The twelve days of Christmas have always seemed like a big bite - and those come after Solstice. These 27 days before are getting longer every day. I suspect that's because the nights are still getting longer. There's something visceral and powerfully, I don't know, attention getting about the continually lengthening night. I'm a rational woman (or so I thought:) with 46 solstices under my belt, yet something deep within me feels a little fear as daylight draws down at the end of each day. Will it ever return?
With every step toward Solstice, it seems like that "goal" is farther away. A reverse perspective (an effect of A. muscaria, BTW - big gets smaller, small gets bigger - remember Alice in Wonderland - where was she anyway - and what was Lewis Carroll into???) And I sink deeper in - what? Of course, now that I think about it. Was I thinking that this 27 days practice would bear fruit? It's more like pruning back the old, and settling into the starkness of fallow times. I could call it "depression" but I think that's only apt if I am telling myself I "should" be feeling, being, something diferent. In the raw, direct, unevaluated/judged/diagnosed experience I feel quiet.
Yesterday's practice was offering my empathic presence to others. Two people with unrelated stories, yet so similar on the fundamental human level. Today I did something similar at the end of yoga class, holding space.
Earlier in the day, I was at school - exploring how we can all be more present with one another, and find ways to support everyone's needs. And maintain order and respect. Our school is a community of nearly 700 11-14 year olds, and about 40 adults. Can we really live in a paradigm of cooperation, without demands, and coercion? How can we not, if we are to support a world where everyone matters? These questions quickly spiral into an inquiry of our entire societal framework, which I believe is based on reward for compliance to authority, and punishment of rebellion. This requires ideas of Right and Wrong, creation of an "other," enemy images, and a hierarchy about who matters.
To step out of that requires a new paradigm, about which the poet Rumi said: Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there's a field. I'll meet you there. I think NVC describes a way to do this. And I'm pretty passionate about it. At our school, some of us have been working on a "lunch detention" program that offers kids a chance to take a look at something they did at school that someone else didn't like, to connect with what's alive in them and others, and consider ways everyone's needs could be considered. Radical. Today I spent some time around lunch detention, so see/feel how it's going. I don't think we're there yet. But I'm grateful to know that we're in it. This is not easy, and I recognized my need for support.
This 27 day practice is supporting me to settle in and connect with the energy of my need to matter - and I see myself actually behaving as if I do. More recently, that same need in others is becoming more apparent to me (of course). I'm guessing that some people have the opposite challenge - they are connected with their own need to matter, and don't see others...not sure.
What I do know is that I want to live in a You and I BOTH matter. Gosh, how is that done?
With every step toward Solstice, it seems like that "goal" is farther away. A reverse perspective (an effect of A. muscaria, BTW - big gets smaller, small gets bigger - remember Alice in Wonderland - where was she anyway - and what was Lewis Carroll into???) And I sink deeper in - what? Of course, now that I think about it. Was I thinking that this 27 days practice would bear fruit? It's more like pruning back the old, and settling into the starkness of fallow times. I could call it "depression" but I think that's only apt if I am telling myself I "should" be feeling, being, something diferent. In the raw, direct, unevaluated/judged/diagnosed experience I feel quiet.
Yesterday's practice was offering my empathic presence to others. Two people with unrelated stories, yet so similar on the fundamental human level. Today I did something similar at the end of yoga class, holding space.
Earlier in the day, I was at school - exploring how we can all be more present with one another, and find ways to support everyone's needs. And maintain order and respect. Our school is a community of nearly 700 11-14 year olds, and about 40 adults. Can we really live in a paradigm of cooperation, without demands, and coercion? How can we not, if we are to support a world where everyone matters? These questions quickly spiral into an inquiry of our entire societal framework, which I believe is based on reward for compliance to authority, and punishment of rebellion. This requires ideas of Right and Wrong, creation of an "other," enemy images, and a hierarchy about who matters.
To step out of that requires a new paradigm, about which the poet Rumi said: Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there's a field. I'll meet you there. I think NVC describes a way to do this. And I'm pretty passionate about it. At our school, some of us have been working on a "lunch detention" program that offers kids a chance to take a look at something they did at school that someone else didn't like, to connect with what's alive in them and others, and consider ways everyone's needs could be considered. Radical. Today I spent some time around lunch detention, so see/feel how it's going. I don't think we're there yet. But I'm grateful to know that we're in it. This is not easy, and I recognized my need for support.
This 27 day practice is supporting me to settle in and connect with the energy of my need to matter - and I see myself actually behaving as if I do. More recently, that same need in others is becoming more apparent to me (of course). I'm guessing that some people have the opposite challenge - they are connected with their own need to matter, and don't see others...not sure.
What I do know is that I want to live in a You and I BOTH matter. Gosh, how is that done?
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