Intro to "The Spiritual Coach"

What is a Spiritual Coach?

 It could be said that I am a "coach of many colours" - working, as I do, across a wide range of coaching disciplines.The question above, therefore, is a rather important one, particularly for me, as I have been asked to explain it a number of times since I nailed these particular colours to my mast!
What is it ALL about?

Well I believe it starts with an Understanding about ourselves at a spiritual level - or that place where we might say our Soul dwells. This spiritual place, that I might also describe as "The Cosmic Domain," is the domain of Universal Mind or where everyone, all of us, is united in the grand scheme of things. I've also heard it described as The Collective Unconscious.

So there's a lot of titles for this formless place that has, seemingly, been around for ever - and has certainly been in the Minds of Men since mankind began contemplating the beyondness of all things.
There's a wonderful, eternal or spiritual perspective taken by the French philosopher, theologian and cosmologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), which is encapsulated in this, his most famous quote:-

"We are not human beings having a spiritual experience
We are spiritual beings having a human experience."

There are two other fundamentals that are with us every step of this journey. One is the power of Thought as a never ending and formless energy, and the other is Consciousness. Consciousness, through our sentience, gives us the capacity to feel, perceive, or experience subjectively.
This, essentially, is the human experience that Pierre Teilhard de Chardin is talking about - it is our relationship with our thinking and our level of Consciousness at any moment in our lives.

So how does this translate into "Real Life" you might ask?

Inside Out

We are born as spiritual beings and we set out upon a journey of distinctly human experience. We learn about all the things that occupy our small corner of the world, and we also learn how to navigate ourselves within that world. Most of all we learn how to express ourselves within that world through the power of verbal language.
We discover, very quickly, that this verbal language is the coded way we can communicate with everyone within that world - including our Self. We now have the means of turning things we can only feel with our senses - via sensual language - into words. we can now make sense of what everyone else is trying to say to us, and also we can now communicate with ourselves beyond our Inner Language of Self.

Round about now with our developing selves, we also start to establish our relationship with the power of Thought, that shows up in the form of our thinking. When our thinking becomes enmeshed and entwined with our verbal language, we then become almost seduced by the nature of Outside In. And with Outside In we set out on the road of believing our thinking to be a reflection of what is Real in the moment. Since it seems WE are the centre of our 'universe' then what we feel is happening to us is caused by things on the Outside of Us. This is what I mean by Outside In.
Our modern, material world, is full of the simplest illustrations of things outside of us being the main cause of things happening inside of us.
Take the power of the Now, that pivotal moment in our experience where EVERYTHING only ever happens.

We have the capacity to only ever be ONE thing at a time in every NOW moment.

So why would we not be happy, as a choice? Makes sense, doesn't it!
Yet - we put off our happiness Right Now by saying to ourselves "I'll be happy when I've got ... the house, the car, the relationship, the job, the money, the right amount of money, the clothes, the degree, the ability, the perfect whatever."
This choice that we have is something of a divine gift. Yet if we don't know we have the choice then how can we exercise that choice? Instead we merely shrug our shoulders and whisper to ourselves, "Because, at the end of the day, I'm only human, after all."
We affirm to ourselves that we are Human Beings and this is a Human Experience.

So, in terms of our Spiritual Being having a Human Experience, you can certainly see how Outside In takes us further and further into the Human Experience and further and further away from the Spiritual Experience.

Of course there are people for whom the Human Experience is a totally adequate way of living their entire life. Yet there's more to Life than THAT - and we all know this and feel this somewhere deep down inside. There are moments in our lives when we come face to face with our Spiritual Selves - we make an Inner connection - and for some of us we keep that connection going, and we become aligned with our TRUE Selves.

The Human Experience persists

The thing is - we may regain the Understanding we were born with and reconnect with the Inside Out nature of reality - however, the Human Experience persists. And it persists mainly because we are LIVING it! It is there every day, every moment of our Consciousness, in every thought we have.
And this is why we will always have moments of frailty as well as moments of clarity. When our Understanding is out of equilibrium, or off centre, or out of kilter, then our clarity will diminish and our frailty will increase. When our frailty increases we lose our sense of wellbeing and security. When our clarity returns we realign with our sense of wellbeing and security.
It is a simple though not always easy equation.

And with easy and hard - like that - here I'm reminded of Robert M Pirsig's quote in his book
Zen and the Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance ...
"Is it hard?"
"Not if you have the right attitude. It's having the right attitude that's hard."

The Video

In this video from December 2016, I talk about "demons of wayward thinking" that beset me in the midst of a dark, dark night. These are the times in our lives when we are either very much alone with our thoughts in Mind - or FAST ASLEEP! And it is very easy to endlessly plough the fields of our thinking at 4am, especially when that thinking is Wayward.
In the commentary I point at the awful nature of the demons, and the surest way to clarity.

That, in essence, is the nature of my conversations with clients when I am working as a Spiritual Coach. To point people towards their relationship with the power of Thought as made into the form of their thinking - and to realign them with the Inside Out nature of reality that we were all born with as Spiritual Beings.

The Space Walk

On Saturday 8th October I joined my good friend Liz Scott on one of her Dartmoor walks. These walks are centred around locating certain crosses, of which there are many dotted in and around the Moor - and she takes along her sound recording equipment in order to interview conversations she has along the way with her companions.
This day I was delighted to be one of those companions and we shared our thoughts on a topic that, for me, is very much central to all coaching and particularly to transformative coaching - Insights.

Insights

Insights emerge from our innate place of wisdom, and as they present themselves in our consciousness, they assume a rather similar identity to our thinking, the trains of our thoughts, the products of our harnessing the power of thought. However, whilst our thinking has emerged from our intellect, our insights have emerged from a much deeper place - the inner mind, you might say, or the deeper energy that is linked to our soul. This is the spiritual plane, which I tend to refer to as the Cosmic Domain - a universal place where everything just IS.

Needless to say, this is a very far-out view and might actually beg the question - am I, as a human being, really connected to all this, even something way out at the far reaches of the universe? Am I, as a very ordinary person surrounded by the very ordinary trappings of everyday life with all my trials and tribulations, am I really connected to all that out there?

Cosmic Domain

Well for me the answer is a resounding YES, and there's a very interesting link between the vastness of the Cosmic Domain and ourselves that involves ... space. They say nature abhors a vacuum - and in a similar way it could be said that our conscious intellect, our Ego if you like, abhors space.
In our busy lives we are beset with endless boatloads of thoughts, and if there is any space around we tend to want to fill that space. Of course, in the very act of filling the space we ask masking our insights!
One of the joyous spin-offs from such a walk as ours on that day, was the fact that we were surrounded AND in the midst of, a huge amount of physical space. Some of the views were almost as astounding as gazing up at the heavens on a very starry night, where it is easy to get a sense of staring into the infinite. Yet - out there in the infinite - is a sense of Home, where we connect with our inner, our spiritual self. And it is as if our insights are a message from Home perhaps saying "here is the way back," "here is the answer," "you have everything you need," or "don't worry - be happy," even.

Space

Another aspect of the vastness of space is our Inner Space. This is a space where, at a molecular level, we know from science that there is more space than substance. In our psyche, also, there are enormous areas of space, that - even if we just consider them, imagine them - can have an extraordinary calming and beneficial effect.

The thing about all this is that it is so very easy to ignore it all, to let it pass us by because we have to attend to what is going on right now, to prepare for what is coming tomorrow, and to remind ourselves about all the yesterdays.
Yet there is so very much more going on out there, and in there, in the vastness of our spiritual places.

Anyway - enough of a preamble!
Here is the recording of some musings on our actual AMBLE, our walk or, as I called it ...
Our Journey Into Space!

Be Well!

We don't need no Thought Control

Part of the narrative of my book Navigating The Ship of You explores the power of thought and the nature of how we personalise that power into what then becomes our thinking. In this extract I outline the role the RAS (Reticular Activating System) can play with our thought processes.

The RAS and our Thinking

It is important here now, to get a degree of “knowing” about an area of the brain called the Reticular Activating System or R.A.S as it is more simplistically known.

The RAS is situated at the base of the brain stem and is a highly complex and functional, though older, part of our brain. By older here I mean part of our “lizard” brain that was there back in the earlier stages of our development.

Amongst a considerable number of diverse neurological functions and roles relating in particular to our consciousness (our awakeness say), the RAS is described as being “the portal through which nearly all information enters the brain”. The RAS filters the incoming information and affects what we pay attention to and how aroused we are.

We can consciously direct its attention towards filtering out, and also to filtering in. Consequently we can filter for noticing similarity and, conversely, we can filter for noticing difference.

Now this is quite understandable in terms of information and data – yet what about our thinking, our thought processes, the content or product of our harnessing of the power of thought?
Can the RAS filter this as well?

Well the key is in the nature of how we might be intending to use the RAS. If we use it as a FILTER then the outcomes are more likely to be beneficial; if we use it as a CONTROLLER then we are more likely to run into difficulties.

The FILTER usage is crucial in helping life’s navigation skills in a number of ways. One is where we need to be oriented towards the Unknown, and noticing what is different and needs to be recorded. Another is to orient us away from noticing “sameness” when we are journeying into the “Known”. The consequence of the latter is to guide us away from ‘lazy’ navigating. This way we will spot the new thoughts rather than wholly relying on the stale thoughts.

The idea that the RAS can be directed to CONTROL our thinking is not beyond question – although we can and have all experienced the power of positive thinking from time to time.

Directing our perceptive filtering to ignore certain things and notice others is straightforward enough – so, as the song goes, when we accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, and latch on to the affirmative -then we “Don’t mess with Mr In-Between!”.
It’s the panacea for all our ills, isn’t it?

“I want to be an optimist!” We hear the cry.
“How easy is it going to be?” We hear the rhetoric.

Well to the person who has no grounding in good life navigation, then the controlling argument mentioned above will sound attractive, very compelling, and will work for them for a while.
Yet nothing will have changed – particularly their attitudes and beliefs!
It would be like them holding a compass and pointing the needle towards the direction they want to go – rather than letting the compass tell them where true north is.

Or, as I have said to a number of people hell-bent on following their noses, it would be like trying to stop a car by grabbing the speedometer needle, turning it round to zero and THEN convincing your self, the “I” part of you,  that the car had stopped!

Delusional – certainly.
Perceptive blindness – definitely.

The Consequence

Of course we can arrange and filter our thinking, but it is only a temporary process.
It is a process we need to remember to do over and over again. Plus – at the end of the day – it is ONLY ever going to be dealing with, shuffling and re-arranging our thinking. And it’ll be stale thinking as well!

It is the classic domain of the “confidence player” in sport, for example. This is the person whose performance relies upon endless positive affirmation of ONLY what is good about what they are doing, or how they are performing.
They are constantly thinking and judging and thinking and judging – in the midst, all the while, of actually playing as well – or trying their ‘best’ to!
“Am I doing well? Am I doing well?
Well, if I think I am – then I am! But if I think I’m not then I’m not.”

“What do you think?” He’ll ask.
“Well, you need to stop thinking for a start,” I’ll reply.

The Paradox

Do you want to know the sure fire way to becoming a Positive Thinker?

You need to harness the power of thought and gain an Understanding of the power of thought from the ground up. This lays a firm foundation.
Here’s the thing about becoming a Positive Thinker, however.

The solution is a paradox.

The solution will happen when you notice the difference having first laid a firm foundation. And the difference you’ll notice is that there is no positive or negative any more – just our thinking!

There’ll be nothing to accentuate, or eliminate, or latch onto.

It’ll just be the way we are.
And then we’ll know the answer to the question,

“What’s it like to be?”

For when we realise our thoughts are uniquely ours AND that we’re the ones doing the thinking, only then can we really start to get out of our own way.

Then we can start to properly navigate our own ship.

A few things to consider before writing the list of “50 Things to do before I die”

The Unknown Journey

In the book “Navigating The Ship of You” I explore the unknown-ness of Life and how, through navigating well, we can step into the unknown and come back having made it known.

Every day contains a vast amount of “unknown” and in order to gain the most for ourselves from the day we need to journey well. And a crucial part of journeying well comes in attending the present moment, for every present moment IS the journey – unlike the past, or the future.

Of course, part of today’s journey might involve some preparation for tomorrow’s journey – and if we do not attend well to that preparation, when tomorrow finally arrives then that “today’s journey” will unfold for us in a different way than we might have thought – yesterday!

Planning for tomorrow is fine - provided we understand that when it arrives it becomes another unknown and unfolding today.

And therein lies the paradox – the mystery of Life if you like – and our preparation, however that might be, is all about how we might be navigating.  

Finite

One of the crucially finite things we need to remember about Life, of course, is that ALL of our roads lead not to Rome – but to our Final Resting Place.

As a result, we can realise that all the roads and all the journeys are and have been of THE most paramount importance to us – and that that importance has filtered out to those we love and those we influence. It is not difficult to conclude that the more roads travelled and the more journeys undertaken – the fuller and richer all our lives will be as a result.

We often hear of the rueful catalogues of regrets and missed opportunities from people at the end of their lives. All the “I wish I hads ...” and the things they would have done differently, are testament to the relevance of perhaps how they could’ve been more contenders in the game of Life and not mere spectators; how they could’ve been better at Navigating their Ship of You.

By the same token, the lists of “Fifty things to do before I die” that abound, also are a reminder that we forever dream to lift our noses from the Grindstone in order to put some self-directed perspective into our lives – Before it is too late!

We were never born with that Grindstone, but we looked at it and were told it was our salvation – and then in true Faustian manner we have sold our souls to it. The irony of our “50 Things” lists is that they are an attempt­ to buy back our souls by giving us an imaginary glimpse of some uplifting experiences we may (or may not) get to do.

Re-Confide

However, buying back our souls is very much a here and now thing, rather than compiling a lexicon of the best future climactic moments.

The first thing we need to realise is that we haven’t actually sold our souls – we have lost touch with them. We have ceased to confide in them to such a degree that we have trusted our confiding to more temporal and everyday things. When we are unsure about the “unknown” of days and our security as we journey, we go for the comforting option of travelling to the “known” instead.
And here’s the thing about the “known” – it is VERY ordinary!

When we go for re-opening our dialogue with our soul, in a spiritual sense, we start to notice how that confiding gives us the confidence to journey, daily, into the “unknown” – to enrich our lives in real time without having to compile a list of a mere 50 future climactic moments.

The opposite of the ordinary is the Extraordinary. And in terms of our souls, would it not be a better thing to dare, for –as we know - Who Dares Wins!

So, allow your soul to dare,
to sail out toward the unknown region.
To venture across where there is
neither ground for the feet nor any path to follow.

There is no map, nor guide, until the one that is yet to be fashioned
by the work of your own eyes and hands.

More than all of your undreamt dreams await fulfilment in that region,
that once inaccessible land.

So loosen your ties, weigh anchor,
and feel the wind filling your sails.
For once you dare to choose to become your own Navigator,
then every day you can set course for some amazing places.

You can be a contender, not just a mere spectator.