Words by Ben Cohen, participant YIP 7
The theme of realization is about taking what has been learned throughout the YIP year, both through an individual’s interactions with themselves and through their interactions with others; to light and how this year of profound and intense self-development comes to manifest itself in reality. This is ultimately the culminating force of the ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ processes which are undergone during the year, which will hopefully manifest themselves in initiatives that will make the world a better place.
As a YIP participant, the aforementioned process was an incredibly powerful experience that took me to the depths of my emotional and intellectual self and kindly invited me to give those faculties the time and space necessary to heal from traumas of the past, and beyond that has given me the opportunity to use these innate qualities as tools for forming myself to be “the change the I wish to see in the world”. It is precisely in this that the ideals of YIP take form in reality, and the fruits of this tiresome process take form in a manner that transcends our sojourn in this lovely Swedish community.
Through the freedom that I have found within this community I have learned that if an individual is given the space and time to find themselves and learn about how to be themselves around others, it allows them to see the Beauty that exists in who they are as individuals and as well as the Beauty in seeing others for who they are. Although the explicit implications of living in such a reality are not inherently clear, one will notice upon visiting this community that the human capacity to love and be loved is a quality lacking in many places in the world, for it is hard to know that you are empty until you have been exposed to the feeling of being fulfilled. Accordingly by living in this reality it brings to life the truth that as humans we are capable of living in a Beautiful reality, which is a truth that can be sometimes hard to fathom with all we hear in the news and in the disconnections the can be so easily seen in the world directly in front of us. It is within this Beauty and all that is done as a manifestation of this Beauty that the ideals of YIP become realized.