Elaine de Beauport, 1933 - 2013

She wore a ring bearing the inscription:

Life is sacred

Elaine de Beauport, one of the most evolved human beings any of us has ever known, returned home to the universe on March 13, 2013 after a long illness. Cheeks are wet with tears all around the country – indeed the world including Caracas -- as we strive to comprehend the magnitude of her loving mind and the loss of her presence in our world. She hasn't gone far. She's in the air around me as I walk on the streets of Philadelphia and as I write this humble tribute to the legacy of her early career, constructing a container where a few readers can place their commemorations and celebrate her life. 

A memorial is being planned at the Mead School (which Elaine founded and is now located in Stamford CT):

Saturday, June 1 at 2 pm

at The Mead School for Human Development

1095 Riverbank Road, Stamford CT 06903

(203) 595-9500

Elaine's professional leadership colleague Aura Sofia Diaz continues in Caracas at the Mead Institute for adults she and Elaine directed. Watch for details on the Mead memorial for Elaine in Stamford to appear also on the Caracas website, The Infinite Human (El Humano Infinito). 

Meanwhile this website will allow a bridge of celebration of Elaine de Beauport from her early professional work in the US through her more recent creativity in Caracas. Since I had the honor to serve as her assistant in her early career with the Mead School for Adults in the US, I can provide a glimpse of the early history for her legacy. This website shares recollections from her friends and sifts through a few facts about her life and work. It allows us to thank her. 

You’ll find a menu, above, containing The Life She Lived, Schools She Created, the Interview, and a Photo Gallery, while on this "We Remember" page you'll find words, reflections, memories of friends posted here. 

Elaine with students in Caracas, 1989

PS: Hey, Elaine, you'll love this -- I found a typeface for the main title called 'Schoolbell.' It's just right, a bit slanty and awkward like a school kid wrote it, sort of human and friendly, like you.  

-- Jane Prettyman, friend and assistant to Elaine through her Council and early book-writing years, 1978 onward   



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REMEMBERING ELAINE
Friends offer their reflections


Who was she?                              Aura Sofia Diaz

The best teacher I have ever met. She was born a teacher. Not a mother or a friend or a colleague but a teacher! And she was learning at a high speed what she was teaching:

- She did not accept critical thinking. Only appreciative thinking. And maybe if you give alternatives and support the person in the new behavior, you can say something that need to be changed…

- Any person was as she or he was.
- Things are as things are.
- It is as it is.
- Accept: it is the process of the moment.
- The 3 A’s of Love: Appreciate, Affection or Accompany. Do not leave a human being without one of them.
- Every student felt the only one that she loved or pay attention to. The only one that she remember her life situations, the center of the workshop.
- She felt love, she not only talked about it. People could feel the warmth that came out of her. She was a loving being.
- She is “precision with words.” She said what she really wanted to say, looking for the right word that would really say what she was thinking or feeling or imagining. She loved words and search for them carefully.
- A brilliant right hemisphere: associations were her main ability, she could make meaning of whatever; her spatial intelligence made connections with images, music, colors, she was a poet, her inventive was limitless. She was a great intuitive person.
- Her left hemisphere was precise, always in time, respectful of the time of others and usually upset at Venezuelans for not being there at the moment that was agreed upon.
- She always said that her brain less developed was the Reptile or Basic brain. That that’s why she found good reptiles to complete her work, she said.
And she could recognize people that work in the body or enjoyed dancing and movement. She admired Martha Graham, loved and admired Caroline Kohles and needed the work and love of Kayte Ringer. In the last period of her life she found the work of Joyce Whiteley Hawkes and her healing at a cellular level.

Elaine de Beauport closed the circle of her life: she began her life experience in India, meditating at a young age and closed her life being a great meditator, enjoying her trips out of the body and dealing with her “light show” experiences. She was a teacher, a teacher of how to live in this earth, and a teacher on how to leave this earth the best prepared possible. Believing in the human being as an energy being, and considering everything and every being an energy being, living in the flow of energy, searching for it when having little and enriching herself with the presence and love of all her students.

She was energy and went back to it, when she decided that it was enough.

Not when we decided that it was enough for her.
Not when we thought it should happen.
Not when we imagine it was going to happen.
Not the way we wanted it to happen but… when she decided and wanted it to happen.

Chapeau, my teacher, I really love you!

Elaine and Aura Sofia 

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101 ways to break your heart
Hanna Wise Heiting

So to start with the woman who taught me how to say yes
The woman who taught me how to say yes to life and love
And heartache died few days ago.
I do not know how she died 
And that is also heart breaking.
She was dying and she was not dying.
And when she was not dying she was very much alive
And so even if we knew she was dying she was very much alive.
That is what Syl who was in almost daily contact with her said.
Syl said she was very much alive.  That was what she said most times
And at the other times she did not say much.
And that is what Elaine herself said the few times I managed to get her on the phone
Also needing to figure out first if she was in Caracas or some place in New York
And she was loved in both but none of the places was truly comfortable
For a person who was dealing with a terminal illness
An illness that was bound to kill you
But in the duration you also had times
When you were, it seems, perfectly healthy and happy 
With the elation of appreciation and even devouring every breath
And smile and contact and shining the love through,
She, at least, was shining it through 
Endless love and unconditional love
And I am not kidding here, 
Even though I am usually suspicious of these words
When they are not specific.

When you were with her surrounded by her love
It did not matter to you that she loved someone else
That she loved the person next to you just as much as she loved you.
You may say that there was a circle of love, a field
And it only grew bigger as more people joined the field 
Though I cannot really vouch for that,
Being the sort of person that feels these things but 
Does not like to talk about them in these terms.
And, well, anyway the circle grew and
We were all laughing and giggling and jumping in the water
Mostly when there was water around
And somehow the way I remember it there was always some water around
And the light shone through our eyes and bodies
Even in dark places, mostly in dark places,
It was that lightness became visible.

She taught me to love heartache.

She said that love was always there even when it was gone
Or the person was gone or the life you had with the person
Had changed to make one of you or both unrecognizable to the other.
She called it love streams,
Quoting a line from a Cassavetes movie
That I could not quite at the time understand
Why it had the name considering all the shenanigans
And going about and explosions of emotions
And detachments and distancing
And mostly the lack of true tenderness,
At least the way I saw it, 
But she declared it a proof of what she was saying
A proof to me because that was the time 
That I loved the movies above all

And in that respect she was right and for sure 
She was right when it comes to loving her
The love streams around her and for her 
And the love that she made you feel for yourself 
When you thought of her never stopped 
So when you think of her 
You think of that better part of yourself that you always love
And you remember that part when another part of yourself
That you are not sure you love or you are quite sure 
That you cannot love 
You then remember that she loved that part too.
And it was more like that Greek universe
Where all the parts of you were Gods and Goddesses
And they were going about their business
Mostly they were going about the business of looking for love
And the less–worthy–of love events only took place
Only happened because they did not find the love
Or did not find enough love
Or only found the love that cannot
Or only found the love that they did not know at first was love
Or they had to do a lot of chores before
They knew it was love, 
Before they learned to appreciate it or …

Only she did not call it Gods and Goddesses
Not that she would mind if you did
She was easy that way.  Easy about namings
And easy about the way you wanted
To name and how you decided to divide your universe
Or unite your universe, take your pick
As long as we could laugh about it over a nice meal
Or on the way to a nice meal.
She just wanted you to learn to be a better conductor 
And to be more patient and encouraging and supportive 
Of the different instruments or players of your orchestra
And especially to be patient with the players that you were not too fond of
And see how useful or even glorious they could be when appreciated.

Hanna Wise Heiting

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Gisela Diaz 

I'm sure she is listening, reading me, feeling me because I feel her, hear her, so I wrote this to her:

Source of light and energy, source of wisdom. Superb Master of the acceptance of others, of "it is how it is." Master of freedom and respect for others. There is not one day that I have shared with you in which I haven´t learned something. "Everything gives me something" . . .  you´ve always said, but you gave me so much, Gringa! It´s a big task to look over my growth as a soul, as a person, by your hand and Aura´s. What a blessing to have had you, companions on the way, guides and sacred teachers. Even in your last days, when you were so sick, you taught me about respect, freedom, the right of others to choose their manner, their own ways, to respect their decisions whatever they may be, no matter how much I understood or shared them. The human being is sacred. Each and every life is sacred. 

And you gave me the best gift . . . to trust myself. You asked me to believe in my own power and called me "white hands," while you kept me holding your hand and didn't let anything to interfere with that contact. 

You will always be present in my Christmas, in my pancakes, in my trillions of cells, in my freedom, in my unconditional love for myself, in my light. You are part of it. Master of life and love. 

We´ll continue to find each other, here, there, anywhere, everywhere . . .  because after all we are ONE right? As you told me at the airport when you were going in and we knew that for now, we would not be seeing each other again: 

"I love you always!"

Gisela Diaz

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ELAINE
A poem in English and Spanish from
Marisol De Macedo V.
March 13,  2013.

Millenary light of the Universe…
Teacher who personifies love…
Infinite vibrating space…
Connections that encourage the essence…
Thinking and intuition...
Motivation and action…
Unicity and duality 

Dust of stars that is one,
That is everyone…
Earth and water…
Wind and fire…
Etheric and magic…
Silence and word…
Travel and arrival…
Deepness and freedom…
Development and harmony…
Sounds and melodies…
Corporeal and incorporeal nature…
Whisper and song…
Pegasus flying over this blue sphere…

ELAINE
Luz milenaria del Universo…
Amor encarnado en Maestra…
Espacio infinito que vibra…
Conexiones que alimentan la esencia…
El pensamiento y la intuición…
La motivación y la acción…
Unicidad y díada…

Polvo de estrellas que es uno,
Que somos todos…
Tierra y agua…
Viento y fuego…
Éter y magia…
Silencio y palabra…
Viaje y llegada…
Profundidad y libertad…
Desarrollo y armonía…
Sonidos y melodías…
Lo corpóreo y lo incorpóreo…
Susurro y canción…
Pegaso sobre ésta esfera azul…

Marisol De Macedo V.
13 de Marzo de 2013

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Sylviane Sans

To Elaine, 

I miss my friend!

Yes she was my teacher, my mentor, my mother and beyond all that she was first and foremost my friend.

I had my most private conversations with her.

When I looked into her blue eyes, my heart of hearts knew I was safe in her presence -- that I could rest, let go and trust the space we were holding.

I was free to be and express an authenticity true to my soul and being.

How I cherish knowing that haven! Knowing its reality.

Thank you my sweet sweet friend.

She was an enlightened being who walked this earth with no such pretentions. Her passion was PEOPLE and their journey to knowing themselves as Goddess/God Divine Creation and to live their version of it to the fullest.

She saved my life as she did the lives of so many simply by shedding light there where your radiance of life was never considered, never seen, never heard before.

That acknowledgment of being heard, seen and honored is the healing of healings because all of a sudden we know we matter, we are alive and experience the sacredness of our life as the miracle of creation. What a gift! 

Yes, she had that ability of seeing in all of us our most precious unique gift and revealing it to us with new eyes, ears and beating hearts.

What a privilege it has been for me to be your friend, my Elaine. How blessed I feel that your life touched mine with such generosity.
How grateful I am, for that freedom you showed me the way.

Even though I am still hurting with your departure, I feel you close, very close.

I realize how much I have internalized you through time and love and that is bridging all distances possible between our universes.  Our dialogues are just as alive in the depth of my soul and in my hearts of hearts where I have always met you I can hear you.
I just miss the flesh! I miss sharing with you the human dimension all together.

I love you forever 

Sylviane

Sylviane Sans, 1984

NEXT:   The Life She Lived 



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LINK:
Elaine and Aura Sofia Diaz's website: The Infinite Human (El Humano Infinito). Go to this link for current info about activities at the Mead Institute in Caracas. 

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