MY BIG DREAM PART II

Last week I told you about my big dream, which was to meet and hold at least a 20 minute conversation with 10 of the most influential people of our time by July 2009.  The question you are probarbly pondering is how close am I towards reaching that goal?  Well I am about 20% there, so I still have a long way to go.  But I believe in miracles, divine intervention and appointment so my 20% can go to 100% percent in a nanosecond, well maybe not a nanosecond, but with a miracle it can happen pretty quickly.

I also requested your participation in an exercise given from one of the folks on my list and said that I will share my outcome.   So here it is:

1) What are the opportunities worth pursuing?  Surprisingly, there were plenty of opportunities that came up for my clients, none for me.  These opportunities were clear as a bright summer morning and I recommended that my clients pursue them.   I was surprised because I thought that the exercise was very personal, it was intended only for the participant and I was expecting something that will directly make it self available to me.  However, showing others the opportunities that are in front of them were so much more rewarding.  

2:  What’s missing in this picture?  What came up for me as the missing elements were tolerance and acceptance.  I feel that there is a spirit of intolerance in the world and I think it is more pervasive than ever before.  In my picture I saw people, including myself at times, being intolerant.  Interestingly enough during the week of the exercise my patience was tested in multiple ways; one being a gas station attendant who refused to provide her duty of service with a pleasing and helpful attidtude.

Another event occured which also showed me my intolerance was when I escaped a near head on collision because the other driver was going the wrong way.  At that moment, I was so angry and all I thought about was my own safety and the other driver’s incompetence in navigating the road improperbly.  It never occured to me when I was infruriated that perhaps the driver was new to the area and was desparately lost, or something even worst.  When the police (who was in the right lane across from me) pulled him over immediately I felt a sense of satisfaction.

We aren’t very tolerant of others who are different, not very tolerant of people making mistakes, people cutting us off when we are driving or waiting in line.  We aren’t tolerant of other people’s prespectives, some of us will vehemently defend our political, religious or scientific views.  We will even go as far as imposing them on others.   So what does this mean?  Should you and I tolerate bad behavior, crime, poor legislations, road rage and the like?  Well, no.  No one should tolerate bad behavior, crime or anything else for that matter that take away something of value from us. 

What it means is that we suspend judgment until we get the facts.  As people we often judge others by the way they look, act, talk, walk, work and so on.  We almost never suspend our judgments until we get to know the person.  Most of our judgments come from our own limited understanding and the lenses we see the world in.  We instantly size others up and get to an opinion even before they get to hello.  Now there is credit to be given to our gut feelings about a person.  But intuition doesn’t come from a place of judgment, it comes from Spirit, and Spirit doesn’t judge, it gives us wisdom so we can act accordingly. 

Since we are all guilty of judging others here’s something you and I can do this week.  When we are introduced to someone new before we formulate our first thought about the person, what if we suspend that thought and operate on the principles of acceptance and understanding.  What if we begin the introdutions by asking a question that will provide us with a little more information about the individual? And how about we apply those principles from here on out?