Have you ever wondered when you were lost, how you could find guidance? Find Guidance from Lost? Yes. Here is how. His Holiness the Dalai Lama encourages us, when we have an enemy, to “venerate” them. Why? Because of the opportunities this provides for our growth, health, and happiness. This attitude of choice makes all the difference. The same is true for seeking Guidance when Lost. If we change our orientation from Lost to Exploring, everything changes. Especially ourselves! And then our experiences shift from one of “moving away from something” to “moving toward something”…such as our dreams and hopes. For this is part of the unfolding story of your life.
If you feel lost and are seeking a life of meaning and purpose, this Guidance and its three Blessings can help. First, by changing how we label or think about what is happening and changing our orientation from Lost to Exploring. And by doing so we change our emotions, the way we feel, and the impact we have on our neurobiology. as well as the impact we have upon those whom we love. As we change our orientation we want to track how we are doing. We can do this on our life’s journey by…well, keep watching the sequence presented here and find out for yourself. You just might change feelings of being hopeless, to feelings of hope, and find yourself moving towards the dreams that are important to you. You won’t be alone. I promise.
Series One Part One: From Lost to Exploring
Thinking we are lost. Thinking we are exploring. How would you change if you came to know that as you are thinking you are lost, life is asking you to explore? Since we know life is asking this of us, it will affect what we Think-Feel-Do. Why does this matter?:
Because: What we Believe we Perceive we Receive.
This presentation provides an exercise to use when seeking to discern whether you are lost or if you are exploring, and the difference between the two in any situation.
If where I am is not lost, and who I am is not lost, and where I am is sacred, then I am to be exploring.
We cover what to do when feeling fear, anxiety, or dread. And when anxiety can become anticipation, then anticipation can become excitement, and everything becomes possible.
The four things about exploring: Observing; Extending ourselves to others and the world; We find Joy; now Expectation grows for the days ahead. I learn to “Induce” anticipation (just as somehow I learned to induce anxiety).
We now move from Blocked to Blessed, no longer Dreading but Dreaming!
Series One Part Two – Journal as Journey
By Stephen W. Emerick, Ph.D.
A Journal can help you track the unfolding story of your life. It becomes our autobiographical expression of our life that is Bodacious in nature! It is how you find the golden thread in the story of your life as you ferociously and fearlessly are honest about your past and your experience of the present and articulate the emerging story that draws you on into the future.
♥ Four essentials of Journaling:
STOP. The Power of Pause.
LISTEN. To the world around us. Listen to understand.
PONDER all that you see.
ADORE. Find aspects to adore in everything and everyone.
In our Journaling, we have a process of ACTION and REFLECTION. It is the harvest of all that we have done.
The Forgiving Journal
Stephen W. Emerick, Ph.D.
I know not how the dream received its cue-
(or whether the sky was black or blue).
Nor too, do I know when
(either by muses’ pencil or pen)
I tumbled into the blinding white-
Words soaked up from the sheets…weaving
into the wrinkled pleats, and
draping in folds of stories untold,
bequeathed their suffering to be told-
my inventories of the wrongs of old…
And in the writing, it fell to me
to write a thousand wrongs.
And as the hands tongue
there was loosed,
tears wedged in the white linen…wove
the Watermark of the soul itself.
Now, awake, I set the pages upon the shelf,
knowing when and if the need arises,
I may come again and help myself.
What if I want to explore this in more depth? Can you recommend a program?
YES! Ira Progoff Journal Workshop.
Intensive Journal Method
Intensive Journal & Progoff Programs
General Workshops
About Progoff Workshops
Progoff Series of Workshop Modules
Sample Exercise & YouTube Videos
About Us
Dialogue House Associates, Inc
About the Method
Intensive Journal™ Workbook
Journal Feedback™ Process
Entrance Meditation™ Readings
Process Meditation™ Procedures
A very personal note from Stephen:
My father, the Reverend Samuel Saint John Emerick, took the Progoff Journal; workshop early in his wonderful life. He faithfully recorded actions and reflections of all the aspects of his life. Dad died in his 90’s, and after the memorial, a package arrived at my home. Inside the box was his Progoff Journal writings. In it is recorded his youthful years, dialogues with famous people he met and the man he became known by many people around the world as the First Chairman of the Board of Habitat for Humanity International. He wrote of our world travels, including when he and I went to Zaire Africa on behalf of Habitat for Humanity International.
Every once in a while, as Keeper of the Journal, I will pull a story or memory from his writings and send it to my children. It seems to explain to them why I am the man I am today, and will be tomorrow. My father lives in us all, and it is a gift to read it over and over again in his own hand writing and loving words.
In this gifted box are his dreams and memories, hopes, fears and great love for humanity and this earth wherein we have our shared life. His love for my mother, and his love for his three sons, their wives, and his grandchildren. His love for a refugee family that he helped sponsor to flee the Laos and Vietnam conflicts, whose son became many years later, my brother from another mother whom I am blessed to have met and remain in close contact all these years, Same Saesing of Laos, and now Hawaii. He is married and has three beautiful children, and he speaks to them of myself as one of their Uncles. And he calls my father his second father, who brought hope and home to his family when they were refugees.
In the end, this is what my father loved: having helped develop the organization of Habitat, and the joy he received knowing the magic that can happen when a house becomes a home. And how as wanderers and refugees we can all become known.
Who would you want to be the Keeper of your Journal after you are gone?
Begin now if you have not already, journaling of your life and those you love. One day, in a place and time far far away perhaps someone will open your journal, and hold it as a gift of a life time. Yours! And theirs!
In 2009 he wrote a letter to me and put it in the journal, writing of some of the cherished things we had done together. At the end of a very long list he writes: I just have to write these things, and send it yo you one more time. These were fortunate times for us. Sit with it! Ponder it! It will add haling to your troubled times. Happy Pondering! Dad. And then he closed with his favorite thing to say to us all: Remember, you do not walk alone. Closer is He than breathing. Nearer than hands and feet. Always remember who you are, and whose you are!
Dad died three years later. But not to me. He is very much alive right here, right now. Ponder that for your own life! In his journal, he sailed… write…by the end of his life and has kept on living! Excuse me, I have to go now, I want to write about this in my journal, of this note I am writing to you. Go ahead, start a journal. If nothing else, write the first sentence or paragraph, and see what comes to you!
Series One Part Three: How to Help a Friend
Remember, with each Series there is an introductory film of Guidance to introduce the series of Three Blessings. The First Blessing, Part One, From Lost to Exploring. This was followed the Second Blessing, or Part Two: Journal as Journey. And now we arrive at the Third Blessing, Part Three: How to Help a Friend.
When we are asked to help a friend, you will find your changing your orientation from Lost to Exploring will help you greatly. The perspectives you gain by Journaling the Journey will make you an able helper.
Before speaking with our friend who needs help, we Stop; Ponder, and Adore the gift of the moment as a friend has asked us for help. And we are totally present, listening from the Orientation of Exploring (respecting how their Orientation is one of being lost. We listen to understand and sometimes that is sufficient in itself.
We are with our friend in exploring what being lost means for them and their own growth. Your friend is asking for your help, and the first and most important thing we can do is be present. So you have everything you need to be of service to your friend. You may become one to the other, a Helper, Hero, or Helper.
We are blessed to be within their Journal as they Journey.
If your friend asks for specific help regarding their concerns, we are careful not to rush. But to render reflection at its best. And then at their request, share parts of our own story and what has worked for us.
Remember in the reflection we, our friend and ourselves, become wiser. Perhaps you will invite your friend to consider the Orientation of Exploring, and if so, you become the Invitation for new possibilities. We share without expectation of what our friend does with what we share. We share and let it go and get back to listening to them as they seek their path. Like a smorgasbord before you both, you let them choose what they take, and leave the rest.