Jan 10 2012
Meet Your Entelechy – #85
This is the start of a new year, but not just any new year; it is the auspicious, much ballyhooed 2012! Some say it’s the beginning of the end. I believe it’s the beginning of a new beginning — a perfect time to turn up our light and let it shine more brightly in the world. It’s an ideal time to commit to our dreams, our highest potential, our most actualized self, otherwise known as our entelechy.
I first heard the word entelechy (en.tell.a.key) in a workshop with Jean Houston. She told us that our “entelechy is all about the possibilities encoded in each of us.” For instance, the entelechy of an acorn is to be an oak tree, a caterpillar to be a butterfly, and a popcorn kernel to be fully popped. We are all loaded and encoded with a dynamic purpose, a special gift and ability that comes naturally to us – so naturally that we may even take it for granted and not recognize it as our innate, great purpose.
I believe that sometimes, if we are not fulfilling our purpose, the powers that be may light a fire under us in order to help our potential fully pop. When these adversities happen it may seem like life has turned on us, but instead it has turned us ON – turning on the big, bright, luminous light of our soul, our strength, and our special abilities, illuminating the dynamic purpose inherent in us. Our life challenges can create those brilliant light-bulb moments when it all starts to make sense and we say, “Oh yeah, now I remember who I am and why I’m here!”
That’s what happened to me almost 3 years ago when I was diagnosed with uterine cancer. It woke me up big time and set me on a course of living my purpose and doing the inspirational writing that my soul had been longing to do. I’d always said that I would write someday…cancer kicked my ‘someday’ into ‘write now’!
Though adversity can be a great shaker and waker, fortunately there are other less painful ways to awaken our deepest potential. I’d like to share with you a powerful exercise that Jean Houston did with us (I’ve paraphrased and abbreviated it):
Stand with your eyes closed and imagine facing your entelechy, your highest self, your deep essence. Imagine your entelechy looking at you with profound love and appreciation for your journey, cherishing you, and imparting to you wisdom, encouragement and inspiration. Breathe it in. Then imagine switching places with your entelechy and BEING that higher self, feeling what that would feel like to embody your highest potential. From that place feel great love and respect for your journeying self, sending that self empowerment, courage, and strength. When you are ready, step back into your journeying self and fully receive those messages of love and encouragement, let it in, feel it, become filled with the love and vitality of your highest self, knowing that is who you truly are.
Just as the acorn holds within it the mighty oak tree, we hold within us our mighty, magnificent, actualized self. The most majestic oak tree is just a little nut that held it’s ground! Our challenge is to hold our ground, to commit to remembering who we really are, and hold ourselves in the dynamic light of that knowing.
How about you? Do you know what your entelechy is, your special purpose, your most actualized self? Is this the year to turn up the heat and pop into your full potential? I’m imagining us all jubilantly singing, “This bright entelechy of mine, I’m gonna let it shine! Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine!”
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Jan Jacobsen has been on a 35-year learning journey. She has completed a 2-year training in Hakomi, a mind/body approach which advocates that healing happens when we bring loving presence to what is. She has also apprenticed for two years with Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks (authors of Conscious Loving), learning skills to make love real and fun. Her thriving relationship with her husband Tom is a testament to the effectiveness and value of those skills.
