This brings us to the promise I made yesterday to talk about liberation through failure as it relates to our dreams in 3 areas:
1. Failing big time and in front of people whose opinion you care about.
2. The dissolution of your long held, congruent, recognizable identity.
3. The gifts of disappointment inherent in dreams achieved.
Let’s start with failing and failing in front of people whose opinion you care about.
FAILURE is anathema to EGO.
FAILURE = COLD and ALONE and DYING in DARKNESS to the Ego.
Failing is how we vaccinate and eventually become immune to the Ego’s virus of “safety at all costs.”
Failing gives you a little bump and an itch. Not rubella.
Failing is essential to the Soul’s health.
Failing shows us our capacity.
Failing shows us we did not die. We are not immediately cast out. We are not cold, alone and dying.
Failing shows us our resilience. Failing shows us what humiliation actually feels like and tastes like and how long it lasts in the system rather than the fear or risk of humiliation. That one can last and linger a lifetime.
Failing shines the flashlight under the bed and exposes that there are no monsters. Just dust. And that sock you’ve been missing.
Failing is magic. Failing is antidote. Failing is finding that even the concrete has a little bounce.
And remember, we started out as babies, hyper attuned to survival at the physical and emotional level.
Failing, and failing in front of people whose opinion we care about, takes us right into the depth of our fears of being left and cast out dying alone.
“If my people see me fail, they’ll leave me.”
This is an incredibly powerful gravity to overcome when launching out into Soul.
And you might lose people as you try and attempt and fail. I have. And I imagine I’ll lose more.
And I’ve learned that even though I’ve had to grieve losses, I have not died. I am not cold. I am not alone.
Quite the opposite. I feel a quality and texture to life that I’ve been longing for. And have known is possible and that very life has been waiting for me to leap, to catch me, caress me, kiss me, hold me upside down by the ankles and shake a lot of the old stories out of my pockets so I can live in a life freer from fear and more aligned with love.
Okay, next stop on our little tour into Liberation Through Failure.
The dissolution of your long held, congruent, recognizable identity.
At your core is not a some fixed, static, unchanging self with a name and likes and dislikes. At your core is LOVE. Pure pure pure LOVE. Wild, creative, expressive, LOVE.
In order to make sense of being alive, being in a body, being in a culture, being a body, being a soul and spirit on earth, we benefit from having some degree of an identity.
I am Peter McLean, 39 years old, living in Sandpoint ID married to Kelly, father to Maryah, Arthur and Fianna.
This is all helpful for navigating through contemporary culture. But it doesn’t encapsulate who I am.
I’ve been a Christian, a lacrosse player, a farmer, a birder, a fiancé, a carpenter, a consultant, a coach, a wilderness guide, a fiancé again, a fiancé a third time, a husband, a stepfather, a father, a friend, a community member, and more.
And all of these do not encapsulate who I am. They are all tags and labels and when I cling tightly to them I can only grow to the size of those tanks.
There have been three big identities in my life that I clung to even as they were sloughing off. And the clinging brought me great suffering.
· Able Bodied Farmer
· Fiancé (the second time)
· Western Massachusetts Community Member
I went through some of the worst terror in my life when my back was going out. Not because of the pain (which was bad and at times excruciating). But because I believed that there would be no place for me in the hearts of my community if I wasn’t able bodied. The terror was in believing my value was predicated on all my discs being un-herniated and in proper working order. And faced with the reality of my body changing and my abilities changing I was certain that I was beginning a freefall into abandonment, loneliness, despair, depression and ultimately annihilation.
My back breaking gave me a huge gift. It brought into light the beliefs I was unconsciously clinging to. And as the terror subsided, I found that my place in the hearts of my community was not built on how many watermelons I could heave in a day, or potatoes bagged and palletized and lowered down into the root cellar.
My community was in love with something more core and unshakable than that. And no amount of disc herniations could touch that.
Next, was my second engagement ending. So painful. For lots of reasons. But the one I needed to really marinate in was the embarrassment I felt. The shame I felt. I believed that my engagement ending was some kind of public indication of the worst suspicions I held of myself, that I am not enough. That I am not worthy of good and lasting love. That I am damaged goods and now no one will ever want to love me, commit to me, trust me to build a life with. There was the real and true grief and pain of a love changing forms and then there was all this secondary fear and shame based not on what I was feeling, but on a story I was believing about my worth and my worth in the eyes of my community.
Again, the dawn broke, as it does, and I found that all was not as I suspected. The world hadn’t turned its back on the damaged goods of me. Not even close. And I learned how to walk proud again.
Lastly, leaving Western Massachusetts was so hard for me. I couldn’t fathom a life outside of the people and place I had been living with and among. I couldn’t conceptualize who I would be or become in a new place. I couldn’t see it. Opaque. Dark. Unclear.
And it took me months to find the courage to say YES to the love of my life in Kelly and to say YES to allowing my beliefs around community, friendship, connection to expand and to grow into something that can span mountain ranges, great lakes, and grand canyons.
Losing firmly gripped identities has allowed for the true essence of me, wild and creative love, to have less costumery to work through, fight through, sing through.
My prayer for you is that you leave the tank you’re in. That you build the rope ladder and throw it up over the side and have a meal and a fire and goodbye party before you climb it. Because, your Soul will organize a way for you to get out of that tank and it might involve glass breaking, flooding, and pain.
And you’ll survive that. Don’t worry. And all that’s fine too. Scars are sexy.
But. And. You can also leave the tank you’re in with as much grace as is possible for you. Which might be woefully clumsy.
And that too, a clumsy departure, is gift you are giving your world, your family, your community.
You’re showing that a clumsy goodbye is more important than an ill-fitting life where no one gets their toes stepped on.
Lastly:
The gifts of disappointment inherent in dreams achieved.
The attainment is rarely the reward. The process of leaving, questing, risking out into your life, into the mystery and encountering yourself and the world, that is the great boon. Making the movie. Finishing the book. Landing the role. These things are the target. You are the arrow. And the flight is the party. The wind moving through your fletching. The soft rifling of your body as you travel through time and space. This is the reward. The party stops upon arrival. Upon impact. Upon completion. And then. There you are. Again.
Our dreams serve many functions:
They give us a target worthy of our capacities.
They teach us who we are, and we are not, on the way to the target.
They help harness our efforts into beautiful creation.
They leave us unsatisfied so that we continue to grow.
Our dreams invite us into a process. They invite us into an initiation. And on the other side of initiation is not the contentment of attainment. It is responsibility. Greater and greater responsibility.
Our dreams initiate us.
All the creation through following our dreams is but a byproduct. It is not the product.
Our sensitivity to, and faith in, the next initiation is the product.
To be sensitive to, is to be responsible to.
As we initiate, we become more sensitive. As we become more sensitive, we become more responsible.
And the specificity of what and who you are responsible to is unique to you. Each and every one of you.
That’s the goal here. For you to find what you are deeply sensitive to and there for responsible for.
That is your calling.
And it won’t let you sleep.
Until you begin to relate to it.
We are relational beings.
And your dreams are a rowdy, lively, lovely crew.
Ready and eager to join you.
Are you ready and eager to join them?