It's ironic. When you hit the wall which thwarts your intentions, you
should be able to call for relief. You ought to be able to
get some support, some respite. You ought to even be able to get what
we would have called a long time ago some help and
understanding and therefore some compassion. At least your
goodness should be rewarded. It should earn points.
The
breakthroughheart
knows to not expect that, at least not to expect that for too
long. The
skydiver
knows the possible consequences of taking on
gravity.
The action itself is not without possibly terrible consequences. That
doesn't imply we shouldn't ever
skydive.
What it does imply is when we
skydive,
we get to do it in full awareness that we're taking on not just the
unforgiving physical universe but we're also taking on causing a
breakthrough
in both responsibility as well as in being with fear.
Breakthrough skydiving
is going for it with as much attention on responsibility
and on being with fear as on staying alive.
And so it is with the
breakthroughheart.
Faint
heart
never won fair lady (as Miguel de Cervantes may have said). Nor
anything else, for that matter.
I'm not speaking about simply going through the motions. That's
insufficient in and of itself to live a transformed life.
I'm speaking about always coming from
bigness
of
heart,
always pressing on, always going ahead, always moving
forward in the direction life is always going, stopping at
nothing, compassionate toward thos who are stopped, knowing it's so
essentially human to be stopped (and to be invalidated by being
stopped), and no matter what to always be creating
breaking through to the next expression of
heart.
Life is no carrot on a stick to me. I'm not in it to
get somewhere. I'm not in it to be someone. I'm not in it
to garner renown or
fame.
Or at least I'm no longer in it to get somewhere or to be
someone. And the only
fame
I'll accept as warranted is
being famousfor being Laurence.
Neither is life a race to me with a start and an end which some lose
and others win. I'm not running as hard as I can to win and to avoid
losing. I'm not running as hard as I can to be more than
and to avoid being less than. I'm running as hard as I can
because I'm running as hard as I can. My
heart
breaks through because that's what it does, because that's what it is.
I
eschew
the mangled dichotomy of being a winner and not being a
loser. As a matter of fact, I assert the obsession with winning
and avoiding losing causes the distinction "loser" which it presences
ever more stringently in those seeking to avoid being one. The
flypaper, stuck to their foreheads, is seen by everyone except them.
Their heads are up on pikes.
I eschew the notion of making it. By being born (clearly fait
accompli) I've already made it. I'm playing this game from
win. Given that freedom, how much of my
heart
I actually express, how much of what I say is listened and has an
impact, how much of the way I conduct my day to day living makes a
difference on
the planet
for everyone with no one and nothing left out is the one thing designed
to be managed by me and by me alone.
How much I answer the call of the
breakthroughheart
is what I'll be known for. It's easy to know those who have yet to
answer this call. Just ask them the question "Who are you?". If they
answer with their name or what they do for a living, you'll know they
haven't heard the call yet. Their
hearts
don't yet live in
breakthrough
mode.
Be careful. Be very careful. You can't use that to make
them wrong and to make yourself right. A win when you win and others
don't is not a win in the new realm of what's possible for winning.
Having a conversation which brings forth a possibility for the
breakthroughheart
requires ruthless compassion - ruthless because people are
skewed away from that possibility even though (if they told you the
truth about it) wishing they could master it is what's keeping them
awake at night, and compassion because they already got
it. The arrogance of assuming you got it and
they don't only gets in the way.
Werner
Erhard,
with no vested interest in being right about what enlightenment is and
with no vested interest in being right about what enlightenment isn't,
asserts simply one of the signs of the enlightened state is you
lighten up!
It's also been said that enlightenment is giving up the notion you're
unenlightened. I like that a lot. It completely takes the mystery out
of it. Lately I've come to enjoy an even more rascally
Zen
notion of it: enlightenment is giving up the notion that you are
enlightened (as James "Jim" Tsutsui may have said).
Whichever notion you give up, I'm inspired by human beings being
willing to give up what they've always been for the possibility of what
they could become. You'll find this willingness incarnate in the
breakthroughheart.
It's a good platform to stand on from which to turn this conversation
over to you.