Outrage
Trauma is not what happened to us but rather how we reacted to what we experienced. This often takes the form of belief systems and behaviours formed initially to ensure our survival in circumstances we experienced as existentially threatening. In the long term, these may prove to be counter productive for our growth and development…
Burnout
Even siblings who have grown up together can have very different gifts. One may have a love of animals while another gets a gift for storytelling or music. Another may develop her gift of providing loving service to those in need, while yet another develops the ability to make sense of complexity and convey important insights in a gentle, inviting, and comprehensible manner…
Initiation
Most of what blocks us from the Spirit is unconscious. A key role of the sponsor is to help me, the candidate, to discover my blind spots – my shadow – so that it can be integrated over time. This can only succeed if the sponsor is prepared to be vulnerable in the sense that she is willing to share her own ongoing shadow work…
Sage Perspective
My life then took a dark turn. Many years were to follow in limbo, spent in the no-man’s-land of clubs and pubs; numbing and self-medication, whereby my feeling got stuffed ever deeper, until the anaesthesia was almost complete. „Lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely; a story with a middle only,“ wrote the contemporary Irish poet, Paul Durcan at around that time…
Ease And Flow
On a beautiful sunny May afternoon, Cologne Cathedral, one of Europe’s finest architectural and cultural gems, is thronged with awestruck visitors. The bright sunlight is streaming through the many spectacular stained-glass windows, creating an almost psychedelic kaleidoscopic experience. At the base of each window, a religious teacher is singing the praises of his particular window. The Rabbi, the Imam, the Bishop, the Zen Master, the Hindu Guru, and so on; each explaining to the curious on-lookers why their window is the best one, the one worthy of all our attention, even devotion. They have lost sight of the light, the light that is streaming through all the windows…
Sweat Lodge
I sat in complete blackness, except for the glow of the red-hot stones and the firefly effects of the herbal offerings placed upon them before the dousing with water began. When the water did hit the stones, there was a loud sizzle, both audible and tangible. This moment was cathartic. I found myself sweating profusely in what seemed both the `Womb on Mother Earth´ and the actual womb in which I was gestated so many years ago. The former gave me great comfort and solace, while the later came close to inducing panic…
Waste
Transformation processes can be mandated from the top. This never works. Alternatively the team can be engaged to come up with the ideas and then execute. This is a much better approach. If the Saboteurs remain invisible, however, true transformation will never be achieved. Sustained transformation requires the `Coaching from the Inside Out´ provided by the PQ approach. Only by identifying the Saboteurs, and applying the on-going practice of PQ Mental Fitness to keep returning to Sage, will the desired transformation begin to shape new ways of interacting in high-performance teamwork…
Explore!
Our large holiday home was the most downstream of three fishing lodges located on the Owenduff River, two miles from Blacksod Bay. A day would begin before dawn (that’s early in July) with a hushed breakfast in the cavernous kitchen downstairs while the rest of the family slept above. Sufficient food for a twelve-hour expedition was then packed in our fishing bags. As the day began to dawn, we would depart quietly in his old car to drive several miles upstream towards the mountains, to the junction where the two main rivers met. From here onwards we would spend the rest of the day on foot…
Gossip
The conscious witnessing of this phenomenon of internal gossip is relatively new to me, something I have learned in the PQ Coaching Programme. The simplicity and user-friendliness of this mental fitness programme, as devised by Shirzad Chamine and his PQ Team, has been helping me greatly in this process…
Disconnection
Loss of meaning is yet another widespread social phenomenon and an affliction of the modern workplace. In his latest book, `The Myth of Normal,´ (page 290), Gabor Maté writes that: Just 30% of employees in the US feel engaged at work, according to a 2013 report by Gallup; across 142 countries, the proportion of employees who feel engaged at work is only 13%.
`For most of us, work is a depleting, dispiriting experience, and in some obvious ways, it’s getting worse,´ wrote two leading economic consultants in the New York Times.´ Draw your own conclusions…
