I am going back to the mountain. I am going to be gone for about a week starting tomorrow. I should show up electronically (email/LJ/IM) either Thursday or Friday, depending on when I want to come into work again. I am repeating the enneagram training I did last year. The last time was such a shock that I feel there is so much more information I can get if I am not sitting there with my mouth hanging open gibbering like an idiot.

This week I have been reflecting that I am in a very different place than I was a year ago at this time. It feels like a quantum leap. I have had two other years that have been quantum changes. One was 7th grade when I moved out of a bad school (the students were bad, the school was ok) to a private school. I learned it was ok to be myself. The change was amazing. I could actually talk to others and interact. The next change was the year after I graduated high school. I went from a kid that wore only concert t-shirts, jeans and Nike’s with plain boring hair and came home to watch TV every day to a person with purple (or red or bi-colored) hair, wore formal wear and rhinestones to class, went out dancing almost every night and had a large social circle and had real friends.

This quantum change has been mostly internal. I feel that I have tools in which to measure things about myself and record them so I can compare and contrast and grow. I think this has lead to a better understanding of myself and others. I feel things make more sense and I can see more clearly than before. I think I can better communicate by saying what needs to be said and by listening. I am willing to trust myself and find answers from within like never before. It is possible for me to leap into the abyss trusting that I can fly. I am willing to face pain and grief, live in it and know I will survive. I have found the value of Peace. I have learned what it is like to be quiet and not be depressed. I am willing to search for what is beyond what I can see in front of me. I have opened up access to the depths of my being and am not terrified by the darkness they hold (not that I am not scared, just that I don’t experience the “Don’t Go There” type of terror all the time anymore). I am willing to Look as I wasn’t before. I am more grounded, more myself. I am more Me and something I don’t recognize as Me at the same time. I am learning that I am more than anything I have ever understood before. I am more connected to people and more alone. I am More.

Last year, this training session started a chain reaction of change that has resulted in who I am today. I doubt that this repeat will cause anything like what happened before. I am hoping to get out of this what I was expecting to get out of it last year. Pretty much just information.