Good morning from Merida. I believe this will be my last recording from here, but I’m not sure. I’m still enjoying myself. It’s been a wonderful visit. I believe my next stop will be San Francisco, but I haven’t quite pulled the trigger. Anyway, I want to talk today about MEA again. This will likely come up many times over the coming weeks. My experience there was very rich. I’m unpacking it. I’m not sure what I want to talk about or when it will come up.

I don’t want to reveal too much of the experience except for to say that the way it’s designed is that the experience in every workshop allows the participants to get to know each other from the inside out. That’s the best way to say it. We got to know each other from the inside out. The very first evening, they explained what to expect over the coming days and we introduced ourselves. We went around the circle and we were asked to start by saying this I am Constance Klein, and if you really knew me, you’d know dot, dot, dot.Of course, everyone got nervous because you’re sitting before all these perfect strangers who know nothing about you, not what you do. Not your last name. Nothing about you. And you start with that. If you really knew me. And it takes just one intimate share for people to really open up. What a terrific icebreaker. If you really knew me, you’d know, fill in the blank.

Anyway, on to what I want to talk about today. Chip Conley opened up that evening by talking about something that he learned from a famous American football player by the name of Aaron Taylor called the vaults. The three vaults. The first vault, is how we share information about who we are, what we do, our families, our age. What I call the facts. The second vault is the story vault. It’s the things that create the narratives of our life, our mindset, stories from our families. Like I said, the stories. Then we got into what we call the third vault. I would say that MEA is designed and really about getting to the third vault. The third vault is about our true essence, our heart space. our presence. It’s the place where we hold and nurture absolutely everything that matters in life. But the sad thing is that we don’t often have the opportunity to connect with each other from the third vault.

You know, I’ve talked about so many times why I love being in circle, and I’ve talked a lot about Martha’s Vineyard, and the storytelling workshop of Nancy Aronie cloaked as a writers workshop. It’s the place where we get to tell the stories that matter. The real stories, not the second vault stories – the narratives, the lessons from our family –  those third vault stories that make us who we are in our heart that matter most.

It is such a cool thing, and such a privilege to bear witness to and to share those experiences and hopes and dreams and fears that we so carefully protect and harbor in that third vault. I’m not quite sure where I’m going with all this, except for to say that the third vault is where it’s happening. The third vault is where you really get to know people.

I think one of the strange things is that often it’s easier to go to the third vault with perfect strangers. In our personal life, we really do spend a lot of time talking about the facts, the stories and the narratives we’ve created about what’s going on in our lives. or what happened to us that day. We don’t often get the opportunity to go to the third vault. And that, I will say, is truly one of the great things about coming together in a wisdom circle or a learning circle with the intention of speaking from our heart space, of getting real. It’s one of the things I love most in life.

We also talked about and learned a little bit about something called appreciative inquiry. That’s something I’ll talk about on a different episode, but I think the point there is that when you ask good questions when you have the courage to formulate a heart centered question, you’re much more likely to get to the third vault. And that’s where the magic is.

I’ll leave you with that. Until next time from my heart to yours.