ORM Wholeness: The Disc Golf Community Experience

The Wholeness Pillar always delivers fantastic things for me, but I continue to be surprised by when and how they show up. The other day, I was going to meet a friend for a round of disc golf. As we were getting ready to tee, we spotted another long-time friend who genuinely lit up as soon as she saw us. She had acted on impulse to drive to the course (for the first time in a long time) and knew she’d find what she needed – Bam! Cosmic timing always blows my mind because it consistently supports those unexpected events that fill our souls. 

We don't get to see each other often, so it always feels like a gift when we do hang out. We act completely silly and laugh hysterically… At the same time, we have seriously deep conversations while we are doing it. These are people who accept me for exactly who I am, with an unguarded blend of love and objectivity. I can be brutally vulnerable and they are free to call it as they see it, but at the end of the day, we always wind up laughing within the arena of our beautiful, dumb, smart, creative, limited Wholeness. We see what we see, and we allow each other to be… 

Friends like that can be hard to come by, and I am beyond grateful – astounded, even – that I have been surrounded by such an abundance of great connections in my life. One of the earliest sources for this has been the Disc Golf Community (DGC). In particular, these people have left doors open for me all over the world, should I ever need/want to walk through them. This group is notably stacked with some truly phenomenal people. They come from all types of political, racial, and religious backgrounds, but that rarely affects the relationships. These differences might trip them up off the course, but nature is a powerful harmonizer that helps to neutralize our hard triggers. 

On the course, the welcoming environment quells the surface unrest with its solid, underlying root system. We are generally able to breathe easily here. Somehow, when you know the pure joy of holding a plastic disc in your hand as it gets ready to fly, your heart becomes just a little more open and your soul finds a little more intellectual allowance. Our egos are able to relax enough to hear the consistent drumbeat of our souls. That combination reaches your heart (whether you know it or not), just because you showed up to play. Disc Golf Does That.

Universally, disc golf informs our individual understanding of Wholeness because it subjects us to so many random variables, including the unpredictable weather. It reinforces our ability to shift our focus (emotionally, spiritually, mentally and physically) in real time. This kind of perspective lets us see immediate effects on our values and conditions, and I know that is a basis for its overall appeal. We get to watch impossible things happen so often that they no longer seem impossible! – and that is one of life’s most incredibly cool tools. Most disc golfers know this inherently, and enjoy sharing it with others. Open doors. I used to advise my friends who moved around a lot to pick up disc golf as a hobby. It’s always easy to make a new friend for an afternoon (or a lifetime).

During the pandemic, when a lot of things shut down, disc golf was able to extend an open invitation for people who really needed something. The roots of this fledgling sport, which has been so carefully tended since the early eighties, began to produce a whole lot of champion fruit as it attracted a broader pool of athletes. There are several technological and circumstantial reasons that explain why Covid became a perfect storm for disc golf to thrive hard (and just WOW, right?!), but I still couldn’t have imagined the exponential expansion that has occurred within such a short time frame. The universe is a study in expansion – a constant demonstration that we are always learning about things we don’t know. It is only we, the human race, that feeds . It feels so good when we are intentionally breathing into our own Wholeness, and it’s even better when we can see the people around us doing it too.

The sting of growing pains are felt by the DGCs OGs, no doubt, but the love of the sport persists well beyond those waves of feelings. The original intentions that were poured into our earliest efforts serve to support a much larger ideal picture of what Disc Golf can be. This powerful, grass roots sport contains an energetic well of hopes and dreams that find ongoing purchase in the present climate. Even though it can feel forgotten to those who seek to remember our specific history, their creative intentions will always be the strong foundation upon which everything else develops. These incredible ideas continue to take leadership form as course designers carefully consider the natural landscape to be an integral part of what we do. These courses continue promoting the idea/belief that we are all connected; not just by the cellular structure that forms us, but with an increasing awareness that we can all see magical things happen every single day, we just have to be out here looking for them!

Magic and Wholeness go hand in hand, but the connotation of each word could use a little polish. In general, humans have become so intellectually astute that we have practically talked ourselves out of seeing most of the enchanted moments that happen around us. To some degree, we acknowledge those things as childhood dreams and fantasy, but for the most part, we chalk them up as coincidences. (Fun exercise: start making a list of the coincidences that happen in your life and see what types of patterns emerge when you string them together). I am no longer surprised by how often this happens, but I continue to be amazed by my ever-widening perspective.

No surprise –  it has now become my actual job to believe things of this nature. Or at least try to find something that doesn’t support its existence, for contrast. So far, I am hard-pressed to find it. With ORM it’s easy to see the resources being regularly offered up for my use, and appreciate them. During the previously mentioned round, on hole 10, two of us threw our downhill drives straight into the woods. I wasn’t worried about not finding them, but I also wasn’t looking forward to the task of trekking off the fairway. As we walked down toward the basket that was just out of view from the teepad, I could clearly see three discs surrounding it! Against forseeable odds, we had both made it through some thick trees and out the other side for a drop in birdie. Unexpected? Yes! Impossible? No way.

These are the types of occurences that have always tethered us (disc golfers) to our sport, and keep us coming back to do it all over again, but differently. There are times where you can actually feel your heart warm whenever something spontaneous or out of the ordinary happens. The infectious smiles and the vocal outbursts are genuinely part of the moment, but thanks to technology, they can continue to resonate with the full range of the feels, for all time. I have a What the Fuck Richard moment from this year’s Kansas City Wide Open that will stand out as one of my greatest tournament misfires of all time ;). I am laughing to myself as I think about how it went down:

Des Reading (phenomenal human) stood on the tee, lined up her drive, and hit the first available tree, (which is highly unlike her). In my unchecked shock, I uttered “What the Fuck, Richard?”, which I then had to explain to the rest of the card. Unsatisfied that I had covered my ass, I assumed the tee without really lining up my shot or thinking about where I wanted it to land (which is exactly like me, btw). I repeated Des’s throw almost exactly. Exception: she was able to nail the landing in the fairway, and I caremed into the woods, forcing a pitch out. For most people, this would be a wtf moment, but for me, it drives home a concept that I am always trying to remind myself: Anything can happen at any time! When we trust that we can handle these things, whatever they are, we become willing to allow them, and less likely to let them emotionally interrupt our otherwise lovely cruise through a beautiful park (or wherever we happen to be). 

At this stage of my life, playing disc golf has become a bit of a luxury for me, but back in the day, it was one of the ways I truly valued spending my spare time. I couldn’t have known then how much those recreational rounds would pay it forward in the rest of my life. Our Raw Material probably wouldn’t exist without the personal challenges that my relationship with Disc Golf has afforded me, over and over… I get to watch my own part of the whole become indelibly woven into the collection of incredible stories that disc golfers get to tell about timing – both on and off the course. Whether it is who we run into throughout our travels, or the mind-blowing things that we get to watch these little round pieces of plastic do, these moments expand our beliefs and broaden our perspectives.

The resources that I and many other people receive from Disc Golf often go unnoticed because they fly under the radar. They are known to the people in the know, but they don’t quite translate organically into the world (at least not yet). Even in Kansas City, where a lot of us know how to draw from the same type of community energy that disc golfers tap into, we aren’t prepared to welcome the full weight of these connections. Even Patrick Mahomes, our beloved, creative and dynamic QB, doesn’t recognize that the heart of disc golf is directly related to the same energy he draws from when he executes magic in football week after week, but I definitely like to imagine what he could do if he did! I’m even warming up to the word threepeat, which used to bother me for some reason (let’s blame Pat Riley?). 

I like to say there are two degrees of separation in Kansas City, and probably two degrees from Kansas City to the US. And what of the US to The World? Look to the friends, people and communities around you for open doors and don’t be afraid that you are ‘using someone’ by walking through them. It is our awareness that transforms our fears and lets us invite the real and lasting practice of Wholeness into our own EgoSoulBalance. It is a human right.