Journey 5.2

This Moment Matters!
by Jim Schendel

Several years ago, I had the good fortune to study acting with the late Sanford Meisner, who created the "Meisner Technique." Sandy (as we affectionately called him) had an uncanny way of saying a simple phrase which somehow seemed to speak volumes. Recently, one such phrase keeps bubbling up to the top of my awareness.

I can see him now standing on the stage of a tiny, dingy theatre bent over his ivory cane while peering out through his cokebottle glasses. A few seconds go by. Finally he smiles a wry smile and says in a tiny rasp of a whisper:

"Every little moment has a meaning all its own."

Immediately, all of us dutiful students scribble furiously. Sandy’s face hardens into a scowl. "DON’T WRITE!!!!" he screams. We all freeze in a dead silence and slowly look up from our notebooks. Then he whispers again. "Contemplate what I just said. Let it roll around in your head a little."

We sit there like zombies. No one speaks, no one moves. We can hear the clock tick. After a full three minutes of agonizing, exhilarating silence, he smiles again. "OK, now you can write," he says. Everyone laughs and breathes a deep, satisfying sigh. Somehow I manage to miss the purpose of this experience, because my first thought is "This is the best advice any actor could ever receive. I’ll be sure and find the meaning of each moment of the character’s life next time I do a scene." It never even occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, I could use this advice when I stepped off the stage.

Spend the next little moment with me letting this phrase "roll around in your head a little"… "Every little moment has a meaning all its own."… In a very literal sense, these are "words to live by."

As my Personal Journey with Mary goes on, I find myself more and more willing to fully experience each moment. Every moment does have its own significance if I’m willing to slow down my thoughts and let it touch me. Not that life is rosy. Heck no!! I still have moments of anger, frustration, loneliness, jealousy, rage, boredom, pain, etc., but these moments also have their meaning and are worth exploring.

In the midst of all this is the voice of my ego constantly giving me the latest orders from Command Headquarters, outlining which moments are to be experienced and which are to be ignored. Do any of these phrases sound familiar? "God, only one more hour of this torture and it will be lunchtime." "Will this traffic never end?" "This is the most boring speaker I’ve ever heard." "I can’t wait for the weekend. Then I’ll really have fun." and on and on and on.

But truly living each moment has a higher purpose than just the moment itself, for what is life but the sum total of all our little moments? Miss the meaning of the moment and you miss the meaning of your life. That’s the bottom line. This moment matters!

Jim Schendel is an actor and artist currently in Personal Journey II.

Separation

by Becky Lane

I am naked and vulnerable in a warm room.
You are a drafty door
Letting the chill infiltrate.
I beckon to you to share in the freedom
Of openness
You stand still and fixed
Unbudging and unwilling
Seeing the truth but not believing
It could be true for you.
I am here and you are there
Wanting to reach across the distance
But I can only make it halfway
And you won’t put up your arms.
I reach and fall with nothing to stop me
Except the bungy around my ankles
Pulling me back to universal truths.
I weep and grieve about the separation that divides us
And I pray that the warmth will surround you
Filling all the breaks and torn places
Until the light turns the door to your soul
Into a window
Letting in the everlasting light of Beauty, Protection and Love.

Becky is currently a Personal Journey II student.

Unnecessary Pain
by Derek Hart

I am healing a hurt place within myself. But at times I believe it is the ego itself that believes something needs to be fixed in me in the first place. Nevertheless, this painful place within me does seem very real, more than just a story. I have had ongoing depression since age 10; an unhappy family with both parents having multiple addictions makes this highly predictable. Do I ignore this part of me? Can I think my way out of it? Should I let go? Should I let go of letting go? Should I transcend it? Should I let God take it? Tough questions.

I have done a ton of therapy, read many books, participated in healing groups, sought after a higher power, and even built several "families of choice." I cannot say that these experiences were meaningless; it was the path I chose. But I still was always left with depression as the core feeling that haunted me each day. Nothing would make it go away. What I did learn throughout those times was that I have a ton of will power, and that I have a tremendous capacity for suffering. But I have also learned that being a survivor of constant emotional pain is something that is not necessary. Nobody needs to suffer unnecessary pain, unproductive pain, pain that teaches nothing. I have become a big believer in the necessary pain that helps me grow, but as a result of the work in this school, the obsessive pain that just destroys my life, moment by moment, is something that has become unacceptable to me.

Before the Rocamora School, I almost came to an acceptance that I was destined to have constant depression for the rest of my life. Then I started taking these classes every week on a specific evening. I was asked interesting questions. "What is awareness?" "What is the ego?" "What are the patterns in my life that are making each day, each hour, each second, less than it could be?" Being asked these questions over and over has helped heal this core feeling of depression tremendously. WHAT HAS OCCURRED HAS BEEN AN AWAKENING OF MY ABILITY TO SEE MYSELF. A new part of my mind has been shown how to soothe itself. I’ve learned to step outside myself and look in. If I don’t like what I see, I can step out of that judgment and look in again. Step out a couple more times and I find something which surrounds me in love, an acutely aware part of myself that always knows the right thing to do, the right thing to say, and most importantly, the right way to think about myself. The word is out. Positive affirmations are not enough to fix such deep wounding.

Am I still depressed? In one of Mary's classes, we were asked to describe the bottom line of what ego describes our entire self as. Mine was depression. That was around class 15. I have completed Transpersonal and Teacher Training and the last time I really thought about what describes my entire self, it didn’t occur to me to even think of depression as a choice. I would say that is a big change. I have come to learn that more than depression; I have had a severe repression.

My patterns and stories had a muzzle on me that prevented me from getting the pain out, prevented me from risking, and prevented me from creating the love in my life that I need. I was literally speech-less. I could not have seen this without this new ability I have to truly see myself from a non-judgmental place. An aware place. A curious place. The wound is shrinking. Life is coming back to me. Some of our pain is unnecessary.

Derek Hart has completed the Transpersonal Journey and is a Teacher Training graduate.

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