People can play a huge role in supporting you in your dharma pursuits.  People who do the job of ‘alter ego’ are role models for you.  You also may find teachers who can push you and challenge you to accomplish the things you’re passionate about. Here are a couple more important ones:

Mirroring - sometimes it’s tough to see ourselves in any kind of objective clear way.  Stephen Cope’s example was that you’ll never see your back with your own eyes, you’ll always need a tool like a mirror.  Likewise other people can mirror your personal gifts to you, things that may be so familiar you don’t even see them.  And when people mirror, they will actually help bring out those gifts even more.  Here’s an example.  My Mom is taking her role as wise elder seriously and she’s great at mirroring. 

One day when we were hanging out she told me I was a good listener.  Now I take everything with a grain of salt, even when I should be listening to my mother but I figured that maybe she’d caught me on a good day, so maybe it’s true. 

But even though I wasn’t 100% sold, it’s made me a better listener.  I’m more conscious of it when I’m talking to someone.  She’s encouraged that skill in me just by pointing it out.  Mirroring is a powerful gift.

Projective Identification - you can identify things that should be on your dharma list by looking at your reaction when you see things in others.  This is projective identification.  And it’s not about ego or material things, like gee I wish I had a hot car like that.  This is the strong visceral gut reaction you get when you see someone pursuing something that speaks to you too.  Here’s an example. 

A friend friended me on Facebook a few months back. And I went to his page and he had that “Cities I’ve Visited” travel application and the guy’s been to lots of places, like over 150 cities.  And I had that gut reaction.  It’s so primal, it’s like “Me Want That!”.  Travelling is definitely on my dharma list.

So I was mousing around his map and he’s been to off-the-beaten track countries in Eastern Europe.  And I messaged him and said, “wow you’ve been to Estonia, I’ve always wanted to do my own personal “Everything is Illluminated” tour and find the town in Slovakia where my Great Grandfather hailed from”.  I had googled the town once and found hardly any listings.  It would probably be a journey just to find the place.

(Aside - “Everything is Illuminated” is a book and a movie.  In the movie the main character, Jonathan, is played by Elijah Wood. He’s a New Yorker who goes to the Ukraine to track down where his grandfather is from.  It’s great - he finds a “tour company” to take him there which is made up of the “blind” grandfather who drives the car, his grandson who “translates” and Jonathan who’s afraid of dogs rides in the backseat with an angry mutt.)

Anyhoo, I was sort of joking about the Everything is Illuminated tour.  Not that I wasn’t serious but I thought of it in a “yeah that’d be nice some day” way.  And when I was thinking about this at Kripalu, thanks to the head space I was in (see: the Kripalu folks are a tricky bunch here) I thought, well what am I waiting for?

Because the obvious thing would be to invite my folks since they’re the freakin’ travelling wilburies now that they’re retired.  My Dad might want to see where is grandfather is from.  But the dude is 70 - how long is he going to be interested in schlepping around looking for towns that hardly show up in Google?

So I gotta get on that.  I want to stand in his home town and imagine what it took my Great Grandfather, before the turn of the century before last, to get his butt to the coast, find the money to get on a ship, sail across the pond to where - Pier 21 in Halifax?  Ellis Island in New York?  And take the train to Saskatchewan to start up as a farmer, marry and father a million kids including my Grandma. 

When I remember visiting him, he was in his 90’s and lived in a little house in Oliver BC.  He had a few grapevines out back that he used to make his own wine.  He played with my little brother’s toy car, making us laugh while he drove it up Roland’s arm, over his head and down the other arm. 

If I haven’t fished Great Grandpa’s strength, tenacity, longevity and sense of humour out of the gene pool,  I want to stand in his home town and breath in that mojo like oxygen.