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Dear Friends “They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. Things are always in transition, if we could only realise it. Nothing ever sums itself up in the way that we like to dream about. The off-center, in-between state is an ideal situation, a situation in which we don’t get caught and we can open our hearts and minds. It’s a very tender, nonaggressive, open-ended state of affairs.” Pema Chödrön
What a relief I’m finding it is to know that we’re really, always, inescapably in the middle of our lives. That we never ‘arrive’. That we’re always ’on the way’. That to be human is to always be an ‘inbetweener’. That there’s never a place to stand outside the process of things falling apart and coming back to together.
Knowing this is a relief to me because it undoes so much of my desperate striving, my stories that there’s a perfect me to aspire to, or an idyllic life free of difficulty or confusion. It reminds me that whenever I feel like I’ve arrived at that place, it’s probably time to be both grateful and in wonder about where I’ve got to and then... to let it go. That whenever I’m in some kind of trouble or pain, it’s probably time to remember that something else is, inevitably, coming. And it’s such a relief to see that I, just like everyone else, am not a thing but an unfolding process, always changing, just like life itself.
I’m noticing that when I treat myself as a process always in the middle of becoming whatever I’m becoming, I’m much kinder. I don’t compare myself so much to others, to who I’ve been in the past, or to the finished-product I imagine I should be. I don’t compare others so much in all those ways either. I catch glimpses of quite how beautiful we are, these unfolding expressions of life partnering with and dancing with a bigger unfolding that was here long before each of us arrived.
And instead of trying fix myself, or trying to fix others, I start to see how I might join in the dance, as an ally, as a truth-teller, as an advocate, as a creator, as one who turns-towards rather than away, as one who welcomes and includes, as one who responds rather than reacts, as one who takes part in life as it falls apart and comes together again.
As Pema Chödrön says “Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.”
The kind of coaching we practice and teach - integral development coaching - is intended to be a response to all of this, a way of honouring and meeting our lives and supporting one another to step wholeheartedly into taking part in life and in what matters to us. You can get a taste of what we mean by joining our upcoming two-day Foundations of Coaching course, our next year-long Professional Coaching course, and by listening to our ‘Turning Towards Life’ podcast. The most recent episode, ‘In Between’, was inspired by Pema Chödrön’s words.
We’ll look forward to seeing you.
Warmest wishes
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