How to Choose a Self-Growth Organization
What are the most important considerations about participating in a self-growth and self-empowerment organization? The following issues come to the surface:
Do I Feel Safe?
Self growth can be a painful journey because we often discover hidden issues that require painful acceptance and acknowledgment about ourselves and our participation in our personal and professional lives. Feeling safe requires that we understand other people have also experienced their painful journey and each of us can learn from one another by sharing our perceptions of our experiences. Feeling safe is also about finding the wisdom that comes from our painful experiences by integrating the negative experiences into positive wisdom.
Are the facilitators experienced in the process of allowing participants to self discover and resolve their issues without projecting their own values onto the participants' experience and perceptions? Is there an understanding about confidentiality and examples are not made on a "personal" level? Do facilitators have the ability to have "empathy" and understanding of the participants and realize that each person's perception is a powerful lesson unto itself?
Can all participants be heard and acknowledged not only by the facilitator, but also by all of the participants in a class environment? Are the participants prepared to understand that most conflicts result from what's heard, even more than what's said? Is the program organized to train participants how to discover spoken and implied control dramas from other participants and have a choice to reflect those control dramas in a healthy way and not own them on a personal basis?
Are participants allowed to express all of their feelings without anyone else acting out parenting and their own control dramas? Feeling safe is understanding the many levels that we are at risk, including the possibility of being spiritually wounded, emotionally hurt, intuitively compromised, mentally incapacitated, and physically numbed out. Feeling safe is also understanding that other people can project onto us at a subconscious level, and our purpose is to have the sensitivity to detect their effort and change the nature of their energy through our own dominion and domain.
Do I Feel Valued?
Feeling valued is discovering the power of learning to parent ourselves. Feeling valued is also understanding the value of becoming interdependent with ourselves and becoming less codependent with external sources and other people. Feeling valued is the ability to create our own self esteem and worth no matter what projections or opinions we receive from other people. Feeling valued is also the process of disconnecting our perceptions of our mother & father's judgment and behavior from the person of our mother and father. Feeling valued is about understanding that we were also a threat to our parents and that we were loved far more than their fearful control dramas would indicate. Feeling valued is understanding we are loved for our unique being. Our uniqueness is our "one of a kind" ability to express the will of our Creator in a way that no other human can or will. Feeling valued also comes from understanding the nature of our own pain and suffering and how those sacrifices transcend our beliefs into greater wisdom. Our capacity to value others for their personal sacrifices gives us permission to value ourselves and our sacrifices.
Feeling valued is understanding the nature of passion and compassion and how to express this masculine and feminine energy at many levels. Feeling valued is a process of feeling your own empowerment through the process of helping others to empower themselves. Valuing also comes from the ability to discover oneself through all living creations in the Divine Intelligence that created the All.
Feeling valued is understanding the nature of the human ego to feed itself through seeking approval and validation from others. This process creates control dramas that we play out with great intensity, especially with those whom we are emotionally invested. Feeling valued is a process of learning to listen and speak from your heart that truly allows others to own their own perceptions while giving yourself permission to own your perceptions which you have created from your life experiences. Feeling valued comes from the ability to love yourself out of believing you deserve to be loved, and therefore you become empowered to teach others to love themselves by modeling the process.
Valuing also comes from understanding the process of forgiveness by accepting rather than approving. Valuing comes from the ability to perceive oneself as the participant in the struggle of life as well as honoring the experience as the observer in the ego mode so we don't have to attach emotions to the experience. Valuing is the ability to be responsible for yourself and to others.