inner aggression and the OST facilitator

[Therese Fitzpatrick]

Raffi, thank you for giving us a gimpse into your inner work.  I am
grateful for the reminder that a facilitator's inner work is an
integral part of the work.  Sometimes I think a facilitator's inner
work IS the work and showing up at events and opening circles is a
small part of "the work".  Lately I have been thinking of facilitation
as shaman work.

My immediate reaction to your post, Raffi,  in which you disclose that
you are working with your desire to express agression and Arrien's
'way of the teacher' is to remind you that the way of the teacher is
to be open, not attached to outcome.

My second reaction, which is advice and I apologize for giving you
advice but your post has called something to move quite deeply in me.
. . . I might go so far as to suggest that I have an inner aggressive
impulse to give you some advice and I am acting on it. . .  My second
bit of advice is to trust your inner 'aggression'.  It might help you
to think of what you are labeling aggression as 'dissonance'.  Our
primary instrument/tool as a facilitator is the inner impulses that
come to us and our work as a facilitator is, I believe, to become ever
more clearly attuned to whatever it is that we are 'getting'.  If we
are getting dissonance/aggression, then that is what we are getting.
The key is how to voice it.

I am reminded of something my daughter and I learned as we raised each
other.  We came to realize that it is possible to say anything to
another person; the key is how we say it.

And the key to the how is to be open, not attached to outcome, which
is the way of the teacher, Raffi.  When you have detected something
within yourself that feels a bit aggressive and that sense of
aggression leads you to hesitate to voice it, then you are probably
being attached to outcome.  I think you would find that if you voice
what is going on inside you, esp. those things that are urging you to
pay attention, that you will be saying what needs to be said.  This is
esp. important when you are the facilitator:  it is your work to voice
the things arising within you, esp. the dissonant things.  If you can
say "this is what I am getting" and you can simultaneously be
unattached to how it will be heard, then you will have succeeded in
freeing your own inner aggression and serving the whole that surrounds
you.  The key to voicing aggression/dissonance is to voice it in a way
that is open to outcome.  If you say "I think we should do THIS" and
you have preconceived notions about how your listeners should react,
then you will get completely different reactions than if you say "I
think we should do THIS" while you are deeply open to whatever happens
or what get said next.

In summary, dissonance is data.  Data is neutral.  So long as we are
open to the meaning of the data/dissonance/aggression that is arising
up within us, it remains neutral.  The moment we  begin to project
how data/dissonance/aggression will be received/understood/adapted,
then it has the potential to be either negative or positive. . . the
moment we project meaning on to the data, we are no longer open to
outcome.

Now, I, too, and thinking I have gone off my rocker.





On 4/17/05, Raffi Aftandelian <raffi at bk.ru> wrote:
> Hi all!
>
> In the process of my ongoing innerwork, I am realizing the amount of
> pent-up aggression I have within me. And that I need to learn ways of
> giving expression to that aggression regularly (new daily recommended
> practices?). I am realizing that the more this aggression sits within
> me it can eat up the inside of me and result in serious illness.
>
> I am starting to experiment with being more aggressive in day to day
> life. To increase my own threshold for my own aggression. It is
> confusing to figure out how best to do this! Right now I am in the way
> of the teacher on the medicine wheel (for those not familiar with the
> medicine wheel, Harrison cites one colleague in his user guide,
> Angeles Arrien; she is an anthropologist with Basque roots and author
> of the Fourfold Way; simply put, a medicine wheel is a tool for looking
> at wholeness), working with objectivity and discernment. I imagine
> there is a much deeper meaning to these two words than how I
> understand them. Because as I weigh how to act in day to day life,
> those two words lead me to hesitate with my aggression at the time when someone
> inside is now telling me, "get the fucking aggression out of you,
> dammit!"
>
> Might people share some practices that have helped you or others in:
>
> a) accepting, embracing, loving one's personal aggression/violence, recognizing its
> positive and creative force (the negative is obvious, no?)
>
> b) how I might give space and voice to the aggression while in the way
> of the teacher?
>
> This brings me to the second part of my question-- What space is
> there, if any, for the facilitator's expression of (verbal) aggression/violence
> in the context of an OST meeting? If there is, what might that
> aggression/violence look like?
>
> If I am at my best when I can bring all of me as a facilitator into
> the room, how can I best make use of my shadow aggressor (the
> murderer, the sadist, the victim, the masochist) when I notice it?
> Obviously, they all rear their head all the time in life and in
> facilitated meetings and I have (probably) never noticed it (!!).
>
> Another way of framing this question is that I am a very expressive
> person and I don't want to feel like I have to stifle my expression as
> an OST facilitator. Can words like "fuck", "shit", "bitch" be used to
> create a climate of Open Space? Has anyone had experience in using
> such words in opening and holding an OST climate? I know the "oh shit"
> story, are there any "oh, fuck" stories?
>
> One thought that comes to me is to acknowledge it and then use one of
> my personal strengths-- a love of play-- to just play with the
> aggression, thereby creating a much more creative field around me
> while in OS.
>
> When I have fallen off my rocker (American English for "I have gone
> crazy; rocker-- is a rocking chair), shit, let me know!
>
> Warmly and blessings (dammit),
> Raffi
>
>                           mailto:raffi at bk.ru
>
>                           mailto:raffi at bk.ru
>
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--
Warmly,
Therese Fitzpatrick

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