The Time Is Now

Opportunity to Evolve

“When you are not willing to be challenged, disturbed or offended, you are not willing to explore your weaknesses or ever reach your highest potential.”

Bryant McGill

          I just listened to Caroline Myss’ video from yesterday. I hope you are listening to them each day, too. You can access them on her Facebook page. The most recent one is about reaching one’s highest potential. She traces back to our human beginnings when we began to have a sense of self—self as separate from the tribe. We’ve always had an appetite, she says, for developing self-ness, but we haven’t known how to achieve it. We can watch evolution in progress in the mental and physical development of an infant—first, they are simply immersed in the mother, dependent on her for everything, and sensing no separation between self and mother. There is no life without her. After a few months, the infant begins to recognize others and eventually, when a toddler, to identify self.

          As a species, we went through the same sequence of events. For thousands of years, humans were a cog in the tribal wheel. We had a place, a role to play, an essential mission on behalf of the collective, but we had no singular self as hunter-gatherers. We always, however, had an “appetite for self-esteem;” we wanted to “win” even when we were traipsing round in animal skins with spears and torches. We possessed a determination to survive, to rule territory, to claim things for ourselves. “This is mine,” just as two-year-old children do. It was only in modern times that we began to want to lead singular lives, lives of choice, but we are still too often driven by the “me” instinct. We have long thought that if we had the biggest car, house, bank account, and so forth, that we would then possess self-esteem and self-direction and reach our highest potential. We left the tribe behind but then were equally bound by our obsession with ourselves. What do I want? Who am I? How can I stand out? How can I achieve personal recognition? How can I be a star?

           Now, we suddenly find ourselves in a situation in which we cannot choose much of anything except perhaps what we will eat today. We are housebound except for our healthcare workers, whom Caroline Myss describes as “modern day saints, who are laying down their lives for the rest of us.” They have no more immunity to this virus than we do, and yet they get up and go to work everyday to care for the sick and the dying. They are answering the call to their highest potential.

Myss says that it is only when we have no choice that we rise to our highest potential—it is never a choice that we make. (Picture Moses at the burning bush. He did not choose his calling.) Our highest potential is a choice that is made for us. And this is our moment. We now have an opportunity to discover our highest potential. It’s not a job, not a profession; it has nothing to do with celebrity or wealth or possessions. It is a Soul Calling. It calls us out of our ego-self, our orientation toward me and mine, and shows us what we can be, what we are designed to be. This is what humanity must evolve to. I think it’s pretty exciting.

                                                  In the Spirit,

                                                  Jane