Life's Little Tensions

Spring is in full bloom where I live and everywhere I look, there are blossoms and new leafs on the trees. Everything is green, and not the green of Summer, but the fresh, lime green of early Spring. The birds are tweeting and chirping on every branch and the earth is cluttered with all kinds of new life. It doesn’t seem that there is a concern that this too shall pass, and Summer will be here fast and furious to claim its domain.

My favorite author, Paulo Coelho had mentioned on his blog that war has always been around and tensions that end up in one winning over the other exist in nature as well. That is one way of looking at the change of seasons. In May, Spring is at its glory, but in a few weeks, it will give in to Summer. Our lives are full of these tensions, transitions, and disagreements over who is in charge, and eventually someone wins and someone gives in. And when you look back at those events, you remember the battle, the wounds, the stories, and sometimes the ending. Sometimes, the ending does not matter, because you were so involved in the battle. Sometimes, the ending changes its meaning. At the time, you may have thought that you were defeated. Later on, you might see the event differently, or your definitions of defeat and victory may have changed. But do you think like this, in the midst of the battle? If you did know what you know years later, would you fight the same way?

The battles I have learned to enjoy these days start with me bumping into one or two of my huge belief systems. I say bump, because it is indeed a bump like the kind you experience in the dark with the edge of the bed. Sometimes it is sharp and painful and throws you off guard. Sometimes it is just a harmless bump. The collision always reminds me of how small I am in comparison to the belief. Just like the bumping into the bed at night, there is no way, the bed is going to move, I have to adjust my path. The beliefs are there, held tightly by mass consciousness which is a heck of a lot bigger than me in size and strength. These are the battles that my clients fight in the sacred space of spiritual coaching.

These battles are at times sham or simulated battles, just going through the motions with a witness (the coach) and sometimes they feel just as real as if it were a real battle being fought out there in mass consciousness. The magic of spiritual coaching is that with the witness by your side, you can see the results. You can taste the ending and then choose how or if you want to fight the battle out there. You can experience victory or loss and then decide what to do. Sometimes even when the client is sure about what they want, after going through the experience of what needs to happen in order to get there, and they taste the flavor of being there, they choose a different outcome. Many times, they find themselves in a completely different place than where they thought they were going. Most times, they give up the battle and sit in the safe space that we have created together to accept who they are, what they’ve done, and where they want to be. And those moments for me, the coach, the witness, are like a vibrant May day full of life and possibilities.