Our Christmas & New Years workshop was intensive, took far longer than 3 days regardless of our carefully planned program (there was a 70 page novel with information and everything), and by the end of it, no one wanted to go home.

I strongly recommend that everyone who was there start writing about it in as much detail as you can remember. Talk about your expectations when you came over, what you were worried about and what you hoped to get out of it. Tell us what you ended up getting out of it, if it was what you expected, if you missed anything important or are elated about all the unexpected process you made. Share your success stories, your experiences with the exercises and techniques we played with, your thoughts on meeting Angel and me, the issues you worked through and how that went, what was difficult and how you got through it. Tell stories and anecdotes of all the things you did with your friends and classmates, even if they are small or silly or a little weird. Give us your major (or minor) insights into this process, the "Oh hey I get this now!" and the "I had no idea I was missing x and that y was so important to me!" and the "I have made the decision to do a, b and c with my life!". And if someone else already wrote about it, no problem! Everyone has a different perspective, and we want to hear all of them.

I'm sure that over the next few days, everyone will slowly start to process the events of the past week(s). Whenever something pops up in your head, come over here and write about it. If you have pictures, post them here. The rest will want to know about it, and writing it down helps you remember and integrate the experience much better.

* Those who do have pictures/vids, please send them over to me as soon as possible. I"ll make a giant .zip with everything in it and make sure all our workshop attendees get a copy.

* As soon as we get this thread started a little, I'll share some of my own experiences of the last weeks.

* Those who haven't paid for the workshop yet: please do so. Workshop: E30. Dowsing rods: E30. We made quite some costs to accommodate so many guests and provide materials/booklets/art supplies. The one who payed for the mugs/paint, please let me know how much you spent so we can deduct it from your workshop fee. Dutch ppl: please wire the money to my bank account directly. International ppl: the donate button is fine, if you clearly mark it WORKSHOP or DOWSING RODS. If you feel you got a lot out of it, donations are welcome, a huge amount of work and energy went into this both for me and Angel.

Cool. Let's see. I'll probably forget most here, but let's get the basics down. I'll post anything else later on.

What I expected? Actually I wasn't sure. I saw the schedule, but we all knew Angel was going to mess with it. I was just focussed on meeting up with my friends and family. Having some good ol fun and make these some holidays to never forget. I'd say as far as those expectations go, I wasn't disappointed

As far as those people go... Well. I just love them to death. I had a hard time taking the train, and so I postponed leaving for as long as possible.
Initially I was worried I'd not get along with Kaiki much because I've always had some anxiety towards her for several reasons, especially with both her and I staying. But she was simply brilliant. Fun to hang around with, shares a similar stream of thought most of the time. Great and witty sense of humour, of course. And always ready to lend a hand or step up, even if she was physically exhausted from all the work.
It was curious when I met with Maarten and Jos. Together, we were the only guys in the workshop, and especially for them, this was a bit unsettling. But soon enough they were pulled in the fray and also had a very rich and interesting time. They both taught me a lot, and added a lot to the experience. Jos especially to me, because he is someone that reflects the strength, stability and support that I am looking for in myself, and so had taught me a lot.
I had already met with Enelya, Yvonne, Mel, Mari. I can say, without a doubt, they have all grown much stronger the past few months. Much more confident, and more in touch with themselves. Greatly improved in terms of getting over their own drama and so on... We got along great last time, and now, now that (almost?) all of us have our hearts online, we got so much closer together this time.
Luna and Casadei were both awesome, too. I grew very close to Luna in several ways, and got to share a lot of new experiences with her. And for sure, her Child-path attitude made for a lot of fun in the group and now, I can confidently say that the Child-path is indeed not to be underestimated. A lovely sight to behold. I had a difficult time with Casadei at first. She planned on staying at Enelya's due to the lack of Green belt. But she ended up staying at Ro's place anyway, for reasons that are more appropriate for herself to explain. These reasons caused jealousy towards both her and Angel, and I felt intimidated by Cas. Through that though, she showed me the way through some issues, so I'm grateful nevertheless. That aside, she's just as brilliant as the others. Outgoing, daring, and now also the only one I trust for getting me make-up.
all in all, the entire gang is simply awesome. Parts of me are still convinced I should've stayed and have shredded their airplane tickets.

That being said though, here's a few experiences.

First of all, I find it note-worthy to say how much I felt my emotions the past few days. I had more anger, more fear, jealousy, feeling intimidated, weak... I'm sure I lost so much weight because I cried my ass off. And I love it. I dealt with more emotional mess and structures than I have the past two months -- since last workshop. I was able to be aware of so many problems that control my life. Some I have already let go. Others I can keep working on. Past Lives, Cap/Cam-issues, impulsive lying, tapping into my core, OMNI Watch, basic energy work...
(that being said, I have the perfect story to depict an out of power A3M archetype through that Viking Past Life)

Currently I'm on the Strength path, with which Angel advised me to step away from leading or organising certain things, such as OMNI, though I plan on continuing writing up the stuff we find, like I originally discussed with Enelya. Instead though, I'll be full-fledged powerhouse, preferably (though I can still switch around... I'm versatile like that). Either on my team-mates to keep em safe, or the focal point of our work, clearing any 'problems' we come by.

Why suddenly step away from scouting and the like, and go straight into the middle of things? Part of it is due to this new path, Strength, which has a powerful inner 'beast' to complement the natural compassion and care. If you know Goku from DBZ, that's pretty much your image. But aside of that, a few days ago I was working on putting up various shields around Angel, for protective means. Luna mentioned how noisy my head was by doing so, it sounded like a lot was going on inside me while I was working on these protections. Angel commented on that, saying I might be more of a Shaper than a Senser. So with this I want to explore this Shaping side more often, along with the Shaping, to see how far I can go with it.
Ro already calls me 'sensing boy', a title that I'm starting to get proud of, so I'm curious how far I could go in Shaping.

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Something I definitely want to share is the make-up night. There will be pics coming later.
We went out shopping one day and ended up buying stuff for Luna and Kaiki. Later that day everyone got together and Rohaa announced a make-up night (I think that was just before New Year's midnight?).
I didn't escape. Cas was the make-up expert of the group, so she got to paint us all up, including me. I was horribly weirded out during the entire process. She showed me how to do the basics. Blush to brighten up my cheeks, dark green eyeliner, smoky green eyeshadow, and even topped it off with mascara. For one eye, so I got to do the other on my own. Respect to women who can do this in 2 minutes. It looked pretty good actually, and after a while I settled down and relaxed about it. With my spiky haircut I looked like Edward Cullen, but better.

It's amazing how this works for even straight guys, and as the song goes, the queers get all the chicks. If a guy can pull off make-up like this while still being very masculine in behaviour, women will be chasing you down to your house all day.

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As last time, going out for dinner and scanning out food that scans was fun, even if it took a while. We went to this place where you could just readily pick what you wanted and put it on a plate as you walk by the entire banquet. So people took out dowsing rods, or just gutscanned their food. Obviously, the food was great. Tasted delicious, though there was nothing special about it. I mean, it was an IKEA banquet. No big deal.
For other days, kaiki and I went to the Plus store across the street occasionally and just took whatever scanned. Really interesting, and I ate some things I never considered before. Like sweet raisin bread with chicken-curry spread and mashed banana on top. Or mixing my milk with orange juice and pineapple syrup.

We had a lot of giggles about all the food and how we just tried everything that scanned and it actually tasted pretty good. Luna even invented this sauce with beans, peanut butter and mustard. It didn't go with the fish that well, but it was a perfect dip for the potato chips.

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One evening, Luna wanted to tell Angel something, but wasn't sure what, or how she felt about it. Angel decided to tell her what she wanted to know, and whipped up this metaphor about how life is just a roller-coaster ride.

Short version:
"You get together with a few friends of yours and go inside. You decide to try all kinds of things, experience it all. The thrill of the free-fall, the scare of the haunted mansion, the fun with the mirrors. Nothing gets passed up. You spend the entire time with your friends and live for the experience.

Life is much like this. Before you go into this, you talk with some friends, decide what you want to do, and jump in. Maybe you decided to be lovers, or parent/kid, or even rivals or enemies. All of these are people that, to a higher level, you really trust. No-one would let others hurt them if they wouldn't entrust them their very lives. You all got in life to experience it all, the fear, the thrill, the fun. With people you know and care for. Even though you may, at this time, not realise it.

So, like with rollercoasters, don't take life too seriously. It's all about having fun while doing it all. But do be serious about it by paying attention to every little detail. You wouldn't have fun during the ride if you were blind to see it all, or mute to scream in joy/thrill.

And afterwards, you get together again, step out of the ride. You talk, you laugh about what happened. Maybe have a drink in between. And then decide what the next ride will be.

So don't take life too seriously. It's just a ride. One of so many."

It's just something I wanted to write down before I forgot. Because somehow it takes away your fear a little of making the wrong decisions, or being distrusting towards the people I know. Makes you able to let life just... roll on.

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Right afterwards, Angel read a section of The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran (read).
He read up till the end of 'About Love'. I had read it before, and I thought it was nice, but didn't really understand it. But this time, it just hit something. Made me realise for a second that there really is no control in love. You let yourself get washed away to really live it. Maybe it's because of the energy Angel put in it (he doesn't just understand the concept Kahlil talks about, he actually feels like the love described there, for obvious reasons), or because of my heart being online now... probably both... But it was simply beautiful. It got me a little overwhelmed. It was worth staying up so darn late.

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Of course there's also the physical contact with all the people there. The first day was still a bit awkward about it, but soon enough we just randomly got close, hugged, grouphugged, poked, chased each other, and so on. Sensual dancing (or something that was supposed to look like it) during the new years eve.

People are totally freaked out about touching and being close, even when caring for eachother. The other day, I read in a newspaper that 53% of Dutch people prefer a handshake rather than a kiss or hug during the New Year midnight hour. During new year. HATE HUGS. DURING NEW YEAR.
While it adds so much more to daily life. I def recommend it to everyone.

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Ill come up with more later, this is taking too long.
note to self: talk about finding own truth and the Freeman Perspective

My experience with the workshop was, in short, a big turn-around for me.

Before I went to the workshop I thought I was bad at sensing, I thought life sucked and it was all meaningless and I felt lonely and sad, wanting to hide away under my bed. Yes, I was in one of those periods that pop up from time to time and without a doubt every year around Christmas and New Year's. I was afraid I'd end up alone in my life and live like a robot if I continued with EP, so I was hesitant.

I'm glad I let you all talk me into coming.

I got to get rid of the lonely and (most of) the sad, I got to hug people, I got to find my inner strength and I am very proud of being Galadriel. I know now that I will never be alone because that is not part of my core.
Next to that, I learned that even though I'm afraid of all the love and the hugging and touching, it comes very natural to me, and I am on my way to stop fearing it now.
It was great to actually be able to say to people "I love you" and not having to worry about meaning it or not. Because I meant it, and I didn't have to put in any effort at all.
I'm also glad to have learned that I do pick up a lot of things from people and that those are the ones that smack me like a hammer. My own feelings do not wave over me at all, they gently sneak up on me and only whack me if I continue to ignore them. I've learned a lot about sensing, and am learning to distinguish between what I pick up from others, and what is my own.

I also learned a great deal of fun tricks and I liked the creative parts of the workshop as well.
I think the most fun was to scan what food you needed and end up with the strangest combinations. I appeared to need a lot of cheese (even different kinds in one day) whereas I always thought I needed LESS cheese. Probably where the lack of it came from...

But most of all I was glad to be able to interact with everyone and not only learn, but also help others in their process. I love you guys, and I am glad to have spent these days with you.

I finally feel happy with myself again.
Scared at times, and maybe a little freaked out ("Oh this is going too fast!") at others, but I know I have the power to pull through.

We started with finding an archetype for everyone’s core tone. If you can only keep 3 or 4 characteristics of yourself. Which ones would that be? Pick those characteristics and see which archetype fits into these characteristics. When you want to hold your core tone and name all the characteristics of this archetype you have forgotten the first characteristic when you think about the last one. That is why we use the archetype as a symbol for your core tone. This archetype got to have meaning to you.

Everyone had to name some characteristics that fit oneself. After this everyone did a scan on what characteristics fit the core of someone. After listing all these characteristics we picked an archetype. We used youtube to find scenes from movies to see if the energies were right. After finding an archetype we hold this archetype and see what the gut says. Ideally speaking the gut gets very happy. The mind may think this archetype is stupid or childish, but that doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that the gut understands it. Kaiki: st francis, epic: goko, Rohaa: ma’el, Luna: stitch, Yvonne: Quan Yin. Mari: Galadriel, Enelya: Obi-one, Jos: treebeard, Maarten: big smurf. Maarten replaced this archetype the same day or a day later. I cannot remember into which one.

Ideally we have to hold our archetype a few times a day for a few minutes for the next month or 2. After a while something sticks and we actually act like our archetype would do.

Find the archetype, hold the tone, reach the state.

This afternoon/evening mug painting is scheduled. We didn’t have any mugs or painting stuff, so we sent Maarten en Jos to go shopping. Mugs, paint, paintbrush and other stuff they scanned as necessary and useful. I am not that creative and it takes me some time to think about what to paint on the mug. So I already started thinking about what to paint on it when the boys went shopping for these stuff. A little while later the boys came back from shopping and we went over to Rohaa’s place.

On our way to Rohaa’s place we got some free newspapers from the station to make sure not the whole floor is painted, but only the mugs. When we got at Rohaa’s place I had to go to the bathroom and when I came back Kaiki had the dowsing rods and they were following me. They had asked for the most creative person in the group. The dowsing rods pointed at me. So I had to lead the mug painting. Well, this didn’t come as a surprise, even though I don’t consider myself as creative. I already thought about what to paint on it, so I was prepared. Coincidence? Probably not. I didn’t struggle and surrendered to what the dowsing rods “said”. I started explaining what to do and handing out the mugs to everyone.

This morning we worked on an archetype that fit our core. So I told them to paint their archetype on the mug. It doesn’t have to be the picture of the archetype, but it has to hold the energies of it. It was quite fun to explain this to the group. I had the feeling it quite fit into the day. During my explanation I used the word mug pretty often. Angel told me that I pronounced the word mug as muck. No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t get the pronunciation right. It got better though. Since then when I think about the word mug, I have to think about muck. That my pronunciation is not correct. It was quite funny though. Everyone understood what I was saying and that is the most important.

Everyone enjoyed painting their mug. Mari also painted a mug for Mel who wasn’t at the workshop. That night Angel baked the painted mugs, so the paint would stay on the mugs even when the mugs get cleaned. The next day the mugs were ready to drink from.

Mugs again - so you can make your own

Take your archetype – whoever that is – and put it into your guts. Be that character, and feel their energies. Yes, this does involve a bit of getting over yourself and stepping into power. This is the place that you want to paint from. Some people work better with colors and shapes, others will more illustration-like decoration. You can use brushes, or treat it like finger-painting. Do whatever scans for your archetype.

What this will do is put the energies of the archetype into the mug, so that whenever you use it you’re reminded of the energies you should be holding. Also, when you manip the energy of what you’re drinking, this can give you a bit of a template that you can match it to.

Karate

Rohaa, Buddha, Maarten, Epic, Kaiki and I went to the karate dojo after new year’s. We had a usual warmup – running laps, bouncing knee-raise things, sweeping kicks over another person’s arm, and the like. Then we had their new year’s special: 100 times thru one of their katas.

The forms were familiar to Ro, Buddha, and Maarten, since they go there regularly. The rest of us gave it a bit of a shot and had a collective moment of “I have no idea what I’m doing.” Ro encouraged us to watch the others and just mimic what they do. It became easier after that. I found that focusing on the breath – as in the collective breath of the room – helped me step into the rhythm of the katas. After each kata, there was a moment for a pause-breath – an opportunity we used to GCB.

I noticed partway thru that I really didn’t like looking at the blackbelts to see how I should be moving, tho the sensei was ok for a while. I watched Ro for the most part, which just *felt* better.

As we went through the katas, the reactions of the blackbelts were interesting. At around 40 repetitions, they started whining – energetically that is – “Oh this is so hard,” and the like. By around 60, they were starting to get angry and vamp off others. One of them got into a competition in speed with the sensei – one would go faster, then the other would try to outpace the first one. This just tired them out faster. Ro was only a little slower than them even. By the end, they were all angry and exhausted, even the sensei. We weren’t. Ro, Epic, and I even played a bit of tag to prove it to them. One of the blackbelts suggested we do 100 pushups since we weren’t tired. Another suggested that we weren’t tired because we hadn’t worked as hard. Ro said the difference was that we had more discipline.

Which comes back to the 3D’s: Decision, Discipline, Dedication.

When we got back to Ro’s place, Angel said we were all what he termed “energetically sweaty.” The way I understand that is somewhat like radiating, but a bit more solid/chunky/scattered. Grounding solves that issue, with 5 point grounding being recommended for quickest results.