Since we changed the Video so that it starts at 6 pm instead of at 7, we we noticed that we have less time to discuss. So we reduced the number of questions to let us have more time to talk.
Bob started talking about Question #2 and his experience at the holistic clinic where he worked for several years. He called it his trial by fire. After describing the situation, he noted that he probably would not have had the same fire in his belly about creating emotionally healthy community as he has now, if he had not spent several years blaming himself for what he felt was a profound failure on his part, accompanied by lots of guilt at not doing enough to make it succeed.
Question # 4 brought up feelings from several people about how we pay attention to our body and our feelings, and how we often miss out on valuable information from them because we're so intimidated by BOTH external and internal discouragement and invalidation.
One person commented that criticizing ourselves only discourages our inner wisdom. The internal criticism can usually be much greater than the external we receive. We also talked about finding out who we are, and what an incredible positive impact that has on our self esteem.
Toward the end of our time together, one of the group participants asked if anyone would like to learn how to test themselves to find out if something they are going to do is the correct thing for them at the time. He explained that if, to start, you ask yourself a false question (I am in Utah), then pay attention to your body's reaction, you will be able to get your answer at a more pure level.
Two people volunteered. One person could easily feel her body's reaction to the false question she asked herself, while the other person went directly into her mind to think about the question instead of paying attention to what her body was telling her. This fit in perfectly with our previous discussion about overlooking our feelings and body sensations because we (and society in general) has discounted and/or invalidated them. This was a pleasant, and informative, way to end our Saturday night get together.
(This video was reviewed by Pam Chambers)
Feel free to come and share your own personal insights sometime; the Saturday Night Video and Discussions here in Austin, Texas are a lot of fun and fascinating. (They're free, too.) Here are the questions the group came up with, based on the personal growth themes in the movie: