APNC 3.1 (Summer/Fall 18) C4

[jgotts60]

I’m clearly late in submitting this, but I want to finish up this class. While to be absolutely honest, I haven’t worked these techniques since this course ended, I do remember the work with multiple perspectives and the idea of ceremony. I did several wanders working with multiple perspectives, and in fact, I actually did do this in other contexts, e.g., hiking with my son up in Brainard Lakes. The first time we tried this practice during the class, it immediately broke some stuff open for me, but in subsequent tries, the same things didn’t happen. It’s not that I was expecting new epiphanies, but a little shift of some kind would have been nice.

That said, on one of my wanders, I did feel a real welcome and comfort from the natural area that I was in. Was that a result of the deep listening, the multiple perspectives, both, something else? Who’s to say. That’s where I just surrender to the mystery.

I worked with the idea of my day as ceremony a little bit, but didn’t stick with it. It’s alsways a balance of the various practices I’m pursuing. I like the idea, but I do a lot of ceremony in various contexts, so it’s not new to me. The stages that you describe are the steps of an initiation, which is, of course, just a really big ceremony.