Distinctions

In coaching, one of the ways we interact with clients is through questions: some like the above, and many others. When we bring a catalyzing question forward, more than an answer arises. We arise. As we—our heart, mind, body—meet the question, a process begins in which our current, implicit understanding is asked to meet this container that is a question. As we answer, we fill into that container: unfurling and unfolding in ways we didn’t know we were capable of. It is the implicit becoming more explicit—but not completely so.

The end of understanding

We’re in an age of bringing background influences into the foreground (e.g. economic and geo-political influences on inflation, the body’s way of storing our lived experience and influencing our current behaviors), and trying to dissect them, understand the nature of them, and pin them down—all toward a pre-set destination of changing them in a particular way. It is that predetermined outcome that can become a limiting factor – a container too small.

For example, maybe we have an unconscious, routinized way of reacting in difficult conversations. We want to understand why this is, so it can be fixed—in other words, we want to respond in some other defined way. Here, we are looking to intentionally shape a response, which in and of itself is fine. The limitation, however, comes from missing what else could transpire. What if, rather than directing our behavior in a particular way in difficult conversations, we instead met it with nourishing inquiry, contactful presence, and a supportive living structure, allowing ourselves to morph into what comes? It could be that we begin to embody a different way of responding in difficult conversations, and experience ourselves as a new kind of person: someone whose spaciousness alters conversations altogether.

Creating vast containers

I pose that development and growth are far more mysterious and endlessly implicit than simply making sense of our responses. What might help more is creating, or discovering, containers large enough to allow what was hidden below the surface to emerge into view—bringing with it the hidden gems that live just beyond what we can comprehend cognitively.

One such container is practice and ritual. We can take up a sitting meditation or centering prayer practice in which we regularly spend 20-30 minutes once or twice per day at the mercy of the practice. It is the longevity and fidelity to the practice over a long time horizon that offers a space vast enough for the emergence I’m speaking about. In this openness, our inner inhibiting structures begin to loosen or dissolve, allowing more of our essence to come forward in all its texture and fragrance.

Another container—one I’d like to emphasize as particularly pertinent to our times—is story. In our postmodern world, the narratives we once relied on to weave a thread of consistency are being pulled apart. In many ways this is a process of unwrapping both the hidden and known harms these stories have caused many peoples over time. Turning toward this unraveling can be the beginning of healing—and we need it.

However, what is lost is a sense of cohesion, the larger frame that the story or narrative held. In its place we look to name things—to codify and categorize and in some way make sense so we can move forward. All of this can be helpful, and what I see happening in that effort is the loss of mystery and possibility. The naming of things can too often come with a certainty (or be imbued with a desire for certainty) that makes the container for us to live into too small. As a result our response—or we ourselves—become too small.

In our endeavors to make sense of what is happening in our world and in our experience, I am inviting us to include space for the unknown. After all, we can only see and understand so far, and so may we allow room in whatever stories we tell for the unexpected to arise. Not only is this a way of creating bigger containers, it is also a catalyst or impulse for unbounded unfolding.

• Jazz music. Places to start: “A Love Supreme” by John Coltrane, “Ella in Berlin” by Ella Fitzgerald
• Epic novels. A few suggestions: Lord of the Rings Trilogy by JRR Tolkien, Third Body Problem by Liu Cixin, Taduno’s Song by Odafe Atogun
• Visual art. For inspiration: Jean-Michel Basquiat, Soheila Sokhanvari
• Movies. Recommendations: Contact (1997), Waking Life (2001)

What artforms have you encountered that have opened you more fully to life, made your container larger? Email [email protected] to let us know.

Meet Cara Jones and Winn Clark

Cara and Winn will be leading the Business of Integral Coaching, a powerful six-month program starting in January that will support you in building a magnetic coaching practice rooted in all of who you are.

Meet them on a free call November 17 or December 7.

“This was a truly beautiful experience that blended heart, soul, and business. The instructors were incredible and truly created a space for magic to happen.”
– 2022 participant