Moving fast, yes? Doing a lot of stuff, yes? Shooting for your next PR, yes? The next journey, yes? The next challenge, yes? Not enough time, for sure.
Many of you reading this are already high performers. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t be reading this.
Here is a sound barrier for you – silence. Have you ever sat with yourself in silence?
Ouch.
If you really need to be understood, meditate.
If you really need to understand, meditate.
After a dear friend and ‘spiritual guide’ (thanks Brother MM) taught me a technique to quiet my mind just enough to sit with myself for a few minutes, I began to discover for myself what mediation was all about.
You may say “Oh, I’ve tried mediation and I just can’t do it. My mind is too loud. I cannot sit still…” But I believe the voice inside your head telling you that you can’t meditate is actually the great deceiver, the ego, or “resistance” as my friend Steven Pressfield calls it.
So, I will share the opening few pages of the journal I started writing in China in 2017, when I knew I would be able to put immense energy and focus into my newfound practice of meditation:
Where are we really going? Home. Always home. And indeed, God is home. The way home for me is not the way home for you. We will both wind up home, but our paths will be different. We might journey together for a while; we might travel with hundreds, thousands or even millions for a time. There will be times however, that your path must be walked alone. Just you and you. If you are not sure you are on the right path, then walk alone for a while. Walk alone and close your eyes. Listen. Listen to the Great Silence. The Great Silence will guide you as you travel. I want to delve deeply into mediation to sharpen my mind; to calm it so I can find silence and, in that silence, hear God.
Three years later, the most profound experience I have ever had took place far from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. It took place in my front yard as I was praying and mediating.
You want to do some hard-core CORE work? Spend some time breaking the sound barrier – of silence.
Thank you, dear MM, for the push and dearest AST for the time and motivation.
TOGETHER WE TRANSFORM
Jim
1COR13:13
PS Thanks Brother Andy for your daily checks when I was struggling with sitting with myself.
BUILT TO LEAD 
Jim
I read this and all could think was, this man has spent some time in deep silence, meditation, and the results are the insights shared on this page! Your life experiences, your writing, your stories, all of it, are certainly inspiring me to slow down, sit with a beautiful piece of Handel’s music, a prayer, a quote, a kairos moment and now….learning to sit silently with me, yikes! You hit me hard again My friend!
Love ya Man
Grant me the serenity to accept the things I can’t change! I’m going to meditate with that one line!
Pete