I teach people how to be themselves with others
The irony is that for most of my life, I had no idea who that was.
I’ve always had a knack for the deep one-on-one conversation, the kind that happens in the corner of a party or during a long walk. But there were other social things I was terrible at. Talking to women I was attracted to, for instance. When it came to speaking clearly about my intentions, I would get a sock stuck in my throat.
I’d watch other people connect effortlessly and ask them how they did it. “What did you say? What specifically happened?” They’d shrug and say, “Oh, just be yourself.” And I’d think, “But who is that?”
What drew me to this work was the feeling that everyone else had been given The Manual. Most people seemed to just know how to meet someone and let things flow from an instinctive level, what we call unconscious competence. I was good at some social things, but there were always these gaps. Authentic relating and circling offered an approach to filling them: a whole slew of experiments that gave me tools to show what it actually means to be myself when I’m with others.
The Breakthrough
In 2010 I was deployed as a soldier in Afghanistan. While I was there I decided that after this adventure, I wanted another one. I would go to Burning Man, spend three months at a Zen monastery learning to meditate, and then do the Authentic Man Program, a course that promised to help with what I was struggling with.
The Zen monastery was probably the hardest thing I ever did. Four and a half hours of sitting each day with zero prior experience. But it opened something in me.
The result was that when I got to the Authentic Man program, I was primed for a breakthrough. I was introduced to circling as a practice, but the facilitators who circled me kept getting frustrated at ‘not being able to feel me’. But in the final moments of the course, Decker the course leader finally got through to me by getting three gorgeous female facilitators to hold me down on the ground. Then he whispered at me: “You know, you’re just like a really good dog who has been beaten maybe once too many times. You’re hiding all the way inside your cage. And I just want to say that I’m here if you would like to come out – just for a moment – so I can be with you.”
This was that Aletheia moment for me. Remembering who I am. A single tear rolled down my cheek. After this we had Thai takeaway for dinner and it was honestly the best meal I’d ever had, because the experience had opened my senses in a completely new way.
I decided that this practice was what I wanted to dedicate myself to. I would burn my boats and leave behind the career track I was on. It took a couple of years to fully integrate that insight, but the only way forward was forward. Two years later I went to Boulder and did the six month train-the-trainer program.
The Struggle and the Work
My experience leading workshops has been characteristic of many people who get into this work. I can’t tell you how many workshops I had carefully curated only for two or three people to show up. I would suck it up and go, “Whoever shows up is the right person.”
I know a lot of people who have stayed well away from my workshops even though they’re my close friends. It’s often because there’s something about the language used that they can’t align with. Many of these people complain about other course participants who can’t seem to ‘talk normal’. I call this the curse of intermediacy: When you learn a new system and are integrating it, it becomes all you can see and you’re constantly using the lingo.
These are just stages in learning, so it’s important to be compassionate with yourself and others who are in that stage. Beyond that stage is the really juicy stuff, the place where unconscious competence becomes possible.
What I Aim For
What I hope people gain from my workshops is less about their personal skills and development and more about how those skills will affect the people in their lives. One student came to the course with his girlfriend. After they left the country for a while, he came back and visited me. He said, “You helped me break through some really deep-seated traumatic patterns that would have made me like my father toward my girlfriend and my children. Receiving these tools made it possible to see those patterns consciously and break through them.”
The main thing about relating arts isn’t about the skills themselves. It’s opening an opportunity to practice something different so you can keep learning as you go along in life. A workshop or course is short. If I can guide your consciousness toward patterns so you can keep noticing them, that’s when something has a real impact on your life and the lives around you. I want your family to have the best you they can get in their lives.
What I’m good at is orchestration. I love to construct a learning experience with a beginning, middle, and end that meets people where they’re at and uses their input as an integrated thread through the workshop. Referring back and forth, creating a narrative. A good conversation isn’t just linear. The words are linear but the experience isn’t bound within time. It’s more like a tapestry.
At Zen monasteries in ancient Japan and China, they usually wouldn’t let you out unless you’d been there at least 10 years. They were afraid you’d go out and unskillfully blab your mouth about Zen. I’m quite happy I was let out after just three months to run around blabbing my mouth about Zen. I’m sure I annoyed some people. I’m also quite sure a lot of people liked what I was bringing.
