World Domination from the Inside Out: Sustaining the Flow

It was 3 am Friday morning, and I woke in a sweat. “What am I doing here...?! What did I get myself into..? Why am I bothering to jump out of a plane in the first place...? Dammit...stupid stupid Stupid!!!”

It wasn’t the skydive that was freaking me though -- it was the idea of coming face to face with the truth of who I am in real life, in the eyes of hundreds of friends I love and respect and interact with online, in less than 18 hours. I was in Portland for Chris’s World Domination Summit, and I was utterly, desperately and completely in terror...

My heart pounded hard as I tossed in the hotel bed, brain spinning with the rising dread of following through on a commitment I'd long become disconnected with. It was so long since I bought the ticket, I’d pretty much forgotten my reason for being there at all. And the feeling of being horribly alone with no recourse in the middle of a really bad decision was crawling up my spine. The chances of getting back to sleep were slim...

I thought hard on how I could get out of it, and what would happen if I just did the jump -- maybe attended the opening party -- then turned around and just gone home. But I had a hotel booked for the weekend with my roomie (the brilliant Crystal Street) and it really wouldn’t be fair to ditch the double room. I could just stay there all weekend, get drunk and watch bad movies...! I’d also capitulated to the persuasive Tyler T to attend volunteer duties on Sunday. That was the worst part...! Relegated to volunteer status, goofy blue T-shirt flapping in the wind, there'd be no place to run and hide.

Flash forward to 3 in the afternoon.

Driving back from the freefall in my little black stallion, with three amazing and gorgeous women (Nina, Tessa, Chantelle), we sailed through the highway traffic chatting it up. Me trying my best to ignore the impending doom of the weekend. All of us bubbly and dazed. I survived the jump -- we all had -- humbled, fully adrenalined, exhausted... now it was on to the next one.

I’m sure you can read other accounts of the WDS weekend, and if you were there, you know. It was epic. There’s just something about running into Danielle in the hallway near the restrooms and sharing a hug and chat just minutes before her big talk, having your heart blown open in person by the quietly fierce Mark Silver, or finally connecting in real life with a gorgeous friend from online -- like Marjory who’s about ten times more luminous in real life if you can imagine such a thing -- that is just so inconceivably life affirming, fulfilling, and heart-overflowing. Its hard to express. Imagine that over and over and over. My heart was overflowing with love. Exploding really.

Fiercely Alive with Love.

I came in to the weekend expecting a heart attack of overwhelm, but I came out with a heart exploding with love -- heart-poundingly massive full of love. So much love, like I’ve never felt for so many people.

I really didn’t realize I was capable of experiencing this much love on this scale -- never felt it quite like that. The depth and fullness of the connections, the inspiration, beauty, love, truth, power of it all was almost too great to comprehend.

So now the conversation shifts to how to sustain this flow. How to keep the high going, and as Jonathan pleaded with us, “do something with all this inspiration.”

There’s been moments when I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to translate all this into something tangible and real. But those are just the small passing moments of small mind.

The Way Forward

The way forward is this: Stay in the heart flow -- the space in which anything is possible and the impossible actually comes true. This space cannot be manufactured! It can only be experienced. This was what the weekend was -- the impossible became possible and it was real -- not just for some luck fortunate few, like Chris or Danielle or Leo, but for us all.

If you weren’t there, or you’re dragging your feet right now in your great work, or you’re needing some kick in the pants, go and get it. Push yourself out of the nest, and make it happen. Go and spend some time with as many people you love and respect online as you can. You can do it. Hit the road. As I wrote in my last Edge Notes, it’s time to stop blogging, stop hiding behing your manufactured identity and start living. You have to live. I'm talking about F*CKING LIVE. Alive. A life worth living.

We’re all a little funky.

One thing I loved and noticed right away this weekend, is we’re all a little funny and a little funky in our own way. Nobody’s perfect, and none of us are flawless. Maybe it’s some blemishes on the skin, or an eye that drifts a tiny bit. One ear sticks out a little further than the other, your mind goes on temporary spazz-mode and makes you babble endlessly through lunch, or some grease from your sandwich decides to hang out a bit longer on your jeans after.

With a heart full of love and the infinite possibilities of who and what you are, all that stuff is totally irrelevant -- they're just the side effects of being human. It becomes so easy to let these things slide -- the small stuff becomes really small and insignificant.

So, the question becomes how to get to that place where all this stuff stays small, and stay there. You’re human, so you can only stay in this flow for so long before reality strikes, right? I know, I'd had a pretty hard go of life lately, it was getting hard to catch that flow for a while...

So, you find yourself drifting away, back into the paralysis of fear that’s so familiar, the stagnation that holds your heart and work from exploding with love and flow. What can you do to remember? Can you go back to the small moments of beauty, exaltation, joy, love, and remember the experience of being there...?

Truly, entirely, without doubt, the flow outside -- the flow of a gorgeous life, a life well-lived -- an epic life -- this can only begin from the heart. The heart is flowing, the heart is full, the heart is awakened with Fierce LIFE. Then everything else awakes with you.

It works. It really works.

I’ve written before that I’m really not into dominating the world, or building an empire, i’m more of a small kingdom kind of dude. But if anything, this being an emperor of the heart, this world domination from the inside -- this I can handle. My Mondo Beyondo word for the weekend: Alive ... Fiercely Alive.

What can you do to remember -- to make your heart come back alive, and stay alive? This is all you need.

FIERCE LIFE.

.. The Art of Epic Flow book launches next week -- by the Grace -- join the Letter to get it free, and get it first, before the price goes up. XO

NOTE: We'll be back on Monday with the F*cking Fierce Gwen Bell. Subscribe. And pls Retweet and share this with your gang, of course...