In Over My Head

Chicory

My role at our Pathwork Helper Community day-long event this past Saturday was that of MC, a leadership role for the day, along with the leadership of my two colleagues who together with me had organized the day and led various functions. I felt satisfaction and joy as we adjourned and I headed for home, some 530 miles away.

But in the hours and days after this event a heaviness came upon me.  It is one thing to MC an event, but quite another to play a continuing leadership role in our Helper Community.  I could feel the challenges we face, the diversity in our community that can be our strength too easily turns to fragmentation and separation.  We have been fractured by trauma over the past several years, and the healing of deep wounds is oh so challenging.  And we feel in some way new, an opportunity for new blossoming for sure, but also leaves a kind of fragility as we each try to find our place at the table in Pathwork and in our Helper Community.

Somehow I feel called to stick with our healing process.  Somehow I feel the mantle of leadership on my shoulders, although how that leadership will organically evolve is not at all clear.  But from this amorphous place I feel the overwhelm of all on our collective plate and my calling to some kind of yet-to-be-determined role of leadership in facing and moving through some of the core issues in front of us.  Clearly, I feel I am in way over my head. Yes, a felt sense of this in-over-my-head space.

I have reached out for help from our community’s facilitators, and they have said that help is on the way.  But this morning a new twist arose in my meditation.  Yes, I am in over my HEAD, but I am not in over my HEART, that part of me connected to my Divine core. I saw in an instant that the felt sense of being in over my head was a prerequisite to my letting go and letting God! All I can do is choose to trust God, be keenly sensitive to God’s soft inner voice, and be open to receiving help from within, from this deep Knowing place that can integrate Truth and Love.

So what wants to happen here with our Helper Community? Can I silently and patiently wait until the answers arise in their own time?  Can I be open to all the places from which these answers may come and have the discernment to know how to integrate these answers into our Helper Community?  Can I draw on everyone’s wisdom in our Community?  Can I neither force nor pre-judge what appears before me?  All of this requires developing new skills in me of what I shall call surrendered leadership.  And this surrender is not a collapse or acquiescing to pressures that I do not feel are aligned with Truth.  It is a surrender to God, to Truth, to Love. This is a learned skill, and my prayer is that I shall be a worthy student.

A core benefit from this surrendered leadership is that it frees me from the illusion that a separated ego is doing anything at all beyond surrendering to God.  When I am aligned with surrendered leadership there is no room for pride, my ever-present lurking nemesis.

So here is my task, to learn the skills of surrendered leadership.  With this I can say, “Yes, I am in over my HEAD.  YEA!” Now my growth can continue while I follow my intention and call to serve our larger Helper Community.