In response to Sherri, who always seems to get to the "heart" of the
matter. Sorry, it just came out.
I have been looking for years to find a way to incorporate heart, soul and
mind into the work I do with people. Prior to my NLP training, I thought,
wow, this will be the way. Then I got to the training, and found a room
filled with computer people, primarily men, who were there to process this
work and their feelings through their minds. It was much more technical
than I would have imagined. The expression, "NLP with heart" became the
battle cry, but I found little real sharing or compassion there.
I went onto teach the men at San Quentin and found a real environment
where sharing from the heart was possible and quite liberating, but I had
to find a "captive audience" to work with and heaven knows how long it
would have lasted if the class would have been optional. Some classes
were quite resistant to any heart expression.
I think that generally, as many have expressed on this list, sharing from
the heart is scary and has been punished in everyone's past-certainly
mine. I share this way more than many because it is vital for my
survival, but I respect those who have never been able to be this free.
Well...I do live in Calfornia and there is more room here to grow and be
yourself.
Funny story: I went to see "Phantom of the Opera" with my family on
Thanksgiving and feeling very warm and happy to be with my clan (my mom
lives in NYC), and reacting with emotion to power of the play and its
theme of love and its beauty, I sprang to my feet at curtain call,
cheering and yelling, "bravo!" To my dismay, I was the only one! Even my
family sat beside me unable to express their feelings. Being eleventh row
center, I looked pretty obvious and felt very strange. So I sat down
until the energy built up and the actor playing the phantom came out for
his bows. I sprang up again, I couldn't help it and finally those around
me, including my chicken family, rose to their feet. Everyone giggled
about my passionate leap to my feet (it is now a family story) but I was
proud that I could express myself when others couldn't. I am proud that I
have come far enough to stand alone with my feelings. It makes me feel
alive. And I didn't die for standing up for what I believed in.
What I hope this list will do is continue threads like this one, add
threads about the spiritual nature of learning organizations while
carrying on the great intellectual debate that goes on across this planet.
I wrote Sherri personally and said that we all need to accept each others
ways of expression and suggested that we start our our list about
mind-spirit-heart. I was half kidding. I have reconsidered.
Why don't we just make sure that these elements are integrated into this
wonderful list by supporting such contibutions from people, like Sherri,
who can monitor and prod us to contribute balance to the list? What a
wonderful experiment it would be toward creating an organization that
supports all parts of the human being.
With hope and optimism for 1997
Diana Mordock
104022.36@compuserve.com
--Diana Mordock <104022.36@CompuServe.COM>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>