Blog Archives

Leaps of Faith

17/3/2016

My friend Nike is taking a leap of faith in setting up the Imagination Unschool in Nairobi. All around me, people are taking leaps of faith.

And I love it. Why *should* things be done the way they've always been done, because they've always been done the way they've always been done?

I love the reversals of what's 'normal' in this video; the questioning this visionary, this leap-of-faith-taker, does, of himself, his company, and the school system he oversees - all so they, and he, can *thrive*.

Nice and comforting as hiding behind what we know can seem, it's important for us to keep questioning why we do things the way we do, and if the way we do the things we do is still serving us, the ever evolving, ever emerging, ever converging, ever diverging, collective 'us'.

0 Comments

Why my 'sticking plaster coaching' days are over

17/3/2016

0 Comments

I was never a pure, A to B, coach: ie. client comes with problem and wants to move from situation/ position/ feeling A to feeling B and then we create a strategy/ techniques/ approaches to use in order to make that adjustment, and get to point B.

This has never particularly interested me, though it's what a lot of people who come to me for coaching, and what a lot of us want, when our lizard-brains are doing the talking: a quick fix to make us feel better/ get what or where we think we want to go or be.

That type of coaching has it's place and brings rewards of a kind, but I've always encouraged my clients to look deeper towards where their experience of life is coming from. I've always tried to probe and to push us both towards looking towards cause rather than symptoms, to look to what's deeply true, rather than what's superficially so.

I didn't quite know what I was pointing to, it was just a feeling, a surety I had, that clients were never 'broken', they didn't really need coaching or me, that they had everything they needed to thrive in life, they'd just lost sight temporarily of that truth, that part of themselves. I would tussle with myself and them, wanting more for us, but not quite knowing how to REALLY get there. And often, though we snuck beneath the surface as much as we could, our main focus was the job at hand: how to get from A to B. We got results and people seemed to enjoy our time together, but I always knew there was more.

It was a funny thing: knowing there was a place I was trying to point people, but not having the words to describe the facts I knew to be true as I didn't quite know what the facts were in an intellectual sense, I just.....well, sensed them.

What's new, and different, and incredibly exciting, is that since coming across the Three Principles understanding 2 years ago I have that vocabulary, I have that missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle, I have the words (to the best of my current ability) to describe the indescribable, the palpable, yet formless principles which explain how human experience works.

The impact on my work with clients is mind-boggling - they're seeing things faster and deeper, and the beauty of this understanding is, that as we catch a glimpse of it, as our understanding and consciousness about how we create our experience of (all aspects of our) life deepens, so all aspects of our life begin to improve, to heal.

No sticking plasters required.

0 Comments

A Tale of Two 'Me's a.k.a What's Really Powering the Show

17/3/2016

0 Comments

I used to think there was one of me, but no: there are two.

There’s me, little me, personal me, little mind/ ego me, and then there’s me, the me that’s not possible to define with words or labels, or letters after my name, or marital status, or familial history but I know to be true, far truer than the shifting ego-powered part of me.

When I was travelling in my late teens and early twenties I experienced big, exciting, awe-inspiring feelings, a sense of connectedness to everything, a sense of freedom and exhilaration and joy I’d never felt in ‘normal’ life.

I put those feelings and those times down to the fact I was away, I didn’t have the concerns and worries of ‘normal’ life on my shoulders: I *was* free to an extent, so of course I *felt* free.

I presumed, therefore, that when similar (though perhaps more muted) feelings occurred in everyday life, here and there, that it was because in those moments I’d managed to shake the cares and worries of my everyday life and be ‘free’ again, even if just for a brief moment.

But what I see now is that there isn't a free me and a not free me - that's a false separation: the feelings of freedom and joy and connectedness I enjoyed when travelling are available to all of us, all of the time, alongside and beneath ego-created cares and worries.

*That* part of me is like the sun in the sky. Even when it looks like a cloudy day, the sun is still there, behind the clouds. It is constant, it never goes anywhere, regardless of what’s playing out on the stage of the sky in front of it.

So what I see now is that there are two 'me's.

There's my ego, personal mind/ little mind me, and there’s a Me behind and beyond. A me that is not ''me and *all* me; which is impersonal, which is universal; which is me and not me, because it is everything and all of us.

Our egos are not ‘us’; they are part of us - a wonderful, glorious, many-hued part of us which allows us to experience life in all it's multicoloured glory - but they are not what’s powering the show.

What’s powering the show is that other ‘me’, or you...

or us.

0 Comments

Why there's freedom in questioning the 'truth' of what we think

14/3/2016

0 Comments

There's nothing I can think about a circumstance or event - or a person, come to think of it - which is True.

I was sitting having my lunch earlier, and I was looking around at the garden and thinking how lucky I am to live where I live.

Nothing remarkable about that, perhaps….

apart from the fact that that thought brought to mind another thought I'd had yesterday:

that I wished I lived somewhere else.

The transience of the flavor of my thinking (and therefore my feeling about where I live) over a 24 hour period struck me. It had me wryly smiling about how little point there is in believing my thinking, in any given moment, about anything, to be True.

Our thoughts about our spouse, our partner, our house, our children, our job, go up and down according to our level of consciousness in any given moment.

We’re feeling low: we see impossibility, problems, issues that need dealing with, NOW.

We feel a bit more buoyant the next day (for whatever reason): and we see possibility, potential and most importantly for me, peace with what is.

And that’s exactly what happened:

feeling low yesterday: saw problems
felt more lighthearted today: saw expansiveness, okayness.

This natural up and down, ebb and flow, is SO natural for human beings. Yet the magical power of the universal principles of thought and consciousness are such that our thinking appears REAL to us in any given moment. So much so that we believe our thoughts to be true.

And until we see the ebb and flow or our thinking/ feeling states, our consciousness, as natural, we can think that the not so pleasant ones, and the pleasant ones, MEAN something more than they do.

Said another way: our feeling in any moment, is a reflection of our thinking in that moment. End of. NOT a reflection of any truth about life, circumstance, events, people, ‘out there’.

What was revealed to me, again, (this stuff takes a while to sink in…), this lunchtime, is that those universal powers or principles never stop functioning – they bring the good feelings and the not so good feelings. They bring the: 'I’m so lucky to live here', and the 'I wish we lived somewhere else' thoughts and feelings in a 24 hour period. Both appearing so true to me that they had me sold.

But if both thoughts are possible, then neither are any truer than the other, they are just thoughts, and thoughts come and go, ebb and flow, nothing for us to do but observe the magic in action.

And eat our lunch.

0 Comments

Leaps of Faith

Why my 'sticking plaster coaching' days are over

A Tale of Two 'Me's a.k.a What's Really Powering the Show

Why there's freedom in questioning the 'truth' of what we think

Kate Barsby

Archives

Categories