Time: 9:30 AM
Date: Thursday the 8th January 2009
“I sought my soul but could not see. I sought my God and he alluded me. I sought my brothers and sisters and found all three.” Anonymous
“Each man has only one genuine vocation—to find the way to himself…. His task was to discover his own destiny—not an arbitrary one—and live it out wholly and resolutely within himself.” Herman Hesse; Demian
This blog was supposed to be on the topic of commitment. It had a catchy title and what I convinced myself to be a clever angle. I’d almost completed it and handed it onto my mum for proof reading.
But something — or someone — was missing from this article: Me. I realised there was something more important and far more personally difficult for me to write about: The task of reaching out to other people.
What makes this difficult is that I am writing on this topic from a position of weakness rather than strength. I really need to learn what I am about to share today.
What does it take to grow as people? How can we climb so high that we leave our limitations behind?
Yes, it does take focus, commitment and persistence: I know something about these qualities and where they can take me. But what does it take it take to go further? What does it take to scale our potential?
After many years of obsessing over this question, I’m discovering an answer that makes me uncomfortable: Other people. Brothers and sisters. And reaching out to them, to be more specific.
More than one person has said to me recently, something along the lines of “Sometimes I get the feeling that you tell yourself Michael that you don’t need me.”
Last time I heard this, I remembered an anonymous passage I had read at a weekly meeting I attend for recovering addicts, “I sought my soul but could not see. I sought my God and he alluded me. I sought my brothers and sisters and found all three.”
About five years ago, I asked Marianne Williamson, the author of Return to Love, “How do you personally hear the voice of Spirit?” The first part of her answer surprised me, “Through other people, Michael.”
I considered how unreliable people can be. I couldn’t help but think that looking to others to hear the voice of something so powerful was a little naive, to say the least.
Why is this looking to other people, this reaching out for others so important? Because when we do, are are sending to ourselves a very important message: We can’t do it all on our own. And we can’t.
It’s true, obvious, even — but not at all for reasons that we might think.
In Peter Senge’s forward to Synchronicity, The Inner Path Of Leadership by Joe Jaworski, he writes “There is a sense of destiny that travels with Joe. It’s a very subtle phenomenon to describe because many people have lofty goals and many people have sense of self importance. Joe has absolutely none of that. The sense of destiny I experience around Joe is actually around him, not in him. It’s not in his personality.”
When we reach out for others at the right time and place, we get so much more than the actual person. We get what can move through these people. We get, as Peter Senge describes it, what is around them.
What I am about to do today, does not come easily to me. But I do need to do it.
I would like to invite you to say a small prayer for me — in relation to a dream of mine.
I’m asking for no more than a few seconds of your time today.
A prayer to whom? To anything or everything that you feel you can pray to. Do you need to be religious? No. Can you have your own unique understanding of some higher power? Absolutely.
A prayer asking for what?
That I be able to use my right arm again. That I become a walking miracle.
I’m not asking for this because I cannot cope with only the use of one arm. And I’m not asking for this because I think it’s a good idea.
After a high speed ski racing accident 15 years ago, all the major nerves were ripped out of my spinal cord. The doctors told me, “Your right arm will be paralysed and painful for the rest of your life.”
In my hospital bed I said to myself and those around me “This will not get me down. I am going to live an incredible life. I will find success and happiness with the use of one arm. Wait and see.”
For 15 years now I have lived with a paralysed and painful right arm and hand. But it’s been an amazing 15 years – way beyond my wildest expectations.
Somewhere struggling up the ladder of success, my ideas of success began to loosen. I started to question more deeply what life was about. A concept slowly crept into my mind that I had never given much thought: Destiny.
What am I really here to do? What is my life calling?
In Demian, Herman Hesse writes “Each man has only one genuine vocation—to find the way to himself…. His task was to discover his own destiny—not an arbitrary one—and live it out wholly and resolutely within himself. Everything else was only a would be existence, an attempt at evasion, a flight back to the ideals of the masses, conformity and fear of ones own inwardness.”
I can’t stop reading this passage. The words seem to be soaking into me.
About three years ago, after my old ideas about success began to crumble, I was totally shocked to be bombarded with intuitive information, suggesting that it was part of my calling or destiny to participate in the healing of my arm. I needed to do my part to bring it back to life.
I saw this miraculous healing happening repeatedly in my sleeping dreams. Random people in daily life approached me and told me of what they believed to be my task. And now, three years later, I’m concluding that I can’t do it on my own. I need help. That’s why I’m asking for your prayer.
And what if you don’t believe in any form of higher power, but would like to help? That’s fine: Do something for me please: Imagine my right arm working again. Visualise it for a few seconds , or imagine the words, “Michael Dayes now has the use of both arms.”
The idea of requesting your assistance with the healing of my arm came to me as I reflected on a story told to me by a good friend, Ralph Kershler.
Ralph is a teacher at a local school. Some years ago, one of Ralph’s students was hit by a car.
The teenage boy was placed on life support. The doctors were discussing the option of taking him off the equipment. That’s how badly he was injured – both inside and out.
Ralph requested some time alone with his student, sat down next to him and began to pray. Shortly after, the doctors were surprised at the rapid improvement in his condition.
Over the following months, Ralph would make countless hospital visits, always concluding with a prayer. The boy continually surprised the medical staff as he began to regain function and feeling throughout his body.
On a number of occasions, Ralph would place his hands over various body parts, say a prayer and within the next week he would regain function in that specific body part.
“Towards the end of his stay in hospital, I held my hands over his head and requested assistance with him regaining vision. By this stage, I had asked thousands of people to pray for him – more than I had ever requested in my entire life. Praying for him had almost become my obsession.”
Only days after this prayer for vision, the father of this St Leos College student, phoned Ralph stating “He can see! He can see!” Today this young man is a walking example of the power that can move through people. All it takes is the vulnerability of someone asking for help.
Years prior to this healing journey, I was requested to be a guest speaker at Ralph’s school presentation night.
On the night, each teacher was invited on stage to be introduced by the principal to 2000 or so students, parents and teachers. When Ralph’s name was called I was shocked at the cheering, stomping and clapping that roared through Sydney Town Hall.
It continued long after Ralph had left the stage — so long that the school principal was forced to wait and wait before introducing the next teacher.
Behind the roar of applause, perhaps there was a message: There are some rare people who reach out and who make themselves vulnerable again and again.
These people who show that they need us and need what moves through us, create meaning in our lives. We love them for it.
When I was talking through the ideas of this article with a friend of mine in her eighties, she reminded me of the lyrics of the old Barbara Streisand song, “People who need people are the luckiest people in the world.”
Participating in the healing of my right arm is part of my destiny, my calling, my duty. I will do whatever it takes to give this healing process what it needs. By simply giving this article your attention, you’ve helped me on my journey. Thank you.
Any comments or questions? You can post your public response to this article below.
Michael Dayes
Phone: 02 96532967
Mobile: 04 1234 2114
Postal: PO Box 788 Darlinghurst
NSW 1300 Australia
Appointment room: 26 Yarrara Road
Pennant Hills NSW 2120
www.michaeldayes.com.au
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