Lifeletters

Please print this lifeletter if you can. It is meant to be held in your hand

Sometimes I think when people look back at this time on earth, they’re going to call it ‘The Age of Uncertainty.’ It feels like we’re living in a bubbling cauldron of change. Remember that ride at the fun park that whirled you around and then removed the floor? It seems like the ground we’ve been standing on is getting pretty shaky.

Many of the people I work with struggle with survival anxiety. Sometimes I do too. Our survival personalities are very strong and deep. They want safety, security, approval, and known quantities to live by. These are very natural human urges. The only thing is, they have nothing to do with the deeper impulses of the heart, soul and spirit.

I read a great book a while ago, called ‘Deep Survival.’ It is a well documented and researched account of who makes it through drastic survival situations, and why. It touched on all kinds of wilderness disasters, concentration camp episodes, and 9/11.

What the author discovered is not what you would think. In all these situations, it was not the well- trained and experienced ones who survived. It was the people who could remain present, and respond creatively, from their intuitive wisdom. That really got to me. Presence and creativity are the foundation stones for all the work I do. I’ve always known that they are essential for our evolution and awakening. I didn’t know that they were essential for our survival.

Deep Survival

Sometimes I think when people look back at this time on earth, they’re going to call it ‘The Age of Uncertainty.’ It feels like we’re living in a bubbling cauldron of change. Remember that ride at the fun park that whirled you around and then removed the floor? It seems like the ground we’ve been standing on is getting pretty shaky.

Many of the people I work with struggle with survival anxiety. Sometimes I do too. Our survival personalities are very strong and deep. They want safety, security, approval, and known quantities to live by. These are very natural human urges. The only thing is, they have nothing to do with the deeper impulses of the heart, soul and spirit.

I read a great book a while ago, called ‘Deep Survival.’ It is a well documented and researched account of who makes it through drastic survival situations, and why. It touched on all kinds of wilderness disasters, concentration camp episodes, and 9/11.

What the author discovered is not what you would think. In all these situations, it was not the well- trained and experienced ones who survived. It was the people who could remain present, and respond creatively, from their intuitive wisdom. That really got to me. Presence and creativity are the foundation stones for all the work I do. I’ve always known that they are essential for our evolution and awakening. I didn’t know that they were essential for our survival.

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I’ve been lucky enough over the past six years to have 5 children born in my immediate neighborhood. I’ve witnessed a lot of natural and exuberant learning and evolution, right in my own back yard. Isn’t it amazing to think that every human being walking around on our planet learned how to walk in the same way: by standing up and falling over, standing up, taking a step and falling over, again and again and again.

Then we start thinking, once we’re a bit older, that our learning should proceed in an entirely different manner. Sometimes it does, but there is still a lot of falling down and getting up that is an essential part of human life. Have you noticed this? Learning to accept this aspect of life as a given and work with it in a good way can release a lot of our suffering. Molly Gordon, a wonderful coach I have worked with, speaks about learning how to “bow to failure.” When we bow to our failures, we look a little deeper than how things first appear. We get curious enough about the nature of life to consider that perhaps failure is not something to be shunned and avoided at all costs. What if our failures bring us something just as valuable as our successes? This has been a big learning for me, and I’d like to share some of it here.

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Please print this lifeletter if you can. It is meant to be held in your hand.

Dear friends:
This lifeletter is an introduction to the whole process of evolution and transformation, as I have engaged in it and witnessed it over a lifetime. This lifeletter is a bit longer than usual, even though I’ve made this description quite short and simple. I’ve used ‘aphorisms’ or compressed statements that can be expanded and unfolded by each one of you as you read this. 

I’ve spoken of our evolution in the context of coaching as I have experienced it, and as I practice it, but of course it can also happen quite spontaneously.

There are a multitude of ways to approach this subject. This is one window into a vast realm. Looking through it may be helpful to some of you. I hope so.

‘And the day came when the risk to remain in the bud
became more painful than the risk it took to blossom.’ (Anais Nin)

Introduction

Barefoot Coaching is offered in these areas:
· Personal evolution
· Relationships
· Communication and Expression
· Non-dual spirituality
· Writing

Barefoot Coaching begins with a vision of you standing here with a foot in both worlds: the formless world of spirit, or Being, and the constantly evolving world of your humanity. To grow into the wholeness of your true nature is to learn how to embrace and honor both of these aspects.

I’m a coach who engages you, my client, in a process of deep learning, where all of you gets involved-body, mind, emotions and spirit. I have had over 20 years of experience in supporting your ‘evolutionary impulse’ the natural movement in you toward wholeness, freedom and integrity. I’m interested in helping people evolve, heal and awaken in new and surprising ways right now.

This process carries us beyond problem solving, to a place where we can all participate fully in life, and in creating a future that allows us to take care of each other and our planet.

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A few years ago, when the Olympic games were in Athens, I was watching them one night on T.V. The American commentator decided to give us a taste of Athenian life, so he walked down to the main square with the T.V. cameras. It was about 5pm, and the square was just filling up for the evening. There were children skipping rope and playing tag, teenagers on skateboards, mothers with babies in their arms, students drinking coffee, businessmen with newspapers and liqueurs, and old men playing chess. He strolled for a few minutes around the square, taking in the vitality and general friendliness of the scene.

What I noticed was how many people were actively engaged in talking with each other. Not the cursory cell phone kind of conversation we are so used to now, but real dialogue. It intrigued me so much that I lost interest in the games. When they were over, the same commentator went back to the square at one in the morning, “just for fun” he said. “We’ll see who’s left.”

He was astounded to find that the square was still full, and not because of the games. The mothers and young children had gone home, but they had been replaced by people of all ages who were still talking. This was quite unfathomable to the commentator. Finally he approached a white haired Greek patriarch, who stood up to speak with him. “Excuse me sir,” said the American, “could I ask you a few questions?”
“Of course,” the man beamed. “What would you like to know?” He was a remarkably tall and handsome fellow, towering above the American.
“What do you do here all night long?”
“We enjoy each other’s company,” the Greek replied. We laugh, we sing, and we engage in dialogue. We are eager to find out what is in each other’s hearts and minds.”
There was a moment of stunned silence.
“Will you be on time for work in the morning?” the American asked.
“Of course,” the patriarch replied with a huge smile. “But we Greeks have a different understanding of time and work than you North Americans.”

A few years later, I spent some time running a series of conversation cafes in our community. My intention was to bring as much of the community together as possible, and create an environment where they could engage in dialogue. I had been living in India for 25 years, where dialogue and inquiry are like part of the air you breathe. The people in India, like those in Greece, are not afraid to ask what I call ‘the big questions.’ As my teacher there used to say, “Any rickshaw driver will talk to you about God, life and the universe.”

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One of my readers, Karen Marsden, wrote and thanked me for my ‘lifeletters’ a while ago. I realized that she had come up, spontaneously, with a new name for these newsletters. Thanks Karen. And welcome to 20 new subscribers and new members of this virtual community. I’m posting some of your responses to and comments on the lifeletters in my blog, which is part of my website.
The Power of Willingness

I’ve been noticing lately the kinds of questions that arise when I’m working with people:
“Would you be willing to accept this experience just as it is?”
“Would you be willing to love yourself for feeling this?”
“Would you be willing to ask your body about this?”
“Would you be willing to live with this question and not know the answer?”
“Would you be willing just to say yes to this moment?”

A lot of the time people respond by wanting to know how, how to do whatever follows the word ‘willing.’ But that’s not the question. We really don’t have to know how. All we have to do is touch into the willingness.

About six years ago, on retreat, I discovered the power of willingness. Our facilitator had asked us to open right up and directly contact our inner experience, the whole spectrum of our feelings and thoughts, without holding back. He asked us to find out how willing we were to do that. I was in a lot of emotional pain at the time, and I realized, when he asked the question, that I wasn’t very willing at all to contact myself in that way. I was deeply discouraged by this, because I could see that without that willingness, I was stuck in a contracted place. I walked around for a while, contemplating my unhappy state, and wondering where I would find the willingness I was looking for. Then I realized something. I saw that I was willing to be unwilling. It seemed so simple, almost like nothing at the time. I simply saw that I was in a place of unwillingness because I was willing to be there.

It reminds me of Jon de Ruiter, a spiritual teacher, who talks about the liberating power of tenderness. He says that all you need to start with is a tiny droplet of tenderness. That’s what happened to me that day-I found a tiny droplet of willingness. And once I found it, it expanded and filled the whole universe. It turned into something much bigger and more potent that I had ever imagined. I realized that willingness is not something my mind produces. It’s an unconditioned quality that comes from the ground of my being.

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If you really want to get a feeling for how someone lives, look at the way they relate to time. Time is like a river we are all floating in. It surrounds us, encloses us, until we cannot even imagine a different way of being with it. But there is. I am lucky enough to live beside a two year old girl called Ruby. She has taught me a lot about time, gifts I was not ready to receive when my own daughter was that age.

One night a few weeks ago, Ruby’s mother and I were out shoveling snow at about 6 o’clock, while Ruby played in the piles we were making. We shoveled away for about 40 minutes. I was conscious of dinner waiting for me inside, and the night growing darker and quieter. Just as we were finishing and getting ready to go inside, Ruby jumped up and announced with great energy and glee, “It’s time for a walk!”

“Now?” we asked her, looking around at the soft snowy night. “Yes, now!’ she said, “offering a hand to her mother, “Let’s go!” Her mother, who is quite extraordinary, laughed, took her hand, and walked down the road with her, into the night. I went back inside, according to my schedule. But the moment continued to haunt me. My heart recognized a lost opportunity.

Whenever I’m with Ruby, I remember when I was young, and my mother would wake me in the morning for school. I never wanted to get up.  I would do this thing I called ‘slipping inside the moment.’ As I lay in bed, I would let myself fall inside each moment, until it stretched out, became elastic, and seemed to last far longer than what the clock was telling me.

During the last few years that I have been coaching, there is one thing that more of my clients have expressed than any other. And that is a great longing to be free of the tyranny of time. Some of them speak about the place of ‘just being’ or ‘being in the flow,’ and how that slips away and disappears when the day’s activities take over. One client of mine spoke last week about ‘that Sunday feeling,’ when there is nothing structured or planned-just a wide open space before you, ‘where you don’t have to be anybody.’ She said that was more important to her than anything.

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I want to thank all the people who have written to me from all over the world in response to my newsletters. I love getting your emails. Please let me know if there is anything in particular you would like me to focus on: a question or challenge you might be working with.

People have been asking me where I’ve learned what I’m writing about. These newsletters are not literature! They are reports from an ongoing practice and investigation that is my life. I discover most of what I am writing about in the relationships, inquiries, and dialogues I have with my students and clients.  The courses, retreats and sessions are the laboratories in which we drill down into the living wisdom that reveals itself, again and again. I call it ‘deep learning,’ the kind of learning that takes us down to the ground of our being.

“Along which secret aqueduct,
Oh water, are you coming to me,
water of a new life
that I have never drunk?” (‘Last night as I was sleeping,’) Antonio Machado

David Mackenzie reminded me last week of James Hillman’s book, ‘The Soul’s Code.’ Hillman is a prominent Jungian therapist. He speaks about the myth of the hero/heroine in our world, and what an illusion it is. The heroic approach demands what I call ‘false courage’, a will of steel, and endless struggle. As a hero or heroine, we are invested in being strong, in ploughing our way through obstacles, in never admitting defeat.

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Please print this newsletter if you can. It is meant to be held in your hand.

A Foot in Both Worlds

When we were living in India, there was not much about our life that was certain, safe and predictable. Life in that country is full of wild and spontaneous happenings that cannot be controlled. Floods, cholera and diptheria, landslides, thieves, and terrorists were a regular part of our landscape. Not to mention daily power outages and water shortages.

I used to watch westerners who came to live and study in our community go through a whole process, just learning to live in India. Often they would get really angry, and burst out in wild rages when they experienced the lack of control they had over their day to day lives. Our whole conditioning in the West seems to be telling us that we can and should take control of our lives, and that if we can’t, there is something wrong with us. I’d like to look at that basic assumption right now, explore for a few minutes that underlying belief and some of its consequences.

Is it really true that you are the one that is in control of your life? This body-mind, this person with a name and form, who thinks they are a separate, concrete entity - is this really who is making things happen?

This person, this human being, lives in what Deepak Chopra calls the local or manifest domain. This is the world of the senses, of things we can grasp and understand with the body and mind. This is the world that most people call ‘real’ in our western culture.

In India it is very different. The manifest field there is not considered primary. What is primary is the unmanifest world, the non-local domain, which cannot be grasped by the mind or the senses. The ancient and traditional culture of India, and of many indigenous societies, was based on the primacy of the spiritual realm, the unmanifest, the source of being. Even the activities of daily life were engaged in so that the nature of this human conditioned attention could be drawn back into this source, recognizing it as the one life in every being, the unseen force that moves everything.

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