This is so beautiful Derek. Thank you for writing it down in such reflection:
"...its critical to treat that circle as a magic circle; to enter it with all
awareness, calm, trust, and respect due a place of power."
It'll beccome my lesson too.
Chuni
________________________________
From: Derek W. Wade <[email protected]>
To: World wide Open Space Technology email list
<[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, February 2, 2014 4:52 PM
Subject: [OSList] - Re: Trust (long)
You all rock. If "learning is remembering something you already knew," then I'm
delighted with the gift of learning I've received from this conversation.
Back when I used to fly airplanes upside-down as a competitive sport, I
received a simple, profound lesson that I now realize I can apply to Open
Space.
I was having breakfast with my coach, world aerobatic champion Nikolay
Timofeev. He was going to compete later that day in the "Unlimited" category --
something he had been doing for many years -- and I was going to fly my first
competitive routine in the much less complicated "Sportsman" category. A
pilot's first Sportsman flight is a milestone: its the one and only time in
your aerobatic career to win a "best first time" award. I was nervous and
concerned about time; gulping my coffee, obsessively looking over the plan of
figures to be flown and judging criteria for each, checking and re-checking the
timetable of the day.
I was nervous both because it was my first time flying at a more advanced
level, and also because we had had a few bobbles the previous few days,
including the canopy of the aircraft coming off in flight and falling to earth
who-knew-where. So I would be flying open-cockpit, the wind in my face for the
first time. A lot of unexpected firsts that were out of my control.
Something compelled me to ask, "Nik, what's one piece of advice you can give me
for this flight?" I was hoping for something about altitudes or airspeeds or
specifics of the maneuvers to be flown.
Nikolay finished chewing his bite of toast, took a measured, deliberate sip of
coffee, set his cup down carefully, laid both his hands palm-down on either
side of his breakfast, and said, "before flight, you must do everything slow.
Everything. You drink coffee, you do slow." He demonstrated with a careful lift
of his cup. "You walk out to airplane, slow. Steady. Starter will be run
around, get everyone in airplanes, go go go, now now now. You breathe. You put
on parachute slow. Get in airplane now -- but get in slow." He accentuated
with smooth, meditative movements of his hands, as if doing tai chi at the
breakfast table. "Touch airplane, feel it. Breathe. Slow. That is best thing
for this flight. All flights."
It was a bit of a slap in the face -- what, I can't just have some pointers?
Doesn't he realize how many things I'm dealing with here? But I did as he said.
I left myself enough time that I could be deliberate and unhurried with all my
preparation. The starter did indeed try to hustle me along when it was my turn
to line up, but I smiled and yelled "thank you, got it" before I began buckling
the chute on.
It was SO hard. At every step I felt the need to check on something, to adjust
some tiny little detail. But I did it. Slow and deliberate, just breathing with
each motion. Paying total attention to one thing at a time.
It was the best flight I ever flew. It felt like the airplane had turned
transparent and I could see everything with 360-degree vision. At one point I
was in the middle of a maneuver called a hammerhead turn -- a vertical up line
until you run out of airspeed and then the engine's torque pivots the plane to
point downward -- and saw that my path would take me into a cloud. Entering a
cloud is illegal, and you're required to break off and restart your flight with
no official penalty, but it can break up the judges' flow and result in lower
marks. Without thinking I pulled the propeller pitch back to act as a
speedbrake -- nothing I had ever been trained to do -- and completed that
figure just under the cloud.
Hours later I was still working out why it had worked, and why pulling the
throttle would not have worked. I didn't feel like I had made the decision, I
felt like the plane and I both did it. It mattered: I received best first-time
and best overall in category for that flight.
Earlier in this thread, Harrison said:
"...coming to the circle scattered, confused and anxious is a good way to fry
your soul and create an environment that matches your state."
And, David Osborne wrote:
"Trust = the safety condition for self-organization."
So my lesson from you all is that whether the circle is drawn in the sky with
an airplane, or drawn on the ground and made of people, its critical to treat
that circle as a magic circle; to enter it with all awareness, calm, trust, and
respect due a place of power.
I thank you all for the insight. I'll remember that flight -- and Nik's lesson
-- any time I attempt to Open Space.
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