My Breakthrough Weekend

By Dan Hoffe

After hearing nothing but glowing reviews from my Hoffman friends, I recently signed up and completed the Virtual Graduate Q2 course.

And I must say it truly exceeded all of my expectations. Our two teachers, Maria Camara and Jane Biondi, and our teacher-in-training, Searl Vetter, were all absolutely amazing and wonderful.

Group Bonding

Despite the fact that we grads could only see each other through our computer screens, we really bonded as a group as we all reaffirmed our commitment to working the Process and to always focus on progress, not perfection.

An additional benefit of taking the course from home was my ability to immediately share the many insights and epiphanies that were occurring to me with my wife, Sarah, who is not a Hoffman grad.

I was finally able to open up and be super vulnerable with her, by sharing not only the picture of my dark side (who looked surprisingly similar to what I had drawn in October 2019) but also, and more importantly, by letting her read for herself all of the negative, nasty, humiliating, and hateful things that it’s been telling me all my life.

My Breakthrough Weekend Brought Me Closer to My Spouse

I am grateful to say that this has definitely brought us much closer together and actually changed the way that we now communicate with each other.

I realized that I had been unconsciously putting her into a box based upon my beliefs about her and whether she’d responded positively or negatively to something in the past. This course and the awareness tools helped me, instead, approach all of our conversations with a beginner’s mind, one that’s present, open, and ready to hear from the beautiful person standing before me, right now, in this moment, instead of from some ghost, who no longer exists anywhere but in my mind.

Self-Forgiveness

One of the most powerful tools for me personally was the self-forgiveness and self-love walk. It inspired me to write the poem, “My Forgiveness Feather,” which I’d like to share with you all today (located below).

By doing the Virtual Graduate Q2, I was able to not only get a tune up for myself, but a much deeper and more loving connection with my spouse. Not bad for three days of hard self-work!

Finally, one of the biggest lessons that I took away from this powerful weekend was that there’s gold hidden inside each of our wounds. But you need to have the courage to dig down deep within yourself, to fully experience the pain that’s there, and to continue to drill through it anyway until you reach the other side and find the rich vein of gold that’s just waiting to be discovered.

Simply said, “Thar’s gold in them thar wounds!” Perhaps Hoffman will create a new course for us in the future called, “Prospecting for Patterns” or “Drilling for Gold.” The tagline that I would suggest they use would be, “For the folks who need to dig a little bit deeper, then elevator can take them.”

My Forgiveness Feather
By Dan Hoffe
Today, I completed my first,
Self-forgiveness and Self-compassion walk,
Where for an hour, or so,
As the sun slowly peeked its head up,
And looked at me over the horizon,
Tinting the white clouds,
Reddish orange and pink,
With each step,
I consciously dug up,
A painful memory,
A burden,
That I’d been carrying for years,
And finally, completely,
Released it to the sky.

I was amazed,
By the sheer number of people,
Who I had hurt,
By blindly following,
The negative patterns,
That had been passed down to me,
Like a baton,
By my parents,
As theirs were,
To them.

With this finally accomplished,
I then shifted gears,
And with each step,
Said out loud to myself,

I love and appreciate my body,
I love and appreciate my intellect,
I love and appreciate my emotional self,
I love and appreciate my spiritual self,

And upon returning home,
I made a final vow,
To love myself,
Wholly and fully,
Just as I am,
And to commit,
To giving myself compassion,
Whenever I am suffering,
Whenever I need it,
No matter the cause.

After closing this circle,
And completing this sacred rite,
I then took out my dark side remains,
And incinerated them,
One by one,
Until there was nothing left,
But the ashes,
And the smell of the smoke,
On my skin.

As I headed in,
I made a quick detour,
Over to my wind chime,
For I wanted to hear,
My newfound freedom,
Ring out to me,
In its angelic and melodic tones.

And for some reason,
I looked down,
And in the grass at my feet,
I spotted a brown osprey feather,
And suddenly remembered seeing it,
Several weeks ago,
As it fluttered down to earth,
From somewhere up high,
In the water oak,
Next to our canal,
Without ever spotting its source.

It was worn and beaten,
But still beautiful,
In its raggedness,
It was a survivor,
Fucking perfect,
Just like me.