New Beginnings
During the past couple of months, I’ve been working with my coach to gather the clarity and commitment to get started with my own business. Last week we had our final meeting as I felt that I had achieved what we set out to create. He challenged me to start posting regular updates about my ongoing progress on my blog, and since then I have been waiting for the right moment.
Today I think the moment has come.
Pieces of the Puzzle
The pieces of the puzzle started started falling in place when I realized just how important authenticity and embodied presence are to me. I saw my meditation practice in a new light as a tool not only for my own development but as a viable pillar for my professional work.
For some years now I’ve been observing the work of Richard Strozzi-Heckler on embodied leadership. I find his approach to leadership to be very grounded in practice—he has even taught the US special forces—but with a deep commitment to authenticity.
Some months ago I decided to further study Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, a controversial but very realized Tibetan Buddhist teacher, now deceased, who places great emphasis on cutting to the core of who we are and bringing that into the world. One of his former students, Reggie Ray, seems to carry his teachings forward in a particularly vibrant way, bringing in somatic practices from other traditions while still maintaining the great depth of the original teachings.
Then it hit me. The embodied leadership that Strozzi-Heckler speaks of seems to be a perfect complement to Reggie Ray’s work on embodied meditation. The inner meets the outer in us.
On Interconnectedness
I have a lighthearted relationship to omens, but the last 24 hours have made them a bit hard to ignore. Yesterday I arrived home to find that Amazon had shipped me the meditation book I ordered. This morning the postman dropped in Strozzi-Heckler’s The Anatomy of Change along with a card to retrieve Reggie Ray’s Touching Enlightenment from the post office. All from completely different bookstores.
In the afternoon inspiration struck and I plowed through the remaining chapters of my business plan. Now I’m ready to send it out for a final round of feedback before submitting the papers that start the official founding process.
Almost the moment I completed the plan, I received an email from Sounds True stating that my download for Reggie Ray’s Your Breathing Body was ready for download. And as I was listening to the first instructional session, I happened to browse through the first pages of The Anatomy of Change and noticed the following dedication:
“to […] Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, for teaching me how to sit”
In this case the most mundane of explanations is the one that excites me the most; my varied interests are converging on embodied meditation and leadership, and the seeds of these connections already exist.
What Now?
In the beginning of this I mentioned that I would be posting regular progress updates on this blog. But what types of updates? And progress towards what? Truth to be told, I do not know. But I feel it’s important that I begin somewhere, and this sharing of excitement and seeds of action seemed like a good place to start.
Needless to say, if any of this excites you, I welcome you to get in touch.
