Essence is not a place or time, an insight or state of mind. It’s the deepest part of our nature, an actual presence that is innate and inborn.*
Jean Houston

entelechy, a Greek word meaning the dynamic purpose that drives us toward realising our essential self*
Jean Houston

There they are again,
Embodied in Jean Houston’s
essence and entelechy:
Theory U’s two inseparable questions –
Who is my True Self?, and
What is my Contribution?;
Also, Joseph Campbell’s equally indivisible
personal and social myths.

We are more than we know,
Makers of beauty and usefulness;
Though we may say we may claim
we are no-one with nothing to bring,
Only surviving a hard life,
It may be exactly here we find our response
To the two questions:
But true healing and transformation
come from being able to sponsor the wound,
Sponsor the demon,
sponsor the shadow.**

Your story and my story –
There’s more to write,
As we turn our attention and imagination
towards our reality:
The problem out writers face isn’t writing.
It’s consciousness.
Attention.
Noticing.^

Carl Jung leaves us with this encouragement
to pay attention:
I am not what happened to me.
I am what I choose to become.^^

So I pursue the purpose in my dream
to help people notice who they are
and what they have, and I become
a whisperer.

*Jean Houston’s A Mythic Life;
**Robert Dilts; Stephen Gilligan and Robert Dilts’ The Hero’s Journey;
^Verlyn Klinkenborg’s Several short sentences about writing;
^^Ken Robinson’s Out of Our Mind.