One day I was sitting in my kitchen with a friend of mine and I told her that I was taking classes to become certified as a Life Coach. She asked me what a life Coach was. What does a Life Coach do? Why do I need a Life Coach? Those were very good questions. So I thought about it, and came up with this presentation to try to answer these questions.
Life is a process of growth. It’s an accepted scientific fact that everything in the Universe goes through a process of Growth. When you grow physically, your mom takes you to buy you new clothes every year (or sometimes more often) because you keep getting bigger! As we become more “enlightened” as human beings we are becoming more accepting of the fact that we are not only physical beings, but we are also spiritual beings. Can we conclude that if everything in the universe goes through a process of growth that we, as both physical and spiritual beings, not only go through a process of physical growth, but also go through a process of spiritual growth? Just as we outgrow our physical clothes, some of us outgrow our spiritual traditions which have “clothed” us and have been our pathway to spiritual growth. As we develop our consciousness what may have been seen as an acceptable attitude in your family growing up, no longer “fits”. There are many different traditions through which people attempt to grow spiritually. This reminds me of an old Indian tale. An Indian village approached the wise man in the village and asked him to please help them understand what is True about Life. He had everyone gather in the village square and asked for three volunteers to come forward and he put blindfolds on each person. Once the three volunteers were blindfolded, he made some room in the middle of the square and brought a big elephant into the middle of the square.
The wise man then asked the three people that were blindfolded, to go into the middle of the square and tell him what they thought was there. The first person went into the square and was feeling around and grabbed the elephant’s trunk. I’ve got it! This is a hose. The second person went into the square and started feeling around and grabbed the elephant’s tail. I’ve got it! This is a rope.
The third person went into the square and walked right into the side of the elephant and bumped his nose. You tricked me, there’s nothing but a wall here. The three people proceeded to argue about their experiences and insisted that what they experienced was the truth. How could a hose be a rope, how could a rope be a wall? They just could not agree as to what was in the middle of the square. They actually got angry at each other because they couldn’t convince each other that their experience was the “right” one. The wise man then asked the three people who were now arguing to take off their blindfolds. They were all ashamed of themselves to realize that they all were just experiencing a small part of the elephant. The wise man said that in order to understand what is true, you need to let go of the truth that you are holding on so tightly to. Only when you let go and take a step back can you experience the whole truth. Yes the elephant is a hose and a rope and a wall. It is all three of these things. If you can see the whole elephant, you can see that it is much more that those things! All three of these people could get on top of the elephant and go for a ride! They could use the elephant to help them with their farming. Once you let go of your small frame of reference, you open yourself to things you only dreamed of before! How often does your living room after a holiday meal sound like that village square when the topic of religion, or spirituality comes up. This is one of the topics you just don’t talk about. Everyone thinks they have the right way, and rather than taking a step back and seeing the whole elephant, we argue our own point of view. Let’s take a look today at what our different spiritual paths have in common, and explore the possibility that we are all experiencing the same elephant! YOU MAY WONDER WHAT DOES ALL OF THIS HAVE TO DO WITH LIFE COACHING? THAT IS GOOD, KEEP WONDERING!!
We need to find a point that we can all agree on and I believe that point is that we all want to be happy . Why do we do anything we do? It’s because we want to experience joy. How many of you came here tonight because you really looked forward to having a bummer of a time. We never do that. We make choices because we want to be happy. Can you agree that the Purpose of Life is Joy? Are you happy? Do you feel joy in your life? How can I experience joy in my life? What makes you happy? What is Joy?
We experience joy when our desires are fulfilled. The more your creation reflects your deepest desires, the more joy you experience. You receive joy from your creations. You receive joy when your deepest truth, beauty and love are reflected back to you. Of all of the creation, human beings have the greatest capacity to be creative. Other beings in the creation have a very instinctual pattern of creating. Beavers create damns, birds create nests, and bees create hives when they go through the process of creating their families. We, as humans have an infinite capacity to express our love and be creative. We write poems, we build houses, we sing and dance. As we are able to manifest our deepest desires, we experience the deepest joy! So, if this is true, we should all be very happy! Are you all experiencing true bliss? Are you all joyful? Our state of happiness and health is dependent upon our thinking, by how positive we are and by our ability and willingness to discharge blocked energy. Personal growth and spiritual development is about moving through these blocks. Internal fulfillment doesn’t just happen. We have to make effort. Let’s take a look at how we grow physically and see if we can’t find some principles in our physical growth that we can gain an understanding from and apply those same principles to our spiritual growth.
Everything in life goes through three stages of growth; formation, growth and completion. Everything begins as a seed of potential. If you open a seed of a flower, you don’t see a little flower inside, it’s just beige stuff. The flower is there in potential only. The flower begins to grow only if it receives the right nourishment. The flower needs the things you can see, like water and minerals. It also needs invisible things like air and sunlight. It’s only when the visible and invisible needs are met in a balanced way that the plant continues to grow until it produces a flower that contains the seed for the next generation. The Universal Energy moves this plant naturally toward completion.
Let’s look at human growth. We all began as a zygote. It’s so small, you can only see it with a microscope. If you look at a zygote through a microscope, do you see a tiny human being inside waving at you? No, the zygote is only a human being in potential. The mother needs to create the right environment physically for the zygote, so that it can continue to grow and mature. After nine months the baby is ready for life outside the womb. The baby grows, but is completely dependent on the care of adults. Human beings have the longest development time of any creation. We too have visible and invisible needs that need to be met in order to grow. Our visible needs are food, water and shelter, and our invisible needs are air and sunlight. By age 14 to 18 humans are able to produce the seed for the next generation, so if we follow the example of the flower, we should be complete or perfect by that age
Is that it? Just because we can have offspring does that mean we are complete or perfect? Have you ever met a person that is 18 and they still act like a child? Have you ever met someone who is 30 and they still act like a child? Many people are able to create a child by age 14. If that means they are mature or complete why isn’t that encouraged in our society? Human beings are not just physical beings, we are also spiritual beings. We not only need to mature physically, to be complete, but we need to mature spiritually. So what is the process of spiritual growth? Our physical growth is automatic, but our internal growth happens as a result of our efforts. Let’s use the same principles of growth we used for the flower and for the physical body and see if we can’t understand the process of growth for our spiritual selves.
When a child is born, they are like an empty cup, just waiting to be filled up. I think that’s why babies are so cute, because you just can’t help but want to hug them and love them. In the formation stage of our spiritual growth, that’s all we are meant to do is receive love. As our parents care for us and love us, we learn to trust. As a child experiences the love and acceptance of his parents and his family, he is learning that the world is a safe place, and that he must be a good and beautiful person to have people love him this much! His cup is being filled with the water of life. Potty training is a big milestone in the life of a human because for the first time in their lives they are learning that they can’t just do whatever they want to do wherever they want to do it. We learn that we need to be sensitive to those around us. If the formation stage is likened to filling up the cup with water, the growth stage is learning how to share that water with others and learning how to fill the cup up again. It’s a balance of give and take action that becomes a foundation of spiritual fulfillment in our lives. Just like the physical body had visible and invisible needs, the spirit also has those needs. The invisible needs that compare to the air and sunlight, is the love and acceptance that is received in his family environment. The visible needs come as vitality elements that nourish the spirit every time we do a good deed toward another person. So we learn the process of receiving and giving, receiving and giving. After practicing this process of giving and receiving, we become more and more confident who we are. We develop healthy self-esteem and are able to be in love and acceptance of ourselves, and of those around us. It’s when human beings reach this point of being in love and acceptance, that we are like a fountain of love, and people love the energy they feel when they are around you. You understand how to love and appreciate others, but you also know how to love and appreciate yourself, so your life is in balance. When we love ourselves and forgive and bless others, we are open to enchantment, joy and serenity in our lives; everything flows better. This seed of love and acceptance is what humans are meant to pass on to the next generation.
When humans can live in love and acceptance, they will have families that can grow both physically and spiritually. We grow up to be trusting of others and are free to acknowledge the beauty and love in others. Our chakras are open. If we grow up without the invisible elements of love and acceptance, we develop fear and guilt. We become emotionally blocked and the flow of energy into our chakras slows down and inhibits our physical vitality. If these blocks or vibratory impurities aren’t released we can actually get ill. The blocks are expressed as anger, self-doubt and lack of self-esteem. Our true desires are denied and we do things out of guilt and become unfulfilled. We are criticized and belittled and learn to be afraid of having deep relationships or following our intuition. Karol K. Truman author of Feelings Buried Alive Never Die addresses these very issues in her book Healing Feelings…From Your Heart .
What are chakras? Your chakras are a series of seven independent swirling centers of energy along your spine that begin with the first chakra that is at the base of your spine and ascend up to the seventh chakra that is at the top of your head. Understanding your “invisible” energy centers and how they affect your body can increase your understanding of spiritual growth. It’s another part of the elephant!
Each chakra represents a spiritual life lesson or challenge common to all human beings. Each chakra channels healing energy into the area of the physical body that corresponds with the location of the chakra. If your chakras are open, you will experience health. If your chakras are blocked, this blocked energy manifests as illness in the organs in that part of the body.
All of the spiritual disciplines teach that we ascend toward the Divine by gradually mastering the seductive pull of the physical world. Every belief system seems to address this. Combining the wisdom of all gives us insight into the needs of our spirits and bodies. If we can try to see the whole elephant, we open ourselves up to the underlying truth of all of the spiritual disciplines. Let’s see how these seven stages of growth manifest not just in the chakra system of the Hindu belief, but also in the Kaballah, in Christianity, in psychology as noted by Carl Jung, noted psychoanalyst, and also among quantum physicists. All teach that which serves our spirit enhances our body; that which diminishes our spirit diminishes our bodies.
All Disciplines promote love and acceptance as the core of their teaching. All disciplines promote ascension from the base or physical desires into the enlightened or spiritual desires. Enlightenment, Ascension into heaven, Divine Justice are all terms describing the same Truth of living in love and acceptance. The Sanskrit tradition teaches that the top 3 chakras and the bottom 3 chakras meet in the heart chakra. You invite God into your life when you breathe the power of emotion into your thoughts. In the business world today this is being recognized by Emotional Intelligence. Psychologists have developed a system by which they can rate your Emotional Intelligence. It’s called your Emotional Quotient, or EQ. Today employers don’t just look at a person’s IQ, but they want to know what their EQ is when it comes to hiring someone for a leadership position. In Yehuda Berg’s book The Power of Kabbalah he ends his book by telling a story of a young student of the Kaballah who was eager to learn all of its secrets. He approached his revered teacher and master with a box containing 22 sacred volumes of Kabbalistic books and laid the heavy box down in front of his master. He pleaded with his master to teach him all of its sublime secrets and magnificent mysteries in the short time it takes to remain balanced on one leg. This eminent Kabbalist is one of the greatest spiritual giants to ever walk this earth. Upon hearing his eager student’s request, he considered the question very carefully. His eyes sparkled with infinite wisdom and he said: Love they neighbor as thyself. All the rest is mere commentary. Now go and learn.
What does a life coach do? A life coach coaches you along your journey to identify and live in alignment with your true desires. Your life coach encourages you to be in love and acceptance of yourself. A life coach listens to you and reflects back to you your deepest desires as you speak them, helps you establish goals that will move you toward living those desires so that you can begin to experience true joy. Your life coach gives you the tools to manifest your desires. You will begin to see your life changing in the direction of your deepest desires as you begin to apply those tools and develop confidence in yourself. You’ll begin to experience higher levels of energy and happiness in your life!
A Life Coach supports you along your journey to awaken your true self and be! So that you can bring the greatest joy into your life!
The purpose of Wholesome Junction is to be a place where you can find wholesome support for your physical and spiritual well-being. As your life coach I will be your cheerleader and your constant source of love and support as you travel on your path of personal growth to freedom.