"My notion about
service
is that
service
is actually that kind of
relationship
in which you have a
commitment
to the
person.
Now I don't
mean
to the
person's
body or to the
person's
personality or to the
person's
stomach or to the
person's
almost anything. What I
mean
in fact is that for me what
service
is about is
beingcommitted
to the other
being,
to the other
personspiritually,
to who the
person
is. Now the problem with that is that to the degree that you are in
fact
committed
to the other
person,
you are only as valuable as how you can deal with the other
person's
stuff, their evidence, their manifestation, and that's what
service
is all about.
Service
is about
knowing
who the other
person
is, and
being
able to tolerate giving space to their garbage. What most
people
do is to give space to
people's
quality and deal with their garbage. Actually, you should do it the
other
way
around. Deal with
who they are
and give space to their garbage. Keep interacting with them as if they
were
God.
And every
time
you
get
garbage from them, give space to the garbage and go back and interact
with them as if they were
God."
...
"Who you
mean
when you
say
'I' is not you. It's just something that
shows up
for you."
I am indebted to Aaron Bartlett and to Adam Quiney and to Andrew Goetz
and to Anna Taglieri and to Barbara Hawes Caldwell and to Barry Colton
and to Bruce Miller and to Cathy Elliott and to Curtis Dady and to Don
Sullivan and to Donovan Copley and to Dusan Djukich and to Eric Edberg
and to Geoff Heise and to George Richvalsky and to George Swan and to
Father Patrick Gerard
"Gerry" O'Rourke
and to Gopal Rao and to Gordon Murray and to Ian Becker and to Jack
Rafferty and to James "Jim" Tsutsui and to JeanneLauree Olsen and to
Joan "Joani" Culver and to Johan van der Put and to John Taylor and to
Joseph "Joe" Kempin and to Josh Cohen and to Judy Golden and to
Kathleen Morris and to Ken Ireland to and to Kimile "Kimi" Pendleton
and to Lawrence Gerald and to Lebogang "Lebo" Montewa and to Loretta
Warner and to Mandy van der Put and to Marcus Hobbs and to Mark Holden
and to Mark Krauss and to Maxine Mandel Potts and to Nancy Scott and
to Nassrin Haghighat and to Palmer Kelly and to Patricia "Pat" Shelton
and to Peter Fiekowsky and to Philip Tokmak and to Reg Leonard and to
Robert Cid and to
Ron Mann
and to Sally Morrison and to Scott Andrews and to Scott Forgey and to
Steve Zaffron and to Valerie Hawes and to Wednesday Reynolds-Wilcox
and to Yaduvendra "Yadu" Mathur who inspired this conversation.
This is a
conversation
about greatness. It's about
being
great. It's about what it is (what it
means)
to be great. It's postulate (its central tenet) is given by the
questions
a)
"Who are you
being
when you're
being
great?", and b) "Where does you're
being
great,
show up?".
Those are the two entry
points
into this
inquiry.
Let's tease them both out further. The first is teased out by the
question
"When I
say
to you 'You're great!', who is that 'great' (ie who is
that
being
great) to which I refer?" (that's right: the "who ...?").
The second is teased out by the
question
"When you're
being
great, where does your greatness
show up?"
(that's right: the where ...?").
When I
listen
for your greatness, I'm
listening
for you
speaking
in a
way
that
honors your word
as
who you really are.
When I
say
"You're great!", I'm not referring to your "I" / "me". It's more than
that actually. It's without you
honoring your word,
I have no
idea
what it
means
for your "I" / "me" to be great (in the "I" / "me" realm, if you will,
we're either all great, or none of us are). If we
refer to the "I" / "me" when we
say
"You're great!", it sounds like
little
more than
ego-stroking.
What's wrong with
ego-stroking,
Laurence?
Nothing,
really. But I would add this as a cautionary
note:
it's not only that
ego-stroking
can never successfully target our greatness and / or make us great (at
best,
ego-stroking
only provides compensation for notbeing
great): it's that it actively
gets
in our
way
of
being
great.
