Leading thoughts

I'm just off to the Thinking Class, I can't wait. Methinks there is more to this thinking business than methought. Last week it was so intense I needed to drink several bottles of water afterwards and for the following three days felt light, elevated and energetic. Then there was the inevitable backlash, horrible aches and pains and fatigue - this often seems to happen after a period of elevation.

I can report back from the field about being lead. I put foward the theory that it was possible to listen in the same way that the coach suggested 'being lead' rather than following, in a dance. I have to admit ahem that I have not been successful in executing my intentions to listen fully to anyone - at all. But I know someone who can. The leader of our thinking group. He listens in a state between expectant and expecting nothing, and he goes right along with where the person he is listening to leads him. He goes to where the person leads him and waits patiently even if the speaker starts to falter and the lead becomes confused - he does not suggest anything or in any way interrupt the lead. When the lead has ground to a definitive halt, he speaks. The first thing he does is to summarise where the speaker was leading him, with extraordinary perception, insight, and clarity of thought. He may well suggest where she would have continued to lead him, had she been able to expres it, - for which the speaker if visibly grateful. And then the discussion begins on the leading idea, measured against a certain thought system which I am disinclined to disclose for the time being. All I can say is that it addresses absolutely everything I've ever been interested in and explains it in a way I had never quite come to before. And as the thinking unfolds in lovely whirls and twirls, the ohs and sighs of the group ring out. The ability to listen like this, with full attention, full intelligence and good background research, is quite simply. divine.