On Searching & Coaching

There is a popular book by Alan Watts called The book on the taboo against knowing who you are. When I started out looking at the field of self-improvement, self-help, coaching and spirituality, I was pretty sure that this was rather easy. I expected that change was a matter of a couple of months, maybe one or two years; that it was about finding out what you want to do with your life and then just do it, happily ever after.

But not only was it a lot harder to really find out what exactly I wanted to do, never mind how to really structure my life differently and how to be true to myself. Who was I anyways?

There is a passage in one of Dr. David Hawkins (2012) books that I’d like to share in its entirety, as it so well describes the coaching industry and the process of searching. This is much of where I have been in the last twenty years:

Well, you say, “there have to be some experts who have the answers.” When upset, you go to a doctor or a psychiatrist, an analyst, a social worker, or an astrologer. You take up religion, get philosophy, take the Erhard Seminars Training (est), tap yourself with EFT. You get your chakras balanced, try some reflexology, go for ear acupuncture, do iridology, get healed with lights and crystals. You meditate, chant a mantra, drink green tea, try the Pentecostals, breathe in fire, and speak in tongues. You get centered, learn NLP, try actualizations, work on visualizations, study psychology, join a Jungian group. You get Rolfed, try psychedelics, get a psychic reading, jog, jazzercise, have colonics, get into nutrition and aerobics, hang upside down, wear psychic jewelry. Get more insight, bio-feedback, Gestalt therapy. You see your homeopath, chiropractor, naturopath. You try kinesiology, discover your Enneagram type, get your meridians balanced, join a consciousness raising group, take tranquilizers. You get some hormone shots, try cell salts, have your minerals balanced, pray, implore, and beseech. You learn astral projections. Become a vegetarian. Eat only cabbage. Try macrobiotics, go organic, eat no GMO. Meet up with Native American medicine men, do a sweat lodge. Try Chinese herbs, moxicombustion, shiatsu, acupressure, feng shui. You go to India. Find a new guru. Take off your clothes. Swim in the Ganges. Stare at the sun. Shave your head. Eat with your fingers, get really messy, shower in cold water. Sing tribal chants. Relive past lives. Try hypnotic regression. Scream a primal scream. Punch pillows. Get Feldenkraised. Join a marriage encounter group. Go to Unity. Write affirmations. Make a vision board. Get re-birthed. Cast the I Ching. Do the Tarot cards. Study Zen. Take more courses and workshops. Read lots of books. Do transactional analysis. Get yoga lessons. Get into the occult. Study magic. Work with a kahuna. Take a shamanic journey. Sit under a pyramid. Read Nostradamus. Prepare for the worst. Go on a retreat. Try fasting. Take amino acids. Get a negative ion generator. Join a mystery school. Learn a secret handshake. Try toning. Try color therapy. Try subliminal tapes. Take brain enzymes, antidepressants, flower remedies. Go to health spas. Cook with exotic ingredients. Look into strange fermented oddities from faraway places. Go to Tibet. Hunt up holy men. Hold hands in a circle and get high. Renounce sex and going to the movies. Wear some yellow robes. Join a cult. Try the endless varieties of psychotherapy. Take wonder drugs. Subscribe to lots of journals. Try the Pritikin diet. Eat just grapefruit. Get your palm read. Think New Age thought. Improve the ecology. Save the planet. Get an aura reading. Carry a crystal. Get a Hindu sidereal astrological interpretation. Visit a trans medium. Go for sex therapy. Try Tantric sex. Get blessed by Baba Somebody. Join an anonymous group. Travel to Lourdes. Soak in the hot springs. Join Arica. Wear therapeutic sandals. Get grounded. Get more prana and breathe out that stale black negativity. Try golden needle acupuncture. Check out snake gallbladders. Try chakra breathing. Get your aura cleaned. Meditate in Cheops, the great pyramid in Egypt. (p. 2)

Having been there for the last twenty years, this is hilarious to me. David Hawkins (2012) writes further:

You and your friends have tried all of the above, you say? Oh, the human! You wonderful creature! Tragic, comic and yet so noble! Such courage to keep on searching! What drives us to keep looking for an answer? Suffering? Oh, yes, Hope? Certainly. But there is something more than that. Intuitively, we know that somewhere there is an ultimate answer.” ( p. 4)

I could see so much of what wasn’t working in my life and around me, in the world and in the lives of friends and family and still, I was sure there had got to be a better way or better ways of how to be and how to do things.

To be clear, I’d like to emphasize that there is at least some value to any and all modalities and tools of personal growth. It’s just that not one tool helps everybody although it is often sold as if.

So by all means, if you have found a coach, coaching modality, psychotherapy, tool of personal growth or spiritual school that is really helping and supporting you, stick to it. If you, like me, have grown frustrated and exhausted by what you have been finding up to now, then maybe you could supplement whatever you are doing with the findings that I am sharing in this thesis (blog) and experience for yourself and see if a more profound change occurs for you, as well.