What follows are excerpts from a blog post of a woman who had completed the Landmark Forum two weeks earlier.
I still make the phone call every single day to tell my dad I love him. I have not missed one day. For 2 whole months now, once every day, I’ve called to say I love you.
There are so many days I don’t want to, or “I don’t feel like it.” There are so many days I want to be a victim and eat chocolate and hang out at the beach in the delusional, detached isolation I used to mistake for “meditation.”
When I declared 2 months ago that I’d make those phone calls, I didn’t really understand the scope of what I was doing, but as time goes by, I’m beginning to live the profundity of “throwing my hat over the wall,” as it were. I have no idea what my life is going to look like after a year of this. Saying I’ll be something (such as loving, generous, powerful, courageous, free) entails giving up the white-knuckle grip I’d much more comfortably continue having on my life. But my life at Christmas begged for me to stretch myself, and for once I am standing for the freedom of my family. For once it’s not about me. For once, I am the possibility of being power, love, and freedom–not just for me, but for everyone around me.
Making a committment like the I love you project has so far exploded me into a new realm of accountability for my own happiness. I stand for something, and my life expands. I am, and therefore I create. The phone call takes 2 minutes a day but the courage of creation it demands is bleeding into every other moment of who I am. Recently, I spontaneously dropped the dependence upon the ipod, and started practicing on my own for a couple days per week of my 5:30am daily morning yoga practices. I also got an Al-Anon sponsor whom I now call when I know I’m full of my own bullshit and I want somebody to tell me the truth. I can tell you more miracles about Landmark. I can tell you that on Valentine’s Day I got a card from my dad and it said “I love you” and that it’s the first card I remember getting from him ever. I can tell you about all the new protocols I have created at work and how I’m now at the cause in my job and my day flies by and I love to be there. I can tell you how tomorrow I start teaching a new yoga class, and that in April we’re planning to add a third to my schedule. I can tell you that I used to depend upon my face breaking out once a month like clock work, but that I’ve never seen my skin so clear. I can tell you that I feel like I see people for the very first time, every time I see them, and that I can’t ever remember being so calm.
When I complained to my seminar leader that Al-Anon didn’t fit with Landmark and I felt I was going insane, she told me to listen really carefully and consider that they were both saying the same thing. I get that now, that acceptance of everything is really how a powerful life starts. That I can’t create a thing until I get real with what is true. I can accept my dad’s alcoholism, and also stand for who he could be.
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