Session 12: Living in True Self

Do you remember a time when you knew exactly who you were, what you wanted to be, and where your life was going? When you do something that isn’t healthy for you, or make a mistake, which part of you is it that recognizes the mistake? What part of you is it that holds the highest dreams and aspirations for your life? Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy (MBE) recognizes that part of you as your True Self. The ultimate goal of Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy (MBE) is to realize your True Self, and to live in it.

Facilitator Notes for Session 12: Living in True Self

PREPARATION
Read the Session 12 Course Materials, review the exercises listed in the chapter and try them at least once yourself prior to facilitating the group.
Practice presenting the materials in this session alone before facilitating the session so you will have a good idea of how long it will take you, given your own speaking and presentation style, to go over critical materials. Adjust by adding or leaving out materials as needed, but do not cut key concepts or Priority 1 exercises and activities if at all possible.

KEY CONCEPTS
(Key concepts are those concepts that are foundational principles of Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy, and must be covered in the session): Personal Truths; positive affirmations of personal truths; global thinking; external thinking; permanent thinking; radical acceptance; nature and the mindful body, and the power of intention

SECONDARY CONCEPTS
(Secondary concepts are those concepts that are not foundational, but that are important if the facilitator can work them into the session – otherwise students will read about them on their own in the reading assignments): Vision questing; the mirrored self, and Second Order Change

INTRODUCTION
This is the final session of the program. As an icebreaker exercise for this final session, ask participants to discuss what they’ve learned about their True Selves and how the course has helped them to live more fully in True Self. If you wish you may make this introductory discussion period longer than usual, as this is a sort of “wrapping things up” discussion in the Adjourning phase of group dynamics. Try not to spend more than ten minutes or so on this portion of the session.

SESSION 12 OUTLINE

12.0 Per Ardua ad Astra
Start the discussion here by asking volunteers to talk about what their own idea of True Self means, and what barriers might be keeping them from living in True Self. Can those barriers be removed by looking “beyond the mask?” In other words, maybe it’s not possible to be an astronaut, but think about what was fascinating to you about being an astronaut in the first place. Now ask yourself, “Is it possible to find those things in some other career path?”
Ultimately True Self is all about finding meaning. Discuss this with your students as they discover the meaning behind their own concepts of True Self.

12.1 Mindful Awareness of the True Self
Ask for volunteers to discuss whether or not they love themselves. If any say they do not, ask them to discuss what it would take for them to be able to do so. Occasionally during this part of the session I’ll have someone who says that they were taught that self-love is narcissistic. I generally point out to these people that narcissism is a personality disorder, but self-love is a sign of a healthy soul. Self-love doesn’t mean self-involvement or selfishness. Self-love means knowing yourself well enough that you are willing to share with others in positive and healthy ways. This is the opposite of narcissism.

12.2 Personal Truths
Introduce this discussion as a prologue to the My Personal Truths exercise. Have volunteers discuss some of their own personal truths.
EXERCISE: My Personal Truths PRIORITY 1
Have students complete this exercise in the group if possible. The idea behind this exercise is for your students to figure out what values they have that would help them to live in their True Selves. Think of these questions as looking for “CORE” values:
Connected: What values do I have that help me to feel connected to others? To nature? To myself?
Open: What values do I have that help me to be open and trusting with others? With nature? With myself?
Reflective: What values do I have that help me to be truthful and responsive (rather than reactive) to others? To nature? To myself?
Empathetic: What values do I have that help me to care about others? Nature? Myself?

12.3 Turning Negatives into Positives
Before doing the exercise that follows, discuss the definition of global, external, and permanent statements:
Global statements are statements that are true in all situations at all times. An example of a global thinking statement would be, “I am an unlovable person.”
External statements are statements in which your personal truth is derived from circumstances which are beyond your control; i.e., things external to you. An example of an external statement would be, “People treat me with disrespect.”
Permanent statements are statements that assume that this is the way things have always been, and this is the way they will always be. An example of a permanent statement would be, “I can’t help it, that’s just the way I am.”
After defining these terms for your students, have them go back over their Personal Truths exercise, looking for examples of global, external and personal statements. These will be re-framed in the following exercise.
EXERCISE: Positive Affirmations of My Personal Truths PRIORITY 1
In the first section of this exercise, students should re-frame any statements they had on the My Personal Truths exercise that were global, external, or permanent. If they didn’t have any, then they don’t have to do any re-frames. In that case, consider it a good thing that your students have come a long way during this course!
In the third section, “recurring themes” could be the number of global, external, or permanent statements present in the previous exercise, or any other thematic content. Finding these themes helps to live more fully in True Self by identifying the meaning to each individual’s life. The themes identified in the personal truths exercise indicate how a person feels about himself/herself.
The final section of the exercise is only necessary if students have listed any negative personal truths. In such a case, have them re-frame the statements to a more positive theme.

12.4 Radical Acceptance of the True Self
The topic that most often comes up in this section is described by the following sentence: “Healthy relationships do not require that we sacrifice who we really are for the sake of another.”
Ask your students if they have ever had to sacrifice their True Selves because of trying to live up to the expectations of other people. Radical acceptance of True Self means moving beyond what we think others want us to do or be so that we may become what we think we should be. While this can be an empowering experience, it can also be scary because such thinking requires us to take responsibility for our own lives instead of relying on others for our sense of self.
EXERCISE: What I See when I Look in the Mirror PRIORITY 2
When doing this exercise outdoors, I usually carry a hand-held mirror. Another interesting variation on this exercise can be done if you have access to a still pool of water on the site you’re using for your workshops. In such a case, you can have your students look at their reflections in the water instead of using a mirror.
When introducing this activity, don’t say too much about what sort of responses students are expected to write. Just tell them to describe what they see. The rest will be covered in the next section.

12.5 The Mirrored Self
After students have completed the What I See when I Look in the Mirror exercise, have them go back over their lists and note how many statements had to do with physical appearance, and how many had to do with their own inner experiences of themselves. Have students re-frame any negative statements about themselves into positive statements.
Have students discuss how physical appearance and inner experience are similar, how they are different, and how they are related to each other. The goal here is to move beyond physical appearance to inner experience by shifting the focus from external to internal.

12.6 Nature and the Mindful Body
For this section I share a story from my childhood: When my grandfather learned to shave, he used a straight razor. When it got dull, he simply sharpened it. When my father learned to shave, he had a razor with disposable blades. When the blade got dull, he tossed the blade away and replaced it with a new one. By the time I learned to shave, the entire razor was disposable, and when the blade got dull, I tossed the whole thing.
The average American produces 5 pounds of trash per day. This is nearly double what the average American produced in the 1960s, and the amount keeps going up in spite of recycling. We have a throwaway mentality. The moment something stops being useful we toss it in the trash without trying to fix it. What if this extends to a psychological level? Does this throwaway mentality extend to our relationships with others? Do we “give up” and kick people to the curb the moment they cease being useful to us? How many ways could this throwaway mentality impact how we see others and ourselves? Facilitate a discussion on this topic with your students.

12.7 Wise Mind and Communication
Introduce this topic by noting that the secret to successful communication involves asking two questions before having any conversation:

  1. What am I trying to accomplish by having this conversation?
  2. Is what I’m about to say going to accomplish that?
    I do a lot of marriage counseling. When couples come to me for such counseling, their answer to the first question is usually something like, “We want to have a happy marriage.”
    But if they’re quarreling all the time, is what they’re saying helping them to accomplish their goal of having a happy marriage? If such a couple admits that they’re fighting all the time, I usually ask them, “Is it more important to be right, or is it more important to get along with each other?”
    We can’t change others. We can only change ourselves. We can ask others to change, but if they refuse, then the only thing we can do at that point is to accept their decision, or accept that this isn’t a relationship that I need to be in.
    When we live in True Self, we live in Wise Mind. In Wise Mind we are free and confident enough to allow others to be themselves.
    If time permits, facilitate a discussion by having your students answer the two questions above. Use their answers to discuss the concepts covered in this section.

12.8 True Self and the Power of Intention
This section starts off by asking, “How many of your barriers to connection have to do with your own assumptions about the way things work in your life?”
If our happiness depends on the circumstances in which we find ourselves, then we can have our happiness taken away at any time, because we can’t always change the circumstances that life throws at us. If, however, our happiness depends on what we believe about those circumstances, then we can always be happy because we are always in control of what we believe.
For this section, facilitate a discussion on the following questions:

  1. “What is your intention?”
  2. “How will your intention help you to live more fully as your True Self?”
  3. “How will your intention help you to live more fully as your True Self?”
  4. “What assumptions have you been making in life that might be stopping you from being able to establish an intention and to live more fully as your True Self?”
    EXERCISE: What I Would Tell My Fairy Godmother PRIORITY 1
    This exercise is a variation of the Miracle Question of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy. The purpose of this exercise is to establish intention. In Solution-Focused Brief Therapy the Miracle Question usually takes the form of, “If you woke up tomorrow and a miracle had happened, and suddenly everything in your life was perfect, what would be different?”
    The answers your students give to the questions on this exercise help them to live more fully in True Self by establishing exactly what it is they’re trying to accomplish; i.e., by creating a solution or an intention.

12.9 Becoming the Fairy Godmother
After your students have competed the What I Would Tell My Fairy Godmother exercise, facilitate a discussion on the following questions:
Are there any answers on this exercise that are beyond your own ability to change? Why or why not?

12.10 Killing the Goose
Facilitate a discussion with your students about their answers to the following questions:

  1. How much of your own personal happiness comes from things?
  2. How much of your own personal happiness comes from your relationship with people?
  3. How much of your own personal happiness comes from your relationship with nature?
  4. How much of your own personal happiness comes from your relationship with yourself?

12.11 What’s Possible
Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia is a novel about a sustainable, environmentally sound society. What would living in such a society do for our state of wellbeing on both a physical and a mental level?
This section is a sort of “wrapping things up” in which I usually ask students to discuss what their vision of Ecotopia would be, and what sort of paradigm shift would be necessary in their own thinking and in the thinking of society in general order to make their vision of Ecotopia happen. Did any of the skills they learned during this course help? Would any of these skills facilitate such a paradigm shift?

12.12 Walking the Path
This is a “final thoughts” discussion. I usually ask students to describe how they might implement the skills learned from this program in their daily lives.

DISCUSSION PERIOD

At the one-hour mark, invite group participants to stay for the discussion period. Point out that the thirty-minute post-session discussion period is optional. Since this is the last session of the program, you may wish to use this time for final thoughts. You may also distribute an evaluation at this point to help you improve future workshops and to get feedback from your students. I usually use this discussion time for a final meet-and-greet and celebration party with refreshments.