I am posting my own responses to looking back over the last year in this blog weekly for three weeks. These are unedited writings done in class, offered here for my students and readers. This is week three out of three. The door is closing soon on Return: Setting New Year's Intentions That Stick, so sign up now if you are interested!
Note the photo above showing the conversation between my dominant and non-dominant hand. This is an especially powerful way to have an exchange with yourself about tender or complex topics.
(dominant hand)
Each time I write this prompt I think it will be dead for me, having done it three times already. I've explored my word in retrospect, looking at my intention word for 2016: connect. I've discovered lightly neglected feelings, and looked at all the interlocking growth and happenings. So what could possibly be left?
(non-dominant hand)
All the tiny specifics details and the endless moments of inspiration and desperation are left.
(dominant hand)
Here's a big one - I haven't really looked at COACHING - how with my new website a year ago I "came out" as a coach, a word I had previously felt to be kind of weird, non-specific, rife with potential shadiness. But suddenly, it was the word that fit with my one-on-one clients, with my support groups, and, mid-year, with my tax and insurance statuses. Legally, a "life-enhancement coach" is what I qualify as. Luckily, for my clients, though it is quite unregulated in Wisconsin, I do have a ton of trainings and experiences under my belt, even if not the kind with letters after my name and big certificates on my wall (just small ones).
(non-dominant hand)
i also reached a point of feeling i will always seek training, but not the usual routes.
(dominant hand)
After going to Rigden Abhisheka and Karuna Training Graduate program (by the way, you can help fund my attending this here!), I'll pick between Social Presenting Theater and Interplay - body-based, socially engaged paths for better world empowerment and growth.
(non-dominant hand)
no MAs, MFAs, social work or psych degrees.
(dominant hand)
Even though it seems - and is true - I am teaching more and different things and getting trainings in specific but disparate-seeming areas, I actually have the feeling of drilling down, of tying this all in - neurokinesis, somatic, non-violent communication, anti-racist work - to my roots.
And what are those roots?
Dharma and activism. Everything I do now has to tie these together, making communities of awareness and intention - and action. All these tools are to assist in liberation, move myself and others forward through difficult terrain and into where growth gets good.
(non-dominant hand)
Karuna Training is the synthesizer
(dominant hand)
It takes all the sounds and melds them, so I come out the other end - Miksang, Shambhala Training, Shambhala Art, Contemplative Writing, coaching - with core principles clear and intact. The guiding light of clarity meets discomfort, the sanity of being with things as they actually are.
(non-dominant hand)
nothing is fixed
nothing was broken
(dominant hand)
I still get depressed, shut down. I still don't make quite enough income. I still struggle with too much to do. But my roots are energized, alive, plugged in.
Lately I've been thinking - if we can't find an anti-racism training program (we are piloting with Mindfulness for the People this spring) that melds well with Shambhala, we will make one. I'll help make one, or train in UNtraining and take it back into its partially Shambhala roots. I have indelible karmic ties to the bay area now, and UNtraining and Interplay are there (Social Presencing Theater is on the east coast). Even with less and less desire to travel, something is lighting a constant fire for me to train in these programs.
(non-dominant hand)
I am tired. Done with the week, done with these seven weeks of classes, needing rest. Also excited.
(dominant hand)
A grounded excitement - the kind that comes with cool plans that have feet and timelines and logic. The kind of excitement I am growing to prefer - no big surprises, no huge arousal, but a slow flame licking up timbers to make way for the new, a slow waving in of the ocean at high tide's return.
Returning - some cycle coming around - even if I swear I have never been here before.
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