Just back from attending a weekend seminar on Unitive™ coaching with Charles and the gang and I’ve got to say it was a bit of an eye-opener.

I felt like a right muppet to begin with – everyone else there seemed to be peering down at me from somewhere at the top of the corporate ladder, while I’m still desperately scrabbling around for a handhold and wishing I’d worn my climbing shoes. I spent most of day one alternating between outright incomprehension (now, just let me get this straight – you’ve got a good job, a great salary, house, pension plan. . .what are you doing here?) and pure, unadulterated envy. I mean, I’m not even sure what a pension plan is.

After a while though, things began to settle down. As people opened up I realised that fundamentally we were all in the same boat . . . and if what we were all saying was true, it appeared to be sinking. Things began to look a little bleak on HMS Potential.

Not that Charles seemed unduly bothered. Beaming from his chair, now pushing, now prodding, but most of all just sitting quietly and listening, observing; by dint of his very presence he seemed to be willing us on: ‘Come on in! The water’s lovely! Don’t mind the sharks. There’s no need to worry.’

And do you know what: he was right. The moment I let go of the sodden barrel of doubts, fears and self-justifications I was so desperately clinging onto, I found myself bobbing along with the rest of the group as we began tentatively, each in his or her own unique way, to glide through the clear waters and undulating billows formed as a result of our ongoing interactions. And it became effortless.

Try it now: take off the water-wings of self-reproach and needless anxiety, sit back, breathe, and let yourself drift in the ebb and flow of the moment. Charles’ message, the Unitive™ approach, is that to surrender to the simple fact of being is to be provided with all the support we need. We don’t have to change. We don’t have to seek what is, after all, an unattainable perfection.  We’re quite all right just as we are.

Truly, a sea change, indeed.

Gareth John [g4reth.j@gmail.com]

Why do we so often try to be perfect? What feeds our drive to perfection? Do we think we can avoid criticism and hurt by being perfect? Isn’t there always some degree of fear behind perfectionism? We don’t live in a perfect world, so how can we be perfect?

Whilst aiming high is great, striving for perfection can be rather stressful. Perfect expectations are too hard to meet. And perfection is rarely necessary: if everybody always waited until things were perfect nothing would ever get done!  

Islam has a different appreciation of the fact that we humans make “errors”. Unlike machine-made rugs with perfect symmetry, handmade Arabian rugs have slight imperfections- so much so that a tiny “mistake” is purposely woven into each carpet!

To the Moslem weaver earthly perfection does not exist. Only Allah is perfect, so trying to achieve perfection is regarded as arrogant even. If a weaver working on a rug dyes wool as needed with the outcome being the colors do not match or age in an identical way, they do not regard this as an error. The rug is simply the way it is.

“In a handmade carpet, the kind you seek, there can be no design exactly the same. Even if you try, it’s impossible. The wool thread may be a different size and they could make only five knots when before it was six. Or the dye is a slightly different colour. Small things, but important. This is the beauty you must see. There is beauty in these inconsistencies. It is human. It is life.”

Dr Ann Katrin Schlag  Unitive™ coaching team