Manzanita Village and the Five Changes » Life Coaching

The Future is Realer than you Think

Caitriona Reed — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 19:43:08 +0000

Things I hear people say about living in the Present Moment

“I don’t like to set goals because it limits the possibilities of what may happen.”
“I don’t like to set goals because I am usually disappointed.”
“I don’t like to think about the future because it’s not real.”

Mindfulness is not about avoiding disappointment, complexity, and unresolved emotions. When used for such purposes it is not mindfulness at all, but a trance of dis-empowerment and disassociation. There is nothing spiritual about masking our fears with concepts and practices that dull us to the limitless possibilities of our lives.

We map time inside ourselves in our own unique way. Your experience of the present is as subjective and fluid as your experience of past and future. Your mind makes meanings in its own way. Whether you consciously fulfill your goals and expectations or not, your unconscious agenda is invariably fulfilled. We navigate with the aid of the imaginary maps, returning to the same self-created destination, time after time. UNLESS we learn to redraw our map.

Redrawing the map means removing unconscious perceptions, old decisions, beliefs, and self-created limitations that you may have believed to be true for your entire life.

Unless you remove the unconscious blocks that prevent you from creating a new reality,
Unless you set clearly defined outcomes and KNOW that you CAN navigate towards them,
Unless you are prepared to learn from (rather than be a victim of) disappointment and change,
Unless you stop using mindfulness to avoid the past and the future,

you will NEVER get the results you would like!

It is not possible to resolve internal conflicts by imagining that only the present is real. Awareness is an indispensable ingredient to living creatively. Without it nothing is possible. But it only comes to fruition as you allow yourself to dream of what is truly possible, and to revise your imagined limitations of the past.

Let go of any fear you may have for creating a bold vision for yourself. Resignation has nothing to do with humility, simplicity, or faith.

Were you using mindfulness to mask your deep resignation, or to cover up and avoid resolving your sense of personal limitation? What will happen when you allow yourself to use your ability for focus and clarity, and to link it to a vision for what is possible. What will happen when you commit to resolving those inner conflicts, set clear intentions, and KNOW that by doing so you create a new map, and more possibilities for having a powerful positive influence in the world that you ever dreamed was possible?

What can you begin to REALLY like about the future now?

“If you don’t have a destination or a goal how will you ever arrive there? And, if you are so focused on your goals that you forget where you are, how will you know where to begin? To pursue your dreams, and to live fully in the present, that is the key.”

Secrets of a Great Relationship

Caitriona Reed — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 05:19:36 +0000

Without a rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar. Ralph Waldo Emerson

I meet people in the course of my work, some of them outwardly extremely successful.

Almost without exception, they tell me that without a healthy and emotionally sustaining relationship their life is unfulfilled and empty.

I also work with many people who are in a relationship. Sometimes, because of misunderstandings, expectations, beliefs they have about themselves, and old hurts that they may have suffered in the past, the relationship is painful, draining, and debilitating.

Humans are social animals. We do best when we are in contact with others, and most of us do particularly well if we have one person with whom we can engage in that ongoing creative dance we call a relationship.

More important than a relationship with another person is the one we have is with ourselves. Our first obligation is to transform our old hurts and habits, so that we can listen better, see, respect, and respond to our partner better, with increasing degrees of skill and flexibility.

Whether or not we are currently in relationship, our first responsibility is to heal ourselves in order to stop hurting ourselves and others by repeating the same old mistakes.

Unless we do so, our first mistake is in who we choose for our mate, who we find attractive.

Learning and developing our skills of empathy, communication, awareness, behavioral flexibility, understanding will not only allow us to sustain a powerful and fulfilling relationship, it will also have a positive effect on everything else we do in life.

Perhaps your relationship sometimes seems to have run aground, though you still have the will to reignite the love and passion, if you only knew how. Perhaps you are looking for your ideal mate but are wary of disappointment.

Join us for the upcoming teleseminar for help with your relationship – whether it’s a current relationship or future relationship.
http://InstantTeleseminar.com/?eventid=16126266

Changing Times

Caitriona Reed — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 05:42:02 +0000

We’ve been teaching retreats in one form or another for years, (actually, for decades) evolving as we go, adapting, finding our way. .

We are profoundly grateful for our many teachers and mentors over the years, including Thich Hanh Hanh, Joanna Macy, Scott Kelman, and Gil Boyne; as well as several extraordinary teachers from the Theravada and Vajrayana traditions of Buddhism.

What has inspired our most recent shift is the realization that many people, including some of our students, have substituted resignation for trust, faith – call it what you will – for a passion for life.

We no longer have either the desire or the ability to teach as before so that people might learn to accept, or perhaps feel better, about their problems. We would even prefer that people felt a bit worse about those problems – in order that they may be inspired to do something about them.

I’m writing this with my tongue in cheek (sort of). I don’t want to sound harsh or unkind.

But the truth is that the greatest kindness may be to inspire and facilitate people towards their very best.

Since that is now our work, our passion, and the most accurate reflection of what we do, we hope you’ll speak to us about how The Five Changes Process can help you.

The Art of Focus: Ways Meditation Can Change your Life

Caitriona Reed — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 23:00:03 +0000

Video from Caitriona

A Mind as Big as the Sky

Meditation is not just about mind control. Focus and concentration are not just about controlling the mind. It’s better to consider controlling less, trusting more – like a trained dancer, an artist, a musician who can express themselves effortlessly.

Meditation is the art of living, and one important discipline, that allows you to become an artist, capable of effortlessly expressing the essence of your unique life, is focus.

You may have imagined that meditation requires a whole lot more focus and concentration than you are currently able to muster. But that’s not true because what’s important is not the degree of concentration that you have, but the way you use the natural capacity to focus that you already posses. It is the quality of your focus that is important.

When we are distracted it’s often because of incongruities and inconsistencies within ourselves – inner tensions that we do not always recognize. If we continually imagine we have to become someone different from who we are; or if we imagine that we should be doing something differently from what we are doing; our energy is depleted and we become distracted.

When you shift your attitude, when you simply give yourself room to simply be the way you find yourself; and when you are simply present with what you are seeing, hearing, feeling, – something inside you begins to change.

The mind is amazingly capable of turning instantly into almost anything. The mind is as big as the wide world itself. It’s as big as the sky. This could hardly be though a bad thing, especially as it is the source of our amazing creativity. So we we would do well to celebrate the power of the mind to go on it’s own expeditions, even at those times you least want it to – when you are trying to concentrate, for example.

Celebration is a key here. Because you can also celebrate your ability to bring your attention back, when you are meditating, to have it be simply present to what you are seeing, hearing, feeling, experiencing … right here and now.

Becoming focus through meditation very much depends on learning to celebrate the moment, rather than exercising special control to whip your wandering mind into shape! Attitude is key. An attitude of celebration brings joy, and joy leads to congruity, and from congruity emerges effortless awareness.

Practice being fully attentive for a few minutes several times a day, celebrate those moments when you can simply be present with whatever happens to be right in front of you, even though your mind may be drifting away for ninety percent of the time. Don’t focus on stopping that drift, simply celebrate those moments you can become aware of it. Rest right there, in that moment of awareness, wherever you are, whatever you happen to be doing – buying groceries, tending to the kids, waiting for a bus, pausing while doing schoolwork

Quick-start guide for tricky emotions

Caitriona Reed — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 05:25:47 +0000

Hi there!

Did you ever buy a gadget or new software only to discover that both the manual and the quick-start guide were missing?

Did you ever wonder if there was a really good manual for being a human-being? Actually there are a few.

But what about a quick-start guide for learning to navigate your emotions, habits, dreams, and goals, rapidly and skilfully?

I mean, so that you can do more than just get by, more than just ‘managing’ – but thriving?

Like asking yourself the question “How much joy and pleasure can I allow myself to feel today?”

And then exceeding what you thought was possible.

Economic meltdown, climate change, and the miracle of mental flexibility.

Caitriona Reed — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 18:51:46 +0000

How will you survive the economy and climate change? Some say it will take a miracle. But the miracle is the mind itself and the flexibility with which we make meaning! My work as a meditation instructor and coach affirms it every day.

It’s always a revelation to see how differently we each respond to crisis. Advocates of global catastrophe compete to find evidence to support their prognosis. While those who say, “there are no real problems, only opportunities to find new solutions,” may find limits to test their optimism. Or not.

What are your values? The ones which form the lens through which you see the world? Is your glass half-empty, or half-full? Is you optimism or pessimism insurmountable?

The particular metaphor of the glass represents something we call a meta-program – meaning that you tend to incline in one direction or the other fairly consistently. The lens may work differently for different areas of your life. For example, you may see the upside when it comes to relationships, and focus on the downside when it comes to money or the global economy. It’s not something that’s set in stone. Whichever way you lean, you can change it – but it takes a little work.

One of the things I notice about people when I first meet them is how they see that glass. Do they focus on the downside or the upside? I also see how quickly people with similar orientations gravitate towards each other.

There’s no intrinsic problem here – unless your particular tendency to see the glass as half-full or half-empty is making you miserable – in which case, as your coach or meditation teacher my job becomes helping you to change it – in whichever direction is going to help your life work best.

This view, this lens, this meta program, transcends ideology. Buddhist thought, religious thinking in general, can lean either way, as can any group or individual.

Do you your glass as half empty or half full?

This meta-program is only one of about 72 that we pay attention to in our work.

The miracle is not so much that we face challenges. It’s that we are each so uniquely different in how we respond to the world and to each other.

See upcoming meditation retreats and trainings for more on meta-programs and personal change.