Archive for category: Personal Coaching

(First posted in 2010 on Stephen’s previous website)

One Sunday morning ten minutes before beginning a workshop in Nicosia, Cyprus, I ran out the back of my hotel to fetch a bottle of water. The street was filled with the movement of young women. The poem is what I saw in my five minutes with them.

Maid’s Day Out

Early Sunday morning
presences of liberty,
attenuating modest joy and delight,
inundate this wizened “Old Town” street.

In quiet relief, temporarily free from
contractual constraints of domestic servitude,
this panoply of petite and ebony haired
immigrant Goddesses
now exhale:
Perhaps their first in a week.

These resplendent beings
conveyed in weary young Oriental bodies
waft and wend their way
into a market’s alley entrance
whose front door
– chained shut –
directs one round the building’s side.

Having taken economic refuge and modest wages,
residing now
in this precinct of affordable rents,
infamous in its crush of nocturnal inebriation,
these feminine deities in quiet buoyancy of bearing,
find solace gathering sustaining conversation
and chaste provisions.

Within this crudely cordoned grocery
a vigilant proprietor surveils tall above this throng
bringing them to heel.
Attitudes of we and they, us and them
bespeaking:
Outsiders are treated differently.

These young foreigners
in exile, too, from their youthful promise.
Once cleaved, can it be reclaimed?
Here being judged unscrupulous
yet the toil and tenderness of these hearts
– expressions of Grace –
– in care and companionship –
minister to this island’s families and elderly.

©2010 Stephen Victor

I am a bit sobered as I look at some of these poems for the purposes of giving the reader context. This poem really reflects my internal dialogue – a mini pep-rally if you will. It’s relevant and at the same time, if you will permit me the expression – bullshit! It arises from my intellect rather than my heart…yet, this has been my path.

Stop All Else

I am.
You are
Gregory Bateson’s
“difference that makes the difference.”

Bow to falsity
and its profusion
then turn from it.

Pay obeisance
to the perversion of your
upbringing, education, training and experience
and wash it from your body and memory.

Nothing is what it seems.
Nothing!

Genuflect to the mother of all fears.
Stand on her great strength
now morphed and rendered in service to your joy.

Walk into the life of your longing!

Stand now
on Apollo’s Central Sun
emanating not His light
but your own!

©2010 Stephen Victor

Refer to the context from “Stop All Else” for this is more of the same.

Embargo’s End

The moratorium on loving
self has been lifted!

Your sovereign status
duly recognized!

The refugee you believe yourself to be
does indeed have a home!
Inhabit it now!

Your poetic license has standing!

The center of your power
embodied, grounded!

The occlusion on the aperture of your heart
dissolved!

Voice the authority
of your native tongue!

And, see!
See beyond what fear has rendered!
Consent to this world as it is!

My friend, you see all the worlds now!
Stand in Apollo’s Light.
Dance on Aphrodite’s breath.
Render up your harvest for those who follow!

©2010 Stephen Victor

I have the good fortune to be learning to fly a single engine airplane. The plane is an 1946 Taylorcraft – a taildragger – named Simply Magic. Flight touches my heart rendering me to tears often. After a flight I wrote this giving it to my flight instructor.

Heart’s Flight

Buoyed beauty delight,
airfoil, propeller,
convection’s currents and
morning’s colored light
lift our banked rolls
– Simply, Magically –
dancing through
cloud corridors

– these canyons –
consequences of consenting cumulus
passages through
tears of quiet quivering joy.

Now,
between sun and cloud,
this taildragger’s silhouette
borne within the physics of
circular rainbow

Changing headings
into Magic’s shadow we cruise
through this colored portal
round and open.

Simply Magic!

©2010 Stephen Victor

I don’t know whether what I write is poetic. I simply want to write and write poetry. Someday these “cartoon characters” will evolve into something of even greater beauty and relevance. Here, I am talking to myself again.

Joy

Unite your heart.
Listen as it speaks.

Its true character is inclusivity.
Its true nature is joy.

Cultivate its fecund kindness.
Its generous plethora awaits.

©2010 Stephen Victor

This poem turned up in the promotional copy I wrote for an evening public talk I gave. The talk did not go particularly well either – yet such is my journey as the one who makes labor of moving into my own life.

Life’s Movements

Identified your destination?
Not the one others want you to take,
rather –
your own!

And,
on whose chart have you planned your course?

Is your center placed properly?

Have your bearings?
Your coordinates?
Your heading?

Do you?

How will you find your way?
By what and whose markers will you orient?

What is the character, direction and force
of the grand winds over the
topography of your journey?

What will be
your true course?

Can you continue adjusting
and maintain attitude?

Make subtle ongoing corrections
en route your desired vector?

Come. Join other hearts
wild for their own soul’s path.

Orient anew
on how best to proceed
into your own life.

©2010 Stephen Victor

I love this poem, yet I had no business writing it. You see, I have never lived in a country while it endured a war on its soil. I do not know the affront of being exiled from your ground, home and community. I do not know the terror of loosing family to artillery, small arms and torture – or their disappearance.

I wrote this poem without the right to do so. I wrote it after five years listening to local contemptuous condemnations of those “occupying our homes,” and of the locals’ refusal to cross the now open Green Line. While buying some food in a local market, I overheard a proprietor correct a tourist for referring to those on the other side of the Green Line by their nationality. The proprietor insisted that she identify them as “occupiers.”

The energy accompanying the proprietor’s insistence tipped the scales. This poem came to the fore in only minutes.

Bivouacking

The provenance of the Green Line
lies south of the Mediterranean
a temporary improvisation there in 1948.
A political suture on lacerations rendered
in hastening desperation.

You believe the Green Line
exists on your maps
and the geography of your nation.

This is but sleight of political hand.
Emotional chicanery. Falsity.
An echo of individual and collective grief.
An attempted remedy to incursions into
the human soul.

This Green Line
lies, rather, on the topography of your own,
and the other’s wounded heart.

It is this territory that awaits truth and reconciliation.

©2010 Stephen Victor

Blessings for A Marriage

May the courage of your sovereign heart
prevail over the banal falsities culture bequeaths.

May your marriage be buoyant, enriching and tender.
May its supple contours center and cradle
the odysseys you are undertaking.

May you together surrender
your most fancied identities and selves
in the arms of the other’s love.

May you each, during this embrace,
forfeit your fears
– falling – for – forever –
in Love’s union of transfiguring Grace.

May you, in these nuptials, ripen
your practice of tending the
vows of a concurrent marriage:
that with self.

May you know the prism of biography
is incapable of refracting the
ineffable numinous light that you are.

May you favor humility, kindness and fidelity of heart:
knowing your dignity, beauty and innocence
are vital, intact and present.

May the poetics of these marriages set alight
a passion to avow yet a third:
the work of your creative expression.

May you take your muse’s hand,
and together – in this longing – watching over these fires –
render up your heart’s attention
to the freedom
in disciplining your self to your creative endeavors.

In the joyous communion of matrimony with self,
with spouse, and with creative expression,
may you – later –
look back across the arc of your life
seeing magnum opuses, poetics and abundant harvests.

©2010 Stephen Victor

The word Eleftheria is a Greek feminine gender term for Freedom. The poem came about due to the incongruity I felt regarding the staggering beauty of the Cypriot land and the unutterably architectural ugliness of Nicosia.

Eleftheria – Unreconciled

I
Straddling shifting platforms of providence,
foreign and domestic policy
remain insulated from politics.

All capital cities, as this one,
– anti-oases each –
ensue from ironies of governance,
and from the political posturing of
unseen and unloved selves.

The groom of government in its affairs of
consummating its bride of commerce
– as consequence –
fosters further folly in these precincts by
arresting and confining Aphrodite’s Beauty.

To wit, in part: Save for Sundays and Bank Holidays,
note the besieged and beleaguered
states of its fiercely frenzied citizenry,
its prickly crush and calamity on constricted infrastructure,
its nocturnal raucously revving redlining road races,
and the
attesting absence of architectural aesthetic.

Yet,
vestiges of poetic presences persevere: The
ensconced effortlessly enjoining elegant elderly eucalyptus
stand as stealthy stragglers along waterless riverbed,
bestowing benevolent buoyancy.

So too, those peopling this place
– albeit unawares –
are Beauty’s currency:
immigrant Asian domestics,
EU’s Eastern European labor,
remnants of Russians remaining
from off-shore tax sheltering days,
expat Brits, colonial legacies, every one;
and, Greek Cypriot daughters and sons.

Stretched on an historic and ideological loom
these diversely textured, charactered and colored
natural human fibers
shuttle their weft’s wave in and through
a raveling thread bare national warp of
unacknowledged falsity, commission, and omission
– and –
teeming dignity, innocence, and beauty:

Each awaits, albeit unawares,
the artistry of reweaving the tenor of
Turkish Cypriot siblings
into the tensile and palette of this Levant hegemony.

II
Beyond cityscape borders
on this isle, the yoni of Aphrodite,
in temperate winter and brutally
searing summer, the Feminine lay neither
animate, roused nor moist: She waits
as Avalon awaits her recumbent Arthur.

This once verdurous
sacrosanct soil, stone and sea
– crucible still –
arrayed in juxtaposition
on the cleaving juggernauts of
East and West, South and North.

She, high relief on Poseidon’s province,
awaits human apprehension
of her contemporary function:
chalice of human transfiguration, and,
ethnic, religious, national and human rapprochement.

It is here we and they,
beings inured to suffering,
will humanely heal human hearts hurt
in fear’s ignorance, arrogance and histrionics.

III
Will we give our heart’s attention to this possibility?

©2010 Stephen Victor

I have spent many early mornings walking in the beauty of a wildlife refuge on a friendly small mountain at the west periphery of Pyrga, Cyprus. This poem came from one such walk.

Harbinger

The Fire Brigade’s swath track
provides
conspicuous contours of relief
on the topography of local minds:

“Emancipating us from ‘fire’”
it is said.

This swath serpentines
profound and arresting beauty
– posted “Wildlife Refuge.”

This designated sanctuary
lays littered with a myriad exhausted
barely biodegradable munitions’ shells
each betraying the character of those discharging
their juggernaut in pleasure’s pursuit,
or clandestine hunt.

The formerly live cartridges – a viagra of
futility’s attempt at resurrecting the
potency of promise
yet fulfilled –
are now but spent casings.

Sun and soil, atmosphere and time
erode testosterone’s testaments to
a confounded creative expression
here flaccidly scattered like the lives of those
in estrangement’s wake.

Meters below this track
– on the side of this mountain –
reports now resound from rifles held by
encamped conscripts,
firing at this nation’s pantheon of
griefs and unrequited longing.

Another generation now entrained.

©2010 Stephen Victor

This is an early iteration of my poem “Eleftheria.” Seems it stands on its own…

City Character

Beyond cityscape borders
in this domain of Aphrodite’s birth…

On this sacred land of
unimaginable and stunning Olive Trees,
themselves
home to wizened elder being
of incomprehensible Grace…

In this fiercely beautiful arid climatic zone
of temperate winters and brutally
searing summers,

one is granted
uncharacteristic soul restoration.

This holy place, Aphrodite’s home,
is the source of reconciliation.
It is here! It is here that our work will occur.

It is here we and they, us and them
will heal human hearts hurt
by ignorance, arrogance and histrionics.

This sacrosanct soil, stone and sea,
crucible still,
awaits its transformation into
a chalice of human transfiguration.

But venture into the anti-oases of
human endeavor and residence
that is this nation’s capital,
and be confounded by profound irony.

©2010 Stephen Victor

NOTE: This is to be read allowing the piece’s own cadence to inform the reader’s

expression.

Beauty

“I know of nothing but the holiness of the heart’s affections, and the truth of the

imagination.” ~ John Keats

Have you yourself tended an infant? Have you observed another care for a newly arrived child? Have you watched parents from races, nationalities and ethnicities other than your own love their little one? Have you seen the elderly move with the aid of a cane, walking stick or the arm of another? Have you seen the aged from other parts of the world? Do they not move similarly?

And the beauty of the young? Do you see in adolescents their robust exuberance? What about the promise of those in their twenties? What of the thirty-eight year old who is now three months pregnant after waiting all those long years? Did you see the circles under her sleepless eyes when her child was two months old? And the new father whose ecstasy cannot find its way to the fore as the weight of new responsibility holds his
delight at bay?

Have you seen these self same states in those world round? Those in their late midlife who were spared hard physical labor yet shouldered great emotional burdens? And what of those with no means? Do you feel the weight of their soul? Or see the dignity awaiting recognition – their own or another’s? And what about grief? What? – when the one that is loved finds another to love? Or a revered one is taken from life? Do you know this in yourself or have you seen it others?

There are those whose inheritance is Christian (Protestant or Catholic), those who are Jewish (Orthodox or Reformed); Muslim (Sunni or Shiite). Those who engage in Buddhist practices (Taoist or Zen); those who live the values of the Hindu (Vedic or Bhakti); and those following Shinto and Confucianism. There are practitioners of Modern Druidism (cultural and religious); of Santeria or Gnosticism, and Native American Spirituality; there are those who genuflect at the altar of Science; there are the Animists, and there are those having declared themselves agnostic.
 
People find their way onto this planet in Belarus. In Argentina. Japan. Norway. Turkey. Syria. The USA. Cambodia. Vietnam. France. Guatemala. Mexico. Ethiopia. The Sudan. Peru. New Guinea. Those with black skin. Brown. White. Those with straight hair. Curly. Those whose eyes are brown or black. Green or blue. Some are considered physically attractive. Some not. Some have had more to eat than others. Some “educated.” Some not.

Do not the constituencies of biology and chemistry hint of common ground for humanity’s staggering beauty and imperative of our grand and myriad diversity? Might we indeed be unique expressions of one source? Might we be siblings?

Is it not the self same grief and anguish that is experienced no matter one’s age, gender, nationality, or ethnic or racial heritage when instances of horrific affront occur to a life, a dignity, our human beauty? So too is it not the self same joy and ecstatic delight that buoys a self when unexpected and robust beauty visits? And what of love? Is not another’s love for family and soil of birth, the self same love available to all?

Is it not the hand and heart of our one Earth, atmosphere and Sun, and the larger movements beyond, at whose behest we subsist and exist? And what of The Perennial Philosophy of Aldous Huxley? These rarely seen yet common and tangible energetic filaments of Wisdom that persist on insinuating their presence into humanity’s awareness irrespective of epoch, culture or continent. Wisdom is as present as our very breath! She is here now! Yet in nonchalance we slumber unwittingly and habitually distracted – “secure” within our somnolent conformity to our culture’s quiet insistence on smallness, individual insignificance and irrelevance.

Have you never read a line of poetry expressing exactly what you did not know that you knew until you read that precious sequences of words? Have you heard the music knowing that the musicians themselves had become the music? So too dancer is now the dance? Have you not been moved in the presence of a sculpture? And that time when you tasted an ambrosia such as you had not known possible? Have you delighted yourself with cuisines of the world? Tasted wine of distant regions – knowing that each was nurtured by a unique soil and sun issuing from the self same Earth and Galaxy?

Remember the joke that caused such belly laughter that your abdomen hurt? Have you seen joy and delight in another? Have you heard a baby’s giggle? Seen her smiling eyes? Watched the excited movements of her arms and legs? And the puppy whose backside cannot be stilled upon your return? And what of that lover’s touch and fragrance? And of that child’s exuberance of her in rushing to greet you?

Have you had the pleasure of standing near honeysuckle in early summer? Have you not wept a tear at the beauty of dawn coming round as the moon bursting in her fullness stays up to greet her morning’s sun? Have you not been arrested at the visage of starry sky or stood entranced by Orion or the Southern Cross in brilliant revelation above a fading mountain crest? Have you felt the sun’s generosity on a frosty morning? And the corolla of yellow in the flower’s opening? Have you drunk deeply of cool water in a midday’s humid heat or been present in a sea of wild flowers dancing at the wind’s insistence?

Do you know the breach of a whale or flash of sunlight refracted on the back of a porpoise? Have you seen the calving of tidewater glaciers and their indescribable blue deep interiors? Have you watched the dripping of meter-long icicles in the morning sun? Have you had your hands in the warm dark humus of a summer garden? What about the beauty of the flower presenting herself through the crack of the sidewalk amongst acres of asphalt and chain link?

Do you know the flower of a thistle? A dandelion giving its seed? A morning’s frost on desert cacti? Have you fallen in love with the magnificence of a tree? The movement of fields of grain in late summer? The sound of waterfalls in the distance? The noise of the breakers meeting the rocks at the jetty? Have you watched tree tops sway? Better yet, have you climbed a tree and felt its generosity? Have your bare legs been caressed by
silky strands of tall grasses while your hair was tasseled by grand gales?

Do you remember how beach sand offers the sea’s and wind’s geomancy to the curious? Recall the graceful silhouettes of Brown Pelican? The soaring of birds of prey? The dignity of the Red-tailed Hawk diving from that pole and capturing its prey? Do you know the chatter of squires? The song of chickadees? The call of raven? The aggregate singular movement of swallows?

My friend, I invite you to remember to remember. Look round. Cease your folly but for the moment!

I submit to you that the longing and struggles, the anguish and grief of loss as well as the sublime beauty of this world are themselves the Grace of the seminary that is your life. This life! Remember Walt Whitman’s prescience: “Soon there will be no more priests. Their time is done. Everyone is to become his [or her] own priest.” We have been in training. Commencement is upon us. The day of the intercessor has passed!

Humanity’s absences of love, of compassion, kindness and civility are inconsistent with the character of the human heart and our nature! Their currency perpetuates itself in the wake of our collective ignorance and haste. Nothing more! Although these absences have become our human norm, such behavior contradicts the human heart, our character, and nature; for we are, by design, brilliantly creative expressions of Universal Wisdom’s intelligence, love and compassion. Our capacity for Wisdom is wholly beyond the rational, the quantifiable. So too is our creative prowess! And did you know that cooperation is humanity’s greatest strength?

Have you been at death’s door? Whether refused entrance or directed to make your own decision…If you have endured the menace of a weapon trained on heart or head by the fears and anger of those in pain…then you know of Grace’s poetic generosity in Her reprieve. If you have seen very red blood surging from lacerated arteries at the surprised pace of an urgent heart in exigent moments, or gathered corpses after barbarous action, you know, with every fiber and filament of your being, that brutality and violence are anathema to the human heart and character.

If you have been the recipient of the cavalier vagaries of governance, business or health “care”… If you have been unjustly nicked by the authorities…if you have suffered indignities issuing from bastions of ignorance…or, if you, yourself, perpetrated a grave injustice and were blessed with the horrifying epiphany of cognizance, now knowing that you breached the very core of your integrity… you know that the character of the human heart is of love’s design and that fear and violence are the outsiders. The interlopers!

If you have not yet learned, soon you will know that your innocence remains intact – always -whether you feel this reality or not! There comes a time when you will awaken in stark relief to the reality that one’s innocence awaits nothing more than one’s own acknowledgement and remorse; and, by granting this, you enable it to come to the fore yet again! So too, you will learn if you have not yet, that neither your regal dignity nor that of another can every be debased! Although it may have have suffered sundry contusions and it longs for love’s tenderness, it is yet whole, present and strong!

So too you will learn if you do not already know that life cannot hate life! If you hate, all that you hate is the conceit arising from the distance you have drifted from your own sovereign heart’s Authority, Wisdom and Love! All pretext is falling away! We will come to love the perpetrator in ourselves and those in our communities. The only thing one can hate is circumstance! Nothing more! Its departure is imminent for we see its salutations in current global discontents.

One’s only task in this life is to consent to what is and embody Love moment to moment to moment! In the grand unfolding in which humanity finds itself – fulfilling this sacred endeavor sets the requisite attitudes and actions that prompt humanity’s magnum opus that awaits. Humanity’s boon is before us!

As for the ideological conceits of our culture? Honor, discharge and retire them. Their service is complete! These artifacts of human biography are ones of absences. Absence of knowing the true character and nature of the human heart! An absence of knowing the potency of our sovereign loving authority and creativity. An absence of knowing that Wisdom awaits our response for She has asked for our hand: Asked you to become her consort, collaborator and lover!

We have wholly mistaken our identity and makeup with something we are not! On this ignorance we hastened our pursuit toward folly’s end; we have instead worsened our circumstance. This is changing now for Wisdom’s hand is yet extended: In this marriage, we will know the staggering poetic beauty of human life and that of the Earth!

In taking her hand, and from the consummation of this love, we will learn that all things ensue! The folly of pursuit will be seen for what it is: an outcome of knackered misunderstandings and misapprehensions: the predicating of our lives on faulty thinking and static dogmas of smallness and fear. The consequences of that trajectory are being righted in preparation for this marriage, and the old folly is morphing into nurturing
compost for that from which we will succor.

In this union with the fields of Universal Intelligence’s Divine Wisdom you will place your intent and attention on the poetics of your life – the life that is your very own. No longer will you tarry in the prosaic existence another has arranged for you. Your will bring your creative expression to the fore and open to knowing joy irrespective of circumstances. You will salute the flag of being rather than that of meaning. Lastly you will know the veracity of Gregory Bateson’s words: “Wisdom develops when you can be around others and not want to change them.”

In your reconciliation with love, you will love your life, yourself, others and the Earth! Your creativity will soar!

©2010 Stephen Victor

(First posted August 31st, 2013)

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness…” – Mark Twain

Twain’s statement is obvious to some yet not to all. In the experience giving rise to his words moves genuine curiosity. Incurious travelers cross borders and remain closed to the value differences confer. Curiosity does not reside in these travelers. Curiosity does not operate in the company of prejudice, bigotry, or narrow-mindedness: these cannot coexist. Many thinking they are curious are confusing curiosity with interest. 

To fulfill one’s promise, to become an effective and accomplished leader requires travel, and a lot of it. Twain’s travel is of inestimable value, yet there is a more necessary form of travel for leaders to undertake. Greatness and promise mandate, of necessity, that leaders travel into their own heart, mind and will. They must travel with all the curiosity they can muster. They must travel beyond the borders of personal comfort. Must go into the humility, angst, epiphanies, and delights of self-revelation and self-awareness. 

Specific travel destinations include: one’s personal worldview, one’s beliefs, personal struggles, injuries and life challenges.  Into patterns of thought, and the habits of placing one’s focus and attention. They must go into the how of relating with themselves, and others: into the consequences of these interactions. And they must become conscious of the impacts of their actions. 

Greatness demands that leaders travel into being and living genuinely: being who they are. Into the embodiment of honest thought, feeling and action consistent with integrity and wholeness. Into patterns of emerging personal equanimity. Leaders must travel into their genuine personal power. They must embody it. Also, they are to travel into defining themselves by their genuine greatness and deep generosity of spirit rather than defining themselves by their failures or foibles, or the false ideals culture touts. So too, they must go into the creative expression and fulfillment of their own true promise, the giving of their greatness to the world personally and professionally.

Leaders who do not travel successfully into and through the realms of interior personal discovery and reclamation, whether their lives and work is borne on great intellectual capacities or not, remain merely envoys of cultural and institutional biases and interests – devoid of genuine Wisdom. Without traveling, the personas of leaders perpetuate existences rife in dispensing prejudiced, bigoted, and narrow-minded internal narratives condemning and enjoining themselves and others unwittingly. Personas not inhabited by conscious and aware compassionately intelligent people are platforms incapable of enabling and supporting genuine greatness. Leadership greatness is the province of the person, not the role. To lead a life or organization well, one must become unutterably and unrelentingly oneself! This is the inside job of a curious life long traveler.

I often describe where I grew up as a place where values run deep and minds run narrow. Those peopling this description were unfamiliar with Socrates’ sentiment: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” They had not yet learned to go meta and observe their thoughts and actions. They had not yet learned that who they are is distinct – separate – from their thoughts and actions, from their personality and body. That a worldview and its ensuing thinking and behavior can be changed to enable personal freedom, creative expression and greatness. That there is a rightness of designing a worldview of one’s own rather than living the one bequeathed you.

These unwitting confusions are also found amongst the educated and ‘properly prepared’ people in boardrooms and C-suites. Everyone has aspects of themselves that are personal. Within these personal characteristics moves a promise awaiting expression. It may or may not conform to others’ expectations or social convention. Within each promise are genuinely helpful and life-affirming movements: motion from which self and others benefit. We can ill-afford the loss of the promises of these bright people.

In 1977 I experienced my first failure in leadership. The circumstances were life threatening. A few months later I experienced another failure in my leadership. Similar situation. Life is conspiratorial in that it will nudge leaders to undertake necessary travel. I procrastinated. Pretended I had not failed. Made up that all was well. Life gave me more prompts: I began traveling. Still do. They have been difficult. Yet, not traveling would have been the more brutal of options. 

If from time to time you are slowed or stopped by the self prejudiced, bigoted, or narrow-minded voices speaking to you from inside your head, you need to travel more. If you define yourself by something other than your own genuine greatness, travel more. If you are not yet delivering your promise, find a well-traveled compassionately intelligent outfitter and guide (coach & mentor) and begin crossing borders into regions of your richness, thus furthering the fulfillment of your promise!

This is an inaugural post at www.geomancie.com and www.geomancie.co.uk. This writing is also a living system whose taproot I will follow deeply into a system of nurturing and sustaining roots, which, in symbiosis, give rise to the flowering of individual and collective promise. We must avail ourselves to this great fecund harvest and its ensuing benefit for ourselves and future generations. 

(First posted February 17th, 2012)

In writing this, my third post on Bert Hellinger’s seven-forms of anger, I am reminded that anger is a messy topic. I know of no one who is free from feeling and expressing their own, or experiencing another’s anger. No one wants to be regarded as an angry person, nor is it pleasant to be in the presence of another’s anger. Expressions of anger are feared, and people who are fierce in their anger are generally judged harshly … as though our judgements can insulate us from our fears.

Simply, it is politically incorrect to be angry, yet many of us are angrier than we admit. So too, many of us are angry without being aware of the anger we exude: Feeling angry has become an unconscious a way of life, a habit. Unreconciled anger can lead to ill-health, and being a recipient of another’s anger, through time, is psychologically, energetically and physically damaging. Recovering from these injuries requires much effort.

The topic of this post gives rise to compassion in me, which, in my world, is a proper response to those who express problematic anger. Compassion does not however absolve those of us expressing anger of our responsibilities. We need to become aware of the impact of our actions, and to stop injuring ourselves and others. So too, when others are expressing problematic anger with us, we need to learn to compassionately and intelligently push back without attacking the other. Everyone has responsibility in these matters. It begins with learning to go beyond our aversion to conflict.

Hellinger defines the type of anger that is the subject of this post as anger that is “a substitute for the expression of love.” This anger functions similarly to the anger in my last post, yet differs in two ways: Its root is distinct, and is only directed to those you love.

Instead of expressing the love you feel, you express anger. In this model, this type of anger is a consequence of an infant’s or young child’s physical, emotional and energetic attempt to “reach out” to its mother or father to receive or give love. The intended connection of love never occurs and the “reaching out movement” incomplete. This results from the parent either being physically present but energetically and emotionally absent, or from the parent being physically absent. Both render the child’s “reaching out” incomplete.

Without proper remedy we express anger to those we love throughout our lives. The intensity of this type of anger increases through repetition. Many of us end up with increasingly angry partners. Compassion is called for. So too is seeking right and competent assistance.

I maintain that we live in a friendly universe. This notwithstanding, life circumstances repeatedly render great pressures for the purposes of changing and advancing our individual psyche. Think for a moment about babies born prematurely: infants tucked away in isolettes where physical touch is all but impossible, say nothing about emotional and energetic connection.  Think too of birth trauma and the child’s ensuing medical attention. As consequence, the child is physically, emotionally, and energetically distant from its parent.

So too, what of those countries which prosecute one or more wars in every generation…absent fathers…fathers who return to their families carrying the weight of combat…many are unavailable to their children. In more recent years, women too are in the fray. They too return burdened.

What about parents with unhealed injuries about which they may have little or no awareness? So too, those parents facing extremely challenging life issue without workable models to guide their way? These parents are physically present yet energetically, emotionally and psychologically inaccessible to their children. No wonder anger is expressed in love’s stead. Again, I suggest expressions of compassion are warranted.

I am not asking you to learn to calibrate these various forms of anger. Rather, I offer these distinctions to spark, nudge and speak to the unconscious healing motion inside you that awaits your conscious awareness. With such awareness, you can take action to further your own psychological awakening. Spiritual and energetic awakenings are ill-fated without honest growth, development and the opening of your personality, mind and heart. Understanding alone does not bring change; yet, we are thought-based people and we require words and conceptual understandings to bring things into our awareness – those things asks for healing attention from ourselves and competent others.

Most of us are spontaneous and highly skilled in expressing anger. It is imperative to become equally or more skillful and spontaneous in expressing our compassionate intelligence. The cosmos consists of forces and counterbalancing forces. As individual people, our task is to let go of models and understandings which do not serve – the ones no longer working. We need instead open to an informing universal wisdom that lies beyond our understanding. It is this wisdom that will inform our push back – for we too need push back in our lives. Yet, we need do so without attacking the other. We need do so compassionately, intelligently and wisely rather from fear and pain.

To this end, open your heart and mind to the following: 
    •    How can I push back against another’s anger without attacking them?
    •    What form of push back communicates that I will no longer tolerate anger directed to me?
    •    What are the right moments to push back?

Questions to direct your attention:
    •    How can I be more gracious with myself and others?
    •    How can I see the beauty, dignity, innocence resident in each human life? In me too?
    •    How do I know of my own beauty, dignity, innocence?
    •    How can I be strong in myself yet compassionate, creative and powerful?
    •    How can I be centered in my belly, grounded to the Earth and feel stability in my bones?
    •    How can I be relaxed and equal to circumstances in my world?

Anger – 2
In my last post, Anger – 1, I wrote of a positive strengthening and enabling anger: In itself, it exists without emotion. It is an energetic force accessible to assist us. Generally, and unfortunately, this positive anger is mixed, contaminated, with forms of problematic anger: those which conscript our attention and emotion. Therefore, we rarely experience or express this type of anger cleanly. Although it does help us, other unnecessary issues arise. In the follow-on to the seven posts I write regarding Hellinger’s model, I will speak to other approaches to taking action.

The topic of this post’s exploration is of a type of anger that is harmful and serves no life affirming function: No one benefits and its consequences grave. It is an anger entangled with emotion. Some years ago a large percentage of my work involved providing conflict mediation to leadership, departmental and project teams in business and government. The anger addressed in this post is one of three, possibly four, types that pervaded those workplaces.

This post is the subject of Bert Hellinger’s second type of anger: An anger that is a substitute for an action you could have, or ought to have accepted, or taken, or asked for, or, demanded from another. Instead of asserting yourself and taking what you needed, you became angry with those from whom you ought to have taken, asked or demanded from. This anger is a substitute for action and arises from inaction. It has a paralyzing and weakening effect that lasts a long time.

Please take note of this reminder: Models are no more to be believed than are theories, dogmas, proofs, facts and narratives. Rather, appropriate working models are useful as point our way.  We cannot get on without them. Too, like theories, they are often mistaken as truths. The beauty of working models is in their underlying intent: They are to be altered, as necessary, to fit the constantly changing and diverse worlds we inhabit.

In reading my examples below you will find that I have altered this model a little: Not only is anger substituted for actions you could have asked or demanded from another, but asked or demanded from yourself. How many of us after failing to do what a moment asks, have gotten angry? Nearly all of us have experienced this.

Lets look to examples: When I was thirty I wanted a radio-cassette player to replace the AM/FM radio in my car. I found the one I wanted yet bought a less expensive brand. After twice returning it to the manufacturer and having it malfunction yet again, I was beside myself with anger. In a cloud of profanity I walked to the dumpster behind my apartment and fiercely threw it in the bin. I was unaware at the time of being angry with myself, yet I was. Too, there were other co-mingling forms of anger present then, but those types are subject to other posts.

Some time ago I outsourced a marketing project. Having received a bid, I contracted the job. Over the course of the project the contractor was angry with me. Eventually he stated that he had given me a discounted fee, and too, that the project was taking more time than anticipated. As consequence to his failing to pencil out his costs, he had unwittingly substituted anger for actions he could have taken: He could have asked for a proper fee. In failing to do that, he could have attempted to renegotiate his fee or the project’s scope. That would have taken courage on his part.

I have done similarly: During times of high rapport with another who asked my fees I have understated them. In failing to change my state of being from one serving social interaction, I created consequences I did not want. Anger was but one. The action I ought to have taken was to change to and embody a state serving my company’s interests. When angry these days, I ask myself: “What ought I have done?” and “What should I do now?” Then act accordingly.

In workplace hierarchies many people frequently and unwittingly act unkindly or disrespectfully to those reporting to them. The myriads of things driving their behavior are beyond the scope of this report, yet, the anger of those in subordinate positions is, if only as example. Many of the mediations I facilitated in executive suites and conference rooms were to redress such issues. Generally however, the executives and managers I worked with were ignorant of their actions: Nor did they initially grasp that their actions largely contributed to their troubling workplace environments.

This anger too is substituted for actions one ought to take within couple and family relationships. No further example here warranted as this practice is commonplace.

I remind you: My intent in these posts on anger is to prompt our awareness; In doing so, to invite us to interrupt our habitual anger. So too, to prompt us to respond with actions right for the moment: those which serving self, other and the moment.

The following questions are asked of ourselves. The answers are irrelevant. Simply ask:

In what contexts have I used anger as substitution for actions I ought to have taken? Should have taken? Asked or demanded from another? Of myself?

In what other contexts have I done this? Are there specific people with whom I regularly done this?

What patterns do I find in myself?

What patterns do I find in those closest to me? At work?

In what situations do I need to assert myself effectively?

In my next post will highlight other forms of anger as substitution. I end this post with a few words from William Blake on anger. (Please keep in mind: How you speak to another concerning your anger is the difference that makes the difference.) Thank you Gregory Bateson for this phrase.)

A Poison Tree
I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I water’d it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright;
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole
When the night had veil’d the pole:
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretch’d beneath the tree.

(First posted March 2nd, 2012)

This post, my fourth in a series on Hellinger’s model of anger brings us face to face with ourselves – well, rather, our actions. Hellinger describes his fourth type of anger “as a defense against your guilt for having wronged someone.” This anger is a defense against the consequences of your actions; further, you make the other person responsible for your guilt. It is a substitute for appropriate action you owe the other person and yourself. Substituting anger in situations of having wronged another ensures that you will remain inactive, as this anger paralyzes you. It makes you weak for a long time.

To free yourself from the consequences of this anger, I offer the “what” of what you can do. It is beyond the scope of this blog post to detail the “how.” Yet, for many, being reminded of the “what” will be sufficient to clean up your relationships, and dissolve this type of anger. Here is the “what.” Honestly, genuinely, in a time and place that workably allows the person you have wronged to listen, hear and receive what you have to say, tell them:
• “I have wronged you.”

• “The guilt, burden and weight of my wrong belongs to me and me alone. You are innocent of these circumstances. I am responsible.”
    
• “Please give back, to me, the guilt, burden and weight of this wrong.”(Receive the energy of the wrong.) Then state:
    
• “I offer you my heartfelt remorse.” (Then give it!)

The person you have wronged owes themselves and you the following: They are to receive your acknowledgement, take back the guilt, burden and weight of the wrong, and to take the remorse you offer. They may or may not do this; or may or may not do so immediately. Sometimes a bit of time is involved. Whatever the other’s response, having acknowledged your wrong and taken on its weight, revel (allow yourself to feel the joy of relief and clearing of the former stuck energies), then move on attending to other things in your life.

As those of us who have wronged others appreciate our responsibility; as we remain strong, centered and grounded while cleanly, without blame and judgement, sincerely and genuinely, acknowledge our wrongs, we will not only clean up our relationships, we free ourselves from anger. In addition, we cease to wrong, or wrong others less often.

If saying these statements to someone whom you have wronged seems daunting, feel free to find someone who is competent and compassionately intelligent to assist in doing this process safely, and respectfully, who is also mindful of the dignity of all involved.

Cleaning up wrongs can be this simple. Yet, was it not Albert Einstein who said: “Man [and woman] cannot live by simple means.” So what’s up? There are two things:
1) We have forgotten to remember that we are neither our actions nor our past, and

2) We have been trained to feel discomfort with difference.

Regarding people being “neither our pasts nor our behavior:” This is a belief worth having for it is a model that produces positive results. While contemplatives and behavioral scientists struggle to identify what human beings are, I, in the interest in being practical and doing what works, offer the above model to mark out what we are not: We are neither our actions nor pasts. So, let’s get on with our lives in ways that work.

Whether due to ignorance, naivete, foible or by intent we wrong others. I suggest that it is our behavior that is to be judged rather than who we are. Our human dignity and value as life forms is to remain intact, whole and unsullied. Our actions are at issue rather than our beings, and identities. This model does not absolve us from our need to take responsibility for our actions; nor, of being accountable. Being accountable and responsible is one of the markers of a healthy psychologically individuated adult. We owe this to ourselves; and others benefit as consequence.

We like that which is like us. When meeting another person with whom we share common experiences, values and interests we are comforted: We like them. We may feel relaxed with them. This is normal. It is natural too. Too often, however, when meeting people with whom we share neither experiences, values nor interests, we feel an absence of comfort; an absence of relaxation and ease; we may dislike them, or be indifferent to them, or prefer not being in their company. We have normalized these responses in ourselves.

Yet, our discomfort is unnatural. We need not feel this way. While like likes like, and like orients around like, like can orient around difference without fear or discomfort. We can learn to be okay and relaxed in the face of that which differs from us: to be comfortable.

Something similar applies to relating with ourselves. As we open to knowing that who we are is distinct from our actions and pasts, the acknowledging of our actions concerning our having wronged another will be less angst producing. We will no longer think less of ourselves. Instead, we will see that our actions might need changing, yet who we are is okay.

In closing out this post, I share with you that my intent for this series has nothing to do with enhancing our understanding about anger, although that may happen. The American mythologist Joseph Campbell reminded us that we are not here to find meaning in our lives but rather to experience the rapture of being alive. Five of Hellinger’s seven types of anger are what I refer to as problematic forms of anger. They impede us from “experiencing the rapture of being alive.”

My intent is to provoke our movement into becoming the “I” in the “I-Thou” relationship. (There is the only relationship available to us. Perhaps we best get on with it.)

• How have I wronged myself?

• What do I need to change so I can resolve these things in myself?

• When will I sit down with myself and with self-respect, strength and clarity resolve these things within myself?

• What are the names of those I have wronged this month, and have yet taken the actions you owe them and myself? This year? This decade? In the past?

• What do I need to change so I can resolve these things with them?

• If needed, who possesses the compassionate intelligence and skill to properly facilitate these processes for me? To help me clean up these wrongs?

• How can I open to seeing myself as distinct from my actions and past?

• How can I open to seeing others as distinct from their actions and pasts?

• How can I be okay with differences? That which differs from what I value, know and prefer? 

• How can I push back against the forces in my life without attacking others in the process?