Applications
The intensity of the journey has been high these past two weeks. Inwardly and outwardly. Powerful helper session with my Pathwork helper Moira, 4-day Ira Progoff-type journal workshop with Faye Schwelitz, then off to Sevenoaks to help facilitate a Mid-Atlantic Pathwork Helper/Leadership event. Many times I wanted to make blog entries, so much richness happening, but the time got away, and now the material seems too digested to be alive. But let me hit some of the high points.
It was a breakthrough to discover my devotion to Pathwork and come to experience my relationship with the Pathwork Guide that I described recently. Let me build on that. In my helper session, Moira pointed to the ten-years of work it has taken me to get to this place of experiencing a presence of the Pathwork Guide. She pointed to my capacity for being one-pointed, that is totally focused on and devoted to Pathwork in this case. She experienced Eva Pierrakos that same way, one-pointed, totally committed to her work with Pathwork.
One-pointedness is not a word I hear often, so when only days later Faye made the same statement to me, referring to my need to be one-pointed in my work with Pathwork and the Pathwork community rather than get diverted into many administrative details of the organization and work, I took it in. Yes, I have a capacity to be one-pointed in my devotion to Pathwork. AND I have enough ADD to make sticking to my passion for Pathwork a challenge.
The next awareness was my need for spiritual help. I cannot know all the answers. It is not my job to know all the answers. “Gary, rather than feeling you have to prove your point, to do things 100% correctly, to be competent, to fear not being competent, you can just bathe in the energy because you are open. AND you can ask for help, spiritual help.” Moira went on to explain that there are spiritual forces of darkness here also, negative forces that want to disrupt and want to create disharmony. For these, I definitely need help from the energies and forces of Light.
Of course asking for spiritual help has been an issue for me, for my pride and arrogance. My relationship with Jesus Christ is not such that I am open to asking him for help — yet. Nor is my relationship with God open enough (still plagued by God-images). But now that I have a felt sense of a connection to the Pathwork Guide, perhaps I can start there. “Exactly!” was Moira’s response to this remark.
And I can also ask Eva for help. This played up big in the Journal Workshop as I did two significant “dialogs” with Eva in this workshop, “Wisdom Figure Dialogs” as they are called in the Ira Progoff vernacular. Eva, a real human being, could offer some guidance to me from a human-being perspective. And maybe, at some point, I shall be open to Jesus Christ as well. But it is so important to know what is true for me in this moment, and in the meantime I have access to the Pathwork Guide for Wisdom and to Eva for courage, perhaps, from her human experiences on the planet.
A lot to take in. But I tried this in the Leadership event. Spontaneity happened all during the workshop for everyone — people taking initiatives as the spirit moved them. It was beautiful to see and witness. I felt it several times myself — being led to share a particular ray of wisdom that seemed to be coming through me.
Then when we were coming to the last session on Sunday and it wasn’t really clear what we were going to do, I asked for guidance myself as I drove from the hotel to the retreat center that last morning. I was aware of my “prayer” for help. The closing came to me during this drive to center, and we used it. And even during the closing it was not clear what to do at a particular point in in the ritual, and again I asked for guidance. What came, through others even, was to use an “OM” blessing for each person. It felt powerful to me and some of the others. And all this was arising in the moment — a kind of “Just-In-Time” guidance system.
One of the participants really liked the closing and later, when I explained how it arose, he was amazed that it all came spontaneously, that it had not really been planned the way we did it. It is a humbling experience to operate this way, and yet so joyful and freeing.
A lot of the leadership event, grounded in the opening ritual by Julia, focused on “accepting what is” — in each of us individually in our relationship to Pathwork and Sevenoaks, in our relationships with one another, and in our community as a whole. In “accepting what is,” we can be open to growth and change.
While this was a leadership meeting, a meeting where we wanted to focus on mission, vision, and goals, it was not a meeting using standard management methodologies. It was messy at times, and seemingly inefficient as we worked through areas of philosophical disagreement. There is a temptation in me to see the messiness as “bad” and to search for “order” out of the chaos, seeing order as “good.” And while this is OK, I need to remember that messiness is not “bad” and sense of order “good.” It all “just is,” and we can let our future arise out of this.
I realize that if I fall back into a style of “plan, organize, staff, and control,” I risk falling back into dualism, always striving for one thing and avoiding another. So this will be the challenge for me, and I suspect for others, as we move forward. We do not have to have everything orderly and clear!
Well, this is kind of sloppy and unfocused entry, but I trust it conveys some of what these recent weeks have been like as I attempt to grow and apply what arises in me. With love.