love what you love: Under Construction

Hello Friends. Sorry for the hella long hiatus. I have been undergoing many changes mostly in quitting the job and starting a very intense and aptly named program called the Process Work Intensive. It is a 5 week, 9 to 6, Monday through Friday marathon of self-growth, spiritual grounding, paradigm shifting program aimed at people interested in things from therapy to global change to becoming more self expressive in their art. In short, I am exhausted.

Today marks the end of my second week. There are 38 course participants from 18 countries, only 8 of which are from the United States. I love the internationality of the process work community. Since the 38 of us have been together now for 2 weeks, things are starting to get a little tense and process work teaches amazing ways of working with conflict. The paradigm is absolutely gorgeous and based on deep democracy which just means that equal creedence is given to any opinion, thought, movement, political action, speech, etc., since we have all parts of everything inside us yet we tend to disavow parts of us that are not accepted within our culture, micro-culture, society, family structure, etc.

The entire first week I spent in utter social anxiety the depths of which I have felt no equal. For those of you who have not experienced social anxiety, be very glad. It is not for the faint of heart. I was a wreck inside trying to be accepted and appear smart and well spoken while cringing at every damn thing that came out of my stupid mouth. The final effect was that I became a smiling dolt who just plain agreed with everything everyone said. I hate losing my mind like that.

The second week has been much better. We had a dance last Saturday at which point crystallization occurred and I saw everyone as being part of a shared whole. We were dancing, breathing, laughing, eating, and relaxing as one living being and then my anxiety dropped away as I noticed myself dancing with everyone else. That moment was wonderful. So as the theory has begun to sunk in, now the personalities are starting to become irritating and we are all a little less polite than we were last week. Things are heating up and I like this because that means we are becoming real and we're about to embark on some real processes.

I am not sure when I will write again as I have 3 more weeks of the Intensive but for people who have not given up on me, thank you for checking back once in a while.

Comments

we check back all the time, livia, and are so fucking glad to hear your voice. dance on. process. grow and change. love from michigan. j and s

Posted by: stephanie and jess | February 03, 2007 at 05:29 PM

livia, i'm so happy for you and glad that you are getting your socks knocked off by this amazing work. i can't wait to hear more and hope we're in touch soon. love, dqb

Posted by: diana | February 06, 2007 at 09:50 AM