prompt: raising emotional experience in the third person
She didn’t want to be there. The first evening’s program felt like an assault. In 1981 a very young and very arrogant Tony Robbins was being introduced to Money and You center managers in Snowmass Colorado. She would have much preferred to be home with her children only 24 hours after an exciting very first European experience.
That had been a joyful, if scary, trip to the unknown. She had been invited to speak, alone, at a Special Fields Conference in Brighton in the UK. Jon had been to the UK as a child, but for her everything was new, from the beach covered with pebbles to navigating the European hotel. Being the featured speaker, traveling on a train with crowded compartments and learning, on a train leaving Belgium for Germany, that the index and middle fingers meant three not two and finally being invited to take two open seats instead of being refused seats they could plainly see were vacant.
There was so much to learn on that trip. In the partly coed European restroom in a train station where her German money was refused, and she couldn’t use the toilet until she was rescued by a friendly woman who gave the attendant something and told her go ahead. What a relief! Later she learned the attendant couldn’t change the large bill she had presented. Another huge relief was encountering Fanita English who took them under her wing and helpd them navigate their first European TA conference.
There was an incredible amount of excitement and love and support that conference. Having to leave home less than 24 hours after arriving for a meeting she didn’t want to attend was a real downer.
The summons had come shortly before they left for Europe. It’s a mandatory meeting! She been sucked into this position. Jon might’ve volunteered, caught up in the excitement of producing Money and You workshops, but after the first one which she enthusiastically supported she really wasn’t interested constantly enrolling new people for a workshop, no matter how much other people expected her to. After all it did interfere with the rest of her life and work.
Now, here they were! The task was to memorize a passage, “Until one is committed there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back: always ineffectiveness…” They were to join assigned groups to present the passage on stage to perhaps 100 other participants. The problem was memorization has never worked for her and Tony’s attempts to help/force, the issue with NLP was a disaster that left her in tears. She didn’t learn until later, the others had been given the passage two weeks before, while she was in Europe. After all she had not been home long enough to open any of her mail.
She wasn’t even sure what kind of training Marshall Thurber and DC and organized – just at the just that the trainers were Tai Chi Master, Tom Crum, and Marshall, and Tony Robbins. To add insult to injury, an upcoming firewalk had been announced with great fanfare! After her first successful but not enjoyable walk on hot coals, a few weeks before leaving for Europe, she thought she would never again need to participate in such a scary, dangerous activity.
At lunchtime the next day, another disaster. She was to wait in the car and join Jon and his group for lunch. Jet lagged, she fell asleep while waiting and when she woke up, she was alone and the site seemed deserted. Jon had gone off with the group which included his “special woman friend” from Canada and never even checked the car. She was devastated. They did have an open marriage at the time but choosing the other woman while she was present was not part of the deal!
She could never remember much of the next few hours. She did the firewalk. The next morning she finally found the courage to have a long delayed conversation with DC about her place in the group.
That meeting turned into something else entirely. DC not only explained the misunderstanding, she did so with such a profound loving acceptance that she pulled Laurie into a totally new spiritual space.
Tears filled most of the spaces between focused activities for the next two days that included one more, extra long, fire walk.