Perhaps the single most powerful engine of transformation is also the one most overlooked in most coaching approaches: our spiritual nature and relationship with Spirit. In part this is because in many societies today there is great sensitivity around it. Talking about spirituality or God can trigger negative reactions, particularly when it has the flavor of religiosity. For some people the whole subject is woo-woo, too ‘out there’ for application in all of life’s situations.

What is Spirit?

I use the word Spirit (with a capital S) as an umbrella term, a label to denote the greater consciousness, presence, or evolutionary intelligence that guides us on our path and sustains our very existence.

Depending on your belief system, Spirit could go by any of a number of names: God, the Divine, Source, Brahman, Creator, Supreme Being, Universal Consciousness or Mind, Divine Presence, Ground of Being, Breath of Life, Guiding Light, and more. All of these are generally pointing to the same thing, and so you are free to decide and define what Spirit means to you.

Now, you may not believe that Spirit exists—that there is a greater consciousness, presence, or evolutionary intelligence that guides life forward—and coaching as a field does not require you to. However, the Deep Transformational Coaching approach does rest upon a key presumption: we are spiritual beings having a human experience (some would even say a spiritual experience).

We know that transformation itself is a journey which leads us ultimately to the realization of our being, of I AM—our essential identity—and our essence is spirit (with a small s). Therefore, it makes perfect sense that in deep transformational work the presence and action of a vast evolutionary intelligence and organizing life force, what I am labeling Spirit, is not only accounted for but leveraged in support of personal evolution.

In the movie The Secret, Michael Beckwith describes Spirit this way:

“Regardless of what has happened to you in your life, regardless of how young or how old you think you might be, the moment you begin to think properly, there’s something that is within you, there’s a power within you that’s greater than the world. It will begin to emerge. It will take over your life. It will feed you. It will clothe you. It will guide you, protect you, direct you, sustain your very existence…if you let it.”

This is a excellent description of the greater intelligence which nudges if not propels us forward. It is “a power…greater than the world,” a life force that is the eternal Ground of Being, the way-shower to our highest potential, the sustainer and container of life. Spirit is life-breath, the animating force in our being. Spirit is not born of our beliefs but the shaper of them—when we let it.

Each of us is intimately connected to Spirit, this infinite life force and source of intelligence, love, wisdom, and energy. Accessed wisely, it helps us direct our thoughts and actions toward personal integration and inner harmony. Spirit knows who you are and holds this truth in store for you within its infinite mind, awaiting the day when you are able to perceive it for yourself.

Transformational Coaching and Spirituality

In Deep Coaching we recognize the reality of Spirit and the role it plays in the process of calling forth the magnificence of our true Self and soul. What is happening deep within when the inner earthquake begins and our acquired self-concept begins to crumble is not an existential quirk of an individual personality, it is the function of a vast system of consciousness which enables human life to become Self and Spirit aware.

Spirit is the alpha and the omega, the space where all possibilities are contained, and it is the essential catalyst and driver of evolutionary transformation.

In Deep Coaching this ‘engine of transformation’ stands at the very center of our work, and so we make room for the presence of Spirit to help dissolve the manifold layers of ego-based thought and energy that we have allowed to inhabit our mind.

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