Jouney into Love
An interview with Kani Comstock
by Raz Ingrasci, President (Edited
by Shawn McAndrew)
Kani took the HQP in 1986. As a past director of the Institute and
as a Process teacher
for 12 years, she has made many important contributions to work relating
to spiritual healing & transformation. Recently Kani published
Journey
into Love in English, with Marisa Thame of the Hoffman Institute
in Brazil. It has also been published in Portugese and Spanish.
Raz Ingrasci: Kani, in your book, you say that
the Hoffman Process is the basis of the journey you describe. What
is it about teaching the Hoffman Process that's fulfilling for you?
How do you keep the experience of teaching it fresh?
Kani Comstock: It's an amazing thing to be able
to teach for 12 years and feel excited about going to the Process
every month, which I do. I find the human spirit and mind to be
fascinating. It's an honor, a blessing, to be able to guide a group
of people through this adventure. It is an adventure for me, as
well as for them, into finding oneself, of coming into more wholeness
and authenticity.
RI: Did the inspiration for you to write a book
come from your experience with the people you work with in the Process?
KC: Well, that's true, certainly, but the real
inspiration and motivation for this book was my own spirit. It kept
telling me I needed to write a book. And I kept saying, "No,
not me." It just kept coming back, so I realized I had to listen
to it. In writing the book, I had a number of different objectives.
A very important one for me was to have the brilliant structure
of the Process be known in the world. It is a way of growth and
integration and learning about one's self that works and is time
tested. I just wanted that to be out there for people to know about.
I also wanted Hoffman graduates to have a better understanding
of the work they had done. For example, the book explains the cathartic
experiences more clearly than is possible during the actual Process
itself. I'm receiving comments from graduates, emails and coaching
sessions that they're finding a better grasp of what they accomplished
in the Process as a result of reading the book.
Another reason for writing the book was to provide some conceptual
understanding for people who were interested in the Process, whether
as prospective students or if they're just curious about it.
RI: It's been said that love is endless. So when
we talk about the "journey into love," what is the destination?
KC: The destination is "to be." I think
love is endless, and it's limitless. But it's often hard for us
to really experience the abundance of what love is. So it's kind
of a moment-to-moment destination — to be in the moment, to
be in the present, to be with ourselves, to be with another, to
be with Spirit. I think it's an endless journey, a journey that
keeps revealing itself.
RI: So, you might say that love is both the journey
and the destination; journeying into love involves going more fully
into where one already is.
KC: Yes, connecting more deeply with ourselves
and all other beings, with all other spirits, and with all that
is.
RI: The perennial wisdom is always that the path
to God lies within: God dwells within you as you. So you're really
talking about that inward journey that ultimately also takes you
back into the world.
KC: It takes us back more into community, more
into spirituality, more into the present ÷ present to ourselves,
present to every other being we come in contact with, and present
to the universe.
RI: Bob Hoffman is famous for saying "No
one is to blame." In your book, there's a whole chapter titled
'Moving Beyond Blame.' What does that mean? What is on the other
side of blaming? What do we find there?
KC: Blaming really keeps us attached to the past,
living in the past while hoping for a better future. We really miss
the present moment when we are holding onto blame — blaming
ourselves, blaming other people — whether that blame is conscious
or unconscious. When we give up blame, we open ourselves to live
in the moment.
Giving up blame is a practice. It's something that we have to do
over and over again. It would be wonderful if we could do it once
forever, but that's not possible for us as human beings. We have
to be aware to be present. So when we make the choice to give up
blame, what we're saying is that we're going to keep forgiving and
letting go of the past and coming into the present so that we can
really have a life. Life is in the present moment.
RI: So we need to forgive ourselves and have compassion
for ourselves.
KC: Compassion is such an integral part of accepting
being human. We're not perfect, we're never going to be perfect
as human beings. All of us will make mistakes. We all have things
for which we could blame ourselves or blame others, but that doesn't
bring us goodness.
RI: It occurs to me that blaming is an expression
of powerlessness. It gives us the illusion that we have power over
someone else. But it's actually an expression of powerlessness in
the sense that real power to make change and be creative is in the
present, because life is in the present. On the other side of blame
is life, power, creativity, and love.
KC: Being present. Not being lost in the past
or in the future; but rather being here in the moment.
RI: In the Quadrinity Process, we spend a lot
of time on the different aspects of self — emotions, intellect,
spirit, and body — and the different qualities of each of those
aspects of self. Yet the ultimate aim of the Process is integration,
or wholeness. What qualities does the integral self exhibit? Why
do we want to become whole? What's so good about that?
KC: I'm thinking of a team. I'm thinking about
the strength of a team. You have a team of great minds, or a team
of great basketball players. Often a team can accomplish things
that a single person cannot. The way I hold the quadrinity is four
different aspects that are interactive, part of the whole, which
bring complementary capabilities, skills, strengths, and perspectives
into our being.
RI: So life is a team sport...
KC: Right! You're not alone. You really have not
only these four aspects to your whole self, but they also connect
you to the whole of life — your community to other beings,
to spirit, to the universe. So when you can grasp what this quadrinity
is, you can't really separate out one part and hold it "over
there." I'm just thinking of someone trying to learn recycling
by attempting to put his intellect someplace else. That's when we
realize how much we're whole.
RI: It is an intellect who is trying to put itself
somewhere else.
KC: Right. We all need to come to treasure every
aspect as an integral part of our wholeness and our gift, our life
and our vitality. Treasure them, listen to them, and be present
to them.
RI: As we reach higher levels of integration,
the integral self is not only whole unto itself, but the separations
of self and environment, self and community, self and spirit, self
and God, self and contribution or work, those separations dissolve.
As we become integral, we also become integral with life itself.
And that's the path. Is that fair to say?
KC: I think that's fair to say. I think one of
the mistakes that all of us make is to think that we've finished
it all just because we've gone through these 10 steps of the Process
that are delineated in this book. I think we've finished the first
round. As we move the patterns out of our lives, as we disconnect
and transform the patterns, we move the limits of our lives outward
and our life possibilities become larger. As we step into that larger
space that we've now created for ourselves, we find ourselves bumping
into more patterns that we didn't even know existed because we kept
ourselves so small. If we want to stay on this path of growth, we
have to keep dipping into these steps, looking at the patterns,
and doing the work to move aside new patterns that we recognize.
In this way we can keep exploring; we can keep being an adventurer
in our own life.
RI: Part of the journey into love is getting comfortable
with the fact that it's an unending, though glorious and magnificent,
journey.
KC: And that we have some control over how fast
we go in our growth. It's our choice where we want to go. But it's
not over with.
RI: I have the feeling every time I break through
to another level that the light has been cheering me on and waiting
for me to get there all along. I think that's part of the excitement
of this journey into love. It is so rewarding in ways that are,
like that old candy bar label, 'indescribably delicious'.
KC: Yes, Once we get there, once we go through
the hard part, we get to the really delicious part. I think what
you're speaking to, Raz, is that when you ask to be guided by Spirit,
it doesn't lead you necessarily where you thought you wanted to
go. But after you've gotten there, you are really happy that you
took the journey.
RI: I hope that many, many people read Journey
into Love and take the trip. ø
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