Subject: The night before From: InaRuth@aol.com Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1998 22:00:39 EDT

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Ina here:

It's the eve before the first weekend of the 2nd Boston Partnership course.  I
am, per usual, totally resistent to going.  It's one of my favorite rackets.
And part of me is unusually eager to begin this again.  It's like trying a new
taste and then liking it and wanting to try it again, but being afraid it
won't be as good.

I'm also noticing the beginings of what I call "completion behaviors" in the
group.  And I want to share this here and now.  I have noticed and
distinguished that as a course/program/part of life is about to end people
begin to do their "completion behavior".  It's an individual expression.  For
some people it's withdrawal, attack, nostalgia, a flurry of participation.  It
doesn't matter what.

My investment is not in the "community" but in the individuals (oh Lord, a
heretic).  To me there is not community without the wellbeing of the
individuals.  So I request people look at their current mindset about this
current course and see if there's a completion behavior running you.  Then
choose.  Don't care what you choose, just choose.

I, for one, am much more invested in individual than community.  It's a
personal thing.  I'm not against community.  The more into "The Gift" I'm
getting, the more I'm reminded of my communities in Dorchester and the South
End growing up.  I am aware that in my current life my communities don't have
the same kinds of bonds.  But I realize how essential my originating circles
of my childhood were to my health and wellbeing and am aware that those nets
are no longer there much.

I guess I look at it as transformation of an individual can lead to
transformation of a community.  I've seen it for decades at Landmark.  I still
meet people and discover that they've done this work because of someone I
introduced to the Training in 1980.  It's Individual/Community.

Hurt is an individual phenomenon - in general.  However, looking at post world
war II Germany or Japan, one realizes that there is hurt on the level of
community.  And I believe that hurt on the level of community is much more
incidious than hurt on the level of individual.  The devastation in German
post WWI and WWII, demonstrates hurt on the level of community, but as
"community" with no access to power on the level of individual.  It is only at
the level of individual that we as a community can transform anything.  The
dialouge of the field Partnership occurs at the level of individual(s).  One
cannot generate such as community.  Through individual, then community, as
Brian's recent e-mail about his company demonstrates.

So there's power in individual.  And Individual being community is a good
focal point for our conversations (any way you'd like to say it.)

So I say hurrah for the individual, the ego, and growth and development.  I do
not want to be alive if(when) they ever eradicte the "I".

love and kisses,
i

From InaRuth@aol.com Mon Aug 17 22:17:40 1998
>From InaRuth@aol.com  Mon Aug 17 22:17:40 1998
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