Seeds for a happy planet

Winter

Winter. Je ziet weer bomen
door het bos, en dit licht
is geen licht maar inzicht:
er is niets nieuws
zonder de zon.

En toch is ook de nacht niet
uitzichtloos, zolang er sneeuw
ligt
is het nooit volledig duister, nee,
er is de klaarte van een soort
geloof
dat het nooit helemaal donker
wordt.

Zolang er sneeuw ligt is er hoop.

Herman de Coninck
(mij toegestuurd door Hilde Vandormael, met dank!)

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…

I have a few bloggers whom I follow regularly and one of them is Jack Ricchiuto. One of his last blog post, which are mostly very short, is about the combination of difference and resonance. A truly powerful combination if you want to go for resilience and emergence! Here is most of what he wrote:

One conclusion so far is that the possibility space for change opens up when we connect different people who can begin resonating together around shared stories, opportunities, and dreams. It’s a process of liberating people from the confines of clusters of sameness and ideological colonialism so they can move toward more diverse connections and pragmatic alignments.

As it turns out, the fusion of difference and resonance is a powerful approach because in that space, people move away from trying to change each other, which opens the space for the possibilities of creating innovative and scalable changes together. Resonant listening to one another’s differences allows us to join in both-and innovations that could never be possible in an either-or constrained world.

I also like his concept of ‘resonant listening’ – if just the world would have more of that these days!

(last blog post of WMtE8, which happened in Magnolia, Cape Ann – this happened on Nov 16, 2009)

The writer in our midst said: “This is about the mythic proportions of our time. It is not going to be an easy journey. Do you know the story of Metis, the first wife of Zeus? Metis was the wisest! And the wisest is no longer remembered. “ She told the whole story with lots of details and I was impressed because I never can remember these kind of stories, and because of the content of this myth itself.

The wisest is no longer remembered…
Men hold the love, women hold the wisdom, that is how it should be…
It raised the question in me: What then really is this wisdom?

It was said that our natural gifts – beauty, holding space, awareness of relationships etc. – have not been recognized; our natural wisdom has been devalued; but these gifts are still present and beautiful!

And as I said in a previous post, I didn’t fully grasp what the real meaning was of ‘women and need’. It was an important thread through our last morning conversation. Need, not from emptiness and deficiency; but from impetus.
Not: I need you, as I want you to be.
But: You asking me to be, is healing. The receiving draws out the being.

How can we respond to a need in a way that enlivens us, in a way that shows originality? If I am asked to spread the word about a book written, then a book party will show more of who I am than sending around email messages.

This brought us to this flipping insight:
The gift of need as invitation to others,
to be and to become more of who they are.
Two weeks and many conversations later the real meaning of it still is landing in me… it is a total flipping around, an upside down and inside out of need…
I need you, because of us.

Before the Ubuntu saying ‘I am, because we are.’ had been mentioned. (And I know now it was the title of a film about Ubuntu!) It does speak about the interrelationship between the individual and the collective; but I realized on a deeper level that ‘I need you, because of us’ is a more feminine way of saying the same. ‘I am’ puts the agency, the consciousness in the foreground; ‘I need you’ puts the interdependency, the matter-of-fact in front. It is a much deeper realization of interdependency for me… it is still trickling in…

One of us made a connection with our conversation around money and the sacred exchange system. The use of money is objectifying the people, because it reduces people to goods and services. There is no existential exchange going on; we don’t have a relation with the ones that produced the goods, or the way it was produced. It occurred to her that an exchange of true wealth happens from this existential soul level; it happens from subject to subject. Like we said a few days earlier, the new and sacred exchange system should put the soul’s callings in the middle!

The gift of need, Need as invitation to become our true self,
Our soul’s calling in the middle…

As I am writing this two weeks after the actual conversation, relying on my colorful notes on a big piece of paper, I come to understand why it is always the case that I finish my blog posts of a gathering some weeks later. Many times I have urged myself to do it right away, not to postpone it. I didn’t understand why I could do a lot of the harvesting on the spot and then there was this big time delay. Now I get it! Most of the gathering is more or less on known ground; there are new insights for the participants and also for me, but they flow naturally for me from previous conversations and insights. The more we go into deeper teritory, I am myself turned inside out and upside down. My way of looking at the world needs to shift, my perspective is challenged quite a lot. I realize now that I then need some time to digest more in order for me to be able to harvest it out, to be able to write something that – hopefully – makes sense to others too.

This said, in this last morning conversation we went into a more mystical thread.
Mythic and mystical…
I told my deep emotional experience of looking back on my life, at the time of Atlantis, in the last moments before death, because the world was collapsing due to humans actions. In these moments I had a deep realization that I had used my co-creating power with my partner and others for the sake of power; for the feeling of being god-like. And as I saw this, I promised myself I would never ever again explore these realms of magic, this co-creation with matter and energy. Now, 2009, in this circle of women we are talking about our natural gifts, our inner wisdom… our magic?
Then my memory gets triggered! Then I get scared.
I need all of you, because of us.
I need all of you, because I want to explore the real life-affirming co-creation; not an abuse of power. Our inner wisdom holds power. Can you please tell me when I am acting from personality or when from my soul level?
When is it memory? When is it true inspiration?
But not bringing our deep inner wisdom is holding back, and can do harm in another way. When we hold back, we devitalize the evolutionary impetus and potential of magic. From the integrity and alignment of soul we are needed to step into full partnership with magic, into real life-affirming co-creation. And in the ‘I need all of you’ there is the invitation to the collective (feminine) soul to fully step into right use of our wisdom in working magic.

The scientist in our midst chimed in with some of the current facts and integrated it with her spiritual understanding. There is a relationship between the manifest and the not-manifest. The not-manifest can be moved and shaped… it brings about an expanded sense of who we really are… If soul is from Source,
and Source is pure light,
what we know in light can be moved through density.
She ended with saying: Soul has a piece to play in how to understand the world.

That said, it was time to close the circle. It had been a full and inspiring morning, and there was no real need to do an elaborate checkout; another song was the best fit.

I believe in all that has never yet been spoken.
I want to free what waits within me
so that what no one has dared to wish for

may for once spring clear
without my contriving.

If this is arrogant, God, forgive me,
but this is what I need to say.
May what I do flow from me like a river,
no forcing and no holding back,
the way it is with children.

Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,
these deepening tides moving out, returning,
I will sing you as no one ever has,

streaming through widening channels
into the open sea.

by Rainer Maria Rilke
(1875 – 1926)
English version by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy

Offered by one of the participants in the circle of Women Moving the Edge in Cape Ann, as a description of our way of being together.

(continuation of harvest Women Moving the Edge Cape Ann)

It was Monday morning now, the last half day of our gathering here in Magnolia. I had a lot of notes from the day before that I didn’t grasp enough to be able to talk or blog about it. There had been this ‘flipping’ around the notion of women and need, but I didn’t understand it really… I didn’t ‘get’ it. So I raised the question if someone was able to help me out in the morning circle… this seemed like an invitation to dive deeper into it, until the last moments of being together in the circle. It had grabbed most of us.

Throughout the whole gathering we had been repeating one of the agreements in Circle Council: Ask for what you need, offer what you can. This is a splendid agreement to make every group into a leaderful group. Everyone is supposed to take responsibility for their own needs and passions and to offer in service of the whole. But what we had come across was more than this. It seemed to be beyond the paradox of need and offer. As one woman said: “No person can follow their own soul’s calling.” If we are on the level of soul my need seems to be an offer, or at least an invitation…

Some notes from Saturday afternoon:
This is an invitation to dramatically alter the way women can be together.

This is the feminine way of what it is to be on a team for men.

Because it is about wisdom, we each need to stay unique and link from there; receiving each other and see the need as receiving. The reception creates the next unfolding! I don’t understand this; I need to sit with this a lot, but I sense it!

Maybe it explains… needing in the context of peers, needing in the context of consciousness…

At the very minimal level it is about receiving the gifts from the others.

We are needing something from each other in order to co-create.

What is the level of honesty that is asked for here? First it is about going inwards; then there is the come out through voicing it; last is to be received in authenticity.
When you receive my gift then the cycle of gratitude works, and it cycles, over and over…

There followed different stories of remembering and pain…
… being initiated in re-connecting with the Earth in a very physical way… wanting to weep: Where have you been? I’m so glad you are back! How lonely we have been throughout history. And now we are not alone if we pursue what we pursue.

… a story of Enough is enough! against abuse by priests and church… I needed someone who stood with me. I need people who can stand and make a big noise if need be.

… a story of fear… if I ask for what I need, I might not be able to get it… particularly with women… now experiencing the solidarity…

The wounding is collective, not just individual.
The story is old, not just this lifetime.

Somewhere in the night appeared this sentence in my awareness:
I need you, because of us.
(more in next blogposts)

Soon after lunch we were all more than ready to go for a walk and to be in nature. We were guided along Shore Street, over the beach into a small walking trail that led a little bit uphill to end on Ocean Lawn: a splendid open view on the ocean, with some beach trees in full autumn color. Everyone of us followed their own impulse and we went in all directions; to sit on the bench, going to the trees or straight to the ocean… It was more than marvelous. When we came back many told about an empty head, a stillness inside and so on.

I had been sitting on the huge boulders of granite, right in front of the waves, with the sun trying to pour through the grey of the sky. It made some soft glow in the sky and some twinkles on the water, and it didn’t blind my eyes; it was just perfect for me on that spot. Some headache had been going on for me, which is always a sign that some energy is moving, that something wants to break through. It feels to me like a pressure that is just below my skin, both in my head and in my face. Sometimes it is quite uncomfortable, but now it wasn’t too bad. Sitting on the rock in upright position like in meditation I realized on a deeper layer what the aboriginal elder had told Birute: Men hold the love, women hold the wisdom; that is how it should be.

It seems to be a challenge to us, women, to move from love within – which we have came to know from every possible angle – to knowing within. I expect it to be as challenging for men to move from knowing in the head to real love. It seemed to me – sitting on that rock – that what is asked from us is Clarity of Knowing. A knowing within, a knowing related to nature and the cycles of life, a knowing that was present in these women called witches, a knowing that asks us to re-member.

Back in our circle a poem was offered: The Unknown She, she who watches… I thought: she who knows…

Then a deep knowing came through the circle, the collective. We need to look at women and needing, and we need a new language here. I need you! Not in a neediness way, not the old dependency on a man, but a needing beyond our being strong and being able to do it alone. A needing that is an interdependency. A needing that is needed to stand together.
This stirred both a lot of emotion and resonance… we had hit a pivotal point; a breakthrough in understanding…

When needs gets reciprocal it is effortless.
Is this a new kind of energy?
There is something emerging in women and I have a need to be part of that.
Talking about it is creating ley-lines across the country and across the globe.
I need each of you in your own way!

It was also touching me on a very deep level. All the times that I had invited the other women to speak from the place within and to drop from the head, and the already known – the memory – I had asked them from my need to be with me. Be with me in this quest of remembering to be in reciprocal relation with all of matter: the threes, the rocks, the ocean, the flowers and much more.

There is magic in relating with ‘life within matter’; magic that we will need in order to heal the wounds of our world and to solve the many intertwined problems on the Earth. But the memory of the witch-hunts and the collapse of Atlantis, due to abuse of magic, resides also on this level of knowing within, and I am very, very afraid to use this power in way that is not life-affirming and maybe manipulative. I need all the other women to go there with me and sense together with me: Is the knowing from within pure or somehow distorted? And only together we can see the whole puzzle.

Judy then offered her gift of synthesis: Clarity of inner knowing leads to magic and our next step is how to do that together. She named some elements:
There was something in the body;
There was wounding, fear and vulnerability;
There was clear asking;
There was moving to ground and to Earth itself;
The Earth is calling each soul to voice its inner knowing;
Then there is a spark and something is ignited.
In the inner stillness the trees, the rocks etc can speak to us.

A new morning on Sunday, still grey but with the promise of some sunshine sooner or later in the day. Judy asked to check in with whatever was present. In the morning I had been going for a walk along Shore street – just like the other day but this time with no rain – and I had been wondering if we were really on the edge, where we really in a space where we felt totally alive?

Lisa immediately offered us her edge: to sing another song for us. What a fabulous voice! What a gift!

And the message that came with the song: the answers are blowing in the wind…
Susan offered the sentence that came to her in the morning: It needs to be stable. Not understanding what this sentence was really about she looked up the true meaning of stable, which is: to stand together. This is what we need, this is what we can offer: to stand together in our soul’s calling, because it cannot be done on our own anymore. Someone mentioned Aikido and someone talked about Joanne of Arc, it seemed to point out that a new warrior archetype is born in women. An archetype that isn’t afraid from aggression or denial, but that – like in a true Aikido move – can use the movement of the opponent as an emotional recycling. The question came up: when we feel vulnerable is it really ours, or does it come from memory; either individually or collectively? And can we leave the memory for what it is and relate to situations in a new way and with inspiration? In this way take 100% responsibility for all of what happens in our life? This is truly a challenging concept but do we want to go for less? Isn’t this the difference between a warrior or being a victim?

We had a break and we tried to figure out when to go to Ocean Lawn, according to Edveeje, who lived here for ten years, the place with the most magic present. Some wanted to go now, some wanted the freedom of not to rush back… anyway the sun called us out and with no agreement or conversation about it we ended all up on the lawn in front of the house, talking in little teams of two, three or four. This is what I like about living in emergence, some things are spoken about and agreed upon, but there are still things that just happen, as if the collective does its own thing and we just go along. It was truly nourishing to feel the sun and we were called for another great lunch.
Our caterer takes a lot of effort and care to provide us with excellent food that is local, seasonal and organic as much as possible. It really feels like a blessing and it is totally aligned with the purpose and intention of WMtE. Also the house we are in, called the White House, but actually a little pink, is full of details that show the care and quality that has been gathered since it was build in 1880. If you were a photographer you could spend a day or more here to capture all the little details of beauty. In this regard it is a feminine energy that is present, which is so different and a lot more supportive than being in a conference center, even when it is situated in a beautiful nature surrounding.

Saturday afternoon wasn’t easy. As much as the morning was flowing and inspiring, lot of the afternoon we spend in the groan zone. Somewhere in the chaos, trying, groping in the dark for where the new and shared meaning would appear.

I had brought in the thread from previous gatherings and from our preparation time around the system and the culture of the current money system and how to think about that in the new paradigm. As I said, not easy…

Do we need to invent a new system?
Talking about money doesn’t seem to hold a lot of passion; actually it feels quite dead.
Although we are not economic experts, through history it were the women who held the keys of the households. So it seems that women – together – are now holding the keys to the world household.

Keys? Do we hold each a key?

Soon I changed the word Money System on my big piece of paper into Exchange System. It is clear that we need something to exchange, but not the current money with its disfunctionalities.

Somewhere it was said that Money will be replaced by Love. Great and interesting idea, but how will that look like??? And what is Wisdom in this domain? There wasn’t coming much on my piece of paper; not much that was inspiring… we were sure in the chaos…

Wasn’t this a mirror of the bigger system? Because the economic system seems so complex, so big and so overwhelming that we just don’t start thinking about it; we withdraw or hold back? or we all try to solve it on our own?

The break seemed to shift things and the conversation got full of passion, full of great insights; some of the keys that we hold became visible. I think the greatest key was that we need a sacred exchange system and we would need to put our soul’s calling in the middle; not even our competence or profession, but our true authentic gifts that are surfacing bit by bit. If we do that and exchange around that in a circle, in a web of interdependencies then something starts to happen and that something is like magic. But it always requires our full participation; our full engagement; our Yes! Yes! Yes! Even if it is our tiredness or our doubts if we bring them in the circle then we are engaged and new things can happen.

It was clear for all of us that we don’t want to prostitute our soul’s calling anymore in supporting the old system. What if all women would follow their passion; wouldn’t the outcome be that Earth was saved and all local and global needs met?
So one of the keys is: go where the juice is! Don’t let a lack of imagination hold you back; but keep on sensing what is life-affirming and what is not. Keep your senses open not to energise the old system.
At one point one woman used a little woman figure as a talking piece, a really tiny one. Someone else felt drawn to take a look closer by and asked to see it; then the woman who owned it said: You can have it!
That’s where the juice was! This generosity is surely a big part of the sacred exchange system that we are all looking for.