Classroom Talk
Fifth and Sixth Grades Archive
About my coaching perspective now.
Posted by John on 05/16/2003 17:00:36
Hi, Jeff! Hi, Rob! Hi, Rakesh—Brent tells me you've been workin' up a
storm on the new Library. Thanks! A word here about my ongoing personal
practice in "being unattached to this website": There was a time when I
would have felt very uneasy about not having responded directly to many
of the fine pages that have been posted here by you students in the last
couple of months.
There must be at least a little score on my scoreboard about this right
now, or I wouldn't be thinking about it and making these remarks right
now. Yet, at this stage of the game here in Classroom Talk, I like,
above all, to see you students responding to each other, and I
deliberately hold off, in leaving space for that. I'll probably be no
more than a once-a-week contributor to our Forum as this year goes on.
And, of course, I like seeing that more and more of the teaching and
coaching that is happening around here is being done by you students.
This seems very appropriate to me in the healthy progress of our class.
Many of the postings I've made in the past have been in the nature of
"the Coach confirming" ideas that you students have expressed. Maybe we
don't need that so much any more—at least, not with you Old-Timers.
Posting after posting, I feel that you students are showing that you have
caught on to the awareness game, and to the idea of using mindfulness in
going on exploring the objective nature of life and human relationships
every day for the purpose of finding new discoveries and understandings
that can bring a better life—a more peaceful and harmonious life—to you
and those who live around you. That's the whole purpose of this course.
So in a sense it is appropriate to say that most of you are graduates of
the formal training here per se.
If any of you would like to have specific responses from me about any of
the teaching points you share here, please say so. Otherwise, it seems
to me, teachings, for example, like Rob, Jeff, and Student John have
posted in April and May stand on their own merits, and speak for
themselves in ways that I feel obviously add to our over-all
understandings as a group. As I see it, they don't necessarily need
"confirmations" or embellishments by me. That being said, I will go on
drawing from the remarks of all of you that I seem to be able to "weave
together" into the best coaching classes that I can come up with. I'm
going to try to work on my skill at doing that.
Also, question's, like Rob's in "Two Things" are as valid as any
questions we get around here. If I don't address your questions right
away, I will try to remember them and do my best to weave them in
somewhere along the way, where they seem to fit in best with the ongoing
dynamics of the class's unfolding.
I'm saying all this so you can understand the methods I am intentionally
trying to employ in doing my job here, and not take it personally or be
troubled when I don't give immediate responses to pieces that you
students work hard on and rightfully deserve acknowledgement for in their
excellence. I'm doing that acknowledgement here. If you don't hear from
me, it was "excellent," as usual. When I feel something you write
deserves another go-round of mindful study (as with the question of being
able to will cheerfulness) I will try to be a dutiful coach and speak up.
And, as John noticed, I, too, will gladly try your ideas on and see how
they work in my own experiences, as well. That's just more Knowledge and
more happiness for me! And, in fact, I hope many students here will be
trying on the ideas of all of us in this class—just for the sake of
experientially finding out new things that we haven't known already . . .
or not, as the case may be in trying each new exercise that we discuss
and undertake.
Just for the record, "willing cheerfulness" hasn't worked for me this
week. In the middle of the night last Sunday I fell down my spiral iron
staircase again. By the end of the eclypse last night I was feeling much
better and nearly healed. But, it's been a long and painful week, a
neurotic week, in fact.
The first time I fell on that staircase a couple of years ago, I resolved
to practice mindfulness every time that I'm on it. Heh-heh. Maybe this
is a good warning to all of us of some kind. I have been carefully
mindful hundreds of times since then on that spiral staircase, but I
wasn't last Sunday night. That first time, I'd fallen on the soft carpet
beneath the steps, and I was amazed then that—despite having
osteoporosis—I suffered not a single bruise or injury, let alone break.
I attributed that to waking up while I was falling, and having the
presence of mind to deliberately fall soft.
This time, I woke up again when I was falling, and again had the presence
of mind to fall soft, but I landed in a tangled heap on the iron stairs
of the staircase, and remained there, wide awake, for a number of
minutes. maybe five minutes, without moving. Ow! Still wrapped up like
a pretzle with my leg twisted under me, I slowly checked around every
part of my body on the inside to see whatever I could feel. It felt like
I might have broken several toes on my left foot, and my right elbow and
forearm, which was slowly becoming covered with blood.
So I just stayed there with it, soaked up the pains of it vividly, there
in the foot and forearm, which had apparently taken the greatest brunt of
the fall, and in several other places around my body. Strangely, I just
stayed there, in a mode, somehow, of peacefulness. My first thought was
of gratitude (speaking of the power of that, Student John), gratitude
that I hadn't hit my head and been killed. (The husband of a friend of
mine died just that way, earlier this year.)
Then my gratitude turned into anger, as I thought about all the trouble
this accident was likely to be to me in the coming days . . . . . and
then to sadness, and I cried, not over the pain, but over the idea that
if I had been killed I might have remained lying there in a tangle on
those steps in just that way all week before the other ranchhands would
realize I hadn't showed up for work the next Saturday, and called my Son
to go over and check up on me.
I fell into a kind of self-pitying morass for a minute or two, seeing
that this fall was just an obvious sign of the things that normally
happen in a person's life when they grow old (going on 69 in my case)—
especially when they grow old alone. Boo-hoo. Woe is me. My whole life
seemed to have come down to a place where it added up to an inevitable
result, old age and dying alone, "like a dog," as my imagination put it
then.
Well, seeing all that melodrama for what it is, I pulled myself together,
remembered my gratitude at being alive, got up, took the pee I was going
downstairs for in the first place, and then washed up, put antibacterial
ointment on, and bandaged myself up. I stayed in bed and slept for most
of the next two days, grateful that I could do that on purpose. By then,
I could see that I was healing, even painfully, and I wasn't sure that
any bones were broken. The swelling was bad, and my whole forearm had
turned a disconcerting purple.
By now, I'm pretty sure there are no broken bones. I still hurt, yet my
body seems to have healed itself back most of the way. I'm kind of
amazed that I was brave enough (or stubborn enough) to give it a chance
to heal on its own this way . . . another item for my "gratefulness list"
this week.
But it hasn't been a good week, all in all. And I haven't been able to
will my Being into any cheerfulness at all, really. In fact, I've been
pretty down. I realized that if I hadn't broken it off with that Lady I
told you about, she'd have been over here cheerfully taking care of me
the whole way. The eclypsed full moon last night marked a lunar month
since I had decided to make that turn in the road. Not long ago I'd
spent a lot of money fixing the air conditioning on my van, and over the
weekend (just as temperatures are starting to reach 100-degrees here in
Tucson) that went on the blink again, and I haven't been able to find
anybody so far who can pick me up at my mechanics when I leave my van
there, and pick me up again. And I'm still limping a little, five days
after the accident. Yeah, it hasn't been a good week, all in all.
Once again, you are Student Johnny on the Spot, with that gratefulness
exercise you described, John. I've resolved to make a list of the things
I am grateful for over this weekend at work in the country, and to start
paying more attention as the hours go by to little things that I notice
that I can be sincerely grateful for.
That one is promising! I have already seen that noting moments of
gratefulness in me can be empowering. I'm going to devote my practice to
that over this weekend, realistically, and see how far I can go with it.
Already, I can see at the top of my list how grateful I am for the way
this class has been going! That makes me feel good right now!
Coach
I've been working quite a bit the latter part of this week on a class
based on "Knowing Sally as I do." I don't know if I'll finish it up this
evening, or will be posting it next week. It stems from the claim I was
making recently that "every situation is workable." The disheartening
loss of a loved one is certainly a situation that challenges an idea like
that. But I'll give it my very best shot. It sounds like you are
already beginning to regain some of your strength again now Sally, on
your own. I'm taking that as a sign that this is an appropriate time for
me to attempt to come in with some healing coaching for you about Gregg's
death, if that's okay with you.
Archived 09/22/2003