Marina Bajszar recently left the Kiloby Center for Recovery to be with her beloved in Colorado. She spent 8 months as a Lead Facilitator at the Kiloby Center helping Scott Kiloby develop the Center’s program. She will be missed. We are grateful to have her list of the top 10 things learned she learned while working at the Center.
Top 10 things learned while at the Kiloby Center by Marina Bajszar
- Every single story that tells of pain and suffering points to one thing everyone is really saying: “I don’t want to feel THIS.”
- The only way to truly relieve perpetual stories of pain and suffering is to feel what you don’t want to feel, directly, without the stories attached to them. If necessary, repeatedly.
- Never underestimate the power of REST. To stop everything and just rest, aware of what’s actually going on here in this present moment. In the midst of all struggles, all ideas, all pain. This is always available and it is very powerfully shifting to rest, sometimes when least expected.
- This work is not about feeling better. It’s about being better at the feeling. And interestingly that comes around and makes us feel better too.
- Readiness is key. You are either ready to look or you are not. If you are ready, the looking is quite easy, direct, and swift, most of the time. If you are not, there may be a lot of dancing and avoidance, defensiveness, and excuses about the issue before the willingness to really take a look at it.
- I realized more deeply than before my time at the center that I really don’t care either way, whether clients are willing to inquire or just want to stay attached to their story and keep their addictions or their sense of identity intact. I love them all the same, whether they are ready to look or not. Truly.
- If there is any goal of inquiry, it is to be able to be present to what is arising at the moment. If you are able to do that, you don’t need the inquiry questions at all. You are already at your destination.
- There is such a sweet innocence to all of this looking. To seeing patterns of behavior, seeing the attachments to identities. The innocence of everyone in their suffering is very tender and sweet and knowing this more directly, it does become more difficult to take any of the contents of suffering presented by clients very seriously. What remains is compassion for suffering. The content becomes irrelevant and at the same time the very key to the door that untangles the suffering.
- I learned that the anchor for every issue, every client, every walk of life that I facilitate, is this moment. NOW. There are not too many tricks and tools for me to remember if I’m just fully present. Each time I am fully anchored to being here now, the sessions then take care of themselves. It becomes a naturally curious exploration together. There is really nothing to DO in facilitation. This has made all the difference and it’s something that sunk in so much deeper during this intense time at the center.
- I didn’t know him well before the center but I must say this from my own experience. Scott Kiloby is probably the most congruent and clear man of the highest integrity I have ever known. He is the same whether home relaxing or giving talks to groups of people. His pajama self is the same as his public self. He walks and lives his talk, fully, continuing to open and go through his own deepening daily. And he honestly could care less if I said these things about him or not, which is also quite refreshing but I wanted to say them anyway.
