Disillusioning Dilemmas

"Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it...This will miraculously transform your whole life." Eckhart Tolle

Dirkx (2008) describes a process called "soul work", the "hard, messy, uncertain, ambiguous, and ill-structured process, with no pat strategies, methods, or specific models to guide the way (p. 66). This is referred to as "to awaken and attend to matters of the soul" (Dirkx, 2008, p. 75). This soul work, the deep, critically reflective act of questioning our own understanding of the world and the way it works, is the driving force behind transforming our whole lives.

Authors in this field of study often refer to disorienting or disillusioning dilemmas that shake us to our core and force us to look at our lives and our worlds from a completely different perspective. This concept brings me to my second posting. I will attempt to describe the moment that brought me to the picture of the window in the last blog...just how did I get there?

Disillusionment

We have all had many disillusioning or disorienting moments in our lives. Some have been small, some large, some surprising, and some earth-shaking. The disorienting dilemma I want to share does not fit any of those categories. This moment snuck up on me and surprised me in ways that would not become apparent for many years after.

A number of years ago I participated in a field study program in a Central American country; this program focused on sport and play as a means to develop sustained peace in a very challenging environment. Although there were many disorienting moments throughout this experience, it wasn't until much later, after returning home, that I started to recognize how this shift in my world really played out. This image, a picture of one of our buses bumping down a country road to a rural school, was the highest impact day our team experienced. I remember driving away from the school after working with the children, everyone with tears streaming down our cheeks. Nobody could put words to our experience. 

In a place where garbage and raw sewage spilled through yards and across roads, in a place where violence and poverty reign supreme, in a place where hope should have abandoned them all, it was in the eyes and laughter of these young children, playing and learning, that we all gazed into the flame of hope among the hopeless...as I reflect back to this day, to taking this picture of the bus in front of us as we pulled away from this remote place, I still feel the energy surge through my body. Hair on the back of my neck stands tall. My breath quickens. A lump forms in the back of my throat. This day was a defining moment that shifted my perception of my world and changed my stars forever.

In 2012, I stood up and grabbed hold of an opportunity; I said "yes", regardless of any fear that tried to block my progress. If I had not said yes to this opportunity my life would not be what it is today. I would not be the person I am. I would not be....In 2012, I thought I was going to Central America to teach. Little did I know, I came back to realize that I was there to learn. My friends who live in this place with little resources and who achieved such greatness taught me. They taught me about life, about love, about hope, about determination, and about privilege...something I would never take for granted again. These experiences resulted in great emotional outpouring; these emotional clues of my own transformation are referred to as "messengers of the soul" as Dirkx (2012) described (p 120). These emotional messengers were telling me something, something that I was not ready to hear until 2015....the moment before this window.

Leap forward four years from this image and I find myself sitting in front of that window, attending graduate studies, and searching for meaning. I remember telling my professor that "there MUST be more out there than just teaching people to learn new things?" Little did I know how true this question was.

Six years after this image, I look back on this day as a major turning point. Something was born within me on this day - I still can't put it into words. All I really know for certain is that the entire world looked very different after pulling away from this little country school. In face of deep disparity, I could see hope. Where I saw hope, I saw faith and love. 

"One of the first challenges is to awaken and attend to matters of the soul." (Dirkx, 2008, p 75)

References

Dirkx, J. (2008). Care of the self: Mythopoetic dimensions of professional preparation and development. In T. Leonard & P. Willis (Eds.), Pedagogies of the imagination: Mythopoetic curriculum in educational practice (pp. 65-83). New York, NY: Springer.

Dirkx, J. (2012). Nurturing soul work: A Jungian approach to transformative learning. In E. W. Taylor, P. Cranton & Associates (Eds.). The handbook of transformative learning (pp. 116-130). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.