As I was sitting on the beautiful grounds at the New Year's retreat, the sound of children playing wafted toward me from the homes behind the center. I was struck not only by the liveliness and innocence of their voices but also by the delight it evoked in me. A few days later I was sitting in a backyard with an 18-month-old toddler as he played with a ball, sidewalk chalk, and a toy dump truck. I was struck once again by the innocence and life flowing through him. There was a wide array of energy and emotion that passed through that little body as he interacted with his toys (all my projections, of course): curiosity, frustration, glee, anger, joy. I watched his reactions with fascination as I owned the projections. Here is what I saw...
My little toddler friend was expressing them much more freely than I, the conditioned adult, but as sentient beings, we both experience the full range of energy. It's through the conditioning process that we learn to repress, deny, hide, the energy we experience in any given moment. Conditioned mind enforces "correctness" and starts dictating how we react to our lives -- the balls, sidewalk chalk, and dump trucks of our lives that we encounter each day. The energy we feel runs smack into the conditioned "correctness," wreaking havoc on the dear human.
I was this child's caretaker for the afternoon and, as such, my role was to watch out for his safety and provide him with whatever space and guidance might be called for in the moment -- in short, to be present with him and respond to Life's guidance as best I could. It occurred to me that I was to him what the Practitioner/Rebecca is to the human being/Rebecca. And to the extent that I as the Practitioner can be present to this one dear human, tapping into the wisdom, love, and compassion of the Mentor, she gets to explore the world, feel her feelings, and express them completely. Nothing is wrong. Nothing is outside the scope of acceptance. We might even say, it's all grace.
Jesus said we must become like little children. In our language, we might say, "As practitioners, we must access the innocence of the human being." We do that in many ways, but perhaps the most direct one is through the right hand in the Two-Handed Recording and Listening exercise. In my experience, the innocence that is accessed (uncensored!) is the sweetness of a human life, and it evokes the fierce compassion of the Practitioner to fight for that precious human with everything we've got.
GasshÅ,
Rebecca