Intimacy with Truth

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In the Intimacy with Truth work one of the biggest things we are working on is shifting our orientation. We are shifting our orientation from one that is run by fear, worry, mistrust of ourselves, our emotions, our bodies, etc. to one that is grounded in truth, stillness, aliveness (yes, stillness & aliveness go hand in hand!) and reality.

This shift in orientation takes time. It takes patience, with ourselves and with each other. It is not for the faint of heart. It requires a devotion to waking up, to seeing what is true even if a part of us doesn’t want to see it, to being in the unknown and staying in discomfort long after most “normal” people would have distracted themselves with something else, anything else.

It takes time to see that you can trust this grounded stillness within yourself. You can trust how it wants to speak, what it wants to say, how it wants to move or not move. But the in-between process – the shifting from one orientation to another – can be uncomfortable and messy at times as it plays out in real life, in your interactions with others, in how you try to live your life.

The good news is that as this shift deepens and we become more attuned to ourselves, to this stillness & truth within us, our bodies (not just our bodies, but our whole being) give us quicker and quicker feedback to let us know when we have left that groundedness within ourselves. I call it our “inner truth meter”. It lets us know almost immediately when we are believing something that isn’t true or moving in a way that is not aligned with our own wholeness & naturalness. Eventually it becomes more painful to leave this wholeness than to collude with an illusion, even an apparently “yummy” illusion.

As this shift happens, your inner truth meter also becomes more sensitive to others. You can tell almost immediately when someone says or does something that is not totally aligned in wholeness and truth. Sometimes you can’t identify exactly what the words or action is, but something feels off and you can’t quite shake it. It can be disorienting to continue to try to interact with the person – do you collude with what you are sensing is their story or do you say something? How do you move in an authentic way, not leaving yourself, yet still meet them where they are and stay in connection?

In the Intimacy with Truth salons and workshops, we are giving ourselves permission to “play and explore” during this transition from one orientation to the other. It can be awkward and sometimes we only learn by doing and “making mistakes”. It can look like: “Oh! I just said something that didn’t come from truth. My body is letting me know. Got it! Let me try that again.” or “When you are talking, something is not lining up for me. My ‘truth meter’ is going off and I feel less connection with you. I feel uncomfortable.”

The salons and workshops are a great place to practice all this stuff “live” with willing participants! It is a learning playground fraught with risk and adventure. I do my best to anchor this playground in love, presence and stillness so that at any moment, when you feel off or scared, you can more easily dip into the presence, regain your balance and “play” again. I also step in to facilitate any time I sense that it would serve a participant to go deeper or if I feel two or more people need support in moving through a conflict. This brings some measure of “safety” to the adventure, but in reality, the real safety comes from knowing that who you are is so unbelievably safe and tended to, even while the scariest fires, trials and challenges may arise within you and outside you.

In my private sessions with individuals and small groups, I am able to give more focused attention to the stories and beliefs that are getting in the way of individuals listening to and acting on their wisdom, as well as facilitate in-depth work that is necessary for small groups and couples to work through conflicts and barriers to being honest with each other and to meeting each other from a place of deep compassion & truth.

In all my work – both group and individual work – I use a mixture of techniques, including a strong emphasis on body-centered exercises, to help clients get out of their head and step into the wisdom that lies in their own being. My primary intent is for clients to be their own authority and to learn to trust the truth that is within themselves implicitly.