Our Full Potential

Some of us catch fleeting glimpses of what our full potential might be … through moments of heroism when our adrenaline allows Atlas to perform miraculous feats of impossibility through the power of our body.  … When all life stills, and our mind pierces daily consciousness … and we see a glorious reality which is … beyond our life here, on this day.

            A good friend once described to me one of the most profound moments in her life – a moment which has influenced and been a reference point for every moment which has followed it.  One day, a day not unlike any other day, she was standing in a field.  And above her, it was as if the sky parted. 

            A halo of ‘opening’ came into being high above her.  And she remembered, in that instant, who she is.  Why she is here.  Who she has come to ‘be’ … to become.

            Then the sky closed.  And she was once again in the world of upward and downward spirals.  Only now, she had seen her ‘Map’.

            We all have such fleeting insights.  Some of us are sensitive, and astute and respectful of them enough to recognize them when they transpire.  Others of us dedicate years of our lives in pursuit of them.  For others, they go completely unnoticed.

            In living our full potential we learn to honor and respect the signals offered to us via our instinct and our intuition.  Like flags upon our way, we Know these to be our clues, our guidance, assisting us to fine-tune and subtly – sometimes grossly – adjust our course.  Just like a ship, aiming for a ‘hidden point, somewhere beyond the horizon’, our instinct and our intuition together are the compass which, when we heed them, point our way.

            We can await these fleeting, apparently ‘random’ instants … when we ‘Know’ ourselves … when we realize our ‘why’.

            Or we can tune in to them.  We can enter a quiet place – some call it meditation – in which we attune our awareness predominantly to our inner senses, allowing the stimuli of our outer senses to temporarily wane.

            When we attune inwardly, and we focus with intention upon our Full Potential … we begin … each in our own way … to discover … like a once-forgotten path being revealed to us in its glimmering light … the radiance of Who We Are and Who We Can Become.

            It is through this stillness, and this honed attention and intention to remembering the nature of our ‘gold at the end of our rainbow’, that we begin to remember who we really are.

            A taste of recognition of our full potential is sweet.  Some of us yearn for it, and greet it with exuberance and celebration.  Others of us turn from it, afraid of it.  This is the first sign that we have touched near the gauntlet.  For our full potential itself is nothing to fear.[1]

            Touching our full potential is not a conceptual exercise.  It is there.  It is always there.  The treasure – the gold – is always there.  It is our awareness of it – and our longing to become it – that so often becomes obscured.

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[1]  See Marianne Williamson’s speech written for Nelson Mandela, published in her book A Return to Love.

* Excerpt from “Running the Gauntlet – Navigating Our Way to our Fully Embodied Potential” in Awakening Instinct * Running the Gauntlet * Windows Through Time – A Trilogy by Ariole K. Alei.

Read more in “The Gauntlet” and “The Most Precious Gift” as well as in “Sensing Your Full Potential” forthcoming 🙂

Note:  This post is excerpted from the same book as “’Brazil’ – Hunger Strikes, Rallies, and Effecting Change”.

Questions to Ponder:  What glimpses / senses do you have of your Full Potential?  How is it different than what you are living now?

Are you interested in personal mentoring in exploring this further?

* Images with gratitude to media.kickstatic.com and farm3.static.flickr.com