Welcoming & Befriending Your Real Self
Welcome here. I am Kim Isaak and Keeping Company is a space I’m offering for holy listening.
Welcome here.
I am Kim Isaak and Keeping Company is a space I’m offering for holy listening.
If you are here, you belong here - just as you are!
Your beautiful, complex, intricate and seemingly complicated real self is welcome here!
I’ve ventured into this writing space because I’ve personally discovered how essential and transformational it is to learn to welcome and befriend my real self, just as it is.
After years of longing to come to know and rely on the love God has for me,
“...and so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them...”
I’ve come to discover something so simple…
(Please know that you are free to sift through your own theological perspectives as I share mine. You do not need to agree with my perspectives. In fact, your own wrestling with your perspectives matters very much. It is a welcome process and journey. And I hope this is a safe place for you to wonder and wrestle together.)
One way that God loves me is through me joining God in loving me just as I am.
I know a Triune God – the One as a parent, both Father and Mother, running towards me while I was or am far from home.
I know a constant friend in Jesus – the incarnated One who dwells within me – always extending welcome, grace, mercy, friendship and love just as I am.
And I know the Spirit, the One living as a fountain within, always bringing about renewal, regenerating new life within me.
I know a relational God and over the years have lived in a relational way within this Trinity of Love.
This relational way of living brought me into the discovery that my own being and body housing my being (my soul) was and is a key place of interaction between us.
My body is a tabernacle, a moveable tent, for the Holy Spirit living within me.
While it has been a healing and liberating discovery to experience the Divine’s welcome of the real me, it has been a journey for me to become present to the real me.
It's been a slow awaking to how hidden my real self really is from me. I came to a realization of how hard parts of me have been working to keep parts of me hidden, out of view.
So where do we begin?
We simply begin with joining Christ in welcoming whatever is presenting in the present moment, just as it is.
We pause, bringing awareness to our bodies and notice what wants our awareness now.
We patiently wait and see what forms in the body…
We begin to describe what we are noticing…
It might be a physical sensation, or a metaphor, or picture or gesture…
and we allow a description of something so hard to describe to form…
we acknowledge that description and simply be with it…
keeping company with it just as it is…
It can be supportive to say:
I am sensing, something in me that feels …
And I’m inwardly acknowledging that it’s here.
And I’m seeing if I can just be with it, just as it is.
This is where we begin.
We are learning to welcome and befriend everything we find within ourselves. We are learning to form a relationship with how our bodies are holding a situation that is murky and unclear.
This age-old wisdom process is called Inner Relationship Focusing. The late Eugene Gendlin, philosopher and psychologist, discovered that some people just naturally care for themselves in this way. Most do not. Therefore, he articulated a process and gave it name so that people can learn to be within themselves in a compassionate, listening kind of way.
Jesus seems to call this way, keeping company…
“...learn the unforced rhythms of grace...Keep company with me and you will learn to live freely and lightly.”
Mostly, you will hear me refer to it as an embodied form of deep listening to the Spirit within.
I’d love to keep company together with you, as we learn how to keep company with our real selves and the living Spirit within us.
You are invited to follow along with my journal. Please feel free to share it with your friends.
I invite you to connect with me through email if you want to learn more or experience this slow and gentle embodied listening process for yourself.
You are welcome to check out the free resources available on my website. They include guided audio attunements, journal prompts, and prayer or retreat guides. I hope that they support and resource you for your own inner discovery and renewal.
You’re welcome to check out my live online classes starting in September, January and April each year. I’d love for you to join in.
From time to time, I will be offering in person workshops and retreats in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota, USA. I may also bring these workshops or retreats to your community. Please feel to reach out and inquire about what could be possible.
I long to see our lives, families, and communities transformed through the embodied listening to the Spirit within us. This wisdom guides us to freely act from our deepest values. Always, the Spirit is leading forward into newness of life and wholeness.
It is good. Very good!
with love as we keep company walking towards wholeness together,
Kim