sharing a proud

Raffi Aftandelian raffi at bk.ru
Sun Jun 26 09:34:09 PDT 2005


Dear friends and colleagues,
Today I finished conducting a full Working with OST Workshop within
the Genuine Contact Program. It was my first time conducting such a workshop. And I write
this now with that mix of feelings, of both pride, of joy, of sadness, of
fear. It is now one more completed milestone in my path, recognizing
once more that there is no going back. And it's scary. A part of me
wants to cry.

And there is no rest. Tomorrow I begin a storytelling evening before a
1 1/2 day OST meeting with my first commercial client, a research and consulting
company which occupies a leading position in its niche on the Russian
market. While I have been paid for OST work before, this is the first
time I am being paid close to what I feel I am worth. And it's darn
scary. And then I access that part of me that can remind myself that
this year I (accidently) achieved the most important thing in my life:

I am not afraid of looking stupid, of being a fool. I am foolish.

Once I befriended my inner fool, it got a lot simpler after that. As
one OST colleague explained to me, the fool constantly zigzags between
zero and infinity. A word in Russian came to me to describe this (a
word that doesn't really exist in Russian)-- пукообразность
(pukoobraznost), which might be translated as "fartishness."
Recognizing my own fartishness has helped me work with my own
arrogance...

A little about the OST workshop: The group was very small, and I made
peace with that very early on. Experience of being in small workshops
with Birgitt was a very powerful model for me. And in my nervousness
before the workshop, I constantly reminded myself to let go of this
issue. It was wonderful to set a fair market price and just to see
what would happen. And indeed the right people came:

a psychologist from an nonprofit organiation where I'd conducted an
OST meeting a year ago and which by their own admission transformed
as a result

a journalist/researcher who'd experienced an OST meeting I'd led 3
years back

a relative of mine

a director of a private English school who has been to many workshops
and done lots of healing work  in the past

It was absolutely delightful to stay in a centered place, to playfully
wrestle with my own doubts, to see how effortlessly and with little
effort the organization of the workshop took place. In contrast to the
many workshops I'd conducted before coming to OST/GC, I was just in a
much more centered, quieter place. Being both facilitator and
responsible for feeding and everything else was just easy. Just about every day we started 1/2
hour late, 1 participant came an hour late every day. And that was
Fine.

And I know that I continue to find meaning and value in WPPF. I just
have difficulty believing in traditional training methods. I think OST
and WPPF are emergent responses to what more and more people are
recognizing: the emergent paradigm is a post-tool paradigm, it's a New
Attitude Paradigm. And that New Attitude Paradigm is a rehash of
everything old, as is OST...

Many fruitful, thoughtful conversations took place during the
workshop: particularly around commitment, what commitment is.

One small innovation I made in the workshop was to devote some time to
crafting the invitation. On day one of the workshop I ran a one day
public OST meeting on "Creating Healthy Organizations: issues and
opportunities." People who were not going to attend the four day
workshop itself were invited. It was a *very* active group of 15 or so
*very* diverse people. When the time came for closing circle, many
admitted that they were ready to continue working on topics...

I took the invitation that I wrote to invite people to the public
taster and then invited Working with OST workshop participants to use
the framework of the medicine wheel to see what changes, if necessary,
they would want to make.

My motivation for doing the invitation crafting work, I explained, was
that while indeed anyone is free to conduct OST meetings, what that
means is that in some parts of the world OST has acquired a bad name
because of messy OST meetings. And that we all make mistakes when we
conduct OST meetings. And that part of the work in minimizing the
mistakes may lie in crafting clear invitations, so that people know
what they are participating in.

The invitation crafting work was a delight-- it opened a whole can of
worms about what participants give permission for and what not. What
was "scheduled" to last 15 minutes, lasted 45 min.

Confusion about how to find an appropriate translation for the word
"learning" in Russian: the first word, "obuchenie" connotes a passive
process and hence does not work easily...

And-- here I took a risk-- maybe this was not appropriate within a
workshop context: I invited workshop participants to conduct the first
OST meeting: on the development of my consulting firm: essenceworks
consulting group (being registered right now).

And within this workshop I also announced the creation of a Moscow
Mentoring Circle, for both GC and non-GC Program OST facilitators.
Join us in spirit and/or in flesh here in Moscow 11am, Saturday,
September 3rd...

Thank you to all who have and continue to support me and a special
thank you to Birgitt. I want to acknowledge once more how grateful I
have been for your generosity!

Very warmly from a rainy Moscow (and a tear or two),
Raffi

p.s. all participants know about the OST Whirled Map. Then know where
to click!

p.p.s. Peggy, your OST meeting organizing checklist made a cameo
appearance too, in my (hopefully passable) Russian translation. If you
get emails about your checklist from Moscow, you know who to
blame...(you can always change your email, never too late...)

                          mailto:raffi at bk.ru
                          mailto:raffi at bk.ru

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