There is a radical, powerful poet whose poems I love----his name is Frederick Seidel (pictured above.) At the beginning of a recent book I wrote I used his lines:
"Don't cure me. Sickness is my me.
My terror was you'd set me free."
I think those lines express so beautifully what happens when we go to a coach or a counselor or a mentor. We don't really want to be cured of our defects because we think "that's who we are!" We get confused and think our sickness is our identity. Lose that and we are nothing.
This is especially true about people who we experience as constant complainers. They want to tell you their victim stories. They are victims of how other people treat them. They are victims of circumstances. They are lost in their victim drama and have totally identified with it. It's who they are. Don't cure me. Sickness is my me.
In the second line the poet says, "My terror was you'd set me free." I know that terror! I felt it before going to Byron Katie's nine-day school. People think Katie is some kind of spirit being, a new age priestess with feel-good gentle pseudo-spiritual rituals for the gullible. Well, no, not exactly.
Her work asks that you bring great courage to the party. She calls it the "great undoing." What is it that I am undoing? One woman stood up in the school and said, "I feel like I'm going to die" and Katie said, "Let's hope you do."
How cruel a thing to say, maybe, it would seem to someone who didn't know that Katie wanted her identity ("sickness is my me") to die so that her true self would be set free to just LOVE EVERYTHING. Terrifying. My terror was she'd set me free.
Then, in the same book I put in a quote from John Lennon. It's from a desolate song he wrote called Isolation. The lines are:
"People say we got it made.
Don't they know we're so afraid?"
People thought John and Yoko had it made. They had fame and fortune. They could do anything they wanted. While you and I? Who knows us? And we do things because we HAVE TO! The Beatles had it made.
So, why, then, were they so afraid? Why? Can you imagine the painful isolation that comes with fame? People loving you for all the wrong reasons. People loving you, not because of the work you have done, but because of the fame you have. The face recognition. Hey, look! Isn't that one of the Beatles? Can I have your autograph? I want to be able to show it to people back home. I want them to see that I saw someone famous. What? You're having dinner with your wife? What are you, some kind of snob, better than someone like me? Someone ought to show you someday.
Don't they know we're so afraid.
But the counter to all of this fear is so sweet, and so much fun to put into wordplay. The fearless life is no more than this fearless moment . . . and then later, simply . . . the practice.
Happiness is not a reward for being good. It's not an outcome. It doesn't come from having made it. It's a practice. Happiness is a practice. How many minutes a day? You decide.
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People, really good people, are signing up for the Steve Chandler Coaching Prosperity School starting in October....please email me for your free copies of the two CDs, "Who Needs Coaching?" and "How To Double Your Income as a Coach" at 100Ways@Compuserve.com........
"When I heard about this weekend, I was both excited and a bit skeptical. I hold Steve in the highest regard, and at the same time I was silently like "$9K for 4 days - are you kidding?" I wasn't sure he'd even fill the class. Oops. My bad. :-) The class filled quickly, and he had to turn a lot of people away. And everyone I talked to felt it was an absolute home run.
For me, it was life changing. I very well may have received $100K in value in just two days, and everyone I talked to felt it was a home run. We'll see what happens over the next six months...I set the commitment to double my income, and the intention to increasing it by even more."
Steve holds a beautiful presence, and he is hilarious. Laughter and joy are very high vibrations, and it was a very joyful weekend. Plus, by enrolling some exceptional people in the group, the group energy fed on itself. If you do teach classes, please note that you don't have to hold all the energy yourself! For example, I love the energy of this group, and your commitment to yourselves and to each other. Much of the value of our class - and of Steve's class - comes from the energy field we create together. Then to top it off, Steve Hardison (Chandler's coach, who charges $150K/year and is one of the top coaches in the world) made a surprise appearance on Saturday afternoon, and took things up another 3-4 octaves. We went into the weekend as strangers and competitors, and we came out as spiritual family."
~ BRIAN WHETTEN, Ph.D., M.A.
Life and Executive Coach
www.corecoaching.org
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