My motivation for teaching

I want to share with you my motivation for creating the “How to Fill the Empty Cup” course and by extension for creating the “Positive Actions Bring Positive Results” webinar as an introduction to the course.

If I look inside myself to see what moves me, I would describe it in three words: a spiritual growth community. I want to have and provide for others an environment in which its members can flourish and emerge most fully themselves. Because I believe that each individual must find the content of that growth for his or herself and because I believe that each person enriches the group as a whole, an equally important part for me is the creative process I want to facilitate.

Whenever I’ve been a teacher or student or participated in any sort of group, I’ve always longed for a type of discussion that appears to be very rare. I’ve often sat in a group wishing everyone could get past merely listening to each other (if they even did that), as difficult and blessed an achievement as that is, because I wanted more than that.

I’m not interested in “polite” discussion, even though politeness is a good thing. My quest is for people to listen because each individual’s perspective is incomplete without the perspective of each of the other individuals in the room. Therefore, my hope is for everyone to consider it  terribly important to hear each other, to experience an inner yearning to understand the other.

Invisible lines of connection exist between group members, as well as between life experience and the words on the page. The creative process that ensues when these are the working assumptions is like no other.

At the same time I’m always seeking my path to how to be happy in a deeper sort of way, a happiness that doesn’t depend on anything that’s happening in life but rather on the values I carry around with me as the ‘constant’ no matter where I go. Thus, my tools are logotherapy, which is a meaning-focused and value-focused approach. A friend and colleague recently told me I am “good at opening people’s eyes to what life can be.” This is, indeed my goal.