Erica Mulford

Inner Implosions to Outer Explosions. Since I've started working with Thomas Whigham a few weeks ago, he's helped me notice the stress or pressure within that was applied to almost every area of my life in some form. The way I related to my family, to my work, to sex, to strangers in the street, even to my own body. When focus is drawn heavily onto oneself, there's often a buildup of intense energy implored inwardly. When the mind is oriented in this way, it can't help but to keep re-creating the same core problems manifested in various ways - like white light shot out of a prism producing a rainbow, it's the same substance, but a variety of colors. He held a mirror up to help show me the inner repression but unlike other coaches or teachers, didn't offer me any platitudes of conventional advice. He didn't teach me to get rid of this, understand it, overcome it, but rather to love it, to see its utility, its purpose in my life, and to no longer engage in a battle of futility against it. Instead he pointed out dynamics for me to see more clearly in my own time and stepped back and let the magic happen on its own. Before I met Thomas in January I had a day dream and a thought that came vividly to mind saying "2020 is the year you care about people again." This shocked me at the time. Didn't I care? I started to see how my own walls were protecting me from more fully expressing this care with others in my life. Working with him has helped this inner knowing become a reality. He helped open my eyes, showed me how much I really did care, and my attempts to conceal that care or hold back out of fear of pain, love, or just plain old habit energy. He taught me that the force of whatever anxiety was driving my existence for many years of my life, was simply that same care...that same beauty disguised as something painful, something I needed to extinguish. When our attention relaxes around ourselves, the implosive energy eases and begins to flow outward again - like the collapsing of a river dam. We start to care about the people around us, our families, friends, strangers, and ourselves. The false walls of perceived protection come crumbling down and we're left vulnerable, open, and free to finally feel the broad spectrum of all the pleasures and pains, the rawness of being alive. Suddenly or gradually we may start experiencing quite a capacity to give, a capacity to experience whatever it is that life is asking us to open our hearts to and take in. A desire to shine in this life, no longer for our own glory but for the sheer joy of it. Our narrative begins to die down of the thoughts with a central character and we begin to feel again, to hurt again, to love again, to enter this world without a greedy hand always reaching for the illusive "more". The beautiful transformation is one from inner implosions to outer explosions - explosions of expressing ourselves authentically in this world, no longer holding back our love and care for others, using our creativity for what we're meant to use it for, seeing situations and meeting them with a fresh, open mind and heart. We give because we see there's very little we need or even could keep. We look around and our heart aches for the stories we hear, the tragedies we see, for the heads that hang low - eyes looking down, avoiding life. For the heads that hand high seeking hollow triumphs - eyes eagerly looking forward, stepping on others toes in attempts to arrive. We know it all too well, we were that person. Therefore we can love that person. We see them, and we see ourselves. Where has there even been a line anyway? We deceived ourselves into believing what our eyes saw represented a true boundary. The only boundary that ever existed was merely a mental one of imagined protection. Once our attention extends to caring about others, our creative minds are allowed to explore brand new territory rather than re-creating the same internal dilemmas, the same conflict, the same addictions. It moves on from the repetition within ourselves, the repetition IS the suffering - it is what we know and what we know is only what repeats. Stepping outside of that we find how little we need to know in order to love. How little we need to really understand about another in order to see them. How little we need to struggle to utter what we need in a moment. And how very much this life has to offer. Lose yourself to find everything. If anyone is considering giving this program a shot and has any doubts, please reach out to me. I'd be happy to share my experience. Love you all