How do I get from "here", my marginal life, to "there", my exceptional life? Don't we humans have all the same stuff? Muscles, bones, organs, blood, body, mind, spirit? If so, then why is it that some folks live a really exceptional life while others - like me - live a marginal one? What sets us apart? Is my chemistry, my essence, the stuff of which I'm made, all that different from say a Queen Noor, Sandra Day O'Connor, Gloria Steinem, Ann Richards, Michelle Obama, NeNe Leakes, Mother Teresa, Oprah Winfrey, Michael Moore, Albert Einstein, Warren Buffett, Abe Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., John Grisham, Bethenny Frankel, Rosa Parks, Annie Leibovitz, Harper Lee, Billy Graham, Gandhi or even the Pope? Why did these folks and so many others like them reach their full potential, their individual exceptional life, and why can't I? Or maybe I should ask, since I ain't dead yet, "why haven't I"? What sets us apart? What do they have that I don't have? Anything? Under a microscope, would a scientist be able to see any difference between one of these folks and me? Probably not. Strip it all down and we're - every single one of us - just a bunch of cells, right? So what got them there - what was the wind beneath their wings - what motivated them, what propelled them, what made them know they could? Was it fear? Did fear of failure give them the strength they needed to get "there"? Was it desire? Would they rather have died trying than never to have tried at all? Was it fate? Would they have reached their exceptional lives regardless of what they did or did not do? Hmm. I can't believe it was fear. Fear does not produce desirable outcomes - it keeps us frozen - unable to move toward our goals. As for desire? Yeah, I don't really buy that one either. Desire is the type of thing that comes and goes and loses its appeal after awhile. How 'bout fate? Was Michelle Obama fated to be the first African American First Lady while Jane Doe was fated to be a high school drop out standing in a welfare line because not even the local McDonald's would hire her? Sorry. I just can't buy into that one either. I also refuse to believe it was chemistry. While the human cell might vary slightly from person to person giving some of us blue eyes and others brown, I refuse to believe that they can vary to such a degree that Warren Buffett can live in a palace (solely because he has good chemistry) while John Doe lives in a tent along side the banks of the Missouri River (because his molecular structure is flawed somehow). So if it's not fear or desire or fate or bones, blood, organs and muscles, what is it? What's left? Mind? Spirit? That's it. Has to be. There is nothing more. Right? Body, mind, spirit, nothing more, nothing less. Basic recipe for all humans. So what is it about my mind and spirit that keeps me marginal - keeps me from exceptional? I don't have all the answers. Heck, I don't even have a few answers. But, after careful consideration and much reflection, here's what I've come up with. My spirit - my driving force - is lost to me. I have an awareness of my spirit, but I'm not really plugged in - connected. We've all heard that phrase, "let the spirit move you", but mine doesn't or I won't allow it to - I'm really not sure which. So the first thing I gotta do is find my spirit. If I can do this, then I think I'll easily be able to identify what it is I want from this life. What is "it" that will get me to my exceptional life? When I look back over my list of folks who have - in my mind anyway - lived an exceptional life, the common thread, the common denominator, seems to be spirit. They are - or in some cases were - filled with and lead by spirit. So I have to find a way. I have to find the path that will lead me to spirit. That has to be first. Just has to be. How will I find spirit? Now there's the million dollar question! If I knew that, I probably wouldn't be blogging about this subject. The truth is I just don't know. I've looked for spirit at church, but I didn't find it. I've looked for spirit in books, but I didn't find it there either. I've looked for spirit in prayer, but it was still lost to me. I've looked for spirit in movies and songs and paintings and dance, but all I could ever find was the spirit of others. I never found mine. This coming Saturday I'm attending a meditation retreat with a friend down at the Unity Temple. It's a 6 hour retreat. God, I hope they won't make me meditate for 6 whole hours! I can't even get a good 6 minutes in till I'm ready to throw in the towel. But anyway, I digress a bit. Sorry. The point is I'm going to this thing because I'm hopeful that I'll find my spirit. And if I do, then I fully intend to keep it. It shall become the biggest, brightest, best part of me. And surely then I'll be on my way. Leaving marginal Karen behind while I run full steam ahead toward my exceptional self. . . my exceptional life. Then there's mind. What is mind anyway? I know what a brain is - I've seen one. I saw it while visiting a cadaver lab over at Cleveland Chiropractic College several years back when I was a student at the Midwest Institute of Natural Healing. Anyway, it was gross. How would I describe what I saw that day? Hmm. Well, it was this nasty looking blob of a thing that appeared to be composed of spaghetti noodles or worms. It looked like the kind of thing one could easily squish if stepped on. What it did not look like was power. When I think of the human brain, I think of power. Think about it for a minute. How strong must the human brain be to do all its business? Doesn't it tell the lungs to breathe? Doesn't it tell the heart to beat? Doesn't it make our muscles fire just right so we can move through life without even thinking about it? Even when we are asleep, the brain keeps right on working. Work, work, work. It never gets a day off. So that lil bugger just has to be strong. But it sure didn't look strong the day I saw it sitting there on that cold, icy, stainless steel, lab table. Nope, it looked like some overgrown bug that I could easily scrape off the bottom of my shoe if ever I were to step on one. But the question I have about how to get to my exceptional life is not so much about brain as it is about the function of the brain. The function of the brain - or at least one of its functions - is to think. Thought. Where do thoughts come from? Why are some thoughts positive and some negative? Why are some thoughts so good that we want to experience them over and over again while others are so horrible that we wished we'd never had them in the first place? I wonder if Mother Teresa ever thought about killing someone. Seriously! She was human - just like me. I have never killed anyone but I sure have thought about it. So maybe she did to. But she didn't - kill anyone that is. That's just it. No matter how negative Mother Teresa's thoughts might have been, they never kept her from living her exceptional life. From this, I am convinced that I don't have to stop my thought processes. I can live with negative thoughts; I just can't act on them. To live my exceptional life, I have to find a way to use my brain's function - thought - for the good. I have to use thoughts to get me where I want to be. More than that, I have to find a way not to let negative thoughts keep me from where I want to go. My exceptional life awaits me. This I firmly believe. I just have to find my spirit, connect and let it move me while at the same time not allow negative thoughts to stop me from getting where I want to be.
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