Your Work is to Discover

“Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart give yourself to it.”- Buddha

The question is, how do we discover?

To me, that’s the million dollar inquiry leading to the fact that we as learners, have to be engaged in the process. Being in a state of AWE, or wonder opens up a desire to know. Watch children as they play, curiosity abounds as they “make believe” their world and giggle and laugh for hours. The definition of discovery is “to make visible.” Children make it up as they go and have fun exploring the possibilities. Games many times emerge from their shared and probably “unconscious” belief that they are creative designers. It’s this awareness that as adults we lose along the way, yet it’s essential to unlock the secret code that lies within us all – what is our highest and best contribution? What is there for us to uniquely bring forth during our lifetime? For this to unfold, we might want to look at our assumptions about learning.

Learning to bring forth who we are and live from that place begins with trust.
Do we see that although we are all human with the same strand of DNA, we are each uniquely different. Being part of nature, we’re a living system that is part of a larger living system. We’re not separate; we’re part of the ecosystem. I notice when I take a walk and observe the trees, I am awe-struck by their beauty. In the Northwest, we have such a variety, and in the Fall and Spring I appreciate the cycles of death and rebirth. They’re signals to me to observe within myself what needs to fall away, creating space for something new to emerge. Walking by the ocean, the rhythm of waves create a calming effect. As and I notice the in and out of the waves, my breathing begins to match the flow. It is a natural occurrence, that connects me with a creative force bigger than my mind’s ability to define it. I trust and let go. Deepening my trust through connecting with nature creates more happiness in everything else I do. My doing comes from a deeper sense of being. In order to “let go,” I need to feel deep connection and trust.

Learning to trust is a process.
Strange isn’t it? When we are children we naturally trust ourselves, and yet on the road to maturity we’re cultivated to look outside ourselves to discover who we are. This reinforces the assumptions that “what” we are learning is more important than “who”.

The discovery of how to be successful is built on matching other people’s definition of what that means. I’ve conducted hundreds of interviews over the years and found this truth; most people are not connecting their “being,” to their “doing.” What they do with their time is related to making money and they sacrifice their health in order to do it.

In order to “come home to oneself,” one of the first steps is to let go and “play,” allowing the discovery of who is emerging to be seen. There is a code that unlocks our own discovery inherent within each of us; the Core Values process helps us discover it. This code is invisible to the outside world – no one can do this for anyone else. Unlocking that code is an inside out process. For evidence that this natural process is key to a fulfilling life –  an acorn holds the code to become an oak tree.  A caterpillar holds the the code to become a butterfly. Just like all of Nature, each of us has our own work to be and to do, and then as Buddha’s wisdom reminds us “with all your heart, give yourself to it.’

In the spirit of sharing stories of people who are cultivating their personal transformation and impacting others, listen to the interviews on this site called The Butterfly Code.

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