“Original Elite” —Mss Study Group Class Part One -- Culminates With Life Saving Success!

Also read:  Anastasia Commenting On Taylor: "I Was Afraid She Was Going To Kill Herself"

We are amazing!

Pandemic syndrome symptoms plaguing you?

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Feeling agitated, driven by fear and urgency, mental fogginess, lack of motivation, unfinished – not yet even begun -- GRIEF healing -- resentment, isolation- threatened by civic unrest and violence and on and on – in the era of the pandemic and Trump?

Consider this ...

Taylor (not her real name), a long-term NH/ZOP Board and community member, was still, three years after, struggling to manage and heal from one of the Northern California wildfires of 2018 that had consumed her home, leaving only a pile of ashes where the marriage and family life she had once worked so diligently to create, were also part of the rubble. 

Emotional devastation, hopelessness, despair and suicidal ideation were never far from her mind.

In February, 2020, just weeks before covid-19 pandemic lockdowns was mandated, I, unknowing of what lay ahead, set out to guide Taylor through Part 1/10 of my unpublished Random House Trilogy  to help her save her life.

My belief was that if I could teach her to healthfully deal with her intense, survival-driven emotions and acting out behaviors, I thought I could help her turn her life around.

FYI: Thinking clearly about emotions, especially those telated to survival threats, real or imagined, generally feels as life-threatening as emotions can be!

Often they are experienced as terrifying, to be avoided, minimized, denied or repressed. Anything to get away from them.

Learning to " think about these feelings, feel the truth of what you are thinking and manage them effectively was quite the challenge I hoped to help Taylor surmount.

When we began, Taylor could do none of this.

Actually, as a pandemic survivor, you too probably already know about this difficulty yourself, and/or are learnng, more or less effectivly, that living under constant concerns for survival, as people are doing world-wide, can be pretty terrifying for real.

So how do YOU or I manage it?

Especially when the imminent threat is gone but you still feel TERRIFIED, as did Taylor for three, long, harrowimg years.

Almost FROZEN with fear, confusion and anguish!

Now, the NH ZOP Board Members who made up this "Original, Elite Mss Study Group" with Taylor are celebrating and, alongside her, developing skill in this area. 

Mastery will still take time. 

Imagine how incredibly life changing this has been for all of us!

Especially these past eighteen months!

That's also the story about how we came to title one of our next important initiatives, The Mindful Cult Of GRAD.

It was those feelings: fear, terror, loss, abandonment and rage for starters -- that seemed most apt to derail Tayloe.

And, of course, that same bundle of hard to manage, pandemic-evoked emotions challenges most of us.

Now -- get this -Taylor ASSURES ME - eighteen months after her having completed what I intended to be only a  five or six week class/study group that continued for all the eighteen months of the pandemic -- We Won!!

Begun just !! two weeks prior to our initial covid-19 pandemic lockdown March 16 -- the combination of this class and our twice weekly Pandemic Survivors Support Group, NOT ONLY SAVED Taylor's Life-- as I set out to do, but additionally, with her diligence, courage and trust in me, built on our 31 year!! relationship -- I was able to succesfully guide her to put her life on a path of ascending to BE and DO her best possible.

And, to even learn to enjoy life again.

WOW!! 

All that during the pandemic as we, along with everyone else is and was fighting to come through severe adversity.

So, as of last Friday -- 

I am pleased and proud to announce I graduated Compassionate Warrior Woman In Training, My Taylor!!

Look for details on how you, too, can now qualify for participation in the NH/ZOP Mss Study Group Class, Part II, beginning this week, Friday, September 3, 10 a.m. to noon.

For additional information on our Mss Study Groups/Classes and other projects, contact us at: MountainWomanRJ@aol.com.

More to come.

If A Mindful Cult (Of GRAD) Can Exist, We Are It!

Answer, Short Form: 
With a lot of help from our friends.

Coming Soon!

But Where Are The Men?

And, if we be "IT," we want you to know all about us and how you, too, can find your way out of the "dark." 

Be it the Mindless Cult of --Trump OOPS!!! -- my bad -- I meant the Cult of the Dark Side, the darkness of the pandemic, or the darkness within yourself, we've got a method for moving beyond.

Check us out. Here's a place to start --

 "How Did We Get Here, Part I?" 

More to come.

Can The Word "Cult" Be Used Other Than Referencing "Dark" Doings

Update in progress (9.27.21)

My answer is YES! 

My NH ZOP Board Members, on the other hand, aren't quite so sure. Their same reservation goes for my use of the word "counterculture."

"Expect pushback, says Taylor, if you are going to be using those words in hopes the general public will grasp the uniqueness and awesomeness of what we have been doing for decades and are doing now."

Wikipedia suggests scholars consider both these words, cult and counterculture, various usages to be controversial. I am aware of the potential -- and -- remain undaunted.  I am choose to use these words to provocatively make our anti-dark side project a bit noisier than its been for awhile -- and -- noticeable!

To Taylor I respond -- "Simply asked, Taylor, do you think I would be going to all the trouble I am presently, if I didn't want to be noticed! 

That's my "new gig," so to speak, I tell her, redirecting "My authentic self is invisible to the naked eye -- and I'm going to keep it that way!!!" script and survival script -- as per GRAD theory -- I've been living onto a new path.

Script-free! And, believe me I've earned this accolade!

So there you have it!

My board members and I discuss the issues at hand here. We will want to explore the subject further, more in-depth and offer our various rationales for using these words or not. 

Herein lies the potential for an enlightening conversation and we dig in to it energetically, assured that each one's view will be respected. If cult-like can be used to describe the passion of our discussion, we are certainly displaying its positive attributes.

Here's another angle in favor of my use of the word.

A cult can refer to a group of followers or supporters who are highly dedicated -- we are that!! -- to a piece of artwork.

Yes! What we are doing through our Mindful Cult of GRAD is a work of art!

I think this is what I hold as a vision for our community-based, beautifully crafted approach to how to fix what presently ails our country and the folks that comprise it by creating and working to sustain small "zones of peace" through our various projects and programs. 

One further comment. Then I rest my case:

Most commonly, according to wikipedia, a cult is a social group typically defined by its unusual .. philosophical beliefs, or by its common interest in a particular ...goal. 

Well, we certainly are that a group defined by a most unusual perspective:

Trust in one another and in our group to each have the "courage" to keep talking truth to power, truth to one another.

The words which we find most commonality are --

Affliliation, movement and group

Amy Ryan (2000) has argued for the need to differentiate those groups that may be dangerous from groups that are more benign.^[15] Ryan notes the sharp differences between definitions offered by cult opponents, who tend to focus on negative characteristics, and those offered by sociologists, who aim to create definitions that are value-free. The movements themselves may have different definitions of religion as well.^[16

End of subject.

We are to be: The Mindful Cult of GRAD and proud to be!

But What Is The Cult Of GRAD?

Also see: Work (Mostly)  From Home -- With Anastasia

And how can it help YOU stand up to the Dark Side?

You will want to know -- and - we will want to "tell" you more of the awe of our adventure, as I've (Anastasia) lived it, along with many of my students and supporters. My new book in progress, Camelot Disrupted: Book One, Lost Hope Regained, due out Fall, 2022, will take you on a fantasy adventure of what it means and is like to devise a life path based on the principles of GRAD.

But alas, our adventure cannot be known by the mere "telling -- and -- even in fantasy, the story can not be told in full of the living it, until the book is ready. Still the real deal is known through the DOING, the experience, the living it, the BEING it.

This is our challenge here -- how to translate, for your understanding, transforming experiences on the level of the body, the mind and the spirit.

We are contemplating the subject of it now.

That's why I'm writing this, worrying some about the doing of the description, Mindful Cult of GRAD.

3:30 a.m. Sunday morning.

11:30 a.m. Sunday morning

I am standing back, looking at the complexity of the topic here and considering options about how best, now, to use this blog site to meet unfolding objectives. 

Maybe one or both of my/our Blog Talk Radio shows?  

In online discussions you can join?

With myself and what NH ZOP has now defined as our permanent Council Of Elders? 

(Meaning those of us on our Board of Directors who made it through the pandemic year past (one, Lisa Boyer, now deceased from ovarian cancer)?

In an almost miraculous fete of collective resilience, support, love and transformation, given the circumstances of each one of us and the pandemic, as our backdrop. we are here now to pass on the gifts.  

The principles of our GRAD theory practiced in the exceptional community approach that has gotten our small group of NH/ZOP dedicated members through our pandemic ordeal are a remarkable example of people working together, body, mind and spirit, to survive as winners through our pandemic ordeal.

We wish we could make it easy to follow us. We will definitely keep trying because we know that what we discovered through the pandemic, in the amazing way we have been able to manage it is something you are likely to want too, for your own.

You just keep reading. We;ll keep writing and soon speaking out more. After awhile we'll find our ways to one another, if we're going the same direction -- with a dedication to truth telling and truth listening at our basr.

More to come.