Feeling Set Up to Fail
I did a level five and felt completely messed with. It is called "the dance between surrender and control," but the emphasis is much more on "everyone needs to learn surrender to awkward surprises" than that everyone needs to learn when to surrender and when to control. I don't think I learned a single thing about how to control the many awkward surprises my entire life has been full of and since life throws me curve balls and confusion experiences every day I did not feel I needed to pay to have people who said they loved me make me more uncomfortable by asking me what I wanted, then doing the opposite in a bunch of different ways.
Questions: What is it healthy to surrender to? The HAI facilitators are not surrendering to my request for an apology. They are not surrendering to my request for a mediator. They are not surrendering to my request that they hear what I have to say. They are not surrendering to my request that they hire competent experts in trauma, business and non-profit ethics to review the large data-base of e-mails, recordings and the 10 hour session with Peter Sandhill and make the suggestions of those licensed experts public, along with how HAI will change. They did not surrender to similar requests fifteen years ago to increase team safety. If the facilitators did say "yes" to these requests would HAI be a more informed, safe and ethical place to work and teach for all concerned? If participants who say "I'm not ready to talk right now - let someone else go," are told "Practice surrender" are they safer. Or are they learning to follow an authority over their own inner sense of boundaries and readiness. The key in knowing when to control more or to surrender more is evaluating the future that comes from the given path of action, relative to one's values.
Concern: The HAI facilitator body seems to have an unhealthy bias against healthy boundaries and control in some areas, which is reflected in a workshop that basically invites people to say "yes" to facilitator curve balls. Clearly the facilitators don't think this is a good idea for themselves or they would practice handling the many curve balls that would erupt for themselves if they would throw the HAI level five script away (their script of surrender is meticulously followed) and learn how irritating it is when participants don't want to take lunch on time and all the many things facilitators count on to make their lives easier. The facilitators could surrender to seeing how much the participants wanted to pay for level five. Since there is as much unhealthy surrender (people going along with things like burning millions of Jews) in this world as people being unhealthily controlling (threatening children with shame and violence unless they conform to our culture) the real key does not seem to be practicing following the facilitator script, but knowing when to surrender and when to control to achieve one's goals. If I surrendered to facilitator lies that none of what I say on this website "is a HAI issue," and will therefore be silenced in any way possible, no one would have a chance to learn about how to avoid being hurt by HAI's blind-spots and benefit from another person's life experience. Yet I don't think the world will be a safer place when victims of abuse are silenced by surrendering to shame and threats by their abuser.
Suing For Best Practices at HAI
