It is good to recognize a blessing when it appears.
This morning I received two blessings both connected to the Lifting the Veils course. The first shows the importance of sharing your story to find yourself and help others and the second pointed out the painful vulnerability of doing this deeply intimate group work using technology.
The First Blessing – Inspiring
I receive the emails from Karma Tube. Today offered this very tender, achingly moving video of a gifted teacher guiding his 10 year old students into the fullness of life through the experience of empathy. More than anything I have written about the importance of biography work, this short video reveals how one person’s story frees the secrets held in the silently suffering heart of another. I could write much more but nothing would match the beauty of this little video.
If this video, ignites a desire to do the work of Lifting the Veils, first read the second blessing and then register for the course.
The Second Blessing – Sobering
This morning a participant in the last Lifting the Veils course wrote me an email filled with disappointment and anger. In one session she had been sharing a story with deep feelings and her skype connection failed. The following session I did not begin with returning to her story as the focus was on another critical experience of early childhood. This person wrote that she felt painfully discounted.
Let me address her experience, because it points out two the the “dangers” of this work.
The Context Danger: The context of the Lifting the Veils program, as in all the programs I offer, is educational, not therapeutic. The outcome is self-knowledge and self-empowerment arising out of self-compassion and inner freedom. The basis of the education is the archetypes of being human and becoming I, the universal components and development of the human being, and the unique configurations and complexity of individual experience.
Through understanding the archetypal, the individual can be illuminated. Suddenly, personal experience and the challenging patterns, limiting defenses, and dysfunctional perspectives you formed in order to survive find their right relationship to your destiny and the redemptive and restorative purposes and lessons of your life fall into place. Self-knowledge, self-compassion and inner freedom increase.
This is group work greatly enriched by the sharing of personal story and personal questions. This sharing is intimate and sacred. Empathy and shared feelings leading to the wisdom of objective compassion is encourgaed. The distraction of sentimentalizing and dramatizing the often painful experiences of another is discouraged.
My job as facilitator and educator is a tough one. I must stay true to the course and the group, and that means in rare cases an individual can feel discounted, disregarded, neglected and not valued. In these cases, I am always willing to offer a private conversation at no cost to address these sensitive feelings with the attention and compassion they deserve.
No one should take a program I offer with the goal of getting fixed or fulfilling a fantasy of finding the ideal embrace of attention and love. I developed these programs as a curriculum for “finding yourself, knowing yourself, becoming yourself.” Each program comforts and challenges, soothes and stimulates, answers questions and asks questions, and strives to guide you to the inner means of resolving karma and fulfilling destiny. All of the programs require courage and vulnerability and an ability to stand in your own fire. I am here to serve your I-consciousness, not your story, and I intend to serve with objective compassion and growing wisdom.
The Technology Danger: Skype can be iffy as signals can be weak, there can be a reverb/echo, your connection can be dropped and some participants have difficulty in following the steps to create a connection that allows for interactivity. It is possible to be on the “call” via your phone which may incur long distance charges.
All my Inner Year and Inner Life sessions are recorded and can be downloaded, a true benefit of technology. And I provide valuable handouts. Every participant receives a link to the recording. This means that even if you need to miss a session or you experience tech difficulties, you can still experience the content and the sharing of others. For all the intensive programs, I set up everyone with a partner for weekly calls where the course work is supported and enriched by thoughtful and warm conversations.
The technology is a risk, but it also makes the work possible on a global scale – forming intimate community in spite of physical distances. One participant in the upcoming Lifting the Veils is from Norway.
Here is the description of the course where you will find the link to register.
http://theinneryear.blogspot.com/2011/10/lifting-veils-veils-from-birth-to-seven.html
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