Staffing "Awakened Heart" (Part 2)

[Originally written in Hebrew on Fri. Oct. 22].

This weekend I am volunteering as a staff member in the program 'Awakened Heart," the fourth weekend program on the Shambhala Warrior training. In this program you learn to listen to the heart and feel it, beating, sensitive, vulnerable and courageous.
When I first participated in the program it was a very emotional experience for me. I think I also cried a little. A good kind of healthy cry. And I really felt my heart and started noticing it more. What happens to it in different situations, how the body and the heart respond to things around, and to internal things. I started noticing its beatings, and to times it's very quiet, but still there, very busy with pumping enough blood so I will live. I don't know if I thought of all this at the time. But I felt. I experienced. I experienced the feeling of being a person with a beating heart. And to look at that.

There were more emotional and mental things that happened in that program, but you can't express them in words. These programs are very centered in the personal experience. So for each person it's a bit different, even though there are definitly things that are common among the participants.

So this weekend I am volunteering. I will help the team of people who are on the spiritual path I am on, friends for the road, as they say, sangha, community, in order to help others look deeply at the sensitivity and courage of our beating heart. When you volunteer, you also learn a lot from the experience. It is a meditative act in itself. Because while you staff the program, the awareness to yourself and others is very high, and there is a great aspiration to be very very good to others and yourself, to be of benefit, and to be kind. And then it's possible to experience this kindness within you and within others. That feels very warm. Like a warm welcoming home.

In general, this program includes- talks, a lot of sitting meditation (this is the time in which participants are reflecting, feel and experience a lot), and there is also walking meditation (sometimes even outside, in the middle of Manhattan!) and sometimes some contemplation activities. As volunteers, we prepare the food (fruits and vegtables, crackers, cheese, cookies and cakes, coffee and tea), and we also escort the participants to their interviews and meditate in between. We can listen to the talks , meditate with the group and participate in discussions.
So maybe this gives you some idea about the program. Perhaps I can add a picture here later =)

Love,
Yael