Two caterpillars are walking along and a butterfly flies overhead. One caterpillar turns to the other and says, "Man, you'll never get me up in one of those."

There is a place, way deep down inside of me, where I experience a sense of connectedness to something much bigger than myself. I notice that, when I live my life from that deeper, soulful place, my life simply works better than when I am coming from a more reactive, fearful, insecure, or ego driven place. 

Individual Counseling and Life Coaching Services

My intention providing both counseling and personal/spiritual growth life coaching services for people is to help them experience what it means to open their heart to themselves. It is what happens when our soul holds our ego with tenderness and compassion. My work is to help people learn how to recognize when they have gotten hooked, gotten pulled off center and are coming from a reactive, ego driven place. I help them learn how to get back to center, to their deeper, more soulful self. The reason this is so important, in terms of the quality of our life experience, is because, when we are coming from our deeper, soulful self, our life just works better. We are more joyful, more peaceful, and more effective in everything we do. This is true whether it is in relationships, a work situation, our own physical health or even a conflict situation in the world around us. 

Imagine looking at life this way for a moment: All we really have in life are moments of "now"... Bazillions of them going by every day. And in every single moment of now in our life, whether we are aware of it or not, we are either coming from our soul (love) or we are coming from our ego (fear). It will always be more or less of one or the other. The one we are "coming from" is what determines the quality of our life. 

In my experience therapy is not about changing people; I don't think there is anything wrong with who we really are at the core or essence of our being. Therapy is about helping people recognize and become more of who they really are, at a soulful level, and less of who they have sometimes tended to be at an ego level.

Soul

Our soul is who we really are. The natural state of being of the soul is peaceful, strong, and compassionate. In our soul, we will find our backbone, our real strength and power. The soul's power is not power over anything or anybody. It comes from a kind of groundedness and clarity of its own. It is never mean spirited or adversarial, but is rock solid. Our soul is where we have access to our intuition, our creativity and our discernment.

It is where we will find our clarity, our wisdom, our passion, and our playfulness. It is where we find our timing and balance. It is where we find our ability to set healthy and appropriate boundaries and where we can ask for what we need and want. It is where we can let go of things that don't really matter. It is where we experience empathy and compassion, which are the natural states of being of our deeper self, our soul. It is simply who we really are.

Ego

In our ego, we are stuck in it's illusion of separateness from the divine, infinite, omnipresent, unconditionally loving nature of the universe. It is like we are stuck in a bad dream and don't know we are dreaming. It is always coming from different forms of fear of loss of that infinite love. It can show up as a fear of being abandoned, rejected, betrayed, or being the one not chosen, not seen, not included. It feels the pain of not being respected or valued. Fear takes many forms including anger, greed, guilt, resentment, vindictiveness, spite, jealousy, boredom, impatience, criticalness of ourself and others. It can manifest in the form of anxiety, depression, phobias, obsessions and it is where we will find all of our addictions.  

All of the symptoms and sufferings that come from our ego structure, even the most ugly and hurtful thoughts and behaviors, come out of an innocent misguidedness, a reactiveness to the perceived experience of loss of love. 

But our ego is not the enemy. I think of the ego structure as the amazing and beautiful pallet of colors with which we get to paint our life's story. Our ego structure is made up of sub-personalities. I see them as different facets of our personality, like the facets of a diamond that reflect different colors in the sunlight. There is nothing wrong with any part of who we are.  It is only when our ego innocently (but misguidedly) reacts from the fear based illusion of disconnectedness and loss of love that it can be insecure, fearful and hurtful to ourselves and others. 

Think of your life as a bus. The question is: "who's driving the bus - your soul or your ego?" At any given moment, is it coming from light or darkness? Every moment of now is one or the other.