As If I Were Great

"I am going to live the rest of my life as if I were a great man... I'm going to concentrate my life on the biggest ideals and ideas I can handle."

-- James Michener

James sounds like a charter member of the As If Club. Club. Motto: Fake It 'Till You Make It! Anyone can join at anytime -- all it takes is a change of attitude.

Most of us, however, spend our lives "playing small," as Marianne Williamson so famously put it. Instead of concentrating on the biggest and grandest parts of life, instead of owning our own greatness, we get by. We live in the shadows of the mountain top of human potential with our brethren who have silently agreed with us not to transcend the normal neurosis that passes for human life. Too bad.

Whether we are as successful as Michener was in the journey he chose to undertake, we really have nothing to lose, except our own limitations. If he had written one hundred books and none of them had become best sellers, he still would have been richer for the experience of having written them.

But your thing may not be writing. No matter. Their are thousands of ways to pursue the major ideas and the cosmic ideals. You must find your own path up the mountain, and it will, most likely, be very different from that of James Michener, or anyone else.

Michener made the above pronouncement at age 40, before he had written a single book. Whatever your age, it is never too late to live as if you were great. It is never too late to focus upon the biggest ideas and ideals you can handle. There is really only one perfect time to do anything -- now.

Collaborators in Creation

"Our duty, as men and women, is to proceed as if limits to our ability did not exist. We are collaborators in creation."

-- Teilhard de Chardin

Who truly knows their own limits? No one. Sure, you may know that you can't run a four minute mile, but, hell, you probably don't want to anyway! Likely, though, there are many more things that you really do want to do, and can do, but you limit yourself from doing them simply because you have failed to adopt the "as if" philosophy. Proceeding "as if limits do our ability do not exist" produces results that far exceed what we could predict through rational analysis. And if that is so when we speak of the individual, just think how much more we can expand beyond our supposed limits when we're working together!

Alot of the New Age books have it at least half wrong -- you do not create your own reality! You co-create your experience of the world by collaborating with others, with natural laws, with The Divine. It's not about manifesting the perfect parking space or creating a multi-million dollar income. It's about joyfully working, playing and living in concert with the One and all.

To truly do that, you must transcend the ego -- both its boundaries and it's pride. Being a collaborator in creation is no big deal. It's just what people do -- whether they know it or not. Doing it consciously is the trick. That, and being detached from the results.

Zen has ben defined as "doing your damndest without giving a damn." That is both the paradox, and the mindset, that we're talking about here. No self-imposed limits, no attachment to results. Collaborating with the Universe! Who knows what will happen?