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    • Home
    • Journey
      • Welcome
      • Services
      • Working with James
    • Touchstones
      • Practical Life Education
      • A Learning Community
      • Multiple Intelligences
      • Growth in five steps
      • Our Community Values
    • Abbey
      • Divine Providence Abbey
    • Resources
      • Videos and playlists
      • Gardens for Growth
      • For fun
    • Topics
      • Yes, angels
      • Suggestions
      • Policies
    • Contact
  • Home
  • Journey
    • Welcome
    • Services
    • Working with James
  • Touchstones
    • Practical Life Education
    • A Learning Community
    • Multiple Intelligences
    • Growth in five steps
    • Our Community Values
  • Abbey
    • Divine Providence Abbey
  • Resources
    • Videos and playlists
    • Gardens for Growth
    • For fun
  • Topics
    • Yes, angels
    • Suggestions
    • Policies
  • Contact

Essex Center

 STUDY.  WORK.  LIVE.  WELL. 

Welcome to the Essex Center!

The Essex Center offers consultations and educational programs that are

a catalyst for change to support individuals 

and organizations who strive to live well,

following their unique path to take 

good care of themselves, others, and nature.

Special Offer!

To get our service started, James is offering up to three FREE full Life's Journey Counseling sessions! Yes, let's have the experience of just talking together about your life or your organization, and about where you would like it to improve, for yourself, others, or nature, short-term or long-term. No obligation! 

Find out more

Three simple questions...

you may be asking yourself, but not finding adequate answers to through traditional resources such as schools, mental health services,  and religions: 

  • Where are you in your current life?
  • What would you like your future life to look like?
  • What steps could you take, short-term and long-term, to build toward and achieve your fullest life?

Whether your concerns are about planning for something very specific and short term or your concerns are about the big picture of your life's direction and mission, the Essex Center is an experience in getting support for your dynamic progress at any age or stage of life. 

About Essex Center

One center — three services

The Essex Center is non-traditional, non-sectarian practical life education and intelligent spirituality center that offers a community for learning and living well.


This center is currently in formation, exploring whether, when, and where to become established as a geographically located agency with an online presence.


Currently, services are private, in person or online individual consultations for Life's Journey Counseling, as well as, serious and whimsical contributions for enrichment and joy from videos and playlists at www.youtube.com/2live1slifewell


The three main functions of the Essex Center are briefly named and described below. 

Whether you call your life a journey, path, or pilgrimage...

Essex Center, a learning and living community.

Essex Center, a learning and living community.

Essex Center, a learning and living community.

... is our core service to the public at large. It is an experience to safely learn practical ways to live a good life. 


Countering the excessively abstract and unattuned so-called academic approach of most public, private, and sectarian schools, the goal is learning that helps youths and adults live actually-healthy, thriving lives that are values-based and purpose-focused.


The current service is individual consultation in the newly-created service of Life's Journey Counseling. This educational, non-clinical, support service can focus on immediate topics, more narrowly, such as relationships or motivation, or more broadly, such as on what one's life work could be. 

Divine Providence Abbey Community

Essex Center, a learning and living community.

Essex Center, a learning and living community.

... is the "quiet place to grow" at the Essex Center. Non-denominational and non-traditional, the Abbey seeks to be a prayer, contemplation, and human growth community, informed by religious traditions, but not limited by them. We seek to "Be the divine" and "Do the providence," striving to bring a good spirit and good deeds to life, from where we are and with what we have.


Members, visitors, and guests will be welcomed to events that admit to the reality of spirit beings, being part of a life process that is bigger than ourselves, and accepting that we are both solitary divine beings and beings fully enmeshed in enduring, all-too-human corporeal communities.


Currently, the Abbey exists as an online presence of videos and prayer service playlists found at www.youtube.com/2live1slifewell 


Evening Sun Institute: Your Vision, Your Voice

Essex Center, a learning and living community.

Evening Sun Institute: Your Vision, Your Voice

... researches, explores, and articulates the path of human growth uniquely espoused at the Essex Center. This small but important endeavor, while optional for Essex Center participants, informs our entire agency developmental journey. 


This entails moving from our spirit (our attitude and mindset in life), to our values (the reasoning for the choices we make), to our studies (what we learn to actually lead our life well), to our service (our work, life's work, and stewardship), finally to  our vision, our highest calling as a human, to share our unique, true voice to those near to us, or perhaps to the larger world. 


How to be a responsible, safe, and effective visionary is the core of this mentoring and support service when it becomes formally established. 


(In the future, content will be added to this website to explore this Institute's mission and work.)

Welcome!

our mission is simple...

  • We want to live a good life.
  • We want to be change agents to help make the world a better place.
  • We want to be a lifelong learners participating with a dynamic, supportive community of learners and doers.


Thus, we address how you can be yourself, as well as,

how you can be part of something bigger than yourself.

This approach to living is fully human, neither religious or mystical, nor secular in a sterile manner. 


We are just beginning our journey as a learning and living community.

If these goals resonate with you, drop us a line

to begin a dialog about your aspirations, large or small,

to see how we can go about meeting them together.


Current Services

Life's Journey Counseling

We are all on a journey, a pilgrimage through this life on earth. Sometimes, this living experience unfolds naturally, with health and clarity. Other times, however, some aspects of our life or work are not coming together well. Perhaps our relationships or families are struggling, or learning has become a challenge, or what work to do is unclear. Sometimes, practically every dimension of our life could be a muddle, with little sense of direction.


The role of a Life's Journey Counselor has been created to make available professional short-term or long-term informed conversations to enable and support decision-making and progress in what life needs and goals we are working through or toward, whether for ourselves, a group we are in, or an organization we participate in. 


Sometimes, all we need is a chance to talk to someone who will listen. Other times, a specific frustration, difficulty, or struggle needs to be the focus of support, encouragement, and enlightenment. 


When it is relevant or central, we consider if there is some mindset, attitude, emotional pattern, or sense of self that could be enhanced for better life outcomes, which is the foundational sense of "spirit" we use here to guide out dynamic life's journey.


Appropriate clinical referrals are made, when needed, when issues arise to be able to make use of this educational, supportive service.

Working with james

Taking the Next Steps

Exploring this website and checking out our videos and playlists are options to help decide whether this service is worth trying.


More directly, there is the offer of a no-charge, 30-minute telephone or Zoom call to ask any questions, explore your needs and requests, and begin to get a conversation going about helpful ideas and priorities. (AND SEE SPECIAL OFFER ABOVE!)


If you decide that you wish to schedule the next step, an initial in-depth consultation, you may telephone or email James.

Fees and confidentiality

All sessions are — usually and preferably — either in person or on Zoom; however, telephone sessions are also an option upon request. 


Life happens, so rescheduling and cancellations are inevitable, with no financial penalty if at some point we agree to continue on a fee basis, unless in the sole judgment of the practitioner these have become excessive. No-shows are charged at full fee unless an emergency prevented prior canceling or rescheduling. 


There is no electronic recording of Life's Journey Counseling sessions by this practitioner, but the practitioner and participant may take notes during sessions. These sessions are confidential, but as they are educational, not clinical, in nature, the requirements of legal authorities are respected and followed. 

Contacting James

"Your best mission is our mission."

We collaborate with each participant in their goal to live well:

  • by taking good care of oneself, others, and nature 
  • by creating, pursuing, and evaluating one's life's work mission

We focus on building: 

  • thriving health
  • a wise and effective mindset 
  • beneficial life projects 
  • and an enduringly  joyful and transcendent spirit.

We work with active participants who are:

      Adults of any age who are ready to address their concerns about, and potential for, improving their personal life and building their life's work.

     Young adults — or adults of any age — who are making life transitions to technical and higher education, work life, and independence, and who are interacting with those in their lives involved in their progress, such as parents/guardians, life partners, employers, and educators.

     Older adults who are undertaking a life review, and seek to develop and express their generous spirit through continued learning, personal fulfillment, and dynamic service endeavors.


In all of these services, we assist people who seek to find or develop, then intensively work on, projects that are worthwhile and engaging to them and that make a noticeable contribution, large or small, to making some aspect of the world a better place.


Thus, we honor, support, and work with people:

  • who now may be struggling in one or more areas of life
  • who wish to achieve and maintain current their levels of personal and professional growth and happiness
  • who are ready to make the changes needed to achieve their fullest  life potential, seeking something more worthwhile and engaging.

"On life's journey, we will walk with you."

 "There is nothing more satisfying than helping someone with their own journey." — Dimitri Moriatis, Spiritual Arts Institute 

"Education in Perspective"

SPIRIT — VALUES — STUDY — SERVICE — VISION

Growth in five steps

The Essex Center  is learning community that follows a model for problem-solving, growth, and achieving one's potential based on a five-step progression: 

  • Spirit
  • Values
  • Study
  • Service
  • Vision

More information can be found under the "Touchstones" tab or by by clicking this button:

Find out more

We strive to

be respectful

...or, at least, act respectfully

Be moral

...or, at least, act morally

BE LIFELONG LEARNERs

...and play, and do nothing sometimes, and rest, and build skills

Be responsible for oneself and to the community at large

...because freedom requires responsibility

Do what you can, with what you have, from where you are

...because that is your gift to us

...because the smallest ripple affects the whole universe

And when any of us fail at any of these, we start over — reset in the present moment — and strive to do better.

During the spring and summer of 2025, we can ask: in times of crisis and change, are we focusing on building our own positive spirit and mindset?

Copyright © 2025 Essex Center — All Rights Reserved. 

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