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
Trusting Life
October 5 2010
So many people — including many of my clients, when they initially come to me — base their lives on a foundation of hyper-responsibility and doing, driving themselves forwards with adrenaline and willpower.
And conventional thinking teaches us to try to assert control — to plan, to think, to believe we know what we’re going to do and how we’re going to do it.
This approach to life — living it through a mental effort to anticipate what’s going to happen and control how it will happen — is a set-up for struggle. There’s simply no way for it to be anything else.
Have you ever noticed that the moments when you relax, allowing yourself to move with the natural flow of life, are the moments when you find the most peace — and the moments when the best things happen for you?
What would it be like to simply trust life? To have faith that in relaxing, letting go, not trying to squeeze life into the shape you want it to take — that in that moment, life just might bring you what you really want and need (instead of what you think you need, or think you should want)?
This might sound like giving up, succumbing to some sort of fatalistic existence, or letting go of the fight to succeed. But that’s just the mind’s story, its continued expression of desire to have control. In actuality — just as the whitewater rafter must yield to the flow of the water if he wants to get down the river safely — when you allow life to move you, you’ll find opportunities for experiences you’d never have imagined. And you’ll discover energy and inspiration, peace and joy, that you hadn’t thought possible.
As one client said, “I’ve come to notice more and more how I’ve lived in my mind — in my thoughts, in figuring things out, always grappling with life as a problem. You’ve shown me that this struggle for control is why I’ve felt so worn out and resentful of all the things I feel like I have to do, as if I’m constantly bracing myself for the next issue that’s going to show up. Living more from my heart — trusting life to be okay for me — has made such a difference!”
Trusting life means shifting out of the stressful, contracted mental approach my client describes, and finding a more natural balance between head and heart.
Here are a few ideas for you to play with to see what living more from your heart might feel like.
Relax and lean back
Your physical position is a direct reflection of your internal experience.
As you find yourself tensing up, frowning in concentration, shoulders tight, leaning forward ... consciously relax. Lean back in your chair and feel the support it offers. Stretch your shoulders, spread your arms wide, and open your chest.
What does it feel like to know that you’re supported, to open yourself physically in this way?
Be in your heart
When asked, most people locate their sense of “self” in their head — in their mind.
What happens when you move down into your heart?
Feel your heart beat, and feel how your breath moves through you, through your chest, through your heart.
One client says, “I feel such a shift. The mental thought-chatter may still be going on, but it becomes so much less important. And there’s a feeling of warmth and expansiveness in my chest — it’s strong and it’s very comforting.”
If you find yourself struggling to stay in your heart, try putting one hand on your chest to re-orient yourself. Feel the warmth that spreads from your hand into your heart — and from your heart into your hand.
Listen to your instinct
Your instinct — your gut, your intuition, the “still small voice” inside you — is your heart speaking to you. It’s life asking you to pay attention.
You may feel that listening to your intuition could lead you to act irresponsibly.
But instinct isn’t the same as indulgence. It’s not the little voice on your shoulder encouraging you to to be “bad.” Nor is it the voice of established habit, or those automatic, reactive patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior.
This deep, heartfelt instinct is the voice of what’s really true for you, showing you how life is flowing in this moment.
“My heart’s voice often pushes me to do things that are hard for me,” says one client. “Standing up for myself in difficult situations, being present for myself in ways I typically haven’t been, fully showing up in the world — these are often tough for me to do. But when I really listen to that quiet voice, listening deeply no matter how loud the voices of fear or habit might be ... it’s never wrong.”
Pray
Prayer is a powerful place to rest.
Prayer is the heart’s reaching out to itself. It’s the antidote to struggle and the mind’s attempt to control. It’s a deep sense of true surrender — not the surrender the mind thinks of as “quitting” or “giving up,” but the willingness to surrender to the flow and movement of life.
Allow yourself to experience prayer from your heart.
You’ll find that this willingness to be with life, instead of struggling against it, is where true freedom can be found.
“No matter how much I try to believe I want to do it all myself, something deeper in me knows that’s not true,” a client wrote to me recently. “The little-me, the me that’s afraid, that clings to struggle, that desperately tries to control ... when I let go of that, when I relax into my heart and into how life is moving right now — it’s scary to that little-me, and yet it’s where I experience peace, love, and the truth of what life really is.”
”The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious.” Albert Einstein, 1879-1955, German theoretical physicist, philosopher, author, and Nobel laureate.
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