The Heart of the Matter
August 30, 2019
Creating a Stage Upon Which the Heart Can Dance

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In my life, I've had the good fortune of having some extraordinary coaches -- people who had the knack for being able to bring out the best in me and spark meaningful insights and behavior change. Bill Stevenson, for example, my high school soccer coach. Stan Silverberg, my summer camp basketball coach. And Tim Gallwey, the Founder of The Inner Game. But of all the coaches I've had, the most extraordinary one has been Prem Rawat.

Allow me to be more specific.

A few years ago, I found myself in a room with him, having a conversation about writing and storytelling. I don't remember how we got onto the topic, but there we were, poised to explore it. The first thing he did, was raise his right hand and circle it around his head three times, a non-verbal clue that I interpreted to be an expression of the state of my writing at the time -- Prem's sign language for "dizziness" and "too much" and "too heady." No words were spoken, but I completely got what he didn't say. His gesture cut to the chase.

It was true -- my writing often was too much, too heady, and too dizzying. Where one word would suffice, I'd write five. Where pausing would have been the right move, I did the hoky poky. Where pointing at the moon would have been enough, I tried to build a space station.

In one gesture, Prem cut through it all. And then, in the silence that followed, he spoke (and I paraphrase).

"When I do an event in India," he said, "there are sometimes 250,000 people in the audience. When I tell a story there, I say just enough so people can fill in the spaces with their own imagination. Storytelling is all about evoking a feeling. What I do," he went on to say, "is create a stage upon which the heart can dance."

Photo: TimelessToday
PremRawat.com
Video: Language of the Heart

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at August 30, 2019 01:13 AM

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