I JUST NEED A PLACE TO BEGIN

E S P í R I T U ?

THE HORSE GUY?

Coaching with Horses?

Story #136

______________________________

I JUST NEED A PLACE TO BEGIN?

Some years ago I met a man who had been project manager of a new car factory being built somewhere in the South. He came into my office for his first coaching session and handed me his leadership assessment results. He did not sit down and could not look me in the eye to greet me. I glanced quickly at his results which looked like a train wreck. I felt the generosity beneath the numbers. I looked up at him and simply said, “These are beautiful.” He broke down and wept.

Bruce had been tasked with the challenge of managing an impossible project — shovel in the dirt to cars rolling off an assembly line in 18 months — and had been successful. The achievement, however, came with a cost. He lost his family through a divorce, the dream home he and his wife had purchased two years earlier, his health (40 lbs and recurring panic attacks, one which resulted in a trip to the emergency room) and a troubling depression he could not shake. When he was able to take a breath he looked straight at me and sighed, “I just need a place to begin.”

We sat and simply slowed down, breathing together for several minutes. “You don’t need a list of more things to do,” I said. As we settled, new and simple ways to reclaim himself came into focus. His attachment to performance also came into stark focus, though now without the harsh judgement and self condemnation. He could see the upside and downside of confusing who we are with what we do. It wasn’t a pretty picture.

This pressure to perform is cooked into many of us early on until one day, if we are fortunate, life shows us a doorway into another, more whole, way of living. Bruce’s doorway was exhaustion. Losing those closest to him was not enough! But now he was open and willing to see with a different way of seeing. Seeing with the eyes was not enough; all he saw was the mass of work ahead of him. He couldn’t sense the distinctions.

The centuries old Japanese folk tale, Cutting Up An Ox, details the journey of self mastery a cook travelled as he learns to cut up an ox. Initially, like Bruce, he relies on strength and will power to push through his days. He is a student of life, however, and after three years discovers another way of preparing an ox and, beyond this, another way of being.

“…When I first began

To cut up an oxen

I would see before me

The whole ox

All in one mass.

“After three years

I no longer saw this mass.

I saw the distinctions.

“But now, I see nothing

With the eye.?My whole being

Apprehends.

My senses are idle.?The spirit

Free to work without plan

Follows its own instinct

Guided by natural line,

By the secret opening, the hidden space,

My cleaver finds its own way…”

( Zhuangzi, 370-287 B.C.E. excerpt translated by Thomas Merton )

Bruce and many of us are hungry to know the best approach to accomplishing any task? Aggressive forcefulness? Aloof indifference? Waiting for someone else to change or to go first? We see another way here, one relying on body centered intuition and partnership with spirit. The doorway is simple: we only have to come to an end in ourselves. Just that.?

As if that is simple!

Václav Havel (1936-2011) was the first democratically elected president of the Czech Republic in 1993, following the fall of the Soviet Union. Known initially as a poet and playwright, he became an outspoken critic of communism. He was imprisoned many times by the Soviet government, once for four years. He wrote this letter to his wife while he was imprisoned.

I Must Begin

It is I who must begin.

Once I begin, once I try --

here and now,

right where I am,

not excusing myself

by saying things

would be easier elsewhere,

without grand speeches and

ostentatious gestures,

but all the more persistently

-- to live in harmony

with the "Voice of Being," as I

understand it within myself

-- as soon as I begin that,

I suddenly discover,

to my surprise, that

I am neither the only one,

nor the first,

nor the most important one

to have set out

upon that road.

Whether all is really lost

or not depends entirely on

whether or not I am lost.

Václav Havel, (from Teaching With Fire)

I must begin; a prison cell is the doorway. I just need a place to begin; the doorway is a successful project having lost any and all significance. Two men brought to an end in themselves a generation and half a planet apart from one another. They both prevailed and went on. I stand in honor of both.

Later today, when I drive onto the horse ranch it is as though I am entering an ancient and advanced world. Horses have been around for thousands of years and have evolved a way of being far more transparent and congruent than most of us humans will ever taste. Sure, we can argue ideas and opinions and drive ourselves hard. What comes after these? What else do we offer? Sadly, many do not know; the inner landscape is largely unknown to them. I used to be one of them! I know.

Visit us at ESPíRITU HORSE and pass through a doorway to an incredible journey into yourself and beyond to the life that is possible for you. You just need to begin.

ESPíRITU?

www.espírituhorse.com