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Water the Fruit Trees, Not the Thorns
We are the authors of our life story. Over the past few weeks, I’ve had the chance to see this notion in action. I’ve watched people courageously step beyond an old story and into a whole new dimension of possibility.
I’ve also watched people with incredible commitment and determination, insist on the continuation of a story that they have outgrown and that clearly no longer works for them. What is it, I wonder, that makes it so incredibly challenging to let go of old, limiting beliefs and open up to a new version of ourselves.
When I was much younger, I had a terribly distorted body image. No matter what other people said, I was sure that I was heavy and ungainly. That is even what I SAW when I looked into the mirror. Finally I made my way to a class on body image. One at a time, each woman stood in front of a mirror and told the group what she saw. Then the group fed back information about what they say in the mirror.
I remember being shocked at the vast discrepancy between what these women saw when they looked at themselves in the mirror and what I saw. At times, it was as if we were looking at two completely different images. When it came my turn, I was once again surprised at the discrepancy between what I saw and what others saw. Except this time, the roles were reversed. I was the one standing in front of the mirror. As I heard the words of others, my image of myself began to shift.
This is the gift of Co-Active coaching. To hold up a mirror and reflect back our client’s brilliance, uniqueness and light so that they can come to see it, can begin to write a new story about themselves and their lives.
Still it is a choice. I’ve had clients who fiercely defended their old, painful story, who insisted that I did not know what I was talking about: they WERE, in fact, a terrible parent, a lousy manager, a worthless person. As a coach, all one can do is continue to shine the light on the magnificence that we see, and continue to interact with that magnificence while at the same time, holding a big space for all the rest.
Here is a beautiful poem by Rumi called “A Fresh Basket of Bread” which I like to read at the Co-Active Leadership Program.
KKH
A Fresh Basket of Bread
The mystery of spiritual emptiness
may be living in a pilgrim’s heart, and yet
the knowing of it may not be his.
Wait for the illuminating openness,
as though your chest were filling with Light,
as when God said,
Did we not expand you?
Don’t look for it outside yourself.
You are the source of milk. Don’t milk others!
There is a milk-fountain inside you.
Don’t walk around with an empty bucket.
You have a channel into the Ocean, and yet
you ask for water from a little pool.
Beg for that love-expansion. Meditate only on THAT.
There is a basket of fresh bread on your head,
and yet you go door to door asking for crusts.
Knock on your inner door. No other.
Sloshing kneedeep in fresh riverwater, yet
you keep wanting a drink from other people’s water bags.
Water is everywhere around you, but you only see
barriers that keep you from water.
Mad with thirst, he can’t drink from the stream
running so close by his face. He’s like a pearl
on the deep bottom, wondering, inside his shell,
“Where’s the Ocean?”
Your mental questionings form the barrier.
Your physical eyesight bandages your knowing.
Self-consciousness plugs your ears.
Stay bewildered in God, and only that.
Those of you who are scattered, simplify your
worrying lives. There is one righteousness:
Water the fruit trees, and not the thorns.
Be generous to what nurtures the Spirit and God’s
luminous reason-light. Don’t honor what causes
dysentery and knotted-up tumors.
Don’t feed both sides of yourself equally.
The spirit and the body carry different loads
and require different attentions.
Too often we put saddlebags on Jesus and let
the donkey run loose in the pasture.
Don’t make the body do what the spirit does
best, and don’t put a big load on the spirit that the
body could carry easily.
–RUMI
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Matt Collins
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Vijay prakash Shukla
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