I told a friend that I've been
a graduate of
Werner's work
for exactly forty four years today. "Wow!" he said,
"That's
incredible!
You must have cleaned it all up by now.".
That really got me (it's an interesting conclusion to draw, for
sure). I looked at it, trying to see if I could discern the total
truth of it for myself. "Well, first of all ..." I eventually said,
"no one ever gets it all cleaned up. There's always
more. There's
elephants all the way
down
- and as of right now, forty four years later, I still haven't
touched bottom.
Secondly, I can tell there has been one massive shift
in how this process plays out for me. The truth is I still mess up.
Really. What's shifted isn't that I've cleaned it all up by now, or
that I don't still mess up now and again. What's shifted is the
velocity with which I clean up my messes ie how
fast I clean them up once I realize I messed up.".
There's a
generosity
that goeswith (as
Alan Watts
may have said) me cleaning up my messes. But it derives only
secondarily from
freeing up
power for the others involved to be made whole. Primarily it
derives from
freeing up
power for me to be made whole. It's not altruistic. So
if I realize I messed up, I'll clean it up even if the others
involved didn't notice (the notion that "You only messed
up if you got caught" is disgusting to me). The sooner I clean up
a mess I made, the sooner any lost power gets reinstated.
So to make certain you know, I do make messes occasionally. In this
way, not much has changed in these forty four years. But the
velocity with which I'm on to them now when I do, and the speed
with which I clean them up once I am, is faster now,
much faster, deploying (as I like to call it)
"the shortest distance
between two people".
Cleaning up my messes as fast as possible as soon as I
realize I've made them, reinstates
workability
- even if the others involved didn't notice I messed up.
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