Blog by Alan Seale, September 13, 2021, Intentional Living
Each month in the free Transformational Presence Ubuntu Listening Circle on Zoom, the host begins with a short centering meditation and then proposes a question for our exploration. In the September Circle, host Katarina Cars from Sweden offered the question: How are you living your purpose right now?
We zoomed out into breakout groups of six and began by acknowledging the power of this question within the context of the enormous challenges facing our world right now—Afghanistan, human rights, COVID, climate change, inequality…. There is so much breaking open right now that it is almost beyond comprehension. It’s easy to feel like there is nothing we can do—easy to get lost in thoughts like Where would we begin? or What could any one of us possibly change?
However, instead of those challenges pulling us into confusion and despair, they, in fact, further refined our focus. The question became: How are you living your purpose right now within the context of all that is happening? Yet soon an even simpler and more direct question emerged:
What are you infusing into the system?
Suddenly the energy intensified. Our guiding question became more urgent. There was full-on acknowledgment within our group that each one of us is constantly infusing a particular energy into the situations and circumstances around us, whether that is our intention or not. It’s been said that nothing is more contagious than emotion. The energy, intention, and emotion that each one of us infuses into the system spills over onto others.
Since that Listening Circle, the word infusing has not let go of me. It creates an incredibly potent image and takes me right back to the Three Touchstone prompts that I wrote about two weeks ago.
I am…calls me to full acknowledgment of who I am right here, right now—how I am showing up in this moment—with no need for apology or pretense. Just full-on honesty.
I trust…calls me to get clear about what I truly trust, as well as to acknowledge what I don’t trust in this moment. As I keep working with this prompt, I recognize that the things I don’t trust tend to be more on the surface—less permanent, more transitory. And what I do trust tends to live much deeper within me—my deep sense of self and my understanding about how life works at the most fundamental levels.
I invite…then brings me to the infusion point. Because to invite an energy into a situation or into a space is to set an intention—to infuse that space or situation with a particular energy and intention. It calls me to be clear about my purpose in that moment or situation—what I bring to the moment through my presence.
These three touchstone prompts coupled with the question What are you infusing into the system? suddenly heightens my awareness of the power of my own conscious choices. What am I infusing into the system right here, right now? And what is the impact of that infusion? What is happening because of how I am showing up right now?
My 2011 book, Create a World That Works, opens with this summons:
To be present is an act of creation.
Your presence—
how you show up to life—
no matter how powerful or subtle,
impacts what happens in your world,
just because you are there.
How do you choose to show up?
How do you choose to engage with the world?
How do you choose to make a difference?
How will you help create a world that works?
It’s true that no one of us alone is going to create a world that works. Yet each one of us can contribute to a world that works by how we show up, by where we choose to put our trust, and by the energies we choose to infuse into the system. We can do our part to shape the mass consciousness of our present and future.
So how about you? How are you living your purpose right now? What are you infusing into the system today?