[postlink]http://newbestmotivator.blogspot.com/2009/07/game-of-chess-best-motivation-and.html[/postlink]
We might use the metaphor of a game like chess to describe the difference between the usual measured approach to responsibility and the perspective of the new practice. Normally if you were asked to identify yourself with an aspect of the game, you might point to one of the pieces on the board: you might choose to see yourself as the important king, the wily knight, or the humble pawn. As any one of the pieces, you would understand that your job is to achieve your objective, do well by your team, and help conquer the enemy. Or, you might see yourself as the mastermind, the strategist controlling the movements of your forces in the field.
In our practice, however, you define yourself not as a piece, nor as the strategist, but as the board itself, the framework for the game of life around you. Notice we said that you define yourself that way, not that you are that. If you had the illusion that you really were the cause of the sun rising or of all human suffering, your friends would soon have you carted off in a white van or at least prescribed a large dose of Rule Number 6 as an interim measure. The purpose of naming yourself as the board, or as the context in which life occurs to you, is to give yourself the power to transform your experience of any unwanted condition into one with which you care to live. We said your experience, not the condition itself. But of course once you do transform your experience and see things differently, other changes occur.
When you identify yourself as a single chess piece--and by analogy, as an individual in a particular role--you can only react to, complain about, or resist the moves that interrupted your plans. But if you name yourself as the board itself you can turn all your attention to what you want to see happen, with none paid to what you need to win or fight or fix.
The action in this graceful game is ongoing integration. One by one, you bring everything you have been resisting into the fold. You, as the board, make room for all the moves, for the capture of the knight and the sacrifice of your bishop, for your good driving and the accident, for your miserable childhood and the circumstances of your parent's lives, for your need and another's refusal. Why? Because that is what is there. It is the way things are.
We might use the metaphor of a game like chess to describe the difference between the usual measured approach to responsibility and the perspective of the new practice. Normally if you were asked to identify yourself with an aspect of the game, you might point to one of the pieces on the board: you might choose to see yourself as the important king, the wily knight, or the humble pawn. As any one of the pieces, you would understand that your job is to achieve your objective, do well by your team, and help conquer the enemy. Or, you might see yourself as the mastermind, the strategist controlling the movements of your forces in the field.
In our practice, however, you define yourself not as a piece, nor as the strategist, but as the board itself, the framework for the game of life around you. Notice we said that you define yourself that way, not that you are that. If you had the illusion that you really were the cause of the sun rising or of all human suffering, your friends would soon have you carted off in a white van or at least prescribed a large dose of Rule Number 6 as an interim measure. The purpose of naming yourself as the board, or as the context in which life occurs to you, is to give yourself the power to transform your experience of any unwanted condition into one with which you care to live. We said your experience, not the condition itself. But of course once you do transform your experience and see things differently, other changes occur.
When you identify yourself as a single chess piece--and by analogy, as an individual in a particular role--you can only react to, complain about, or resist the moves that interrupted your plans. But if you name yourself as the board itself you can turn all your attention to what you want to see happen, with none paid to what you need to win or fight or fix.
The action in this graceful game is ongoing integration. One by one, you bring everything you have been resisting into the fold. You, as the board, make room for all the moves, for the capture of the knight and the sacrifice of your bishop, for your good driving and the accident, for your miserable childhood and the circumstances of your parent's lives, for your need and another's refusal. Why? Because that is what is there. It is the way things are.