“Happiness is never really so welcome as changelessness.”
-Graham Greene
I often get asked something like, “Why bother?” … because it’s unclear to most folks exactly what it is that I do.
It’s usually a sign of some confusion that I get asked such a thing, because the connection between the work I do … the actual service I provide … is often unclear, even to my clients … except for the results they get. It’s why they keep coming.
To be fair what is unclear is “HOW” what I do works, NOT the outcomes I produce.
The outcomes, the “WHAT” that clients want, are attained within the work we do together … that’s clear.
However, from my point of view the “HOW” is much more interesting than the “WHAT” … despite how obscure it can seem to the uninitiated.
Separating “THIS” and “THAT” … or,
Unraveling the “X/Y Paradigm”
In the simplest terms I am a “Change Artist.”
That is, I help individuals and organizations make changes they want or need to make … for whatever reasons they may have to do so.
To be more specific, I am a “Healer” … in the most traditional sense of that word.
For most people the word “Healer” is a mystery of sorts, carrying a ton of semantic baggage with it.
However according to Webster’s 1913 edition of the dictionary a Healer is:
“One who, or that which, heals1.”
I prefer this quote in describing a Healer myself:
“Healing is really just a common job, there are lots of healers. She was one, I was one. Doctors, therapists, nutritionists, acupuncturists, dentists, shamans, physical therapists, editors, divorce lawyers, plumbers; there are healers everywhere. I used words and emotion to help people heal. He, I was told, used something along with words and emotion. That’s what interested me, the something else.“
I too help people to heal with “something else“.
The “healing” I provide people with happens through facilitating change.
If we dig a bit deeper we would come to a more interesting tidbit about the nature of the work I do, and that is that I am actually promoting “changelessness” in the work I do with clients.
You see I’m Graham Greene on this one, that “changelessness” is more welcome by most people than happiness. BUT unlike Graham, I believe that perceiving and experiencing the extant changelessness at one’s core is what they actually seek … NOT the changelessness he refers to on the outside, i.e.: no change in the context of their lives, stability and consistency over all.
Folks are simply confused about this, and it’s what I believe leads to confusion in my work too.
I’m never confused about what I do, or for that matter, what I’m doing when I’m working with clients … I’m aiming at what is changeless in the individuals and organizations I work with, and making that manifest and extant in how they experience themselves.
Sometimes it’s also about how people in relationships experience what is changeless in their relations … but it’s always the same old, same old … or as my teacher, mentor and friend would tell me … “Joseph you’re a one trick pony.
The real trick is the paradox that to become changeless you must first change, and I am gifted at provoking change in people.
Healing Beyond Words …
What’s sometimes surprising to me is how the obviousnesss of what I do escapes folks, even those I’ve worked with for years sometimes.
Sure, they get the outcomes the come for … the the “HOW” seems elusive, or invisible, to them somehow.
What they miss most of all is that what they really get is healing … deep, profound, unspeakable healing.
This is understandable, how they miss the healing part of it … because it’s beyond words, and beyond the common paradigm. WHAT I do, and HOW I do it, are beyond how “it’s done” in the modern framework.
Heck, if I more openly called what I do “healing” or called myself a “Healer” most folks who don’t yet know me would be more likely to use the label “quack” … especially when I refer to healing relationships and organizations!
I’m guessing though that quite a few of the folks who do know me, when they read this, will get exactly what I’m talking about … and may even wonder why I don’t more often use these terms in referring to what I do or myself.
There is another part of the “trick” I do. My “trick” depends on helping my clients get to NOTHING before they get what they want.
This is where we separate the clients who will make and those that will go back to where they’ve always been … those who choose the red pill and those who choose the blue pill.
“Morpheus: This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.“
From: The Matrix (1999)
It’s about the choice between the path of seeking change or unveiling one’s changelessness and learning to remain constant in that.
It’s about the freedom to become who you are … fully, completely and wholely … and in that healing what ails you. In becoming changeless, even when the disease remains … the discomfort is relieved.
The idea of becoming changeless is far beyond “healing” as most people have been taught to think about it … it’s about leaving the Matrix behind.
Profound healing is NOT about getting better, or getting past or over what ails you, or learning how to cope with it either.
Profound healing is stepping into your life “as it is” without changing a thing … and in that finding the enchantment, wonder and awe present in this moment.
Then and only then, when you’ve stepped beyond the Matrix, delved into the deepest regions of your being, and begun to experience the essential nature of your changelessness, can you begin to re-emerge into the world proper and choose the life you will lead.
Maybe even more acurately than calling myself a “Change Artist” or “Healer” .. in the tradition of Tarkovsky I should call myself a “Stalker”2. This is very particular and peculiar skill … one I seem to have a proclivity and prodigious training for as well3.
Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.
Princeton, NJ
- From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 ↩
- A guide who leads others into the “Zone” where their deepest desires are revealed, and their wishes granted. ↩
- My everlasting thanks to Roye Fraser. ↩
PS – Summer Intensive Training w/Dr. Joseph Riggio:
MythoSelf Behavioral Communication
Professional Certification Training
Presented by ABTI | Princeton and Acuity World, DK
SPECIAL ONE WEEK ONLY OFFER
(expires 19 June 2013)
Opps … I made a BIG MISTAKE …
My partner Henrik Wenoe, at Acuity World has been on my case for weeks (months really) to announce this training program to my list … but I’ve simply been swamped.
The Early-Bird pricing “officially” ended on 15 May 2013 … and here we are almost a month later and I haven’t even let folks know about this powerful program we’re running this summer.
So I’m taking the blame and doing what I can to make it up to you …
For the next week you can still get the Early-Bird pricing for either attending the event live in-person, or via Live Internet Simulcast (there’s even an option to pre-purchase just the videos) … when you register directly using this link:
MythoSelf Behavioral Communication – Summer Intensive
You’ll SAVE $3000 from the Regular Investment for this 12-day Intensive program when you attend it live (BTW the investment includes room and board with three meals a day, snacks and coffee/tea/water all day long).
If you want to attend via the Live Internet Simulcast … now broadcast in HD via my private LiveSteam MythoSelf Channel … or pre-purchase the HD video recordings, you’ll be able to take advantage of the Early-Bird pricing as well.
BUT … you must act immediately to get the Early-Bird Pricing (there’s also a three-payment plan I’ve set up for you as well if you want to spread out your payments over three months) …
Here’s the link you need to use to register and get the Early-Bird pricing:
MythoSelf Behavioral Communication – Summer Intensive
[NOTE: The full program brochure is here: http://www.acuityworld.com/pictures_da/med_clips/Joseph%20Riggio_2013.pdf]
Mike G says
“I took the Buddha shopping” ? Thanks for the book tip…
Joseph says
Welcome … interesting book I think (I just started reading it myself …)
Joseph
T says
Hey,
I see you as a healer and experience it as such. In my hallucination it’s a transformational healing experience. When you say beyond the matrix I experience it as beyond the default matrix, the imposed social matrix into the creative and impeccable choice and possibilities matrix. In the unchanging I arrive at all the leverage I could ever want and never fully realize since I’m always surprised in the direction of my story and legacy.
It’s an amazing price for the video only. I look forward to the next possibility of that.
Be well and beyond,
T
Joseph says
T,
Thanx (I think …).
It’s always beyond the “default Matrix” … first the one imposed on us, and then the one we continue to impose upon ourselves.
The video price IS AMAZING … my partner’s gonna kill me … but that’s the way I roll ‘”~>
Shyaam says
Dr. Joseph, the idea of ‘changelessness’ makes sense and the ability to show up with life ‘as is’ is what I like to have.
Usually, for a moment or two, I get the truth of ‘Nothing’ but then I go back for ‘Something’ and seeking starts. I try to analyze how did I get into ‘Nothing’ or how would it feel to be in ‘Nothing’ but it doesn’t work.
Joseph says
Shyaam,
I get it!
Sustaining “NOTHING” or an aimless path directed only by the whims of the “Signals in the System” takes both great skill and enormous courage … it’s why the spiritual traditions have always referred to people who follow this path as “warriors” …
Of course they don’t mean “those who fight and kill others at the bequest and pleasure of their masters” by “warrior” … but rather, those who strive to kill the illusion they are trapped in to free the Self.
FWIW I do think there are “warriors,” both current and past, that have done both … picked up and wielded arms AND strove to kill the illusion they found themselves trapped by simultaneously … this is/was their sacred path. These few are the Paladins …
Joseph
Shyaam says
Hmmm. I see that the ‘courage’ factor is missing in me (I am still trying to please others – seeking approval).
I feel that the Mythoself process facilitates to make us a ‘sacred warrior’!
and I am not able to afford the program now (though I get that the video option is really cheap). In the future, I definitely will 🙂
Mark Schwimmer says
As a rather active torrent of rain pelts my windowsill in New York City, I hear the loud banging of the larger drops beating against the air conditioner that protrudes from my window, for the umpteenth time this month, I find myself responding with quiet satisfaction.
“Profound healing is stepping into your life “as it is” without changing a thing … and in that finding the enchantment, wonder and awe present in this moment.”
When it’s raining I carry an umbrella and I go about my business. Kind of like the old US Post Office motto, inscribed on the edifice that houses the main PO in NYC,
“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds”
As you, Joseph, have installed in me the response to what shows up in the world around me, “so this, what next?” to keep me inching forward on the road I have chosen, there is nothing else to be doing, knowing that along the way there will be gifts and there will be losses, and appreciating that I am the judge of both, and from where I am perched I cannot tell one from the other. So I chuckle a bit to myself and continue inching forward, reading the signposts as best I can.
Many believe that a healer must cure, but the only dis-ease, is perhaps the position from which a life is lived, and that the true role of the healer is to point out an internal balance to be held as we aim ourselves along the journey from “the womb to the tomb.”
Ancient adages, “affirmisms”(sic), and cliches, tell us there is nothing to be doing, nothing to be gaining, nothing lost, nothing to strive for, no one to please, and yet because we are human we are easily coerced to make these concepts our goalposts, as if they are really “things.”
The stories about who we think we are, are malleable, and who we really are is, well some say we are made of “star stuff”, and that works for me because the idea of birth and death are too much for me to get my head around.
The other day, I met with a confused husband.
He said, “I can’t show that kind of affection to my wife, it’s not who I am.”
I laughed to myself, knowing in all seriousness that he could become that person, when and if, it becomes important enough, and all he has to do is remove two words from his story, and be naturally flooded with the kind of “enchantment” you speak of.
Maybe he will, maybe he won’t, it depends
Mark.
T says
Hey Mark,
Thanks for this great piece of writing. It had clarity, depth and captured a good story. I like your definition of what dis-ease is with respect to the position one lives. I love the commitment you have to your journey and am inspired to deepen mine.
Thanks,
Tivo
Mike G says
Mark, “The other day, I met with a confused husband. He said, “I can’t show that kind of affection to my wife, it’s not who I am”.I laughed to myself, knowing in all seriousness that he could become that person”
This is why, now, I have chosen generally only to work with people in couples (ie with both of them present). I want both of them to be there when that kind of BS gets destroyed.
Thomas says
Joseph
At one point I was told I was a healer as well, a very powerful one at that. Not knowing what to do, other than trust my instincts I played with it for a time. At first I doubted what was being said to me. My initial response was wtf are you talkin about ? But going back to my teenage years I had experiences and access to knowledge that might have seemed strange to others, especially my best friend, who couldn’t believe what he was hearing, and yet it felt right to me, the wisdom I seemed to easily access that is. Back then I had accessed this in a way I didn’t like and wondered if there was a better way. Been trying to find that better way for a number of years now. hmmmm. I may add more thoughts on this subject, but for now, this is all I’m willing to share.