Colleague Talk - Journey To the Sacred Chamber of your Soul 18th Feb 2008

Last week was a very energetic week, my colleagues in office were all in a very jovial mood and so were our clients, work flowed and volumes moved. It was the LOVE week!! Valentine’s Day was on Thursday and boy, how Love changes life!! If Valentine’s Day was every week, then we would double our corporate target, Kenya would be a developed country, women would be the happiest living beings and all men would be flat broke!

I spent most of my Valentine’s day evening taking a moonlight walk. My selected location was peaceful and serene. It reminded me of a year and half ago, when I found myself at the heart of Mt. Kenya, where my colleagues and I had gone for an experiential training on Leadership. An experience that stands out is one night called “Solo night”. Each of us had to spend 24hrs alone in the forest, with only basic items, Bible/Koran, a pen and foolscap. It was a time to reflect on how far you have come, what you have, what you intend to accomplish, who you want to be in life and how to get there. I had a chance to take a journey to the sacred chambers of my soul. Whatever I wrote in that Foolscap remains my road map up-to-date; the only thing that changes is depth of my view points.

Action Point: Journey to the sacred chamber of your soul

I came across one of Carol Mandi’s articles, she encourages creating more of ‘Me’ time and taking time to look within ourselves. If you would like to add meaning to your life, I suggest you read the article below.

Quote:

Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and know that everything in this life has a purpose. –
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Have an energetic week and purpose to live inside-out, not outside-in!

Journey to the sacred chamber of your soul
There is a place, a sacred chamber inside each one of us that most of us don’t even know exists because we rarely go there. If you thought of your life a s a house, this room would probably be your bedroom.
This private place is what author Gordon MacDonald calls, one’s private world. The reason we ignore, neglect or are simply unaware of our private world is because the public world is more enticing, visible and demanding.
Our public world is what everyone sees and where we are heavily rewarded. It is in this domain where we engage in work, play, network with acquaintances, acquire property, and so on.
According to McDonald, our public world is the part of our existence that is easiest to evaluate in terms of success, popularity, wealth and beauty. It is here where the titles like Ms Got-it-all-together or Mr Self-made count. But when the layers are peeled down and we proceed into our secret chambers, our private world is where we see the truth about ourselves, if we have the courage to be honest.
It is in this place where the wealthy, the famous and the beautiful finally admit, “I’ve failed with my children,” and “I have a problem with drugs/alcohol/smoking” or “I want to add meaning to my life.” It is here where the crucial life issues are weighed and evaluated, adopted or shunned. It is here where the essence of a person is seen, where men and women are made or destroyed.
MacDonald writes ”Our inner world is more spiritual in nature. Here is a centre in which choices and values can be determined, where solitude and reflections might be pursued. It is a place for conducting worship and confession, a quiet spot where the moral and spiritual pollution of the times need not penetrate”

The problem is that most of us live outside-in, where this public world takes ninety percent of our life’s energies and attention. MacDonald adds: “our public world are filed with a seeming infinity of demand upon our time, our loyalities, our money and our energies. And because these public worlds of ours are so visible, so real, we have to struggle to ignore all their seductions and demands”
“They scream for our attention and action. The result is that our private world is often cheated, neglected because it does not shout quiet so loudly. It can be effectively ignored for larger periods of time before it gives way to a sinkhole-like cave-in”
The more fulfilling way, of course, would be to live inside-out. However, by living outside-in, we are effectively choosing breadth over the deeper issues of life. Eventually, the disorder in our private world begins to show up on our work places in the form of clutter or missed deadlines.

In our relationships, we bemoan the lack of time for pursuing friendships. We begin to sense the chaos in our lives due to promises we are unable to meet to others or ourselves. We know that our lives are spiralling out of our control.

Consider the words of Oscar Wilde, quoted by William Barclay in the letters to the Galatians and Ephisians. Wilde confessed, “the gods had given me almost everything. But I let myself be lured into long spells of senseless and sensual ease Tired of being on the heights, I deliberately went to the depths in search of thought, perversity became to me in the sphere of passion. I grew careless of the lives of others.
“I took pleasure where it pleased me, and passed on. I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that, therefore, what one has done in the secret chamber, one has some day to cry aloud from the house-top. I ceased to be lord over myself. I was no longer the captain of my soul, and did not know it. “

But how do we avoid this disintegration? By taking time-out to order and evaluate our day? By working smart instead of harder? There is an answer for each one of us but we must seek it by going into the secret chamber and asking the question.

(Journey to the sacred Chamber of your soul is an article by Carol Mandi)