• Home
• Philosophy
• Coaching & Mentoring
• FAQ
• Biography
• Contact
• Blog

The Work of Transformational Coaching & Mentoring

• Mindful Transitions
• Living in Relationship with Awareness
• Radiant Transformations

Transformational Coaching and Mentoring can begin in several ways.  The initial focus of our work together might be on how you relate to the larger world and the transitions and changes that have to be made now, or to those that occur and must be negotiated throughout a lifetime.  It could also start out looking at a personal relationship with anyone from your significant other to a colleague or employer.  Or we might begin by working directly with your desire for personal change and growth or deeper spiritual awareness.  It is possible, though, that work in one area might guide us to refocus on another.  For example, we might start looking at a relationship issue and find that a door opens to working with deeper personal or spiritual awareness.

No matter how we begin our work or where we end up, there are a number of values and intentions I strive to bring with me, and encourage you to be open to as well, in order to build a safe container in which to do and support our work together.  Some of the most important ones are listed below:

• To do our work in the now, the living present moment
• To be gentle and hold our work carefully but lightly
• To be accepting and non-judging of whatever arises in the field of awareness that we create together
• To be willing to be transparent with thoughts, feelings and our intuitions
• To hold the intention to not make anyone uncomfortable, and yet also not to strive for comfort
• To be willing to take risks, make mistakes and accept glitches as a normal part of exploration and discovery
• To be open to ask the seemingly obvious questions
• To be willing to trust in not knowing and non-action
• To be willing to allow whatever needs to happen to happen
• To hold the intention to be patient and not do anything until it needs to be done

These intentions will help set the tone of our work and allow us to explore deeply with a sense of safety.  They will also allow our work to be serious and genuine but also support joy and pleasure in our explorations. 

It also benefits our work if we can introduce and maintain these qualities:

Engagement — This work is intended to be easy and effortless but it requires commitment and an enthusiasm to remain engaged. Are you prepared to show up and be present in this moment?

Willingness — There needs to be openness to new possibilities, a willingness to be different than you are. Are you open to the possibility of transformation?

Acceptance — This work will expose you to new ideas and ways of being. It will present paradox and inconsistencies that elude the thinking mind. It will suggest doing without anything being done. Can you live with paradox and accept not knowing and not doing?

The Domains in which the Work is Done

The division into three domains, or life areas, in which Transformational Coaching and Mentoring is offered is both real and artificial.  On the one hand it is realistic; the work needs to start where you are.  If you are dealing with a major or difficult change in your life, that is a good place to begin.  Many transformational changes are catalyzed by significant and/or painful events.  It makes little sense, for example, to talk about finding more joy in your life if you have just lost a loved one.  At the conditioned level of our being it simply won’t feel right and it is not likely to be successful.

In addition, the approach used to navigate a major life transition may differ from one used to look directly for personal transformation.  In the former, it can be beneficial to spend time looking closely at how our minds function and learn methods that allow one to observe this and to build awareness.  For the latter, it may be more profitable to work at the level of the end result—taking a backward step, as it were, into unconditioned awareness.

On the other hand the divisions may be seen as somewhat artificial.  In whatever life area the work begins, much of the same territory will eventually be explored and known.  And no matter what methods and practices are used, the several paths will often converge in a common place of peace and contentment.

Keeping these thoughts in mind, Transformational Coaching and Mentoring can begin in any of the following three broad domains.

Back to Top

Mindful Transitions

Learning to Navigate Life’s Large and Small Transitions with Deep Mindful Clarity, Alertness and Calm.

Change is normal, it is everywhere and with us at all times.  Much of what changes happens so slowly or is so miniscule in scale that it escapes our attention.  And some change occurs regularly and happens in cycles so that it is expected and thus known.  Other changes can be unexpected, chaotic, turbulent and dramatic and it can seem as if the future is totally unknown.  Some things that change will revert to their former state—although possibly on a different time scale than we are used to—and other changes will be permanent.

In human terms, permanent changes are often viewed as transitions.  When we go through a transition in our lives it often requires an adaptation—a change of view and often a change in behavior.  Transitions can be difficult and sometimes even psychologically and spiritually devastating. 

A life threatening disease such as cancer or a difficult course of medical treatment can often be physically and emotionally traumatic as can a chronic illness or disability.  The loss of a loved one or significant friend, a transition and change that affects all of us at one time or another, requires so much from us.  And now, in the midst of widespread political and economic turmoil, it might seem like we are all living in the grip of the ancient Chinese curse.

With Deep Mindful Awareness, we can engage with times of change with greater understanding, clarity and equanimity.  We can find within ourselves our own understanding and self-generated knowledge of what needs to be done next.  As Dr. Olendzki says, we can begin to make the journey from suffering to natural freedom, perhaps not in the blink of an eye at first, but it can happen more easily than one might think.

This work may start with finding ways to settle your mind and see through the apparent chaos in your life.  Then it may be helpful to learn more about how the mind works and how we can use this knowledge to work with your thoughts, beliefs and attitudes rather than struggle with them.  At this point you can begin to engage with the realities of your personal situation and make the adjustments that may be called for.  Over time you will be able to develop a practice that becomes a natural part of your existence and integrates into your natural way of being, always available to meet new challenges and even the successes in life.

Back to Top

Living in Relationship with Awareness

Bringing awareness to intimate relationships—Finding the “We” without losing the “You and I” with the knowledge that none of these really exist.

As humans, we arise out of relationship, we are raised and live in relationship.  An interesting counterpoint to this obvious reality is that culture also gives us both directly and subtly the message that we need to be independently strong, should focus on, even indulge, our own needs and that we can, indeed, “…live as an island” in contrast to John Donne’s exploration of the interconnectedness of humanity.  We wear our own conditioned blinders as well, which are formed of our wants, joys, fears and insecurities.  Nevertheless, most of us long for and strive for good relationships with others.

Not only are relationships deeply important to us, but it is in relationship that we can best learn about ourselves.  It is in relationship where we see our reactions and our beliefs and who we truly are.  With deep mindful awareness we can come to know ourselves, transform ourselves and potentially transform our important relationships as well.

This holds for all of our relationships, those with our significant other, our children, parents, neighbors, elected officials, gurus and gods as Krishnamurti points out.  We can reach a new level of engagement in all of these relationships that will enhance the well being of the other as well as ourselves.

Relationship work can actually be done as an individual or with a partner.  In a parent-child relationship, for example, it is often the case that the parent has the most capability for initial change and the work is with one person.  Transformational change in the individual can frequently also dramatically change the entire social grouping in which he or she is embedded, whether it is a dyad or an entire family system.  The same can hold true for a couple, but more often there may be a mutual interest in personal, as well as, relationship transformation.  The work may begin by exploring relationship issues and finding new ways to look at, and work with, them.  Or the initial work might call for a broader look at such things as developmental stages, individual and shared values, and goals. From that point, the work may turn in the direction of transitional work as considered above or go in the direction of deeper transformational work as discussed below.

Back to Top

Radiant Transformations

Non-Dual Mentoring for transforming your relationship with yourself and the world in which you live.

Whether our practice is based on the tenets of Theravada Buddhism, Zen or Dzogchen, they all offer support for loosening the grip of the conditioned mind on our moment-to-moment and day-to-day way of being. Practice in any of these traditions allows us to live life more openly and with greater equanimity.  The ultimate goal of these, and really most every other contemplative tradition, is to be able to experience unconditioned awareness-a non-dual state of being in which we are complete and fulfilled exactly as we are.  The possibility of unconditioned awareness, and an appreciation of nondual reality, is actually available to us at any time and in any place.

For most of humanity, however, conditioned existence is all that is known.  Perhaps more accurately put, conditioned existence is seldom really known to most of us, but it is where life is lived, organized and responded to.  As noted on the Philosophy page, we are all highly conditioned beings.  Our thoughts, feelings, concepts and perceptions are all a result of all the experiences of a lifetime and are the natural outcome of interactions with other people, and the entire natural environment as well.  What is problematic for most of us is that we are not able to step back and look at this connection between our conditioning on the one hand and our consequent thoughts, feelings and behavior on the other.  It is so seamlessly integrated into our self or ego, if you will, that we rarely have any clue as to how it might be otherwise. 

Most of us have lives that are not unlike the avatars we might use to represent ourselves in a fantasy computer game.  We know that the actions of the avatar are a response to the programming of the computer game in combination with our input through the keyboard or handheld controller.  Likewise, most of our feelings, thoughts and behaviors are a result of our conditioning (our programming) and the impact of events we perceive in the present moment (the keyboard or handheld controller).  But this is typically very difficult to see within ourselves.

Sometimes we can recognize this reality in others, especially children.  On a rare occasion we might have a glimpse of it personally.  We might see, for example, how we once thought and felt about something very differently than we do now.  It might have been a change in our orientation toward another group of people, a political idea or an activity.  Unfortunately, even when we have these brief “step back” experiences we don’t grasp how virtually everything we “know” or hold to be true is similarly constructed, and can also be seen through, with awareness, as simple mirages of the mind. 

The goal of Radiant Transformations is really twofold, the first is to take a step back to heighten your awareness of your conditioned existence, and secondly to promote your experience of the unconditioned aspect of your being.  With regard to the latter, it is to help you identify unconditioned awareness, learn to be in your life in such a way as to make unconditioned awareness more and more available to you in all aspects of your life and to deepen or enhance the qualities of this way of being.

One way of doing the work of Radiant Transformations is to actually begin resting in the experience of unconditioned awareness-by coming to it through the back door, so to speak.  (Although some might reasonably suggest that this approach is really through the front door, while at the same time noting that there is, really, no door to go through at all.)  There are also a number of practices that can be worked with to open us up to, and expand our experience of, unconditioned awareness and nondual experience.  These include such things as:

• Maintaining and/or refining your contemplative practice
• Experiencing living in the present moment with unconditioned awareness
• Discovering the possibilities of deep mindful listening and speaking
• Investigating mental fixations of all degrees, and
• Finding ways to dissolve and release fixations
• Developing and integrating unconditioned awareness into all of your life
• Opening yourself up to new ways of being

It should be noted however, that although these practices can be enormously helpful in gaining experience with unconditioned awareness, they make up the proverbial boat that helps us get to the other side of the water.  And as the saying goes, the boat can become a burden if we continue to carry it with us once we reach our destination.

In time, or perhaps in no time at all, with active engagement, you can begin to live a life of integration and well being no matter what your external environment.  The wholeness and interdependence of life will become obvious and your way of being in it will become natural and, in a way, effortless.  You may be able to begin living life with a mind as light as a soft breeze.