This is an email reply to a coaching client and a dear friend who asked me to help her with her consistent sense of being ‘a failure.’

I’d like to share with you some of what has arisen in me since our phone call the other night. It’s been a very enlivening thing for me, to open to possible ways that we can work together in relation to this old, persistent feeling of failure. I spent yesterday just holding the feeling of our conversation in my heart, and asking, without putting pressure on myself for a pat answer, “What would really help you, where you are right now?”

The first thing that arose was writing..A lot of the work I do with people is more verbal, or bodily orented, but with you, I would like to offer quite a bit of homework in the form of writing. I think writing can be a very powerful tool for you right now. And the first thing I would like you to do is send me that poem, that incredible poem, about being nothing and no-one, that ends with ‘Who wants this much greatness?”

The second thing that came up was creativity...One of my deepest feelings about you is that your authentic nature is relentlessly creative, and that whether or not you end up with a great job by the time you are 80, there is a core part of your being that wants to express itself creatively, just because that is it’s nature, not for any goal, or sense of accomplishment, or approval,

The next thing, which I think could be the crux of the matter, is the spiritual aspect. I wish there was another word, because ‘spiritual’ feels so hackneyed. When I first heard you read that poem about nothing, I had a realization that you are actually awake to your true nature, and have been for most of your life..Then we had a conversation here one day, in which you told me about experiences you have had, off and on all your life, in which you couldn’t find your self, couldn’t locate yourself as a solid, separate thing.

I realized the same thing about you that day, and I don’t think I have ever fully expressed this to you. The essence of all the non-dual spiritual coaching and teaching I am doing right now is about helping people discover the ‘unfindability’ of the self. The ironic thing about you is that I think you are already there, have always been there, but without a deep understanding of what it means, not to be able to find a solid sense of self...It’s very paradoxical, because the more we open to the spacious emptiness of our true nature, the more we can embody ourselves as a totally unique being. So I’d like to work with you on this.

We also talk a lot in Radiant Mind about ‘seeing thru’ the beliefs and thought constructions of our whole conditioned world. I think that is also something you have been doing for a long time--seeing thru all the ideas the world feeds us about accomplishment and success and security. I think, if you were really honest with yourself, you would realize that the way you perceive and experience this world is very different from most of the people around you, even those who are very close to you. In our work together, I’d like to support you in building a foundation, an unconditional space of permission to open to the way you perceive and experience life, from moment to moment, without trying to fit into anyone else’s way, without any apology or compromise.

The last thing I wanted to tell you is how grateful I am to know you. I have always, as you know, found it incredibly easy to love and respect you. And felt something quite deep and profound that connected us. Last night I was lying in bed, reading before I went to sleep, I became aware of all these different thought-threads in my being that still sing litttle songs of failure, that tell me that I could better than I am. This often happens to me with the people I work with: I find that what you are struggling with is not at all foreign to me, and that you have invited me into a place where we can both explore together these persistent ideas and feelings that create suffering, and learn to see through them as we open to the truth of who we are--this something/nothing that is beautiful, free, and right here in this moment.

much love
Shayla

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