We must continuously remind one another and ourselves

The days on the mountain are flying by in record speed.  Due to this swiftness, they've begun merging into one fuzzy cloud where time is a sort of illusion and nothing is as relevant as the NOW.  While my schedule is full, I am happy to be filling these spaces with materials, ideas, lessons, thoughts, and concerns that I am truly interested in. 

I wake up early every morning, jump in the shower, get dressed, and rush out of my wooden home; often greeted by rolling hills of snow. The crisp morning air has proven to be friendlier than I had ever imagined it could;  part of that friendliness has come from my willingness to accept it for its beauty rather than reject it for its chill. I take some 300 footsteps to the common room where everyone gathers for our morning course. 

On one such morning, I entered the common room to find "Mind the Gap" on the projection screen. I thought to myself "how funny, I am waging an uphill battle in efforts to bring a continuous, daily practice of this idea into my life.  Mindfulness".  At 5 past 8, Nique, a  British teacher at IICD, began his lesson. He had chosen to focus on Expectations and Assumptions ,which, while relevant to my current reality and the realities that I will soon find myself in touch with, had an important relevance in my life prior to my arriving at IICD.  For the past 6 months I have been gathering thoughts/ideas/words/ pieces about assumptions in an effort to shed light on this man-made phenomena; the sometimes dangerous power and hold that assumptions can have on the mind and thought processes of human beings.  "Strange",  I thought, "What a refreshing way to start the day".  It was one of those intense moments in life where the relevance is undeniable and almost hard to label a coincidence.

A brief synopsis of the hour would remind us that, while many of our assumptions and expectations turn out to be true, it is those that are false that create challenges and problems for us.  The course touched on our need for an understanding of the inevitability of assumptions; that with this understanding we should "be willing to be wrong" in the face of those that prove to be false. 

Throughout the hour, I took some time to jot down a few of Niques side notes.  I thought it important to remember that "we choose how we react to every situation, and we can choose to react differently".  And also that we must always try to "Open our hearts and love ourselves"; that it is through this love that we find the capacity to love others in a healthy, pure, and positive way.  As the course ended, I felt light, and was excited for all of the promise that the day had to offer.

We must continuously remind one another and ourselves to exercise our minds, expand our narrow scale of thought, and learn about things that don't "appear" to directly effect us; those things that ,through learning, turn out to effect us much more than we could have possibly imagined prior to this necessary investigation. 

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