I work with leaders; people who have a position of responsibility to other people in which they ensure their individual and collective success. I find one common factor with everyone I work with; what they are seeking to accomplish in their life, is also seeking them. The thing we are looking for is also looking for us.

From this perspective they are not alone in their pursuits; they have a felt sense that they are on a mission and that they will find a way through the obstacles that have the potential to block their success. These leaders are not religious or “spiritual” in their beliefs, necessarily. However, life has presented each of them some sort of opportunity to wake up to a new level of understanding of their purpose.

I am thinking of a brilliant entrepreneurial marketing guy with a high school education who had recently lost his business partner due to an unforeseen accident. He had always imagined that he and his partner would grow their business together; his keen sense of people, relationships, and the markets combined with her financial and managerial talents.

Unexpectedly, all of this changed. Suddenly he was left alone to pursue their dreams.

After an initial setback he began to make the necessary adjustments to reinvent himself. His particular gift was his understanding of his own shortcomings. There were certain things he knew he did not do well. He learned to ask for help and to seek guidance in these areas. He also never lost sight of the dreams he and his partner shared.

However, he had another quality of trust and insight. He would often tell me, “I know that I will achieve what we have set out to do if only I can listen.” The future, he realized, was always just outside of this moment pressing itself into existence. How he listened to and received this “future” was a conscious act. The norm, for a leader, is an attitude of “trying to make it happen.” In our work he began to orient his actions around a process of “listening to what is trying to happen.

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There is a new economy emerging, based on a reciprocal relationship with an abundance of resources to be found in our world’s reserves of intellectual, spiritual, social and cultural capital. HOW these resources are “mined” or leveraged will determine the quality and therefore value of their utility. We need to position wisely and respectfully through our relationship with these ancient reserves and recognize that how we take determines what we make. Our capacity for knowing these here-to-for hidden resources must be managed, like we carry a dream from the unconscious to the conscious – with respect, so that their original nature is not diminished but enhanced.

Tags: Recognition

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The other day I was walking with a friend along a bike path and it was a beautiful fall morning. We passed by the park and there they were; an army of fathers with children orbiting about. Coffee in hand, cell phones to the ears, text messages flying off into the unknown like scattered pigeons startled by the sounds of their children at play. One particular father meandered by on his bike as we progressed down the path. The now familiar tri-wheeled, mesh enclosed cart in tow with the youngest of his children, head bobbing side to side in a pre-sleep state of discontent. The older child, perhaps six years of age, riding beside dad on his tiny bike, seemingly accustomed to this excursion, alone and holding his experience in wait for the attention from his father, which did not seem to be coming anytime soon. And Dad, blue-tooth in ear and fully engaged in a friendly and somewhat rejuvenating discussion indicated by his quick jabs and repartee with someone who unbeknown to him or her, participated in stealing his presence away from his children. And I wondered, was the cost of these lost parenting opportunities worth it?

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Presence increases the likelihood that you will encounter the wound you carry in relationship with your father, mother, and their relationship. These conditions need to be negotiated in order to sustain and deepen presence. Here is a 3D Meditation Video that speaks to the understanding that what we resist, persists:

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I am dedicated to helping people Rest within a Sense of Wholeness^TM.

Resting within a Sense of Wholeness means you have the tools and methods to:

• Recognize your worth
• Have clarity of purpose
• Be free from conditioning
• Be integrated in mind, body, heart, and spirit
• Act in service to humanity and the planet
• Deliver on promises
• Accept yourself as you are revealed within your relationships
• Access your natural way of being
• Communicate clearly and compassionately
• Cultivate an inner dialogue
• Transform difficulty into opportunity
• Manage the subtleties and the dramatics surrounding change
• Be graceful in your transitions
• Utilize the right methodology in the right situation
• Greet with curiosity that which you cannot control

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In fulfilling my purpose, to help people Rest within a Sense of Wholeness^TM , one of the most vital applications of this intention is what I call The Present Father^TM.

In my doctoral thesis on Fathering, I open by quoting N. R. Gibbs from a Time Magazine article in 1993: “More children will go to sleep tonight in a fatherless home than ever in the nation’s history.”  Gibbs said this more than 17 years ago, a haunting statement that is even truer today.

The absent father shows up all too frequently in my one-on-one sessions with clients, often as the source of debilitating behavior, depression, self sabotage, unhealthy relationships, and other destructive patterns. Furthermore, many of today’s social challenges – increasing crime rates, substance abuse, physical abuse, and racial and economic disparity – are also rooted in the absent father.

As a man who experienced the absent father throughout his life, as a scholar with extensive research on the topic of Fathering, and as a father, I know we can heal the pain of the absent father.

I am referring to healing the pain that comes from:

• Having a father physically there yet absent in other manners.
• Literally not having a father physically present.

In healing the pain, we reverse the negative effects of a fatherless society and restore The Present Father^TM for generations to come.

For me, the healing took place when I chose to show up as a father – The Present Father^TM. There was no historical basis to inform me, no one to look up to, no place that I knew of in the culture to guide me. I had to discover what fathering meant through my relationship to my child. I would listen to my child’s needs and respond. In that same moment, I would also grieve, letting go of the wounds from the relationship with my own father.

As I began sharing my stories of being The Present Father^TM with clients, colleagues, and friends, I saw that it helped them recognize and understand the pain they too felt as a child. In hearing my stories, they were able to identify where their fathers were not present, to grieve and recover from their sense of loss without having to actually parent a child.

The Present Father^TM encompasses guidance, techniques and tools on fathering, stories that inspire fathering, one-on-one fathering sessions and seminars available via webcast. My book will be released in 2011, and until then you can read more about The Present Father^TM on this blog.

If you are interested in a one-on-one session or would like to participate in a seminar, please contact me.

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There are times when we are parenting our children that our presence is just not enough to maintain connection with them. They will get stuck and trying to help them pushes us beyond our ability to know what they need and how to give it to them. We sometimes need help to address the obstacles that arise between us and our children. Sometimes all we have to do is find our way through and we are back into connection. However, if you are parenting alone, this can be a daunting task. Look for resources outside of yourself – a friend, a sibling, another parent, or a family member may hold the key to unlock and free them. If you have a partner, enlist them to aid you in getting back in touch with your child. Children are explosive in their development and sometimes it takes a little creativity to help them to get back into the business of being a child.

“My boy is probably five years old, sitting in his room on his bed next to his playroom. I have joined him for some play and suggest that we move off the bed and back to the machine we are constructing with his set of Legos. He wants nothing to do with me. Then I suggested we wrestle. He’s grumpy, remote and though I am available he is not available to me or to our play.

I sit with him, try to talk, but he just tells me to leave. This is an unusual circumstance that I cannot get through to him. I try again in 15 minutes and his mood has not change. He is stuck and I don’t have the resources in that moment to help him through.

I speak to his mother, she is skilled in ways that I am not, and she reports that he has been like this sense she picked him up from school the day before. We discuss it and concerned that something may have happened to him, decide that one of us will try to break through. She heads up the stairs, I follow, and the door shuts between us. I head back down for a cup of coffee and wait.

Later she emerges and has had a break through. After a little struggle and and buckets of tears he discloses to her that he had taken five fuzzy buttons from school the day before, that he did not have permission to take. Guilt, shame whatever you call it had him immobilized. He had hidden the buttons in the fist of his hand and when she handed them to me they were wet from his despair. Such a small transgression in the scheme of things, had become an insurmountable obstacle for this little boy.

He was now relieved but needed a plan to figure out what to do to make the situation right. I went up and sat with him and after much discussion we knew what needed to happen. We were going to conduct a Ninja, Stealth, mission to replace the buttons. After much rehearsal, excitement, drawing of plans, decision about timing, and the route to take, we were ready to go. The next morning we left early to school, we stealthily walked in together and we secretly replaced the buttons – No one being the wiser.” (Fathering Journal, 1996)

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“I remember one night waking to the cry of my infant son. My wife was nicely sleeping so I went to him. He was wet, a little hungry, but I had the distinct sense that he simply wanted company. I was the guy for the job. I swaddled him in his soft cotton blanket – tight, firm and weighted; like a football that nestled neatly in the crook of my elbow. I headed down the spiral staircase for a warm bottle. We sat on the couch together. Having stirred the banked coals in the fireplace; the logs I had placed on top began to snap and we were bathed in the glow and warmth of its radiance.

Nineteen years later, just a few months ago, I am on the third floor of a different house. It is 5:30am and I listen to gentle creaks and snaps of my son’s joints as we do a yoga routine together. We have tea on the floor next to us, the soft light of a lamp on the shelve baths us in a warm glow and I remember – We are together in silence just as we were so many years ago. I hold him in my conscious embrace as he holds me in his. Something moves between us, then and now. Something holds us in recognition, a quiet, ancient sort of ancestral knowing.”

(Timothy P. Dukes, Fathering Journal, 2010)

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“We are people.

A people do not throw their geniuses away.

And if they are thrown away, it is our duty

As artists and as witnesses for the future

to collect them again for the sake

of our children, and if necessary,

bone by bone.”

-Alice Walker

Yesterday Santjes Oomen and I had an exceptional opportunity to work with a group of sixteen individuals on Nantucket Island.  This workshop was a continuation of our ongoing teachings, Spirit in Practice™. The work was subtle, sweet, and inviting of the unique qualities and gifts that each person brought forth in order to open consciousness to who we are and what we are here to serve. These few hours together became an opportunity to claim and hold a change of consciousness and to heal the context in which we live; inviting a culture of care and consideration, and an emerging collective intention to be present for how we live in relationship to one another and to this earth.

The focus of the work was the recognition of the degrees of presence we bring to ourselves, families and experientially to one another – the exchange between self and other.

One salient insight for me was the understanding that all who were sitting in the room had come a long way to find one another and if we are not present for our Self, how will we be recognized? And if we are not recognized, in this moment, where do we to go from here?

Santjes quoted: “You are a person, you started with nothing and you have most of it left.” Something in this phrase is so permission giving, so allowing of all that we are and are soon to become.

We spoke of sincerity, meaning “without wax” – a term used for sculpture when it is produced without using wax to hide the cracks or flaws. A work of art was said to be “sincere” if it was without wax. This simple concept seemed to inspire each one of us to reveal ourselves – wounds and all. And our “imperfections” were held and accepted. The work of love is to love. The practice of love is to love better, to hold each other and listen, and to be fully present.

In the rich underpinnings of the process lingered a question that inspired each one of us; “ how are we useful and in service of what wants to be known,” and the work unfolded as we aligned our efforts for our individual and collective well-being.

“So, another way to understand this effort to be sincere is as a commitment to firsthand contact with the world with the goal of having nothing between inner and outer but the skin of our heart. Who we are, then, and what enlivens us rests on this immeasurable thinness called sincerity. And in order to grow useful – which is not always synonymous with being productive, but more about being a life-affirming agent- we somehow must discover our true place, not as instructed by others, but uncovered  by the litmus of our own uncorrupted sincerity.” –Mark Nepo

We spoke of the etymology of “person.” Greek   per son  – “the sound that passes through.” The unconditional invitation of total presence gives us permission to know our own person. Our chance to form inwardly, to become an authentic person, often depends on our willingness to let the winds of life shape us as they move on through.

And we shared our stories, openly moving through considerations that would normally keep us separate and less engaged. We simply took the risk of being ourselves, wounds and all. Throughout the day, synchronicity danced among us, reminding us of how deeply connected we already are.

“God breaks the heart again and again and again until it stays open.” ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan

Santjes and I work in deep appreciation for our teachers and the teachings that find us in the exchange of emerging communities of persons who gift your presence and with whom we share this journey.

 References:

Nepo, Mark (2005). Exquisite risk: Daring to live an authentic life. New York: Random House

Sarris, Greg. (1994). Mabel McKay: Weaving the dream. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

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Being present for your child and the relational life that is developing between the two of you, requires that you are able and willing to remain separate. Your relationship with your child carries within it the capacity to develop. It is a living, breathing organism that you manage with your presence, caring for it so that it evolves as a healthy and functional separate entity. This relational life exists because of your presence as well as in your absence. Like the breath of a living thing you are present when you are inhaled into participation with your child and your presence remains when you are exhaled.

“This morning when my boy woke up he called for his mother; a few minutes later, while she was preparing a bottle, I walked quietly into the room. He waved to me, as I lay across the end of his bed. He muttered “good morning” in his sleepy voice. His hand was extended to me and I held it for awhile, massaging the fingers gently. No words were spoken. The action seemed to be pulling him from his not-yet-awake consciousness, into the world. He withdrew his hand and said “Go.” That was all he said, “Go!” I smiled and said “ok.” As I left the room I added that I would see him in awhile. He smiled and nuzzled deep into the bedding.”

This moment, captured in my fathering journal, occurred when my son was very young. I remember feeling conflicted. What I really wanted to do was to be with him on that sunny Saturday morning and play “Space Ship.” This was our traditional “under-the-covers” game in which we turned his bed into an intergalactic warship, struggling for survival against hideous celestial creatures. I actually felt rejected and would miss this moment of actively creating our relationship through this magical play. However, the life of our relationship would go on in my absence. Some things grow more fully in the dark than they do in the light.

My boy can afford to “toss his father away” in one moment because he is safe enough to expect that I will be there later, when he chooses to be with me. The presence of my absence, in this case, was positive. My child determined our proximity to one another and the relationship continues in the soft embrace of a world that is whole and together.

 “Psychologically, the result of separation by division into two is awareness of the opposites. This is a crucial feature in emerging consciousness.” (Edinger, 1985, p. 187)

Against a backdrop of presence, if we cannot tolerate what it feels like for us to separate from our children we inhibit the natural development of relational life. And we may find ourselves doing this simply because we don’t like how it feels! Presence requires that we can tolerate the conflicting feelings within us without having to project them into our relationship with our child.

 “One becomes conscious as one is able to contain and endure the opposites within.” (Edinger, 1985, p. 187)

Edinger, Edward F.  (1985). Anatomy of the psyche: Alchemical symbolism in psychotherapy. La Salle, IL: Open Court.

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