The Art of Appreciating – The Courage to Receive
• Do you have trouble letting in the good around you?
• When someone says or does something nice to you, do you get all squirmy and suspiciously nervous? Do you uncontrollably and immediately go to standard cultural programming [“Deny. Minimize! Deflect!!”] even when there's no need for it? You see yourself ending up invalidating your friend's experience and making community building that much harder, when in fact it's clear this actually serves no one?
• If your “nutrition barrier” is hyper-active and preventing you from letting in to metabolize the very things that you want and need most? Yet even knowing this does not stop you from invoking it?
Maybe you've seen how pervasive and enforced is this “modesty” meme throughout cultures around the world — from the “Proud Nail” -that gets pounded down, in Japan, to the Tall Poppy Syndrome -that gets picked first, and “Jante's Law” in Scandinavia, to our own, “Don't get too big for your britches, son. Remember, always, where you came from” … ?
If you too have noted how unhelpful and deep this cultural programming is, perhaps you would like to join us in one of these classes on “The Art of Appreciating ~ The Courage to Receive”?
My idea is that when we tug on this one, it often goes way back to early deep wounding around not expecting much, the world will not be there for you… which often cripples our sense of the possibility of creating the lives and the world that we want.
So, I travel around the Bay Area, offering these, mostly in people's homes, that we might all become more aware of the poverty consciousness left over in our collective psyche. And, instead, help each other construct more appropriate and helpful responses.
Love to have you join these small groups of intrepid explorers, figuring out this bug in our collective software, and working on dismantling it.
Schedule of Upcoming Classes:
Friday evening, April 26th ~ Monterey
Sunday afternoon, May 12th ~ Berkeley
Tuesday evening, May 21st ~ Richmond
(and, in San Rafael, mid late May, date TBA)
Classes are usually 2.5 – 3 hours. By the end, each person should come away with practical tools to work on self-authoring their lives, and how to support others interested in the same.
I do this to spread the meme, to improve our culture. I appreciate your donations to help me doing this, but the “cost” of the class is dana, love offering, sliding scale, no one turned away for lack of funds, (also, no upper limit on amount of acceptable donation.) I thank you for your support.
If you would like to work on this closer by, in your home with your friends — and I hope you will — please let me know. Traveling from Booneville to Monterey to get this meme out, into wider circulation, I am always looking for people who want to clear this.
If you are outside this area, and would like to explore doing this yourself, I have lots to say on this, happy to work with you. It certainly does not require my presence for you to get together with your friends, offer some positive appreciation to each other, see what comes up, and work on getting more mindful about this, crafting more appropriate responses.
Paul C. Hoffman: wildly creative, out of the box, meme spreading, agent of social change, graduated from a college where you have to travel mostly alone for three years around the world to earn the B.A. degree.
[Know anyone who wants a real “world education”? They're still looking for people. See how good your life could be: http://www.liu.edu/Global .]
Most known currently as founder of “EarthSeals” – his company has produced and distributed them by donation over 13 million stickers of our planet in the last 25 years, which got him listed in “Who is Who in Service to the Earth”.
Response Options Feedback
Check what works for you and mail this back to me at earthsun@pacbell.net.
[ ] RSVP – YES. Sign me up!
Love to come to the class in ____ on this date:
Do send the exact address and I'll plan on coming a few minutes early, to park, and get settled in.
[ ] Love to have you come to where I am, hold one of these groups here. Contact me about what day and when our schedules can overlap.
[ ] I like it. Want to learn more, keep me in the loop. Send information what your thinking is about this topic, how your classes work, how we all can get through this. Perhaps I can start something in my area even if you can't make it this far.
[ ] Sorry, not interested. Don't send more info about this class, take me off this list.
[ ] Please delete me from all lists. Prefering not to hear about what you're into.
– – – – – –
(from my sig file)
Paul C. Hoffman
vm: 510 496-3463 vm
email: earthsun@pacbell.net
founder, EarthSeals.com, PO Box 8000, Berkeley, CA 94707. You can send a SASE and get samples.
• Life Coach: “helping high potential currently stuck people jump start their lives”)
• Personal Mission Statement: Double the quality of life for everyone on the planet who's interested. Largely through internet matching software — if you've got a problem, it's very likely that someone somewhere has a brilliant solution. Why should you struggle to “reinvent the wheel” when we can find ways to connect you to what we know already works, have you seeing further by “standing on the shoulders of giants” ?)
• Intuitive Healing Bodywork ~ Licensed massage therapist, over 30 years. Satisfaction Guaranteed, By Donation, Out Call
• “Making the match between what you really really want to do -and- what the world really really wants to have done” [class created]
• (working on…) part of the Collective Wisdom of Humanity Database… “21st Century Consciousness Tools: best practices, key memes and useful insights for Deep Presence, Healing, Transparency, Transformative Relationships”
• Love to (physically) help people move. Several people have said “the physically strongest person they know”… Very smart, positive mental attitude, great communication clarity, embodied wisdom, practical knowledge.
“What a great life!”
“My life is a testament to the power and possibility of Upward Transformation.”
See Also:
Worth a Look: Paul C. Hoffman and EarthSeals
