My first time with Mindells

21 May 2011

by Paola Esperson

In the end of November I had a night dream; Arlene, Jean-Claude, Arny and Amy, they were making clear the reason why I was there, studying process work. The last thing before I woke up was Arny inviting me: “See you at Worldwork!”  I woke up in the middle of the night knowing that I was going to Denver. It was perfectly clear that I couldn’t wait for the “next Worldwork” in three years. This year, every signal was with me going, even the school holidays.

During the months from December to April a lot of dreams were drawing me to USA, never before in my life I dreamt about that country, far away of being a myth for me. One month earlier my body started with a body symptom, my therapist  gave me a key for reading it (still I need to study several years to understand the deep connection between body and world work!) “you’ve already started Worldwork, Worldwork is body”.

I left UK rushing from work, just the time to catch the flight to Denver…slept 10 hours, I was happy,  excited, lost…jumping in another continent to spend as much time as possible with that incredible heart, world lover, genius that is spending his life bringing a chance and awareness for the present and the future of humanity.

All my school holidays have been dedicated to understand, feel, study with mind and body the teaching that Arny and Amy Mindell are bringing. The first morning in the big conference room for the seminar about “Spiritual traditions and POP” before the Worldwork in Denver, I didn’t know one face, one body, but incredible that the atmosphere  was like being at home, finally with my family. In my dreaming process I was feeling a field filled with connection and openness to each other. With incredible gentleness, strength and simplicity, Amy and Arny were able to draw all into a deep “altered  state”.

The strongest message that captured my attention for 17 days was to learn the ability to flow from X energy (the energy that disturbs us) to the u energy (the part of us more disturbed by X). It looked like an impossible mission…connecting with myself, with the earth, with the universe, again with the two X and u energy…

For two weeks I’ve been struggling in reaching a conclusion, my X and u energies used to end far from each other. “Listen the message from the universe,” was the suggestion…No message, I was deadly deaf, no solution for extreme opposites.

At the same time, the contact with people from all over the world was so rich, warm, inspiring, watching or being in the middle of conflicts, learning how to sit in the fire and support deep democracy, discovering how difficult it is to bring deep democracy inside myself and that supporting with  gentleness and acceptance my deepest self paradoxically was more difficult than accept other’s point of view…

Back in London I was attending the same seminar followed in Denver, I’m slow, as you can see…I need to repeat in order to understand. It was during the second day of  “spiritual traditions and POP”, I was sitting listening and watching the “sample” of our exercise, when a thought landed into my mind…probably from the TAO, like a gift, and  all my X and u finally found an answer, after 17 intense days,  when Arny was explaining  “my goal as a facilitator”. In deep democracy every voice has its own sacred space, as  a facilitator I don’t have to change the other, I’m not looking for a winner or a loser, I have to learn how to sit in the fire to keep open the  door of relationship and dialogue. This is the only way I can “win the peace” among opposite positions, this is the only way I can build a world, internal and external, where at the place of escalation and war, I bring listening and I can learn and feel the precious value of each human heart.