Seeds for a happy planet

I sensed M. was not connected to our field. Did she need something? Was there something to share?
Indeed! She had been developing a whole map around Emergent or Regenerative Leadership. How is this leadership being formed?

She noticed in a gathering with the Pioneers of Change that these young people where doing great work but didn’t have a clue why some people would not understand them. She wanted to check this map with us, not in a mental way, but with all our senses, with our Wholeness of Knowing. We would use drawing, music, automatic writing, constellation to give her feedback and input from our different perspectives. This was a feminine way of strategic planning! And so much came out of it!

We first concentrated on the first bit of her map: the I, the person of the leader. This translated in the question: What is longing to emerge in the being of leaders now?
It is heard to tell the depth of insights and the emotions touched by all of us. We became very aware of the difference in paradigm between the young people and the older ones.

Sensing into this question and drawing it made clear for L. why she had such a hard time understanding her daughter. She spoke how she could sense the energy going in so much directions, from process to outcome, to process, to outcome, on and on. She sensed a kind of leadership that was willing to step out of the way, ‘willing to go behind’ to let things emerge. And these leaders being in many places, are all working in a similar fashion. But then she realised what was missing! ther is so much passion, but no com-passion, no ‘real’ heart in it, not a humility that mostly comes with age.

S. – being the younger generation here – was in awe for what she heard. She totally resonated with L’s words and could add her perspective. She named that in her ‘living all over the place’ she was longing for solid grounding, someone like her dad, who could hold the core while she would do her ten thousand things.

Now I understood the real inter-generational issue. This was what I had been longing and expecting to see in the summer in Axladtisa. Now it emerged here in our little circle with so much clarity.

We started our Sunday morning, after breakfast and after meditation done by some of us, with a walk. Up and down the road, as the tracks in the forest were way too wet. It amased me throughout the whole day how easily things would flow, how naturally we made transitions from one way of being together to another way. Like M. and I walking down this road, and at a certain moment, not talking about it, not agreeing about it, we just turned and walked back. This is a quality of alignment that is really dear to my heart. As someone said later, Kairos and Chronos come together.

There was wonderment in the circle that you can really be pulled forward by emergence. I explained that synchronicity or being aware of the intangible is not emergence. Emergence is a scientific term; it describes that when a new kind of relationship between different ‘wholes’ comes into being, it creates a really new kind of whole that has never exited before. This made us dive deeper into what this Collective Presencing is about. As individuals we all need to be whole, centered, aligned in ourselves. This means to me an alignment, a resonance between our head, our heart and with an open will. When we gather in a circle then, with a shared question or intention, we form a container for Source or Soul to come through. We realised that the five of us gathered here and now, is a unique possibility, this is a unique field that we create, that will never ever happen again!

At a certain moment we all shared what was present. It was crucial for S. in order to feel calm again, to hear from each of us. It gave us all a sense of where we were in relation to our shared field. L. realised that this way of being is not about trying to understand what is going on, but a commitment to be present with each other. If we do that the field re-opens again.

Being present is like a gift, your presence makes me feel good. And it makes the field tangible. What is then the shared inquiry that we are all present with?

This was written down:
What
wants to,
needs to,
longs to
Emerge
now
through us?

Talking is nice…
talking about emergence is nice…
but it is not it!

Proposing some ideas can be useful, but doing what is needed and right in the moment is different!
“Can’t we ask Emergence what it wants to speak to us?”
“Go ahead. Put yourself in Emergence shoes and speak what you feel.”

… some doubt… some resistance… and then she took the leap and stood up.

“I am Emergence.”
A Constellation happened!
“I have been waiting.
My nature is now and in the moment.
It is not about me, but about we.
It is what it is, right now.”
Gratitude stood up and joined the constellation.
Collective Presencing stood up too.
Emergence said to Collective Presencing: I long for you to stand next to me. Then the World came along. She spoke about needing emergence, but was cought up in ‘being defined’ and having ‘density’. How could she be changed when she is pure form? Isn’t she ‘what is’?
But the World became tired, and became open for some support. Emergence, ‘the author of form’ could stand behind her and Collective Presencing could come closer. “Perhaps I can be remade. Perhaps it is not the form that holds my essence after all. I am the world willing to be remade.” (the picture might not make any sense to you, it is a colorful representation of how the constellation unfolded)
Big insight: Emergence is just a matter of standing up and do it!

We closed our day with sharing stories. We talked a lot about gratitude, how all the old wisdom traditions have always told how important that is. There is power in Gratitude! It is a practice we need to cultivate.

It is Sunday morning now. I am up pretty early, the benefit of the jetlag. I started my day in the hot tub here, watching how the light took over from the night. You don’t see it changing and yet it changes. Like the flowers who are in the center of our circle. We noticed that they were opening and yet you can’t pin it down and say: Now I saw it!

This has a lot to do with what was in our focus yesterday: emergence.

We started with noticing that at the breakfast table the centered and loving space from the meditation had changed in some heady conversation which left some of us closed down, stressy and agitated. Ego is so eager to take over! To do what it thinks will deserve  him/her a place in the circle… but in doing so we loose the essential, that what gives real meaning. Once again we realised the importance of our ability to notice in the moment, to be able to check if we are really present or not.

Someone shared a story of a boy giving a taped box to his dad. The dad didn’t understand what was in it. “It is me!” said the boy. If we open our soulboxes, share our love and our thinking, and if we are aware of the links between, the web that it creates, then a New Being has emerged. This is the potential of Collective Presencing. The Circle Being that is in itself a higher level of complexity, a next step in evolution, with the capacity to sense deep into deep and complex situations.

Suddenly the right moment was there to share the story of how Women Moving the Edge came into being and what we learned along the way. Next our energies went into the body: someone sleeping, the rest working with sound in the body, which fluently resulted in expression with colors on paper.

“I don’t belong at my desk anymore, although I created myself.” Resonance in the circle around this theme… “What I desire is not created yet.” A lot of talk about the precipice, the gap between what is and what we desire, the difficulty of going there… but is this real? Is it really hard? Or is it fun? is there excitement when we live on this edge? Do you know the aliveness when jumping of the cliff?

The sentence changed during the conversation to: What we desire is being created now! Life is here; it doesn’t need to be done! Leaping to lightspeed is not-knowing the form that is being created. But there is intention, there is a guiding question, there is  asking what we want.

We realised the limits of language, the limits of concepts, the limits of the already known. It is a ‘language +’ that we need. In the emerging we need all channels and there is the possibility to speak right from Source, without words being processed through the mind first. When spoken, these words carry with them the field where they are coming from; you feel the difference. It is this quality that we are seeking also in our acting. Are we able to notice and discern the difference?

After a day of preparation with Judy on Thursday we started yesterday afternoon with the fourth gathering called Women Moving the Edge. Subtitle is: of Collective Presencing.

What is preparation for an emergent gathering? It is not about design, because all you can see, all you can know is the first step. It is about building the field between the partners in the hosting team. What does that mean? I notice that I am only satisfied, or have a feeling that the work is done, when we have come to a point of newness, a point where we could raise a new question, a point where we could share a little deeper than ever before. It is about going deeper into what is possible and let unfold the next bit of it, into the manifest. All this is guided by the question: What is next? What is our edge now?

So we started with three participants. Actually four, but one lady was distracted by something in her private life which made that she was late, and after dinner decided to go home again.
We started in our default way: dancing, moving, doing what was needed to bring yourself present in the room and in the gathering. Then, with the check-in, we plunged right deep into it! Our guiding questions were very simple: What brought you here? and What is your edge now? What a richness in the sharing and in the questions raised! After the check-in Judy and I looked at each other: How did this happen? Do we have anything to do with this???

The first words that appeared on the flipchart were Surrender and Power: how do they relate? Next was: moving from Being Loved to Being Love. Here are some more snippets:

Asking is setting an intention; is setting up a resonant field where the One – or Source – can come through. It is the intention that activates; and we can be ongoing open to that.

The metaphor of the mycelium showed up again: this deeper, highly sensitive and highly connected system of knowing.

Is it difficult to love?

How do we manifest our future potential? Manifesting from Source is being aware of the connections. Is this hard?

Our mycelium is sick; we have to find a way to create a healthy underbelly. Later someone said: not the mycelium is sick, but my ability to engage with it is sick!
Being love is a state of relationship without judgment. It is a free flow of energy, with no resistance, no needing to know. The potential for love is always there. We are always connected!

Can we put our truth out? Do we dare to tip over the edge? More will follow!

Since some time I feel the need – and the motivation – again to pick up my blog posting. So many ‘Seeds for a happy planet’ pass my screen and come up in conversations, that it feels like wasting them, if I don’t write about it. Not only for you the reader, but also for myself.

Because I notice there is a difference between seeing or reading something and really getting it! To stand still, to reflect on it, and to really harvest it, in order for it to get integrated and available to cook with it, that is the point here. I was reminded of this by a blogpost by my friend Amy. Thanks Amy!

So here are some seeds that I noticed recently.

I’m trying hard, but I don’t remember how I came across…. I knew already that the kingdom of Bhutan is measuring the collective created value in a different and more menaningful way than our GNP. They measure happiness of the people! Seeing in this video that so many people with statistic minds are actually working this out, felt very supportive to me. It gave me a feeling of: others are finding out what I don’t know about! Thanks to these people, and the many others that I never heard about.

One line of inquiry that I hold for myself is around: What could a new financial system or economic model look like? Here is a blog post about how it is going right now, and why it should change in the future. If you have more time you can watch this video, although I knew the basic ideas, I found it still worthwhile watching this.

Some weeks ago I told a good friend that I want to live in the energy or space or field where I can always ‘act in an instant’. This ‘acting in an instant’ is used by Otto Scharmer in his Theory U. It describes how you can be totally aligned in your self with your thinking, your emotions, and your actions and at the same time also be in harmony with your environment and third in resonance with the future that is emerging through you.

So, it is not following some instincts, or giving in to your longings. To me it is an alignment of your personality and your soul. In my experience it is a way of being totally alive. I guess it is like a bud of a flower, opening itself up more and more, step-by-step – a better word here is unfolding.
The difference between myself and the flower bud is that I get excited, and the flower is ‘just growing’? Or maybe the flower is always excited?

Why do I feel excited? Most likely because I wasn’t fully alive before. I was holding back a lot, I was silent, I didn’t take myself serious and many more ways of being ‘normal’ and ‘obedient’ instead of being fully alive.

Acting in an instant, it feels so good! The days and moments that it happens follow each other quicker and quicker. As if time collapses! There isn’t much scheduled in my calendar, which makes it possible to act in the now: to finish tasks right away; to take steps ‘one conference call at a time’, no big projects are figured out into detail, which then need to be accomplished, but a sensing of ‘right time, right space, right people’.

If time collapses, then space should collapse too. I can see glimpses of it in the ease of conference and Skype calls connecting people easily across the globe, in sending text messages from Belgium to Israel, but I am wondering,
if the time-space continuum really collapses can I disappear from here and appear right next to you???

The first leg of my journey ‘at this side of the pond’, as George would say, has ended. It was an amazing journey.
Arriving here in Canada, in the province of Nova Scotia, with a size bigger than Belgium but only 1 million citizens, the first thing that catched my eyes was: space! Kilometers and kilometers you only see threes, threes, a lake, and threes again. Only now and then a few houses!

We gathered here at The Shire, a learning centre near Yarmouth, with some stewards of the Art of Hosting network. Purpose was to see how a next level, or a next step in governing/stewarding this self-organising web of practitioners could look like, could take form. It is a worldwide question how a self-organising web of people can be guided to the next step of its evolution, that is also in alignment with values as openness, open source, courage, leadership, constant learning etc. We can’t govern ‘old style’, not even ‘new style’. It needs to be ‘emergent style’. It needs to be supportive of the growth, the evolution, the brilliance of the web and all the people in it! This style needs to be an expression of and add to the unfolding of being a learning-full and leader-full network. As someone said in the gathering: I want to be a leader with no followers.

Wouldn’t it be great when everyone was a leader in this way?

This theme is exactly the focus of the workshop I will participate in at the Shambhala Summer Institute in a few days.

I love this learning with others, this collective inquiry that leads us to emergent learning.

Recently I attended three lectures, basically about different models of change and leadership for these times, and they all three ended with a similar kind of message.

The first one was Otto Scharmer who gave a workshop in a conference in Wurzburg. This conference was one in the series ‘Fields of Conflict, fields of Wisdom’ and this year’s theme was “I am. You are”. I value Otto’s book on Presencing and Theory U, because they gave words and a bigger framework to a lot of my intuitive knowing. I asked Otto afterwards the question of how to make sure that after going through the eye of the needle people don’t fall back into their ‘normal’ way of doing things. Basically his answer had two advices: be clear on your intention (don’t loose out of sight what you want to accomplish) and the second is to have a circle of friends to keep you in the creative spot.

The most inspiring lecture and workshop on the conference was given by Nicanor Perlas, a Philippine who has been integrating social activism and spirituality. He presented the Lemniscate Model, which uses the language of the hero’s journey of Joseph Campbell, and integrates more the ongoing iterations of the process than the U-process. One of the last points he named was that “a real living relationship and dialogue is a powerful entry point to a new sense of activism”. He named it the real ‘letting go’ and stressed the importance of a ‘a real relationship’ to be able to ‘return’ into the world after the moments or days of illumination. He named a real relationship ‘a spiritual path’, through which we can learn to hold our fluid state when we are encountered with boundaries in our self, in the other or in the organizations we live and work in.

Then a few days later I was totally amazed by a lecture by Julio Olalla, a man born in Chili, living in the US, but still showing his Spanish roots in jokes and even dance!
Fascinating enough he used the same language from Joseph Campbell! (The same book named in twice in three days time, I understand it as a sign to search for the book, somewhere on my shelves, and read it with the eyes I have now). The main point of this lecture was that emotional learning is possible and needed. He gave beautiful descriptions of the core qualities of different emotions: sadness, gratitude, passion, trust, tenderness… and stressed the importance of working with the body. He then pointed out that for ‘leap’ learning we need to gather in a ’sacred place’, which was named in former times “they sealed the temple”. In this space of care and trust the learning happens through speaking about your demons and emotions and when you are really listened to.

Real learning happens in real conversations, and conversations are as old as humanity.

Leadership in these complex times seems about providing a safe space where our humanness, in all its aspects, in its relational essence can thrive again. Whatever map we use, it seems to come down to “turn to one another”.

I received a nice candle today from a dear friend, with a blessing I want to share:

May you always be blessed

with walls for the wind.

A roof for the rain.

A warm cup of tea by the fire.

Laughter to cheer you.

Those you love near you.

And all that your heart might desire.

Irish blessing