Of course, this practice has more metaphysical nuances now than it did in 1650. The word ‘god’ is interpreted in many different ways by many different people. And pretty much all of them can be a valid interpretation of our lived experience.

I like to think of it as a metaphor for whatever mystery it is that is the source of ease. Of comfort in our own skin. The source of grace, and inner beauty. Restlessness, desire and longing

And so, when I’m in conversation with a client I make it my practice to remember that whatever else I’m seeing figuring in their context, I’m also seeing ‘god’.

I’m also a coach. At Harthill Consulting Ltd we're about making meaning from what we encounter in the world. Right now, that feels more important than ever. Intrinsic to this, for me, is the notion of climbing higher to see further - to obtain more clarity of insight about how we wish to live our lives.

All of us can climb higher if we want to. If we choose to leave the comfort of our socialised mindset behind. Maybe not 24/7 - but enough to allow us to experience the ease, comfort, and grace to make us the kind of people who create transformative moments in the course of ordinary living. And like ourselves much more in the process.

One of these post conventional ways of making meaning is that of the Alchemist. This isn't referencing, as our profile report puts it, ‘any magical or mystical powers’, but ‘a place of constant paradox, co-experiencing profound ordinariness and an extraordinary depth of awareness and feeling. A mixture of the deeply felt existential, the profoundly playful and exceptionally ordinary’

Perhaps the source of our ease, contentment, and comfort in our own skin. Maybe a cocktail of grace, inner beauty, deep desire, and wistful longing. It might be what us Quakers mean by ‘that of god’.

So I seek to respond to that Alchemical 'something' inside every client I work with. The purpose of my coaching and my supervising is, as Dr Simon Western puts it, to be emancipatory. To connect them with their capacity to notice Alchemy in the ordinary, be playful in the intimidatory, and be at ease in their complexity.

I sometimes invite clients to share with me what they witness in themselves when we address some, maybe unusual, existential questions.

‘Who might love be inviting you to be in this?’
‘What might happen if you just let go?’
‘Where might you and your system embrace more vulnerability?’
‘What might evolve here if there was less of you in it?’

Stuff like that. That makes us both sit back in wonder.

Because, of course, I’m noticing the questions digging into me. Answering that of Alchemy in me.

Hoping, as Simon Cavicchia once said to a group of us, that grace will decide to descend on our conversation.

#coaching #love #develop #quaker #supervision