The Process: Therapy, Education, and Ritual, Part 2

The Hoffman Process
by Tim Laurence

(Page 3 of 3)

By first understanding childhood experiences and then working through them, you will be able to separate yourself from rigid belief systems and parental character traits, as well as potential emotional trauma that may have been sabotaging your adult life in one way or another. Once this separation has occurred, you can experience a profound inner healing with long-lasting results.

You will be able to heal by letting go of the past.
You will be able to live in the present.

You will also be getting to know a part of you that is free from any programs or conditioning. We call this part the spiritual self, or essence inside. Think of it as the diamond that lives within each of us, the clear channel of light. It is always there, even if we are completely caught up in our own day-to-day struggles, the trivia of modern existence. It's the voice within, the part that leads us toward our greater potential. It is our connection with God and the universe.

Your spiritual self will be much more available to you once you look at and do some major housecleaning on your own patterns. The Hoffman Process digs out the layers of encrusted mud that have accumulated over the years and lets you reconnect with your diamond essence. By doing this, you are led back to your own truth and your own vision of how things really can be. You are put back in touch with your own wisdom and intuition. You will learn to trust that the answers lie within. Your spiritual self lets you experience love and joy arising from a source that knows no limit.

The fourth element is one that you can touch and feel at any time. It's your physical reality, the body. Throughout this book, stay in touch with how your body responds when you feel an emotion. Stay in touch with your body when you go through a guided visualization. Listen to its response under stress and in times of peace. Learn to honor its own magic and mystery. It's the home of your spiritual self during your lifetime. Don't become, as so many of us have, like the character in James Joyce's Ulysses, who "lived a short distance from his body"!

How Can the Process Help to Change My Life?

When you experience your wisdom and the power of things as they are,
together, as one, then you have access to tremendous vision and power
in the world. You find that you are inherently connected to
your own being. That is discovering magic.

Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

The residential Hoffman Process has helped to change many lives, whether the human being inside is an astronaut or businessman, young student or retired fisherman, homemaker or teacher. It is a deep cleansing experience that allows each person to completely reassess everything about themself and their belief systems in a safe and supportive environment. Sonia Choquette, author of Your Heart's Desire, said of her experience, "In the Hoffman Process I experienced all aspects of myself cooperating instead of negotiating with one another, which I loved."

How and why the Process is so effective is a hard question to answer, not least because it is very difficult in research to isolate all other factors and name those that contribute to change. However, over the years we have amassed a great deal of anecdotal evidence.

The first reason that people suggest is that they finally allow themselves to see the bigger picture, an image of themselves and the world that is not colored just by the beliefs that they had held up to that point. They go beyond the patterns of their parents and the dominant culture to feel underneath what is true to them. They may also have a profound spiritual experience once the chatter of the mind has been emptied out and may shift their fundamental life values or goals as a result. For others, going through the dark periods of their lives can release a great deal of blocked energy, especially the energy they have needed to hold in fear, anger, or sadness. That energy, now released, can be used for a positive direction — for example, in work or in relationships — and pay its own dividends in "the real world." Joan Borysenko, best-selling author and cofounder of Harvard's Mind-Body Clinic, said that since doing the Hoffman Process herself, "One of the most concrete changes I have experienced. . . is the steady increase of joy and gratitude that began to bubble up. Another change is that I find it nearly impossible to blame and shame myself or anyone else."

At some point in our lives, we all feel the need to move on, to travel beyond what we already know. We experience a calling to learn and experience more than we have already learned or been taught. For some of us, that means traveling and exploring other cultures. For others, it means stopping work and training for another career.

All of us, however, can benefit by looking at what we learned, and probably take for granted, in the way we grew up. Even if we get along with our parents or caregivers very well, there are probably areas of our behavior and reactions of which we are unaware. To us, these ways of acting or being are totally natural. But they might just drive other people up the wall! For instance, we expect to have a Sunday lunch with the rest of the family. Our partner, unused to such strong family bonds, wants to spend a quiet day without visitors. We are quite happy doing an undemanding job. How come everyone else sees this as being lazy and unambitious? We lavish gifts on our children. We get accused of spoiling them. We wonder whose way is the "right" way.

Whatever our age, we need to leave the family nest properly and to discover our own values. On a deep level, we carry around not only our families' sets of beliefs but also their attitudes and even their feelings. Through the Hoffman Process, the beliefs and attitudes that limit us and are not authentically ours can be identified and changed. It is important to consider both the positive and negative ways we view our parents and caregivers, because our lives may be run by them. Resolving on a deep emotional level any old issues with our parents and caregivers, even if we feel that intellectually everything is just fine with them, can very much alter the way we behave in the world, particularly to our loved ones and to those in authority positions, such as our bosses.

Copyright © 2004 by Tim Laurence. Excerpted by permission of Bantam, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

About the Author

Tim Laurence is the founder of the Hoffman Institute UK and director of Hoffman International, who organizes the Hoffman Process in 14 countries. He spent much of his adult life in the United States, where he studied with Bob Hoffman. He is now married and has two sons.