Look and Listen

Biography

Jim McDonald acquired a BA in Interpersonal Communication and Group Leadership. Building on his academic knowledge, Jim spent sixteen years honing his group facilitation and public speaking skills as a corporate Training & Development professional. His continuing education includes an 18-month Gestalt Experience Training Program, with an emphasis on the Gestalt Appreciative Inquiry approach. I found the willingness to receive the gift of sobriety almost two decades ago and haven't looked back since. The willingness to look honestly at myself has changed my life and led to personal victory over a lifelong struggle with codependency and adult addiction. The active synthesis of honesty, spirituality and deep self awareness into my daily living are all gifts that help me to continue in my practice of suspending judgment and this is key to my rediscovery of inner peace. Being a Student of Experience has deepened my connection with Self and others in ways "trying" could never muster. I was asked to leave the corporate world for the third and last time several years ago. The willingness to follow inspiration, no matter where it might lead allowed me to pause and rediscover my inner peace. The peace the world told me to cover up with "doing and thinking". Out of that willingness came the book, Who Would I Be Without, and the Student of Experience™ practice. I continue to follow inspiration today, sharing this powerful message of self-awareness and inner peace through printed materials, presentations, workshops and coaching sessions. Visit www.studentofexperience.com for details, information and products. Ideas and experiences, unlike 'things' in the world of form, are strengthened, not lost, when given to another. It is only when one gives that one truly receives what has been given.

Inspiration

I was a writer in my youth, my innocence, and I forgot as I was taught to listen to the world instead of my inner-knowing. After a lifetime of feeling alienated and unsettled, the time came to ask, 'is there another way?' The alienation i felt was minor, but it was always there in the background. Something, I was never sure what, but something wasn't right and it was ALWAYS there. I learned to cover it up, ignore it, for many years, but eventually that was simply too exhausting and something had to let go. Grew up in an alcoholic home and became a model alcoholic myself for many years. Sobriety came with ease when it finally came. Then elven or so years of sobriety, therapy, and challenging myself to be brutally honest with 'me' lead to the final awakening. I was sent home from my last job as a Training Professional and felt only peace through the process. I wandered the planet in a state of bliss, and did nothing for the next two years or so, all the while practicing all i had read and learned from teachers such as Byron Katie, Eckhart Tolle, etc. Extended periods of deep pain, fear and suffering that I chose to let live rather than stuff away, allowed me to finally see ME and in that seeing, the fear and pain subsided. It was truly an awakening of Self from the Dream of fear and I began the writing near the end of the second year. I literally spent my days walking in the park, looking at my thoughts, belief system, etc. and watching those things that held me locked into a world in which I did not belong, crumble simply because i looked at them and questioned them for their validity. I am now "all in", with this new life despite everyone around me wanting to help me, 'find a job'. This is my job now and it speaks to my heart like nothing i have ever done before. I have spent all of my savings, including my retirement money and my debt is piling up... back taxes not paid, credit cards, etc. but i keep going, trusting the visions, the inner knowing - I am on MY path now, not theirs, and I am more peaceful than I have ever been in my life! All I have written above is why I found myself beginning the book with, "The gift of willingness is the only thing that stands between the quiet desperation of a disingenuous life and the actualization of unexpressed potential." While the statement is quite deep in its meaning and language, it stands alone at the front of the book. The book itself is almost the opposite in that it is written in common, everyday language because that is how the character lived and experienced himself, and the world.