* Process: Canoes, Rivers and Alignment

JW: Thoughts for this week's call revolve around process. Please add to this list if there's anything you think I should think about prior to tomorrow's call.

Title Signals: As we post more onto the blog, the likelihood that we will miss something important to each other grows. What if we had a title signal that was a flag that the writer would like a response? Maybe as simple as an * at the beginning? ... example this post and a one other I've flagged. The nice thing about this system is that if you look down the right column archive, you can see the * flag.

Reflection: Neither of us did any sort of recap on last Friday's call and now I can't remember what we talked about, only that it was another good conversation. I am volunteering to act as secretary and capture the essence as a post which can be commented on as desired. Will also change the "Fridays" heading to "Process" as a place to put info such as this one.

Parked: We've talked about having a place to capture things that flit through our minds so I created a heading "Flittings." We haven't used it so I changed it to "Parked" and I put the Wintering post there (although after reading the sample, I'm not as much taken with the book ... what you posted might be the best part of it). I have one in progress that might go there.

Canoes, rivers and alignment: We seem to have happened onto a rather unusual degree of alignment which, for me, is delightful and amazing. It is making this journey so much easier. However, I think it's worth talking about the possibly inherent hazard: valuing alignment over self development which could lead, IMHO, to a spiritually enlightened form of co-dependence.

After chewing on the idea of canoes and rivers for awhile now, I believe that we (I) need to think of this journey as two aligned canoes going down two parallel rivers. There's basically three ingredients: canoes (us), rivers (life), and alignment (the journey we've chosen to do together). All are critical ingredients.

In order to grow on this journey, I believe it's important for each of us to be pretty radically self-centered and to be just as radically open, honest and accepting even when it conflicts with perfect alignment. (And, I have very little idea of what this means or how to do it ... which is why I'd like to have it on the table for conversation, probably more frequently than either of us would be wont to do under normal circumstances.)