Before my Arete I strongly believed that it was wrong to express or feel anger, disgust or to a certain extent even sadness. To acquaintances I can imagine I appeared ever patient, ever considerate, ever happy. Though in the arena of the Arete Community and to folks who have done a lot of work with authenticity, radical honesty and so forth my happy act was not so impressive. As well the people most close to me were unfortunate to experience the explosions of emotions I rained down after bottling up.
Since Arete I have slowly come to know the difference between anger and violence; that anger can be a powerful cleansing and even healing force that does not need to be associated with violence. I am still learning to speak my mind in uncomfortable situations even if it means coming across as something other than polite, so as not to bottle up my voice to the point of explosion.
Other things that have been in the forefront of my experience this past year
1) Authenticity even when it might be judged as ugly
2) Encouraging others (especially women) to unplug from victim consciousness: this goes along with speaking up – if i don’t speak my boundaries (or desires) then my boundaries may be crossed, so in a sense if my boundaries are crossed I CHOSE my experience by not speaking my truth. Nobody can DO anything TO me. That’s controversial
and
powerful
and
freeing.
3) Owning my experience: starting with my language (this goes along with victim consciousness, which is unfortunately ingrained even in our language: “that MAKES me sad/happy.” “She MADE me feel good/upset.” etc…) Im still learning to avoid inflicting myself, my opinions and even my truth on others.
4) Staying in The Conversation: always get complete, get closure. I have many close friends because of this one.
Here are some of the replies I got from this emails which was originally sent out to the Arete Connect email list/forum:
Jessica,
Your beautiful email brought tears of joy and gratitude to my eyes. Thank you for bringing yourself so fully to your Arête Experience & making it such a line of demarcation for the life you want and the beginning of new way of being with your child. Thank you for reminding me why I have dedicated my life to this work. What you’ve shared makes it all worth it. Thank you.
Love,
Guy
Guy Sengstock
The Arete Center
guy@aretecenter.com
I like your recognition of the difference between
anger and violence. It’s a powerful distinction. It is
a powerful one for me.
David Hedley
Jessica,
* I acknowledge you for your love and commitment to be the best mom you can be for your son Shayen. *
Love, Laurie”
Great discussion. It’s funny how easy it is to get moral and sanitary when we talk about anger. Perhaps this is because (at least with myself) our association with anger is someone always gets hurt. As Jessica has pointed out we collapse anger with violence and therefore get “hands off” with anger. However if we take the concept “anger” out of the experience of anger a whole new world opens up.
Guy
Guy Sengstock
The Arete Center
guy@aretecenter.com
Hi Jessica,
I want to tell you how inspiring your email is. It feels great to know
that we are having such a deep impact on folks beyond just the weekend.
That is our goal and it feels really good to actually hear about it.
Thank you so much for sharing. I clearly remember at the end of your
circle telling Guy that I was so proud of him. In that moment I really
saw how we were healing the entire world. Witnessing your circle moved me
to tears, and hearing how you are doing now just makes me feel great.
~Kevin
hey Jess,
Thank you for this post, and for your “going deeper” follow-up post. I
was moved and opened by them. I think that you share a gift with people
over email, with how authentic and reak you are, and how much enthusiasm
you express in your words.
I have some experience with NVC, and I love it. You and I can talk more
some time. I can also make you a CD with some MP3 audio of Marshall
Rosenberg (the NVC founder) talking on it.
Stay bad,
Adam Coutts