Archive for Work Life Purpose
The Whole Health Medicine Institute, founded in 2013, has mystical roots. After a nudge from Jay Fiset, who suggested to me at an Association of Transformational Leadership meeting that I might create a training program for doctors to invite them into a conscious way of delivering the kind of Whole Health Medicine I practiced in my integrative medicine practice and teaching in my books, my National Public Television specials, and my TEDx talks, I heard a mysterious guiding voice that asked me to sit down at Esalen Institute and take dictation for a letter. The title I was given for the letter read “Calling All Conscious Physicians.” When I asked the voice what I was supposed to do with this letter, the answer I got was “Await further instructions.”
My friend and esteemed colleague Jason Wachob, who founded Mind Body Green, where I am a regular blogger, just released his new book WELLTH: How I Learned to Build a Life, Not a Resume. I contributed to his book on the topic of gratitude, and I want to share with you this excerpt from Jason’s book.
I have two friends who are trying to do beautiful things in the world. One is an ardent environmentalist who really passionately yearns to save the biosphere and protect the planet. The other is a social worker serving abused, abandoned, neglected, traumatized children in a community where most people are hooked on meth. Both carry so much pain in their deeply empathic hearts that their own bodies are suffering. I worry that these two are killing themselves with those broken open, bleeding, service-oriented hearts. Yet, I see in them a painful pattern that leads to unnecessary suffering, one I recognize because I’m still in the process of breaking this pattern myself. Been there can tell going there how to get there. But it’s not easy. Breaking this kind of pattern is like trying to put an octopus to bed. The minute you get two arms tucked quietly under the covers, six more arms of the pattern sneak out!
What does it take to become more tender, open-hearted, and compassionate human beings in a world that trains us to judge, criticize, compare, blame, and shame? How does this evolutionary initiation happen, when one makes the journey from the head to the heart and the heart swells into actions that ease the suffering of others? What does it even mean to be compassionate?
Compassion and its compatriots—empathy, kindness, benevolence, gentleness, tenderness—they have a bad rap, suggesting weakness, passivity, becoming a doormat that other people can take advantage of. And yet, nothing is stronger—simultaneously fierce and feather gentle—than the open heart. Just look what a mother can call upon to protect her child when the child is in danger. Don’t mess with Mama Bear, and don’t mistake unconditional love for weakness. The ultimate strength lies in trusting that the heart can lay bare without getting trampled upon, not because there aren’t unkind people who can stomp across the raw, vulnerable parts of your heart with their dirty boots, but because YOU can become the fierce protector of your own heart without closing it or armoring it off. Because you’ve got your own back, love can flow through you unhindered as you bless the world simply with your presence.
You Are Naturally Compassionate
Dear God,
Help me remember everything that comes through me comes from You, that none of it belongs to me, that it's not mine to control. Let me remember that I am of You and in You and connecting to the You in All That Is, but I am not in charge of how You flow through me. Remind me that You will help me bring into being that which yearns to be born, and You will put on the brakes when I get off track. Empower me to accept everything and resist nothing. Help me trust and let go and let You use me as a vessel of sacred service. Please use me to bless this world in whatever way is most aligned.
As I birth my new book The Anatomy of a Calling into the world today, please gently nudge me if I try to force my will instead of trusting Your will. Help me have faith in your plan without trying to enforce mine. Remind me that you will show me when to act and when to rest. Loosen the grasping in me so I can relax into the arms of Love that hold me always. Please help everyone in this world remember that we are all One, that we are made of love, that You are in all of us, and we are all one body, one heart. Let us be each others refuge. Ignite within us the Divine spark that lets You spray through the garden hoses of our bodies and hearts. Let us all trust that what we birth into the world will come into being as it is meant to so we don't have to cling to the outcomes we wish for.
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