Archive for category: Personal Coaching

Recently I received a comment and curiosity regarding my website. I decided to post them along with my response.

Comment and curiosity:
I did enjoy reading your website. As I was reading I wondered if the philosophies change according to regional or from country to country or even religious denominations? I also was wondering if your consultations are done with well known companies? I am a critical thinker not to be confused with negative thinker and my curiosity was piqued.

Response:
Thank you for your kind acknowledgement!

I appreciate your curiosity. The attrition rate for genuine curiosity itself warrants quantities of curiosity from each of us. Author Tom Robbins’ phrase “Vatican thought police” may point to one of the many unscrupulous culprits imposing their genocidal bent on curiosity. I fear that there are many unmarked graves concealing the remains of formerly active curiosity.

My interest revolves around energetic curiosity rather than thought-based curiosity. These two processes and skills are entirely distinct: the former unlimited and the only authentic and true catalyst of change. The latter receives more credit than is its due. Nonetheless, compassionately intelligent thought-based curiosity can be catalytic. It is often necessary in moving one toward and into genuine energetic curiosity.

I too appreciate the distinction you offer vis-a-vis negative thinking. Itself a plague on the Earth!

Regarding well known companies. Generally no. A few are multinationals: One, a household name operating world wide. Two operate on four continents. Another, involves thirty-five countries. Another operating throughout the EU. And, one operating in the USA from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean. However, that is a bit of grandstanding on my part. Most of my client organizations are small. Too, I have worked with governmental entities in the States, at all levels of governance, and with not-for-profits and NGOs.

Regarding whether my philosophies change regionally or from country to country, or even with differing religious denominations…I love this question!

The short answer is no, and for this reason. The models I use regard the origins of difficulties people experience to arise from a single source: An intended “built-in” bug in the operating system or hardware a person comes with. The bug bears a positive life-affirming intent and is itself a positive process for a human being. To me, the origin of an individual’s issues are distinct from genetics and culture. They are however symbiotic, as they incubate in the context of family and culture.

What is required of me is to meet people in the dignity, beauty and innocence of the Human Heart, and, too, to meet them intellectually. When I am successful in this, together we can begin the process of going beyond the familial, cultural, religious – and those stories of one’s personal history. In the process I need honor one’s respective narrative, yet, unless I assist them to change how they define themselves, to change, too, their personal cosmologies, and then to locate themselves beyond the myriad of their local pseudo-identities – the one’s they believe themselves to be – I help no one. I am but wasting their life and my own.

A good teacher must meet people where they are and then take them where they could or would not have gone on their own.

I trust there are threads of coherence here.

Thank you again for your curiosity! I wish you well!

On September 29, 2011, General Aviation lost a stellar, yet, unspoken hero. So too did the communities who loved him. Though insufficiently acknowledged, Bill Warren was the chief diplomat, emissary and envoy of the Spirit of Flight. He was born in Port Angeles, Washington on October 13, 1946. His family’s farm was under the flight path for the local airport. Ronn Dilling, Bill’s first cousin, reports that ever since Bill was three years old he gave his attention to airplanes and flying. As a child, if Bill was not watching planes from the farm, he was at the airport.

At eight years old Bill’s family moved to Medford, Oregon. He became a fixture at its airport. Bill first held the controls of an airplane, in flight, at age ten. From that moment, flying became the center of his life. Bill was fifteen when he got his private pilot certificate. Save for a brief stint in a city Parks Department, Bill’s career was aviation. He flew every type of aircraft except jets. It is said, if a plane can be started, Bill could fly it.

Whether flying Mercy flights, dusting crops and local orchards, providing air support for wild land fire suppression, dispersing airport fog, or shuttling planes, Bill was the one for the job. So too, he performed aerobatic stunts in the movies, founded a flying circus in which he designed and performed previously unseen aerobatic maneuvers. He was one of the main attractions in regional air shows in the lower forty-eight and Alaska.

Bill trained new pilots and tested those with experience as they sought new ratings and to maintain current certifications. Too, Bill provided flight knowledge training courses at Rogue Community College. Over the course of his career, Bill experienced nineteen engine failures – each time – through deploying his keenly developed attention, knowledge and behavioral skills rendered nineteen successful landings.

Bill Warren was out of sync with modern aviation. He seemed better suited for flying with the legendary French pilot and author Antoine De Saint-Exupery – or better still, being a character in one of his novels. Too, Bill’s soul was a contemporary of author and pilot Richard Bach.

Although Bill owned many airplanes his plane of choice was a 1946 Taylorcraft. Like himself, the T-Craft was lightweight and free from contemporary excesses. Flying a T-Craft, he would say made necessary that a pilot be a Pilot, god damn it. A T-Craft is affected by the subtlest movements of air. It’s just a big kite. You cannot power your way through anything – the pilot has to fly and fly well!

But for a few, all gauges and instruments were concealed and unreadable in Bill’s plane. To him, autopilot, GPS, and speed indicators were the pernicious bane of General Aviation. Pilots need to feel the tiniest motion of the weight shifts in their body…their body informs the pilot moment to moment of how the flight is progressing, how the plane is performing, and when to apply the controls. This is flying.

Bill was adamant that people already know how to fly! He would point to birds of prey riding the thermals and say – we are made of what they are made of. What is in them is in us, god damn it! Stop thinking and feel. You KNOW how to fly! Yes, he would say, there are things you need to learn to pass the test. And, there are things you need to know to be safe, but you already KNOW how to fly! Everyone does! Now, go over there and catch those thermals and get some altitude without having to work for it, god damn it!

Bill’s plane was named Simply Magic. She knew how to fly. Let the plane do her work, he would say. Stop over-controlling the plane. The pilot’s job is to relax and pay attention to the energy you are feeling in your body. It will tell you everything. Scan for other planes noticing too the altimeter and compass. Listen to the sound of the engine, and, in a relaxed way, gently slowly make what corrections are needed. Let the plane fly itself. It has much to teach us.

Those of us in Bill’s world could not – not – love him. It was simply impossible. Yet, he was often oblivious to the fact that his disdain for conformity, specifically to social contracts of interaction, was, at times, difficult for others. There are those who permanently closed their hearts to him. Bill could be a pain in the ass. Although Bill loved women, he did not protect them from the aspects of men that are best reserved for the company of men.

So too, Bill could be ornery in the way a wizard would be: messing with people to tease them – to shake them from their foibles. Women tell me he was naughty. I believe them. He fancied raising a Rolling Rock beer as oft as he could.

I read some place that some heroes need be defined by their greatness rather than their foibles. I contend this is the case for each of us. This is so regarding Bill Warren. His staggering genius, talent and abilities as a pilot and flight instructor are overshadowed by two other qualities of character. One: The profoundly delightful light of his heart – albeit issuing from behind turbulent life circumstances. Two: his profound respect, appreciation and love for children and young people.

The buoyancy of Bill’s heart and his work with young ones are his magnum opuses! Children and young people knew that Bill saw them! They knew he loved them! They knew he empathized with their circumstance! They knew they belonged in the world when with Bill! Lastly, they knew they were safe with Bill and from him!

Bill Warren, you have my love and deepest respect! I trust you are fog free and aloft in smooth air. I am privileged, heartened and changed – bettered – for having known and learned from you. So long my friend. Oh, one last bit: A poem.

Late Fragment

And did you get what 
you wanted from this life even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.
             ~ Raymond Carver