Am I Talking Self-Responsibility for the Efficacy of my Role in Mid-Atlantic Pathwork?
Meditation – Tuesday
Pause to Consider: Am I Taking Self-Responsibility for the Efficacy of my Role in MAP?
I notice that my engagement with other folks in Mid-Atlantic-Pathwork (MAP) is uneven. Yesterday evening was highly engaging: focusing on core strategic issues we face in moving the organization forward. Then with others in MAP leadership, usually where there is an absence of strategic context and more freewheeling, I find the engagement – especially in emails – tedious, draining, challenging, and even threatening, pulling me off my Center. It’s simply hard for me to work without a clear strategic or business context.
The energy in these leaders can be high and well-intended, but to me it sometimes comes across unfocused and un-integrated with the whole of what we are about as an organization. And then with still other leaders, the engagement can be rich and strategic but so sporadic that there is no sense of continuity or of gaining traction toward the top priority strategic actions it seems to me that we need to be working on.
My mood in these engagements ranges from the high energy of strategic engagement on the one hand to frustration with the lack of focus and sense of strategic priority in the day-to-day operations of MAP on the other. It is important for me to be aware of my mood swings and their cause, and the defenses that come up when I feel pulled off my Center. It is interesting to see what seems to me to be the heterogeneity and fragmentation of our organization and then the corresponding variation of my moods in response to various people in leadership. And I wonder how others perceive me in all of this. Are we a cohesive team or a collection of well-intended but independent and very different style operators?
Focusing Statement: Pathwork Lecture 131 Interaction Between Expression and Impression; ¶18
The negative attitudes toward the fulfillment must be unearthed, as well as the nonexistent problem that you battle against. Then, and then only will your blocks dissolve.
This comes as a succinct recapitulation of the work of Expressing covered in the preceding paragraphs of this lecture. So in review, the issues to focus on in expression are:
A) Negative attitudes toward fulfillment and self-expression:
1) I do not want to express my REAL SELF within MAP
2) I hold back bringing forth my REAL SELF within MAP
3) I do not stretch and reach out with my REAL SELF within MAP
B) My Battle with my non-existent problem
1) Wanting MAP to be ahead of where MAP is right now
2) Wanting me to be ahead of where I am in MAP right now
3) Hence, not facing the NOW, right in front of my face
As I sit with this and apply this “framework for expression” to myself personally I see a few things to work on. I ask myself, “Am I taking self-responsibility for the efficacy of my role in MAP?” Or do I simply “do my best” in the roles I have taken on and with the time I am willing to invest, but without looking at the true value of what I am doing in terms of the impact on MAP’s forward direction? Do I let the opinion of others be the responsible agent for my doing the “right” things rather than take full responsibility for my actions serving the higher cause as I see it? In other words, am I abdicating myself from any final responsibility for the success of MAP, whatever that “success” is to look like in the Plan of Salvation? Moira, my Pathwork helper, would ask, “Are you really committed to MAP and its ‘success,’ whatever that ‘success’ might be in the Plan of Salvation?” Right question!
Am I in a codependent relationship with what I see as some dysfunctional behaviors in the MAP organization – simply enabling well-intended folks to do their thing whether or not, when I stand back, I assess that these activities are high priority activities for our forward direction? Or, in a more healthy way, do I rather really work with the other leaders so that together we can prioritize things within what we collectively see as a strategic context?
What would my REAL SELF showing up look like in this context? Do I have the courage to do this confrontation with other leaders, if confrontation is what is called for, or rather do I retreat back into isolation, doing the best I can in the various jobs that I am in but with an attitude of “going down with the ship,” if that is where the ship happens to be heading? Do I feel any responsibility for the ship heading toward the iceberg, if that is what I am sensing, or do I withdraw and simply work on budgets, meeting agendas, and other relatively safe, though ineffectual, activities required of the roles I am in and let others be responsible for where the ship of MAP is heading?
Coffee Time with Pat
Pat noticed my high energy and asked what this high energy was all about. I shared what was arising in me. Pat: Wow, are you ever alive! Your energy is strong this morning. Gary: So once again after meditation I feel alive, very alive, in all of this realization. I notice that I am inspired by this sense of Truth, truth as I see it through, at least in part, my REAL SELF eyes. Pat: Recalling that the Virtue of a THREE on the Enneagram is TRUTH, of course this sense of Truth would be inspiring for you!
Pat: So where do you go with all this energy? I know you are energized regarding Pathwork, but where are you with the Sevenoaks Retreat Center? The retreat business does not seem to energize you. How will you discern how to engage with the other MAP helpers and leaders with this energy you are feeling? It would not be resigning in protest, nor being a bull in the china shop. How do your bring your truth into this MAP energy field?
It is not just your energy field, it is you being responsible as part of the MAP energy field. Seems like this is a matter of everyone showing up, as you are intending to show up, with your hearts wide open and transparent. Gary: Thank you. May it be so, may I discern right-action from here.
After Pat left for the morning I realized that I need to go back to the guidance of Pathwork Lecture 203 that deals with anticipating how Pride, Self-Will, and Fear may show up for me when I am intending and daring to be my REAL SELF in community but it comes out distorted. And then intending to show up without these lower self qualities. (Click here to review these words from Pathwork Lecture 203)(Click here for Presentation and Exercises on Pathwork Lecture 203)
Shared in love, Gary
Epilog
Later in the morning I wrote up a one-page summary of where I thought we were regarding the critical revenue-generation activities we have – the who and what of our major business lines and their respective marketing activities. I sent this to the leader I was chatting with last night. Will this be helpful? Understood? Am I building a case or, hopefully, working for the good of the whole? We’ll see, but I felt very satisfied with the clarity of my email.
But after a few hours my mood wavered once again. I was feeling somewhat depressed after this burst of insight and inspiration. Now what is this about? “Gary, do not judge. Welcome all guests to your Guest House. Just ride the waves of it all, paying attention to what is happening in you through this all. How can you show up in Truth for yourself and in Truth within the MAP community? Remember, being human is being who you are! Do not get ahead of where you are.”