The following is written by a participant who flew from California to attend a 7-day Symbolic Modelling intensive training in London in 1999 run by Penny Tompkins and James Lawley. While he gained the professional skills of using Clean Language and the Metaphor Therapy of David Grove, below he has chosen to describe some of the personal changes he has experienced since returning home.
The results of the course keep working out in the most wonderful ways in my life. Things that were challenges in the past are now ‘resolving’ of their own accord. Also, the word ‘resolution’ keeps coming up for me in the sense of a higher resolution on a video screen in that I’m seeing things clearer. For example, I realized that “trusting other men” was more a surface issue and that I had something about ‘male is bad’ down deep. And the irony of being in a male body!
I'm fully awake
I used to have a terribly difficult time waking up in the morning and getting out of bed and when I did, my body would start to become uncomfortable in one way or another. Now, I pop back into my body as if there’s nothing to it. I’m fully awake and my body doesn’t do weird things anymore. So, now that ‘maleness’ is not the source of all evil, I get along much better with my body it seems and it seems to be liking me better as well. This in itself is a miracle!
It's inconceivable
Many other equally miraculous changes are manifesting as well. It seems to be taking a little time for all the rest of the bits that make up me to reorganize in response to the shift in my metaphoric landscape. And still they’re happening across the board. I first described this work to myself as “unbelievable”, however, I now most certainly do believe it, because I’m living the experience. What I’m really saying is it’s inconceivable what this work can do, has already done, and continues to do!
I have arrived
I have no idea where all of this change is going and, unlike the way it used to be, it doesn’t matter anymore! I still ask myself “how that could be?” because in the past it was so crucial to “know” what was going on and to “plan”, even if it meant fooling and deluding myself about how much I really knew. I used to think I could tell what other people were thinking or that I “knew” what was going to happen in the future while, of course, not admitting to myself or able to realize how much I really didn’t know. Now, it just doesn’t matter anymore. And the fact that I have arrived at this place without having to undergo some tortuous, racking physical pain is amazing!!!
I still am not over it, and yet, know that I will be, and yet, don’t know how or when, and yet, that’s all right. Actually, I ask myself, when has life ever really made sense? However, as I look back at my past, that certainly didn’t stop me from trying very hard, all the way up until I took your course. Now life makes perfect sense all of the time, I just don’t “know how”!
© Thomas Zelenz April 1999
