It was about the time I saw the video that I was asked to consider presenting classes about Vision Journals. I knew I'd found the experience of completing the Unity Project identifying statements for myself very useful, so I decided to contact the Unity Project for their materials, and modify the identifying statements (they encourage this, by the way) as a way for people who come to my classes to see we all have more in common than we might initially think.
Just below are the "Identifier" sheets I created for the class so you can print and fill them out for yourself. Tick off the statements that ring true for your perception of yourself. Under the next column, expand a little on your thoughts about that identifier. For example, for statements #9 "I consider myself to be political" and #10 "I don't like politics" - in the past I wouldn't have considered myself political, and I'm still pretty sure I don't like politics, but I'm finding it increasingly difficult to know where I stand on these identifiers. Current events seem to be pushing all of us to be "more political" than we once were, and we may be liking it even less. So consider these statements as they reflect who you are right now, and use the space next to the statement to go a bit deeper into your feelings.
One of the intriguing things about the Unity Project from my point of view was that people had a chance to add "I AM" statements to a blackboard to express aspects of themselves that might not have been covered in the initial identifying statements. Here's what the Unity Project blackboard looked like at the end of their experiment:
I've also created a sheet for you to print out and add your own "I AM" statements. I've also left a space on the sheet for you to write out some of the communities you belong to as well. There are some obvious LARGE communities we all belong to: human, biped, carbon-based life-forms, for example, but we each also belong to smaller subsets of communities: people who can't ride bicycles, people with long hair, people who are afraid of spiders, etc. Write out some of the less obvious communities you belong to and how that affects how you see yourself in the world.
For example, here's how I completed my "I Am & We Are" statements page ...
Give yourself some time to work through these pages. Come back and add as you work in your journal. Don't feel like you're pinning something down forever ~ you're thinking about how you are in this moment, but your attitudes and experience might change as time goes on.
No comments:
Post a Comment