Adirondack with magine!
02.01.2010

 
Adirondack Header with magine
Michael Fox CPCC,
founder of magine!,
is a professional
coach and trainer,
author and creative artist, whose work has been featured throughout
the world.

Michael is a
Certified Practitioner
of the
Myers-Briggs
Type Indicator.


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The iguana's tale...

Life is best lived with hands that are open, a heart that is grateful, and a mind that is present.  

 

When I was a youth, I had a maddening and often self-defeating tendency to chase, to control, to collect: people, "stuff," moments. Healthy desire mutated into obsession; curiosity into covetousness; a willingness to be present into an insistence upon pressing. This tendency was reflected in my life by a restless sense of discontent and a haunting knowing that I was not living in alignment with my values. 

 

I'm thankful, during those days of quiet desperation, to have come upon a passage from Danish author Karen Blixen [aka, Isak Dinesen], in her literary masterwork Out of Africa. She recalled a discomfiting experience in Kenya in the early twentieth century: 

 

In the reserve I have sometimes come upon the iguanas, the big lizards, as they were sunning themselves upon a flat stone in a river-bed. They are not pretty in shape, but nothing can be imagined more beautiful than their colouring. They shine like a heap of precious stones or like a pane cut out of an old church window. When, as you approach, they swish away, there is a flash of azure, green, and purple over the stones, the colour seems to be standing behind them in the air, like a comet's luminous tail.

 

Once I shot an iguana. I thought that I should be able to make some pretty things from his skin. A strange thing happened then, that I have never afterwards forgotten. As I went up to him, where he was lying dead upon his stone, and actually while I was walking the few steps, he faded and grew pale; all colour died out of him as in one long sigh, and by the time that I touched him he was grey and dull like a lump of concrete. It was the live impetuous blood pulsating within the animal which had radiated out all that glow and splendour. Now that the flame was put out, and the soul had flown, the iguana was as dead as a sandbag.

 

Upon reflection, Ms. Blixen regarded shooting the iguana as a metaphor for a life that seeks to chase, to control, to collect:  

 

Often since I have, in some sort, shot an iguana, and I have remembered the one in the Reserve...It was as if an injustice had been done to a noble thing, as if truth had been suppressed. So sad did it seem that I remembered the saying of the hero in a book that I had read as a child: 'I have conquered them all, but I am standing among graves.'   

 

Life is best lived with hands that are open, a heart that is grateful, and a mind that is present. 

 

 

What comes up for you when you read this post: confusion or recognition?

 

Who or what are among "the iguanas" you've shot?

 

What was the sense when you watched the color, the very life, of the iguana fade from view?

 

What do you make of Ms. Blixen's use of the quotation from a storybook: "I have conquered them all, but I am standing among graves."

 

How might you have thought differently, acted differently, if you had hands that were open, a heart that was grateful, a mind that was present?

 

What's the learning? 

 

Michael Fox
m�agine!

530/613.2774
407 Myrtle Drive
Farmerville, LA, USA 71241
 
In addition to personal and professional coaching,
m�agine! specializes in spiritual transformation coaching,
employing its proprietary models
--Values, Vision, Voice
and Heart, Soul, Mind & Strength--

as well as
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator� curriculum
published by CPP, the People Development People.

Michael's books include
 
Complete in Christ,
Complete in Christ Spiritual Transformation Workbook,
and Biblio�files.

Coaching fees are based upon a sliding scale. Contact us for details.
For additional information, visit our website at maginethepossibilities.net.

Limited scholarships are available for spiritual transformation coaching.
On the flip side, if you are able, please inquire about opportunities
to fund scholarships for those who cannot afford coaching fees.

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