DreamCatching

Working with Our Wounds: Integrating Ancestral, Transgenerational, and Early Life Trauma

/ Nathan M McTague, CPCC, CPDPE, CMNEC / 1 Comment
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I’ve had a lot of folks ask me about this lately — so here’s what a lifetime of experience and over a decade of study has taught me about trauma:
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When we experience something traumatic in life — whether we’re still in the womb, in our adult prime, nurturing our own babies, or in our twilight years — and especially when we don’t get enough emotional support in the aftermath, there is a psychological marker inserted into our neural processing. Like a wedge, it interrupts and reshapes everything that goes on around it. This modulation of our neuropsychology stays with us, regardless of years of ignoring and pretending that we are not (have not been and will not be) affected. In many cases, even if we have made numerous attempts to heal, to realign, or to augment the effect(s) of the traumatic experience, the results of such addresses are temporary and maintenance-oriented at best.
We may find that we can repeatedly heal the symptoms, without ever touching the wound(s).
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From a Shamanic perspective, trauma is engrained energetically into our very beings, and sometimes even results in a split or loss of one’s soul. All the healing in the world can do nothing more than maintain the health of the left over part(s) of us. We feel some relief, we go on in hope, but pretty soon, because the original source of the imbalance is left untouched, the same old symptoms, or even brand new ones begin to spring from it. Like a splinter that was healed over instead of removed, the wound festers, and no address at the level of the surface of the skin can do anything to fix the deeper issue. In order to heal the symptoms of the trauma we have to go to the source.

One way we do this unconsciously is to repeat patterns of behavior that are either part of the cause(s) or part of the result(s) of the trauma. This is how we unknowingly attempt to heal the source of our suffering. We keep having the same painful relationships. We keep going back to the same unhealthy lifestyles. We keep protecting ourselves even when there is no danger. We keep re-experiencing similar trauma to the original event. All because the epicenter of our pain is calling us back, back, back to the place(s) we were injured so that we can truly heal at the source, back to the trauma that caused the wound(s) in the first place.

But there is another way.

If, with a trusted practitioner, we return to that original source; if we go back to the intersection of the trauma, we have an opportunity awaiting us. Instead of continually healing ourselves of the symptoms superficially associated with the wound, we can delve under the triggers, under the skin rashes, under the lack of confidence, and the slew of bad relationships, and the failure to thrive.
We can get at the splinter wedged into the center of our life and pull. it. out.
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That’s what my Emotional Body Integration sessions are all about. I spend about 2 hours helping you get in touch with, find the roots of, and address the original trauma. I help you reintegrate the part(s) of you that the trauma split away. And then you get to finally, finally heal your old wounds, drop your old shields, and experience yourself in a new, whole, and empowered way. Problems and issues you never even associated with the traumatic event fall away. Patterns you’ve been beating your head against forever begin to effortlessly unravel. Old proclivities that you forgot or lost after your trauma, return to you like dear friends. And life takes on an aspect that is lighter, brighter, and more fulfilling.
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I’ve had clients discover how a relatively trivial event they’d almost forgotten from childhood was undermining their ability to launch a new business. And once that wound was addressed, they went on to blast off to huge success in their new endeavors. I’ve helped clients retrieve parts of themselves that they had lost touch with for decades. Suddenly they began making art, or writing, or singing again. With another who was experiencing profound shame over the death of a pet, we discovered the shame was linked to a childhood trauma that was assumed healed already. By addressing that old hurt, we made room for more peace in the current grieving process and brought deeper healing to the original trauma.
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Are you suffering? Have you tried everything else already? Are you ready to be done with self-limiting cycles and painful reproductions of your past? That’s what I’m offering, because I know what it’s like, and I don’t want anyone else to have to keep carrying the weight of their old wounds.
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I’m in such a fortunate place in my life because of how this work has healed me. Over the last 14 years, I’ve been on a path of deep exploration and restoration and growth. I’d learned so much about protecting and hiding myself during my upbringing, and from the hurt that was passed on to me from those in my family who came before me. I built shields to keep me safe, but which also kept me in, and kept others at bay. I lost my family, my livelihood, and my will to go on. I repeated patterns of unhealthy relationships built on trying to belong, and trying to help others in order to justify my value. I even dragged myself through a series of several horrendous, high-speed car accidents, over and over again, barely (and lucky to be) walking away. All just to (unconsciously) try to heal myself of the wounds I carried.
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Then I started my training (with CTI) to be a Life Coach in 2006, and began to peel back the leathery layers I had grown over my old hurts. I started making a practice of digging into the places I would normally ignore. Then, as part of my work (with my partner Natalie) to create our line of emotional education tools called Feeleez in 2007, and the research and work we’ve gone on to do with parents since, I learned about emotional development, neuro-emotional dynamics, and rewiring neuro-emotional programming.  Finally, about 9 years ago, I entered into an apprenticeship with Shaman, Marge Hulburt, in Missoula. Through her tutelage and tender but powerful skill in healing, I began the simultaneous process of addressing my latent energetic wounds and learning to help others to do the same. These experiences have not only brought profound changes to my life and allowed me to integrate my past trauma, they have also culminated in empowering me to offer this deep healing to others.
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Part of my life purpose is to ease suffering in the world. I’m on a mission to reach as many people haunted by ancestral, transgenerational, and early life trauma as I possibly can. If you know someone struggling with their past pain, or pain handed down to them from their family, will you share this post with them? And if you, yourself, are struggling with your old wounds, may I gently invite you to get in touch with me. I offer a free “Get the Splinter Out” Strategy Session designed to help you get super clear about what you’re dealing with, what you want instead, and what to do about it.
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Please don’t wait for your same old pattern(s) to knock you into the dirt again. Take this chance to do something different today that will change every day that comes after. Message me or check out the FAQs for more information, and/or follow this link to schedule your complimentary consultation now.
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Because you deserve to be your whole self.
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With love and respect.

∞

Be well.

Purpose

/ Nathan M McTague, CPCC, CPDPE, CMNEC / Leave a comment

Patience masters resolve:
From under the wheels of time,
she pulls a carbon miracle:
Right there
in front of God and Everyone:
Unfailing the wrinkle(s)
of her circumstances;
Biding moments;
Bracing and braving
her tender fortitude.
And then comes the day:
Then comes the instant:
Then comes the action
that she can’t take back:
The leap off the edge
of comfort:
The thing we sometimes call
the opening…

One unfurled,
the bees will have their way
with her;
The season will undo her;
The wind and rain and sun
will all gang up
to destroy her:
But that is not her concern.
She only lives
to courage her bloom through
the opening:
She only lives
to be her true
unbridled self.

Kinda like you and me,
I guess:

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Argue for Your Un-Limitations

/ Nathan M McTague, CPCC, CPDPE, CMNEC / Leave a comment

If you’re like most humans, you’ve probably spent most of your life either being told and/or telling yourself that you are limited.

You’ve been hearing from both the outside and the in that you can’t do this and you can’t do that (“Can’t you read the siiign?”). You’ve been told that life is hard, life is a struggle, and that you have to overcome nearly insurmountable odds and obstacles in order to achieve the things you want because nothing is free. Even love is (supposedly) a battlefield.

The result is that most of us are so couched in our limitations that we can barely see anything for what it really is, especially ourselves.

Everywhere we go and everything we see and everything we do is colored by the limits through which we’ve been taught to perceive the world and ourselves. From this cloudy perspective the world can look pretty rough, and our station in it can seem like nothing but the space between rocks and hard places. What’s worse – we are often such good owners of our limitations that we believe we can’t even move through this brambled landscape without dragging those weights around with us. And even worse still – these ideas have always been handed to us as though it was a favor we were being offered; as though someone was saddling us with all this doubt, and fear, and limitation in order to “save” us from the brutality of life.

This is why sooooooo many of us have lives full of things that we don’t want, and why so many of us feel unable to whittle away these obstructions in order to have the lives we do want. This is why so many of us simply feel like we can’t. We are so encumbered by these heavy halters that any move, change, or goal seems nearly impossible.

Many of us are so limited that it’s a wonder that anything happens to us at all.

And the most insidious part about all of this is that it’s all a bunch of hogwash. It’s not even really true. And it’s not helping us. Not one iota. We’re not being safely kept from getting “too big for our breeches”. We’re not being awakened from some self-destructive, self-delusional fantasy life. We’re not being sheltered from embarrassing ourselves with our ignorance of how life works.

We’re just being caged.

 So I’ve got a new challenge for us all. Since we’re holding the keys to our own destinies, and since we are what we believe we are, let’s make a promise to each other. Let’s promise to get ourselves out of these prisons of limitation. Let’s promise to leave these bound beliefs behind us and never retrieve them.

And instead of arguing for our limitations and thereby owning them (as the old adage explains), let’s give them up. Let’s argue instead for our limitlessness. Let’s claim and discuss and prattle merrily on about how empowered we are, how easy life flows for us, and how peacefully we move through everything that comes.

Let’s never talk about what’s wrong with us, why we can’t do this or that, or why we’re unable to achieve, be, or have whatever we want – ever again. 

No more complaints. No more fear-mongering (even to ourselves). No more disastrous outlooks. No more foreboding predictions of imminent failure. No more “owning my issues”. No more “saving myself from disappointment”. No more holding ourselves back. No more self-depricating, self-loathing, self-abusive bullsh*t. NO. MORE.

From here on out, let us use our words, both inside and out, exclusively for empowering ourselves and others. Let us dedicate ourselves to looking exclusively at how, where, and when we and our world are unbound. Let us train ourselves to be exclusively aware of all the places and ways that we are, do, and have whatever we want. From here on out, let us argue only for our un-limitations – and sure enough, they’ll be ours.

∞

Want help finding your limitation locks and using your keys to get free? You can hire me as your Life Coach – powerful un-limiting is one my favorite parts of the job!

Be well.

Building the Super You: Focussing Your Vision

/ Nathan M McTague, CPCC, CPDPE, CMNEC / Leave a comment

xrayvision

How focussed are you? How well are you able to hone your focus, and concentrate on the minutia of any particular activity or interest? How precise can you be in directing your attention and for how long?

We have a skill set available to us, the potential for which is hardwired into our brain design, giving us the power to focus our attention on whatever we choose, and thereby, draw to us a deeper perception of that which we give our focus. So, for example, if we spend our days focusing our attention on building a physically stronger body, then we wind up perceiving ourselves as stronger on deeper and deeper levels, and it becomes fact. If we take this a step further, there are a number of studies that show people can learn new skills, heal wounds, reverse paralysis, and grow muscle tissue, just by focusing their attention on thinking about performing those same actions. Our focus is not only how we notice things, and take account of the details, but also how we relate to the world, how we experience life, and how we create more of the things we want in our lives.

Dr. Joe Dispenza, the nuero-scientist featured in the films What the Bleep Do We Know? and What If?, and author of the book, Evolve Your Brain, has made a study of the power of human focus and tells of one study in particular in which participants were told they would be learning how to play the piano. One quarter of the participants were shown and given regular time to practice certain scales and other active elements of piano playing. A second quarter was given the same amount of time to play, but no instruction whatsoever. A third section was given information and instruction and then told to mentally rehearse, and for the same amount of time as the others played, this group sat imagining themselves playing. The fourth group did nothing, as they were the control group. The researchers hooked the participants up to MRI scanners so they could tell which parts of the brain were being stimulated by the various activities. They discovered that the second group (the free players) had as little stimulation and brain development as the group that never showed up. But more surprising, and more to the point, the group that just imagined themselves playing showed just as much stimulation and just as much development in the exact same portions of the brain as the group that was actually practicing.   !

The bottom line is, if we give our attention to something, and focus on it regularly and with clear intention, we can create change – change in our perceptions, change in our awareness, even change in our abilities. In fact, depending on the particulars, we can create just as much change with our minds as we can with our hands. But the key is developing the skill of focusing our attention and keeping it focused long enough to have the desired effect. To have the experience, as Dispenza puts it, of timelessness, of being completely absorbed in the thoughts, feelings, and mental experience we are working to cultivate, and repeating that experience regularly.

A simple focus-building practice is doing only one thing at a time and finishing it completely before moving on. It may sound too easy to be good for you, but I challenge you to experiment with it for a day. With every activity that you take on – whether it’s going to the bathroom, brushing your teeth, writing your memoir, or spending a couple hours in the park with your kid – give yourself completely to the activity, and let nothing distract you from it until it is complete enough for the present moment. So this means, no texting while eating, no talking on the phone while driving, no working while playing. You may find it more difficult than you’d like for a daily practice, but giving yourself the opportunity to work with it regularly will build those focus muscles into super focus muscles – the kind that can change your life.

Another fun focus activity (and this is also Dispenza’s idea) is to choose something in the morning – an image, an object, an idea, anything – and hold it in your mind throughout the day watching for how your focus will draw more of the experience of that thing to you. So let’s say you pick “a blue bucket” as the mental image on which to focus, and revisit during the course of your day. Then you just sit back and watch how that blue bucket shows up in your day. If you hold your focus on the image for 10-20 seconds at a time and revisit it more than once during the day, seeing it clearly in your mind, I guarantee you that you will perceive it somewhere else – either a picture, or a real blue bucket, or some mention of a blue bucket in someone’s meandering story you happen to overhear as you pass them on the sidewalk. Don’t believe me? Give it a shot.

Happy focusing!

∞

Be well.

Rediscovering… YOU

/ Nathan M McTague, CPCC, CPDPE, CMNEC / 2 Comments

In the last post, I discussed the idea that we often are the ones holding us back from being our most magnificent selves. We do this in many different ways, depending largely on methods we were taught to use by our parents, caregivers, siblings, and early friends. We have loop reels of negative self-talk rolling in our heads most of the time, we tend to doubt ourselves regularly, we self-deprecate to our friends, and underestimate our prowess to any audience who’ll listen. But one of the more subtle techniques we frequently use to disempower ourselves or keep us stuck is our own self-awareness.

Now, I know – you’re thinking, “Damn. I thought ‘knowing myself’ was supposed to be a good thing!” And generally speaking, I’d say you are more right than not right about that. Exploring yourself, and discovering the you that you carry with you (often too closely to sense) is a necessary project for almost all humans. Otherwise, we spend too much time bumbling around and being dissatisfied and blaming it all on forces outside us.

However, there is a difference, between knowing yourself and canonizing yourself. To know yourself is to look within, and explore who you are, and how you work, and to be present in your own processes. To canonize yourself is to make a claim (based on “knowing” or not) for how you always already are. To know yourself is to take note of your movements in relationship to the events of your life. To canonize yourself is to write in stone how you will respond in every foreseeable situation, and to manipulate the events of your life to confirm and conform to a static version of yourself.

Knowing yourself has some real advantages, but almost all of them are lost if you only use that knowledge to limit yourself.

You might be holding yourself back with how well you “know” yourself if you’re saying any of the following:

  •  “I always… [get sick, get taken advantage of, etc.]”
  •  “I never… [win, get to do what I want, etc.] “
  •  “I’m just a… [neat freak, addictive personality, etc.]”
  •  “I can’t…”
  •  “I don’t…”
  •  “I won’t…”
  •  Or any other “universal truth” about how you are and always will be, or about the way life works for you.

You in a nut shell…

But, lucky you – today you have brought yourself a brand new opportunity to reacquaint yourself with yourself. That’s right folks, today, you can give yourself a get-out-of-self-free card any time you feel the desire to look at yourself from a fresh perspective. Today, you have been given full license to rediscover yourself – forget your biases, make no assumptions, and take nothing for granted.

Pretend you have no habits and see how long you can get away with it. Act as if you have never met yourself but have always wanted to. Forget everything you ever knew about how you respond to life. Take yourself in for the first time. Give yourself an exclusive interview with You. Experience your being-ness from a place of wonder, and exploration. Be a novice to your own existence. Chances are you’ll discover that there is more to you than you were previously allowing, and more to life than you had yet been willing to allow.

Try it for a day and you will change your thinking about yourself. Practice it everyday and you will change your life.

∞

Be well.

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Want to turn up your experience of ecstasy in life? Pretend you are an alien trying everything on Earth for the very first time. Allow yourself the richness of every sensation in all of your experiences. Be open to everything as a sublime gift. For example — eat a single raisin as slowly as you can; peel a grape; watch a bee pollinate a flower; savor a sunset; wish on the first star you see tonight…

Today, You are a New You

/ Nathan M McTague, CPCC, CPDPE, CMNEC / Leave a comment

What are you bringing into your life today? What are you drawing toward you with your focus, intention, and emotional state? What are you creating in your immediate future?

Everyday, we are building our stories. Everyday, we are attracting and manifesting the things we focus on, and intend, and feel. Everyday, whether we want to or not, whether we believe it or not, whether we make an effort to do so or let it happen passively, we are creating our lives.

The present we are experiencing today is the result of what we have been making up to this point. Everything you see in your world is the result of your focus and intention in all the days before now. Most likely you have (as most of us) spent the majority of your life in ignorance of this fact, and therefore, have witnessed a lot of your life with wonder and confusion, not realizing from where it has all come.

But today?  Today you know what you are bringing toward you. (And if not, then I am here to tell you.) Today you are being given the opportunity to focus on, intend, and delight in realizing the life you know is right for you.

It exists already inside you. You feel it and know it as if it were your own hand. You always have.

You’ve just been too afraid to believe it.You’ve just been duped by the naysayers preaching into your ear since you were born. You’ve just been deceived about who and what you are, and what you are capable of doing, and how life works. You’ve been lied to. And now, today, you are in the right place and time to say, “No more lies.”

You can be who you are now. You can do what you dream now. You can have your life now. You simply have to believe it. And know it. And feel it in your bones that you are your most magnificent you. You are the creator of your life.

When you believe that – as a beyond-any-shadow-of-a-doubt belief – then, and only then, will you begin to see it. Look where you are and realize that it is all the result of what you have believed until now. And recognize that if you want to see something different, you will have to change what you believe.

Today is when you begin to believe in what you will see next. SO get busy, you’ve got some focussing, and intending, and feeling good about your life that you’ve got to get to. Your time is now!

∞

Be well.

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Want help changing the beliefs that inform what you’re seeing in your life? Get in touch  with me to set up your complimentary strategy session today!

Who Controls YOU?

/ Nathan M McTague, CPCC, CPDPE, CMNEC / 2 Comments

Are you a puppet? No offense, but seriously, is someone controlling you? Is someone conjuring your life and making you play along? Is someone else writing you in as the unwitting character of your own story?

Well, I’m hoping that by the last one of those questions, you were shouting a resounding, “Noooo!” But put more subtly, I wonder if you might find yourself frighteningly less disagreeable. What I mean is, you may be willing to resist being called a puppet, or being outright controlled by another, but are you giving away your power in other less obvious situations?

Here’s a good way to check – answer these few questions:

  • How did your life get the way it is?
  • How did you get to be the way you are?
  • How did you arrive at your current financial state?
  • If things aren’t the way you’d like, how do/will they change?

If you responded to any of the above questions with any answer other than, “By my choice and intention” or a variation thereof, then you are giving away your power.

How, and to what degree, we take responsibility for our lives and what is showing up in them right now, are fantastic indicators of how much power we currently have. If we are aware that we are responsible for everything, then we are already more powerful. If we own that responsibility and make it our motivation – well then, our power becomes immeasurable.

A place to begin taking more responsibility in your life is by refusing to ever play the victim again.

I don’t mean become a bully, take self-defense classes, or increase your vibrato in adversarial scenarios. I mean stop blaming anyone else for anything that happens to you. Stop saying that the universe doesn’t want you to have something. Stop saying that you “can’t” because of someone else. Stop pointing the finger at coworkers, bosses, spouse, lovers, friends, kids, or strangers. Don’t let them have that power over you.

Take that power back! Own every aspect of your creation. Delight in the surprises that you have made for yourself. Revel in the opportunities for growth, and exploration, and change. Savor the many chances to bite the dust on your own volition, by virtue of your own power, and at the end of your own choices.

Sounds hard, but you begin with one choice. Make the one choice to own your power. And then, just don’t stop using your ability to chose, recognizing that your life is all your choice.

∞

Be well, powerful choosers.

Building the Super YOU: Recognizing Your Limitlessness

/ Nathan M McTague, CPCC, CPDPE, CMNEC / Leave a comment

Ever thought of yourself as infinite before? How about all-knowing or all-powerful? Ever felt like you could make magic, heal sickness, or fly?

What about when you were a kid?

Here’s one of the many places where I think kids have got life figured out more than adults. They still have a grasp on the limitless power we humans have at our whim. Unfortunately, most children are raised by adults into “knowing better”, and eventually forget just how incredibly capable they are. By the time they are adults, the concept of having anything more than average abilities has generally been coaxed or crushed out of them, like all the rest of us “grown-ups” – or more appropriately “ground-downs”.

But we don’t have to be worn out, mediocre yo-yos, lurched and jerked around helplessly by our circumstances. We don’t have to be victims. And we don’t have to be insignificant, either.

Coursing through each and every one of us is some of the most potent energy in the universe. If you could harness the human will, you could light every house on Earth. And if you could fill the sails of human potential, you could ride them to the other side of the cosmos (and back!).

What I mean to say is that we are powerful – each and every one of us. And so much so that we are even able to keep ourselves ignorant of our potency while simultaneously creating every aspect of our existence. We are even so powerful that we live whole lives here, manufacturing every moment we experience, and still die without knowing who or what we are. It takes a hell of a lot of magic to manifest a whole lifetime without ever letting on – even to yourself.

Still doubting that you’re an all-powerful, all-knowing cosmic creator? Well check out some of these links to human “miracles” to remind yourself of just what we are all capable, and doing:

  • 1994 study that concludes the “placebo effect” often accounts for more than 1/3 of all positive reactions to treatment of any kind in which both practitioner and patient believe
  • Urban legend of Supermom lifting a car
  • One of many spontaneous remission of cancer stories
  • “When Fear makes us Superhuman“
  • The Yogi who Lived without Food or Water
  • And other People with Abilities Beyond Belief

After you’ve had enough of that, check out the documentary What If? the Movie for a full-on celebration of our human potential. You’ll be amazed and inspired by what “ordinary” humans are doing.

The bottom line here is this: there is more to you than you have yet dared to believe. You are moving mountains everyday, you just haven’t stopped long enough (yet) to notice what you’re doing or able to do. So let me encourage you to look into what’s possible, and then to dust off that beautiful imagination of yours and get serious about unleashing some of the potential you’ve been hoarding for so long.

Believe me, you aren’t the only one who will benefit when you decide to own your power.

 ∞

Be well.

Whatcha-Whatcha Whatcha-Want?!

/ Nathan M McTague, CPCC, CPDPE, CMNEC / Leave a comment

Got any idea what you want for your life? Or what you want in your life? Or from it?

Well, although it would be more convenient for the present discussion if you said, “No… I don’t know what I want at all…”, the fact is nearly everyone has at least an inkling. It’s the urge that calls to us from the corners of our thoughts and feelings. It’s the intangible drive that pushes us toward some things and away from others. Our secret, or at least unspoken, desires influence our decisions every step of the way through every interaction of every day, and often without our ever knowing it.

And that’s the sticking point, isn’t it? Most of us are all too regularly motivated by subsurface wishes that remain hidden from us, even as they alter the course of our lives.

Think that can’t happen to you? Well, just take a moment to remember all the times you’ve given in to one of your favorite foods or vices, even after you were making a sincere effort to resist. That’s the power of “less-conscious” wants in our lives.

My point here is not to make you feel guilty or powerless. We are all motivated by “unseen hands”. Our power lies in rending the veil. Like the pivotal moment in The Wizard of Oz, we must tear away the shroud of “the man behind the curtain” and expose his mechanizations for what they are in order to be free.

So what’s behind your own curtains? Whatchu got in there?! What are your secret desires? What do you want?

The flip side of this discussion is, of course, that the best way to get what you want in your life is to know that you want it – to claim it, to celebrate it, and to move toward it with conviction. The more time you spend discovering your self and your self’s agenda, the more power you bring to both, the more crystalline your identity will be, and the more realized you will become. When given proper attention and focus, the things we want in life transform from a list of hopeful ideas into the resonant creation of the life they represent. And although it contradicts modern “conventional wisdom” – if we give power to the things we want, and know that we can bring them into fruition by virtue of our intention, attention, and extension of effort, then rather than a bane to poison our happiness, our wants simply become signs of what lies in store for us.

And that’s the moral of this particular story. The universe is a generous, abundant place, containing and offering all that we might ever need or desire. It has always provided for us, filling our bodies with energy, replacing our atoms with care and compassion, adjusting it’s every move to assist us. Simply by virtue of our wanting something, the universe responds and conspires with us to make it manifest. It has been doing this since the beginning of time, and continues moment by moment everyday, working with us to create.

May I encourage you to pull out your master list of secret desires, clear out the attic of your wishes, and make a claim for all that you want for, in, and from your life. Write it down, make it into a song, draw a picture, or carve a sculpture – but make it plain and tangible. Let the edifice remind you of the thing you’re manifesting, and empower you to move yourself in collusion with the universe to create the life of which you dream. It’s yours – but only if you want it.

Ω

Be well, my fellow future-makers.

TrUst

/ Nathan M McTague, CPCC, CPDPE, CMNEC / Leave a comment

Another post from the DreamCatching project, just perfect for you! ❤

28 DAYS at the BRINK!

Ladies, gentlemen, and all of us in between — greetings and salutations from the Brink!

Today’s theme is trUst. One of the overwhelming motifs of this entire project (the art, the collaborations, the coaching sessions, the interactions I’ve had with gallery visitors, the experience of living on Front St.) all distills into the concept of trUst. Self-trUst that we can live and maneuver and express ourselves as we authentically think and feel and create; trUst in community to accept us as we are and enrich us as we grow; and trUst in the universal process of which we all are part.

It’s a nice package deal, these levels of trUst. They feed each other and fit together in a healthy system. When we’re brave enough to trUst ourselves to truly sh!ne who we are — to let ourSelves, our individual most-me’s, out — then we have an opportunity to be…

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Sh¡ne!

/ Nathan M McTague, CPCC, CPDPE, CMNEC / Leave a comment

Here’s a recent post from my DreamCatching project (which has been consuming pretty much all of my non-coaching time!). I thought it would be appropriate for readers here as well. Enjoy!

28 DAYS at the BRINK!

mandelaToday’s theme is Sh¡ne and for me it is the quintessential take-home message of all of the coaching sessions I’ve done, and all the interactions with gallery visitors that I’ve had since I’ve been in the space. So many of us are coming to terms with, recognizing the desire to be, and leaping bravely into freeing our most-self. We’re coming out of hiding, turning off our invisibility powers, opening our chests fully and bravely, and radiating who we are out to all the wide world. And the resounding response is “Welcome! So good to see YOU.”

Shine1So may I encourage you to get in on it while you can, to catch the fever, to do yourself and the rest of us a favor and let out your Most-Me. We need it! And maybe everyone won’t, but most of us, and surely the ones that matter, will absolutely love you for it. Be…

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Corollaries

/ Nathan M McTague, CPCC, CPDPE, CMNEC / Leave a comment

In the last post, I started explaining the concept of Blind Faithº — the bedrock belief that everything everything is working out for our highest possible good(s).

 And though I think I gave a pretty good answer to this question already, I can still imagine someone wondering: “WHY?”

Because I have other plans for this post, I don’t want to spend much more time on that at present, but I will give the following three assertions in response:

  • First, I happen to believe, as I mentioned already, that we all live and die, perceive and ignore, experience and avoid the entire world of life based almost solely on what we believe about it. The perspective we hold on life is the essence of what we live and experience.
  • I also happen to believe that we are all connected — that is, absolutely and utterly interlaced and continuous — All is One, as they say. From our mingling atoms, to the energy connecting us and the empathy we share with everyone, we are as indivisible from stars as we are from each other. That is, we are all vital parts of the same thing.
  • Finally, I also believe that the whole thing of which we are all parts cannot, truly speaking, ever do itself harm. There is no source of suffering in the universe, there is only a source of benevolent abundance, and our willingness to allow it in our lives or not.

I can’t say for certain if these beliefs are antecedents or offspring of my Blind Faith in the process of existence. On the one hand, they feed into and make possible this bedrock reliance on our safe growth and development. Knowing that belief creates experience, knowing that my belief and experience have told me that everything is part of the same thing, and knowing that there’s no reason to believe that the universe would need or want or even be able to harm itself — does, in fact, make it easier to believe that everything is working out for all of our highest possible good(s). On the other hand, Blind Faith is all that underpins that knowing. I just believe those assertions to be true. And further, it is my trust in the continual evolving of our potentials in particular that guides me to believe the above assertions to be true.

It’s rather like a hot air balloon. You wouldn’t say that it’s the air alone, or the heat alone, or the silk alone, or the stitching alone, or the tie-lines alone that make it fly. They all have to be there working together. The air is held by the  stitched silk, the silk balloon is held to the frame for the flame and the basket for the pilot by the tie lines — the flame heats the air up so that it swells in the balloon, which lifts against the tie-lines, which pulls the rigging upward with the balloon, which means the flame stays with the balloon and heats the air, etc. etc.. Who can tell which one comes first or is the most important when you’re soaring through the sky?

Put all together, my philosophical hot air balloon works something like this:

I hold that the overriding principle in all of my experience of life is that everything is infinitely interwoven, part of the same universal thing; and that this entirety is benevolent to itself, and has orchestrated all of its parts so that everything is working together for the furtherest possible development of everything that is, toward our highest and most evolved well-being; and when we allow ourselves to hold that belief long enough to habitualize it into our default perspective, then we perceive nothing but the continual joyful unfolding of our potential.

The bottom line for the moment is — it’s worthwhile to hold the perspective “that everything always works out for me”, in part, just because it conditions us to see that happening in our lives. The more often we remind ourselves that it’s all going perfectly, the more regularly we will experience just that. The more consistently we consider our experiences to be good for us, the more good experiences we get to have!

In terms of action, you might be asking, “Once I get my Blind Faith up and running — what do I do?” How do you turn Blind Faith into the job you want, or the relationship you want, or the lifestyle you want? And I would certainly be remiss if I left you, as I unfortunately did my friend (in the conversation I described in the previous post) without any further explanation.

Here’s some actions that happen for me while I am living the life of Blind Faith:

  • For starters and foremost-ers — I give a lot of gratitude. I’m giving thanks for the many blessings of life every single day. When something goes “wrong”, I give thanks for the right. When something goes “worse”, I appreciate that it’s as good as it is. Even when I am at my lowest, I am giving thanks for what I must be gathering from it. That energy of being thankful for what is unfolding is both the means and the end of living a fulfilled life.
  • Another thing I do a lot is look for the good that is coming. I look for proof of the good that’s already in my life. I make note of the ease I am having. I count my blessings. I expect that the asshole who cut me off in traffic, that made me miss the exit off the freeway, and that made me too late for my important appointment has actually done me a favor, and as soon as I come to my senses I will realize what that is. I know it’s all working out, so I am anticipating how that will occur, and I am ready when the moment comes to jump — which usually means I make all of the appointments I am supposed to make with no trouble at all.
  • In addition to looking for the proof that life is working out well for me (and thereby self-justifying my faith), I am also on the lookout for how well life is working for other people. I’m giving thanks for other people’s successes and achievements and wisdom and abundance. I’m counting the blessings I see in other’s lives as we meet in passing. I’ve even been thankful for the jokey signs of certain panhandlers…
  • Another practice in which I regularly engage is relaxing. I take a pause from all activity, and just breathe deeply and fully. Even if it is just mere moments at a time, I get clear and centered and light, and I lean into the extremely calming notion that everything everything is working out perfectly for me. It’s an excellent respite from thinking and doing stuff all the time, but much more importantly, this is a vital practice because it is re-programming my subconscious. This is a simple but effective form of self-hypnosis — little daily increments of getting the largest, most powerful part of my brain on board with remembering and helping me act as if everything is proceeding as it should (which, of course, is how I want me to act!).
  • I also practice having fun. I grew up thinking everything had to be for some purpose. “You have to be doing something meaningful with your time or you’re wasting it.” Even something as simple and personal as making art had to have some higher purpose. I have, since, come to realize that the only real purpose — for anything and everything — is because it feels good and right. We may not be able to make laws or run a society based on it, but every person as the master and law of him/herself must abide by it or perish. We must and can only do what feels good and right to each of us. Having fun feels good for me, and more importantly, it’s proving my faith to the everything. Again, it is both the means and the end in itself.
  • Another vital practice is nurturing the inevitable manifestations of the life I want and the good coming to me. I make room for the things I am welcoming. I make preparations for the fruition of my plans. I look for the things I am being offered to do in order to allow what I want to come. I act in order to express my belief — I pick up my shovel so that my faith can move the mountain.

When we act, it is important to remember that we have to have our minds ahead of us, or no matter what action(s) we take we will be putting the proverbial cart before the horse. As Buddha supposedly said (and someone wrote down in the Dharmapada), “with our thoughts we make the world” — our hands just move it around. When our minds are working with us, expecting good things, looking for more things for which to be grateful, receiving the experience of life in faith that all is and will be well — then even the smallest action has the weight of an epic triumph. Or as Jesus reportedly pointed out — your “faith alone” is enough to move the mountain; if you have that, then all you have to do is “tell the mountain to throw itself in the sea and it will be done” (Matthew 21:21).

So get out there. Be full of Blind Faithº. And enjoy yourself — it’s all going to be just lovely.

∞

Be well.

º the unshakeable definition of all things, circumstances, and events as positive agents in our becoming.

The First Concept

/ Nathan M McTague, CPCC, CPDPE, CMNEC / Leave a comment

The other day, I was talking with a friend, who’d also previously been a coaching client of mine, and he was remarking on how I seemed like I had a lot of great things going on in my life — great family life, work that I found meaningful, and a plethora of fun projects, etc. — without seeming to ever “just lose it” with so much going on. He then asked me something to the effect of: “What’s your secret?” And I quite literally found myself giving an answer I had never before given to such a question. I think at various points in my life, I would have said, “I don’t know…” or “I’m very fortunate…” or perhaps launched into a description of the steps in my approach, and some appreciation of the amazing help I have at every turn. And to be sure, much of that is all very true.

What I found myself saying to my friend, however, was simply: “Blind Faith!”.

He leaned across the table toward me and repeated from under his raised eyebrows: “blind faith?”. And I sat back a little, somewhat surprised to hear the words we were both saying, then nodded my head (as if simply in agreement with his assertion), and said: “Yep,” laughed, and then, “Some secret, hunh?”

He couldn’t believe either the flippancy of my response (I’m sure he’d been expecting some sage answer, practiced to the point of dissertation), or the lack of any detailed elaboration. I told him, in a fairly vain attempt to console him with earnestly animated, if airy, discourse that I believed everyone proceeds based almost solely on the beliefs they have about life — ergo we all live by virtue of the faith we have in those beliefs. And I think I made that point perhaps too clear (as it was my only follow-up at the time…) with all the remaining time that we spent on the subject. And truth be told, I feel fine with that, as I believe it was enough for both of us at the moment — for me to get to simply claim the whimsical, magical truth of myself in the presence of someone I respect without presenting it in a more “traditionally acceptable” guise; and for him to hear this basic, easy gospel, without the philosophical elaborations or logical justifications that he would expect in such a situation or would wish to explore with his own stellar analytical skills.

It was a message delivered by means of the form of the message itself — a form poem.

Nevertheless, I have realized in the days following that I have a personal philosophy. “Just now realizing he has a personal philosophy?!” you may be saying — and yes, of course, I have had philosophics of my own before — but they were almost always various versions of “the philosophy of juggling concepts”. I remained open to everything. I borrowed from everything. I owned nothing. And now I have claimed something that I now realize is what I have always always in my heart of hearts been most about. I’ve graduated. From my own school.

I’ve also realized, I have a lot more to say about Blind Faith.

I partly-wish I’d had the faculty at the time to tell my friend: “This is just the bedrock, the basic bottom line, the most reduced answer I can give you (just so that we can fit it into the scope of a single conversation…)”. I wish I’d left him with the understanding that my faith that everything will work out is just the beginning. So I’ve decided that I’ll share a bit of what I’ll tell him next time with you for the moment.

To begin with, let’s get the main point straight — I call it Blind Faith, not because I am a fool for it (though I gladly would be, I think), but sincerely because it is the kind of faith that can lead me even in the darkest of moments, the eyes-closed-leap-into-the-abyss kind of moments, the please-help-me-so-I-don’t-go-down kind of moments. At it’s most basic element, it is simply the following in which I have this particular level of belief: That no matter what — no matter what comes, no matter what goes, no matter what befalls, no matter what is revealed — every single thing that happens to any one of us is for our own and everyone else’s highest possible good. Period. Whether it’s war or famine or murder or job-loss or partnership-dissolving or failure or degradation or the opposite of all of these things in any one moment — it is all working toward harmony, not entropy as poor Steven Hawking is mis-convinced. Things do fall, and they do break, and then they become something new — Things do not simply Fall Apart.

So this first, most important piece, is simply to hold (with eyes shut if necessary) onto the firm rock of believing that I am absolutely taken care of — both in life and when I pass through death. Nothing can ultimately hurt me, and nothing is out to cause me harm in this life. And as my friends at Abraham-Hicks say, “There is only a source of Well-Being, which you are allowing, or not.” — there is no source of suffering there is just either our allowance of disallowance of our own joy. And no matter what we are experiencing, there is joy to be had there too!

And this faith, this peace, is simple enough that I can reach for it at any moment. When I am upset, I sigh and remember — everything is working out. When I am frustrated or angry, I huff and remember — even this is is working out for me perfectly. When I am nervous, I remember. When I am utterly lost, I remember. And moment to moment, the remembering becomes belief, the belief slowly grows into knowing, and knowing into experiencing. And when I experience the fruition(s) of my belief — I save and compost its essence to nurture my faith further with the proof and evidence of itself.

Over time, and somewhat without my perceiving it, I have grown a perspective on the world. And as the only point I made to my friend indicated, I know that what we believe about the world and of our lives written through it, is the truth of our experience. The truth is not that “seeing is believing”, but rather that the believing constitutes the seeing. Everything we know about life defines the extent of what we will end up perceiving of it.

We are not discoverers of great truths — we are the forgers of them. We can be, do, and have whatever we can imagine, so long as we know it to be our truth.

We don’t need a system of levers and gears and highways and machinery to move mountains — we don’t even need a strategy or plan. As Jesus (you know the one) is reported to have said: “If you had but faith alone you could move mountains”.  I would add further that if we have faith enough, then we will see clearly that the mountain was never in the way at all.


I think I’ll leave that note to resound a bit before I continue. More to come on the effects of Blind Faith on action. Until then…

∞

Be well.

*