Friday, April 15, 2011

Happening to One Another

Game #3 was played yesterday.

Actually it was a pre—Game #3. We needed to do some preliminary team building yesterday so we created an interim process to accommodate that necessity.

This is an intense and powerful process I/we are bringing out of the moth balls (old New Horizons, pre-Anastasia going blind) into an updated form, the Climbing The Mountain of Awe Game.

We must proceed cautiously so we accomplish the awe we are after. And, avoid the pitfalls; diversity spawning polarization rather than transcending it.

It is a tricky affair to achieve this.

I am appreciating the power of our process as it derives from our old format, more and more.

So we had an interim Game #3 yesterday.

Today that experience (which was wonderfully successful) brought a quote to my mind.

From Eric Berne, M.D., the architect of Transactional Analysis, my home-base psychological modality of my psychotherapy practice, in “What Do You Say After You Say Hello?

Berne poses the book’s title question: “What do you say after you say hello?”

Answering his own question in the book’s introduction, Berne explains it thus:

This single question… “really contains within itself all the basic questions of human living and the fundamental problems of the social science.”

The answer to the question is essentially that after we say hello, we happen to one another.

“Happening to one another” means that we see the other person as a wonderful phenomenon.

Obviously this is not a high speed, internet –favorable activity.

Nonethess, if people did take the face-to-face time, slow down, even at a Starbucks, people possibly could happen to one another.

How could we not transcend the polarization that diversity can create, if we follow this path?

Berne illustrates his point, telling a little story about the genuine smile of the Fiji Islanders, “one of the rare jewels of the world.”

“It starts slowly. It illuminates the whole face... and it fades with secret slowness as it passes by."

Only the smiles of an “uncorrupted mother and infant greeting each other” compares,. Berne suggests.

(“What Do You Say After You Say Hello?’, Grove Press, pages 3 and 4.)

Our new GAME group team is developing this “happening to one another.”

We will reach awe, if we hold our course.

Maybe slowly. But certainly.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

I Had No Idea

More on our Climbing The Mountain Of Awe Game.


It’s a challenging process, this new GAME of our’s.

Only for the most dedicated peace-builders.

We have to concentrate on the intent; reaching the peak, collectively, of an experience of awe.


  • Win-win;
  • Synergy;
  • Thinking outside of the box on social action options.
I’ve been living the GAME as a lifestyle for close to thirty-five years.

So the methodology comes naturally to me. That is why I feel competent to offer myself as a guide for this climb.

Lorrie, my honorary daughter, has been living that climb, too, for more than a decade and a half.

For Sue and our other beginners at “playing the game”, it offers a new language and approach to collective peace-building.

So do you know what happened?

Of course, you don’t!

I discovered that I need to start pulling my three unpublished manuscripts out of the old storage chest as guidebooks.

Interesting, eh?

Even in not-final editing form, these three books (in progress, a very long time) explain in detail with, cutting edge perspectives, how you can, also, make the ascent.

Snake bite protection plans, the most special feature!

(Remember snake bite protection from early on when I was first telling you about preparing to climb the Mountain Of Awe?)

Information is now online on how to purchase a copy of your own signed, limited edition of the first of my three unpublished manuscripts:

On The Origins And Cure of Adrenalin Addictions

I had no idea people would be needing a copy of my guidebooks for themselves, At least not so soon.

How silly of me, especially with the caliber and the experience of climbers my leaders team have.

What fun lies ahead.

(Information on and the foundation quiz from book #3, “Exploring Your Dark Side: The Adventure Of A Lifetime,” can also be found online.)

Let’s see what will happen next as we climb our Mountain of Awe.

GAME #3. Thursday, April 14.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

“Climbing The Mountain Of Awe”

An interactive GAME of empowerment and transformation

Game #2.

We played our new GAME again last Thursday.

We are still rehearsing, but we are beginning to catch our stride.

Next step: beginning to develop a bi-weekly GAME group.

Already our GAME is becoming infectious, at least for me!  I am so grateful to my volunteers who are making this possible. And, following my lead.

Someday, I hope you will get a chance to play when we come to your area. We are developing a GAME team to work with me in doing the GAME. That means that maybe "someday" might not be so far away. 

Renewal of the GAME is probably the single best thing anyone could help me do.

I have felt almost completely cut off from a community where I could feel whole since I lost my eyesight.  My gratitude to my volunteers is immense.

Next week we add one new member, ZOP Sistah, Sandi.

If she wants to be on our team, she's in! 

She's got all the qualifications we are looking for in GAME team members; absolutely -- reliably -- true to those first four pledges of our ten (six more to post when the time is right).  And, plenty of chutzpah to go along with it.

That's my Sandi; kindness, generosity, courage and endurance, for starters.

Someday, hopefully, this GAME team will be so adept that I -- Anastasia The Storyteller -- can become obsolete.

More to come.

Anastasia
Today the weeping cherry is in bloom and the magnolia is heading that way.
Forsythia, too, but I don't really like it very well.