“Real, honest effort, no matter how slight seem results, no matter how weak seem the progress, has no time for mere parade. Their high motives that inspire are: love, honour, truth, justice or those others that lead the ranks of their high purpose. The glowing realization that their work is serious inspires them. Their consecrated effort to rise to the heights of their highest nature—gives a royal importance that banishes trivialities.
True importance is always simple. The large duties, cares, and responsibilities of those seeking to do great things give them natural dignity and ease. They have the simple grace of the burden-bearers of India, who carry heavy loads on their heads and, in the carrying learn how to carry them, erect—with fearless step. There is in them no trace of the—pose of the strenuous. Men of serious effort think too much of their work to think much of themselves. Their great interest, enthusiasm, and absorption in their world of fine accomplishment eclipse all littleness. They are living their life,—not playing a part. They are burning incense at the shrine of a great purpose,—not to their own vanity. They ever have poise,—not pose.” ~ William George Jordan
If petty things appear large on the screen of your life, you are likely focusing on something other than your life’s purpose. If you require great fanfare to get motivated or to follow through on what lies ahead of you, you are likely missing the propulsive energy that comes naturally to one whose function is aligned with his life’s purpose. Life is purposeful, meaningful, ever-expanding at its core and your life, properly lived, will reflect that ever-present inner reality on the outside.
If I’ve said it once I’ve said it a million times, true life expression moves from the inside out. Life is an invisible quality that takes visible form in words and deeds. It manifests most easily through one who has no self-concern, whose every thought, word and deed is centered in service.Try as you may, you cannot make a life for yourself, neither can you make life conform to your wishes at every turn. You must let life express through you in relation to the world around you. True living is much more about letting than it is trying.
The moment you try to be a better person, try to have hope, try to be the man or woman you know you can be, you have failed. The true you is neither a product of your imagination nor the result of following your heart. The moment you try to fabricate the “you” that you would like to be or the “you” that you feel others would like you to be, you’ve joined the ranks of the sculptured ones, the great imitators, posers, pretenders and pretentious ones who identify more with the pod that they have than the pea that they are.
The truth is that you must let go of your attachment to the outer identity you and others have crafted before you can begin to reveal who you really are inside. Life expression is a radiant quality. Once expressed, it draws unto you that which you need to magnify your expression into the world at large.
The process is quite simple.
Why not give it a shot?
Gregory Hake 
Posturing is so empty. It is much simpler and more effective and more interesting to just be yourself.
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” Let”, a great starting point for the actualization of true potential. The news today is talking about the country’s disappointment with it’s leaders due to posturing and false fronts. Could we forward our national leaders this post? Thanks Gregg!
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Much is lost at the hand of posturing…a sad state of affairs, but it doesn’t have to be that way!
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Many people have invested much in their personas. They spend their time imagining what a person like them would do, instead of doing what feels right to them. Not necessarily what feels good, but what feels right. But the word persona comes from the word mask, and that is what they are wearing and what they are doing. They are masking their inadequacies; their bad decisions over time when they chose the wrong path. But, like all shams, personas do not stand up to much prodding before they collapse. This is innately understood, so the persona is protected above all else.
The other path is much simpler. (As an aside, the natural process is always much simpler than the artificial one). It might not feel easier, especially at first, but living life according to life’s rules is the way to a truly meaningful existence. If you feel like you have gone too far down the wrong path, you haven’t, but it is true that the sooner you change the easier it will be to change.
Start looking for the opportunities you have to be helpful. Stop complaining that you’re tired, you’re sick, that you have a headache, etc. Excuses abound, but the few that allow their true selves to shine through will have that poise that Jordan speaks about – and that cannot be masked.
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I liked your point about personas needing protection and I imagine much of what falls in this category is often mistaken for “personality” and is assumed to be immutable.
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“I tried,” “I’m trying.” I’ll try.” These words may have the glaze of nobility, but they are empty in fact. They are excuses for a refusal to let the light of life shine freely. They represent a state of consciousness that is forever tentative or partially committed at best – a house divided. No possibility of creative achievement there! Why not let the River of Life sweep away the hopes and dreams of one who is constantly trying? On that basis perhaps we’ll have some real living!
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I suppose people have been afraid that if they give up the resistance all that will be meaningful to them will be swept away by the restored flow of the river of life. They’re happy enough to relinquish that which they dislike about their lives, but they white-knuckle everything they’ve deemed to be “good.” I suppose the point is that you have to make yourself sufficiently vulnerable that it can all be reordered according the life’s purposes, which, contrary to popular opinion, are always creative.
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That’s thick. I think I know where you’re coming from. It’s not that the effort put in to being a better person is wrong, it’s just that if you are starting from a point looking from the outside in – say you have this very specific idea or image about what you wish to manifest – and then go all out in your effort in attaining it, and then say you get there……well now what? You celebrate a little maybe, but if there is not a deep sense of selfless purpose to the whole process, you end up left kind of with the same feeling – a bit empty. If you’re resilient, well you might get up and go after something else. If you didn’t get it, then discouragement can easily set in.
In the health industry, weight loss is a big thing and one technique used frequently to help motivate is where people place a picture of a certain person they would like to look like – typically a hollywood star they can cut out of a magazine that has chiseled abs or some other attractive feature – on their bathroom mirrors, on their refrigerator, everywhere to keep reminding them of their goal when the time comes that desire for forbidden foods waxes high. I’ve often wondered about this approach and haven’t suggested it to my patients, as we tend to look at proper body composition as the result of being healthy. Health is an internal state, where your mind cooperates with your feelings in a balanced way and so into the physical body. We have to integrate all facets of our makeup, and we are going to have to think and feel differently if we want to look differently. Our identity has to change, our routines need to change, the way we think about how we go about our day all has to change, and from my experience, the ones that do succeed in this long term are very much a different person than when they started. They think feel and act differently for they have cast off their previous identity.
I know the analogy runs thin a bit, but the point is as you make, we can’t superimpose a specific image or idea on ourselves and hope to achieve inner triumph, for we don’t have the power to know what is to become of us at that level. We will have dreams yes, we will have aspirations no doubt, we can receive inspiration to help us make our next move, but what is to manifest remains unseen. Forecasts can be made through observing trends, but that’s about it.
And so what’s the only reliable marker of true progress forward? Of manifesting purpose? I believe in what you have offered here today, in which it all hangs on one’s commitment to service. Personally, the largest steps forward I’ve taken in my lifehave been when wanting to help others was at the center of my concern. This is what has allowed me to overcome bad habits and immaturities as much as it has implanted the deepest dreams of my heart. The great instructors have always centered on this message and I can now more clearly see why.
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Great points, Ricardo. Thanks for sharing your perspective.
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It may be that frustration is a helpful symptom to become aware of; I find it’s a byproduct of trying. Some of the hardest working people I have hired were many times the least productive. One of their commonalties was they dwelled on the petty aspects of the business, allowing it to derail them. Building a life or a business is a tiring pursuit, letting it be evinced from the propulsion you discribe is satisfying and sometimes miraculous. Great post, thanks.
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A frustration is nothing more than a blockage to a particular flow unless you compound it with emotional agitation and further cement it with reactionary tension. Frustrations in this sense will happen quite often, and are no big deal. When the blockage is reacted to and obsessed about, however, you have problem. As you said, the sense of frustration is a good warning flag that you are investing overly in the blockage by trying to move what is not ready to be moved while likely missing the very leverage points that would allow an eventual release of the %&*^%! blockage.
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Trying or letting; excellent distinction, thanks for a great start to my week!
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My pleasure!
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I love how Jordan describes that “true importance is always simple”, and I noted that the difference between “poise” and “pose” is simply “i”. Where there is no real expression of “I” there is no true importance or significance. My new bumper sticker: Own the “I” … !
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great observation!
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