Exploring the frontiers of gay consciousness with ROBERTO BLAIN

Awakening: With a Two-by-Four

For some years now, I have been approached repeatedly by people seeking guidance in their lives. Perhaps this is because friends know I’m in the business of hiring and developing people. So they come, or they send friends to be coached or mentored. There must be something in the air. Lately, more and more friends, colleagues, readers, boyfriends, referrals, and others are contacting me for this kind of guidance—or just an ear. Many of these “seekers” are in some stage of what my Edging Out co-author Don Kilhefner and I refer to as “bridging” in the Midlife Awakening workshop that we co-facilitate. Those taking their first steps onto the bridge may have just started to notice, with a growing sense of alarm, that their current livelihood has lost its “juice.” What seemed like interesting and rewarding work before now seems boring and meaningless at best, a form of paid torture at worst. Others are further along, fully immersed in a life purpose exploration, wrestling with their demons and their destiny. Still others are in a state of pain, confusion or even physical or emotional breakdown. The ones who are honest with themselves report varying levels of anxiety, frustration, and fear. What they all have in common is some degree of resistance and a feeling of being lost.

In my last column, “Follow Your Yellow Brick Road” (Vol. 26.24) continued the theme that Don and I began when we wrote about the distinction between an ego-led life and a soul-directed journey. In order to illustrate the difference, I wrote about how I discovered what I might refer to as my “right education” in a Master’s program at the University of Southern California. I was able to discern this authentic path by listening to my soul’s voice through methods I learned from my “village elders.” Since so much of the agonizing soul searching I’ve noted above centers on finding one’s right livelihood, I thought it might be helpful to follow up with a piece on how I found my own. This then, is the story of how I got on path to my life’s calling—one that is slowly, blissfully, unfolding and revealing itself to me now.

The signals starting coming about eight years ago, when I was working for Warner Bros., helping them build their consumer products licensing teams in Latin America. At the time, we were opening the São Paolo, Brazil office. Excited about a trip to a country where I still think they drop aphrodisiacs into the water supply, my trip was dampened by a horrible pain that ran from my lower intestinal tract down to my prostate. Tests revealed nothing was medically wrong, yet the pain was just unbearable. Knowing what I know today, I am sure that for some time I had been ignoring my soul’s call to some other direction, and I was manifesting it physically. For example, I had been approached by senior management to become a training director at WB, and I passed, seduced by the sexy opportunity to travel to exotic parts of the world. Then, activating a plan I had been concocting—completely oblivious to my soul’s urgings—for years, I tried my hand at entrepreneurship, co-founding QuPeople (“quantum people”) a company dedicated to innovative corporate training and team building. In hindsight, striking out on my own at that time was probably premature, an act of hubris, albeit well-intentioned. Having launched right around the dot-com bust against everyone’s counsel (“Are you nuts!?”), business was slow at first. As a first-time entrepreneur, selling an intangible product in a depressed market was hell. While we landed some incredibly lucrative, high-profile accounts and made decent money, the experience was quite stressful and debilitating.

Approximately two years into entrepreneurship, I had Warning Dream No. 1: what I call my “Death Dream.” I dreamt that I was in the throes of death, and it was frighteningly realistic; I awoke sweating, scared, and upset. It did not take long for the outer state to reflect the inner. Within a week, I came down with a mysterious illness that included a fever, loss of appetite, tremendous loss of energy, and a feeling in my body that was very, very wrong. I became extremely alarmed. Favoring Eastern medicine to Western, I went the holistic route, running to community elder Jewel Thais-Williams—owner of Catch One Disco and founder of the Village Health Foundation on Pico Boulevard—for her acupuncture, healing herbs, and perennially profound words of wisdom and comfort. A week later, I had Warning Dream No. 2. I dreamt that I had cancer. Yikes! Upon Don’s advice (“You need to see a Western doctor too!”), I grudgingly went for the standard checkup and blood tests. Nothing.

A few months and a loss of over 20 pounds later, I became weaker, thinner, and increasingly alarmed. But having a warrior-like, unstoppable nature, I kept right on going, intent on growing my business despite my physical breakdown. Notwithstanding the combined efforts of my Western and New Age healers, I still felt like something was very wrong with my body. Then came Warning Dream No. 3. I dreamt that I was walking down a road and a woman rushed past me and told me I had stomach cancer, and then she immediately made a right and began traveling east. Second cancer dream: this one really freaked me out. Soon after, a straw broke the camel’s back. At a meeting with E! Networks with one of my business partners, I nearly passed out. I was able to hold it together, but upon leaving the meeting, I turned to my partner and said: “I can’t go on.”

That evening, during my weekly coaching, counseling, and dream interpretation session with Don, I told him what happened. After listening to my story, he said, “I think it’s time you went on your journey.” Incredulously, I proceeded to tell him that there was no way I could leave: “I’m running a business!” I protested. “We have engagements coming up! We’re just getting off the ground and beginning to be successful. I can’t possibly do that. I have partners, and people depend on me!” Don calmly proceeded to tell me that my life depended on it, and that if I did not stop what I was doing, there would be consequences. When he told me how, many years before, he had gone on a 10-month journey that reconfigured his life, my resolve began to dissolve and I started feeling an odd sense of relief, of possibility. Maybe that was my answer. (It was!) The next chapter in my life was one of risk and exploration. In hindsight, I believe that if I had not listened to that “small voice” and shifted gears accordingly, I might have cancer today. I often wonder if many of the illnesses that beset human beings happen because they ignore the soul’s voice and continue on paths that de-vivify and crush them. In my next column, I will share with you the journey that I embarked upon, a vision quest that would dramatically alter my life, restoring my health, and placing me on the path to a life of greater meaning, contribution, and joy.

Roberto Blain is head of talent acquisition at USC, on the executive team of c3 transmedia, and co-facilitator of the Gay Men and the Midlife Awakening workshop. Contact him at roberto@consciouscreativity.com.