What people say
I can honestly say that, for the first time in 50 years, I’m learning how to just be. How to relish the present moment, which, magically and mysteriously, unlocks the door to the treasure house that is the rest of my life.
- Jennifer Green, Salem, Oregon
From the moment Jon and I connected, I had this deep experience of loving presence and complete trust. Something bypassed my mind and my ability to figure things out, and communicated directly to my heart and soul that I was safe and in the right place. There was a creation of power in our relationship that he honored and witnessed as being mine. It was my power. I had the experience of being wonderfully, beautifully powerful, in the most loving, energized way.
- Laura Lind-Blum, The Idea Midwife, Waterbury Center, Vermont
Jon can help you recognize where you are, and become more clear. My work with him has not been about plotting out my future, it has been about helping me come into deeper relationship with myself so that next steps unfold easily and effortlessly.
He creates a safe, spacious container for you to go as deep or wide or high as you’re capable of in any given moment. It’s a matter of him being able to see the facets and help me make them real in me.
- Sandra Leader, Carmel, CA
My feelings changed from, “Quick, fix me, I can’t stand how I feel, make it better, hurry,” to, it’s not about hurry, and it’s not about fixing, it’s about staying where you are and getting more and more and deeper and deeper sensations that this is okay. You’re fine, this is okay.
It helps me reframe experience. I don’t see anything that’s happening quite the same as I’ve ever seen it before, because my viewpoint has been enlarged. There’s more, there’s peace, there’s joy, there’s love, there’s health, there’s everything.
- Layne Young, artist, Salem, Oregon
Free Article
Honoring the Past
2008 is almost over. It seems impossible, but there are only a couple weeks remaining before 2009 begins.
So many people seem ready to get this year over with, behind them, done. They’re rushing — or trying to rush — through these last few days in their eagerness to move into the future. Given the tremendous financial upheaval and stress of recent months, that’s understandable. But I’d like to encourage you, as I’ve been encouraging my clients, to slow down just a bit to honor what this past year has brought. Ending is as important as beginning; closing is as necessary as opening.
Take a moment to stop and reflect on what closing means to you. Look at the year past with compassion and clarity instead of through the fog of stress, anxiety, and drama. If you spent time last January thinking about your intentions for the year, now is a good time to revisit those thoughts and see what actually unfolded. One client did that recently, and was pleasantly startled to discover just how much of what she had set down in her journal had become a part of her year.
Here are some things to consider as you look back over the past twelve months of your experience.
What are you grateful for?
Why is it that everyone gets so serious about gratitude? It seems like there’s some sort of unwritten rule that we have to find big, important things to be grateful for. While it’s good to be grateful for big, important things, there are so many smaller, amusing, delightful things that also deserve gratitude.
There are days when I’m simply awestruck by — for instance — the beauty of the falling snow (yes, even when I’m shoveling it off my driveway), or the delicacy of my cat Sasha, creeping her way into my lap (and thinking she’s going to steal some of my lunch). Gratitude arises in the moment as I work with clients, talk to my sons, greet my wife Ellen after her day at the office.
What has happened to you this year that you’re grateful for? What small, treasured surprises unfolded for you? What unexpected opportunities arose? Take a moment to recall them and feel the warmth of your gratitude. Then spend some time writing about your feelings. Setting your thoughts down on paper leads to deeper exploration of your experience. And in describing what you’re grateful for, you’re likely to find more gratitude to describe.
What sadness is lingering?
Every year has its share of sorrow. All too often, we don’t take the time to pause and allow ourselves to feel the sadness. Instead of respecting our emotions, we stuff them out of the way and try to keep on with our lives.
Sadness often isn’t convenient. The events that caused it to arise may have required you to stay focused, support others rather than yourself, keep moving to cope with a crisis. If you didn’t have the space to experience your deep emotion at the time, take that chance now as the year draws to a close. When you allow yourself to fully feel it, expressing it through journaling or simply by taking time to sit with it, you allow it to pass through you and release itself. The feelings and the event that brought them can then remain in the past, losing their power over your present experience.
What was impactful — and what was missing?
This isn’t about goals; as my clients know, I’m not an advocate of goals. When I ask “what was missing?” I’m wondering about your feelings of happiness, contentment, joy, love, wholeness — your sense of who and what you really are. How consistent have those feelings been for you, or have they sometimes been obscured by a fog of expectation and responsibility?
Likewise, when I ask, “what was impactful?” I’m thinking about those moments of expansiveness, times when you allowed yourself to simply live from awareness and what was arising in the moment.
Looking back over your year gives you a perspective from which you can see the unfolding patterns of your experience. For instance, you may find that those moments of clarity are interspersed with other moments of frustrating confusion. When you see these patterns, it shows you places where you can choose to engage your curiosity in exploring what’s really true for you.
“Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” Jalal ad-Din Rumi, 1207-1273, Sufi poet, Islamic jurist, and theologian.
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