How I Work

The core of my work is helping people come into better alignment with purpose, both individually, and in communities and organizations.

Alignment

By alignment, I mean being true to purpose — to what is most authentic and most alive. It is as if your purpose is a magnet, and all the elements of your life are iron filings. When you are not connected to purpose, the elements of your life move this way and that. Bring purpose into the picture, and every element lines up the way iron filings form clear patterns around a magnet. There is coherence, and beauty and effectiveness.

Listening

Coming more into alignment involves listening. I pay close attention to your stated purpose — honouring what you want to create or change. I also listen for your deeper purpose and mirror back what I’m hearing.

A key discipline in my work is non-attachment. I’m not pushing my agenda, but listening for what wants to come through. I could whip something up but that wouldn’t have any sustained benefit. It might feel good. You might like it, it might be pizzazzy, but it does not build your capacity or create alignment.

Clarifying principles

How we do things is as important as what we do. What principles are integral to your purpose? When you line up purpose and principles, there is a coherence between the what, the why, and the how of your work. You stand in “choiceless choice”. And living up to your principles is both its own reward and a magnet for great people, partners and possibilities.

Calling forth

Once the purpose, principles and scope are clear, I see my work as calling forth the latent capacities and hidden gifts needed for the purpose. Everything needed is in the individual or in the system. This means my main work becomes inviting, linking, networking, brokering and bridging. I am part midwife, part matchmaker.

Often it takes only a bit of information, or money, or expertise to help magic happen. Without the missing ingredients, much less happens. The art is to see how little needs to be added to get balls rolling in a way that generates ongoing momentum.

Building capacity

I always aim to leave individuals and systems more self aware and more resilient. This includes opening space for people and groups to reflect on their own process, by asking questions like What worked? What was tricky? What might you do differently another time? I also often introduce people to simple inner work tools. 

Inner Work Tools

Inner work means ways of working that are interior, based in intuition, perception, intention and consciousness. It doesn’t replace logical thinking, experience, and practical know how. Rather it complements them by offering ways to harness our inner knowing for all sorts of situations.

You can use inner work to:

  • set the direction and strategy for a project or task;
  • make decisions quickly and with confidence;
  • gain insight into relationship challenges;
  • bring awareness and choice to how you frame issues and situations;
  • sort through confusion or emotional turmoil

You can also use inner work in groups to harness collective wisdom and cut to the chase in group processes.

Inner work is important because it offers quick and reliable ways to deal with complex situations. It is also a magnet, bringing individuals and groups home to what is most important and most authentic.

To learn about my top ten approaches to inner work, see Make Light Work.

It’s a book I wrote to share with you and others ways of working that are simple, practical, and potentially revolutionary.

I first found them in 1990, after crushing disappointments in my work for social change left me bruised and confused. I knew I couldn’t carry on as I had been, and began a quest to find ways of working that are win-win-win for individuals, communities, and the planet.

The core message of the book is that it is possible to “make light work” in our lives. Whatever challenges you face, whatever confusion you have, “Everything you need is inside.”

“Well”, you might say. “That is all fine and dandy, but what do I do Monday morning?”

The book offers practical answers — introducing a suite of tools with at least one approach for every type of circumstance and situation.

Included are chapters on:

  • Automatic Writing
  • Burning Your Wood
  • Framing
  • Flirts
  • Guiding Images
  • Multiple Options
  • and more

Kate is a friend, a teacher, a former colleague, and an inspiration! I greatly value her reflective nature and ability to tune into her inner wisdom. And she’s wonderfully gifted at helping others tune into their own inner truths. Kate walks the talk and you instantly sense this. She is worthy of great trust.

Michele Davidson

Walking my talk

I use myself like an instrument to create space for people to work in. If people want to move to the next level, I challenge myself to move to the next level. If letting go of old hurts is needed, I find those places in myself and do the work to be able to move on. If taking risks is the order of the day, I take risks personally, the better to prime the pump for the system I’m working with. To facilitate change with integrity, I endeavor to always be on my growing edge so I am able to hold space for others to do the same.

Honouring the Source

The most potent single shift in my life was on day 29 of a 30 day Vipassana retreat led by S.N. Goenka in 1994 when I “experienced” (there was no “I” to experience) the ground of my being as peace. Ever since this has given me a deep and strong trust in Life, and a pathway to connect to stillness, the void, and the unity behind myriad life forms.

These are exciting times, as humans become more self aware, raising our potential for conscious evolution of consciousness.

In this time of spiritual renaissance co-arising with greater understanding of (and of the need for) systems change, there are hundreds of emerging tools, approaches, practices and paths. This diversity is wonderful. It can also be distracting.

Ultimately, what brings us more quickly to trust and truth and good ways forward is found in practices first discovered thousands of years ago — in stillness, in silence, in bare presence, in yogic practices, and in devotion to questioning “What am I?” and “Why am I here?”

Whether called Sangha, circle, tribe or [fill in the blank], when we gather with others, there is support and nourishment and wind at our backs. We need to go deeper than our busy minds and conditioned ways of being. I hope that in working together we can deepen our collective capacities to find answers in the wisdom of the body, our felt sense, creative expression, and play. And that our time together will nourish in you and others an appetite for ongoing inner work practices and orientation.

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