I’m attracted to TASA because of the focus on truth, peacefulness and creating a community-led Self-Governance system that brings men and women together in local communities to decide on the issues that affect those same local men and women. What a relief it is to find like-minded people that resonate with my belief systems, and feel that there is a better way to live than under the drudgery of power hungry elites bent on padding their own nests at the expense of the ordinary man and woman. I’m in!
As I become more involved in TASA it’s apparent that a small group of people have stepped up to help drive the vision of a fair and loving community-based system and while their enthusiasm is palpable, I’m hearing questions about what might be holding people back from getting involved further to increase the many working groups and committees needed to run a governance system and stand our four pillars with elections.
With a background in life-coaching, I notice something about this group of people that are leading the charge. They are people that are sure about who they are, prepared to challenge their fears head-on and not only do not fear change, but embrace it and drive it.
After a few hearty conversations with these men and women, the term Personal Self Governance is emerging and encapsulates this group of drivers and can go a way to explaining the hesitancy that they are observing within our Assemblies.
Personal Development is a term that has been around for a good fifty years now and a thousand books can be studied to explore the nuances of the subject. In a nutshell, personal development is about looking in the mirror and facing yourself. When you look at yourself in the mirror (figuratively or actually), there is nowhere to hide. You stop looking outside of yourself for answers and start looking introspectively. You stop making excuses, blaming and behaving like a victim. You start dealing with your ‘stuff’.
Once we start coming together as a connected community again, there will be someone that sparks a negative feeling within you through an action, word, opinion or even just hogging the spotlight. Sorry to say it, but that is your sh_t! It’s not them. In fact you can thank that man or woman for bringing to your attention the exact thing you have to work on right now, to self-govern yourself.
Each time you feel ‘triggered’, this is an unresolved ‘trauma’ in your past that you will benefit from addressing. And don’t think for a moment that there will be just one trigger. There will be many. Each time you are sitting in your Assembly and feeling like you don’thave anything worthwhile to say, that’s a trigger. You do have something worthwhile to say.
And we want to hear it. We want to hear all of the voices in our amazing Assemblies. Maybe you are worried about what people might think of you. Well what if, what someone else thinks of you not only doesn’t matter, it’s none of your damn business! Get up and say it. We want and need your voice.
The key is to take personal responsibility for those feelings and reactions and begin the work to resolve them. Oh and it is work. Hard work. Yet as I bring this subject up with my Local Assembly, there are half a dozen men and women describing a range of healing modalities that they practice. These are the processes that will allow us to heal those old emotional traumas. Reach out to your local healers.
To become truly self-governing, we all need to address our own triggers by taking responsibility for the feelings that arise and becoming self-aware of how we respond to triggers.
The amazing leaders that have stepped up are doing this work and it never ends. They have fears, they get triggered by other’s behaviours, they have moments of self doubt, but most of all they are mastering Personal Self-Governance. Now it’s your turn.
