Gold in Reach in Each

How this young skater went beyond the gold and broke into a deeper dimension of our human spirit ...

“Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” -Howard Thurman

There’s a lot of buzz around Alysa Liu’s Olympic gold medal recently and I want to note here that the gold was not the medal as much as a shift in consciousness or way of being. Alysa points to her peak happiness on the ice in sharing her art and joy with the world. As you watch her deep in the flow, she is like a young child playing in a pool of water … just lost in the moment. Off the rink, she freely supported others … a sense of what really mattered seem to be her North Star.

That pivotal focus seemed to set her free from mainline Olympics and what drives most of our society … the fear of scarcity, of not working hard enough … and poignantly, that merciless and intractable feeling of “not being enough.”

There is something here. Alysa somehow found her key to abundance. She had to step out of the game for a few years in order to return with a whole new game, that was no game at all. It was all heart … and hard work. It was just the truth of who she was … and the desire for others to share her art and joy. She had passed beyond. This is a kind of shift of consciousness … freeing her to free others and touch so many hearts.

In a word … she had moved from scarcity to abundance.

We all might relate … we all have a panel of judges inside us … and even some outside. They shake their heads and whisper to each other how we will never make it. Their voices are that of scarcity, fear and doubt. Some are geared to crush the competition in this never ending drive … but Alysa indicates that a deeper goal is to bring everyone a piece of the gold: her zest and happiness.

This 20 year old girl is a beacon and also the canary in the mine. We can work together and place the gold in our hearts around the necks of ALL our brothers and sisters … so they can also feel it in their daily lives … shimmering through.

A true story: During the mid-1950s in Bangkok, a huge clay statue of the Buddha began to crack due to heat and drought. When some monks arrived to investigate, they shined a flashlight into the largest of the cracks. What they saw surprised everyone. Deep under the gray clay was the gleam of gold.

No one had known that inside this popular but ordinary looking statue was a solid gold Buddha. As it turns out, the statue had been covered with plaster and clay six hundred years earlier to protect it from invading armies. Although all the monks who lived in the monastery at that time had been killed in the attack, the golden Buddha, its beauty and value covered over, had survived untouched. ( Source Link)

When we can begin to see this way … mud opens into gold.

You and you and you and you … and everyone and ethnicity in this circular rink we call life. There is much gold here … and we find our own in bringing it to others.

So Near

The folded note
barely the size of a quarter
I picked out from the 
receptionist’s bowl 
and blessed her
for her creativity

I opened it in the curious
palm of my hand
listening as it nudged me in
simple dark typeset … 
“You have what it takes!”

It felt like a keyhole in the 
canyon of my stagnant wandering
 … and how the slightest breeze
can turn you towards your own True North 
hidden always, right there
inside the palm of your own hand