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Inward Bound - Summary of Events
Keynote Value Options Affinity Groups Services Speakers Tent Social Closing Ceremony
Keynote Kick-Off
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Inward Bound kicked off with the multi-media keynote address by SKS Founder Augie Turak. The keynote wove together clips from American Beauty, Apocalypse Now, Fight Club, and The Matrix to both serve as inspiration heading into Inward Bound and to give people a taste of what to expect.
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Augie began with an electrifying story from an SKS meeting years ago where a student related how he had once found himself locked in an ice cream freezer and faced with certain death. As the student screamed and beat his arms against the door (ultimately breaking nearly every bone in his hands) there was only one thought running through his mind: "I'm dying, and I don't know if there's a God." After a miraculous, purely accidental escape through a newly installed emergency door, the student had only one desire: to answer the question he faced in that freezer.
Augie suggested that we are all looking for something real and authentic, perhaps something larger than ourselves—whether you call it the "still, small voice," or our higher Self, Truth, God, the Higher Power, etc. Like Neo in The Matrix or Ricky in American Beauty we sense that there is something more to life than, as T.S. Eliot once put it, "birth, copulation, and death."
Augie suggested that another way to express this is that we are looking for "intimacy" and "intensity"—intensity which gives us the sense that we're truly living life to its fullest and intimacy which gives us the sense that we're truly connected. But, as Augie put it, we are all like the boy in the freezer—"we're all still locked in the freezer of our own fears, rationalizations, games," and whatever else keeps us from living authentically and pursuing what's most important to us.
He went on to say that spiritual intimacy requires trust, and courage, and ultimately a willingness to "go first." Inward Bound was therefore an opportunity to pursue and experience that intimacy and intensity first-hand, and to participate in and experience the benefits of community. He went on to say that the most important thing was to take whatever you got out of Inward Bound, bring it home with you and do something with it...
Augie concluded the keynote by suggesting that the quest to live authentically, to seek intimacy and intensity, is "the greatest adventure, the most rewarding activity, the most beautiful experience, and the scariest g-d--mn thing you can do with your life."
The Value Options Game
The "Value Options" game, originally designed by IBM Executive School Founder Louis Mobley, was designed to shake up notions of oneself and one's deepest values. It does so by providing a context in which one articulates and then experientially discovers how important one's core values really are.
For Inward Bound, the Value Options game was designed to provide a high-energy transition toward the participant-focus of the conference, in which students would get to know one another, struggle to articulate their own values, and then to form their own small communities (or "affinity groups") of 14-18 people—including one facilitator with whom they would work closely over the three-day journey.
One of the most intriguing aspects of the Value Options game is that it models everyday life in that it forces us to work with others to accomplish something we care about (in this case, form a small community that we'll be with for the rest of the conference), while having to juggle our own values and those of our colleagues. As such, it has the opportunity to help us realize the ways in which we go about this personal negotiation—often unconsciously—in our everyday lives.
Here's how it worked:
Each student, educator, and facilitator randomly received a set of four Value Options cards. Each card contained a particular spiritual, religious, or philosophical value statement, such as: "I believe that most of life is up to us" or "Suffering in this life is a result of things done wrong in a previous life" or "God is something made up by human beings to comfort them" or "God is not outside, but rather within" AND all of the opposites. Obviously most people ended up with some cards they liked and some they didn't—so the first part of the game involved all 250+ people in the large reception hall trading their cards with one another in the attempt to acquire a hand that they felt best represented them. After the ground rules were laid out, chaos ensued, and the room quickly resembled the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
Once people had cards they were happy with (or could at least live with), the bigger challenge began: to find other students with similar values and form a small community of 12-15 students, plus one facilitator.
It was more of a challenge than you might expect. What if you can't find a group? What if a group says that your cards don't match everyone else's well enough? How far are you willing to compromise your own values to fit in? Students had to face these questions and make tough decisions, but in the end there were 15 groups and everyone had a group.
The groups then worked with their facilitators to come up with a group name and a group mission statement which reflected the identity and shared values upon which they had built their community. "Tragically, these mission statements, which were written out on large sheets of butcher paper, have since disappeared during the post-conference clean-up. We are offering a reward for any information leading to their recovery! Click here to send in a tip! ;) "
Affinity Groups and The Cup of Trembling
The core of the Inward Bound experience was designed around the "Affinity Groups" formed out of the Value Options game. Each group had one session together on Sunday, three sessions together on Monday, and one wrap-up session on Tuesday.
The theme for the Monday sessions was built around an article called "The Cup of Trembling." The "cup of trembling" is a metaphor for whatever prevents us from truly living our lives the way we want to. It could be a fear that needs to be overcome, a past experience that has to be accepted, an action that must be taken, a relationship that needs to be mended, a fact of life that must be faced, or perhaps something else. The small groups provided a place for the students to discuss the idea of the cup of trembling philosophically, and—more importantly—to explore, write about, and share what their own cups of trembling might be. The affinity groups were designed to be the place where students could let down with each other, examine their lives and values, practice and experience radical authenticity and self-honesty, and come to an appreciation for the importance and benefit of community in living a spiritual life.
Services
The purpose of the "services" (for lack of a better word) was to create a space at the beginning and end of each day for "tuning in" to the sacred/divine/stillness in a communal way. Each one was hosted by one of the guest speakers, some who represented religious traditions (eastern and western) and others who did not.
We've included brief highlights from each service:
Father Francis
The first service of the weekend was offered by Father Francis Kline, the Abbott of Mepkin Monastery and a Julliard-trained musician. Father Francis interwove traditional Catholic, Jewish, and Buddhist prayers and rituals with a live piano performance of a Bach prelude and fugue, and concluded the first day in a peaceful and deeply settled way.
Claudia Horwitz
Claudia Horwitz, director of stone circles, emphasized the importance of community: "I am because we are." She also led the group in a collective chant. One observer remarked, "Everyone was on different notes at the beginning of the chant but by the end of the chant, the entire room had resolved into a perfect chord." It was a beautiful demonstration of Claudia's message of community.
Niles Goldstein
Niles Goldstein, the Rabbi of the New Shul Synagogue in New York, began by leading all the participants in a Hassidic "nigun" or wordless song. He followed this with a list of poems and prayers from four different traditions all focusing on the theme of finding the divine through nature. Stories from his own adventurous life described how he experienced "God's presence" through his own awe of natural wonders such as the Northern Lights in Alaska.
Fleet Maull
Fleet Maull is a Buddhist lay-monk turned ordained priest who spent fourteen years in prison for smuggling drugs from South America. He began his talk by explaining the Buddhist perspective on such a life: "I could say that the devil made me do it, but in Buddhism we say, my own stupid thinking made me do it." He explained that Buddhists use meditation techniques to find a deeper understanding of the workings of their own minds, and offered the students a chance to experience this for themselves by concluding with a guided meditation.
Mariana Caplan
Mariana Caplan also related stories from her own life and spiritual search. She talked about spending years living in primitive conditions in South America, and how horrified her family was. She talked about naïvely believing, as she set off on her spiritual quest, that it would take her two years to find enlightenment. ("It took me another five years to even find my teacher.") Behind her humor and warmth was a serious message about the importance of both gratitude and the commitment that must be made if you want to turn your life into a serious quest for spiritual answers. "What I want to offer you is the challenge of, instead of expressing gratitude by way of saying 'thank you,' which is fine as well, to express your gratitude by making a vow to do whatever is necessary in your life to transform in such a way that you become different, and that your life itself becomes an expression of the gratitude you feel for the profound teachings that we have heard."
Speakers
On Monday afternoon, between affinity group sessions, students had the opportunity to listen to one of the seven guest speakers. It was the job of the guest speakers in this context to lead by example and "go first." Despite the speaker's diverse backgrounds (from a Rabbi to the Abbot of a Catholic monastery, from a Buddhist lay monk to a former CEO), they all shared one thing in common: They have each led fascinating lives dedicated to following their respective spiritual paths and serving their respective spiritual communities. In these talks, each speaker related a story in which they faced one or more of their own personal "cups of trembling;" times where they had been most challenged, how they dealt with them, and the transformations and insights that came out of the experiences.
Tent Social
By Monday night it was time to kick back, celebrate, and enjoy the company of good friends. And what could be more relaxing than eating Ben and Jerry's ice cream and dancing to drumming courtesy of the Antioch College, Ithaca College, and University of Florida crews?
It was a fun night for all as students, faculty, and speakers alike shared stories from the conference, played board games, and/or danced the night away. We even caught keynote, August Turak, showing his moves on the dance floor. You might not want to quit your day job there just yet, big guy. (Do you want to see Augie breaking it down on film? Click Yes or No to vote. If enough people want it, we'll put it online)
The Tuesday Wrap-Up Session
Each Affinity Group, and indeed, each individual, had a unique Inward Bound experience. So how do you wrap up more than 250 experiences in two hours?
You can't. Instead, each group nominated one or two folks to relate an experience that was exemplary of their Affinity Group. We had NO IDEA how powerful these stories would be. People related their struggles, their moments of inspiration, their realizations and moments of transformation; they celebrated the connections they'd made and the lessons they learned. In addition, a small group of students from Loyola University Chicago and Manhattanville College, whose experience at Inward Bound was somewhat negative, did a wonderful job of coming together to acknowledge the wide range of experiences that students had at the conference. Ed Cheely was clearly moved by this whole process as evidenced by the fact that his closing remarks were, as far as we can tell, utterly incoherent. Nonetheless, the wrap-up session on Tuesday did manage to capture an impressive and stirring cross-section of the Inward Bound experience. The best way to find out what it was like is to simply check it out for yourself (see video clips below).
An Open Letter to Inward Bound Attendees from the Organizers
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