Excerpt from Chapter 4
Bringing in spirit
By Sarah Jawaid and Damon Azali-Rojas
Each and every master, regardless of the era or place, heard the call and attained harmony with heaven and Earth. There are many paths leading to the peak of Mount Fuji, but the goal is the same. There are many methods of reaching the top, and they all bring us to the heights. There is no need to battle with each other—we are all brothers and sisters who should walk the Path together, hand in hand. Keep to your Path, and nothing else will matter. When you lose your desire for things that do not matter, you will be free.
—Morihei Ueshiba, The Art of Peace
In Chapter 4, we’ll focus on how your coaching will allow you to know, trust, and lean into Spirit. Ready? We invite you to sit with the three paths taken to reach the peak of Mount Fuji. Sarah has already retraced her path to ascending the mountain. Damon’s path, textured and held down by familial and collective landmarks, is coming up. The third path: your path. It is completely unique to you in this lifetime. Wherever you are on that path, we invite you to be aware, take notes for those who come behind you, and place cairns. Know that those who cross your path gain sustenance, can orient themselves to their destination, and perhaps gain shelter on hard nights, ensuring they melt into glorious mornings.
We reference Spirit in every chapter. We try to define it here as the magic that cannot fully be known. There will be limitations due to the English language, and we hope that we can provide moments for you to look away from this text, pause, go inward, and discover your own knowing.
The healing industry in the united states is colonized as a way to support capitalism. Buy all the self-care things you can to make yourself feel better. We are told we can use meditation as a way to alleviate stress from not having health insurance or working overtime to pay our bills. We are made to believe the stress we feel is our fault, not a product of living in a world that causes trauma. We are led to believe healing is not attainable in this lifetime. Yes, healing is lifelong work, and it happens in spirals. Sometimes it feels like you are starting all over from the same place you began, and sometimes it feels like you are in a new place entirely. It’s a journey. It’s possible that seeing someone as whole and seeing yourself as whole is the foundation of the grace needed to reveal healing. Spirit is a healing force.
In some cases, Spirit is used as a tool to harm through domination and exclusion. We ask you to consider how using Spirit in this way is a reflection of the individuals who oppress. When we lose our connection to Spirit because of harm, what else is being taken from us?
How can we decolonize and reindigenize our relationship to Spirit and step into greater intimacy with ourselves?
This chapter is about your own spiritual enlightenment. It is the realization of the Divine within you, outside of you, and just plain you. This chapter describes and focuses on the cultivation of Self both inside and outside of the coaching container. There might be times that Parts of you will object to what you are reading. That is good. We want to allow them to speak. This is how you address their concerns and melt into deeper knowledge.
Excerpt from Chapter 5
Needs and Values: Leaning into the Relational Worldview
By Sarah Jawaid and Damon Azali-Rojas
Naima and the Difference Between Worldviews
For most of us, as we heard Naima’s presenting agenda, our default would be to say “Get out. Get Out. GET OUT!” like LaKeith Stanfield in the movie by that name. Charge the batteries on those phones, ya heard? This is the difference between a coaching conversation and a best friend conversation or an abuela conversation. Most of those non-coaching conversations go to the to-do list and have Naima thinking:
“Damn, when did I last do my resume? I have only been here a year, how do I smooth that over? Who can I get for a reference for this job? Maybe a coalition member? Is Idealist still around or should I focus on Linked-in? Oh snap, I wonder if that job that I turned down for this one is still open?”
The real problem is Naima’s needs are not getting met. Mainstream coaching can identify and support Naima to address those unmet needs. It could even get Naima to a job where the majority of her needs are fulfilled. But that only scratches the surface. Through Liberatory Coaching and the relational worldview, the coach-partner deepens their understanding of their needs and has so much more to explore.
This isn’t to say coaching from a linear worldview doesn’t have a place. Linear coaching works in a linear worldview where the corporations and bosses want folks to get along despite differences because it makes more profits. The linear worldview where individuality and competition erode radical solidarity and collectivity. Liberatory Coaching from a relational worldview works more holistically to dismantle white supremacy and settler colonialism.
Jobs are much like relationships. A lot of times you’re going out with that same old tired, triflin’ dude. Each in the string of partners physically looks different, but the habits are the same. They buy you dessert, they call their momma, and are nice to your best friend, but it turns out that they borrowed that money for your dessert, their forty-two-and-a-half-year-old-self lives with their momma, and they want to go out with your best friend.
This calls for really investigating your present needs and your values about partners and partnership as a whole. If you don't look deeply enough, you tend to repeat patterns. Parts of yourself and those part’s Parts’ unmet needs are trying to redeem themselves by choosing the same partner. You are running on autopilot. Gettin’ all steamy for the next one. But, really, it is your Parts and Protectors [1] who are driving you into the arms of the same type of person that meshes smoothly with your unmetabolized trauma. It is familiar. They are used to it. Even in its chaos, it is a familiar chaos. “So I think you better call Tyrone / (Call him) / And tell him, come on, help you get your shit / (Come on, come on, come on).”[2]
Back to Naima. Work or any other types of relationships blossom from an unconscious template of our needs. Usually, if you’re leaving a job (or a string of jobs), it is because the same underlying unmet needs and misaligned values are causing you to want to move on. Naima keeps getting served the White Supremacy Hate Cake at every job she goes to. It looks delicious and enticing from the outside—an organization that is standing up for Black Lives or fighting Climate Catastrophe with a diverse staff. But the ingredients under the ganache and between the layers provide nutrition for the culture that is opposing what Naima needs and values. For the majority of organizations in the united states, including nonprofits and social justice organizations, the Hate Cake recipe ingredients might include:
White Supremacy Hate Cake
6-8 cups white supremacy, settler colonial culture
1-2 cups hetero-patriarchy
2/3 cup harassment
3 bunches of tokenism, finely chopped
3 colleagues unaccountable for unskillful behavior
2 large instances of shaming other organizations for the same thing this one is doing internally
2 colleagues, who you trained but who are “lighter” or “more male” than you, getting promoted over you
2-3 heaping tablespoons of white fragility
1-2 tablespoons of transphobia
Garnish with the ignoring of accessibility needs
Liberally add salt and lemon to Naima’s wounds by appointing her head of the DEI committee with no extra pay but an increase in workload
For Naima, like for so many of us, the organizations claiming to uphold the kind of values that inspire us to give our all are the same organizations that serve Hate Cake at board, staff, membership, campaign, and coalition meetings. #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo might have empowered some people to speak out, but many individuals and organizations are still stuck in the same route responses to the crises and harms that they themselves have perpetuated for years, even centuries.
If the coach had stopped at Naima’s most pressing unmet need of getting the heck out of a toxic job situation, we would have gotten the aforementioned “to-do list.” Instead, by working from the more relational viewpoint, we got to a place where Naima was able to find her dream job.
[1] Parts and Protectors are things we will write about in detail in the next chapter. It introduces the concept for clarity that we are Self. The grounded essence of us that is described by the 8Cs—compassion, connectedness, curiosity, clarity, courage, calmness, creativity, and confidence. There are also other Parts in your psyche that are not as grounded. These Parts might be holding fear, anxiety, or worries and cause us to make decisions (usually short-sighted ones) to keep us safe from what they are worried about. That worry could be actual or based on past trauma or pain that isn’t in the present moment. When we make decisions from Parts rather than Self, we are not accessing all of our resources. The goal of all coaching is Self-leadership. See Chapter 6 for more details on Parts and Protectors.
[2] “Tyrone,” lyrics by Erykah Badu.