distinctionsT h e Q u a r T e r l y N e w s l e T T e r f o r C l i e N T s a N d f r i e N d s o f

Winter 2012

What is your life for, really?by James Flaherty

The pause or slowing of activities that many of us experience at the end/beginning of the year can be a chance for us to reflect, in a manner deeper than usual, on matters that are essential but often neglected because of the pressures of daily life. Even if you don’t have such a chance or if it’s already gone by in this cycle, please take the occasion of reading this article as an opening for reflection.

Usually, when people reflect on what their life is, they concentrate on:Am I achieving my goals?Am I attending to what’s most important for me?Am I paying sufficient attention to people who are important to me?Am I making and acting upon the right plan for taking care of myself and my family in the future?Am I leaving a legacy so that my accomplishments and values will continue after I die? Am I happy?

What would you add to this list? Do you attend to some of these and not others? Why is that?

Given that so many of us, as an overall population, do not reflect at all, this list could be a pretty good start. And it is very much better to reflect than to keep going, merely bouncing from activity to deadline to next calendar item to next conversation to next project, and never lifting our heads above the fray.

These questions, though, exist at the conventional level of understanding our life and, consequently, can at most pro-vide some clarity and impetus to correct.

They provide more depth than when we are being busy/overwhelmed/buried, but are not sufficiently penetrating to cast over

our accumulated survival strategies our self-reinforcing denial mechanisms our self-absorbed, neurotic obsessionsour fear-based greed for money, pleasure, novelty, status, powerour persistent, moment-to-moment domination by our inner criticour making everyone, including ourselves, into objects subjugated by these goals

—you know, the way we live when we are being automatic and scattered in activity.

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1Practice of the Quarter............................3Poems of the Quarter...............................4Book of the Quarter.................................7

Happenings................................................. 8Special Event...............................................9Course Calendar......................................10

INDEX

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N E W V E N T U R E S W E S T

If the point of reflection is to return to ourselves, to re-oc-cupy our authenticity, and to embrace the truth as fully as we can (which I think it is), then we have to find topics that are different than the questions above open up.

I think the trouble with the reflective questions listed is that they start with the premise that my fundamental task is to find out how the world is and how I can navigate it to get what they—the questions—are aimed at. The premise allows no unique calling or purpose or destiny. The ques-tions are a list of socially sanctioned concerns (the con-cerns that that one “ought” to have as a member of the contemporary culture) that feel valid because the people around us agree with them and because we can even find sensations in our body that get stirred as we move closer or further from them.

They can be quite difficult to set down; nonetheless, they keep our life going in circles in a way that digs us deeper, deep-er into a rut that further limits our view and behavior.

Let’s start somewhere else then.

What if each of us has a unique mysteri-ous destiny that reveals itself over time and in the very midst of the daily cir-cumstances that can feel so claustropho-bic, inescapable, relentless, pointless, repetitive and painful?

What if all this suffering is a compassion-ate wearing away of all that is not consis-tent with our destiny?

What if our daily difficulties are precisely perfect for devel-oping the strength to live our destiny?

Then what would our reflective questions be?

Entertaining and engaging with these “what-if” questions takes a courageous, self-sustaining inquiry that is beyond what our culture will usually sanction. We can find no proof that it will be worthwhile.

But we do have the example of others who have gone be-fore us: people who have quieted themselves enough to hear the whispering call of destiny and have consequently re-contextualized all their relationships, activities, experi-ences, values and beliefs so that they can live, more and more fully, their destiny.

I wonder, can we even tolerate a word that sounds so anachronistic as “destiny”? Can we, even in the furthest

stretches of our imagination, accept that little me, from no-where special, growing up in a family that was messed up and not remarkable, has a destiny?

With what dignity, honor and devotion would we treat ourselves and our life if we took ourselves to be the embodi-ment, the vehicle of a unique destiny (like a princess/prince in waiting, or the recognized reincarnation of a wonderful spiritual teacher, or…)? For that reason alone, I think, it’s worth enacting.

What happens when we recognize ourselves as more than an accident of biological coupling happening in a time and place? How do we act when we see this being true about everyone we encounter?

To come full circle, here are some sug-gested reflective questions arising from this new premise that each of us has a unique destiny to live out:

How are my current life circumstances clarifying what my destiny is?Am I being true to my destiny, as I currently know it, in my actions, rela-tionships, attitudes, commitments and practices?How am I furthering my exploration of my destiny in how I’m living each day?In what ways am I honoring myself and everyone I meet as the holder of a unique destiny?

Much more on this topic in the book of the quarter, Fate and Destiny, and in the poems that imme-diately follow, as well in the practice of the quarter.

Exploring this topic deeply is the most powerful antidote to our toxic busyness that I have found up to now.

I am open and interested in exploring this individually with people if you’d like to take it up in some form of com-mitted exploration.

We will also take up this topic of the next San Francisco Roundtable.

Take care of yourself.

Love,

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© New Ventures West® 20�2

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P R A C T I C E O F T H E Q U A R T E R

This practice has two parts, which you can do simultaneously.

Part 1

Please write out a list of the 10 most difficult events/circumstances in your life. Please do this over a period of several weeks so that you can keep correcting, editing and adding to your list until you feel that you have gathered the most germane items that exemplify how your life has been.

When you are satisfied with your list, please write out your answers to the following questions. For each item:

What about this event/circumstance made it difficult for you? Specifically:

What part of you or your life was threatened or deeply challenged? What were you trying to make sure happened or didn’t happen? What identity were you attempting to hold onto?

How did you move through this event/circumstance? What strength or quality of yours was developed in the process?

What did this strengthening prepare you for?

If you reflect on each of these events/circumstances as if it were a trial (the difficult circumstance that each heroine or hero must face), a purification process (in which you had to let go of anything that was not purely you), or a preparatory exercise, then what is it that you are being readied for? What does this reflection tell you about what your destiny might be?

Part 2

For 30 days, please write down your dreams as soon as you can after having them. Include in your writing:

what the dream felt likewho was in itwhat happenedwho you were in itwhat the dream has you wondering about

At the end of the 30-day observation period, please ask yourself what these dreams and your reflections upon them tell you about what your destiny might be.

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Uncovering my Destiny

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P O E M S O F T H E Q U A R T E R

Valhalla Burn Unit on the Moon CallistoBy Sarah Lindsay

When Jupiter shields Valhalla impact basinfrom the light of the small white sun and the streaming particles of its wind,the patients who are able may come and linger in the courtyard,with its soothing views of a thoroughly fireproof world—concentric rings and ridges of ice and stone to the black horizon.The patients move with exquisite care, never too close to each other or to anything,sipping bottled oxygen,dressed, where they can be covered, in white cotton shifts and strips of gauze.Even those with eyebrows and lashes appear to have two holes burned in their faces.The doctors who watch them are not old, but their faces are slack and soft as worn denim.Each qualified for this post by the loss of an irreplaceable love;they aren’t homesick for an Earth they could ever go back to.There’s room in them now for oceans of understanding,and they see the use for severe burn victims of these conditions—feeble light, mild gravity, ice-covered ground,no touch of air to dread.No atmosphere. That’s why the sky is black all day, which does tend to bother the nurses, the aides, the kitchen staff, the housekeeping crew, all of whom are encouraged to miss their planet,and when they cry, are to do so hunched over sterile vials meant to preserve the healing proteins found in common tears.

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The Selfby William Carlos Williams

The poemis a disciplineWhat you needto sober you is what you have

Your children

Let themchildrenteach you

the peach flowerthe grapeglobular lockscurling pathetically aboutthe templestheir eyestheir rosy cheeks

the poemlaid crudelydelicatelybefore you.

Real Live Boyby Sarah Lindsay

And so Pinocchio the wooden puppetbecame living flesh,as he wished. The first

of many surprises. His palms were soft,sometimes grew wet,and when a splinter of wood slid into his skin,

it didn’t feel friendly there. Not oneof his eager dreams had mentionedthat a real boy couldn’t remove his foot

whenever it brokeand peg on a new one,or that he wouldn’t understandthe fiddle’s words anymore.

He was no longer remarkable,though often amazedat how the parts of his new spine found

so many ways of aching, or how,in the pit of winter,the bellows in his chest grew heavy with phlegm,

how the dog in his belly yelped for breadwhen there was none,

how sleep ruled himwhen he had meantTo work all night againon his wooden Geppetto.

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Poems by Tomas Tranströmer from The Half-Finished Heaven (chosen and translated by Robert Bly)

The Cuckoo

A cuckoo sat cooing in a birch just north of the house. The sound was so powerful that I first thought it was an opera singer performing a cuckoo imitation. Surprised I saw a bird. Its tailfeathers moved up and down with every note, like a pump handle at a well. The bird hopped on both feet, then turned its body around and cried out to all four directions. Then it rose and flew muttering something over the house and flew a long way into the west….The summer grows old and everything collapses into a single melancholy sigh. Cuculus canoras returns to the tropics. Its time in Sweden is over. It won’t be long! As a matter of fact the cuckoo is a citizen of Zaire. I am not so much in love with travel any longer. But the journey visits me. In these days when I am pushed farther and farther into a corner, when the tree rings widen, when I need reading glasses. Many more things happen than we can carry. There is nothing to be astonished about. These thoughts carry me just as loyally as Susi and Chuma carried Livingston’s mummified body all the way through Africa.

Breathing Space July

The man who lies on his back under huge treesis also up in them. He branches out into thousands of tiny branches.He sways back and forth,he sits in a catapult chair that hurtles forward in slow motion.

The man who stands down at the dock screws up his eyes against the water.Docks get old faster than men.They have silver-gray posts and boulders in their gut.The dazzling light drives straight in.

The man who spends the whole day in an open boatmoving over the luminous bayswill fall asleep at last inside the shade of his blue lampas the islands crawl like huge moths over the globe.

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B O O K O F T H E Q U A R T E R

Fate and Destiny: The Two Agreements of the Soulby Michael Meade

Michael Meade uses his own life, full of intriguing and extraordinarily difficult circumstances, to illustrate the central point in this captivating book: that each of us has a unique destiny. The author’s main method, however, is to draw on the huge human storehouse of myth, legend and story to illuminate and nuance his ideas. It turns out that the author’s destiny is to be a storyteller, so these two streams of narrative flow to-gether, producing a perfect illustration of his topic.

Fate is the collection of circumstances that we are thrown into and that always surrounds us. It’s the inescapable circumstances of time, place, gender, the availability of resources, the amount of surrounding love and support and the rest. Fate strengthens us for our destiny and also reveals it to us if we are paying attention. Since most of us aren’t looking for our destiny, this is an important book.

Finding our destiny means we are taking our life seriously and not thinking of it as a collection of random events. Having a destiny also means that we have a unique, noble identity that we have been given so that we can bring the gift that is ours alone to deliver.

When we rigorously, continuously open to what our destiny could be, we have a spacious view of our life that makes it less likely that we will get caught up in petty activities, busyness, destruction or defensiveness.

Maybe we are not merely a collection of brain processes—perhaps we have a pro-found and lasting connection to life going backwards and forwards in time.

Find out for yourself by taking up this book, which opens up a part of us that’s been put to sleep by our contemporary cultural narrative and practices. Reading it feels like having a conversation with a wise person in which our body, mind, heart and spirit are awakened, inspired and integrated. Entering this book takes us away from our immediate concerns and lets us know ourselves and our life and our pos-sibilities in a new way that also feels as if they’ve always been waiting for us.

A sweet, nurturing and delightful way to start our new year. A pleasure and an education not to be missed.

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Save the datefor the first

Integral Coaching Conference

May 13-15, 2013in San Francisco

Grads, contact Maryellen Myers if you’re interested in helping with planning.

HAPPENINGS

International Coaching Week (ICW) is next month! This weeklong celebration of coach-ing takes place from February 5-11, 2012. If you are interested in celebrating ICW, consider checking out your local coaching

chapters for any organized events, or call a coach friend and take them out to lunch (I still have a few openings in my calendar that week—I’m just sayin’). No matter how you choose to celebrate, the basic premise of ICW is to educate the public about the value of working with a professional coach.

The new ICF Membership Eligibility Require-ment (MER) provides that beginning April 1, 2012, to be considered a full “Coach Member” of ICF, you must have completed at least 60 hours of coach-specific training. Any NVW grad has more than enough hours by complet-ing the Professional Coaching Course, which is an Accredited Coach Train-ing Program (ACTP). If you hold an ICF Credential, you will automatically hold the

An oasis for you and your clients

Coaching News for Grads from Maryellen Myers,

Director of Graduate Development

Looking for a quiet, private space to meet with clients in San Francisco?

The Coaching Space, a lovely, two-room office space located two doors down from the Lauren Coaching Center, is now available for hourly, half-day or full-day use by students, grads, and friends of New Ventures West.

You can find details and an online reservation form at this page of our website.

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Cost for each event is $30 plus a traditional donation (dana) to the teachers at the end of the day. No one will be turned away for lack of funds. Please bring a bag lunch.

To register or for more information, contact Mary Ann Sacksteder at edzdialogues@everydayzen.org or call 707-528-6619 (e-mail preferred).

INTIMATE RELATIONSHIPS AS PRACTICE PLACE SUPREME

Sunday, February 19: 10:00 AM - 4:30 PMLauren Coaching Center, 3502 Geary Boulevard, San Francisco

with Chris Fortin and James Flaherty

Intimate relationships are occasions for feeling our deepest, most heartfelt connection. At the same time, genuine intimacy requires us to be vulnerable and let go of our habitual defensive routines. In this openness we can discover amazing things about ourselves, including the real

When we care so much, we also contact our profound human longing that’s frequently been misshapen by earlier wounding. It’s here that we have the exquisite opportunity to step into this painful situation with the kindness, presence and healing power of the Dharma.

Through brief talks, meditation and group exercises we will explore:

your intimate relationships.

Chris Fortin is a Zen priest, psychotherapist and spiritual counselor (dharmaheartzen.com). She is a teacher in the Everyday Zen community, and leads the Women’s Lotus Sangha in Sebastopol as well as meditation retreats throughout the Bay area and beyond.

James Flaherty MCC, is the founder of New Ventures West, a company that has been training and developing coaches for over 20 years. He is a voracious reader, he practices yoga and qigong, and he is a longtime student of Norman Fischer of Everyday Zen.

Everyday ZenDIALOGUES

We welcome people of all nationalities, classes, genders, sexual orientations, ages, physical abilities, and newcomers to Buddhist practice. Everyday Zen Dialogues is a series of programs creating conversations about practicing in the world. We invite you to visit our website (www.everydayzen.org) for more information about future events.

The Everyday Zen Foundation is dedicated to sharing the Zen attitude, spirit and practice with the world — to listening to the world, to changing it, and being changed by it. It is guided by the teachings of Zoketsu Norman Fischer.

Note: this is not a couples-only event. It is open to all.

A SPECIAL EVENT WITH EVERYDAY ZEN

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FREE PROGRAMSCOACHING ROUNDTABLEOne-day introduction to Integral Coaching and an opportunity for graduates to reconnect and discuss a new coaching topic.

San Francisco March 10 June 2Cost: Free

VIRTUAL ROUNDTABLEFree one-hour teleclasses on topics germane to Integral Coaching.All calls take place from noon-1 p.m. Pacific Time.

February 15 with James FlahertyTopic: “The Beginning of All Coaching: Self-Knowledge”Cost: Free

MEET THE LEADER CALLFree one-hour calls hosted by leaders of the Professional Coaching Course. All calls take place from noon-1 p.m. Pacific Time.

February 17 with Sarita Chawla Cost: Free

FREE COACHING AS A GUEST CLIENTSpend a half or full day being coached by a highly trained student. Experience Integral Coaching firsthand and come away with fresh insights and practices.

San Francisco April 14 June 8, 9Washington DC March 16, 17Cost: Free

COACH BUILDING BLOCKSCOACHING TO EXCELLENCETwo interactive days on the foundations of Integral Coaching.

Boston April 3-4Chicago April 17-18Copenhagen February 9-10London March 1-2San Francisco March 20-21 Singapore February 3-4Washington DC February 28-29 Cost: $695 in the U.S.**See our website for international pricing

INTEGRAL COACHING PRINCIPLESThree-day exploration of Integral Coaching for current coaches, counselors, and HR and OD professionals from all schools of training.

San Francisco April 18-20Cost: $1,275

COACH AS ENTREPRENEURBuild your business as a coach by finding your unique gifts and developing your skills and way of being as an entrepreneur.

Chicago June 21-23San Francisco July 13-15 November 2-4Cost: $1,495

THWARTING THE INNER CRITICAn experiential dive into working with the superego.

Portland, OR February 18-19San Francisco July 19-20Cost: $675

COACH CERTIFICATIONTHE PROFESSIONAL COACHING COURSECertification program for independent and corporate coaches. The next year-long programs begin:

Chicago October 2012Copenhagen March 2012London November 2012 Ottawa (in French) June 2012San Francisco March 2012 May 2012Singapore February 2012Washington DC April 2012Cost: $9,500 in the U.S.**See our website for international pricing

GRADUATE PROGRAMSMASTER CLASS WITH SARITA CHAWLAA powerful program for grads on a topic relevant to our coaching work and own self-development.San Francisco October 29-30Washington, DC October 4-5Cost: $475

BOOK STUDY GROUP WITH JAMESMonthly conference calls with guest authors applying current texts to Integral Coaching.

Quarters begin January, April, July, OctoberCost: $375/quarter

COACHING REUNION WEEKEND TELECLASS WITH JAMES FLAHERTYMeets six times on Tuesday evenings from February-May, 5-7pm PT. Topic: “Expression, Silence, and Mystery: Accessing our Deep Well of Creativity”

First call February 21Cost: $450

The enneagram and InTegral CoaChIng

Opening New Territory: Realizing our Capacity for Sustained Development

with James Flaherty and Russ Hudson

An intensive five-day training for new and experienced coaches

San Francisco, June 11-16Cost: $1,495

C O U R S E S C H E D U L E

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