Recovery Reflections #1

[Guest guest]

Recovery Reflections #1

from Rob Brezsny's Beauty and Truth Laboratory:

Beauty and Truth Laboratory has developed a set

of questions to guide you. Here they are.

1. What feelings and intuitions have you been trying to ignore lately?

2. Which parts of your life are overdue for death?

3. What messages has life been trying to convey to you but which

you've chosen to ignore?

4. What red herrings, straw men, and scapegoats have you chased after

obsessively in order to avoid dissolving your most well-rationalized

delusions?

5. What unripe parts of yourself are you most ashamed or fearful of?

How can you give those parts more ingenious love?

6. What parts of yourself have the least integrity and don't act in

harmony with what you regard as your highest values? How can you

bring them into alignment with your true desires?

7. Is it possible that in repressing things about yourself that you don't

like, you have also disowned potentially strong and beautiful aspects of

yourself? What are they?

8. Are those really flaws that are bugging you about the people whose

destinies are entwined with yours, or just incompletely developed

talents? Are those really flaws that are bugging you about yourself, or

merely incompletely developed talents?

9. Some people try to deny their portion of the world's darkness and

project it onto individuals or groups they dislike. Others acknowledge its

power so readily that they allow themselves to be overwhelmed by it. We

believe in taking an in-between position, accepting it as an unworked gift

that can serve our liberation. Where do you stand?

10. It's easy to see fanaticism, rigidity, and intolerance in other people,

but harder to acknowledge them in yourself. Do you dare?

11. Would you be willing to compose a Menstrual Hut mission

statement? Speak the following sample as if it were yours and see how it

feels: " I'm ready to stop the world. I need some extended leave time. A

sabbatical from life. I'm not going to wash any dishes, do any laundry,

make any small talk, pay any bills. I will follow every weird train of

thought or vagrant emotion that captures my imagination. Will lower the

barrier between my conscious and unconscious minds. Will follow the

smells I like. Listen to my body. Celebrate what's not so beautiful but

really interesting about myself and anyone else. Keep my eyes out for

surprising new intuitions and teachings. Have wild patience. Smash a

clock with a hammer. Actually kiss the earth. Fall out of my chair from

laughing so hard at nothing in particular. Listen to music I don't

understand. Call out to the sky, 'I defy you, stars.' Give my whole heart

or else not offer it at all. "

--

Regards,