Standing on My Head. Hugh Prather

ourselves back, we trade the opportunity to find out who we are for the illusion of safety.

      I say that I accept the way I am, but do I accept it so fully that I am willing to act on it—to actually act the way I am?

      I have to act the way I am now before I can become something else.

      I agree with Nelson: “We can't change, but we can expand.”

      This Thanksgiving, Norman said, “I have known you since the third grade. I have seen you as a Christian Scientist, a vegetarian, an avid businessman, and now this, whatever it is. Your ideas change, but you always remain the same.”

      I am not sure if I have changed either. I know that today I am a little more aware of my body, a little more aware of nature, a little more aware of other people . . . but that's not really “changed.” It's more “returned”—returned to some of what I started life with. I also know I am a little more tolerant of the way I am and the way other people are. Those two things usually go together. And I know that I have a few more alternatives now. I am able to respond in some ways that I couldn't a few years ago. I think Norman is probably right—only ideas change. I have read about saints and high people, but I have never known one. Awareness, tolerance, and openness don't seem to change me; they just allow me.

      He called tonight. He's going to be a big-time politician, he says. And he probably will. As I listened to him, I thought, “There's a real live human being under all of that.”

      You say you want “to be somebody”;—then apparently you don't want to be yourself.

      Fame isn't fame. It only appears that way from a distance.

      There is nothing to achieve

      There is nothing to achieve

      There is nothing to achieve

      As long as my attention is fixed on future accomplishments, I remain where I am. Ambition has the opposite effect of “getting me ahead.” It keeps me stuck. Ambition is an extension of the past. It is a desire for more of something already known or something long desired. Openness is what will get me ahead because openness does not know what is ahead—it has no rigid idea of what is needed.

      If all the striving, planning, and rehearsing that most of us indulge in actually came true, we would still be left with only a bigger version of ourselves. Real progress can't be imagined. We can't anticipate in thought what new vision life will lay before us or in which direction it will next demand our growth.

      All I want is to be able to relax into this moment so I can see what it is offering.

      “I wish” assumes that I know what is in true contrast with my present experience.

      “You have so much potential.” That is a hole yet to be filled. Thought won't fill it. And ambition, which allows only the future to be real, simply makes the hole larger. To stop this clatter in my head I will have to die to the future. I will have to give up “having potential.”