What I Learned From The Art of Accomplishment Connection Course
Hey friends,
This week I finished The Art of Accomplishment Connection Course. Wow, it was powerful! I’m excited to share some of the revelations I experienced with you here.
The most signifiant takeaway wasn’t an intellectual understanding but a tangible feeling of my emotions. I realized I had never embraced such intensity. Meditation helped me recognize the raw sensations, but when emotions arose in daily life, I realized there had been resistance.
How did I encounter resistance without realizing it? For example, when anger arises during a conversation, I would feel so uncomfortable that I wanted to put a lid on it. I would tell myself I shouldn’t be feeling this, or it’s wrong to feel this.
The course created a safe environment for me to deeply experience emotions with others. The most helpful technique was to reset the body, such as by shaking or moving our feet. I guess the reason it helps is that it allows emotions to move through the body more fluidly; otherwise, they tend to get stuck in the body.
A fascinating thing was that I felt connected to my practice partners even though we just met for ten minutes. This was very different from my usual experience. I suppose the mind perceives others as different from us by default. It creates judgment out of fear and wants to protect us. But through vulnerable feelings we shared with each other, I saw the same struggle and happiness in another human being, which created deep sense of connection.
II.
I mentioned vulnerability. It’s one of the four states of mind called VIEW. Another one is wonder. It’s more of an active state than my usual passive one. If someone is not listening, I would feel offended. With wonder, I ask, “Wow, what is it that just triggered me?” The beautiful thing is that it’s not trying to change how I feel, but sheds a new light. It gets me out of my patterned response.
This is the central theme I learned: the place of resistance and discomfort is also the place I can grow. I always felt bad about judging others, but judgment can be a tool to understand ourselves. I’ll give an example.
One pattern that happens repeatedly is when I’m waiting in a line, I find myself judging people in front of me for taking a lot of time. This might happen in an airport security line where people have a lot of unpack from their bags, or in a checkout line where people have full baskets. Using this judgment as a tool, I notice it actually reflects my fear of being judged by others. For instance, in group conversations, I censor myself because I fear wasting others’ time without any contributions. Deep down, I think I worry that I’m not good enough, smart enough, or kind enough. I fear acting spontaneously will expose my flaws and others will reject me.
I used to get overly intellectual about this. I ask, why do I have such tendency? Why can’t I welcome more love? Why not just trust myself? These are again judgment. They bring out more shame which locks me in the same place. I learned that I could simply ask how I feel: What’s the difference between managing and then blaming myself versus just being the way I want to be? The latter feels less constricted, with more joy and ease.
III.
Often, I hesitate, like when speaking up in a group, fearing it might lead to disaster. I know it’s not true, but my body refuses to try it out. In a sense, I’m actually inviting what I’m afraid to feel.
In one exercise, we repeatedly asked each other, “What’s awesome about that?” There was nothing awesome about being afraid to speaking up and closing myself off, I thought. But as the exercise unfolded, my answer ended up in a place where I actually wanted to be.
I close myself up -> so I don’t need to interact with others -> I feel more safe -> I can be more of myself -> I don’t need to care about what other people think -> I can do what I want -> …
The outcome was like first-order negative and nth-order positive, but my unaware problem was that I always stopped myself before taking the first step, preventing me from being authentic and getting in touch with a deeper truth.
One might think this is about positivity. I see it more about possibility. Stepping out of usual frame of thinking opens up paths that we previously ignored. We don’t have to take the new path, of course, but seeing it gets us out of binary thinking and gives us freedom of choice.
IV.
Impartiality, another state of mind, was also very new to me. Meditation practice has helped me drop many agendas for myself (like now I can be more present), but the exercises opened up another layer of agenda I have for myself and others.
A major aspect is about my relationship with my mother. Through the course, I realized there was a feeling that I was never understood, heard, or trusted by her, and this belief has been self-reinforcing since my childhood. The more I believed that, the more I had an agenda to prove myself and wanted her to be different, so the more I wasn’t listening to her; the less empathetic I was, the more she resisted me; and the vicious cycle continued. It made me realize it was not completely her fault (I had a victim mentality), but I played a part too by not actively listening. Now, I’m not concerned about who is to blame anymore, but more about what I can do to have more empathy and not want me or her to be different.
I think the way the VIEW state of mind works is not by doing. I used to explain my mom’s behavior by her experiences and ignorance, which gave me empathy. It works intellectually, but this neurological pathway is never activated when I’m under threat. In the moment of emotional intensity, the rational brain is just offline. The kind of non-doing is to simply open up awareness and be with the other without trying. This needs practice, which I think is really how the course helped me in integration.
V.
The fourth session was the most intense for me, which was about empathy. I noticed myself letting my negativity out in full force. I used to be very cautious about showing pessimism to others, but that time I let my skepticism in my head all out:
“These all work great in the course, but won’t work in real life.”
“The world is not like this, where people can show their true authentic self.”
“We’ll fail miserably if we do these.”
And something magical happened when my practice partner held the space of openness: I got myself back soon.
Expressing my negative emotions used to be devastating because I thought my energy would destroy the other person (which in turn would destroy me), but my parter was full of wonder. This showed an outcome that was completely opposite of my belief. It also showed me that when I felt victimized, it’s more about my own inability to create space to hold the emotions and accept things as they are.
I feel there’s so much more to explore and learn from my feelings. Much of which I can’t fully articulate now. I want the process to unfold itself, rather than rush to answers. And I’d love to continue sharing this journey with you.
If there’s anything you’d like to share, feel free to comment, say hi on X, or leave anonymous feedback here.
Until next time,
Weichen