Put This Purpose First

It's that time of year when the already-crazy demands on our time and attention ramp up at warp speed. Even when we're committed to honoring the true spirit of the season, holding intentions for mindfulness and gratitude and simplicity, it's challenging to maintain our centeredness when all of our senses are bombarded with relentless messages to buy, to decorate, to plan, to cook, to bake, to party, to give to charity, to draw a name for the Pollyanna, to do, do, do, do more...

It can be a bit stressful. Crazy-making, actually. And the best antidote to crazy that I know is - are you ready? - Self-connection. And I don't mean connection in the form of an inner debate with our small, worried, taskmaster self, but rather as deep communion with our highest Self. Sacred time we set aside for contemplation, journaling, meditation or prayer. Not as one more thing we have to squeeze into our day, but as the one thing we embrace that opens us to clarity and peace in every day. Genuine Self -connection is both a magnificent gift to ourselves and a responsibility we hold when we are committed to realizing our fullest potential. We simply cannot live authentic, meaningful and inspired lives when we are disconnected from the inner truth and magnificence of our highest selves.

I've recently finished a book written by Barbara Marx Hubbard, a brilliant futurist and one of the early founders of the Human Potential movement. She has lived a full and vibrant life and, at the age of 80, is still vital and engaged and teaching and creating. The title of the book is Emergence: The Shift from Ego to Essence, and it's a highly personal yet universal account of the process of what she calls fully incarnating as her Essential Self. She describes a commitment she felt called to make to devote substantive time each day to this intention, in the form of deep meditation and journaling.

For a period of 21 days she spent three hours every morning immersed in this profound experience of Self-connection. And this was at a time when she was under extreme pressure to finish a crucial project to which she had committed.  Time and again her worried self tried to talk her into cutting her Self-connection time short so she could make those phone calls and schedule those meetings and develop that curriculum, already! Yet she chose to honor instead her audacious commitment to true Self-connection; her inner voice told her firmly and repeatedly to "put this purpose first."

So she did, and discovered in doing so that she was renewed and replenished in a way far beyond what we normally think of as renewal and replenishment. She felt regenerated, alive and open and deeply at peace. She became more effective rather than less so, moving through her life from a whole new state of being that was profoundly clear and centered. Not only did she "get done" what she needed to get done, she experienced a state of joy and relatedness with others that completely elevated her sense of Self and life purpose.

Now, granted, she wasn't also trying to buy dozens of holiday gifts or bake a thousand cookies. But the point is that even as her external life became crazy with stressful demands, her commitment to genuine Self-connection became the solid ground from which she could meet those demands in the most inspired and effective way. In putting that purpose first, she served herself and others with great integrity and vibrancy.

I've experienced this phenomenon myself - even without ever having spent three consecutive hours in meditation! Yet my morning practices of journaling, prayer and meditation center me in a way that nothing else can, and on the rare day that I omit them, I find myself more prone to worry and distraction and procrastination. (Not to mention garden-variety grumpiness and irritability.)

So as we dive headlong into Holiday Season 2010, let's make a pact to put this purpose first: to start each day in communion with our highest Self, inviting it to soothe us and guide us and inspire us. Let's declare peace within as our greatest means to realize peace without. And let's just see how much we get done.