My teacher, Tom Brown, Jr., gazed out over the classroom. “If only you could see your potential as I see it.”
These words have haunted me.
Wake Up!
Sometimes I look at people around me: my loved ones, my friends, my fellow Trackers. And a part of me wants to scream, “Wake up! Look at your beauty! Your strengths, your gifts, your Medicine. Wake up! You don’t have to go through all this self-doubt and pain and distraction. The world is waiting for you!” And yet the struggles continue.
And then I look at my own self. And I want to shake myself awake as well. What if I could just let go of my doubts and fears and distractions? What is holding me back from focusing whole-heartedly on making the biggest impact I can have by embracing and living my potential?
And then, in a moment of kindness I realize: life is a process.
It seems to be human nature to need to go through struggle on the way from being a perfect little baby deeply connected to the Great Mystery to a fully integrated human authentically and powerfully expressing our unique Medicine in the world. There is something about the struggle of the intervening years that enables us to deepen, grow, and separate the chaff from the nurturing grain. And to become a co-creator of the world through living our potential. Or not.
In our efforts to become a fully capable human, embodying our potential, it seems that we must delve into and heal the demons of the self in a way that only we, as unique individuals, can fathom. The demons I speak of, of course, are those that we’re so familiar with: the demons of self-doubt, distraction, temptation, self-absorption, to name a few. Each of us has our own variation and combination of demons which threaten to thwart our growth, dissolving us into a blubbering lump of emotion, pain, and ineffectiveness.
But we are not our emotions. We are not our pain. We are not the sum of our negative or positive experiences. What we are is a child of God.
As we traverse this experience called life, we can choose to embrace who we truly are. And if we are expressions of the Great Mystery, then it is up to each of us to determine our potential and live up to it. It is part of our God-given challenge on this Earth, borne of the Creator’s gift of free will.
But how on Earth do we determine our potential and embody it? How do we overcome this challenge, laid down like a gauntlet in front of us?
Tracking our Life
We can determine our potential by looking toward the tracks which our own feet have laid in our lives. If we step back and objectively view our proclivities throughout our lives, they become observable clues of our potential. What is a common thread running through the choices we have made? It may be so familiar to us that we don’t see it.
We can more fully enliven our potential through crying for a vision, whether by doing a four-day Vision Quest or through our daily prayers. “Creator, please show me a step to take towards fulfilling my potential today.” And with this focus, each prayer we utter, each surrender we take, each foray into the Silence helps to carve the granite of our lives into a beautiful gift to the world: our potential more thoroughly actualized.
We can more fully embody our potential through discerning and prevailing over our perceived demons and blocks in our way. These are like walls barring us from our potential.
As Tom has said, “Seek the walls.” In working to identify and overcome them, learning and growth are accelerated and uplifted. And so is our ability to actualize our potential. How do we disintegrate a wall? By delving into it and embracing it from an angle of curiosity, acceptance, purpose, and healing. With persistence we will break through that wall. And it will no longer have the power to thwart our living up to our potential. The wall, then, becomes a blessing in disguise, assisting us in honing our gifts to the world. And we will begin to seek the walls for the gems they hold, hidden in their seemingly immovable bricks and mortar.
Vibrantly Fulfill Your Potential
So, in a nutshell, how can you more vibrantly fulfill your potential? Know yourself. Pray and listen for the Creator’s guidance. Embrace your blocks and dive straight into them, using your training to clear and heal them, strengthening you for the task that lies before you.
There is absolutely no one else like you in the universe. Each of us is needed. None of us should feel insignificant in this Earthwalk. The more we empower our vision, the more we break through our walls, the more we live our potential, the better off we will all be.
But remember, life is a process. You can’t run before you learn to crawl. As we strengthen, so too will our ability to stand, to walk, and to run straight back into the arms of the Creator, having learned and grown through our struggles to be a greater force for the Light on this beautiful Earth and beyond.
