New evolutionary capability?
Yesterday something new happened for me and I think it is important for the leadership of the future. Years ago, in the autumn of 2000, I initiated a women’s group, which was called the FiveStar. Later the name changed to FourStar as one of us left our circle. This women’s circle was very important for me and to all of us. We all used it as our safety net and as our mirror and deep profound feed-back opportunity. Being all trained as therapists, you can be sure that we inquired into all bits and pieces of our emotional life. At a certain point silence ‘came in’. We didn’t decide to have more silence, but as we trained ourselves in following the energy that was present, silence happened. We learned to meditate together and used this collective state of presence to ask for information regarding questions or issues that were important to us. It was in itself a learning cycle – over the years – of co-sensing, until the point of ‘the eye of the needle’ as Scharmer names it in his U-process. I, or we, didn’t know this theory, only later I could see how our journey was a kind of U-process, at least the left side of the U: the process of coming to an Open Mind, an Open Heart and an Open Will. It was so fascinating for me that I wrote an article about it.
In this article I’m talking about the CircleBeing, this collective identity, that can arise when the members of a circle can all be fully present in themselves and with one another. The final question of this article is my hunch that CircleBeings become present because they have a CircleTask. You can see it as how individuals have all their individual life-task.
In one of our collective meditations, many months ago, we saw what this CircleTask is for us. But I got frustrated over time when I didn’t see any energy to make it manifest. Part of this frustration became constructive energy in the creation of Women Moving the Edge, about which I blogged recently. So I entered yesterday’s meeting with the question: Is our circle dying or is there energy for the emergence of something new? We had a deep dialogue about it and finally got again into a collective meditation around the focus question if we were to end our circle, and if not – why not, and if yes, why so? In the information we got it was crystal clear that ‘the form’ of our gatherings had come to an end and that there is a seperate path to go for each of us before we can realise our true potential, or our CircleTask.
So we left with no new appointment in our agenda and in total peace with our new insight. No blame, no conflict, no attachment to what was before… I knew right away that this was something important: not to be attached to the form or previous content of our meetings. Being able ‘to flow’, to be present to what is needed, not only related to content but also to form!
This seems to me an ability that is needed for the right part of the U-process. Because the trap of falling back into ‘known’ procedures, meetings and organising is very tempting when related to make things manifest.
I’m curious for the future to come…
March 16th, 2007 at 10:46 am
Dear Ria,
It looks like you have a great need to manifest. A need to see and experience a result. So, what I experience as the circle task in the circles that I am involved with is: being a circle. The actual physical coming together is the first ‘task’ . The first move. This is women moving the edge: the willingness to come together in a circle with a spiritual center This is big. Really big. No more is needed. We can relax in that movement. And then, as you write so beautifully, comes the next phase of the circle, being able to stay together in the center of our circle. This is in my experience the realization of the circle. Although it is not visible. The circle is a metaphor for Oneness. In your FourStar Circle it is obvious that you are in this oneness. So you can surrender to this. When it is needed for you to come together in the physical again, there will be a call.
Namasté to you all.
Edda