Out of My Mind & Into My Spirit

I use to schedule myself into fifteen-minute increments. Have you ever run to the bathroom at the absolute last second just because you were so busy? Well, this is how my life was. I was running a growing company with fifteen employees and one hundred sales reps nationwide. We were listed in Entrepreneur magazine as one of the top fastest growing companies in America. I was twenty-six and on my way to being burned out by thirty. The road paved with success was proving to be less fulfilling than I had imagined. So, one day when I decide to do something completely out of the norm, it changed my life forever.

I told my staff I would be gone for the next two hours. I had no idea where or what I was going to be doing in those 2 hours which at the time seemed completely crazy. There was always something to be doing and never enough time to do it in. I thought at the time that this compulsion pulling me out of the office was strange but for some odd reason I followed it.

I got in my car and began driving. I had no idea where I was going. This was even more ridiculous to me. My mind thought, why am I wasting my time. However, there was some other part of me that was all of a sudden separate from the mind that said, keep driving. So I did.

I listened to this small subtle voice which seemed to be me but I hadn’t heard it for a very long time. It kept saying, drive this way, keep going. I would stop on occasion and ask, “are we here yet?” Like a child on a long car trip anxious to get where they were going. This has been symptomatic of my life – always wanting to get where I was going. Then when I got there I was not completely satisfied, so off again I would go to the next place.

I was driving in a neighborhood in San Francisco that I was completely unfamiliar with. On the corner there was a Starbucks. I heard, “pull over”. You can imagine my relief. Starbucks was, in fact, a place I could very much relate to and feel comfortable in. In fact, it kept me going through my eighty-hour work weeks, day after day.

As I went in to the Starbucks, I ordered my usual Grande Soy Latte and sat down in a chair with a view of the street outside, enjoying some familiarity in this strange experiment I seemed to be participating in. After several minutes passed by, I noticed a homeless man walking across the street towards the Starbucks. As I studied him, I realized I knew him. He was a man from the neighborhood I currently lived in, however, I hadn’t seen him in at least two years. He looked very much the same. In very elegant, preppy tattered clothing as if he came out of a J Crew catalogue and never changed his clothes again.

I was so elated to see him because I thought he had died. He was a fixture in my neighborhood for many years. I would often buy him coffee and he would smile and mutter incoherently. There was something about him I could relate to, something that attracted me to him. He had something I wanted which seemed absurd considering he lived on the street and was mostly incomprehensible.

With out hesitating, I jump up out of my seat and run out of the Starbucks to greet him. “Remember me, remember me!”, I say.  “You used to live in my neighborhood. I am so happy to see you are OK, how are you?”

Before I could finish, he turns and looks at me with a clarity and certainty so powerful, it as if a wind came a blew right into my face and said, “wake up, child.” Needless-to-say, I was paying attention. Staring deep into my eyes with a power beyond the physical, he said, “You want to help people but you do not know how.” And he walked away.

It hit me like a ton of bricks right in my heart. There was a resonance there that was so deep. It made me stop in my tracks and I could hardly breathe in.

This was the beginning of my path to being spirit led instead. It changed my life forever.