Day 336: Tony Lobl

September 1, 2010 at 12:01 am, Category: Inspiration

“… we all do have infinitely more to us than we ever realized, and sometimes it takes someone to be seeing you objectively through this sort of more spiritual lens that can help bring out your own recognition that you have potential that’s either there and just not being acknowledged or sort of feeling latent that can be brought out.”

.

.

Right click here to download…

.

Toni Reece: Thank you so much, Tony, for agreeing to be part of the Project, and before we begin, can you please introduce yourself?

Tony Lobl: Well, hi, Toni.  Thank you for having me on for this interview.  I’m a Christian Science practitioner and also a representative for the Christian Science movement to the media and legislatures in the United Kingdom and in the European Union, and I also contribute articles to inspirational magazines.

Toni: Well, Tony, we’re pleased to have you here.  When you think of that word inspiration, who do you inspire, and how does that happen?

Tony: Well, it’s been interesting thinking about that.  Can I just read a quote actually from Desmond Tutu …

Toni: Sure.

Tony: … which means a lot to me.  He said, “During the darkest days of Apartheid, I used to say to P. W.  Botha, the President of South Africa, that we have already won, and I invited him and other white South Africans to come over to the winning side.”  He continues, “All objective facts were against us.  The past laws, the imprisonments, the tear gassing, the massacres, the political activists, but my confidence was not in the present circumstances, but in the laws of God’s Universe.”

I just love that quote.  In a sense, what Desmond Tutu was doing on the national stage there is what I feel I’ve been given the opportunity to do person by person with people who ask me for help or who I encounter who I can help along the way.  And it’s that sense that in the midst of whatever problem you’re challenged by and you’re struggling with, there are these laws of God’s Universe that we can just focus on and bring to light and that can bring solutions forward.

So in a sense, that’s my appreciation of how I can inspire people.  The range of people in my experience is something I’ve just been enormously grateful for.  Just through my particular work, I’ve had the opportunity to travel on all the continents apart from the Arctic and Antarctica, and I’ve met truly wonderful people.

The other thing is, in meeting these people, you know, I’ve come up with this sense and my own experience that there is no such thing as being an inspiration without it being mutual.  I’ve really been inspired by all the people I’ve come into contact with, and to the degree I’ve been able to help them I’ve been really grateful.  But in every individual there’s something there that inspires me as well, and I’ve just been grateful for that kind of mutuality.

Toni: Now when you … the work that you do, can you give an example, Tony, of what it is that you do?

Tony: Yeah; it can really vary.  In terms of the actual practice of Christian Science, it varies as much as people’s problems vary and, you know, even in one life you can have so many different problems that you’re just trying to sort through.  Yes … just an example, before this call actually I got a call from someone whose child was just having a coughing fit at night and the parents were trying to calm the child and it wasn’t working.  And this wasn’t in any way a life-threatening thing – it’s just they obviously wanted to see their child comfortable and they wanted to feel comfortable, and they asked me to pray.

I did exactly what Desmond Tutu said, really, just gave them that sense of comfort that there’s this underlying law of God to support harmony, to support peace, to support everyone’s well being.  And as I prayed for them, I got a text message back saying all is well, the child stopped coughing, went to sleep, and they did, too.  It’s just that sense of restoring harmony to every situation through seeing things a bit more spiritually.  So it comes in a number of different packages at different times.

Toni: What a lovely story.  And the work that you do, Tony, how do you help others to explore their own potential?

Tony: Well, it really goes back to me to this idea that we all do have infinitely more to us than we ever realized, and sometimes it takes someone to be seeing you objectively through this sort of more spiritual lens that can help bring out your own recognition that you have potential that’s either there and just not being acknowledged or sort of feeling latent that can be brought out.

And so what I’m really trying to do when I encounter people – and this isn’t necessarily only for people who ask for help, but just in my day-to-day interactions with people – I’m just trying to seeing through to that spiritual individuality that I feel is the core of everyone.  And that as we recognize it for ourselves or help each other recognize it, we find that we have a purpose, we have a meaning, and we really matter, and that that’s a global truth for every individual, and that it sometimes takes us to help each other see it, but it’s already there.  We’re already the complete package, and we just sort of need to sort of come alive to that.

Toni: It’s really amazing to me how the unintended outcome of this Project has been the dialogue around passion and purpose.  And there’s a lot of people all over the world that don’t know how to bring that purpose alive and, as you’re stating, everyone has a purpose.  It’s bringing that … it’s awakening that purpose, but how does that happen?  And this is a very short time frame to even pose that question, but it’s so important.  It just keeps showing up as a question.

Tony: Well, maybe I can share an experience in my own development, because this is kind of crucial to me.  I actually took a course in a sort of nursing program that I was hoping to move forward in, but I wasn’t sure that I had made the right decision for me, that it was where my purpose was actually meant to be.  But you know, like everyone, I had responsibilities.  I was married, and I needed to get some work.  I needed to bring home a paycheck.

This job came up that seems to suit the qualifications I’ve got, and I applied for it, but I still felt uneasy.  And I went forward with the interview, I waited for the outcome, and one day I was walking down … I remember, I was in London, it was raining, and it was sunny at the same time and this rainbow came out, and it had a lovely spiritual feeling about it.

But the anxiety about this whole thing about what I was going to be doing came to a head with this lovely thought that just kind of wafted into my thinking, which was, “The certainty is in Him,” and that meant to me Him with a capital H, God.  That God knew what I as an individual was meant to be doing, and that I didn’t need to struggle to make that happen.  I just needed to sort of yield to the recognition that it was going to happen, and that I would recognize it when it did.

And right after that, I got a call from the job that I’d applied for saying they turned me down, and that was fine.  And very soon after that, literally in a number of weeks, I was asked to do a totally different job that used writing skills and other creative skills that I kind of almost put to one side to follow this other course.  And really, I’ve been doing that for the 15 years ever since and love doing it.

But the clincher to me with this whole experience was I learned who had gotten the job that I hadn’t got, and I’ve actually gone through training with her, and I knew she was perfect for that job; you know, much better than I could have been.  Same skills, but just different qualities which were so much more suited to it.  And so that really was like the, you know, the exclamation mark to the experience to me that God knows everyone’s place, and that we can come alive to that.

Toni: I think that is so important.  This coming alive to it is just this open-ended search.  It’s just the search that people are going through.  What inspires you, Tony?

Tony: Well, a whole range of things.  I would say … I have, you know, a day job that’s like everyone else 40 hours a week or whatever, but I always kind of feel I’m on holiday.  If I walk down the road, I just love seeing whether it’s sunlight or just people.  I love people particularly.  They inspire me more than anything else.

One thing I have to say … in order to gain inspiration – it’s a bit paradoxical – but I need two things.  One is total solitude and the other is company.  And I don’t think … when I look at … to me, Jesus is the central figure in my sort of spiritual life.  That’s where I look to for inspiration.  And in the Bible you read that Jesus went up to the mountains, and clearly this was solitude.  It was him alone with his thoughts and just meditating on spiritual things.

But then you read he came down from the mountains and that’s when he’d heal people; you know, you read of crowds and multitudes.  To me, that reflects the right balance, that I do need time alone to refresh spiritually, but I also need time with people both to express what I feel I’ve gained through that time of quiet contemplation, but also as I said earlier, to feel the inspiration of a lot of other people and the individuality and each one that really means so much to me.

Whether it be a world leader in the news like Desmond Tutu – he’s a constant inspiration to me – or just an individual down the street.  I think some of the greatest moments in your life are when you are walking down the street and you exchange a look with someone and you break into mutual smile and you never find out who that person is.  You never stop to ask their name, but you’ve both felt that connection, both I think with yourself and either with something higher that I would call divine love.

Toni: How are you exploring your own potential, Tony?

Tony: It’s a good question.  I like the reminder that we should never stop doing that.  I think it’s really important.  I would have to say … I’ve mentioned the Bible of course, but as a Christian Scientist, I’m also very grateful for a book called Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy.  That’s a book that to me helps me focus my thoughts on the spiritual dimension of life and helps remind me that my everyday thought is meant to be about how to grow in grace, in forgiveness, in love, in living not just for oneself but for the greater good of all.

Also, it provides me real ideas about the nature of God and about the nature of each of us as God’s creations that give me these insights that I feel equip me to help other people when they ask me to do so.  So I think that’s kind of like the fuel.

And then the journey is just really being open to a greater willingness to be there to serve others when the opportunity arises.  And for me that varies from these one-on-one contacts to opportunities to contribute these inspiration articles that might reach, you know, tens of thousands of people or occasionally I address meetings, which even reach more people.

So it depends, but to me they’re all equally valued and all equally precious, but I want each one to be the right thing at the right time.  And if I feel that, then I feel that I have the way to grow individually so I can do a better job of helping others, too.

Toni: I love the way that you put that, that it has to be the right thing at the right time, and only you will know if that is where you’re at.  And I think that that is so important for people to really hear that statement.

Tony: It’s crucial.  I mean, getting into judging other people and their choices and decisions is … it’s walking on very thin ice.  And I’m always grateful … not that I’m totally without judgment, I mean, it does challenge me, but I’m grateful to see in the examples that are precious to me that that ability to get over that and love people where they’re at and trust their ability to hear what’s right for them.

Toni: Tony, you have been absolutely wonderful in this interview, and you have … your thoughts are very, very inspiring, and I know that a lot of people are probably going to be listening to your audio a couple of times, because there were some…

Tony: Oh, absolutely.

Toni: … very salient points here.  Thank you so very much  for taking time out of your schedule to work with us on this Project.  We cannot thank you enough, and we will have your website at the bottom of the transcript so that people can learn more about what you do and benefit from it as well.  So thank you very much for being here.

Tony: Well, it’s … as I said, I believe in mutual blessings, and this has definitely been one of them.  I’m very, very grateful to you.

Toni: Thank you.  Take care.

Tony: All right.  Goodbye, God bless.

___________________________________________________________

For more information about Tony Lobl:  www.christianscience.com

.