I don't remember what I
said
in response. I do remember
being
(as it's
said
colloquially) blown away. By what? It was as if a
portal opened
wide
had suddenly,
magically
appeared in my fortress of solitude in which heretofore
only ice
walls
were
possible.
With those three
words
"Just
show up",
he
completelyrecontextualized
(I
love
that
word)
all the frenzy, all the confusion, all the uncertainty, all the
"What the heck do I do
now?"
which occur in the domain of trying to figure it all out, and dropped
them squarely into the realm of
being
ie into the realm of
presence
- which is to
say
into the
possibility
of
being
ie the
possibility
of
presence.
As the author of
these Conversations
For Transformation,
with by
now
at least a modicum of
experience
in wrestling with this sort of distinction, I'm all too aware that
there's a pernicious
trap
in attempting to provide a
meaning
or an explanation for "the
possibility
of
being
ie the
possibility
of
presence"
for someone who's trying to figure it all out. The
trap
is that in attempting to provide a
meaning
and / or an explanation, the likelihood of any
realbeing
and / or of any
realpresenceshowing up,
is reduced to zero (dunt esk ... it's just that
way).
That's
why
I invite you instead to interact with this distinction ie to try it
on for size, and to
discover
it for yourself. Try on (by
asking
yourself) "What occurs differently for me when I'm trying to figure it
all out (in any situation), than when I'm just
showing up
(in any situation)?".
It's
easy
to
get
stuck trying to
come up
with the rightanswer.
Rather, just
sit
with the
question
in your lap like a hot brick and instead
see
if you can
get
out of your own
way
long enough to allow many, manypossibleanswers
to
come up.
A good
question
may indeed be one which
gets
the right
answer.
But a greatquestion
(as
Werner
may have
said)
is one which
gets
lots and lots and lots of
possibleanswers.
A great
question
may also generate lots of "Yeah, but ..."s as well as many
more
answers
to
"How
about ...?"s and "What if ...?"s. Here's one of the lots and lots and
lots of
answers
which
came up
for me: when I'm trying to figure it all out, what's available to me is
the finite set of options I've already tried, whereas when I'm
just
showing up,
what's available to me is the infinite space of all
possibilities.
Wow!
"OK we
got
it
Laurence"
you may
say,
"but what about all that circumstantial stuff that was
there for you to deal with? You
know,
there were all the
considerations,
there were all the
fears,
there was all the this might
happen,
there was all the that might
happen,
there was all the what if I can't do such and such, there was all the
what would
happen
if ... na na na ... you
know,
there was the
wholedang thing you were dealing with which you
askedWerner
about in the kitchen
originally.".
Well? What about it?
Showing up
(ie
"showing up"
the wayWerner
distinguishes it) doesn't change any of that. It doesn't
change any of my circumstances. It doesn't relieve me of their burden.
It doesn't void my responsibility for them. Neither does it negate my
ownership of them. And it certainly doesn't make them any
easier to
deal with. What it does do is it brings forward
who I really am,
which
directly
affects the impact my
being
has on
my life.
In addition,
showing up
gives me
creativesay
in my choice of
possibilities
for
being,
and therefore it
empowersthe way
I live
my life,
and
the way
I deal with any and all my circumstances.
Man! I'll make no bones about this: that inspires me. You
and I will be dealing with stuff forever ie we'll be dealing with the
whole
dang thing until we
die
(I'm sorry, there's really no
way
of avoiding its domination). What
showing up
(the wayWerner
distinguishes it) brings with it, is the
possibility
of dealing with it all
transformed.
And it's just
possible
that dealing with it all
transformed,
is really all that
Life
requests of us.