The vision I'm still learning to live

living in a world where it's strange to love

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Six years ago as I was camping alone in a remote canyon in southern Utah, I had a vision.

But I’m still learning to live it.

It’s a good thing the vision came to me. Because that’s what I was there for—the vision arrived near the end of four days of solitude that were part of a two week “vision quest,” a modern rendition of the rites of passage ceremonies that Indigenous cultures across time and place have used to mark the transition from childhood into adulthood and full participation in the community.

I was 39, so you could say I was a bit behind schedule for entering adulthood. But in my defense: I live in a society that has forgotten these ancient ways of marking key stages of our growth. Even more, we’ve made a collective agreement to settle for more stunted consciousness states instead of evolving and expanding. We prefer to cling to our egocentric ways rather than shifting to soulcentric ways of being. Anyways…

The term vision quest is derived from the Lakota word hanbleceya, which literally means “crying for a dream.” It involves suffering, undergoing a spiritual death, and crying out for a vision for one’s own life and for one’s people. I did experience a form of this out in that remote canyon though, admittedly, it couldn’t hold a candle to the kind of initiation experience that African shaman Malidoma Patrice Somé describes in his book Of Water and the Spirit.

Still, I was absolutely crying for a dream. Because in the years leading up to that lonely canyon moment, it had become increasingly clear that my way of moving through the world was unsustainable. And that there was more to who I was than I realized. I craved a glimpse of my destiny.

You can read all about this journey in my book The Way Home.

Fortunately, I received a vision. Sure, I didn’t expect it to involve Donald Trump. But that’s what the gods gave me. Beggars can’t be choosers.

You can read a fuller book excerpt of it here, but here’s what the vision showed me:

The message?
It is something so elemental, printed on the most basic greeting card and sung in the cheesiest pop song.
And yet something so magnificent and inexpressible, pointed to by the mystics in poetry, story, and song across the ages.
It is the Leaving, the Falling, the Rising.
It is the path, the journey, the destination.
It is the true treasure of the quest—the source of the sound of the genuine and the one and only human vocation. The message is love.
Love. Love. Love.
Life is all about love.
Immeasurable, unconditional love.
Love is our essence. It is where we come from. It is our destiny. Love is who I am and why I’m here.
Love is who you are and why you’re here.
Love is who we all are and why we’re all here.

Love is who I am and why I’m here.

This is the fundamental vision I received.
It’s also the vision that I’m still learning to live.

A series of experiences, encounters, and conversations this year has brought it to my attention that I’ve only been scratching the surface of expressing this vision in my life.

A coach recently reflected back to me that it’s as if I function like a set of Venetian blinds. I like to control the amount of light that gets through. I modulate the amount of love that I let flow through me.

His observation was spot on.

Why do I do that? I wondered.

There are lots of reasons. But as I’ve reflected on this I’ve realized that—and this feels like a odd thing to say—we live in a world where it is strange to love.

Yes, to love is our nature. It is our birthright. Yet we’ve forgotten. And at this moment, it often feels more common to withhold, to be against, to divide, to tear down. Or to be cynical about love.

So here I am as this creature that longs to be loved. But I’m worried that if I love too much, I will be, what—Obnoxious? Overbearing? Dismissed? Rejected?

Yes. In other words, there is still a part of me that is afraid that if I really reclaim my identity and purpose as Love that I will be… unloved.

As a result, I hold back. I allow only a fraction of what is within me to flow through me. In fact, I try to make love palatable—not “too much.” Practically, what this looks like is showing love in ways that make sense to people. In contexts where people will say “Yes, that is an acceptable place to show love” or “Yeah, they really need it there!”

With family and friends, of course. But also by starting a community center in Seattle to “serve the poor.” As a hospice chaplain, a meditation teacher in prisons, and as a coach and teacher.

Attempting to control my love output doesn’t just manifest in where or with whom I express love, it also impacts the levels that I let flow through me in those contexts. It might still feel like big love to those people and in those places—and I hope it does—but my inner dam operator knows there is a much vaster, boundless, ever-flowing stream where that comes from!

I’m aware that these reflections may not make sense to anyone. Or that this may be perceived in any number of ways, including, “Is this guy, like, bragging about how much he loves people?”

But I’m putting this out there to express my intention to fully live out the vision that I was given—to let love flow through me in even bigger, bolder ways. To open up the Venetian blinds and let the light come streaming in.

I’m also sharing this, I suppose, to remind you that despite what you’ve been told, it is not strange to love.

In fact, Love is who you are and why you’re here too.

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