Written by: Bengt
Toastmasters.
So, jumping right in: What is a “Toastmaster”? Typically, I think of the verbal acknowledgement of occasion to an audience, culminating with the raising of a glass. But the word also evokes a silly Monty Python-esque image! In their visual dictionary, I see Cleese or Jones perhaps, possessing exceptional proficiency with the crisping and browning of bread, two slices (or four) at a time. Buttering evenly and arranging on a platter placed just so atop the requisite crisp white napkin, then at the perfect time, removing a previously placed silver dome with a fearless flourish. Thus unveiling the cooked triangular bread portions to a prim English breakfast dining room? And, imagine the years of training and array of considerations? That the silver dome would make the toast a bit soggy (any hospital veteran can tell you this!) if the toast was covered too soon is but one of these! But I digress.
For years, the image of what attending Toastmasters would be like, and why I “should” do it loomed dark, heavy and large as a monolith with the words “You must overcome your fears” engraved in it’s hard, shiny surface. There wasn’t even a nervous “run -up-and-touch-it-to-see-what-happens” moment as per the ape in the prelude to 2001: A Space Odyssey! At the mere mention of it I’d recoil like a snail. The perfunctory admonishment of “It would be good for you” danced around my mind, complete with waving finger … and avoidance won. Another modern space film analogy involves a staunch and absolute statement by Star Trek Voyager’s Captain Janeway: “fear exists to be conquered!” I wrote this obediently and sheepishly into my journal that night. If Janeway espouses this … it must be true! Geez … even Picard had never said THAT!! More alarming to my small self image was that this FELT true inside! Oh boy.
Eventually, by Grace, I came to a space (sic) where facing fear was less an issue than it had been. I found myself looking into a local group that hopefully, wasn’t too intense. I found them. And they weren’t! And here I am a year later sharing my two cents!
“What this must not be is an environment of stuffy seriousness”, I told Self. I envisaged business people, and others, steeped in confidence and a drive to succeed. Oh dear! Those I’d prejudicely concluded in typical ego fashion, that must be opposite in upbringing, conditioned beliefs and values than I. They MUST be. My mind said so! I pondered being exposed to the whole world. After all I anticipated that my audience wouldn’t be the naked ones one is coached to picture to aid confidence. I would be the naked one up there, crouching behind the podium! Many people’s worst nightmare.
Jerry Seinfeld observed that the number one fear of most people is public speaking. Number two was death. “This means”, he continued “to the average person, that if you have to be at a funeral, you would rather be in the casket than doing the eulogy!” I suppose speaking in front of others is like a “little death”, which happens to be how the sexual orgasm is described in some cultures. I’m not sure that my experiences thus far with “being naked” in front of an audience would deliver quite that level of bliss!
However … Toastmasters, like most experiences, is NEVER what the mind projected it would be. For that alone, it is worth going. Just sitting at the U-shaped table, I found all sorts of imagined stuff falling away. We never live what we fear. Only on the inside. Toastmasters has coincidingly facilitated a deep shift in consciousness for me. In other areas of “my life”, there’s been an alignment happening subtly for a long time. Arriving into a Toastmasters era is part of the bigger program. Attending and being present, noticing what comes up inside, is primary. The speaking is almost incidental! ALMOST! This is likely not a common aim for fellow members the world over. I typically don’t have “goals” per se … yet concurrently, I do. I just don’t usually label them. There’s a “Heart Program” running in the background all the time. It’s like looking at the glass and seeing it’s always been full and cannot be otherwise!
I am grateful for the opportunity and I endeavour to be fully present, even when I am called on for a Table Topics contribution! Talk about a challenge to remain present! It’s usually afterwards that the ideas and the question asked come clear! “Just relax” being screamed in your head by the onboard “Fix-This” cheering section, does not yield a state for relaying a candid story about your favorite Hallowe’en costume to the room in the 2 LONG minutes allotted!
The Toastmaster tree produces fruit which tends to ripen in stages at different rates. The ripened define the ripening and vice versa. Yin and Yan. But we’re a whole tree all the same. Sometimes, we’re shaking the tree and sometimes we are just shaking! Particularly during Table Topics, one instinctively feels the fight or flight response! Something is afraid of dying up there in front of the other fruits! Our relationship with fear is the most important one we have. From it flows all. Relationships with self and other, with the physical world, with emotions, with endeavours of all kinds. Toastmasters challenges me to love my fear. To not become it. To witness it with spaciousness. If the Seinfeld observation holds true, Toastmasters affords the chance to leap from that casket to the lectern! But wait … does that casket have pillows?
Author: Toastmaster Bengt
I have been attending Toastmasters for just over a year. My interests are self-realization, music composition, poetry, Love, the Oneness of everything … and the Concorde! I currently live with my sister and her family in Calgary. I love to play drums, some guitar, and keyboards. My favorite music groups are Duran Duran and Metallica. I love feeding birds, seeing Truth, and Being Stillness. Toastmasters is a place where I can be present with uncomfortable thoughts, feelings and sensations … and transcend these with exposure!
Literally Speaking Toastmasters 