Awesome. It is so humbling to me to realize the universe has been talking to me my whole life and I never knew it or understood the language.

Love Doug

Wow! I definitely didn’t expect to read this morning the posts of the kind that Stephanie and Shelley have posted here in this thread. I think these are very deep and very thought-provoking.

I am going to be totally honest. No offense intended at all and it is nothing but genuine frankness. Since long I have been wondering whether something is fundamentally wrong with the community board.

Shelley wrote: “AS you can perhaps tell, I am hungry for information, community, learning”. This was so evident to me even in her very first post and got confirmed more and more in my mind as I read her ensuing posts. And I genuinely shared my thoughts, as I have done several times in the past in similar cases, the sole intention being the consideration of the possibility that my sharing might be of some help or other. And the reaction from the community board in Shelley’s case as well as in the other cases in the past has always been to ask whether I do it from a frightened part of mine and whether I give importance to head rather than heart. Asking it in itself is fine and I welcome it. But, what is not understandable in each case has been the silence on the part of the concerned people by not providing responses to the questions I raised in turn or the suggestions I made in turn. This has happened quite a few times on this community board – not once, not twice. What has recently happened in respect to Shelley’s thread has especially made me think a lot.

Stephanie wrote to Shelley: “This community board is supposed to be a place where we can get guidance, learn and have some good conversations and be in spiritual partnerships but it has been awfully quiet lately… chirp chirp… Glad you are here!” I had very similar thoughts. It was no doubt silent. I have often felt so thankful to Shelley and Stephanie for bringing life to the community board. I honestly believe we simply waste our time when we start to wonder whether the above statement of Stephanie’s could have come from her frightened part. Every aspect of her statement is reflecting an honest truth. How could it come from a frightened part?

It feels really sad to have to read in a community board of this kind that is totally devoted to spiritual growth: “But I get really confused about how to be in spiritual partnerships here. Honestly the conversations so often revolve around someone noticing frightened parts. It’s scary for me to post.”

Gary’s teachings are extremely deep. The concepts involved are not easy to comprehend and there is a lot to discuss and understand before applying them in life. That is one reason why Gary and Linda have the Life School and other events. I do hope the community board would take an entirely different approach and encourage these discussions in the future without making the members, especially the newly joining ones, feel scared to express the thoughts.

Thank you Shelley and Stephanie for expressing yourselves.

Again, I will definitely not be responding to anyone who might be tempted to ask whether all of the above came from a frightened part of mine. Let me just assure that these are genuine thoughts.

With love and trust,
Sundar Naga

Sunder,

I am a newbie, and as such, I suppose I can make mistakes. It is so liberating to have that freedom! So here goes, going to be doing it all wrong in this post!

I think the community board must be about the freedom to make mistakes, ask dumb questions, say the wrong thing, do things wrong. Even give the wrong guidance. We did not suddenly learn to run as toddlers. We had to crawl, fall down while crawling, do the wobbly drunken sailor walk, before we perfected the walk, let alone learned to run. I think this should then be a safe place where we can all show our stumbles (within some guidelines about how not to hurt anyone’s feelings, etc).

And maybe as the newbies and the toddlers stumble, spiritual partners with more experience can guide us with love and thereby strengthen everybody’s practice of coming from a place of love.

Sunder, I hear your pain and see where you are coming from. I salute you for coming from your authentic place, and saying/doing what is difficult to do! This must have been a difficult post to write. Yay to you for doing what is difficult! On your way to Authentic Power!

At the risk of being accused of care taking, may I suggest that everyone on the community is learning. So people (even those with more experience than me) may not always give the right answer or do things perfectly. Your calling that out is beautiful, as it gives them an opportunity to grow too.

And you and Stephanie asking people to participate more is so important, because that makes a true community. So, will the Village Elders take note and participate more? 🙃
====
There is a saying in India “small mouth, big talk,” and in serenity circles “30 seconds of recovery, and she acts like she knows it all.” So, within that context I will ask you, Sunder, those two dreaded questions:

When you wrote your post this morning (which is a beautiful post, and a very important post), had you felt, experienced, and resolved your hurts and fears about the types of responses you have received in the past on this site?
Did you put your usual player out on the field, or your best most loving player, one that would generate more love within the community? From Newtons Law of equal and opposite reaction, was your expectation that you put out love for all people so you would generate and receive love from all people, not just some people?

Now here I am going to go off the deep end, and potentially break all rules regarding the community. I hope you know that I am doing it from a place of love, and comradeship, because I suffer in some ways from similar issues. From reading your posts, I surmise that you are a super intelligent person. I have learned a couple of things about intelligence.

1. I was listening to the Super Soul Sunday show on Oprah last week, and the woman giving the talk said, emotion is warming, intelligence is cooling. Intelligence creates distance between people. Hmmm, this is something I have seen and experienced for myself, and that I am now becoming more and more aware of around me. Intelligence is not all that it is cracked up to be! Not in creating authentic power!
2. The other thing I have learned is that when humans have a talent, a positive skill, they focus on it to the exclusion of other skills. I am admittedly not the smartest person, but I have an exaggerated focus on intellectual thinking, at the expense of my emotional self!

So, here I am, taking my baby steps in discovering my feelings, staying with my feelings, digging deep to understand the origins of feelings.

What I am trying to say, and probably botching up is, maybe when people ask about your frightened parts, they are asking whether you meditate, examine your feelings, try to see when you experienced something similar in the past, when you learned to use the players you most frequently use (whether that is judgment, anger, acquiescence…), sort of similar to what Gary talked about this morning when he spoke about discovering the money control he learned from his family of origin.

Hope this helps! And if anything I have said bothers you, or anyone else, I hope you will speak up, so we can continue the discussion, so we may all learn and grow.
Cheers,
Shelley

Shelley,

“And sorry Sundar, for continually misspelling your name!”

No problem at all.

With love and trust,
Sundar