the goal is not the goal
At different stages and phases of working together, my collaborators (the word I use to refer to the people I coach) have goals. Mostly how it works is that they start off with goals before things start to become murky as we make our way through the alchemical labyrinth, through the process of dissolving the unaligned desires, in order to make space for truer ones to emerge. Sometimes they arrive unanchored and open.
But no matter how we begin, my collaborators are driven. They need to be for where we are going together.
This past weekend, a few of them raced Ironman Lake Placid. On the surface, they had varying degrees of the same goal. They wanted to perform the race at an increased level of execution compared to how they have performed at previous Ironman events. This is what I want for them as well, but I have little concern for the time on the clock.
My first collaborator - we’ll call her Freight Train - is, as her name implies, a force. She knows this whole-heartedly in 2 places: intellectually in her mind, and buried in her deep center. Her way of racing requires force and ignition in order to puncture the deep center and burn away the many accumulated layers of self negation. She is a bird of prey. She is a meteor. A wildfire. She is a rocket ship, burning through the atmosphere so that she can soar, lightly, above the clouds.
My next collaborator - we’ll call her Rose Quartz - is a love poem. The secret strength of a poem is its ability to supersede the collectively assumed difficulties of this world, and to move straight through them as if they were invisible. She and I have been in a long term collaboration of integrating her transcendent footsteps, and she now knows how to do this in more areas of her life than not. The most difficult places to be a poem are in the most difficult places: the toughest physical challenges and the most centrally vulnerable foundations. Her way of racing is to travel relentlessly with ease, especially when others around her are reinforcing the idea that it should be heavy and hard. She is a rainbow fish. She is a bridge between this world and the other world. She is a misty morning, calling her dreams down in the gentle hovering clouds, so she can feel them on her skin.
My third and final collaborator who raced Ironman Lake Placid this past weekend - we’ll call him Rolling Thunder - is inevitable. Long after the excitement has passed and the others, who were only in it for the thrill, have given up and gone home early, Rolling Thunder roars on through the night. He is undeterred and unwavering. He is not coerced by bright lights and short term spectacles. His way of racing is steady and sure-footed. He is an ancient drumbeat. He is a cosmic time-keeper. The low tone of the thunder booms and pulses underneath the wavelength of the fast-paced traveler. What we have in place of goals are too vast to be known by us yet.
Not all of my collaborators are endurance athletes. We all choose different ways of meeting ourselves. What makes a successful collaboration is how willing and driven we each are to break through to the center, to be awe-stricken and transformed through the meeting.
Sometimes the goals that they come in with become small and flat. Sometimes we accomplish them anyway, but we know not to look for life-saving elixirs at finish lines. The goal was never the goal, after all.
The world is far too spectacular for so many of us to be chasing after the same monochromatic agendas. I care little about what you accomplish or acquire; I want to know how you live your art into being. Do you glide, strut, march or pirouette? Do you roar or fall to your knees? Do you rupture and tear? Do you burn hot and bright or do you simmer and glow, in the dark of the night?