Seeds for a happy planet

Sunday morning we invited every voice in the circle to check in, as we have come to realize, again and again, how important that is for the energy in the circle. It took us almost till noon, but it was surely worthwhile!

Following upon the affirmation we had named the day before – The need of the world/Earth is an invitation to become fully ourselves; that is our role as the evolving collective feminine. – of course that turned into new questions:
What does it mean to become fully ourselves?
How is it to be the new collective?
It seems like a sacred meditation in itself…

Living as the web of life is living from a meditative space…
the flow is enticing but is not always there…
the flow becomes a stream of evolution, completely natural.

I feel the need to report how it has started snowing here again. Snowing with these thick drops of snow that make the perfect layer to use the snow to sculpture. It is an amasing view because there are windows on almost three sides of this room and it feels as if I am right in the middle of it, but still warm and protected.

I also notice that the further it gets into a gathering it becomes more difficult to sculpt out the meaning it has – for me at least. More really new things are coming in, new insights and new information, and I need more time to digest all of it before I am able to write something coherent about it. So I will stop here for now, and go to have breakfast instead of forcing myself…

As always in our Women Moving the Edge gatherings, I’m getting behind in blogging all that happened because it is such an intense time. It is Monday morning now and I have slept almost 10 hours, as my energy collapsed to almost zero yesterday late afternoon. So I wasn’t part of the second evening in the hot tub… I will hear the stories later today.

What if the new is here now? that is how Judy invited us into the afternoon on Saturday. A few themes that I wrote down in the moment:

Healing
The circle is a safe birthing place for the broken off bits of ourselves. I’m becoming more of myself, in this collective feminine that we are…

Birthing the new woman
The new woman is soft, has a clear focus; she knows; she brings the pain into relation; she is all of this and doesn’t need a definition. She receives in the womb, gives it some form and brings it into relation with the outside.

Trusting the intangible
Trusting the color to pick; trusting the image to follow; trusting the impulse to speak…

Yesterday morning, which was Sunday, we started the circle with reading my two blog posts; as a way to mirror back what had happened so far. Of course, and that’s the point I want to make here, this is only my experience, the things that I have picked and found meaningful, out of the vast amount of what was spoken; not able to mention all that happened inside the other participants in the process.

In the late afternoon energy got low in the group and also in myself. I was wondering what this was about. I was not normal tiredness, at least not for me. Some were laying down… coming in and out of the dream state… resting to allow to open up to new ways of sensing… cherishing the silence… resting to open up the vagina… resting to let the broken off bits heal…

It was noticed that after connecting with ourselves – to reconnect the lost bits – and connect with each other the next step is to relate with the Earth; ‘allow myself to grow into the soil’.

Relaxing – as if nothing needs to happen – to improve my confidence in myself and the confidence to use my wisdom in the outside world. This gathering is the place to receive and then ‘giving’ my view into the world. I’m tired of being this or that, I want to be the way I am!

So, it dawned on us that we needed to change our question into affirmative mode: The need of the world/Earth is an invitation to become fully ourselves; that is our role as the evolving collective feminine!

It is Sunday morning now, more snow has come during the evening and the night; so postcards are everywhere you turn your head. Meditation has just ended and a few people are doing their morning exercises.

Yesterday evening we treated ourselves with a special gift: a hot tub in the open air, with the full moon right in front of us! It was a fabulous experience, with the moon coming in and out of the clouds, getting hot in the water and then rolling in the snow to get cold and back in the hot tub again. Time to just be and enjoy the experience and nothing more…

It wasn’t an easy morning yesterday. We were in the proces that Arnold Mendell calls becoming a True Community. First there is the happiness of finding like-minded people and then – all of a sudden? – the diversity shows up! Weren’t we friends; and now I am angry at you! In the language of Theory U this is the point of opening the heart, realising that all emotions that we project on each other are ours and we have to take responsibility for them ourselves. Going beyond the right and wrong, or any polarity that is present, and opening to the diversity and how other people are different than us. It was a big reminder for all of us, me included, never to violate the rule of the talking stone and an invitation again to speak to and from the middle and not addressing someone in specific. Reclaiming our projections is needed to re-weave the strands of the collective.

It was nice to see how throughout the day more and more people started drawing or playing with colors on paper. Amasing pieces of art emerged before our eyes by just taking one color after the other, not having a plan upfront what it would need to look like. This is exactly what we invite people to do here – to be here – to live in the moment, sensing where impulses are coming from and express them when they are authentic. We were releasing the tension of having to reach something. And we were, step-by-step, coming to this point of not-knowing. The mental not-knowing that hasn’t a clue how to draw energyfields, but if we try it turns out we can! It is possible to sense into that and observe and notice it in some way. There is something below the visible and the tangible…

There was a lot of talking about fear and courage. It linked with the theme of the day before ‘the courage to make connections’. In reclaiming our projections we need the courage to connect with our deeply held and unconscious individual pain. But in opening the heart there is also connecting with the pain of the others. For us women, it seems like when we connect with our bellies we can hold this pain in an easier way. What would become possible when we connect our wombs – and not just our hearts – in an ever expanding way? What could womb expansion look like?

Saturday morning in our 9th Women Moving the Edge gathering. I’m sitting here, early morning, in our working space while many others are sitting in deep meditation. Looking out of the wall with windows all over, there is this fairytale landscape, every branch of every three fully covered with a small layer of untouched snow. It is extremely beautiful as the surroundings here are all natural and birds don’t fly up when you approach them.

Yesterday afternoon we gathered with 12 women for this gathering, here in The Netherlands. We spend our time on arriving, being present and sharing stories. For me it is special to be in this venue as it was here that I got a deep, transformational and life-changing training in the early 90’ties, called Emotional Bodywork. Here I got my basic lens to look at people, relationships and transformation. Of course what I learned here has been moulded by my unique way of being and many other trainings and workshops, but it is still a deep root in my way of being.

We checked in yesterday around the questions: What made you come? What is your edge? The stories unfolded, all held within the container of both a deep circle practice and our guiding question: If the need of the world/Earth is an invitation to become fully ourselves, then what is our role as the evolving collective feminine? Sharing circles and our way of working of going with the flow and what is unfolding doesn’t give us a straight line right to the answer on the question. We wander around, we circle around, we explore the territory… so here are some of the themes that came up…

We are all part of the puzzle; we all have our unique place.
…healing sisterhood…
The need to be connected, because that’s the way we will reach the needed intelligence.
… the magic of co-creation…
What if it is easy? IT IS!!! It is a change of perspective…
Being in the rhythm with Earth… re-weaving the web…
Do I dare to return to the Wild…
the Mystery…
the natural below the conditioning…
where magic is real…
the truth beyond the heart…
the rhythm of the body…?

I’m here to be with what is…
to get out of the way…
no interpretation…
witnessing what is happening…
to learn together the feminine approach.

Evoking all our grandmothers…
reweaving across time…

The courage to make connections…
across time…
reaching out to nature spirits…

Connections growing from parent-child relationships
and power dynamics
and sisterhood
to real partnerships.

I need you, because of us.
I need you, because of the web of life.
Can we live as the Earth?

I want to share this story, that led eventually to a book The Power of Half. It’s a story about an american family that made an unusual decision… they sold their house (the american dream) and bought a much smaller house and gave money to the Hunger project. Here the article in The New York Times, and here the video – made by the son:

Lately I start to replace the word sustainability with thrivability, and now I came across the word trivancy. The big English-Dutch dictionary that I have here doesn’t know any of these two words… I expect them to mean the same…

Here is what Jack Ricchiuto (yes, again from him!) writes as part of a longer article:

The good news is that all groups can thrive. The quickest way for groups to experience more thrivancy is to design them for more thrivancy. Like everything else in life, thrivancy happens by design. Things always perform as they’re designed to perform.

The work of designing groups for greater thrivancy is the work of designing the four core elements of a group’s interactional space. When any of the four elements of this space is better designed for thrivancy, groups become smarter and better together.

This week we started the first conversations within the hosting team for a next Art of Hosting training in Belgium, Flanders. Part of the conversation was around finances and do we attract the right participants when the price is too high etc. While what we want to accomplish is that a sense of ‘mateship’ – kameraadschap – to be integrated back in our communities and society.

Jack Ricchiuto writes about the same:

Did economic development today in a rural midwest community where people instantly got the distinction between economic and community development. The difference is in the metrics. Economic development is about coins and community building is about connections. Two completely different directions. We need to change the conversation from economies to communities even though it takes us far beyond the comfort zones of conventional approaches.

I don’t think I have written here about my interest in Permaculture. In these days of less ‘work’ and less scheduled time I spend a lot of time looking at video’s and websites. The hours I have spend is still way below the average that the default Western adult spend on watching television, but to me it was a lot! The good thing is that I can knit while wathching – listening… I love it!

Tonight I came across this video, which isn’t a selling statement for Permaculture, but a good conversation of what is at the heart of it. Highy recommended!

Yesterday I came across this site: Ecoversity – with many, many video’s… if you want an interesting evening of TV-watching!

THE GREAT TURNING*

You’ve asked me to tell you of the Great Turning, of how we saved the world from disaster. The answer is both simple and complex:
We turned.

For hundreds of years we had turned
away as life on earth grew more precarious.
We turned away from the homeless men on the streets, the stench from the river, the children orphaned in Iraq, the mothers dying of AIDS in Africa.

We turned away because that is what we had been taught.
To turn away, from the pain, from the hurt in another’s eyes, from the drunken father or the friend betrayed. Always we were told, in actions louder than words, to turn away, turn away. And so we became a lonely people caught up in a world moving too quickly, too mindlessly toward its own demise.

Until it seemed as if there was no safe place to turn. No place, inside or out, that did not remind us of fear or terror, despair and loss, anger and grief.

Yet on one of those days someone did turn.

Turned to face the pain.
Turned to face the stranger.
Turned to look at the smoldering world
and the hatred seething in too many eyes.
Turned to face himself, herself.

And then another turned.
And another. And another.
And as they wept, they took
each other’s hands.

Until whole groups of people were turning.
Young and old, gay and straight. People
of all colors, all nations, all religions.
Turning not only to the pain and hurt
but to the beauty, gratitude and love.
Turning to one another with
forgiveness and a longing
for peace in their hearts.

At first the turning made people dizzy, even silly. There were people standing to the side gawking, criticizing, trying to knock the turners down.
But the people turning kept getting up, kept helping one another to their feet. Their laughter and kindness brought others into the turning circle until even the naysayers began to smile and sway.

As the people turned, they began to spin, reweaving the web of life, mending the shocking tears, knitting it back together with the colors of the earth, sewing on tiny mirrors so the beauty of each person, each creature, each plant, each life form might be seen and respected.

And as the people turned, as they spun

like the earth through the universe, the web wrapped around them like a soft baby blanket, making it clear all were loved, nothing separate.

As this love reached into every crack and crevice, the people began to wake and wonder, to breathe and give thanks, to work and celebrate together.

And so the world was saved, but only as long as you, too, sweet one, remember to turn.

–written by Christine Fry (October 19, 2004)
*Thanks to Joanna Macy

These days a lot of my friends are in Copenhagen, offering their gifts as citizens who care. Here is a simple harvest from one group of Art of Hosting friends:

3 practices that if practiced
by any person on the planet
will help to clear
your inner climate…

SHARE
Our knowing: There’s enough if we share
Practice: SHARE IT

CHOOSE
Our knowing: We all have a choice
Practice: CHOOSE ON BEHALF ON THE PLANET

HEAL
Our knowing: We are nature
Practice: FIND YOUR NATURAL RHYTHM

other good practices for each day:
BREATHE – MOVE – LAUGH – REST

The foundation for these we suggest is an ATTITUDE OF GRATITUDE.
More to read on the website, also links with some video’s taken…