Blissful journey in Open Space

[doug]

Suzanne--

Wonderful! You keep us all chasing our bliss in this world work.

I especially like your turn of phrase, "Big talk."

			:- Doug.



On Thu, 2010-04-22 at 09:24 -0400, Suzanne Daigle wrote:
> Dear Open Space friends, I was going to send a personal thank you note
> to Harrison (who I'm glad to say has become my friend as he is to all
> of you and all of us). Instead I decided to just put myself out there
> again in this community and send it to everyone.
> 
> As I prepare for my upcoming trip to Berlin, celebrating my first year
> of Open Space following wonderful training by Diane Gibeault in Ottawa
> in April last year, I just decided to share my story and my feelings
> with all of you.  I am truly in awe that Open Space is celebrating 25
> years this year in the city where the Berlin Wall used to be.  I
> cannot help but feel it is significant -- significant thinking of all
> the Berlin Walls that should fall in so many places in our world where
> people feel overwhelmed by the things that seem to be crashing down
> around them.  Yet I feel that this deep pain is possibly the signal of
> a collective and global rebirth.  But to notice and see, we must open
> up space in our lives.  As we do, we realize that what matters most is
> what's inside of us.  It's why I am as drawn today to Open Space as I
> was the first time I "met" OS a year ago. So today I decided to press
> the "send button" ....thank you Michael Herman that it's working so
> well allowing me to share how I'm feeling on the eve of my trip to
> Berlin.   I can't wait to meet so many that I have been reading here
> and others who I know already. I feel such gratitude to have the
> opportunity to be there. I've even decided to do a second training in
> Open Space in Berlin to deepen my practice and learning with many from
> other countries.
> 
> Now for my note that I had intended to send to Harrison:
> 
> 
> Hi dear friend Harrison,
> 
> My « bliss » journey continues and I know you said Thank you not
> required.   But I still want to say thank you.
> 
> You see for me I’ve connected that the “song” (from mythology) leading
> me here came from my first encounter of Open Space. It “caught me”
> then and without knowing in the darkness of it all, I chose to make it
> my life path. Hugely unsettling as it made me question so much of who
> I was and had done in my career and in my life.  It led me to a deep
> searching, so much reading, throwing myself into Open Space as a
> practice every chance I could finally leading me...inside myself.  As
> I started to go there and for me this is just the start, I realized
> that by just 'being' instead of 'doing', life around me was changing!
> My relationships with my mom, my dad, daughter and siblings, friends
> and others are so much richer.  I’ve met so many people this past year
> leading to so many “big talk” conversations instead of small talk --
> conversations where it feels like we're  Expanding our Now.  (a
> Harrison book).
> 
> Often, I felt like I needed to go into my cave disconnecting, knowing
> that I will be reconnecting with quiet purpose following my bliss in
> the years ahead.  Not easy to do in a society that expects us to do
> more and more with less all the time. Plus there is this little thing
> called paying your bills. Yes, it has been blissful, easy no!
> 
> As I have embarked on this journey, I read what you’ve and many others
> have written, great thinkers and many authors you spoke of in your
> books.  Myth, philosophy, science, etc.  Like a kid, reading Hardy Boy
> mysteries, it’s been magical.  And through it all, I think of Open
> Space, its principles, its law and what it awakens in many people
> inviting them to Freedom and Choice, to the place inside of them that
> makes you feel like a kid again that is your life..
> 
> Everywhere around me, I see people racing, running, worrying without
> ever having time…or taking time.  By opening space, wherever and
> whenever I can, 24X7 (for me once a month participating or
> facilitating: this weekend with the Girl Scouts), I feel I can do a
> small part for people to perhaps discover as I did the magic that is
> within them.
> 
> In my continuing words of thank you, a brief paragraph from one of
> Joseph Campbell’s writings captured in the book Pathway to Bliss
> talking about Arthur’s banquet hall with all the knights around the
> Round Table. To me, it spoke Open Space.
> 
> “They thought it would be a disgrace to go forth in  a group. Each
> entered the Forest Adventurous at that point which he himself had
> chosen, where it was darkest and there was no way or path.” You enter
> the forest at the darkest point, where there is no path. Where there’s
> a way or path, it is someone else’s path; each human being is a unique
> phenomenon.  The idea is to find your own pathway to bliss.
> 
> Harrison when I sat in a circle for the first time, it felt like a
> scary dark forest for me – someone who had lived in hierarchy all my
> life, career and otherwise seeking to do what others defined to be
> “living responsibly” in a command-control sort of way. I felt it then
> and I feel it now that by opening space, there is a big chance that
> Open Space will "catch others" too. I don't know if you can find this
> place alone, by yourself. For me, I found it sitting there with others
> in my first Open Space when I was in  Canada. I believe with Open
> Space, we can discover ourselves and what we're passionate about and
> from that place, we create community, a new community where people can
> just be themselves, give of their individual gifts, appreciate others
> and create in a new way, paying attention and noticing what matters,
> expanding their now.
> 
> So folks, now I press the send button feeling a bit vulnerable,
> questioning as I always do if silence is not more effective because in
> the end knowing our journeys are always unique and personal, I know
> that it is not by "telling" that we find our journey but in
> discovering it ourselves.
> 
> I know had I been reading this before I "met" Open Space leading me to
> my path, it would have scared me to read this as if someone was
> pushing a religion on me.
> 
> And yet here in this community which feels like home, I felt it was ok
> to share especially now less than a month away from the Berlin WOSonOS
> with OS happenings in Australia as well and Brian Bainbridge in our
> thoughts.
> 
> Love to all, Suzanne
> 
> 

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