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
The Subtlety of Existence
How do you know that you exist?
Rene Descartes famously said, “Cogito, ergo sum” — I think, therefore I am.
I often tell my clients to stop focusing on thinking and instead feel their existence.
I also ask them to stop constantly focusing on doing, so they can separate what they really are from all the things they do and all the results they produce.
Actually, I generally just say STOP, and leave it at that.
Stop.
And notice.
How do you know that you exist?
What’s the foundation of your sense of your own existence? When you say, “I am!” what comes up for you — what is your experience of “I am”?
You may feel as if your existence is the same as your identity. After all, the most common usage of “I am” is as a lead-in to a profession, a feeling, or a state of being. For instance, “I am a teacher,” “I am happy,” or “I am cold.”
But is your existence really the same as your identity?
One client recently became aware of how she’s based her sense of existence on other people’s responses to her. Without their interaction, she feels invisible — nonexistent.
We’re taught from very early childhood to seek outside ourselves for validation of who we are and what we should do. As children learning the ways of the world, exploring what it means to interact with other people, that’s fine; we have to have something on which to base our behavior.
Unfortunately, that external focus tends to stay stuck as we become adults. And as adults, it’s really not effective or appropriate to base our sense of existence on external factors.
When your sense of existence is based on something or someone outside of you, or on something (such as your identity or your feelings) that tends to change, then it will inevitably feel very tenuous. And that’s frightening.
So here are some ways to look at where you’re basing your sense of existence now — and some questions to help you turn inward, discovering what it means to come home to yourself and your true existence.
Change your language
Because it’s so common to use that “I am” construction to define yourself, it’s easy to assume an identity or a relationship with things that are just aspects of your current state of being — and then to use that identity to try to locate a sense of existence.
Notice how you use “I am,” and try other ways of expressing the thought.
For instance, you could say “My work is teaching,” “I feel happy,” and “I feel cold.”
How does that change your experience?
What you’re not
Your feelings and thoughts, and even the stages of your life and career, are ultimately as transient as the weather. They come, they go, just as the sunshine and clouds come and go.
One moment you may feel happy, and the next moment sad or angry. One moment you may be thinking about a problem, and the next moment notice that there really isn’t a problem at all. And statistics say that most people change careers at least three times during their lives — and you change jobs, of course, much more often than that.
So if you aren’t your feelings, your thoughts, or your work — what are you?
What is it that experiences feelings, experiences thoughts, and engages in work?
“I am”
Say it aloud: “I am.”
What does it feel like?
The sense of your own existence is subtle. You won’t see fireworks and flashing lights or hear choirs of angels.
Be still, and allow the silence to show you what you really already know.
Just like my client, when you rely on external indicators to give you your sense of existence, you’ll have times when you feel invisible — and other times when you feel on top of the world. It’s impossibly unstable, uncertain, and unreliable. Even when you feel fantastic, there’s still a part of you that knows it cannot last.
When your sense of your own existence, of what you really are, is based on the shifting flow of your feelings and thoughts, or on the responses you receive from others, then it can seem as if your existence itself is constantly at risk.
On the other hand, as you explore the difference between those shifting states and what “I am” really means, you’ll begin to experience a very different, very solid and reliable foundation for your life.
That’s when you come home to yourself and recognize your own wholeness.
“Not the power to remember, but its very opposite, the power to forget, is a necessary condition for our existence.” Sholem Asch, 1880-1957, Polish-born American Jewish novelist, dramatist, and essayist.
If you liked this article, you can
sign up to receive my regular newsletter!