Sometimes I just don’t know what to say, how to write about an experience I’m having, or a thought I’m thinking, or a shift that’s happening at some deep level. I’m sure you can relate.
I’ve been thinking how to write about my experience with Newfield Network’s Foundations Course, and I confess I’ve been stymied for several days now.
I could tell you it was incredible, fabulous, amazing, deeply moving, great fun, meaningful, transformative, and wonderful. All of these adjectives would be true, but none of them would communicate the truth of it. I would only end up gushing, and that would do justice neither to the program, nor to you.
On the one hand I could say the experience was magical, and yes, that’s how it felt. On the other hand, however, it’s not that much of a mystery.
The Newfield approach proposes that learning is most enhanced when we are immersed in a community, experiencing ideas in an atmosphere of dignity, safety, and intellectual rigor, undergirded with music, movement, and fun. A good recipe, right? If we had formed a focus group around the question, “what would be the most powerful elements of a good learning environment?” we might have come up with these distinctions ourselves. It’s not that hard.
It’s just rare, unfortunately.
I’ve had the privilege of being empowered to accomplish a shift in my usual way of being, thanks to this magical mix of pretty good ideas. I’ve fallen in love with 100 people. I’ve hugged, kissed, danced, cried, wondered, risked, stretched, disclosed, empathized, agonized, laughed, and learned. And I am changed for good.
The reason it’s so hard to describe is that there’s nothing to compare it to. It’s not a retreat, a religious experience, a training course, a convention, a seminar, or a cult. It redefines learning, and moves it into the realm of deep change. I’ve witnessed the emergence of 100 souls, out of the usual and into the possible.
Leap learning.
And that’s just the program. As the days go by I’ll continue to try and put into words those things that were most profound inside my own mind and heart. These are always the most interesting, in my opinion. That’s where the tectonic plates are shifting, and that’s where the tricky part lies – trying to describe it.
Or maybe I’ll have to take a lesson from Mary the mother of Jesus, and just ponder these things in my heart.
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