The Hoffman Process, A Month On
With Mark O’Brien
When I first came out of the Process I felt very solid though not nearly as high as when I have come out of other workshops.
I did not see this as a bad thing, more a reflection of the nature of the work, the understanding that I have that whatever insights I may have had, in the Process, there is much more work to be done to free myself of my childhood conditioning.
It is recommended that post-Process you make it a point, if they are still alive, of visiting your parents.
My father was 96, and as he had been threatening to die for some years (He had been ‘threatening’ to die since he was 75 that he might not be around ‘next’ year, so after 20 years of the meaningful and uncertain goodbye every time I parted from him it was something we laughed about, with him saying, like a true Irishman, that ‘one day it will be true, that I will die’!) I felt that my intended visit a month later would work out.
I rang him after 2 weeks and had a very nice chat with him.
My sister told me he was not doing well, though she had also said that many times before.
As we spoke I felt very relaxed and tuned in with him, un-demanding, there was nothing I wanted from him. I was at peace, finally, with my father.
A week later he died. I travelled down to Victoria with my stepdaughter and stayed for some time helping prepare for the funeral and for a few days after.
My siblings were all amazed at my intention to place flowers on my stepmother’s grave which I completed.
I had been carrying bucket loads of resentment and rage around my stepmother which via the Process I had been able to let go of, and now I felt forgiveness, compassion and gratitude for her role in my life and in my father’s life.
It was strange to have been waving the anger and resentment flag my whole life, and all of a sudden no longer wanting to do so.
I felt very sad at my fathers funeral, bereft in a way that surprised me given Dad’s death had been expected for so many years.
But I felt good, clean, with no residue of things unsaid, of love not felt or shown, and again was full of gratitude to the Process.
I wonder what my relationship with my father would have been like if I had done the Process 10 years ago; 20 years?
With my stepmother? What would it have been like to have to gotten over my rage and resentment all those years ago, and to have had a healthy relationship with my father and stepmother?
It is not so much I regret not doing it earlier, because ultimately everything happens at the right time, but I do wonder…
Do I recommend the Hoffman Process? Absolutely.
Any particular time of life, age? Don’t know,up to the individual.
I do hear that people who do it in their 20s do it again in their 40s from a very different perspective.
See The Hoffman Process, a review
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