Through Your Life's Looking Glass Teleworkshop

Dear Friends,

For weeks I have been mulling over the possibilities of offering a biography workshop over the phone. The impulse to do this will not fade, so here it goes. Do you want to participate? I am setting a limit of 8 participants.

What is biography work? It is a creative study of your life - how you have come to be who you are today. It is done with a group so that each participant's life reflections can inspire the others. The work follows the archetypal phases and themes of human development.

Your life is a path to emotional maturity, psychological balance and spiritual freedom.What are the steps you have taken on this path? Has the path been clear and easy or filled with mysterious turns, steep climbs, slippery slopes? When have you found extraordinary vistas or had to hack your way through rough vegatation? Have you strayed away from you life path, taken detours, fallen asleep along the way? Who has shared the path with you, given you good directions, and urged you forward?

Give yourself 15 hours over ten weeks to focus on your life. That is less than a day in your life given to understanding your entire life. Biography work lets all the days of your future shine with more brightly with self-awareness, self-compassion, self-direction.

What can you learn from taking warm interest in the paths others have walked? Can you be inspired by others? Can you recognize your self in another's life? A biography group is a karmic constellation of mirrors. You will see yourself in other's lives and be profoundly moved. You will find the stories of your life, healing, illuminating and comforting the lives of others. You will find a growing compassion for all others as you find more and more sensitivity to the forces at play in each individual's life.

Through Your Life's Looking Glass is a workshop of 10 - 90 minute teleseminars of guided and shared reflections on your personal biography - the stories of your life.

The intial five sessions will focus on the 7 year phases of human development. Each phase awakens and matures certain capacities eg. from birth to age 7 we are learning about our physical body and the physical world and we are held closely by our family. Each member of the group is asked to share about their favorite space in their home and to describe their favorite relative.

The final five sessions will explore archetypal themes such as money, spirituality and religion, nature, fear, strokes of fate, etc. I do not determine the themes until the fifth session as I base the themes on what has been revealed in the work of the group. Let's consider money - we may explore family attitudes about wealth, material possessions, financial autonomy, financial abandonment, etc. Each participant might be asked to describe early memories and feelings about buying something special for themselves or buying a gift for someone else and then look at the meaning of those gestures today.

Will you devote 15 hours of your life to a process that will illuminate your present, heal your past, and liberate your future?

Will you see your own life mirrored in the life stories of seven other individual? Will you accept the warm observations of your life and offer your own observations to others with compassion and gratitude?

I create a mood of safety, sacredness and significance for the group. I expect openness, courage, and reverence from the participants.

This workshop is open to those living 45 driving minutes outside Manhattan. For those within the NY metro area I am giving a biography workshop beginning Monday, March 10, at ASNYC, 138 West 15th Street, NYC. Go here for more info.

The cost for the biography teleworkshop is $300. The dates are Thursdays, March 13 through May 15th. The time is 7-8:30PM Eastern.

To register or to get more information call me at 201-333-9106 or email me at lynnjericho@gmail.com.

Healing as a Threat - The Auto-immune Disorder of the Soul

For the last year I have been working with a dilemma - the client obsessed with the healing process who never heals. Some of these individuals find one healer and work with them forever even when the work does not lead to any lasting benefit. Others engage with a vast variety of healers and therapies without a strategic healing plan and an assessment process . Both groups are usually very knowledgeable and well-read but are highly emotional in their unsuccessful pursuit of healing.

I want to share my thoughts on the clients who work with many different healers and healing modalities.


Healing work takes consistency, commitment and attention from both healing partners. Since I am a generalist and intuitive I recognize the need for a healing relationship that functions as the organizing strategic and tactical center for the engagement and comprehensive assessment of healing needs, resources and benefits. I work to provide this for my clients. Without this centering perspective the healing process becomes impulsive and compulsive - a dynamic where research, choices and reactions lose focus and effectiveness. Not enough time to is given to any one healing process to achieve lasting transformations or results.

There is a profile of the "juggler" client. They are always juggling many healing processes and many healers, tossing balls in the air, catching and holding balls, dropping balls, picking up dropped balls and finding new balls. These individuals are always quite brilliant/gifted. Many of them had "ill" mothers and emotionally absent fathers. Many of them had mothers that worked with a number of healing modalities often beyond traditional forms for themselves or one or more of their children. The parent/child dynamic is focused on being ill and seeking, but not finding wellness, happiness, stability. It is as if being ill is always trumping being well. This dynamic impacts the adult life of the child. Healing would be a betrayal of the parent but seeking healing is loyalty to the parent or family system.

This is an auto-immune disease in the soul - any potential healing is perceived as potential threat or harm and emotional antibodies are released to create doubt, resistance or abandonment of the healing process. These antibodies have intellectual, sympathetic or practical rationales that are quite powerful in their justifications. However, they are auto-immune responses and need to be confronted and understood as such to move to authentic healing.


Truly, without first addressing the auto-immune soul disorder, the sufferer will succeed only in continuing to suffer and remaining loyal to a family dynamic of seeking and not finding. Sadly, I don't know any juggler who has succeeded in recovering well-being.

I am working on a set of guidelines to support these individuals. If you identify with this disorder or love someone who suffers with it, please email me. I would love to know your story and your questions.

The 3 R's of Your Soul - Receiving

If we have found some empowering clarity around refusing and feel comfortable saying "NO" to what we don't want, it is time to plunge into the mysteries of receiving.

Receiving is a two pronged action: to be presented with something and to accept what is presented. The first prong is passive and the other active. Depending on our temperament, either passivity or activity is our preferred role of engagement in life.

With receiving, we are both passive and active, so receiving is difficult for all of us regardless of our instinctive preference for an active or passive living style. Through the growing maturity of self-mastery, we can come to enjoy both aspects of receiving. The key to this enjoyment is the ability to recognize the point where the passivity of being the object of a presentation evolves into being the subject accepting. We must bring our attention to this subtle and often overlooked point of metamorphosis to be comfortable with both prongs of receiving.

Recall or imagine someone giving you a kiss on the cheek, a birthday present, a complement or help with a problem. When did the active gesture of accepting begin? I use to have a real struggle with this when people would come up to me after I gave a talk. They would be presenting me with compliments, gratitude or other feedback. I could only focus on their gesture and felt absolutely clueless about accepting. I felt truly out of control as I didn't know how to be engaged in accepting after spending time in the gesture of presenting in my talk. I might feel great about my talk but I felt lousy about the conclusion. It took me a couple of years to learn how to gracefully and actively accept what was presented to me. A similar situation is found in the role of mothering. Mothers give and give and give some more and although they may fantasize about receiving and enjoy the passive role in the initial gesture of presentation, they often struggle with the active role of accepting. This challenge is the source of the image of the mother criticizing all gifts from clothing to candy to doing the dishes.

Receiving actually feels incomplete when it remains passive and never becomes active. Imagine putting food in your mouth and trying to swallow without closing your mouth. You can't do it. You need to actively and consciously close you mouth - willfully accept what food is presented to benefit from what you receive.


Receiving is a threefold relationship: we relate to the giver or presenter, we relate to what is being given, and we relate to the consequence of accepting.


Who is the giver? Is this a person you feel safe with? Do you trust their motives in giving? Do you feel they are qualified to give?These are questions that take us back to early childhood and our first caregivers. As children we were dependent on our givers but as adults we are not. We can be objective about our givers. We can decide if we trust the giver. The relationship to the giver shapes our willingness to receive. Did you early caregivers teach you about power and autonomy? Did they abuse or neglect or smother you with their attention? All this effects and shapes you ability to receive. You may want to reread the posting on refusing at this point.

Is the giver generous or indulgent? It is hell to be indulged because indulgence has no concern regarding the actual benefit to the receiver. Indulgence lacks integrity and wisdom. My readers are on a path of spiritual and personal development. They want to receive, be presented with and accept, that which strengthens - the gifts coming from the consciousness of generosity, not the compulsion of indulgence.

What are you willing to receive? What are you comfortable receiving?
Material gifts?
Recognition?
Help?
Encouragement?
Acknowledgment?
Celebration?
Truth?
Compassion?

Write down your feelings about receiving each of these presents. What does this remind you of? Do your best to get to the earliest or core memory of receiving this gift. Does your willingness to receive change with the giver? Your comfort or ease? Imagine the giver, first your mother or your father, a friend, a co-worker, a stranger, etc. for example, you may be able to receive compassion from your friend but not celebration.

What are the consequences of receiving? What expectations are in the giver or in you?
Reciprocity- the expectation to match the gift.
Gratitude - a simple and sincere thanks.
Indebtedness - the expectation that the return will exceed the value of the gift.
Pay it forward - the expectation that you will take what is received and pass it on to the next receiver.
The free gift - no expectation at all, not even for a thankyou.

Review your experiences with each consequence. You might also take a look at what you have attached to all the gifts you have given to others.

There are many more layers to the complex experience/capacity of receiving, but these reflections are a good beginning. Please share your thoughts on receiving.

The 3 R's of Your Soul

In working with my clients over the last 20 years I am always delighted (light up) when I recognize a simple way of expressing and understanding a difficulty or a problem. The simplicity means it is easier to grasp and transform the problem.

Just the other day, a client's challenge with setting boundaries and meeting her own needs led to the recognition of 3 R's of the soul: refusing, receiving and requesting. Most of us are challenged with one or more of these essential skills.

We all know the 3 R's of childhood education - reading, 'riting, 'rithmatic. There is much more to education than reading, writing and arithmetic, but these three are essential foundations for learning:

• The skill of reading allows us to learn the ideas of others.
  
• The skill of writing allows us to communicate our own ideas.
• Arthmetic teaches us how to add, subtract, multiply and divide, the four ways of manipulating and calculating quantity and value (not just in number, but in everything).

These are three incredibly valuable skills. Life without themwould be very frustrating, confusing and disturbing.

Equally valuable are the 3 R's of the Soul:

* Refusing - saying no
* Receiving - accepting help, support and acknowledgment
* Requesting - asking for what you need or deserve

I want to explore each of these three essential gestures of the mature soul. Yes, these gestures are about maturity. In the mature soul, these 3 R's gracefully establish healthy relationships and a strong sense of self-esteem. If refusal, receiving or requesting are immature, they lack self-wisdom, lean toward selfishness and demand, and damage rather than build relationships.

But the challenge for so many of us is the absence or deficiency of the capacities and the confidence to refuse, to receive and to request.

How comfortable and mature are you with refusing, receiving and requesting? Do you have an inner permission to say no, to accept help, support and acknowledgment, and to ask for what you need or deserve?

Let's look at each of the 3 R's of the Healthy Soul beginning with Refusing.

Refusing is the skill that gives boundaries to your soul. I will not do this. I will not tolerate this. I will not accept this. I will not conform. Etc.

How were you educated about “NO!” Do you feel you have a right to say no? Are there certain contexts where you have difficulty saying no? Do you find that you refuse yourself, your own desires and needs, more easily than the desires and needs of others?

Refusal is such a powerful skill and one that is not encouraged in early childhood. Yet, the “terrible two’s” when a child is exploring “No!” is the same time when the soul is waking up to the experience of “I,” of Self-distinction. Sometime between 2 and 3 in the midst of delighting in “No” a child says, “I” for the first time and begins to reference self personal individuality. This simultaneity is not coincidence. Refusal is a gift of the” I.” “I will not....” Learning the skill of refusal is essential to the soul’s sense of selfhood.

Revering your Selfhood is reflected in your ability to refuse giving attention, time and energy to all that does not serve your practical and inner development. Saying no is often saying yes to a deeper reality.

Here are a few self-reflective exercises:

1. Write down your feelings about saying no. No to yourself. No to others. No to family or social expectations.
2. Do you remember having your refusals honored by your parents and teachers? What about your spouse or partner.
3. How do you feel when someone says no to you?
4. How would you life be different if you were more comfortable with refusal?
5. Write a list of desired refusals. What do you want to say “NO!” to.

Explore refusing, compassionately and courageously.

My next posting will be thoughts on the skill of receiving.