#505: Elizabeth Lesser on Building Omega Institute, Intentional Communities, ADD (Authenticity-Deficit Disorder), the Value of Grief, and the Emotion of Illumination

There's some sort of bizarre magic that happens when we put down what Rumi, the great Sufi poet, calls the 'open secret' — this secret that we're all carrying around that we don't live up to who other people are, that we're somehow flawed. All kinds of weird coping mechanisms come from that. When we put that down, when we just show up with the other person... 'Am I enough?' Oh yeah, you're enough. Stop trying to be something else. You're okay. [When] you find that enoughness in each other, it's like a freaking miracle.

There does not have to always be resolution; there often just has to be the questions. It's like, you don't have to pull out every single stick from the cleared out river; you can just pull out a few so that there's a little more movement, and trust that that movement will do its thing.

I think grief is just a sign of how well you loved. Grief is like a badge of honor. You loved. You are a lover. And, of course you're going to grieve, depending on how much you give of your heart when the object of your love is gone. It's going to hurt.

If activism is how you relate to the injustices in the world, innervism is how you interact with all of the layers of who you are—your psychology, your wounding, your mystical bent, your nature, your nurture, all the different parts.

I have, in my experience, sometimes found... just in the asking of the question there can be an incredible unburdening. It wasn't an answer, solely an answer, that was required to help that unburdening, but just the asking of the question.

The tagline of Omega is 'awakening the best in the human spirit.' I'm not an athlete, but I knew that, for some people, awakening their best was athletics. That athletics was going to be the door to everything—to excellence, to getting in the zone, to experiencing a world beyond your own small limited ego self. I knew that was a gateway for many people.