I was watching the Tour De France recently. One night as they rode the long climb through the Alps, the riders from other teams were picking on the number one guy in the yellow shirt trying to wear him out so they could overtake him. 
 
Interesting tactic. 
 
As my friend described how the race worked and the meaning of the color of the uniforms, I found the analogy to life uncanny. The yellow shirt (which designates the number one guy) was heading for his glory, so to speak, through the steepest part of the climb, another day in the lead across the finish line, while the competitors aimed for him.

Though it is the expected way of the race for the competitors to try to win, isn’t it also the way life can be? When others are jealous of you, trying to trip you up, criticizing, trying to bring you down, want what you have, it’s a pretty good bet you’re doing something right. Though I’m making a bit of a stretch with my analogy, I’m going to use it anyway.
 
Nature plays a similar game. Crows and starlings will dive-bomb or peck at eagles and hawks sitting in their perch, or flying by, to keep them from eating their young or stealing their eggs for lunch. The eagle may leave when it is tired of being pecked, but it doesn’t stop her from coming back for a meal.
 
Throughout fiction and non-fiction, heros and heroines are attacked and shamed because of their power, their greatness, their spirit, their vision, their love, not the lack of it. Think, Cinderella, Luke Skywalker and now Rey, Reggie Jackson, Frodo Baggins, Jesus, Sojourner Truth, Harry Potter, Joan of Arc and so on. Their journeys are the depth they had to go to connect with, embrace, refine, and command their light in life, despite the pressure against them; to realize a greater expression of their intrinsic power for their unique purpose.
 
Your fears will amplify if you believe the starlings, so to speak, inside or out, and try to keep their good opinion; if you try to remain an old version of yourself; if your ego and insecurity take the lead; if you are out of integrity with your true nature. And if you have any self-awareness of your light, the true nature of what you’re capable of, the smallness can also become irritating to your system. You may think something is going wrong, but it’s the motivation you need to shift gears and climb higher.
 
A client needed to shift out of the fears she was feeling with the change in the economy and the talk swirling around her. What about the dream house she bought? What about the new team she is on? What about her income? What about… ? Fear had its grip and she knew she needed to shift it fast. 
 
But her fears weren’t really about the economy, or her lack of business skills, or reaching too far with the dream house or anything of the kind. Everything had moved fast. She had shifted fast. She had what she wanted, but now what? 
 
She was on the cusp of further expansion, climbing that hill, and that expansion looked unfamiliar. An underlying unworthiness crept in, fear that it was all too good to be true. What if I fail on this team? Doesn’t the economy have to affect me, too? Who am I to keep going and have it even better? Maybe this house is too much. Don’t I have to do business like everyone else to succeed? I might end up alone out here. Shouldn’t I dim it down a bit?
 
Dimming made space for fear and the perspectives of others to pool around her. When we move through a significant phase of evolution and find ourselves on the cusp of the Unknown, is it common to turn and say, “wait, I know who I am back there. I don’t know who I am out here.”
 
Like a herding dog at the front of the pack, she needed to swing back, to the end of the line, reviewing things, herding her old fears and dreams, then letting go and finding her stride in the lead again.

The lead of her own life. 
 
The value of circling back allowed her to ground into her worthiness and dissolve the roots of her unworthiness. To gain new perspective on her innate power and how to be it in the kind, powerful, capable, fierce, and bright light that she is. To learn to connect with her future self on an ongoing basis, becoming her in the present moment.

“To the extent that we don’t connect with our true essence and express our true creative selves,
we become “domesticated” like a trained animal.” 
~Paul Levy, The Quantum Revelation

The rider in the yellow shirt will lose his shirt for a day. And the next day he can win it back again. If we agree with the starlings, we may become an impoverished version of ourselves, “domesticated” toward the idea that we are inherently lacking, or must dim it down, as if the hawk believed the starlings that he wasn’t worthy of lunch. 
 
As you advance in your potentials, you may feel it more poignantly when you’re reverting to previous versions of yourself, holding back to stay connected with what you’re afraid to lose. Reverting will feel like fear and failure. Don’t believe it. 
 
Your future self, rooted in your true nature, dreams, and capacities is waiting to be lit up by your attention, feeling, integrity, courage, surrender, and focus. At first it may feel scary because it is the unknown, or maybe the better word is, unexperienced. Use your imagination, your visualizations, meditation, energy tools and so on to merge into your future self, to ground into and become familiar with him or her, so you recognize your future as it continues to arrive in your present moment, feeling the glory of another day at the top of that hill.


Here’s to more of You in this world, 

Shelley