One magical night in Africa I witnessed a firelight festival of dances from the various tribes that traditionally inhabited the area now known as Zimbabwe. Every dance had its own rhythm, its own theme, its own story, its own origins, its own costumes, and its own music. For the finale, all the groups came together and, in turn began again, improvising on their signature dances. At first, to my Western ears, the seemingly conflicting tempos, rhythms and tunes appeared to be descending toward chaos. Then a magical pattern began to emerge, in which every individual song and dance took its place, weaving and interweaving together a spectacular tapestry of colour, light and sound. After half a lifetime in inspirational music, this was music as I had never experienced before. I still get goosebumps when I recall it.
I learned something that night. The best way I can describe that is - that Simple Harmony comes from energies that sing on the same scale -- the same key-signature. Rich Harmonies come from the melding of all signature energies. No matter how discordant some of them may seem to be at first to the untrained ear, there is an organising influence, a cosmic conductor, that will fold every new sound into an ever-enriching symphony.
The process I witnessed that night in Zimbabwe was wonderfully re-created in The Homeland Suite, a sequence in the movie "The Power of One", when the young hero created a concert that combined and celebrated the songs of all the different tribes represented in the prison where his friend was incarcerated.
It's not until we enter chaos as a deliberate act that we discover the subtle patterns that become available when we say "Yes" to the whole of experience. Without any compromise, everything finds its place, everything fits in, and what emerges is the self-organising principle of the whole of creation.
But we miss that experience because we baulk at what we call "anarchy.". Even if catastrophic circumstances force us into chaos, we're too panicked to gain anything from the encounter. The human mind is terrified of apparent chaos. Like someone who's been tossed into a pond full of crocodiles , our feet don't touch the bottom -- they hardly skim the surface in our mad scramble to get the hell out.. That's a pity, because it prevents many of us from ever experiencing anything grander than the moth-eaten scraps that will actually fit through the censoring screens of tiny mind.
There is a way through, though. There's a way to get out of your mind. And, unless you want to, it doesn't involve chanting "Om" or even "Three Blind Mice" for hours on end.......
The first step is to get that your mind is something that you have; but it is not what you are. I've just reached into my pocket and pulled out a bunch of keys, a bus ticket, and a handkerchief. All three things are handy for enabling me to have a range of possible experiences; but they are not Who I Am. I Am that which has them and carries them around so that I can use them. But they do not define what I am, and I can put them down or pick them up at will. So it is with our mind. We have it to use, but it is not who we are.
The second step is for you, the CEO of Your Life Inc., to come back from the world's longest lunch-hour, make an executive decision to take back the reins of your life, bust you mind back to its office as Head of the IT Department, and call in your Heart to find out what's been going on for him/her in your absence. Then bring everyone together (including your mind).and get some fullness and balance back in your life.
To embrace your Greater Self, however, you MUST go through Vulnerability. Now, I didn't make this rule up. It's just the way it seems to be for everybody -- even Jesus the Christ had to go through this portal., and he told his followers about it, too. We all have to take a deep breath and open ourself up to everything our mind has formerly said "No" to.
Say "Yes" and feel into the flows of thought and feeling. Some of them may seem quite irrational, wrong, stupid, even downright dangerous to your emotional ease. At first you may experience tremendous discomfort. That is indeed a good sign; it means you are getting out of your "comfort zone". Nothing new or transformational was ever found in the Comfort Zone. Look back at your own life experience -- did you ever learn anything much when things were going well for you? Were your greatest spurs to growth easy times, or tough times?
This is the greatest challenge to counseling. Most callers come to you because they are 'way out of their Comfort Zone and, like a person drowning, they are fixated on scrambling back by any means possible, even if it means drowning you in the process. Our challenge is to engineer a shift of perception for them, a shift that will allow them to see the possibility that the Comfort Zone has a lid on it, and as the emotional tide continues to rise, they will surely drown in their own Comfort. Chaos and Uncertainty are signs of hope.
Beset as we are by seeming disharmony outside of the familiar rap-thunk of the comfort-able, we hiccup. We hesitate long and hard.
Leap in. You have to jump in. Just as you cannot learn to swim by standing on the beach, you have to wade into Life if you're ever going to learn how to Live it. Be willing to get out of your depth. You're not going to drown!
YOU - CAN - SWIM.
Honour the urge to Leap in. That urge to get out of your depth is your Destiny calling you!! It's as old and true as Creation itself. It is our evolution calling. The false mind that keeps us back, stuttering all over with fear, does not know -- has no idea whatever -- of why we came here. The mind is concerned with one thing, and one thing only -- its own supremacy. And where you and I are called to go, our minds are going to be as supreme as a minnow in an ocean full of whale-sharks. Our tiny minds will dis-solve into the ThoughtForce of All -That-Is that awaits us there.
As we surrender the need to control and protect our egos, as we submit to Vulner-ability, as we release into the intrinsic harmony of all energies, we find empowerment, vitality, and tremendous peace.
And then ......... life goes on.
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