Your Internal Gyroscope

“A wisdom figure is someone who is seen to have arrived at an inner center and lives out of the resource found there.” ~ Murray Stein

Many years ago, I read William Manchester’s biography of Winston Churchill, The Last Lion.  Many vivid passages from that book remain with me year after year, but one stands out in particular.  Manchester said that Churchill was driven by his own internal gyroscope.  Churchill didn’t blow to and fro with popular opinion.  Indeed, he spent nearly all of the 1930s in the political wilderness as he spoke forthrightly against the rising threat of Nazism.  More broadly, Churchill simply did what he did with little regard to the perspective of others. 

The internal gyroscope serves as a worthy ideal, but let’s dig a little deeper into what this means.

The Internal Gyroscope In Action

• The internal gyroscope has its own energy, and this force is powerful.  Why?  Because the energy is not derivative or imitative, but comes directly from your true self.

• Once that gyroscope is whirring and driving you, it is a force to be reckoned with.

• At its deepest, most refined, and most thrilling, the gyroscope pushes you forward regardless of external results.  You value what you are doing for its own sake and know it should be brought into the world. Fear recedes, the question of confidence is less relevant (thought confidence is quite strong), and “effort” is subsumed into something more elemental.

• The internal gyroscope will tell you when you don’t need to puzzle out certain challenges that arise–to solve every confusion in your life.  It allows you to let some things be what they are.

In addition to Churchill, Eckhart Tolle reminds me of someone from the spiritual sphere of someone living through an internal gyroscope.  Have you ever watched Eckhart Tolle give a lecture?  He simply stands up there and his message flows out of him directly.

Discover (Uncover) Your Internal Gyroscope

To some degree, activating this internal mechanism stems from trial, error, and effort.  You get there through repeated acts of courage and turning inward until you find your true self; this self begins to shine through; then it shines through its own momentum.  Both Churchill and Tolle activated their internal gyroscope through tons and tons of reading, thinking, being, and doing.

That’s the internal Gyroscope.  It whirs and whirs of its own accord, gathering momentum with time, study, effort, and right action.  It will guide you through thick and thin.  May yours spin true.