Why Meaning Matters

Meaning is what fuels success in good times and bad, but that doesn’t surprise you, right? If you were to pick up any article or listen to any expert on the topic of employee engagement, happiness or sustainable success, they would undoubtedly throw around the terms “purpose” and “meaning.” And yet, what’s difficult is where to find this elusive concept and how to incorporate it into one’s work day-in, day-out.

But first, let’s remind ourselves why “meaning” plays such a vital role in long-term success.  Success typically starts with a vision: I want to be this, do that, and have these things - hopefully, in that order.  As I’ve said before, these declarations are defined in the conscious mind.  And yet, we know that achieving goals is predicated on getting the desires of the rational, conscious mind aligned with the actions and behaviors of the unconscious mind because the latter aspect of mind is really in charge. So in short, the successful have learned to bring the unconscious mind along by speaking its language: emotions.

I’m not talking about fear, revenge or even pride.  Research has proven that these types of motivations are short-lived because they invite old behaviors to return once the risk is out of sight.  However, positive, forward-facing emotions allure the unconscious mind to turn off the automatic pilot so we can get outside our comfort zone.  And yet, some people will go an entire lifetime without knowing what stirs the deepest crevices of their soul, which is why purpose feels like an elusive concept for so many.

My search for meaning started with years of self-absorbed navel-gazing.  Oh, I asked myself all the “right” questions: who I am, why am I here, what do I do well, what’s most important in my life, what are my interests, what has my life taught me so far, and now that I’m here, what am I meant to do – right now?  I’m not discounting the process – it introduced me to the importance of meaning and changed my life.  I exited that process knowing full well that I was supposed to be helping others to unleash their untapped potential.  But, in retrospect, I am also aware that some of my answers came from my head, not my heart.  And, here’s how I know the difference.

Last summer I was in Phoenix and took a quick two-day trip to Sedona with a colleague.  If you’ve been to this magical place, you already know it’s the allure of the red rocks and nature’s untapped splendor that brings millions of tourists to this part of Arizona each year.  On our second day we set an intention: find a vortex.  A vortex is a site where the energy of an area is said to be concentrated and it is a great place to pray, meditate or heal.  So, Sally and I embraced our new-aged Thelma and Louise personas and set off in the compact rental car with the vortex map from the visitor’s center and the pendulum we’d purchased hours earlier in-hand.  Go ahead and laugh; we did.

And yet, that all changed for me when I sat at the base of the first mountain. We’d split up, and I sat uncomfortably on a rock in my attempt to meditate. The chatter of the morning ran through my head: how did I miss the rain forecast, I wish I’d had another cup of coffee, were we really at the right location. One minute passed. I continued to sit, and my thoughts slowed.  Two minutes turned into five.  There was more silence than chatter.  I don’t know how long it was when the message came through to my consciousness, “It’s time for us to heal.”  

The words didn’t make rational sense, but my body viscerally responded to the truth of the statement.  Tears formed in my eyes.   

Not long after that thought, a picture entered my awareness: it was a Native American Medicine Wheel.  Months earlier I wouldn’t have recognized the symbol, but now I had an inlay of a medicine wheel in the foyer of a house my husband and I had purchased a few months earlier.

The concrete and copper wheel in our house was created by the original owner, Kitty Farmer.  At the time, she was a literary agent.  However, she would go on to leave the publishing industry, move from Washington State, and co-found the Medicine Wheel Foundation, which addresses the significant health disparities occurring in the Native American population.  I had the chance to talk to Kitty about the wheel and her work, and afterward, was intrigued enough to watch the trailer of a documentary she was making, What’s in the Heart.  The film, once completed, would highlight the cost of emotional wounds from past generations and explore the programs that are bridging allopathic and traditional native healing practices to assist the Native American communities to heal.

The words that flooded my conscious awareness that day were taken directly from that video, “It is time to for us to heal.”

This was a significant moment for me, because I’d been avoiding using the word “healing” to describe my work.  And yet, on that day my heart opened and I heard those words as if they were my own. I knew I wanted to be a part of the movement to help people to self-heal in more non-conventional ways.  My work would be different than Kitty Farmer’s, but in the global sense – it was the same.  After all, my self-discovery had been surface until I learned how to open my heart.  It was clear that the time had arrived to let go of my ego and listen to the whispers of my soul, which is where you find real purpose and meaning.  And, you’ll know you found it when your emotions tell you so. 

Today, those words – IT’S TIME TO HEAL - sit above my desk in the visual mapping goal work I did with Patti Dobrowolski a few months ago.  It’s an icon that keeps me focused, inspired, courageous and clear.  It fuels my work, and my life.  It tells me why I exist, right now.  And, it opens the door to the real principles of success.   

This is a series of posts born from the post, The Real Secrets to Success.  In our next post, we will explore the importance of Ecology to success.  

Making Sense

My husband and I watched a documentary called Wake Up this weekend.  The movie depicts a reluctant spiritual seeker, Jonah Elrod, who experiences an unusual phenomenon that changes how he interprets the world through his five senses.  In short, he now has the capability to see — with his own eyes — the interconnectedness of all humanity through our normally unseen energetic connections.  He can also see spirits, angels, and yes, even energy that is wounded and shattered.  The film depicts his journey to make sense and find peace with this new-found capability.  In the end, he calls on us to wake up to the fact that there is more to this world than what we can experience through our limited five senses or our rational minds.

After watching the movie, I voiced that everyone should hear Elrod’s story.  My husband quickly replied, “Not everyone would believe it.  It won’t make sense to everyone.”  I said nothing in response, because I intuitively understood these might represent his thoughts.  This left-brain intellectual who lovingly inhabits my life represents the majority of Western culture.  If we can’t see, measure, prove or make sense of something, it doesn’t exist.  And, in fact, it’s this limited paradigm created hundreds of years ago that closes humanity off from the extraordinary that lies beyond the mind.

In fact, at one point in the film Elrod visits with a Sufi Mystic, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Ph.D., in one of many attempts to understand his new reality.  Elrod asks the mystic why the human race has lost contact with the level of consciousness he is experiencing.   The Mystic says, “It happened over the last few hundred years…with the belief in science…with the belief in rationalism…and so, we actually developed a consciousness that created a veil between us and the spirit world and all of its manifestations.”  In other words, we’ve forgotten how to be fully awake to all of reality — and this has been exaggerated with our love affair with science and rational thought.   

As I reflect on this simple notion, I can easily associate this statement to one of my poignant moments where I expanded my own notion of reality.  It was a cold December day last year and I was making my third visit to see Sally Pechstein who does healing energy work. 

   

Like Elrod, I was a reluctant seeker.  If you would have told me a few years ago I’d be spending a busy holiday shopping day visiting with someone who claims to clear our energy centers, I would have fell down laughing.  But I’d already experienced my own awakening  — and once you start to awaken — you'll want to awaken some more.  So, I’d been exploring other healing modalities with great interest. 

 

After my very first visit to Sally, It was clear that my own veil of consciousness was lifted just a little bit further.  And therefore, I returned this day with the same openness, but with more deliberate intention.  I’d just finished reading the book Journey of Souls by Michael Newton, Ph. D.  The book chronicled a once mainstream psychologist who experiments with hypnotherapy to further the healing process and in return, stumbles upon a set of consistent themes regarding what happens to our soul after death: how our soul leaves the body, collect it’s life lessons and evaluates actions with those spirit entities who have watched over and guided us in the physical world.  The book was absolutely fascinating, but my intellectual mind was reeling with questions.  And yet, the notion that the soul exists beyond ones’ physical death made total sense in my gut.  So, I went to see Sally that day to make sense of whether any of this was true.  Sally humbly embraced my agenda.  

As I had two times before, I lay down on the table and covered myself with the warm blanket.  Sally started some relaxing music you’d easily find in the new-age bookstore and offered me a small lavender-filled pillow to cover my eyes.  As the room morphed into darkness, I promised myself to surrender to whatever feelings, pictures or sounds my senses could grasp.  Before you know it, my cognitive thoughts were reduced into a state of empty relaxation.  

Sally started her silent work and I retreated inward further. (I want to be clear that I was in a meditative state, not in a trance.  As a hypnotherapist myself, I know the difference.)  It couldn’t have been more than 10 minutes before I was aware of the presence of others in the room.  It wasn’t a sense that I could hear or see people that would appear if I removed my eye coverings, but that there was considerably more energy in the room.  In fact, it was like being a crowded, darkened elevator and knowing, intuitively, that we’d passed the weigh threshold by three times.  

After this awareness heightened, a slideshow started to play in the internal darkness of my mind.  The slideshow was a montage of images representing my life — these weren’t pictures I consciously created.  It was as if someone had hit the play button on a projector as I involuntarily sat in the theater watching my life pass through my mind’s eye.  Like fireflies on a hot summer night, every challenging moment of my life flashed with rapid succession: my awkward childhood, failing in school, the heartache of my marriage, giving up my children.  

As quickly as it started, the images were gone.  In their place was a clear message in unspoken terms from someone who felt incredibly wise, “We were always there: in every challenging moment.”  And, I knew it was true.  Not because I needed physical evidence or a scientific study to tell me so, but because every cell in my body was basking in gratitude, love and a deep sense of knowing that this divine presence has followed me through my life.  In response to this truth, my body felt overflowing with bliss: as if I’d consumed too much gratitude on a gluttonous Thanksgiving Day.  So much so, I said silently to this presence, “Okay.  Okay.  I know you are here.”  I needed a reprieve from the emotion and the physical pressure that surrounded me. 

The intensity would subside and rise again on two more occasions in that session, leaving me with other profound experiences that culminating in an important message:  I am here in this lifetime to learn, so I may teach others.

 I would stay on the table that day well after Sally left the room.  At first, I didn’t dare stand because I was still overwrought by awe, so I let the tears flow in hopes the sensations would escape my body.  By the time I propped myself in the corner chair next to thin slice of light coming in from the window, my rational thoughts started to come into focus — what did I experience, was it real, what did it mean?  So, I invited Sally back into the room and attempted to put my experience into words, but it was difficult to translate the indescribable into a common lexicon that didn't exist.  I did my best.  And in return, Sally shared her written account of what she’d experienced as the practitioner.   Our accounts were almost identical.  

But regardless of the fact that I know what I know about this profound experience — and that Sally corroborated what I experienced through her own account — most of our society will automatically discount what unfolded because it doesn’t make sense in the rational mind.  I understand that, I do. I get that Jonah Elrod’s story pushes our boundaries.  Years ago I would have discounted it, as well.  But that was before a few years of experiences that have expanded my own understanding of how this world works.  Making sense has its place, but in the process of paying homage to what science and rational thought provides — we lost touch with the universal laws of what’s really true and the magic of what’s possible.