Greatness Calls

My last post Greatness, Interrupted told the story of a bread crumb moment when, she, my highest self, said, “You are destined for Greatness”, an intuitive moment that I didn’t explore.

About 5 years ago, I detoured toward exploring her sensations.  I felt an energetic pull to understand a miraculously successful sports team.

One day, when the television was on, I inadvertently caught an interview with the coach. I learned this coach collected books, 1^st edition books; if I remember correctly. I believed I understood the pull, I’m a huge reader…the coach collects books…. Done! Connection made!

The internal gnawing didn’t subside. Becoming mildly open to her messages but refusing to watch games, I turned on the televised post game press conferences expecting to learn why I felt a connection to this team. The joke was on me!

Any sports fan knows the press conference drill; cliché, cliché, and more clichés….” team win”, “need to improve”, “good win for us”, “we respect the other team”, blah, blah, and blah. For two seasons, I listened to press conferences before I realized there was nothing there but talking heads. Needless to say, she, my intuition, wasn’t “speaking” to me. I had no sense of being on track. I would need a new game plan!

Accidently or serendipitously, I began watching their hype videos, their games, reading books written about the team, listening to personal and professional interviews, and listening to so much sports radio that I would respond to the radio while driving. I don’t know why she was present. My guess is that she is nourished by my casual attention and small actions. Eventually and quietly, I began satisfying the pull of learning about or maybe from Greatness. I learned that their Greatness grew from and was rooted in details; exact wording, well-crafted preparation, flexibility, and intelligence. I’m sure passion, consistency, self-awareness and looking inward to access belief and trust in yourself and your teammates creates a strong and agile foundation for the daily detailed work of accessing, maintaining, and deepening their Greatness.

But I can’t help but wonder why is this knowledge relevant? Am I supposed to be great at something? If so, what is it? And the greatest question for me on greatness is why am I being “taught” or shown the way to greatness.

Recently, there was a BIG win for this team. I felt happy and pleased for their fairy tale ending. Only thing was, it didn’t feel like an ending to me. This volume of their story was complete while she was “telling” me to go deeper……but why?

A Sideline note: While editing this post, I took a break to watch the news. Instead of the news, a program about this team was beginning. Is this a coincidence? I can only wonder…

 

Greatness, Interrupted

Decades ago, I was mindlessly watching Oprah and admiring beautiful dresses in Vogue Magazine, when Oprah uttered the words, “I’ve always known I was destined for Greatness.” I spun my head toward my roommate and said, “I’m destined for Greatness, too”. It was an awkward moment as my caring roommate gave me a doubtful and quizzical look while my face transformed into a shocked expression when I realized I said it a loud and had no idea why I made this declaration.

As I write this, I remember that my heart felt like it bubbled up with the words printed on it. Including a sense of “knowing”. These words were given to me from somewhere deep inside me. Reflecting now, I can only assume it was from her, my highest self, continuing to leave me bread crumbs to lead me to her guidance. Once again, I did nothing with this information.

Back to my regular life I went…. I didn’t investigate this any further because I had no idea that I could or should look deeper. I started to see these intuitive hits as party tricks, something fun, entertaining, and miraculous like balancing cups in a pyramid shape while riding a unicycle.

A year after this bread crumb was placed on my path, she gave me this identical message again. My boyfriend, at the time, and I were sharing stories about being class officers in our high school and college years, when he said to me, “You are destined for Greatness!” Lacking any ability to communicate effectively in a relationship when the attention was on me, I just stared at him. I’m sure you can imagine what I was thinking. He never clarified and I never asked but there it was another bread crumb left on my life path……

What about you, do you have bread crumbs left on your path? What are they? What do you do with them?

 

I Knew… I Said

I grew up in a house where my accomplishments weren’t recognized or wanted. I believe my mother didn’t want her daughter to be smarter than her or more accomplished or more capable. As a child, she told me not to try so I wouldn’t fail. So to please her, that is what I did. I didn’t care about school work. I didn’t receive any support, anyway. When something was confusing or if I didn’t know how to think about something or how to acquire knowledge about something…. I was on my own. I always did well enough but didn’t live up to my potential. Losing out on feeling a sense of accomplishment, liberation, and emotional expansion that living to your potential bestows.

Interestingly enough, the expectation was that I was to go to college. In retrospect, how my mother justified denying me access to academic success but felt compelled to be sure I attended college baffles me. This inner conflict led me to live life carrying this sense of a lack of foundation and support while pursing any interests. I didn’t feel secure or grounded as I moved thru life.

While I lived frightfully unmoored, she, my highest self, told  me, through words and a knowing sensation, that I would go to graduate school. I heard her, believed her, didn’t question her, didn’t know who she was that was leaving me yet another bread crumb to guide me and send a signal that she can always help me. But I wouldn’t become intuitively open enough to allow her consistent help for decades.

I was barely making it thru college. But miraculously, I was saved by spending a semester in London. This semester introduced me to a friend that questioned the belief system I was raised with. This new world view returned me to the USA with clarity and support that lead to a senior year with a much improved GPA. With my college degree, I set out into the work force remembering what she, my highest self, said. As I worked, I kept an eye out for when this Master’s Degree was to happen. I felt the destiny. My human self, stayed open to complying. I still have no idea how these 2 parts of me worked together. One part very aware of my spiritual truth and complying while another part internally questioning why I believed her.

About eight years into my work life, destiny opened the door and graduate school began. Yes, it’s easy to say, that I used my free will, identified a school, applied, and was accepted and therefore lived out my destiny. But it never felt like that… It felt like I was given a peek into my future by her. It felt like she was leading, guiding, and showing me the way. I never planned it or pushed it. Looking back, somehow and from someplace within, I simply opened to it and followed.

“Who ever thought YOU would be graduating from graduate school!”, a couple family members affirmed at graduation. I smiled and knowingly said “I knew I would be graduating from graduate school, I knew……”

So Insecure

So, I have a feeling, an internal and external sensation, really. It is subtle, bordering on imperceptible. It feels like a quiet, calm moving energy both inside me and outside of me. I’ve learned that this is my spirit, my highest self. But I’m unsure what, she, is telling me. Plus, I don’t know if I want to use time and access patience to figure her out!

She, my highest self, appears as I peruse the Boden Catalog. Boden, is an English company, selling colorful, sporty, clothing. She, wants me to learn something about myself or my life from this catalog. I’m coming to understand this because of the sensation I’m feeling as I turn the pages. I don’t have any idea what her point is but I’m willing to try.

The story of deciphering her message goes like this………I’ve always loved the Boden catalog. It’s fun to see vintage patterns on casual and feminine clothing. This time the catalog was trying to tell me something. Maybe she is nudging me to take a trip to London or to buy new clothing that I don’t need or honestly, want right now. No, it’s not that! I know this because I don’t experience that sensation of clarity. The “ahha” feeling that is a crystal clear signal from her, my spirit, that I GOT the message.

In reluctant pursuit of the “ahha” feeling, I hold onto my catalog. Usually I peruse; pretend I have Boden Bucks, imaginary dollars that allow me to buy everything I want, and then move the catalog to the recycle bin, after spending my endless supply of Boden bucks. But this time, I carry the catalog around because it is “poking” at me.

I perservere. While I’m looking closely at the photographs, she, releases a positive knowing. This validation inspires me and provides the hint that the message will be fully revealed by detailed study of the pictures. I get an idea that learning Boden’s philosophy and who the Boden woman is will lead me to the message. But, guess what, I didn’t learn anything. So, with my Boden Bucks spent, my frustration mounting,  the message unknown, I tossed the catalog in the recycle bin!

To release frustration, I follow the need to turn on my computer and start typing. Then it happens, the understanding that was frozen within me gives way…and I get it! She, is leading me to the secure, easy energy the photographer captured.  Feeling liberated and pleased, I know I have received the intended message. “Ahha.” Simultaneously, I know she is highlighting my insecure foundation. So here is the lesson – awareness of your insecure self must be healed in order to live with a secure and easy energy.

My insecure self, fears my easy, secure spirit. My insecure self is anxious, confused, looking in so many places for information, answers. She makes plans, turns ideas and information over in her mind. Constantly putting the pieces together and then rearranging those very same pieces. She tries to answer all the possible questions, anticipate every move of the players and the outside circumstances. Feverishly rearranging the pieces, trying to make a creation that produces peace, calm, and understanding thereby feeling secure. My insecure self can never get to security through these processes. The constant thinking, planning, evaluating, rearranging and reengaging creates the insecurity. Constantly working from outside information or outsider information.

But Ms. Secure, my highest self, has insider information. She knowingly leans over and reaches into a magical bag or purse or maybe even a doctors bag and pulls out what she needs. She is strong, moves with ease. There isn’t multiple steps and careful pondering and rearranging to gain the  knowledge needed in a situation. There is an internal quiet and understanding that dipping inward provides the message. The message is given on a small piece of paper with a quiet mind, a deliberate bow from a reverent posture. It only requires reading it, believing it and acting on it. Again and again.

 

 

Something Happen To

We had been broken up for years. I didn’t have his new phone number, wasn’t sure where he lived, and hadn’t talked about him in… forever. But his name repeatedly popped into my mind in a strange way. Its like it was floating thru my brain. Was she, my highest self, trying to tell me something? Was she leaving me yet another bread crumb meant to lead me to my internal guidance system?

Anyway, over dinner, in a crowded, noisy restaurant in an equally crowded and noisy city, I told my friend something happened to Steve. With a doubtful and judgmental look, she told me nothing happened to Steve I’m just projecting the disappointment of Fred onto Steve.

I slowly and knowingly shook my head no a few times and said I’m planning to contact Mark, Steve’s long-time friend because something DID happen. She playfully rolled her eyes.

On the following day, I knew to contact Mark at 400pm. (Why did she, my highest self, give me this information?) After catching up with Mark, I asked the question, “How is Steve?”. Mark, slowly and quietly told me, “He is better, now.” And then the story began…Steve had a minor surgery when traveling overseas, it got infected, it got better, it got infected again…..it got better again. Since he wasn’t improving as anticipated he flew to a nearby country for better treatment. During the flight, the plane was stuck by lightening!

Immediately, I contacted my skeptical friend. With an I told you so tone I laid out the story in detail. She listened in complete silence and when I finished she said,” If you ever get any information about me, tell me!”

My friend’s response caused me to wonder about this voice? Why is she, my highest self, speaking to me? Having no idea how to make sense of these messages, I decided to view them as fun and entertaining party tricks…. dismissing it entirely. It would be years until I realized this was another bread crumb being left to return me to my inner guidance system.

Oh, and Steve is fine! He must have protective guardian angels swarming him.

Car Accident

MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA

When I was in elementary school, she, my highest self, told me about a car accident taking place. I, still, remember it clearly…

Sleeping soundly, I brightly awoke and read the clock. It said 10:15pm. She told me my parents had been in a car accident. I wasn’t alarmed, scared or upset, I never questioned or doubted the validity or the source of the information, I simply rolled over and returned to my deep sleep.

In the morning, my father came into my room (which he never did) to tell me about how my mother was feeling after the accident. He said a few words and I blurted, “You guys were in a car accident last night at 10:15!’’. He simply said, “Yes”.

I have no memory of my father’s reaction to my message from her that I confidently shared. I excitedly and anxiously, continued with, “Can I look at the car?”. He pointed to my bedroom window. It was parked in the driveway under the window. (My parents never parked the car there) As expected, the front end was deeply smashed! 

 The knowledge of the accident came from such a deep and unknown place within me that I didn’t question its origins or its truthfulness. I KNEW it was true because she told me.

This was one of her bread crumbs she left on my path to my highest self. I have returned to that bread crumb and told this story so many times as I have tried to learn who she is and what she wants to share.

She has left many more bread crumbs since the accident….

Will and Grace

Sooo it all started at birth! The birth of what I don’t really understand. Was it the birth of the universe or just quite simply the birth of me. Me, complete with she – my truest nature, and all the other parts that needed to come to life to guide me through the maze of a conventional life.

When I was in second grade, she, my true nature, was recommending that I create a picture by cutting construction paper into rounded designs and then gluing them to the outer edges of the paper. After that she said make stars all over the blank spots, use the sparkling markers. This filled us with joy! While drawing brilliant and sparkling stars, the second-grade art teacher told us we were working on something else. The joy drained from us and she, my true nature, silently faded inside.

But that was a long time ago and she is back! When I think back over the decades, she made many appearances. I now, know she was speaking to me with intuition, passion, daydreams, nightdreams, and out and out words that I dismissed as odd. Truthfully, I looked around to see who was saying them, saw no one and easily shrugged off the voice.

While struggling to live an appropriate conventional life, a part of me developed to fear her and another part became a vigilante on patrol. My vigilante’s mission was to admonish and squelch her input, her knocking, her wants.  The vigilante and fear parts were excellent at their jobs. How else could my conventional self grow, respond or react in an expected fashion. I grew to believe “I” was the conventions that I lived within. And really had no idea who she was or her mission.

But through years of interment remarkable events and people she introduced to me (her way of leaving bread crumbs for me to find her), I can only think of her as GRACE………..

“Who Am I Anyway?”

“Am I my resume? That is a picture of a person I don’t know.” These lyrics, from A Chorus Line, echo this transformation of the ending of one way of being and the start of another. I have, somewhat obediently, lived my life following conventions or struggling to rid myself of them as I anxiously try to follow my truest nature.

Mostly, like many, I have folded my truest nature inside while I “make it work” within the convention. Because my spirit is so strong, she would knock consistently at the part of myself that could allow her to unfold and stretch out for a while. Before she was required, by my conventional parts, to return to her spot. She quietly left me with some wisdom. Then she would willingly fold back up while I looked over the wisdom slice and returned to the appropriate behaviors of the conventional world.

But now, she has had enough of folding and unfolding. She wants to express herself. She has experiences to live, things to say and a life to create…… instead of a life of working within the confines of convention. Those confines are too small for her. She needs to stretch!

While she quietly and confidently plans to lead the show now, some of my other parts are confused by her. They feel fear, intrigue, denial, a sense of adventure, restless, excited but mostly anxious.

She whispers stick with me and have faith.

Let’s see where she takes us…….