Clarity comes from time in the desert more than time on the mountaintop. Wandering in the wilderness is part and parcel to clarity. During practice recently, one of my few shared her beliefs about the ongoing path of ascension. I reminded her and the team this is a myth. Nobody lives up and to the right.
Nobody.
No team. No company. No community. No country. It’s just not true. The path for all of us is one of discovery and most discovery is made when we slow down in the valley, sometimes forced, sometimes by choice. The best amongst us, schedule wilderness time before we find ourselves dying of thirst in the desert of poor choices. One of the most common mistakes I’ve seen in myself and this work is the mistake of chasing more, especially more good. Damn.
Too much of a good thing is oftentimes the road toward ruin.
I’m slowing down and giving myself margin to rethink the path I’m on. Clarity is coming. Real. Hard. OPUS. What about you, friend. Are you too busy running? Maybe you too would benefit from a little time in the wilderness. Slow down. Reflect. Write. You’re not designed to be a human doer – it’s being, right.
Live hard. Love harder…
BUILT TO LEAD 
War is fun. Danger is fun. Risk is fun. I feel most alive when on that razors edge between total destruction or amazing glory. I love it! The beautiful exhilarating thrill of uncertainty, where life and death crash together. It is where my soul comes alive.
But in between all the dangers are the weird moments of calm. In the valley. The times of quiet. Times of reflection. Where we are expected to lay down in green pastures. These are the moments that terrify me. The moments I run from.
Chet has spent years trying to bring me to this place. A place called quiet. I’m am trying. But it still scares the shit out me.
I am with you, brother. Still a long way to go to get comfortable, alone in my room. Keep working…
I wanted to hate this perspective – of clarity coming from time in the desert moreso than time on the mountaintop. I love comfort and fullness and abundance and typically I would categorize those as mountaintop things.
I equated this to seasons, since that is my lens for how I look at life. Naturally, I have a tendency to want to rush through winter — it seems like a vally season on the surface… nothing grows, everything looks dead, we all hunker down and just wait it out, only looking forward to the next season that is SURE to offer a bounty of goodness. Winter is barren. Winter is a time of lack, of want, not have.
The mountaintop is spring — it’s amazing, a sight to behold and appreciate. It’s so much more than I need, but I like having it all, more seems better, right?
The thing is stuff does grow in the winter, it is just so damn slow; incremental; almost unnoticeable. When I take time to grow in the valley, I can see so much more clearly what I want for my mountaintop view to be.
So I don’t actually hate this perspective. I choose to embrace winter; this was a reminder of why (beause on the really cold days, when I’m missing the sun so so much, it is easy to forget).