Last Friday, I had the great privilege of leading a circle of 45 radiantly creative women on a journey into the Heart of Support. This morning, I’d like to share with you an excerpt from our Deep Dive exploration into Support.
The dictionary definitions of support include: to bear – primarily from below; to hold or uphold; to strengthen; to provide for.
Support and provision are qualities of soul. Along with other essence qualities like power, love, truth and abundance, they emerge from the field of unity, of formlessness, and are at the heart of all forms of life.
At the unity and essence end of the continuum of being, you are one with all that is. There is no difference between you and the business that supports you. You are not separate from the Deva of Support, the subtle energy being who holds the blueprint for the soul quality of support in all dimensions.
To experience support as a soul quality, all you have to do is become present, and attune to this quality, which is already within you, even if it is primarily a seed or potential and you have yet to develop your capacity to gather and hold it.
But you don’t live solely at the unity and essence level of your being. You are also an incarnate soul, and you have a very specific incarnate presence. No-one else in the world is exactly like you – you are uniquely and utterly yourself in the particularity of your being. No-one else has your particular genetic makeup, your personality, your way of experiencing the world.
No-one else has your particular ecology either. Your relationship with the world around you is not the same as that of your sister or mother, your dearest friend or your beloved Yorkie.
At this particular end of the continuum of being, you are unlike anyone else who has ever lived or ever will live. You are a miracle. One of a kind.
Support and the World of Your Business
At this particular end of the continuum of being, your business, too, has its own incarnate life and presence, different from yours. It is as uniquely itself as you are.
Similarly, Support itself begins with unity and essence, and then manifests in particular patterns and forms that require boundaries, containers, definition and differentiation for it to express itself in your life and the life of your business.
Support appears in your business as support for the particular, highly specific life of your business. It shows up as allies and creative partners who support you with connections, money, expertise, advice, technologies and other concrete forms of support.
There are many ways to look at support in your business. One way of mapping your business’s needs for support is to consider the kind of support you need in each of the following four areas of your business:
1. Support for inspiration, guidance and visioning the world of your business.
2. Support for strategic planning, to lay down a pattern for that vision to unfold.
3. Support for goal-setting, project planning, and organizing systems and structures that will hold up the body of your business.
4. Support for implementation – the day-to-day operations and actions that move you towards your goals.
Each of these forms of support is an expression of the essence of Support — which emerges from Source, from the Sacred, and whose pattern is held by the Deva of Support. But the forms that support takes are forms that are in harmony with the life and incarnation of your business, and meet the very specific needs of your business as they exist right now.
At this particular end of the spectrum of being, differentiation, discernment and boundaries are essential, to be in right relationship with support.
When you know yourself and your true desires – when you know what you’re feeling and what you need both for yourself, and for your business — then you can exercise your discernment and your power to choose the forms of support that are right for you. You know what kind of support to ask for, which offers of support to say Yes to and which ones to say No to.
You know which areas of your business need support and in what sequence. You can then mobilize your allies, and focus your resources of time, energy and money on those forms of support that will truly be beneficial to you and your business.
This will keep you from wasting your time and money on things that seem like a good idea, but don’t really support your purposes or aren’t in right timing for your business. If your business is still in its infancy, it needs the kind of support that will bring in cash flow rather than support from elaborate organizational systems or software designed for much bigger businesses.
Anything that you or your business cannot actually use and digest – no matter how fabulous it might be – becomes toxic and a source of stress and difficulty, rather than a source of support.
For example, if you have a fledgling business manufacturing jewelry or clothing, and a colleague decides to support you by sending you a massive order for a hundred thousand nose rings, or a million hand-appliqued platypus t-shirts, that order will not support your business – it is more likely to destroy your business, as you struggle to cope with an order that is completely beyond your capacity to fulfill.
True support is always aligned with your souls purposes, and in harmony with your life and the life of your business.
So to access the right support, get to know yourself and your business; know what you truly need and can actually use. Then, you can stand in your sovereignty and say Yes to the forms of support that are in harmony with your purposes, and No to those that aren’t.