Here's the thing, here's the
dogshit
reality
of
this work
bringing forth
transformation:
as
miraculous
as it is, doing it is not particularly glamorous. That ... and as
powerful
as it is, it doesn't pay very well. Glamor and financial viability
don't provide reliable evidence of
transformation.
Neither of them necessarily goeswithtransformation
(as
Alan Watts
may have said). What goeswith
transformation
is a springboard, an opportunity to dive into a
vast
pool of possibility
(let me rephrase that with
rigor:
I should say "What goeswith
transformation
is a springboard, an opportunity to dive into life from a
vast
pool of possibility ..."), an opportunity to make things
happen
which, prior to the onset of
transformation,
would have been considered simply
stoopid,
impossible, far-fetched,
unimaginable.
Although the possibility
transformation
makes available may eventually result in something glamorous
(listen:
it could result in just about anything - glamor, if it's
of
interest
to you, is merely one of thousands of possible outcomes), and although
the possibility
transformation
makes available may result in financial viability, what's required to
bring forth
transformation
in real terms, is most often
nothing
more than basic, routine
work.
This workdoesn't guarantee rewards like glamor or financial
viability. Yet if you can't engage in the basic, routine
work
of bringing forth
transformationas if engaging in it is its own reward, it's unlikely you'll be any good at it.
If I take on
the work
of bringing forth
transformation
in another way, for example in a way which I describe as going for
the goodies ("going for the goodies" means taking it on with
the expectation of glamor and / or financial reward), it renders me
ineffective in bringing forth
transformation.
Why
is this? The closest I've come to an explanation of it, is via
Matthew's "No man can
serve
two
masters.".
That may (or may not) be the truth - I just don't know. I don't
know
why
it
works
this way for me - suffice to say I've noticed it's the way it
works
for me. And once I've noticed the way something
works
for me, I don't stay
stoopid
much longer.
What
this work
looks like in practice ie what it looks like
where the rubber meets the
road
when I'm in
action
with it, is long hours
sitting
at my desk for long days,
working
with my Lenovo L440 ex-IBM ThinkPad laptop,
writing,
reading and re-reading, checking and re-checking for accuracy, for
hours and hours and hours on end ... then
writing,
reading and re‑reading and checking and re-checking for accuracy
over and over and over again. There's
nothing
particularly glamorous about it.
As for the financial viability of it, so much of my
survival is bound up in my concerns about
money,
that it simply doesn't
work
well for me to blur the line between
this work
and my survival concerns. It seems to
work
better when I keep both of these endeavors cleanly distinct. It seems
to
work
better for me to manage my financial concerns with
integrity,
freely
independent of my
work with Werner
bringing forth
transformation.
In this way, I notice I end up being better with both.
This basic, routine
work
doesn't require the same kind of qualifications and skills other
work
requires of me. This
work
doesn't require me, for example, to do anything in
particular. What it does require of me is that
I am committed to being a
space where the truth can go to work.
That's one of the cues I'll take from
Werner.