After an hour of invigorating SunDo exercises, Ray and I read each other’s autobiography out loud to each other. We had each written our own last night so knew the material well. However, listening to it in the third person and read by someone else gave a whole new perspective–unexpected, weird! I finally noticed that my college campus (chosen for its superior geology program) reflected my childhood therapeutic “happy places” of ocean and redwoods. Hmm!

We continued working with negative and positive inner voices, but on a more personalized level. The melodramatics here got in the way of getting much out of this section, although I retreated to a back corner away from the speaker and had a lovely conversation with my Inner Child about our younger days. This seems like a great topic to pursue, to defuse those negative energies, but the workshop energy got so carried away with the negativity, I think we just reinforced it! The follow-up therapeutic session seemed pretty token, sort of on a par with “Nastiness be gone! Now, moving right along…”

After lunch, we repeatedly asked ourselves—while doing chakra exercises to distract the ego-mind—who are we, really, and what do we most truly want. Powerful questions, wow. Again though, I found the strident shrieking of the questions was more distracting than inspiring. I retreated to the protected corner again and found myself rocking back and forth, assuring my Inner Child that (despite the decibel–level) she was safe now; I love her; we will help each other grow into what we planned for this life. It was great; I really felt connected, giving and receiving love.

(Earlier, the instructor explained that that sense of connection is with our higher self/source/God/whatever you want to call it. I can believe that my Inner Child actually IS my higher self—the pure soul I came to this life to educate, train, and develop further, the innocent one that got beaten down by the onslaught of non-Heaven-like life.)

Eventually, we were led to figure out that our true self is the part of us connected to everyone else, which all the major religions (and probably most of the minor ones, too) tell us is universal love. Oh, that made perfect sense to me, so I know theoretically who I truly am, even if I’m not fully aware of it.

I still need to figure out my intended purpose for this life. Even as a child I knew I was to “save the world” through writing. I got distracted delightfully by geology, family, and tutoring. Now that I have a variety of useful experiences and am getting more spiritual, I have to figure out how to tie it all together into a helpful lesson to pass on to others through writing.

All right, the next session of the workshop was to demonstrate expanding our circle of love. Before we can love others, we each must love oneself. The next layer out from self is parents. The instructor had such lovely lectures on this, both sentimental and realistic, calling for and giving forgiveness, from child to parents and parent to child. I was in tears, and I suspect most everyone was. From self to parents, then we  expand our circle of love to ever-larger communities (families, classmates, neighbors, coworkers, town, environment, state, country, earth, whatever).

That would have been the perfect closing, but then there were official closing ceremonies, and THEN (what?!) we split up into branches and each person set specific goals for short, medium, and long term. That was quite helpful for me at this time of abrupt transition from taking care of my father to moving back to my old life—as a new person. (And moving back with my husband who is also evolving! This will be interesting.)