As human beings, our default setting is to focus on ourselves: what we want, what we think, what captures our interest, what we push away, what we create for ourselves, etc. Even when we are focused on other human beings, it’s in a self-referential way – how they relate to us, our needs, experiences, and interests.

In the work we do in the Evolutionary Collective, we give people an opportunity to pay attention to something else. We invite each other to be as present, as vulnerable, and as sensitive to exactly what is occurring in this moment together. Sounds simple, and in a way it is, but being invited to give yourself begins something crucial for us as human beings. For the most part, we live in a world where we aren’t seen, and we rarely give ourselves and our gifts to the max. Some people manage to go for it, push into the world, give what they can, make things happen, and express themselves, but they rarely give their deepest Self.

In our post-modern world, we are asked as individuals to find better ways to come out and develop ourselves so we can give our gifts, but I think there is something so much more at the heart of what it is to be human that we are longing to experience and live.

The vulnerability of the young woman in the video above inspired this blog. Her willingness to stand on stage, nervous and open, and to give herself to the audience in her depth and vulnerability, is a tribute to what we all want to give. Her tears that came as she was being mirrored by the judges I think touches something in all of us. Her beauty and depth, so real, so available, so touchable, is what I’ve discovered all human beings have when they are truly invited to give of themselves. Authenticity has a rawness. There is a mutual discovery when we share ourselves authentically. I know that when that sharing is occurring, I discover new dimensions of myself in the same moment I am fully sharing with the person inviting me. Their depth of Being opens at the same time. Mutual Awakening is this deep invitation – almost a demand to give yourSelf to me, to you, to this moment. Everyone wants to be invited. We just need to learn how and practice it so often and so completely with each other, that we return from the recesses of being hidden into our full glory and shine on together….

Consider this…

• When have you experienced giving yourself, where you felt it was real, complete, and received?  How important was that for you?
• Did it matter what you were sharing, or was it something else?
• Who knows you at your depth?  What elements of self were shared – beauty, brilliance, sweetness, power, goodness, clarity, sensuality, divinity?
• What difference would it make in your life if people invited all of who you are, all of what you have to give, and more…?