Intention

What is your intention in blogging?

Blogs exist for fun, for social interaction, as information sources or portals, to comment on politics, to gossip about the entertainment business, to inspire, to share and more. They can chart our growth and struggles, be a place to share a favorite recipe or show pictures of our hometown sports team. Blogs are whatever we make them.

Spiritual bloggers often share many of the same motivations as bloggers in general. Yet they have differences, too, because they tend to focus in the direction of the eternal, of the meaning of life and how to more deeply connect to God or purpose or to a point deeper within ourselves.

Spiritual bloggers are not alone in these kinds of pursuits, so perhaps a better phrase to use instead of ’spiritual bloggers’ is the term ’seekers’. I use the word in the context of someone who is looking for a deeper sense of what life is about or what they are all about. So, seekers, in this sense of the word, is more inclusive. It counts philosophers, theologians, physicists, martial artists, yoga devotees, healers, agnostics, atheists, humanitarians, social activists and more among its members.

If we kind of scoop up spiritual bloggers and seekers into one big basket, we can ask a question: What is it that we are intending to accomplish with our blogs?

One person may say, “I don’t want to accomplish anything; it is just a place for me to kinda vent and sort through some of my thoughts.” Another person may say, “I just enjoy writing poetry and this gives me a place to organize and present my work.”

What is you intention in blogging? What are you looking for, or what would you like to accomplish or see accomplished?

The project manager’s persepective

There are basically two kinds of project managers. The first type tends to have a more limited world view than the second type.

The first type of project manager (PM) believes they need to know how to do everything relative to their job. This PM may or may not be okay with delegating to others, but even if they delegate they always believe that they have to know how to do every job and task. Focusing on every detail can be a good and productive attribute, but it can create habits that get us lost in the details.

The second type of project manager tends to view the world from a higher perspective, an approach that allows them to delegate freely and quickly, giving them the space to step back to both monitor and adjust to the bigger picture. They may not know how to do every piece of their project, but that does not bother them. They see others as being valuable and necessary, and they are far more focused on getting the project completed than on who does what.

Sometimes, the first type of project manager will feel superior to the second type because, after all, they can do ‘everything.’ Judgemental approaches like this can limit the first project manager from growing, and confine them to a certain world view that is not as widely inclusive as it could grow to be. Such judgment also tends to make the first type of project manager resistant to the help and teachings of the second type of PM. Consequently, the second type of PM may eventually tire and move on, fatigued over others telling him or her that the better perspective is always the lower perspective.

These attitudes are also true in our own life and purpose. Lost in the details, the majority of us lose sight of the big picture. Yet there are experienced people who have the skills to step back and see the bigger picture, a picture that is inclusive of the continuity of eternity, inclusive that a bigger picture is, indeed, unfolding.

Spiritual seekers often lament that they don’t know where to turn. Turn toward the more seasoned teachers. If you can’t find them, search. If you seek, you will find. Be relentless, be demanding of your church, your minister, your instructor, teacher or guru. Don’t settle for the lower perspectives, but rather insist on your right to be taught how to connect to the very Center of all things, to the very Center of You.

If you haven’t had deep experiences it is because you are inexperienced. Demand the experience itself.

Winter: the dark night of contemplation

Every winter brings a certain bleakness with its shorter days and its colder temperatures. It is a time when long dark nights are often accompanied by stillness, lethargy and dormancy. Winter’s attributes affect human behavior. For example, there are times during each winter when I feel like I am going to be done in. Sometimes these are just fleeting thoughts of despondency, but at other times I have found myself too deeply submerged into weeks and weeks of the darkness called winter.

Winter is a time to allow the soil to rest, as we prepare for the new growing season ahead. It is also the time to look into the darkness called our self, and examine our roots and the ground we are growing in.

Here are a few things that I usually go through in the dark night of winter:

Questions about my self worth

Dealing with desires to ‘give it all up’

Discouragement, such as asking questions like, “What’s the point?”

In past years I had a hard time seeing how to build something positive out of winter’s doldrums. In recent years, however, I have realized that just as it is good to contemplate Death every day, it is also beneficial to use questions like these to mine deeper into our root system. I find that as I go deeper and deeper, I discover more and more substance. This discovery can yield a confidence and determination to center on and in the deeper and more fundamental aspects of life, including the root drivers that are determining our reason for Being here in the first place.

Mining of this nature doesn’t come without a price, and one price is standing up for what we discover to be True as we travel beyond the shafts and tunnels of Time, and enter into the vast cavern of the Eternal.