So, i sent another brief email to trent, his response is as follows. Im going to comment after.


Demetrius,

your final line ( above subject) is your fate -always blaming others without reflecting on your role in the issue

people have the right to face their accusers:
- you accused the current semester group of irreponsibility
- you accused siddhartha and myself of not organizing a 'real academic program'

for me to allow such private (i.e. closed) discourse is to asked to participate in an atmosphere of paranoia and mistrust which would undo the verypurpose of the open trust of the Fireflies community.

As much as it may hurt , your suffering must be expressed openly and become transparent if any real discourse and growth is to happen.

Hence privacy has boundaries. In matters that involve the integrity -in this case the future existence of the program -and there canbe nothing private.

We built this learning experience as a holistic community process that aspires to reject the power patterns of conventional hierarchicallearning. By sending a 'private e-mail to me confessing your superior standards was trying to perform an 'end-run' around these intentions and making me a partner to your self exaltation at the cost of the program and all involved.

I have witnessed your tendency to exalt yourself in comparison to others ( e.g. your being called a 'prince' at Yogi)

what you don't seem to understand is that your behavior and your e-mail to me was a by passing of "them', the community, and in trying to make me a partner to your self-exaltation , in essence asking me to agree with your performing an act of domination over 'them' ( which you didn't recognize includes me and siddhartha)..

This is an opportunity to learn about yourself ......................and if you have the courage......... to face the community you are in openlyand resolve matters

trent.

above written after a consultation with jim morley - who also conclude:"Then I would urge him to strive to resolve his relations with the community. He COULD learn from this experience!"


That was in response to this email:


"So, if i send you another PRIVATE EMAIL. Will you keep it to yourself? Or willyou send it out to another 13 people?"

pissed off, disrespected, and violated
-Demetrius



so, i said i was going to comment on it and im going to but even fucking starting this sentence is hard i can feel the nervousness running in my veins, forearm muscles hurt, butterflies going apeshit in my stomach. why? cause trent is dead on. yeah. i mean, yeah. i mean yeah. gosh, starting this off is so hard, but he is right and that would make me wrong. and that, for all its wonderful possibility, is hard to accept. read something from nicholes paper last night, a spot about accepting your faults so you join the group. yeah. accepting my faults, being poor at group interactions, not being an asshole. im getting off topic, simply trent was right and i was wrong to act how i acted, to judge, to send trent an email, to have these questions/concerns and not raise them within the group but to go around everysone back to the authority figure.

like a tattle tail.

indeed. that is most certainly what i did. fuck. its hard to get my thoughts moving, im sorry. good one, i am quite sorry. in fact, im hugely sorry for being a fucking asshole, for judging, without all the information needed, for jumping to conclusions to holding onto pretenses and projecting onto all of you a range of shitty identities. im sorry.

im sorry for wishing that i had gone last year.

im sorry for being unable to communicate and identify, for assuming for making people feel uncomfortable, for not being understanding for thinking folk should know shit or act a certain way, think certain things, like and dislike certain things. for not remebering how hard it was for me when i had to learn these, for not being helpful at all. im sorry for being an asshole, a pretentious dick.

i wish we had more time and i more courage to discuss and apologize and attempt to rectify or at least reconcile differences. but we dont and i have ruined most of this, i made my time what it was and that was good/no good/in between.

ive learned alot. alot about india, alot about myself and i owe a great debt to the 9 of you who have helped me in this process, i probably will never be able to tell you all this, but i think it and maybe it will come out tomorrow, who knows? im going to hold on to this and run with it, hoping that i change the fundamentals of how i behave and how i understand/relate to people. its what i want to do and ive got the juice to back it.

yeah and words mean nothing and i know that, and they will continue to mean nothing until i act on them, with all the people in my life, all the relationships i have and all the thoughts i think. unlearning this is not going to be easy and im going to make mistakes, i have to make mistakes, that is part of the process and i want to make mistakes, i want to learn, i want to fuck up so that i can see what im doing, see how it effects others, to see the problems it creates. i want to do that. i need to do that. i will do that, i will try.