Seeds for a happy planet

The Dutch translation of this poem, originally written in German, was for years on the wall, where I changed my cloths. So, I read it many, many times in the morning or when going to bed; sometimes consciously, sometimes less. But it dripped in, slowly but surely. Now I came across it again… It is such a deep wisdom, that is also at the core of any transformation work, be it individual therapy, systemic constellation work or… it is also useful for the state of our world.

It is what it is, says Love…

“It is madness
says reason
It is what it is
says love

It is unhappiness
says caution
It is nothing but pain
says fear
It has no future
says insight
It is what it is
says love

It is ridiculous
says pride
It is foolish
says caution
It is impossible
says experience
It is what it is
says love.”

Erich Fried (Es ist was es ist. Liebesgedichte Angstgedichte Zorngedichte) – Translation by M. Kaldenbach

The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion – put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.
by Wendel Berry
via Chris Corrigan

A song to enjoy!

Last bit of our journey here together, the harvest of the open space sessions and the final closing. Three words jump out: Mystery, Mastery and Artistry.

Mystery… how to describe?
Can we reach the Mystery through Mastery?
Mystery of our individual being in the world, mastery of the subtle arts, which then allows us to grow to a collective mastery, a mastery of the collective being.The use of arts seems to come more to the foreground in our inquiries, as are stories. Indeed, people were using color and paint in their notebooks, and in the conversations.

Really beautiful pages I saw all around. Both arts and stories are related with our embodied presence. And both are easy ways in to let people participate in. It brings us easily from I to we. When mastery comes in, it goes even beyond the We! Collective intelligence, collective wisdom and collective being shows up.You will notice that the people-place relationship in its surface form had more or less disappeared. As we noticed in another session the areas of life: I, We and profession/vocation are collapsing into one whole, into wholeness. So also the people and place collapsed into how we are as human beings in the world – in a new way.

The importance of stories and the weaving of them into a story-field was not really new to me, but I realized that this is a big part of what I do! I weave the stories that hear and that I am part of in order to show the new meaning that is arising in many different places. I imagine the new storyfield to be an inspiring possibility and opportunity for people who feel the dis-ease of the old story.

Mystery
Mastery
Artistry
In service of the whole
In service of evolution

Magic!

I have been reading Dave Pollard’s blog for a long, long time. This time I want to share something – because after all he is a good writer! He goes on naming what is required from us in these times:

“Instead of seeing conceptually I have to learn to see perceptually.

Instead of using the tools of propagandized modern language, I have to learn to use the natural tools of intuition and attention and appreciation and sensation and presence.

Instead of learning based on planning and presupposition (based on what I’ve ‘learned’ before) my learning must be based on openness to all possibility, on appreciation of emergence, and most of all on humility.

Instead of applying complicated, analytical learning methods I must apply the ways of complexity: experimentation, discovery, observation, imagination, and practice.

Instead of learning by the traditional means of separating myself from the object of my study (”the environment”, “the culture”), I must learn integrally, as a connected part of all-life-on-Earth.

I have to relearn to learn how a child learns: authentically (=Gk. being oneself).

………..
To move forward now I have to become un-civilized, wild. Agile. Authentic. Finally, fully, nobody-but-myself.

………..

To do that I must let go of everything I believe, everything I think I ‘know’, everything I fear, everything I think is appropriate (or not), expected, accepted (and acceptable, or not), everything I have unintentionally become and everything I have ‘taken on’. All that baggage. All that stuff that holds me, holds all of us, back, and holds us in place.

I have to become light.”

Beautiful.

Raw.

True.

I love it!

Yesterday, surfing on the net, following writings from friends, this is what I found: a truly, inspiring story, as much in the content as in the way it is published!

It’s all in the question.

Find it

Explore it

Open it up to others

Learn from it about it

Experience its power

Enjoy the feeling

Assimilate the knowledge

It’s all in the question

Written by Hala Makarem – found her blog, Inspirational Reflections, through the Presencing Institute community site.

This is a drawing I made a few weeks ago… it is on my wall, right in front of me… it somehow shows how the new will burst through the cracks of the old…

As the photo shows, I was ‘out’ on that Sunday evening.

Maria and Sarah offered to do a Tarot reading on our common question: What is the next level of women’s leadership, connected to Source?

Now, I would maybe call it ‘feminine leadership’…

Many elements that came out of this reading supported my own ideas of how and what is next; so I could safely lay down…

At the centre is the realisation that it is about change, huge change; about breaking out of a paradigm; and we don’t have a choice! Many people feel that these days, and our trap is that we want to have the bigger picture first, and then act. No, it is as we said before: sense and act, sense and act, sense and act…

This ’sense and act’ is our new practice. We do it over and over again, like a good apprentice who wants to become a master, until we slip through the mystery! It is coming into our awareness that we do need a new form, not one we planned ahead, but a form that is coming from Source – the form is ‘coming through’ us.

There will be many forms, many layers, many versions; with a danger that creativity can be scattered. We will need to be very un-traditional, and to let a form emerge that makes the feminine visible. But the near future brings ‘the wheel of fortune’: we will awake to the alignment…

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.”

Martha Graham