Inner-Life Work
Inner-Life Work in the Spirit of Anam Cara
Dear Friend,
In the Celtic tradition, an Anam Cara is a companion to the soul, someone with whom to share the hidden intimacies of your inner life through the sacred depths of presence.
In the presence of an Anam Cara, we come to a safe harbor of belonging to the inner within of our life. The masks and half-truths fall away. We come home to the shelter of who we are, truly. We meet the sacred mystery of our innermost innocence and innately loving essence. Working at the level of soul is at once healing, awakening, and transformative.
It is said that though the body is born complete, the birth of the human heart is ongoing, ever being born across the arc of life: through the joys and sorrows, wonder and wounds, love and loss. By stirring inner feeling, life experience unfolds the landscape of the heart. And it is a heart awakened to inner feeling that gives birth to soul in the world.
Now, more than ever, the world cries out for the wild depths of the human soul.1
Working Together in the Spirit of Anam Cara
I offer 1:1 sessions, drawing from a deep well of presence in the spirit of Anam Cara.
Richly steeped in contemplative traditions, and inspired by philosopher Jean Gebser’s insights into the unfolding of consciousness and Thomas Berry’s revelatory vision that the universe is a process of communion—both urging the awakening of our spiritual depths in this time of human–Earth transformation—our work together serves to reveal and awaken the vast depths already alive in you.
Together, we enter “unknowing” to quiet over-reliance on rational thought and ego-consciousness and rest in that in us which is ancient, Earthly, wise, and whole.
We come into fully embodied, heartful presence to what is alive in you now on behalf of your becoming. And because inner-life work is never for ourselves alone, we do this work in quiet service to that which calls us to it, and to community, culture, and living Earth.
Who Might Seek an Anam Cara?
All of us, really.
A person might seek an Anam Cara when an inner yearning, no longer content to live on the surface, seeks a more intimate presence with our True Self; during significant life transitions, grief, or sorrow; stirred by the search for meaning; or longing for intimacy with the ultimate mystery of the universe.
For many, the body’s disquietudes are the doorway, whether it be age, chronic illness, or pain. For others still, it is reckoning with the fact that we will die that brings us to the most intimate questions about our lives and the longing for intimacy with the very depths of our being.
Each of these is a throughway to the long hallway of the long forgotten, beseeching us. We know when we have been called to this work. We come to the anam-cara experience not searching for answers but seeking to be present with the fullness of life. We come because we are stirred by a quiet longing.
My life’s work is devoted to human becoming—as an eco-contemplative philosopher, lay monk, teacher, and mentor.
A retired healthcare provider emphasizing integral health and healing, I hold a Ph.D. in Transformative Studies with a concentration in Consciousness Studies from the California Institute of Integral Studies. I am the recipient of a research fellowship from Esalen Institute’s Center for Theory and Research for work contributing to The Future of the Body project. From 2014–2025, I served on the Educator Council Board for the Center for Education, Imagination and the Natural World, a work closely mentored by the late cultural historian and eco-theologian, Thomas Berry.
We can never fully leave where we have been; where we have been is transmuted through us.2
While decades of work as a healthcare provider, restorative medicine researcher and clinical educator, and probiotics–botanical supplements formulator are behind me, this work, along with formal apprenticeships in yoga traditions, became the foundation of phenomenological inquiry into the role of consciousness in health and disease, and later, the unfolding of consciousness itself.3 But it was presence with a loved one in the process of dying and a long season of loss that became the cliff drop to deepen my life-work. In late 2022, I began a thirteen-month pilgrimage, traveling wild reaches of North America in a converted Sprinter van. Embarking on this journey, which eventually plunged me into the Arctic Ocean, was a way to come home to a deeper order of being. I am a forever pilgrim, walking the pathless path of human becoming. We all are.
Please contact me to learn more and for an exploratory conversation: reneeeliphd[AT]gmail[DOT]com.
Paid subscribers to Beyond the Comfort Zone receive a complimentary session.
We work together one-on-one in person or via Zoom.
Notes
I have been asked on more than one occasion to define soul. Soul is behind any idea of soul. At every attempt to hem it in with words, words conveying ideas, we abandon soul. We abide in the inner, hidden everywhere of soul. Some refer to psyche and soul interchangeably as the inner within of all that is. In our quietest moments, we experience soul as a still point of originary presence; of inner knowing; of communion with the inner within of the world and the imaginal—ever flowing toward us; we experience soul as an inner impulse always seeking to unfold an inner kernel of living truth, beauty, and love in service to this life we call our own, to others, and to living Earth.
Christopher Chapple, Ph.D., personal conversation at “The Living Legacy of Thomas Berry” Convening, May 30–June 1, 2019, Chapel Hill and Greensboro, North Carolina.
This talk offers a glimpse at these insights. The video is slow in the first few minutes, but it catches up.