This post comes from another member of the community, Tanya Williams.
Last night Charlotte came into my room.
She told me she had waited til she was in a generative space to
talk
about the situation of the need for space for guests during the upcoming
Ontario Jam weekend and her need to continue to stay in the spare room. She didn’t, however, BEGIN with saying this:
that she needed to stay in that room, for she told me later she didn’t want it
to be felt as: this is my need, so too bad for you! She wanted first to reveal her process, hear
mine, and to think together about what might be possible to create what we all
wanted and needed.
She described her experience of being in a delicate
unfolding process, and how staying in that room in the heart of this
community allowed her to experience her fears and discomfort in a
context that held them as fuel for
learning. And she had been having
coercive thoughts too: such as, feeling like she was taking up space that
should be going to someone more deserving from the Jam. When she paused and said she wanted to make
space to hear my experience, she dropped her eyes for a moment. I then saw her discipline lift them back up to
meet mine. Not a discipline that forces
her gaze, but a discipline that reminds her of the reasons why it makes deep
sense not to pull in, to stay open.
There was no tension in it. I
could feel the smile spreading on my face with the delight in her revealing all
of it. I knew she had worked hard to be
aware of all the layers, and to be able to lay them all out for me to see, with
relative calm.
I felt that the impacts of this work she was doing would be
part of the rich experience that people would have here. I told her this and that I had actually already
worked out something with another member of the community to meet the particular need for a spare room for
one of the people staying here. Charlotte said
she had been ready to offer her apartment as well. We sat and marveled at the ease of the conversation,
and Charlotte reflected on the shift from seeing herself as a burden: “I will
be this broken person hiding in the spare room” to: “I will be part of the powerful
learning that will unfold.” She said this
changed everything.
There is something in this ease that is at my learning edge
right now. I reflected to Charlotte that
I had opted out of work tonight, and this feels like very different behaviour
for me. I had been feeling a sense of
urgency and anxiety stemming from the idea that I should seize the opportunity
to work, and a generalized sense of scarcity.
And also a desire to seize the moment to work with the youth in the
youth theatre company on certain things, and I have been having an experience
with the co-director where I feel like I get a mixed message that if I have an
idea to go for it, and then in practice it seems like he would rather do it himself. I had the thought that I could reveal this to
him and ask him what his experience is and what he wants, and, like Charlotte, I
will wait til I am feeling the flow of the generative coursing through my
veins.
I have been noticing the effect of this subtle coercing of myself,
and how it relates directly to the tension that mounts in my body, manifesting
mainly as pain in my jaw and shoulder.
The same day, on a walk with my partnre along the Grand, we were
talking about our relationship and I let myself rest in a pause as we looked
out onto the expanse of swiftly moving water.
(A meta-pause.) I breathed out
the thread of tension that had risen in me as my partner accelerated in his points and
questions… and this feeling like I HAD TO keep up, but couldn’t… “I HAD TO…”
was the clue: the tension was stimulated by the thought that I HAVE TO respond,
have answers, reassure him, at the very least stimulate an epiphany or revelation, illuminating a
tectonic shift to Humanity 3.0! I shared this
with him and he laughed and said that he wouldn’t expect that from me, and I
noticed myself stiffen a little. “What
do you mean??” came out of my mouth, fueled by the thought that “I am someone
who regularly stimulates revelation in people!”
Oh, the identity that hooks me!
Filled with a sense of fascination, I could just reveal that to him and then
he revealed that he just meant that there are times when he asks me questions
and I confound him with more questions.
We both laughed.
I see the structure: I HAVE TO because THIS IS WHO I AM.
Charlotte brought up the old commitment: “Offer no praise
and no blame.” and how she has conversations with herself, where she says: “you
are not wrong for _____” and “you are not right for_____”. I found myself relating to that old commitment in a new way: apply it TO MYSELF.
It is so damn subtle!
I feel amazed and deeply excited to be noticing these ways I am blaming
or praising myself, as well as having a part of me strangely in awe at the
tenacity of the old thinking in my system. And there is a tenacity in the practice of meta-pause and the sensation of awe.
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