So my journey into waking up began. I realized then, and affirm more than ever now, that my strengths for information uptake, synthesis and retention were part of the very thing that had lulled me into the dull, sleepy world living most of my life in my head, and rather unaware of my own emotional dynamics, shadow, and even the things going on in my body.
Clint was a good sounding board those several days he helped me see things I couldn’t see, he had compassion I had rarely experienced in all of my adult life and he had uncanny insight into how desperately this “waking up” thing was needed by me. I think it is largely due to the fact he had been through his own deep waking up. This was the birth in me of a commitment to see ministry in and through me move in a different direction.
Over the last several years I have with increasing frequency run into guys and gals in ministry that are waking up. Some ministry shift, crisis, interpersonal challenge, deep disappointment or some other catalyst coupled with a little bit of age under their belt makes for an elixir that jolts you into a reality distantly familiar but strangely new. The developmentalists tell us that there are certain things that only come into our field of awareness with the coupling of age and some catalyst that jars us out of autopilot.
Well I had experienced my jolt and Clint was midwifing the moment. I have mentioned The Way to Love and DeMello but Clint handed me one more DeMello book that provided the “last straw” in breaking me down and helping me reconnect in deep ways to God and to myself. The book? Awareness. A resource broker knows how to place the right resource in the right hands at just the right time. Well this was perfectly brokered. I have never been able to confirm it but Father Frank Stroud, about whom you will hear more, told me that this book of DeMello’s was the most sold book in the area of spirituality for Doubleday the book’s original publisher. Maybe this resource would help you too.
Jesus’ first word to the masses we have recorded was “wake up…”
Awareness is all about practices that help you become more aware, not about amassing more information. Maybe some of these resources will help you, maybe the videos on an awareness based spirituality or weekly practices we engage in the Transformational Trek Tribe will help you. But whatever facilitates heightening your awareness…go for it.
