Every year around this time, I do a little life coaching exercise that’s featured in Give Your Life Direction.  The idea is to make a list of things I wish I could say but, for whatever reason, can’t.  Maybe because the other person is dead.  Maybe because it would be too dangerous to confront them.  Maybe because the other person lives far away.  Or maybe because I just don’t feel I can be honest with my emotions, whether they are jealous, angry, or wounded.  My fifth chakra, the throat chakra, has often been rather weak, but I’ve been actively strengthening it.

The first year I tried this exercise, I had a list as long as my arm.  It was only  “supposed” to be ten things, but I kept going, shocked at how much I’d kept bottled up.  A few years later, the list was down to the five to eight range. Last year, I had to dig a little harder and still ended up in the five to eight range, thanks mostly to some secrets I was keeping for someone else. Every year of this exercise, the burden gets a little lighter.

I sat down a few days ago to make my list for the year…and nothing.  Absolutely nothing.

The closest I could come was a conversation I’d like to have with one particular man in my life who has been out of town, but I’ve held off only because it would be nicer to have the conversation  face-to-face, alone.  It’s nothing bad–no anger, no jealousy, no I’m-hurt, no why-did-you-do-this?, no nothing of that sort.  Instead, it’s just a nice talk about something personal and lovely.

Right now, there’s little to nothing that I have bottled up, no emotion I’m swallowing because I’m afraid to say it or fear the ramifications if I do.

I kinda like it this way.

Lorna Tedder

A couple of months ago, author Christopher Penczak led me to a wonderful insight–that regardless of our spirituality, we are all seeking the deeper mysteries.  This explains why many Christians are seeking more occult knowledge and many pagans are committing to new paths, some attaining clergy status in multiple traditions or experimenting with some of the more alternative “alternative” religions. 

So far, I’ve found two ways of exploring my own inner depths.  The first was through Initiation into a spiritual path and a commitment to graduating from the program.  The second was through hiring a life coach to help me make a difficult transition after my divorce. 

I’ve had two coaches now–I jokingly call them  Yoda (my career coach, whom I no longer see because I made the transition I needed) and Obiwan (my spiritual coach, whom I talk with about once a month).  The coaching experience was quite different from the spiritual training experience, however, mainly because the spiritual training dictated what I was to learn and how I was to learn it.  This is not to say that one was superior to the other–just different.

There were pre-set opinions and Mysteries to be shared in my three years of seminary training, but the coaching experience was more focused on uncovering my own Mysteries.  Both coaches I’ve worked with have given me guidance  in discovering my own strengths and tools for dealing with the not-so-pleasant, and I’ve had so many epiphanies through this process.

I think that’s the biggest value of a coach–the continued self-inquiry and self-correcting pathwork to get to a place of achieving your dreams and forging new ones. 

I myself have now been a coach for about a year–part-time, fitting it into my existing schedule–and it’s been very fulfilling to help other people discover their facets and transform themselves into a higher version of themselves.  Most coaches set aside a 40-60 minute appointment once every 3-4 weeks, but I’ve been experimenting with email coaching for several clients this month, and it’s been better than I could ever have expected! 

Here’s why:

There’s good reason for devotions, rituals, and church services to be hold on a regular basis, whether it’s every Sunday or every Full Moon or four times a day.  If I have an appointment with a client to discuss how they’ve applied certain spiritual techniques for the past month, what I find is a mad dash in the 48-hours before the appointment to focus on their inner Mysteries and think up a few gems to talk about.  (Hey, I know–I did this with Yoda for the first few months we worked together.)

With email coaching, we’re checking in every day or so, doing small things to stay on-track, keeping the focus on their transformation.  It’s become a way of living the sacred way, this very regular and frequent but gentle guidance, rather than putting it on a shelf for weeks at a time. 

I guess that’s the secret to regularity in ritual:  it keeps the mind focused on the path.

If you’re interested in exploring your own Mysteries through a short-term or long-term coaching experience, you can contact me through http://www.lornatedder.com, or if you prefer to work with someone else, I’ll be happy to recommend someone to you.