2008.07.24 19:00 - the Little Voice

The guardian was Pia Iger. She added below comments.

Maxine was the first arrived.

Maxine Walden: hi, Pia
Pia Iger: Hi, Maxine, how are you?
Maxine Walden: well, thanks and you?
Pia Iger: Ok.
Pia Iger: feel not easy to integrate the inspirations from 9-sec and meetings to real life.
Maxine Walden: oh? care to say more? I think I know what you mean
Pia Iger: often caught myself in zombie state,
Pia Iger: not aware what I am doing

Then I realized Maxine misunderstood me. I was not talking about  doing 9-sec pratice itself, but about how to integrate what I learnt from 9-sec, as "being aware, being Here and Now" into everyday life, how to break through the habitual mindless state  in real life.

Maxine Walden: ah, might feel awkward re RL
Maxine Walden: the mind is probably not used to the 9 sec practice for many of us
Pia Iger: yes, very hard to break in.
Maxine Walden: not used to such different levels of focus
Maxine Walden: I find that when I have to concentrate as I do in my work sometimes then I cannot really be doing the 9 sec practice at that time
Pia Iger: very likely not.
Maxine Walden: does it interfere with your RL relationships?
Maxine Walden: others might not understand what you ar doing
Pia Iger: actually, so far it seems not that noticable to others.
Maxine Walden: it is just within yourself then, the difficulties
Pia Iger: yes.
Pia Iger: I have enough time and space to do 9 sec.
Maxine Walden: that's good
Pia Iger: suddenly I was thinking, even when you are very concentrating, you can still somehow see yourself from outside for a few seconds.
Maxine Walden: yes, that is possible, for sure, just takes an extra concentration, of another sort I find
Maxine Walden: have you been trying the Being exercise Pema suggested a few days ago?
Maxine Walden: stage one and stage two?
Pia Iger: a few times.
Pia Iger: funny, once, I strongly feel that my angles can 'see'.

I meant 'ankles', not 'angles'! (although, in this context,  it could be said that my ankles become my new visual angle?)

Maxine Walden: your angles?
Pia Iger: normally I may not realize I have angles with me, or take for granted.

should be 'ankles'!

Even typo of "typo" itself!

Pia Iger: angels, sorry, type
Pia Iger: typo
Pia Iger: ankles
Maxine Walden: I am not sure what you mean by angles, do you mean angelss, oh, yes, oh, ankles...
Pia Iger: serious typo:)
Maxine Walden: now what did you first say about your ankles?
Maxine Walden: that they can see
Pia Iger: I said I have more strong awareness of my ankles, feel they can sense, can "see" behind of me. Of cause, it is just a vague sense.
Maxine Walden: oh, but how interesting, so different parts of you can see or sense you and things
Pia Iger: or, another way to say it, that I have more awareness of things that I take for granted, or almost forgot that I have.
Maxine Walden: oh, yes, I really agree with that, the 'taken for granted' takes on significance and notice
Pia Iger: So, how is your new practice going on?
jowell Penucca: hey girls
Maxine Walden: varyingly. I am not having as strong an experience as say torm is reporting, but it is interesting
Maxine Walden: hi, Jowell
jowell Penucca: how ya doing?
Maxine Walden: as say Storm is having

Jowell is a new visitor. Then Adelene joined us too.

Pia Iger: Hi, Jowell,
jowell Penucca: hey p-ia lger
Pia Iger: we are in a meeting of Play as Being
Maxine Walden: fine, Jowell, care to join us?
jowell Penucca: sure
Maxine Walden: we are discussing aspects of reality and of how to become more aware of wideraspects of reality
jowell Penucca: thats nice
Pia Iger: and we do a special experiment, by stopping for 9 sec every 15 min.
Pia Iger: in real life
Maxine Walden: Pia, just to say I need to leave in about 3 minutes to go to another meeting
Pia Iger: then we meet here every day to share our experience.
jowell Penucca: oh ok cool
Maxine Walden: hi, Adelene
Adelene Dawner: 'lo :)
Pia Iger: You can read logs from previous meetings and view photos:
http://playasbeing.wordpress.com/
Adelene Dawner: Sorry I'm late
Maxine Walden: nice to see you again
Pia Iger: Hi, Adelen,
Adelene Dawner was talking to Pema and lost track of time ^.^
jowell Penucca: what kind of experiment ya have
jowell Penucca: ?

I saw Maxine was typing, then assumed that she was answering Jowell's question. But it turned out she was just saying goodbye. So Jowell did not get his answer in time.

Maxine Walden: ah...maybe Pia you could answer Jowell, I had better go to my other meeting. Sorry I cannot stay longer.
Pia Iger: Oh, bye for now, Maxine.
jowell Penucca: bye
Maxine Walden: Hope to see you again soon, Adelene and Jowell
jowell Penucca: you 2
Adelene Dawner: cya Max
jowell Penucca: well goin to leave i be back later
Pia Iger: fine, Jowell, a question for you
Pia Iger: do you mind your name appeared on our blog?
jowell Penucca: sure noproblem
Pia Iger: ok. pls take a look of our website and welcome back sometime.
jowell Penucca: alright pia see you soon bye and take care
Pia Iger: bye.

Jowell politely departed and continued his 2nd day exploration in SL.

This is also my 2nd time to meet Adelene. The first time was at Monday night session.

Pia Iger: Adelene, how have you been?
Adelene Dawner: Well, a bad but productive day today. Productive's always good.
Pia Iger: in what sense it is bad?
Adelene Dawner is not entirely sure she's ready to talk about it yet, or wants to talk about it in any case. Work stuff.
Pia Iger: You don't have to talk in details, maybe just roughly how you felt.
Adelene Dawner: Frustrated. Very very frustrated.
Pia Iger: inter-personnal reasons?
Adelene Dawner: I've been telling my boss for *years* that I need more training and support that what I've been given. Her response has always been 'you've been here long enough, you should know this stuff', and nevermind that I spent the first year there doing something that is not the same as what I do now and was never actually trained on what I do now. I'm on the verge of being fired over this.
Pia Iger: do you like what you do?
Adelene Dawner: And, you know, I won't mind leaving. I've been *ready* to go for a while. But I work in a ... (Pia omitted the details here), and the customers like me, and I haven't wanted to hurt them by leaving. I may not be good at doing what the boss wants me to do, but, at least from my perspective, if the customers are happy that I'm there, I'm doing it right, dammit.
Pia Iger: Is there anyone else who can train or teach you a little?
Adelene Dawner: I've tried that route. It hasn't worked - the opportunities to get together with those people to train have never come up. And at this point... well, from her tone today, Boss wants me gone, and it'll only take one more write-up.
Adelene Dawner: And, yanno, I'm not especially *willing* to put a lot of effort into keeping the job at this point. I'm just pissed at what I'm losing it over - at how I'm being wrongly judged.
Pia Iger: "being wrongly judged" would happen a lot at work or in relationship.
Pia Iger: I have many such experience too.
Adelene Dawner is less pissed at going, and more pissed at being pushed. And the little voice in the back of her head responded to that thought with 'then you should have gone a year ago, when you knew it was time - if you didn't have to be pushed to move when you need to, you wouldn't be pushed!

I was impressed by her abilities to phrase out and differentiate her complex feelings in real time.

Pia Iger: I am familiar with this kind of "little voice" too.
Pia Iger: very self defeating.
Pia Iger: and now I think the little voice can be doubted. what the voice said may not be true.
Adelene Dawner is taking that as 'how to avoid this situation next time'.

Adelene learnt it is better to listen to her little voice.

Pia Iger: Is it possible to you to doubt the little voice inside you?
Adelene Dawner: Possible, but I've often come to grief by doing so.
Pia Iger: come to greif by doubt the little voice, how so?
Adelene Dawner: In my experience, it tends to be right.
Adelene Dawner: In fact... even in this case. If I'd left a year ago, when I first started feeling that I was 'done' - and that 'feeling ' was from the same voice - I wouldn't be in the relationship that I'm in now with the customers who will be most hurt by my being fired, if/when that happens.
Pia Iger: are you regretting that you did not listen to the voice and left a yr ago?
Adelene Dawner: ...yes and no? I'm not feeling the emotion of regret - I accept that what happened has happened, and the idea of wanting to change that makes no sense - but I do see it as likely having been a mistake.
Pia Iger: but at the same time, a yr ago, I assume there was also anothe little voice that telling you it was ok to stay.
Pia Iger: I always found inside me two opposite voices.
Adelene Dawner: no... I stayed out of inertia, mostly. Laziness, if you prefer. Finding a new job takes a lot of energy.
Pia Iger: Inertia, means you still felt ok to be like that. If you really felt bad at that time, you may start to work hard to find a job, right?

Adelene explained further.

Adelene Dawner: This is one of those situations where the things that an autistic would weigh in that decision, and the things that a normal person would weigh in the same decision, are different.
Adelene Dawner: 'felt bad'... isn't something that's relevant to me, there.
Adelene Dawner: and 'felt ok' doesn't mean the same to me as it does to most, either, I think.
Adelene Dawner: I guess I should explain that.
Pia Iger: pls
Adelene Dawner: I'm aware that normal people feel emotions all the time. I don't. I do have emotions, of course, but they're not constant - my default state isn't 'happy', it's 'neutral'. I mostly feel emotions in response to specific situations - and not every situation will evoke an emotional response. There was no emotional response connected to the situation a year ago - just an awareness that I was 'ready to go'.
Adelene Dawner: So I 'feel ok' in most situations, including ones that I don't really *like*.
Pia Iger: like "middle way".
Adelene Dawner: Very much so.

I got better understanding of the little voice Adelene talked about.

Adelene Dawner: The thing a year ago - it wasn't an emotional thing. It wasn't me being unhappy, or even me having some reason to leave the job. It was just an awareness from ... my gut, kind of, or my subconscious, or wherever you'd say that kind of sudden awareness comes from - that it was time for me to move on... and I chose to ignore it, because I didn't want to make the effort.
Pia Iger: I understand that awareness from inside.
Pia Iger: I think by practice 9 -sec, we are letting this awareness/little voice to be more noticable.
Pia Iger: or generally many meditation can bring up our inner voice
Adelene Dawner: I'm pretty good at hearing it. The problem is in implementing it - and in remembering that I shouldn't ignore it when it's quiet, like it was with this.

Ah, a good point from Adelene!

Pia Iger: can this subconsciousness be called as intuition too? You can say you are very intuitive.
Pia Iger: by good at hearing it.
Adelene Dawner: That tracks well, yes.

The little voice is special.

Adelene Dawner: With that voice - it 'sounds like' a lot of the other communication I get from various parts of my brain. But the other parts are more persistent, and less inhibited - the poetry generator, for example, tends to spout random lines for no apparent reason, and the right thing to do is ignore those. When it has something good, it'll get persistent and keep 'telling me' 'till I write it down. This voice doesn't act like that. Every time it talks, I need to listen - it doesn't talk without a reason and it doesn't repeat itself.
Pia Iger: this voice is fleeting,
Adelene Dawner: mm.
Pia Iger: I guess that is why we need to pause or meditate, to quiet our mind and let this voice be heard, when it suddenly speaks up something crucial.
Adelene Dawner chuckles. "Mine isn't that patient."
Pia Iger: I did not follow, can you explain more?
Adelene Dawner: My 'little voice' pipes up whenever and wherever it happens to feel like it. Perhaps it knows that it can get away with doing so; I'll still hear it anyway. But I'd be pretty amazed if it actually waited 'till I was meditating.
Pia Iger: I was not saying that we hear them only during meditation. By keeping practice of meditation, our mind will be quieter most of time, when we are not doing meditation.
Adelene Dawner: mm.
Adelene Dawner yawns and notices that it's 11:15 pm... and that she only got 4 hours' sleep again last night.
Pia Iger: My confusion is usually I heard two opposite voices inside my mind, and I can't make up my mind which one to listen.
Adelene Dawner: Well, if you're able to actualy converse with those voices - I know I can - ask 'em 'why'. They'll sort themselves out.

I will try out this suggestion:)

Before we said goodbye, I asked Adelene permission to post this log. And thanks for her openness.