Are you coaching others to recognise who they are before thought? Does their fascination with the content of life, and with their personal experience, sometimes distract from looking more deeply? What would support this exploration more?
I was with a group yesterday, pointing them back (along with fellow coach Sam Jarman) to who they are before the content of experience.
Pointing them towards the only constant we’ve ever known — the fact that we exist. The fact of Awareness. The fact of I am. The formless nothingness which is all we’ve ever known for sure.
And it’s so fascinating how the mind doesn’t want us to look there. It wants to keep attention on the form. In the content.
It keeps you in the content — that this is happening, that my work is like this, that I’m like that, that I don’t know how I will…x, y, z.
All of it playing out within awareness — but the fact of awareness, the fact that there is awareness of it, ignored in favour of the dancing, moving content.
It keeps you in the content — not wanting you to look before that. It whizzes faster round and round — don’t look! don’t look! Pay attention to me, this thinking mind! Feelings of anxiety coming up (inevitably) in the presence of that whizzing. Don’t look back there! Keep looking here at me — this mind with all these thoughts. Look how I’m keeping you safe. (Or so it says…)
All of it playing out within awareness — but the fact of awareness, the fact that there is awareness of it, ignored in favour of the whizzing, spinning content.
It keeps you in the content — the favourite narrative-of-me jumping straight back in, right after you’ve just had a realisation of how well you do when out of that narrative. Oh but I’m not the kind of person who… Oh but I could never do that again. Oh but I think that was just a fluke.
All of it playing out within awareness — but the fact of awareness, the fact that there is awareness of it, ignored in favour of the familiar content of the narrative.
We are so enamoured by the content of life.
So, as a coach…
How do you support your clients to shift their attention out of this content. Out of these moving, changing parts of a me and a world, and into the fact of Awareness.
How do you guide people out of what they’ve been taught to engage with, fix and solve and into the fact of something deeper within. Something before the content. Something before the finite, limited, personal mind with the personal-feeling stories it tells? How do you point people to something which — to the mind — is useless and pointless!
What do you see that supports this the most for those you work with? What stories do you share, what metaphors help, what questions do you ask?
Because it seems to me…
That this is what the world needs more of, and that the more of us who are sharing and talking about this exploration, inviting others to look deeper, the better.
And then the more we can come out of the normal idea of self awareness as awareness of the content (in order to try and make it better), and move into awareness of the Self before content, the more of a connected, compassionate, creative world we’ll live in.
And right now, from where I’m standing, that can only be a good thing.
Are you in?
With love, Helen
If you are in — join us on 11th March at 12.30pm UK for a call for coaches in the 3Ps and Nonduality where we will share collectively the questions, pointers, metaphors and stories we find support our clients the most with this shift. We’ll all leave with so much more than we arrived with, and therefore more ways to support this shift for ourselves and in the world. I’d love you to join us. Become a member to be on the call.
I coach and guide smart, passionate, curious people who care about improving the lives of those around them. Often coaches and leaders, they’ve worked hard all their lives to be the ‘best’ them and it doesn’t seem to have delivered the happiness, security or freedom they expected. Now they’re wondering what else is available. I guide you back, prior to stories, to remember the real you because that’s what you, me and the whole world really wants! Find out more here.