn't, and that "whatever" was the
quickest way to soul leakage. And none of us can
find meaning or wholeheartedness unless we are in a void,
a void of everyone else's images and information.
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My
grandmother used to fast once a year for twenty-four hours
during the holiday of Yom Kippur. Listening to her
empty stomach growling, I asked her once why she
fasted. She didn't say anything for several moments
and then she replied, "You can't grab God. You
just have to become empty. Then God will have a
space to enter."
So many of us are afraid of meeting ourselves, alone,
without distraction. We have been taught to fashion
an image of who we think we are supposed to be and show
that to the world. Through fear of knowing who we
really are we sidestep our own destiny, which leaves us
hungry in a famine of our own making. Each of us is
here to give something that only we can offer, and when we
avoid knowing ourselves, we end up living numb,
passionless lives, disconnected from our soul's true
purpose. But when you have the courage to shape your
life from the essence of who you are, you ignite, becoming
truly alive. This requires letting go of everything
that is inauthentic. But how can you even know your
truth unless you slow down, in your own quiet
company? When the inner walls to your soul are
graffitied with advertisements, commercials, and the
opinions of everyone who has ever known and labeled you,
turning inward requires nothing less than a major
clean-up.
Traveling from the known to the unknown requires crossing
an abyss of emptiness. We first experience
disorientation and confusion. Then, if we are
willing to cross the abyss in curious and playful wonder,
we enter an expansive and untamed country that has its own
rhythm. Time melts and thoughts become stories,
music, poems, images, ideas. This is the
intelligence of the heart, but by that I don't mean just
the seat of our emotions. I mean a vast range of
receptive and connective abilities, intuition, innovation,
wisdom, creativity, sensitivity, the aesthetic,
qualitative and meaning making. It is here that we
uncover our purpose and passion.
The future exists only in our imaginations. It is a
collective story waiting for our voices to express.
That can only happen when you and I are willing to enter
the emptiness, listening in the silence until we can
understand how to create a future we can befriend.
I am wondering now, dear reader, about you. What are
the courageous conversations you need to have with
yourself, and how do you need to have them?
May we allow ourselves stillness so we can open our minds
to ourselves, and spaciousness so we can allow a moment of
rest when all thoughts fly above us like kites in a strong
wind.
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