TRANSFORMATION TRAINING - Intro weekend

HI…HOW ARE YOU FEELING?

The automatic, polite and appearance saving answer to this question is “fine, thanks”.

If we believe that the questioner is seriously interested in us, and there is time and space, we may dare to answer, “Well, not so good, actually”, and elaborate.

But the question itself limits the answer to an evaluation in terms of good or bad. This is dualistic consciousness at its most primitive. But often it would be more accurate to answer, “Well, I feel challenged, but in a good way”, or simply to answer, “in process”.

The expectation that we should always be feeling good, especially around tantra groups, where, I mean, “surely the idea is to become more alive and joyful and sexy and have a party”, prevents process from being welcomed and taken seriously.

The word tantra means “expansion”, expansion beyond our usual limitations or boundaries. Which involves leaving our comfort zone and feeling safe enough to not always feel safe. Or in other words, to transform our feeling of safety from a dependence on certain circumstances or the ability to control how others are with us, to a confidence in our inner resources and flexibility to deal with the unknown. Sometimes expanding beyond our boundaries produces a feeling of euphoria, but sometimes it is downright scary as we enter into the unknown and gradually turn it into the known.

It can be helpful instead of asking ourselves how we are feeling, if we ask what we are feeling. This question invites sharpened consciousness.

Many of us, especially those of the male gender, have been trained not to feel, or more exactly not to notice what we are feeling. Many come to feel this as a handicap to living, and want to learn to feel. We learned not to feel in order to suppress and survive difficult feelings, such as fear, anger, disappointment, shame. To do this we had to sacrifice the beautiful feelings, such as love, intimacy, being touched by life.

Cherry picking is unfortunately not possible, it is either all or nothing. So, if it would be socially acceptable, it would be logical to reply to the question “how are you feeling” with “I am feeling wonderfully upset and confused”, because on our journey to feel more we are grateful to be feeling anything. Then we can practise our noticing to realise what it is that we are feeling, and why, and what this reminds us of: instead of thinking about our problems, we do the detective work of becoming more and more aware of what is happening inside ourselves. Complaining about not feeling good simply misses this opportunity in a misguided sense of entitlement that the group we have paid for should immediately help us “feel better”.

So my invitation is: if you are not wanting to consume self development groups to make you feel better, like eating donuts, or knocking back the whisky, but are open to a powerful, structured and expertly held process of change and self development, to challenge your limitations and expand into your potential, come on the Transformation Training. Learn what you are feeling, accept it and don’t try to change because you are wrong as you are, but let the consciousness of noticing release the energy of living our lives, and so allow our truth to happen. As we practise accepting truth with compassion, both our own truth and the truth of others, transformation of ourselves and of our lives happens.

HI…_WHAT_ ARE YOU FEELING?