The Clearest Thinking I Have Experienced
After reading the April Present Time, in which Harvey and Catherine Land discussed the understatement, I felt really excited. I have been in and around RC for about twelve years and have gone through many RC phases, from being completely involved in it and discharging profusely several times a week, to feeling totally disenchanted and stuck. I have taken several "breaks" from RC (one of which lasted two years), when I was feeling especially confused and uneasy.
A few months ago I attended an RC workshop in White Rock on Women's Liberation. Diane Balser was leading. That weekend created a major shift for me in regards to my thinking about RC.
I was fortunate enough to be counselled by Diane in front of the group. She was able to focus on the fact that I was a "mess" but also that I was completely good, honest, and brilliant. My distress did not daunt her, and in turn, it did not daunt me. It was such a relief to have someone actually tell me out loud what a mess I was! I realised almost immediately that there was a huge veil of distress that I had never been able to reveal before in session. I had discharged buckets over the years, but somehow I hadn't really realised that my distress was not me!
In prior sessions I'd often felt that my heavy distress from childhood abuse was all my counsellors saw. I felt helpless about finding my way out of the patterns that I believed correlated with being a "survivor." After awhile I simply got sick of rehashing it over and over. I sure wasn't feeling zestful or motivated!
Since my session with Diane I have made a conscious decision to leave that sad story behind. Sure, it happened, and yup, it was hard. But it is over, and I really don't want to talk about it any longer. I mean, twelve years is long enough! Instead I've decided to focus on the understatement.
Well, let me tell you, my life is moving. And I am excited! It is like an enormous weight has been lifted and I can get down to what I really want to do with my life. My thinking, my mind, is working much better than I ever dreamed. If I get side-tracked (restimulated), I say to myself: "Sometimes a gal likes herself." After saying this a few times, I find myself smiling and thinking about how much I really do like myself.
I have always loved dancing more than almost anything else, and I have now decided to teach dance workshops. I'm also going to explore moving to a larger community, one in which I will not be faced with such isolation and will not have to drive so far to work. I have submitted some of my written work to a writers' magazine. (I have been writing for years but never seemed to get around to submissions.) I have been exercising regularly since the workshop, and I look and feel great. And for the first time ever, I am seriously thinking about leadership in RC.
For me, RC was often a place to "hide" from the world, to be safe and coddled by my loving counsellors, to be told I was good and perfect (when in fact I was really quite a mess out in the world). It seemed that my counsellors loved me so much that I never had to change, or they loved me until I somehow screwed up around an RC guideline . . . which over those twelve years I did! Then I felt like an outcast and had to retreat to lick my wounds.
None of this shoved me forward like the understatement, or Diane revealing that I was a mess - but a "good, honest, savable mess." That I can work with. And suddenly those guidelines and rules all fit. I love where it seems to me RC is headed. I am eager to be out in the world, to make changes, to lead - to quit hiding behind my distress, using it to keep myself down. I understand now why women must lead. I see how I have spent years feeling threatened by powerful women taking charge. (It has been much easier to comfort a crying distressed woman than to support and cheer on an assertive female leader.)
Using the understatement, "It sometimes happens that someone likes somebody," has pushed me into the clearest thinking I have ever experienced. And boy, do I discharge. Yet once the session is done, I can readily move on to accomplishing what I need to in my everyday life and making concrete plans to change the world. I will not let anything get in the way!
Lana Mareé
Edgewood, British Columbia, Canada