Feedback from the participants of the January 2016 courses in Malaysia:
Po:
I have the impression that I’ve been here for a month. And I can say I feel very different from what I was a month ago. Different both in my inner self and in my outer appearance. At the courses I seem to become kinder, calmer and tenderer. My estrangement from other people dropped and my tenderness increased.
When I arrived at the courses, I was obsessed with anxiety about my job. It seemed total nightmare to me because of my problems with the General Director. At the first day of the courses I was haunted by all that terrific problems with my job, but today I was going to a cafe and could not remember what awful problems I had at all. I watched the situation from far away distance and saw that I had one fault in my work, but no serious problems. It’s incredible, stunning to me, especially if consider the fact that I didn’t do much practice – only 5 exercises from those we were trained at the courses.
When I came to the courses the theme with my job seemed very heavy, constantly poisoning and the most important in my life. And though I didn’t do any over-efforts in this theme it lost its importance. Now I want to take another hurting and obsessive problem and undermine it without any hurry, like I did with my job problem.
Jay:
I am so glad that Bo and the refugees have created the courses! It’s super cool to communicate with them, to discuss the Selection and try to practice it all day long during 3 weeks.
Thanks to the courses everyone has much more personal contacts with each other, and that’s cool too. And Bodh constantly advises us to communicate more, to look for mutual wishes. I personally, after a long isolation and lack of social interaction felt a great move in this theme.
I have friends who are friendly with me. I communicate with people whom I never talked before. All this makes my life much richer, reduces the tiresome feeling of loneliness and background of negative emotions, which this feeling produces.
I like the very format of the courses – it is so infinitely far away from ordinary “lessons”, yet they are lessons indeed, but you go there with a distinct anticipation. I like the lessons taught by Bo and Elka, where you can chat with them in a friendly atmosphere, try different exercises, laugh a lot and do what you want – climb onto the table, lie on the floor, come and go at any time, ask whatever you want. I noticed some definite changes at the very 1st course:
– Any activities in line with the Selection, replacement of perceptions, their elimination, etc are just a way to accumulate energy, a way to make the life more enjoyable. If I want to accumulate energy, if I want to change, to climb out of the rut, then it is expedient to do these practices.
– We were shown some spectacular examples illustrating how negative emotions really poison us, and hardly there are any situations where they would be appropriate to use, and how negative emotions kill the ability of rational thinking and assessing situations, how they destroy creative urges, make you stupid. After these demonstrations I began to notice in my everyday life, that my desire not to miss negative emotions, to stop them when they occur by inertia – has intensified, got some additional boost.
If it weren’t for the courses, it would be up in the air how soon I would start to change and do something with my life. Apparently, if you want some changes in your personality in line with the Selection, it’s just a fault not to go to these courses. It is virtually a rejection of the most powerful drive, ignoring the influence of professionals who are dab hands at what is described in the book – elimination of negative emotions and experiencing enlightened perceptions, generating desires, etc. I am already, much more confident in my own abilities. The Selection is no longer an overused tables of the covenant but an instrument to manage own perceptions. We are actually being taught to become engineers of our own perceptions – emotions, desires, interpretations, etc.
Liv:
Yesterday we did some practice at the courses, which would have a delayed result.
Well, I got the result, and it is absolutely amazing and incredible for me. A problem, which I was never able to resolve in my life, has been fixed at least for one day, as a result of 20-minute efforts. This problem is serious, with severe consequences, and, as they say in detergent ads, “No matter what I tried”. I never managed to solve it, at least efficiently and sustainably. Well, it was solved sometimes, accidentally, or through self-compulsion.
The practical tool that Bo gave us seems just a miracle. And I want to use it further in solving this problem, and to apply it to other areas of my life. I’m starting to feel the master of my life, not just a fallen leaf going wherever the wind blows. Moreover, I think I found the first subject for perceptions research.
Listoed:
I went to the courses without any special expectations, but now I consider them one of the most important events of my life. I advise to take them to anyone who is somehow interested in self-development, or who aren’t happy about their life more or less routine, filled with the same events, people and emotions repeated over and over again.
I don’t know how one can overstate the amount of knowledge, discoveries, changes and amazement that took place here with me. And most importantly, what I have experienced is certainly not limited to the three-week course, because I cannot wait to dive into my “normal” life to apply all that I learned. But the most significant thing for me has been a new level of intimacy with the company of “sympaths” – the most extraordinary people I’ve ever met.
Yonsey:
For me it is the coolest thing that the Selection came to be perceived as natural part of my life. I myself never had enough willpower or energy to break the habit of stewing in negative emotions and dullness. Now I have a lot of tools that I personally have tried many times at the courses and seen the result.
The desires to do some practice, to play a bit with my perceptions or make a small step towards changes is now perceived as something pleasant and natural like the desire to cuddle or read or run. Not as a necessary action to stop being a “bad person”, but as an endless adventure, a research which needs only myself and some friends to talk about practice. No need to be an enlightened warrior. I have a childhood feeling of breathtaking mystery: “What will come of all this?”
Po:
An important change after the courses – I got something I want to call “my own life”. When I remember this phrase I feel a deep viscous saturation and discern a number of background desires – to change myself, to accumulate energy, to delve into various topics, to read, to expand my knowledge.
Liv:
Apart from considering myself a normal person, the Courses gave me an absolutely necessary thing – feeling of not being helpless. Now, when I find myself in any unpleasant state, or notice a desire, I immediately have a swarm of solutions what to do with it. We were given these solutions for all the basic life situations. When the certainty “I am a bad person” arises – I just know what to do. When I begin to blame myself for some wish – I know how to stop accusation, I have an important motive. If I see a problem in my life – I know what set of measures to take. If I just feel miserable – I know how to understand what I dislike and I will have the ideas how to change it, or just the clarity of having such a problem. And even if I lie flat, without energy, submerged in negative emotions, even then I know how to come to life!
And all that is not just knowledge as information, but I already have some experience in application of this knowledge. That is, I have already formed at least minimal skills. It’s just as if you were learning, I do not know… to crochet – they showed you how to do it, examined how you have done all kinds of stitches and then left you and you continue to crochet on your own.
Feedback from the participants of the April 2016 courses in Nepal:
Evgeny Lobachev:
One of my discoveries at the Selection courses is about creativity. I always considered creativity to be the domain of geniuses, gifted people, that you can be either gifted or not gifted, and nothing will ever change your status. I was sure that I was not gifted. I don’t know why I had this belief, and I don’t remember since when, but I always avoided creative tasks, gave up without even trying to solve them, such tasks seemed something painful to me.
Now I’ve come to understand that creativity is available to anyone, simply because if you don’t fall into perfectionism, creativity can be shown in quite simple actions: figuring out how to improve something in your apartment, choosing matching clothes to make an outfit, or formulating your thoughts and writing a note like this one. There is some kind of joy from understanding that creativity is available to me. I want to “find and build the muscle” that is responsible for creative state, want to invent and solve creative problems.
Page:
Self-blame is perhaps my biggest problem. I’ve just finished the first part of the Selection Courses, and I already notice a change in the theme, more active attitude towards it.
Yes, at this moment I have some unpleasant displays. Now I can just accept the fact that in this particular moment I am such a person. It makes no sense to experience negative emotions about this, as there is no sense in any negative emotions at all (and never was). All that remains for me is to accept and recognize that now I am such a person and remove self-blame from my life. Further I may change such displays – or even may not change. But if I hate myself for my unpleasant displays – that won’t do any good. Feeling negative attitude towards myself for the unpleasant displays makes a vicious circle of hatred, that won’t make me happy, and won’t change anything in this world for the better.
Skvo:
One of the coolest themes for me at the Courses is training invulnerability – both to negative evaluations and to positive ones. It turns out that so far I have had a belief that I should experience negative emotions – self-blame, shame, feeling of inferiority, a sense of hopelessness – when it comes to my unpleasant displays. And if I don’t feel them, I must be an arrogant person who does not care about anything or anyone. But right now I feel like I am allowed not to experience these negative emotions and even told that they are not necessary at all and that they only kill me. That I need a completely different attitude towards myself.
I can quite easily generate a sphere of personal responsibility in which there is just me, and I am comfortable and interested with myself.
Efa:
Surprisingly, it’s only the second day of the Courses but I have an impression that they last for a week already. At 5pm I remembered some practice which we did at 11am and it seemed that we had done it a week ago – it was impossible to believe that it’s only been a few hours.
I have a lot of discoveries: that elimination of negative emotions is much easier than I thought before, that I am able to generate enlightened perceptions – it is not at all difficult, that I can at will induce pleasure in my body, I’m capable of it, and after several attempts it becomes still faster and more familiar. After the practices we did at the Courses I’ve shaken off a huge amount of negative emotions, and I now feel much more alive.
Yami:
It turns out that I am a complete stranger to myself. I live in the illusion that I’m pretty calm person with a relatively good life, everything is all right except some nuances, but in general I feel good.
Today I found myself with a terrible background state – “I don’t want to live”. It kills all desires and interests in me. Even if my efforts have some effect on me, I immediately rolled into anxiety and skeptics – “Everything is useless, I am already old anyway, I will die soon, what’s the good of this cosmetic repair in the form of efforts”.
For me it’s a deafening clarity, I didn’t realize how poor was my knowledge about myself, how destructive was the certainties I cultivated. Now I am dumbfounded of myself, and it doesn’t seem to feel gloomy.
It’s cool that it came out now. I don’t know yet what I’m gonna do with it, but the fact that it is no longer hidden opens up the opportunity to explore and change this; so far there was no such possibility.
The second day of the courses came to an end …