Newsletter June 2011

The Transformer

Inspiration and News from the Center for Transformational Presence 

June 2011

Article: Remembering the Future To Find Peace In the Present

Soul Mission Profile: Peter Heinrichs—Embracing Abundance

Video of the Month: Teach Me How To Trust

Remembering the Future To Find Peace In the Present

by Alan Seale

Photo - Maureen Edwards

It seems that everywhere I turn these days, I hear people talking about uncertainty. It appears to be at every level of society, from personal to global—a sign of the times in which we are living. Over time, uncertainty can lead to fear and insecurity about the future, taking a big toll on our sense of well-being and confidence.

In Transformational Presence Coaching, we use a tool called “Remembering the Future” to help navigate the uncertainty of the road ahead. It can help us discover the greatest potential waiting to unfold, and then show us how to create a future in which that potential becomes reality. It’s an easy, intuitive process grounded in principles of quantum physics.

“Remembering the future” may seem like an oxymoron in our conventional ways of thinking. In our three-dimensional world, the reality that we experience is created by circumstances occurring in a specific time and space. It makes sense to us that we can remember the past because we have experienced it as a linear series of events that happened at specific times and in specific locations. Remembering the future, on the other hand, seems impossible since, by linear time standards, we haven’t yet experienced it.

However, when we expand our awareness and step beyond our conventional, three-dimensional reality, we can enter the quantum realm where there is no linear time-space continuum. There is no sense of past, present, and future as we think of it in everyday life. When we step into the quantum realm, the future is just as available to us as the past. We’ll talk about this a bit more below, but first let’s give you the chance to experience remembering the future for yourself.

So how do you remember the future? It’s a simple process that anyone can use at any time. There are just three simple requirements:

1. to accept that there is more available to you than what you can access through your five outer senses of seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling
2. to let your intuitive senses come alive
3. to pay attention and respond to what you discover.

It can be fun, and it can also bring a lot of relief!

Take time for the exercise below and see what you discover. I recommend that you read through the exercise first, and then give yourself at least 10 minutes to actually do it. Getting up and moving around the room or an outdoor space as the exercise suggests will bring the best results. However, if you are not able to move around, you can move your finger around on the surface of a table or on the arm of your chair to represent different time-space locations in order to receive the same effect.

Let go of your preconceived notions about whether or not you can do this and just assume that you can. And here we go!

Exercise: Remembering the Future

Begin by choosing a place to stand that can represent where you are right now in your life and circumstances. Take a few moments to breathe into this time and space to feel the energy of where you are, and to be aware of emotions. Allow yourself to be fully present with “what is,” yet not get swept away by it. Just be present with it. Remember that you are not your circumstances. Your circumstances are just what is happening at the moment.

After allowing yourself to fully experience where you are right now, move to stand in another spot that can represent a time in the future. You may want to assign a specific date to that spot, or you may choose for the spot to represent a time after your current project, challenge, or goal has been accomplished or resolved. Either way is fine.

As you step into the future spot, let yourself shift in your awareness so that the future time has now become your present. Notice what shifts within you as you symbolically step into another time, space, and circumstance. Take your time and notice where you are, what the date is, and what your circumstance or story is in this new setting. Gather as many details of circumstance and feeling as you are able. Let your intuitive senses come alive and serve you. Most importantly, let it be easy. Don’t force anything. Accept whatever comes without judgment or analysis. Just observe.

You may notice that already you are feeling better. As you stand in this new time, space, and circumstance, “remember” back to the date and time where you started this exercise, and remember what has happened between that time and the time you are standing in now. Let yourself intuitively remember how you got to be where you are now in this new time, space, and circumstance.

What new information, insights, or understanding do you have about the circumstance you were in at the beginning of this process? How did you get past the challenge that loomed so large back there in the place and time where you started? Let your intuitive senses give you the answer. Simply stay in this awareness and “remember.”

After you have gathered as much information as you are able at this time, take the feelings and awareness that you have in this new spot with you as you walk back to the spot where you began. It is very important that you bring your insights, feelings, and awareness from the future back with you to the spot that represents today. Don’t leave it all in the future. Bring it back with you to today!

As you stand in the spot representing today, notice how your relationship to your current circumstances has shifted. What new insights do you have about your next steps or the way forward through whatever may be happening (or not happening!) now?

The basic process of remembering the future is as simple as that. What you are actually remembering are possibilities of how your future could turn out. We understand both from quantum physics and from ancient wisdom teachings that we are constantly creating our present and future by the choices we make today. Three different choices today could lead to three different outcomes. You can adapt this process to go stand in the various outcomes created by each of the choices you might make. This can give you greater insight and wisdom for making the choices you face today. (If you want to explore these concepts further, see the e-book, The View From the Field, or my new book, Create A World That Works.)

If when you visited the future things were still really difficult, take in that information, and then move on to another spot further into the future, asking to be shown a time and space where things feel better, more manageable, or resolved. Be creative and flexible with the process. This is a very simple model that can be adapted in any way that will serve you.

On very rare occasions when I am leading someone through this process, they find that the looming issue does not resolve. If by chance this happens to you, as you continue to visit different points in the future and remember what is happening there, allow yourself to be present with “what is” without judgment or assumption. Be a compassionate observer. Ask what gift or learning is available to you through what is happening. And ask what choices you can make back in the spot where you started that might alter the future and lead to a different set of outcomes. There is a wealth of information and guidance available to us when we step beyond the limitations of our current time-space reality.

The uncertainties of today may be challenging, but they do not have to be paralyzing or debilitating. When we employ simple time-space awareness tools, we can often find the insight and guidance that we need in order to navigate the uncertainty with confidence, clarity, courage, and strength. The more often you practice remembering the future, the easier it gets and the more it will serve you in moving through every day with a sense of grace and ease.

Many blessings,
Alan

Copyright © 2011 Alan Seale

Soul Mission Profile: Peter Heinrichs—Embracing Abundance

by Johnathon Pape

Sometimes the path to abundance can take us through areas of risk, change, and scarcity.  However, continuing to follow “what wants to happen” in our lives can lead us forward to not only a greater understanding of ourselves, but also to increased opportunities for living our missions more fully every day.

In opening to the rising potential in his life, Peter Heinrichs has encountered an abundance of change, including moving from a long-term career as a full-time pastor to a new career as a coach and a part-time pastor, relocating to another area, and embarking on a fulfilling new relationship. Early on in these transitions, Peter began coaching with Alan, where he discovered his soul mission—I bring abundance so others may find theirs!

Peter went on to participate in Alan’s Transformational Presence Coach Training and is currently finishing up the Manifestation Wheel teleclass.  “The interesting thing about the Manifestation Wheel is that it helped me recognize my sense of powerlessness with money issues, and that awareness reinforced my soul mission.  I began to say to myself, ‘I really am enough’ and that’s where my power comes from.  I think that for so much of my life I saw scarcity before I could trust abundance—scarcity in love, time, energy, money.  When I’m in a place of scarcity I depend on the world to affirm me, measure me, or validate me.  When I’m in a place of abundance I’m in my full power.  Abundance is about ‘being,’ from which the ‘doing’ and the attraction of well being always come.”

Johnathon Pape: Thanks for sharing your story with us, Peter.  You have made extraordinary, inspiring choices to follow the energy of what wants to happen in your life.  That has to be very exciting, and perhaps a little scary.  Can you speak about that?

Peter Heinrichs: Yes to both.  Part of abundance is letting go of fear in the present moment while preparing the space for new opportunities. I left a full-time/long time position as a senior pastor to take up part-time ministry and start up my coaching practice. I am sixty years old. I am investing my retirement funds in this new adventure. My total income this first year will likely be less than my youngest daughter’s support and college tuition. I am making choices to simplify my life and expenses. I am prioritizing my training as a coach. What more joy can I ask for than the capacity to claim this adventure of abundance.

JP: Abundance issues are so prevalent in our society.  I love that your understanding of abundance encompasses everything in life.

PH: It’s not just about material things, although that’s certainly a big part of it. I see the main characteristics of abundance as simplicity, celebration, and invitation to dance in the moment. Abundance requires that I continually notice what I really need and what I can let go of. What is then transformational is to celebrate what I receive and what wants to happen in and around me – to really celebrate! I have a client who has done an incredible job with her life in the face of real difficulties. I asked her if she had ever stopped to thank herself for the good work she had done.  She hadn’t, but she sure did in that moment. How often do we actually thank ourselves for the transformational work we’re doing?  I want a life of celebration that refuses to back down from systems of fear, domination, and division. I want to dance where others trudge, cower, or hide. And I want to invite others to dance with me!

JP: Your Christian faith is obviously very important on many levels, not least of which is vocational.  Can you say more about your background as a minister?

PH: I started out as a Unitarian Universalist minister.  I graduated from Union Theological Seminary in NYC and served a parish in Newport, Rhode Island for four and a half years before taking a position as the Director of Development for the Unitarian Universalist Association Headquarters in Boston.  I was there for 5 years, and then realized that my spiritual journey was taking me in a different direction. I found that I had a real relationship going on with Jesus and felt that I could better explore that through the United Church of Christ.  So I transferred my ordination from UUA to UCC and was hired by the South Church in Springfield, Massachusetts, where I served as their senior minister for twenty-one and a half years.  I left that post in January to explore these new directions in my life.

JP: And how did coaching become a part of your world?

PH: Well, it evolved out of my work as a spiritual director. While I was still very active in parish ministry, I trained as a spiritual director at the Spiritual Life Center in Bloomfield, Connecticut.  I graduated from that program in 1998, and then went on to become a trainer of spiritual directors.

JP: What exactly is a spiritual director?  Is that like a pastoral counselor?

PH: Not really.  A pastor is a preacher/teacher/manager in an institution which manifests God’s work and love in the world.  Within that, of course, there is pastoral counseling, which is not therapy, but rather a loving and listening ear within the context of ministry.  The purpose of a spiritual director, on the other hand, is to empower the direct relationship between the client and God.  Pastoral counseling felt like it was so mired in the needs of the institution that it was hard for the pastor and the client to break free to follow what God really wants to show you.  It’s not impossible to do this, just very challenging.  And the difficulty I found with spiritual direction was a tendency to use God as a substitute for the work that people need to do.  At its best it is a remarkable journey; at its worst it can be enabling. The danger is that the spiritual director becomes merely “a mirror with a mouth.”  The thing that was appealing to me about coaching was that God no longer had to be separate, in the third chair in the room, if you will.  The power of coaching is that the higher power is already present in the two chairs of coach and client. That makes the process co-active and really empowers both client and coach to experience their own sacredness and humanness at the same time.  Holding the space of inquiry, curiosity, and power with the client is a very sacred space. That is very much a part of what is there for me in Transformational Presence Coaching.

JP: So Transformational Presence Coach Training has complemented your spiritual journey?

PH:  Yes.  I definitely see the work I’m doing now as an evolution from and complement to these offerings. What has been totally convincing to me about Transformational Presence is that the deep alignment within a person of soul and ego and the alignment of a person with greater Consciousness is of itself transforming the world.  Anything other than that alignment is going to be trying to fix the same old problems (no matter how admirable that might be) rather than shifting the energy to the highest Consciousness where they will naturally be resolved for the benefit of all. Jesus really tried to get us to see that in his teachings!

JP: Which takes us back to living in abundance—even within the abundant challenge of something that wants to be transformed.

PH: Yes, I’m thinking now of the astonishing thing about the story of Jesus and the multiplication of the loaves—a story of extraordinary abundance—and that it’s not so much that everyone got to eat, but that Jesus’ followers began to see the big picture that there is more than enough to go around and they were being called forth to live the “more.”  Abundance implies sharing (celebration and invitation). Because I have claimed abundance and not scarcity in my life, I can invite others to choose the same. I began my coaching practice mostly among pastors because they are a natural niche for me. Pastors are often visionary and generous people, but they frequently overlook what they themselves need and what truly wants to happen in their lives and ministry. Disempowerment is a common experience among pastors as they tend to take responsibility for fixing rather than simply empowering from a deep sense of being.  I coach for the power that comes from the abundance of being—calling forth the “more” that really wants to happen and not the daily drama.

JP: That’s very exciting.

PH:  It is.  And I am also more than ready to expand my coaching beyond the world of pastors!

JP: Well, I know that you have a new coaching business with your partner, Susan Lewis. Tell our readers about that.

PH: We have recently started a coaching practice called BeLove in Yourself Life Coaching (www.beloveinyourself.com). It’s not so much about what you “believe,” but how you “belove” into your potential. Beliefs are constructs. Helpful as constructs can be, they do not propel anybody into new life. There is only one force that propels into places of choice and opportunity, and that is love. Not the soppy love of popular movies, but the gravitational force underlying our creation and purpose. Love returns our power from being mere objects caught in a random universe to being subjects who infuse meaning and transformation. Abundance is as simple as knowing that there is more than enough of the power of love to go around.

JP: What has been your greatest challenge to living your soul mission, and how have you transformed that?

PH: Remembering every day and every hour to simplify, celebrate, and invite—even when it feels like I’m walking in peanut butter.  There is a saying: Suffering is inevitable. Misery is optional! I would add: Blessing is promised. There are more options than we imagine or desire, and we are free to choose among them. Be willing to see options. Every day I go to willingness.

JP: What would you say to someone who is considering doing Soul Mission * Life Vision, the Manifestation Wheel workshop, or Transformational Presence Coach Training?

PH: Hitch your pants up, tie your shoes, make sure you’ve gone to the bathroom. You’re in for a wild and very joyful ride!

JP: Thanks again for sharing your ride with us, Peter.  I wish you abundant blessings on the journey!

Peter and his partner, Susan Lewis

Video of the Month:  Teach Me How To Trust

This month we feature a You Tube video of nature images with beautiful teachings from the Native American tradition. The music accompanying these images is Samuel Barber's poignant "Adagio for Strings." This video seems a wonderful complement to Alan's article on uncertainty and peace.