Teaching Philosophy and Individual client coaching using the Four Agreements.  

 

I was very blessed over the years to have personal time with don Miguel Ruiz.  He continually demonstrated extraordinary levels of respect, unconditional acceptance and love.  It was through my personal experience observing don Miguel demonstrating such attributes that I had to continually redefine what these words meant.

 

The Teacher - Student Relationship

The Teacher or Guide is in service to the student.  The student is not there to serve the teachers needs.  This is why the very best teachers are completely free.  That means that their happiness and emotional state is not dependent on anyone else.  That includes the success of the student.  When the teacher emotionally needs or wants the student to succeed then the teacher is now dependent on the apprentice.  When this happens they are both trapped in emotional dependency.  As insurance against this I often encourage my clients to dismiss me from their employment periodically.  Always providing them with the opportunity to exercise their free will.  (more on Teaching)

 

I see my students as my friends.  This is because the relationship is built on respect.  It is our honesty and authenticity with each other that real trust and respect is built.  This is why my clients become my friends.  Yes, we have a financial agreement, but that is not how I see them. We also get together for movies, dinner, social outings, and have fun.  No one is any better than any one else.  No one is any less than anyone else.  I don’t put myself above my students, and I don’t want anyone to put themselves below me.  This means not putting the teacher on a pedestal above ourselves.  We can have respect without putting someone above us.  This approach is conscious on my part.  I use the relationship with my clients to break their false beliefs about Spiritual teachers, and to establish new paradigms of unconditional acceptance and respect. 

 

I do not give much advice on what a person should do.  I respect a person's choice and do my best not to influence their choices.  I do however ask questions and provide a point of view that can be quite revealing. 

 

Each person’s life is a work of art.  We are all practicing artists.  I have practiced to become skillful at living my life in gratitude, love, and integrity.    If someone wants to learn the art of love and happiness, then I am happy to share how to create life as a beautiful work of art.  The teacher/student relationship is similar to a student of music or sculpting studying with a accomplished artist.  The student’s agreement is with themselves to master the craft.  The teacher’s agreement is with the student to help the student to master the craft.  Their intent is the same, and together the intent and possibility to create life as a work of art is much stronger than the student going it alone.

 

Working with a Guide

Our work together is principally focused on being happy in every moment of your life.  To do this we focus in two directions at the same time.  One direction involves the practices that will foster happiness, love, and abundance in your life.  The second direction involves the inventory and dismantling of agreements thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors, which keep us in suffering. 

 

Each person’s process through each of these directions is unique, and I endeavor to make each person’s journey both interesting, and as enjoyable as possible. 

 

While implementing life changes can be challenging, it does not have to be a process where we suffer.  It makes no sense to use our process of self discovery and transformation for emotional drama making.  This is exactly what we intend to eliminate from our lives.  Believe it or not, this inner work can be fun.  But don’t confuse fun with easy.  This journey is most certainly challenging.

 

My guidance involves various practices in awareness, meditations, dreaming, stalking, (tracking) forgiveness,  and intent.  It also includes anything else that comes into my awareness of what will work for a person in their particular situation.  I am continually inspired to come up with new exercises and actions to transform individual’s lives.  After years of studying with Miguel Ruiz, and ten years of teaching myself, I have quite a few tools in the tool bag to work with.  We will use the Four Agreements, but these are only a beginning.  In my years with don Miguel Ruiz he has shared with me many specific practices and exercises. Because I have a clear understanding of why certain exercises work, I will sometimes make up practices specific to a person in order for them to get the results they want.

 

The guidance I give is to help each person make himself or herself strong and self reliant in their happiness.  My apprentices are free when they no longer need me or anyone else for their happiness.  Of course, they are free to go anytime they wish.  They are also free to return anytime they wish.  (providing I am still taking students at that time.) 

 

I do not do therapy sessions where I listen to people’s stories.  That does not interest me.  This does not mean that I do not listen to what is going on in your life.  I do listen intently, but more to what the underlying agreements holding the story of drama together.  I am interested in working with people that want to change the story of their life, not repeat it. 

 

I’m not quite sure where to put the notice, so I will put it here.  It has become my experience that individuals who engage in this work have experienced tremendous change in their life.  Be aware that tremendous life change may occur.  This change isn't always easy but many have found that the rewards on the other side worth it many times over.

 

You Keep your Free Will to Choose

You have no commitment to me. I can make suggestions or offer exercises, assignments, and actions to take. But you have no obligation to do anything I say.  In that regard, I am not attached to whether you do anything I suggest. My commitment is to support you whatever you do or don’t do, no matter how fast or slow the progress. That means my complete respect and acceptance of you as you are.  Don't under estimate the power of acceptance to change ourselves and our situation.  Happiness in life is completely possible.  With your action, supported with proper guidance, it can happen.  If I can do it, you can do it.  

 

Attitude

You can take this journey very seriously, but you don't have to take yourself seriously.   If you do, your steps will become heavy and the journey longer. Laughing at yourself will make you lighthearted, and your steps will become lighter. Then the journey will go much faster and be more enjoyable if we laugh at ourselves.  The work is the same, but the attitude will make for a completely different journey.  Generally, I laugh a lot, and encourage it often.

 

Chemical Substances or Power Plants?

There are many stories of teachers using substances to break people’s perception.  If you wish to have power plant or hallucinogenic experiences, then that's what you choose.   I suggest you find someone that teaches in the way you want to learn. I don't work with power plants, nor do I suggest the use of chemical substances.  When one uses chemicals or plants to alter ones dream, we often give up our power to the substance.  The way I teach is to use what power we have to break our limits of perception.  By doing this we recover more of our personal power.  With more personal power, we can break even more of our limiting beliefs.  In this way one reclaims their own personal power and does not need the use of substances.     

 

For me it's not about experiences of “other realities”; what is important is being happy, and living a path with heart.  If you are able to live completely present in the moment, without the distraction of the mitote in the mind, you will find a whole reality right there.  Once you experience living in the extraordinary reality of life in the present moment, you no longer have the desire to escape to other dreams.  But if you choose to, you can.

 

Long Distance Support

I am not a motivator and I am not here to inspire you. Not my job. If you really want to change something in your life, that is all the motivation needed. If you don't want to change something, then I don’t want to work to change it against your will. I will offer the tools to use and the exercises, but you will have to use them and practice them. I will open the doors.  You will have to walk through them.
 

The Bottom Line 

I entered into this work because I wanted to be happy.  If we are to change our life, we will end up changing our thinking, emotional state, behaviors, and our point of view.  I was skilled in what the world had taught me in terms of academic and career from years of practice.  But nowhere had I been educated about transforming my behavior, emotional state, or my own thoughts and beliefs.  Yet I learned to do them and have shown others how to do it for themselves.   

 

These are the things that we must do if we are to be happy, and Love unconditionally.

These are the truly worthwhile things in our life.  If we only have a short time left in our life then we should waste no time.  If we are going to live for many years, then we will likely want to learn sooner than later. 

 

The Battle Ground

As Spiritual Warriors the war we are fighting to win is for our personal freedom.  Personal freedom is the freedom from fear, freedom from judgment, freedom from suffering, and the freedom to live our life with gratitude, love, happiness and justice.  We are battling against our beliefs and knowledge that drag our mind into suffering.  The battleground is in our mind.  It is in the corrupt knowledge of the belief system that brings us into emotional suffering.  This corruption exists in our own mind; yet, we must use our own mind in order to heal the very thing that is corrupt.  This makes the task at hand extremely difficult on our own.  The chance for success without outside guidance is low.  It is like expecting a computer that has a virus to be able to fix itself. This is why the apprentice warrior seeks a guide assist in providing clean input and a clear point of view.

 

Overcoming the Obstacle of Fear

The path of the Spiritual Warrior is through the major obstacles of fear, clarity, power, and knowledge.  In the beginning of the journey, fear is the biggest challenger.  Fear keeps us from expressing our own love.  Fear keeps us from taking risks and living the life we want.  These fears manifest in many ways, fear of failure, or the fear of what someone else will think of us.  To just win over our fear changes our life in extraordinary ways.  Even if we just win over some of our fears, our lives are filled with more enjoyment. 

 

If we are to live with more love in our lives, then we must eliminate the fear that we are living with.

By overcoming fear, we eliminate the most emotionally painful and disturbing part of our mitote.  The easiest way to get over fears is to realize that the stories they are based in are not true.  Most of the things we have feared have never happened except in our mind.  Learning to deal with our mind is the easy way to get over fear.  After fear, the other obstacles are just a matter of time and attention. 

 

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The practical and business part of the program

 

The basic relationship.

In this process the primary intent of the student is for their happiness through the dissolving of their fear and judgment based agreements.  My primary focus as a teacher is for the happiness of the client through the same process.  The student is not obligated to me.  Their commitment is to themselves and their own happiness.   My commitment is to the student for their happiness and personal freedom.  It is a simple agreement on both our parts.   And either of us is free to change it at anytime. 

 

The Structure

We will schedule a time to talk on the phone, twice monthly. Estimate each call will be 45-50 minutes.  Tuesday thru Thursday is usually best.  We will discuss issues; explain exercises and practices, etc. We can/will also correspond with email in between calls. Sometimes issues may need immediate attention and it's fine to throw in a phone call.  We can also adjust this schedule to be less or more often depending on where in the process things are, and the time it is taking to integrate practices.

 

Tell me about you

Before we start, write and send me a bio on yourself. Include your education, professional work, personal and spiritual development history as background.  Include past spiritual practices, religious work, psychological counseling and treatments. 

 Most importantly I want you to cover the emotionally defining experiences of your life.  These are where the core agreements are formed or identified.   Include how you looked at them then, and how you look at them now.  It might be the same.  There are no wrong answers here.  Honesty will move us farther than hiding.  If there are issues or experiences that you are not comfortable sharing at this early point then no problem.  But please be honest and let me know that there are experiences that you are not yet comfortable sharing. This assignment is not for us to indulge in our stories.  It is necessary for us to review our past patterns and history in order to awaken from the patterns that have been running our life.   Email is fine

 

What are your Goals?

Also before we start, clarify what you want to get out of this work? Why you are doing it? What is your motivation? What conceptions and expectations of the path do you have? Are there clearly things you want as results, or just things you know you want to change about the present but don't know what it will look like in the future. Write a letter explaining all of this so that is clear for both of us before we start.  Again, email is fine. 

 

There will be some writing

Get two books to write in as journals. We will use these to guide you through two processes at the same time. One process is the dissolving of your current dream through the inventory of your current agreements.  We call this one “The Mitote Book”.  You will break the agreements that don't serve you to be happy. The second process is the creation of your new dream.  For this we will create our own “Book of Life”.  We will build the new dream at the same time that we let go the old one.  This way it smoothes out the transition process.  The processes also support each other in terms of a push-pull effect. It also allows us to go faster on the path.

 

The Business Side

Fee is $225 monthly, to be paid by the beginning of each month.  This will cover the two monthly sessions.  Payment may be mailed to may address at P.O. Box 22130,    Phoenix, AZ 85028. 

For individual sessions, or to do sessions monthly the fee is $125 per 50 min session.

 

What it is, and What it is not

I look at this as personal coaching, not therapy. It is guidance and coaching on your own transformation process.  The path is to happiness and the full enjoyment of life.  My parents didn't teach these practices, nor the church, or all my years in the classroom.  Don Miguel taught me most of it, the rest I figured out on my own or from other teachers along the way.  What I guide you through is a distillation of the most effective practices and exercises I, and other warriors have engaged in.

 

More opportunities for you

If you are serious about the work, attend workshops if they are in your area.  These are listed on my website. At the faster end of things, I suggest a power journey.  It is the means by which I can guide you through the greatest leaps in transformation.  See the events page on my website for the next dates    There is detailed trip information available through the links.

 

You get to keep your free will

All suggestions are just that. Being happy is the number one priority.  You are not required to do any assignments you do not wish to do.  I give neither grades, nor judgments for how you do your assignments.  Your reward will be your happiness and overcoming fears and lies.  If the results don’t motivate you to continue, then I’m am not guiding you well in the process, and you should find a different guide.  It is about exercising free will, you will learn to make your own choices. 

 

The most important part

Enjoy your life. I suggest starting with laughter. (this item may be the most important) It is where all the work is going to guide you. It is why I started the work years ago.  I wanted to be happy, and enjoy my life, no matter what.  If you think you have something more important to do in this world than be happy that’s okay.  But they don’t have to be exclusive.   Being happy can coexist in yourself with what ever your actions and directions are in life. 

 There are some writings below.  They address some of the types of questions I get.  Perhaps they will help with some clarity on the relationship and the process.  Or perhaps they won’t.

 Thank you,

 

Gary van Warmerdam

 

NOTE:  After years working with individuals I saw that the general majority of people wanting to change the emotional quality of their lives would benefit from the same basic instruction and practices.  Instead of continually repeating the same instruction over the phone to my clients, I've made recordings that can be downloaded from the internet.  They are available on my new site. They are also much less expensive than doing individual sessions and they are supported by conference calls.    www.PathwayToHappiness.com.  The audio sessions course can be used in conjunction with individual sessions.

 

 

 

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