Chapter 15: Holding the Page

December witnessed the grand opening of the new and vastly expanded Sacred Art Museum!

Guardian Meetings continued, with themes centering on mentoring, PaB practice themes, and
balancing wide focus and minute detail. Eliza stepped in for December to hold this Chronicles page.

Stevenaia and Wol offered much requested mentoring sessions to new guardians, which focused on
not only technical aspects of session log claiming and posting, but also on what it means to be a "Host"
within the context of a PaB session. 

2009.12.06 08:00 - Facilitation & Mentoring

2009.12.13 08:00 - Guarding the Space of Emergence

2009.12.20 08:00 - PaB Approach, Applied in an Open Way

2009.12.27 08:00 - Presence and a Felt Sense of Proximity

With these discussions came questions from new guardians which prompted
Pema to write to the email group, just before December:

"The Unity of Relative and Absolute"

Play as Being points to the unity of relative and absolute,
a topic that has come up a few times the last few days.

Seeing the world in a _relative_ way, we *play* in this whole
rich world of phenomena, with all its happiness and suffering.

Seeing the world in an _absolute_ way, we acknowledge *Being*
everywhere and everywhen as expressing Itself in phenomena.

Alas, the words "relative" and "absolute" can be quite
misleading; I don't mean "anything goes" and "rigid," on
the contrary, I mean "precision" and "openness."

Further:

How does "Play as Being" hold this tension?
And how do other approaches hold this tension?

Most other approaches start as "play as problem" followed by "find a
solution."  We firmly put ourselves at the center of the Universe,
identified solidly with all the problems we have: that's dressing up
having as being.  We then feel we *are* the problems: we are our anger,
our sorrow, our needs, we are a small and limited being in need of all
kinds of things that we expect to come from outside.

Play as Being goes the opposite direction.  We start with what we
really are, and of course, we don't really know what we really are,
so we start by acknowledging that we don't know.

Then we also acknowledge what we normally think we are, and we can
make a long list of what we identify with: our job, our money, our
status, our family relationships, our citizenship, our body, our mind.

Then the hard work begins: we investigate all that we normally consider
to be, and to see what among that is what we have.  Do I have a body?
Do I have a mind?  Doubting questions will pop up: "What could I possibly
be if not a body and mind, in some combination?"  The challenge is not to
jump to conclusions and say: yes, I'm a body with brain that produces mind
and that's it.  Such an answer closes the door to further investigation.

Rather the challenge is to try, as a hypothesis, that perhaps I am
something altogether different from anything I currently identify with,
even my body and my mind.

When we really center, during our 9-sec breaks, we can learn to see
more and more openness there, what we are, with all that we have then
receding as extra shells draped around that open center, obscuring it.

Let's try to get back to this most simple PaB exploration, this dropping
what we have to see what we are.  And no rush: this can be a practice for
a life time.

Theme Sessions this month were dynamic, ranging from "Ys, Es, Bs", to "Facilitation", to "Sustainability",
which prompted Pema to gather and post sessions on a current wiki page, and Storm to post future sessions
prominently on a bulletin board near the PaB playgoda.

PaB Theme Sessions

Eos Amaterasu: Facilitating has some quality of caring
Calvino Rabeni: In that sense, people may learn listening as a predecessor to applying it in facilitation
Calvino Rabeni: It very much does - compassion is a good word for it.
Eos Amaterasu: yes, a classic duo
Eos Amaterasu: openness / compassion
Calvino Rabeni: Holding what is, and helping it realize itself.

Genesis and Tarmel organized a PaB party in the Village "with virtual drinks, music, and just good old
hanging out interspersed with sessions at the pavilion."    

December Guardians

Geoff Baily and Zen Arado became guardians in December. Pila Mulligan left the group.

At the end of the month there were 66 guardians.

December Scribes

The scribes for December were Hana Furlough, Mickorod Renard, Fox Monacular, Calvino Rabeni,
Gaya Ethaniel, Arisia Vita, SophiaSharon Larnia, Eos Amaterasu, Corvuscorva Nightfire, and Eliza Madrigal