An Empowering Experience
Attending the World Conference was an empowering experience. I want to share three gifts (out of the many) this experience brought to me:
• Approving the Guidelines1: The process of approving the Guidelines was no less than amazing. It clearly reflected the worldwide individual and group effort in reading the Guidelines and preparing and sharing thinking about them. It was visible evidence of many people’s deep caring for RC and their taking it seriously. For a good number of hours we went through the many proposed changes. There were over two hundred people in the room, and throughout there was nothing but good thinking. People offered their minds, uninterrupted by their feelings that were sometimes clearly there. It was a demonstration of what is possible when we are well discharged and our thinking is accessible to us. So impressive. So hopeful! It was also as if we each had thousands of years of exploring, trying, counseling, discharging, and thinking available to us.
• The self-estimation of Tim and Diane2: Hearing Tim and Diane review their work, and hearing what it meant to other people, created a clearer picture for me of what my work is as an RC leader. It showed me the resource I can (and actually do) offer to others. People appreciated not only Tim’s and Diane’s leadership, attention, and support but also the hours of labor they put into making our Community exist and function. Although on a smaller scale, I have the chance to do the same, and I decided to never again underestimate or dismiss my RC work as “not real” or “not enough.”
• Being: Before the conference I had to discharge feelings of insignificance. At the conference, it was clear that among ourselves, like in the biosphere, the oaks (large trees) and hyssops (small herbs) are interrelated and are each a unique, beautiful, and important part of life. I was not leading (in the way we usually interpret this term), but I was nevertheless my whole, significant self, and happy with my contribution. This was a great contradiction3! I came back feeling more connected to myself, more proud and powerful, and with hope. I reclaimed RC, and I reclaimed power. I want to keep this. And the best way to keep it is to teach it!
Tami Shamir
Shefayim, Israel
Reprinted from the e-mail discussion
list for RC Community members
1 The Guidelines for the Re-evaluation Counseling Communities — the policies for the RC Communities
2 Tim Jackins and Diane Shisk
3 Contradiction to distress