this first step

hurling oneself into the abyss

Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it's a feather bed. (Terence McKenna)

I've recently leapt into the abyss: I've reduced the hours at my job in order to focus my time on my mad coaching practice, my writing and other creative projects. This first step toward my future entails a step away from the past; away from the security of fulltime employment, and toward the challenges of self-employed entrepreneurship. Yet I can see all the pieces falling into place, all the steps that have led me to this point and which take me closer to my vision of a life devoted to madreality.

I often describe madness as a leap into the abyss, a step off the edge of the cliff into thin air. First one plummets, shrieking with fear, into crisis and breakdown – and eventually into a realisation that one is being held throughout it all. Often society and psychiatry intervene to insist that one has landed and is irretrievably broken. Diagnostic labels are wrapped around one like bandages – sometimes so restrictive as to feel like the Mummy.

Coaching helps one to loosen those bandages and to move unrestricted, to find alternative frameworks for understanding one's lived experience. It helps one learn to trust oneself and to trust the process: difficult and messy for sure, but ultimately rewarding. Coaching is not therapy – it does not involve diagnosis or treatment. It is a partnership in which the coach walks alongside the client as they make their way through the terrain that lies between themselves and their preferred destination.

You can find out more about my coaching offer, over at my website: juliamacintosh.online.

More on this adventure will surely follow in blog posts to come...

Photo by Ana Johen Carrillo Olea on Unsplash