Questions and Dreams

Friday June 19th

I am speaking into my little digital recorder in the car on my way to Ottawa... to a NAJPA weekend (NorthAmericanJourneyPractitionersAssociation) to rethink my practice.

There are questions. There are things I wonder about... how to use this time after the surgery, the pain, and the recovery... and my failed attempt to use the journey for my cysts. I am wondering if people are shying away to use this work because they know about this failure. I am wondering if I am being led into a different direction... a different way to run my practice.

Life seems to give me a big opening right now. I have not had a single client since I am back from Germany. And the two workshops I had scheduled at the center in Delmar didn't get ANY registrations either. That surprised me, because back in January, when I presented the Journeywork to them, they seemed to be so excited about it. It seemed they couldn't wait for me to start working there. And now there wasn't a single person who wanted to do the workshop. Curious.

Maybe I am just given time to write this book. Maybe that's what I most need to do right now. Who knows. Most of the time I can relax into that awareness. Once in a while the old fear of not doing enough for my practice, not doing enough for Journeywork, not finding effective enough ways to spread the word about the Journey catch up with me. Then I do get a little nervous, then I do get a little restless.

More often though I can remember what I learned: that life never makes a mistake. It seems that's the word that fits for me these days. I don't call it God any more. I call it LIFE. I don't call it universe any more. No: LIFE. Life never makes a mistake. And if life doesn't make a mistake, it's giving me a lot of time right now without work. It's giving me time to trust that I am being taken care of. It's giving me time to trust that the support that is coming from Constantin is enough right now. That's beautiful. In many ways. The timing of Constantin's business doing well matches in a peculiar way with where I am with my work. And if it is so that this was the time where he was meant to support me and I was meant to be... off the hook... if this was the time to release - at last - the pressure of making a living, it is curious that that time seems to be now. Why would it be now? Why not a couple of years ago? The struggle was painful enough then, wasn't it?

I don't know the answer... and I guess it doesn't matter. Now is the time. And now I do have a story to tell.

I also still have this desire to bring Journeywork into the school system. It's a big dream to do that. I would love to find a way to make that happen... or rather: I'd love to find a way to participate in the process. I don't imagine it will be me by myself. I imagine there will be more involved.

To have Journeywork in all public schools in America. Just imagine. So many of the problems in the schools would be addressed, so much could be shifted, so much could be set into motion for an entire generation of students, so much could be opened up, so much could be released. God... just imagine!


Questions continued

So what are my questions for my practice?

I am passing this big river, wide and quiet it flows in a soft curve right next to the highway. The landscape green, rising up on both sides of the bank. This is not the Hudson. this is the Mohawk river I think. Rivers have shown up so often in my experiences of source... images of rivers, rivers as metaphors... those feelings of being carried... by a stream of energy that flows like a river... and now I see this river... hmmm...

What are my questions for my practice?

Do I need to redefine my focus with my clients? Do I need to enter into client relationships with a new clarity that the healing the journey provides is not always physical... even when that is what someone is looking for? That the healing the journey offers is not always a direct response to what someone is looking for. Sometimes the desire is for a physical manifestation, and the journey will not make that happen. Sometime the desire is for an emotional shift, and the journey will not make that happen, because sometimes the journey heals away the outer layers first and doesn't get to the core right away. Sometimes... very rarely, a client will not feel a difference. This is rare, but it happens.

Sometimes a client has big hopes and is disappointed when the journey doesn't create the fast and miraculous healing that has been expected. It does happen. I always try to let someone know that they have just started... that even though they don't perceive any change ... things have been set into motion... that there is more they can do if they stay with the experience... if they keep using the work with what is surfacing after the first session. Often these very people don't seem to believe that it is possible... they give up... they don't stay in touch with me. I feel bad about that. In such situations I always wish there was a better way for me to reach them, to pass through the layer of disappointment, through the veil of hopelessness.

I wonder if I have put too much hope into providing change - in the past. When there is hope, there is the seed of disappointment. It seems I can only hold a door open. It is not up to me if someone walks through it or not, it is not my job to make someone walk through it. I just have to hold it open. There are a few clients in my life who have not walked through the door. I still sometimes talk to them in my mind... long afterwards. I still try to reach them. - Interesting.

The knowledge that this is not my responsibility is not new. What I am moving toward is possibly more of a clarity, more of a constant knowing, more of a restedness, more of a visceral being in that awareness that it is not up to me... that I am just a facilitator. Maybe it really doesn't matter. I breathe differently.

If I think about my practice now in an ideal way, it is not seeing myself working every day, week after week. An ideal practice for me would be to have three or four clients a week, and to be able to write. I love the writing. I hope there is a need for my words, no, a place for my words. I also hope I can make some money with my words... I hope I can write more than one book. Books are powerful... even in this computer age.