[As I promised Audrey, here's the transcript of what I was moved to share at the community night, at the annual ServiceSpace retreat.]

Last Saturday night, exactly a week ago, I was at a motivational seminar in Los Angeles. I attend a lot of retreats and seminars for my work, and at this one, we spent two days talking about how we wanted to be more. Nine out of ten people who got on the stage said they wanted to write a book and they wanted Oprah to discover it. It was one of those seminars. I love the idea of aspiring for more; I love the idea of infinite possibilities. But sometimes motivational seminars create within me this paradox of how do you reconcile striving and surrender? Sometimes when I attend workshops like that where I'm told I need to be more, I leave feeling like I'm not enough.

Fast forward a week, and I am here at the ServiceSpace retreat on Thursday. It feels like two weeks ago. :) We did this beautiful opening ceremony and then walking back from that sacred circle like we did, single file, I started getting really excited about this circle, this gathering.

The reason I was excited I heard my inner voice say, "No one in that room is going to tell me that I need to be more."

Yet, when we sat in the first circle and shared about where we were, the thing that came up for me was, "Did I deserve to be here in this sacred circle with this group of rock star, kindness people?" When I hadn't eradicated homelessness and such, how could I possibly deserve to be sitting in this circle with these people who were doing world-changing things? Doing really bold things in the world. I confessed that even in this circle of kind and loving people I felt like perhaps I was not enough.

It was in that instant, that moment of vulnerability that I had my first revelation. I had a revelation as to the nature of grace. Grace as a universal principle. Grace says you don't have to deserve what you receive. Grace, by definition, is that you receive that which you have not earned.

In that moment when I felt like I might not be enough, like I might not deserve to sit in this circle, I had this experience of grace. Like wow, maybe I do belong here. And then it just got better from there.

I don't know exactly what changed me….

It may have been that first night after the circle when I went upstairs. I had to take a vitamin and I was like, "Oh I've got to walk all the way downstairs and get some water." I've got this great water bottle that ServiceSpace gave us, but I need to fill it. Then I picked up the water bottle and saw that somebody had filled it before giving it to us. I don't know if I would have thought to do that….

It may have been the numerous hand written notes found on our pillows with candy and other treats and books and other gifts we received. Post-it notes on our doors, signs containing mystical wisdom. It may have been all the beautiful food that was prepared with so much love and so much elegance. It most certainly was the sharing from every single person and the one-on-one conversations. The sharing that was so elegant and so eloquent and so from the heart. It may have been all of those things. It certainly was the film that we saw on the healing power of animals.

It was that, it was all of that, and yet it was something more. It was something intangible. I think, that what really brought the healing within me, the healing I experienced here this weekend was this: the circle. Or maybe the other big word we’ve been using, the Mobius Strip? I'm going to stick with circle but you all will know that we're talking about a mobius strip, maybe. :)

I think the circle healed me. And the circle is really what I see as a placeholder in eternity. What I learned from this circle, and particularly as we brought in the animal energy, is that we are enough as we are. I can't imagine a condor or a porcupine or a wolf or a serval sitting in their enclosures or strolling around in the woods and saying, "You know, I'm just not enough."

Then I remembered that my tendency to say that I'm "not enough" is a relative term. Yes, I will always be not enough in certain ways. When I tried to lower myself off a cliff to get to the Bolinas beach, I was not enough. I was not up to that task. In some situations, I'll be too much. But not enough and too much are relative terms meaning they are in relationship within something more infinite. What I aim to do and what the circle strives to do or doesn't strive to do is to touch the hem of the infinite garment of the absolute reality.

I just came up with that, wow. To touch the hem of the infinite garment of the absolute reality. Somebody write that down, please. :)

Absolute reality – this is the reality where we all abide when we rest and remember who we really are. A lot of the work this weekend has been about remembering. We remember the Absolute. We remember the reality that takes us to what I like to call, "Rumi’s Field.” This is a Rumi poem that I’ll adapt slightly for our purposes: "Out behind ideas of wrongdoing and right-doing there is a field, there is a circle. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even phrases like ‘each other, or not enough,’ don't make any sense.”

Thank you Laddership and ServiceSpace for teaching me that those words don't make any sense. Thank you for bringing me home and so it is. Thank you.