I am participating the Mutual Awakening practice with Patricia Albere. It’s a sixteen week, virtual course that seeks “to actively create a shared field of awakening that fosters greater human capacity for collaboration, creativity and healing.” We meet by phone and on-line with people throughout the world. I wasn’t sure what to expect, and I’m still not sure what’s going to happen, but I’m along for the ride.
I signed up for this course on impulse. With my new practice, I was thinking I need to expand my circle of “being known.” That was awkward. What I mean is that to be successful in the alternative/spiritual health field, you to become known and recognized. You need to gain enough “street cred” so that people seek you out for sessions, and for speaking engagements and other events. I may not get much of that from this course. Seeing how it’s virtual, it doesn’t seem likely that anyone will get to know anyone else. We don’t generally use last names or even see each other. But you never know, there are off-line events that could lend some exposure.
We’ve had two sessions so far. During the first, I was in my car and could only listen. I didn’t realize that the course was to be largely interactive. (By law, around here you can’t use a phone while driving.) I was planning to only listen, but they kept pairing me up with people and expecting me to participate. Oops. Sorry guys. I arrived at my destination in time to participate in the very last interaction, idling by the roadside. I have a feeling that I didn’t get much out of the session because my attention was largely on the road.
This second session was a bit different. This time I was home, and I could shut myself in a room by myself and listen and respond without distractions.
There were two or three exercises in the second session. (I can’t remember if there was a final, short one at the end or not.) The exercises seemed to be designed to produce a shared consciousness between the two participants. One person spoke about what they were experiencing for a set period of time, (“I’m experiencing…”), then the other did the same, and then we exchanged statements starting with “We are experiencing…”
I didn’t know what to do with the first exercise. I ended up just doing a stream-of-consciousness thing, which probably sounded pretty random.
The second exercise was the same, but longer. This time other person went first. I interrupted her about half way through because I couldn’t hear what she was saying. That may have been a mistake, it seemed to completely destroy the flow. (Afterwards someone shared that she couldn’t understand a word her partner shared the entire exercise, and she just went with the rhythm of the sounds. I could have done that. Next time.) Fortunately, by the time we got to the “we” part, things seemed to recover and we got into an interesting grove.
From the very beginning, I was seeing stars in a nighttime sky. That came back stronger in the third part, and we both started feeding off that, back and forth. I don’t remember what was said, but in my mind there evolved a picture where I was floating high above a dark planet. The planet was on my left and was dark because the sun was behind it, silhouetting rings above me. The stars, all around me, were extremely bright and hard, multicolored jewels sharply defined against the absolute black. Away from the sun, and some distance away, was a fuzzy, white-ish disk. Maybe it was a planet, maybe something else. It seemed foggy and surrounded by fog.
This image grew as we shared impressions, back and forth. By the end, we were both floating above the planet, out there somewhere in space. At the very end I had an impression that I shared, but now I can’t remember. What I do remember is that there we were surrounded by a constellation of heavenly bodies. All grayish-white or ghost like. All different sizes and distances, and there was something significant about them—but I can’t remember what it was.
Was there some kind of shared experience, or were we just feeding off each other’s imaginations? Open question. Let’s just see what happens.
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