I walked into the library at Gaia House, 1 week into a 3-week meditation retreat.
The library was my favourite place, holding thousands of books and looking out across the garden. I’d spent many happy hours here, curled up on a chair next to the 30-foot windows.
This time, I was pissed off. I was here for my weekly teacher interview. I’d struggled to maintain mindfulness throughout the day, trying this technique and that, and getting frustrated with the other jobs I had to do.
Coaches are called upon to play many roles in their work.
Here are three I find myself occupying frequently:
Fire tender. Many people show up with glowing embers—unmet desires, protean ambitions or a growing dissatisfaction. But they’re unsure how to breathe these embers into life. Sometimes they feel a growing heat in their bellies before their eyes have registered anything.
My job is to honour the ember—to witness its warmth, to grant it some air, and fan it into a confident flame.
The way we grow in wisdom is not linear.
The things that often nourish us are perennial and we have been engaging them since day one, in ever more complex and beautiful forms; love, loss, joy, pain, bliss and suffering.
In fact, wisdom often flourishes in the patient return to these same themes, each time revealing new aspects of something already intimate. In spiritual practice, these basic themes are things like: attachment, compassion, emptiness, judgement, insight, acceptance, faith and doubt.