Sophie's Challenges

I've heard from a handful of you all about continuing on, and I thank you sincerely. In this moment, I am feeling fear. I seem to be going back and forth between fear and grief. Unfortunately, learning to feel my feeling accurately was not a priority while Sophie was alive, and now like quite a few others things she taught, I now need.

If there is any particular area or lesson that you think you may have gotten, maybe better than any of the others, just know that it would be a great contribution to all of us for you to share as we go. It could be that each of have certain lessons deeper and therefore able to reinforce our collective learning.

Hopefully, soon, we will have a meeting with Kawa, one of Sophie's best students, who she has worked out a way for everyone to still have access to her work. Sophie was clearly generous that way and while Kawa will have support from some of us, he is certainly generous in taking this on.

In the meantime, while we have this forum up, what I will do is share what I am attempting to learn or what I may have seen or done as result of continuing this work. Most likely it will be me copying a quote from Sophie and attempting to grok it.

I realize in the Drink your Food practice, I have not been as deliberate as would be required to improve my overall awareness. So, I am starting there as an action: At least one meal of my day will be just me eating and paying attention to my eating, my body, and bringing my attention back as noticed.
Here is Sophie's quote at the beginning of this challenge: "I love challenges. They are non-traditional learning... Self-teaching. And they create the kinds of changes no traditional teaching can produce. People, participants learn about themselves, about their strengths, their weaknesses... and learn that changing anything is a process... often long... so what? It is worth it."

I almost forgot that I will need to go back and strengthen or rework my 'conversation for possibility'.

Thanks Everyone!

Baheej, thank you so much for jumping in and starting the conversation...I am so grateful that this handful of us who had the incredible privilege of knowing Sophie have this opportunity to stay connected... I'm feeling the same way I did when I was learning to ride my unicycle, the fear of pushing off with nothing to hold onto feels just like the fear of pushing on through life without Sophie.

I too have been re-focusing on the Food Challenge, coming back to pulling my attention in to chewing, and chewing as if what's in my mouth is the only thing on earth...it seems to be the foundation for pulling in the attention anywhere else in life. It seems like a good time to go back to the most basic practices and build from there. It's occurring to me that any growing that happens, any noticing and learning of distinctions that happens, requires being present, and the genius of the Food Challenge is that each time we eat is an opportunity to notice being present, whether we are or we aren't...an opportunity to practice noticing it daily.

THANK YOU so much to Kawa, for being willing to carry on Sophie's work and make it still available, there seems to be a lifetime of learning still there in all of the articles and workshops.

Thank you to everyone willing to connect on here to support each other. Maybe in this way we can honor Sophie by carrying on with her work as best we can...her words were that our most important task is to support and guide each other, to replace her. I'm sure we're all feeling now more than ever that there is no replacement for her, but I'm grateful for this small family of people who can stick together and carry on as best we can.

Thank you to all...as Baheej said, here we go.