Base Camp

Taking up the Challenge
As you begin “base camp” you take up the challenge of strengthening your Powers of Presence and begin engaging with your Tangles. You meet fellow “Untanglers” who share your journey through the rocky and steep roads ahead, and you begin to get to know your Tangle.

Showing Up as Your Biggest Self
Tangles need you to be larger than they are. You develop your ability to stay grounded in Self-in-Presence as you interact with your Tangle. You cultivate inner and outer resources that strengthen your ability to engage with your Tangle as your largest Self. You learn what to do when embodying Self-in-Presence is hard.

As Big as Montana
Tangles are always multi-parted. This week, you develop your ability to become the space that the Parts in your Tangle need. This enables multiple Parts to be welcomed and equally valued… so that the next steps can happen.

Deeply Listening
The Parts in your Tangle need empathy and relationship. During the next three meetings we will be exploring the Power of Deep Empathy. With this Power, you’re able to relate to the Parts that you find in your Tangle in the way that each Part needs so that something radically new can happen.
This week, we focus on how to enable Parts to express their deepest fears and hopes for you.

Deeply Understanding
Different kinds of Parts present different kinds of challenges to you as Self-in-Presence. Those Parts are faced with different kinds of challenges themselves. This week we explore what Protector and Defender-type Parts are like, how they behave, and how to respond to the different kinds of challenges they present.

Deeply Loving
This week, you go even deeper. You learn about the qualities and needs of a third type of Part, the Small One. You explore the transformational power of developing a relationship with any Part, especially with Small Ones. And you get ready to transition into the next season, which is about the tough things Parts in a Tangle put you through, and how to meet those challenges.

Into the Maze

Lost in the Maze
When you are inside a Tangle, “hijacks” and “takeovers” by Parts are everywhere. It’s confusing to know where you are, what is happening, and what can be trusted. You’ll learn to recognize these patterns so you grow in your ability to respond when you find yourself entangled in them.

“Did I just do that?”
Sometimes you become identified with a Defender or Small One so quickly that you find yourself acting before there is any reflective awareness as Self-in-Presence. We call that being “hijacked.” You’ll learn how to recognize when that’s happening and how to cultivate Self-in-Presence so that you are in the driver’s seat instead of being driven by a Part. You’ll develop your ability to create a relationship with hijacking Parts so that hijack happens less and less often.

“Who’s pulling my strings?”
When a Protector takes over, its beliefs and feelings can seem to be our own. Protectors can hide in plain sight by masquerading as Self-in-Presence. You learn how to recognize and respond to these “takeovers” so that worried Protector Parts get the kind of relationship they truly need in order to transform.

“Who’s that hiding in the bushes?”
Many things that are mysterious about our Tangles become clear when we realize that some Parts are operating invisibly. In a Tangle, Parts can have impacts and effects without our being able to perceive them directly. You learn how to detect invisible Parts and how to develop relationships with them so they can transform.

“This is never going to work!”
Many Parts are scared of what might happen if you get close to the core of the Tangle. They have lots of strategies to stop you in your tracks, including saying, “This is never going to work.” You learn to recognize their strategies and cultivate relationships with these worried Parts so that they trust you to be OK as you get near the core of the Tangle.

Widening the Horizon of Possibility
You further develop your capacity to be a wide open space, a welcoming environment where your whole Tangle can be just as it is. You learn how to get a felt sense of your whole Tangle. A fresh experience of how the whole thing is now forms. You are, in this new moment, already living beyond the Tangle in ways that couldn’t happen before.

Diving Beneath the Surface

Diving Deep
As you find your way to the core of a Tangle, you encounter Parts that have been frozen in time, unable to live forward. In this season, you’ll strengthen your capacity to be the Transformational Environment of Self-in-Presence for what feels impossibly stuck. You learn how to take each of the Powers of Presence to a deeper level so that you can provide what these Parts need and fill in what they are missing.

Desperately Evading the Abyss
When a desperate Small One gets loose in the world, and sees a chance to get what it longs for, it can behave in ways that disregard both reality and other people. You’ll learn why trying to give a desperate Small One what it believes it needs keeps you trapped in the Tangle… and how to be what the Small One really needs instead.

True Love
Trauma is at the heart of every Tangle. A key element of Untangling is becoming the healing environment for what has been traumatized. Discover how to create a trustworthy relationship with Parts that are frozen, still living in the time of the trauma. And learn a way of responding to them that enables them to live forward again.

Touching the Frozen Core
As you dive deep to the core of the Tangle, you come to an experience we call the Point of Stoppage. You’ll learn about the nature of the Point of Stoppage and why treating it as a Part will be ineffective – and what to do instead. When you can bring awareness to what has not yet been formed, and stand how uncomfortable that is, whole system shifts become possible.

Dancing with the Dragon of Despair
When Parts have been struggling for what seems like forever to get out of a Tangle, they can become deeply discouraged and despairing. They are afraid the reality is this is never going to change. That you are essentially broken and can never heal. That you don’t have what it takes to live fully and freely. As you learn to dance with these Dragons, they begin to hope again.

Life Emerging
Your unlived life has always been ready to live forward again. It’s just been waiting for the right conditions. The good news is that you can create those conditions. Using the Powers of Presence, you meet the needs of your entangled Parts. You hold a space for new life to emerge. As you begin to live beyond the Tangle, you sense what is possible now that was not possible before.

Into the World

Easier – and Harder
As your Tangle loosens, some things will get easier, allowing you to welcome bigger challenges in your life. As you develop your ability to meet the new challenges that arise when life starts to get more free, your confidence in your ability to encounter new problems grows. You now know that what seems to be a setback is a precious opportunity for further growth.

It Takes Two to Tangle
Tangles always involve other people. Everybody has Parts. In our closest relationships, our Parts often mutually entangle. You learn to recognize when things in a relationship are getting “Parts-y.” You learn how to stay grounded or return to Self-in-Presence when Parts get triggered.

Dancing with the Mystery
Every interaction you have is a fabulous opportunity for relating from Self-in-Presence to the other person’s largest Self. As you live more and more from Self-in-Presence, you experience the difference between Parts-y reactions and being responsive. You’ll know from your core that taking responsibility for your actions includes taking responsibility for the actions of your Parts.

Life Beyond Tangles?
Is there such a thing as life beyond Tangles? Well, it’s not “everything is easy now.” It is not being all done and finished. It’s not Nirvana, or Heaven. It doesn’t mean getting everything you want. Perhaps life beyond Tangles is really two things: Living your whole life more and more from Self-in-Presence, and having the capacity to respond to stoppages as they occur so that interaction becomes freely available again.

Bring It On, World!
As you live from Self-in-Presence more and more, you can be comfortable with being uncomfortable. When Parts arise (and they will), you recognize they are there and are able to turn toward them. Your capacity to enter into and engage with life – whatever happens – deepens and strengthens.

Getting Free
Profound transformation happens in magical and paradoxical ways, unpredictably yet always in the direction of living freely. Doing this work in community is deeply nourishing. During this year you have created connections that can sustain and support you as you go forward. When your Tangle shifts, your life opens up in surprising ways. You free your abilities and gifts so that you are effortlessly more authentic, creative, emotionally available, playful, loving, compassionate…