More About My Approach
I see the continual unfolding of awareness, purpose, and creative engagement with life as natural and fundamental features of the human experience. It is natural for us to recognize the inherent freedom of our awareness and for our experience of awareness to develop toward greater openness and integration. It is natural for us to live in continual creative exchange with life, engaging in an ongoing process of discovering, deepening, and more fully inhabiting and sharing our deepest gifts. It is natural for the challenges that arise in our lives to act as gateways to greater opening and for us to live in transformative relationship with the pains and joys of this life, allowing them to lead us to deeper knowing and authentic expression. It’s natural to live in contact with the beauty and profundity of life, with the depths of our souls, with the mystery of the vastness in which we find ourselves.
Of course, while these qualities may be natural, they’re far from normal, owing to the presence of conditioning, trauma, and a general cultural lack of support for full and healthy development. I understand my role as orienting people toward the natural direction and intelligence of their inner lives and supporting them in moving through material that impedes their flourishing. Ordinarily, what’s inherently “natural” often feels surprisingly foreign or challenging due to the force of habit we’ve developed. However, when a person is supported and guided, it becomes much easier to recognize and align with the essentially effortless shifts and openings that want to happen—that are waiting to happen, if only the right conditions are welcomed. As awareness is allowed to open and material is integrated, what was previously experienced as problematic becomes incorporated into the larger wholeness of who we are, fueling a more aligned and alive experience of life.
“All living things in nature must unfold in their particular way and become themselves at any cost and despite all opposition.”
“And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy.”
I see Emergent Inquiry as a direct approach to working with the core, underlying material of our lives. Rather than focusing on verbal discussions of challenges, wounds, or a sense of being stuck, we instead encounter these elements directly on a felt (that is, experiential and embodied) inner level. Within a contemplative space, we allow this material to gently move and unfold in a natural and powerful way, liberating both awareness and authentic expression in the process. Similarly, rather than taking newly emerging expression, authenticity, and excitement and focusing on verbally creating plans and goals from it, we instead allow the deeper aspects of emergent expression and creativity to continue revealing themselves, working on us, shifting us, opening us, and leading us forward from an increasingly aligned and activated place. When we contact the emerging unconscious through our felt experience, we initiate shifts and new directions, and the more essential wholeness of who we are leads us forward. Our responses to challenges and opportunities arise from this more integrated and aligned place.
Ultimately, I endeavor to support people in their process of awakening to the limitless depths and beauty of this life, to their inherent freedom and wholeness, and to the possibility of allowing life to unfold from this place of deepening purpose and soulful alignment. I accompany people on their continual, emergent quests into the vital unknown, supporting them in their process and in cultivating the skills of living in a transformative relationship with life.
Photo location: Cranberry Isles, Maine