Moscow Training Introduction

We Won't Give a Dollar! The Victim and the Creator.

Alexandra Y., took part in a Lifespring training session in Russia.

This is a personal story of her experience...

The Lifespring session in Moscow lasted for five days. During these memorable five days, participants were given an opportunity to review and re-assess their entire lives. The program started by people getting on stage and holding a microphone for the first time in their lives, telling an audience of more than 200 strangers things they had never dared tell even their families. Adults wept and laughed like children. We embraced each other and felt a fondness and intimacy for totally unknown people as if they were our closest friends.

It was a training session in learning to live.

And life, as our trainer John Hanley explained to us, follows very definite laws.

One of these laws is that every moment of our life we have to make a choice. When the issue is an important one--say, to marry or not to marry--we usually make our decision consciously. However, in routine everyday life matters, a person often doesn't realize with what purpose he or she takes this or that step. They simply float with the current and become victims: victims of people, circumstances, and life itself.

Somewhere deep inside each individual there is a certain image, a vision of how various aspects of one's life should evolve. The closer our outer life is to our inner vision, the more we feel in harmony with ourselves, the more satisfaction we derive from life, and the happier we feel. For example, one's inner vision may enable someone to see themself as a great musician. If they actually take steps to achieve that goal, such as devoting days and nights to playing the violin, they will be happier than if they took up something that may be very interesting from the standpoint of the people around them, but does not correspond to their inner vision, such as spending days making political speeches.

In other words, whatever we do, we always choose one of two roles: that of a Victim or that of a Creator. Creators arrange their life themselves, subordinating circumstances to their inner vision. Victims, on the other hand, suppress their inner vision, submitting to circumstances. The Creator is happy, the Victim is not.

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