Victories

A couple of months ago I went to a Lilac inspiration meeting.
That was an experience in itself. Part of it is too private to share it here, and deeply intertwined with TTTH, but the big part was doing my first Bellydance public performance.

I was using my phone for the music and it didn't occur to me to ask anyone to take pictures, so I don't have any memento of the occasion. I redid my improvisation on Comptine d'une autre été and a new one on a string version of Sweet Dreams by a great German band called Eklipse.

It felt awesome to dance in front of other lilacs. Years ago I remember reading on a bellydance blog that to be a good dancer and a good teacher you have to have performance experience. I never really dismissed it, but I only actually understood the importance of it when I did my first performance. Those five minutes made me realise more things about me as a dancer than all the training sessions I've done in six years.

Funnily enough, it looks like my natural style as a dancer seems to be extremely serene and relaxed. Who knew?

Anyhoo, during the inspiration the HQ lilac chief told an experience related to the actual proof campaign. She said that when November came she didn't think she had had a lot of victories, so she decided to sit down, look back into her diary and write down anything she could consider a victory. She had a list of something like 35 victories.

I felt inspired and decided to go back home and immediately write down my list.

The importance of dialogue

This is something I wrote for a Discussion meeting I was supposed to moderate but I ended up not being able to attend. In rereading it, I found it not too shabby, so here it is. (nothing at all to do with the fact that it's already written).

Why is dialogue so important and how do we do it?

This is based on a wonderful article from November AOL, in which Peter Osborn (btw, who is this guy? He must be a bloody genius!) talks about the importance of dialogue.

Sensei stresses the importance of dialogue constantly. Whenever we are stuck or have problems with others, we are always encouraged to “create a dialogue” with them.

Old and New Year's Resolutions

Before writing my first entry for 2014, I went back to read what a wrote a year ago, to see if I had any victories to report (who am I kidding, I thought it would be easier to quote something else rather than writing an entirely original piece, but I know you love me anyway.)

I want to start with an apology for my lack of new posts in the past few weeks. I have been rather busy and then down with a stinking flu (I'm not really fully recovered yet).

That is still true, a year on. No posts for over a month and I am once again down with a stinking flu!
It's so nice to see certain things never change! (not).

I'm now going to go through the determinations. I'm quite annoyed I did not put them down as a nice bullet point list. What the heck was I thinking?

I'll sort it now.

Arrogance

Some time ago, Seleus republished on her blog Lotus Flower an article titled Mistaking Arrogance for confidence. I found it extremely interesting on a variety of levels and it made me think a lot.

Arrogance is something that has been ascribed to my character for my entire life. It caused me endless suffering, especially because the pattern is usually as follows. 
I am accused of being arrogant. I believe it, and start policing my thoughts and actions in a paranoid way. This is all for nought: people keep coming at me with accusations of being arrogant. All the while, these same people are surrounded by others, who get praised to no end and to me appear  completely full of it. So I get harshly criticised for being arrogant, my efforts completely ignored, and other people, displaying what to me looks as genuine arrogance, get praised instead of me. 
It used to drive me insane.

Actual Proof campaign

I can't believe how it didn't occur to me to write anything about our Actual Proof campaign.

D'oh!

This campaign started last year, and will finish on the 18th of November.

Quoting from the SGI website:

Tsunesaburo Makiguchi (front row, center) with Soka Kyoiku Gakkai members in Fukuoka, Kyushu, 1941

November 18 is the anniversary of the establishment of the Soka Gakkai.
Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, first president of the Soka Gakkai, and his disciple Josei Toda (second president) published the first in a series of writings outlining the system of soka, or value-creating pedagogy, on November 18, 1930, and this date marks the founding of the Soka Kyoiku Gakkai--the Society for Value-Creating Education. The word "soka," which was coined by Toda and Makiguchi, is a combination of Chinese characters meaning "create" and "value."
The group's aim was to reform the Japanese education system in order to foster the unique creative potential of every child, and this endeavor was further strengthened by the philosophy of Nichiren Buddhism which also stresses the vast untapped potential of every individual.