Let's face it. "Why?" is a terrible question to ask yourself. Here's the reason.

When you ask "Why?" , as in "Why is this happening to me?" "Why doesn't that person answer my calls?" and questions like that, it gives your Inner Critic a chance to raise it's self-serving head (because it's trying to keep everything the same, and you "stuck") and respond like this: "Because you're a hopeless dweeb." "Who would want to hang out with you? You're worthless."

The things you're told by your Inner Critic are NOT TRUE. It's what you heard (usually from someone else, or the TV, or any number of places), and what you've reinforced throughout your life. It happens to us all. 

Trust me when I say there isn't a person out there who doesn't have some version of a blue-suit-cats-eye-glasses-grey-haired-overweight-overbearing-loud-voiced Critic whispering (and sometimes shouting) in their ear telling them what a creep they are. Mine is named Sally Jenkins (with apologies to every Sally Jenkins...

We celebrated my 67th birthday on Dec 11, 2023. Nice and quiet with Ashara, the cats, dogs and horses (always in that order). These days a nice non-Grunge flannel shirt is a fine present. That and take home Asian dinner. And a small chocolate cake of course!

A couple of weeks rolled by, close to holiday season and I saw a new post from the Roger Dean group on Facebook discussing another art show at the Trading Boundaries Art Gallery in Sussex, UK. What the actual paint-on-canvas? Is that Awaken I see in the background? Colorful metaphors ran around my head like ants streaming out of their hill under attack. Ever see those little buggers move when their queen sends mental messages to save the hill? Frightening actually.

The repartee began for the second time.
“Could I buy it?”
“YES!”
“Should I buy it?”
“UH…..UH…..” feeling the credit card in my wallet practically leaping out.
“Hold on, bub. We have a furnace that’s...

Part 2
We moved back to Colorado in 2013. After 23 wet years we looked at each other and wondered why we were still in the Pacific Northwest.

We missed the sun, the Rocky Mountains, warm days, the sun! Within a year we sold our beloved home in the actual forest, surrounded by actual cedar and alder trees. Ok, it was green and beautiful up there. We felt like wood elves from a Tolkien story. Sometimes, though, being a wood elf isn't enough. What about the Hobbits?

Now we live on a 40-acre parcel with our family of cats, dogs and horses (always in that order), on the eastern plains of Colorado with fabulous views of the Rocky Mountains. Colorado is heaven. Ask anyone who lives here. (A wood elf might disagree.)

We are steadily building our fan base of clients who come to us for some much needed compassion and empathy. Ashara and I are Master Gestaltists, as are our horses (although being more evolved than us, they didn't have to go to school for four years). More on this another time.

PART 1 (it’s a long story, folks)

Have you ever met any of your heroes?

What would you do if you did? What would you say to this person who you worshipped from afar? Would they meet your expectations of the Adonis or Aphrodite you believed them to be?

Well, I have met my hero. Two times.

Seriously, because we say seriously when we really mean it. The first time was in Seattle and the second time was quite recently in Denver.

Wanna know the truth? Both times were better than eating twenty boxes of your favorite pasta from your Grandma’s favorite pasta bowl then passing out from carb overload only to wake up and think about finding the nearest Pasta Anonymous meeting. “Hi. I’m Frank and I ate twenty boxes of pasta, passed out, and now wanting more pasta with pesto and those giant prawns still in their shells.” [HI, FRANK!]

Let’s go back to 2004 when my wife and our family of cats, dogs and horses (always in that order) lived in the very wet and very...

What does this even have to do with our business?

Well, a couple things, actually. It’s got lots of horses. Our business has lots of horses (four). 

Vendors have booths. The company where we got our training had a booth - if you went to Stock Show, you saw us in the CINCH Arena/Events Center at the Touched By A Horse booth.

Ashara (far right) with two soon-to-be Touched By A Horse certified coaches

Touched By A Horse is where we got our very extensive training in Gestalt coaching, both with and without horses. It’s a four-year total program, AND we are required to do continuing education, so we never stop learning. It’s based in Colorado, and there are coaches trained in this modality all over the world.

It was so much fun sharing the booth with some of my fellow coaches. In the Denver area, we’re spread from Platteville to Colorado Springs, and there are probably others I don’t even know about. What I’m saying here is that if you want to...

All motive and action affects the cosmos in some way. The principle of cause and effect is the truth that allows us to change ourselves and the world around us for the better. However, this same universal law is also at work when change is not at the forefront of our minds. Our intentions flow forever outward in the form of energy, affecting both the people closest to us and billions of individuals we will likely never meet. For that reason, we should strive always to speak, think, and behave with great thoughtfulness and compassion. The virtues we choose to embody can inspire joy and integrity in the lives of countless people, whether we touch their existence directly or not.

Read the rest of this article by Madison Taylor here.

Hey! Glenn's been busy creating podcasts for his tribe of artists, musicians, poets, writers, crafters, photographers, and really, anyone who considers themselves a creative.

He's also interviewed a few artists and those are available as well. Talk about keen and intimate insights into what drives these people forward!

You can access The Creative's Consciousness podcasts on Apple Podcasts.

This is a beautiful video on YouTube featuring Lee Harris, Barry Goldstein, and Steven Washington.

May your hearts be awakened! 

One of my all-time favorite books is The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by a brilliant author, Douglas Adams, who unfortunately passed into the outer regions in 2001 at age 49.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was a concept for a science-fiction comedy radio series pitched by Adams and radio producer Simon Brett to BBC Radio 4 in 1977.

Life, the Universe and Everything is the third book in the five-volume Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy science fiction "trilogy". 

This post is my homage to Douglas Adams who visited Denver's Tattered Cover Bookstore in the very late 1990s to perform a reading of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. He was so kind as to autograph my leather-bound copy of that book which I cherish to this day.

So, why the blog title Life, The Universe, and Almost Everything?  Because everything is too big for us to know about it all! 

What we will share in these posts are things we do know...

Gestalt coaching is a form of individualized (or group) coaching that emphasizes personal responsibility and focuses upon the individual's experience in the present moment, the coach-client relationship, the environmental and social contexts of a person's life, and the self-regulating adjustments people make as a result of their overall situation.