Seeds for a happy planet

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!

Halfway during our gathering, the morning of the third day.

As hosting team we had the sense that going deeper was what was needed, both in the group to get to the next level of meaning and between the people and the land.
Instead of the individual walk in silence we walked the flow of the water on the land – literally. Hearing the story of riverbeds drying out earlier than it used to be (maybe because neighbors have drill-holed?), the well that was full with debris and wood, a flood that changed the road and so much more. Impressive was to realize how much power – in the form of electricity – to pump up the water from the well we need for our comfort of having running water! Later in the day Jacki from Kufunda, would tell that they have to draw all the water they use in their center by hand.
How far are we removed from what it really takes… better: from what we really take from the Earth, in so many different forms, and with so little respect, gratitude and awareness. Next to the well we shared a short time in silence and the messages that we received while listening to the land.

We then settled for a circle around the question: What is the most meaningful thing for me that I am holding in my place -here or at home – at this time?

It was an amazing string of beautiful gems, guided by our explicit invitation to listen with wonder, to listen – as water – to the deepest levels, and introduced by calling in the four directions.

Most meaningful for me – and part of the invitation to the others – is the building of a new human capacity: to listen, to speak, and to act as an ecosystem. To be a collective being with many ears, hearts, minds and bodies that can be of service to nay question, issue or opportunity at hand.

As Maria said, a lot of us are trying, struggling and experimenting with bringing the mystery back into our lives; not in the old forms with white robes, many bells or lots of incense but in a new way. But if you don’t connect with the mystery – with Life – in a gentle way then it disappears. More and more during the day we realized that we need the Subtle Arts to be able to see more, to listen deeper, get deeper insights…

Mystery. . . . .   Life . . . . .
Cycle of life and death
Balancing the grounding of a new project while pulling back to be present for a new baby….

Reverence
And Ritual

Where is my home? Of consciousness?

Honoring my ancestors, because my own story is too small.

The Earth is tired. We have to Re-awaken our Guardianship, which means: Stick with it, no matter what! And still be non-attached.

Again the subtle arts:
The story of the Wounded King,

The owl that calls at night,

The night consciousness

Claiming old wisdoms in new ways
Focus on the unexpected
What feels right?
What is right timing?

Communication is bigger than conversation

We change from being story-holders of the old story to story-makers of the new. Then a new story-field will arise.

My place is where I am.

There we were on the second day of our gathering. Again a beautiful, sunny Greek Spring day. As we had decided, we started – after framing the day – with connecting with the land; a half hour alone in silence. We were offered to pick a Tarot Card as inspiration, and off we went.

The funny thing is that ‘the Tarot’ is a language that I never can remember. My card was The Star. Not bothered what books or masters would tell about it, I used my creative expression to draw the card in my dairy. I saw an angel and a reflection of the star into the water. I understood them as subtle energies, and an invitation to use more of them in my life.

We were then invited to a World Café to look together into the emerging patterns we could notice in our field of inquiry about people and place relationship. It was a deep conversation, difficult to capture… but I will give it a try here.

Chaos, distraction, stuck energy, loss of meaning… it asks for a simplicity that allows a holding of the complexity. Then meaning – meaning in place – can emerge. We would need the science of natural rhythm and the science of subtle sensing to be able to receive messages – both from the land and ourselves. The point is to go beyond separateness, to an embodiment of the vibration of the land. Then we are living in true partnership with Earth, in wholeness.

Again and again, silence was named as a condition to come into this conversation with the land.

Another line in the conversation was about death, endings, the shit, the dirty… and the need to re-integrate, re-weave it into our lives. Because we have separated it out, but it belongs to us, to Earth, to our lives.
One question: How is standing in the shit a sacred act?

Suddenly there was a burst of energy in the harvesting circle. There was a call for action! Let’s do something here, on the land! Is it time for action?
Is it right relationship to be on the land and not contributing to the growing of the food?

Of course these was much, much more…
Sacred in the ordinary, the ordinary in the sacred/rituals
Balancing individual and community
The giving and receiving with the land

And a deep recognition:
Our lives,
being alive depends on the land, on the Earth.

This first day of our gathering of Meaning in Place was a collective orientation into the topic. During the day I didn’t have the impression that we were on to something, but by the evening my sense was that this will not be a ‘normal’ gathering, but that it will take us to the depth and width of the relationship of people and place. In other words we are dealing here with the relationship of Humanity and the Earth.

From our individual stories we were telling each other in the morning one thing really stood out for me: Place has massive influence on people! It is so obvious, but at the same time so unconscious! So obvious that we don’t really notice, that it isn’t a field of study (yet). If I translate this into the bigger picture we can state: Earth has a massive influence on Humanity, so obvious, but so unconscious!

Humans Creating Meaning
This gathering is about Meaning in Place, and how to host that. That is what we humans do all the time: create meaning. And in these challenging times we try to create a meaningful life with a new story, a new meaning we have to find together, as humanity. Because meaning is life-affirming to us.

We came to realize that a meaningful life these days means to live our full potential, nothing less. It requires our attention, our time, our commitment. To say it in other words, it is a practice.

What if meaning in place is grounding the disorientation in the world? (Maria S)

Earth and Nature
Of course many stories were about nature, about a sunset, the desert, the garden in our childhood, a special tree and so on.
Some quotes:
Nature goes straight back into the heart, into some kind of innocence, into a longing. Nature connects us back into the slowness of my soul.
A powerful place is when my spirit smiles.
The gift of nature and the nature of gifts.
Isn’t the Earth giving us messages about ourselves?
Where are the farmers, the guardians? What is the form of farmers or guardians in these time?

Home and Belonging
Belonging to – or relationship with – place seems key to make life meaningful. Without this relation meaning is hard to sustain. That’s why we garden, why we gather on our stoops and create gatherings like this one here. It seems to us that we need to (re-)install a culture of belonging.
But in these times, at least for people from the West, we are not bound anymore by a specific place, a specific profession, a specific religion, a specific relation… we have the choice! To the extent that it becomes overwhelming and we have no ground to stand on anymore. Lots of young people don’t know their place anymore… this happens on a variety of levels… there is a hunger for contribution, a hunger for new meaning…
Where am I welcomed?
Where is Home?

But places are calling for stewardship, and people are calling places into being. Let’s stop waiting!

Reconnecting Earth and Humanity, People and Place
It seems to me that we named a few basic, grounding practices during our conversations throughout the day. Maybe a better name is Intentions? Because having intentions is basically a human feature. Here are some:

The Act of Making Life
So many people on this earth are behaving as tourists, sharing only a few pieces of their life with the land they live on. We noticed that birthing our children, living with our children and our extended family, burying the death, drinking the water – on and of the land – is core in the people-place relationship. Of course our relationship with food is the same story. At least we can eat local and seasonal food, it’s a fast track to relationship with place. Grow your vegetables your selves will teach you to get into an intimate relationship with place.

The Act of Witnessing
Just noticing, witnessing, without attachment to how the outcome might look like is a huge power that awakens potential, both of people and of places. It is about being fully present to the piece of land you live on, without any intention to commodifying. It is about our capacity to listen deeply what is the right timing and the right thing to do in this moment. The act of witnessing activates the resilience that is lingering underneath.

Listening to centuries of sleeping stories. Rocks hold the stories.
The potential of the land is dormant until it is listened to again.

The Art of Welcoming – Community
Stories reminded us of doors that were open, kitchens where there was time to listen, gatherings where everyone brought something to the table, employees that wants a kitchen in their office so that they could eat and chat together over lunch. There is so much potential in these simple but profound acts of creating intimacy!

Place creates the ability to be heard and seen.

Honoring and inviting the Magic
There are infinite layers of looking at reality, at place, at the world. They all exist and it is up to us which layer we call in. Devas are everywhere. Our being on the land, in the world doesn’t need to be heavy! There is light energy and magical levels everywhere.

Something in the land is craving to be enjoyed!

Meaning making together – co-create
In order to create together you first need to be conscious of your own meaning, your own ground.

Another chance in evolution
In the evening we asked the Tarot cards what was the meaning of this gathering in the context of this time in the world. That was the point I began to get a sense of the deeper meaning of our people-place relationship inquiry. The card that was to give us advice told us that there were ‘three cups’ that had been spilled and that there is still a need to grieve about the pain of what we haven’t achieved yet; all this in order to be able to look at the ‘other two cups’. Listening deeply to the message, the group that was around the table realized that we had been together in another time and now we – as human beings – were given another chance to learn about the power of creation and to live in harmony with the earth. At that other point in time we didn’t live up to our real full potential as we were caught up in so many power struggles. And there is pain to deeply recognize that. One of the challenges is to balance the power of creating with humility and respect. The non-material energies need to be recognized again and become a science, because we didn’t use them or we used them in the wrong way.

People and Place
Humanity and Earth
Power and Love

Again on my way to Greece and Axladitsa, the sixth time in 1,5 years. (I’m writing this on the plane) I could never ever have imagined that this was possible in my life!

This journey is part of the Powers of Place Collaborative, which is an international stew of people, all – in one way or another – passionate about the relationship between people and places.
These days many people are expanding their awareness in many different directions and being aware of place, of the land and the buildings we are in is one of them.

It all started with Sheryl Erickson, who – with here ability to sense what field of practice and study is coming to the surface – send me an email at some point.
If I knew people or places which showed a special interest in this people-place relationship?

Yes, I did! Immediately I replied with a few names and links, just from the top of my head.

Sheryl was totally on fire with the information she got… months later a project proposal was written and later a grant received from the Fetzer Foundation in Kalamazoo (I love that name!), in the US. Last January we met in person with the very diverse core team of this collaboration, both people from the US and Europe.

At this moment I’m sitting on the bus bringing me from Thessaloniki airport to the big bus terminal to take a regional bus to Volos. I just noticed that the wheat on the fields has ripened already and is ready for harvest. So different than in Belgium where we have to wait some more months for that to happen. How would these differences in seasons and weather play our in our inner being; both individual and collective… I wonder…

From Monday till Thursday we will plunge ourselves into a deep collective inquiry around Meaning in Place. Some of you, readers, might be familiar with the Art of Hosting Meaningful Conversations. This art, which favors self-organization and invites people to (re-)connect with their own passion and responsibility, is in some places used as the operating system. One of the questions we hold is what becomes possible is we use this art to create meaning – or meaningfulness – not just in conversations now and then, but in relationship with place. And place can be a rural retreat/seminar center, or an urban business innovation space, even a little Learning Village like Kufunda in Zimbabwe or even a whole region.

Oh my god, cherries are ripe her too!!! This little open van had them piled up in the back! Too bad I can’t get of the bus! It is first crossing through the busy, Greek center of the city before arriving at the regional bus station.

We will look in our four-day gathering at what is the common ground in all our different practices, and of course into how we can cross-fertilize and improve them. The purpose of the Powers of Place Collaborative is “to catalyze a new field of study and practice based on the premise that right relationship between people and place offers the potential for transformative action toward what is needed at this moment in history.”

I’m looking forward to it!

Sounds, flowers, animals, spring…
I am almost overwhelmed…

The bees in the blossoming plum three,
the rooster from the neighbor’s house on the other side of the little valley,
seagulls far away near the shore,
an owl awake at daytime,
crows with their unique sound…

Two young dogs to feed and to take care of,
they are testing my leadership and unconditional love.
A pregnant cat who hides inside all day – mostly sleeping –
and goes out when it is dark.
Waking me up at dawn because she wants to come in and eat.

And flowers, so many!
Showing what spring is like:
the power of showing, of manifesting;
each with its own uniqueness.
My English vocabulary falls short here to describe the fragile colors,
to give you the names of the many wild flowers.

Am I fully participating in life, here?

My first day of eleven of being on my own. I am in Axladitsa, in a house with no electricity, and when you are outside there is just silence. ‘Officially’ I am here to look after two young dogs and a pregnant cat, but for me it is more like a solo retreat.
Yesterday, on the plane, I was musing over what would be my guiding question for today. The final version is this:
How do I participate fully in Life, in Love – here – with all the dimensions of my being?

Most of the morning I was tending the place. Doing little jobs no one had time for lately, taking care that new trees can’t be ruined by the young dogs etc. A certain moment my question came along: Was I fully participating in Life, in Love, here? I was surely not doing big things! Most of it would go unnoticed by many who would walk by. Still I could answer my own question with a full Yes! I was in a conscious relationship with this place and its many beings and its material stuff. I was taking care of them, loving them in a way.

I know since long this is the way I like to start when being somewhere for a longer time: walk around, seeing the place, do a little tending… that is for me arriving. Simple things, noticing… no complexity…
wrong word…
no complicatedness…
doing simple things and being aware of the relationship between it all, the complexity indeed. These simple things are worthwhile, have value, because they make that the whole, the complexity can flow and go on.

There is a quality in simplicity; there seems to be stillness in it.
The quality of simple beauty.
Fully participating seems to be simple, maybe even in matters of much greater complexity?
The next minimal elegant step.
Stillness

It has been a while since I wrote my last blog post in English. In the meantime there was the Art of Hosting happening here in Dutch, with lots of related activities and I just returned a few days ago from Greece. I was at Axladitsa, the Learning Center, initiated by Maria Scordialou and Sarah Whiteley. The first few days I was part of their landweek, helping out on the land and in the garden. We fenced the newly planted vines and cleared some more space around the house and what will become the next extension of the vegetable garden.

After this work outside we gathered with the hosting team – the three of us and Judy Wallace – to prepare for the collective inquiry: The Edge of Collective Sourcing. Below you find the document we put together on this day, right before the participants were arriving. You will see, it is a work in progress, not all points have flesh to the bones (yet).

LIVING WHOLENESS – Through the Practice of Collective Sourcing

This is wisdom generated by two ‘partnerships’, which have been inquiring into Collective Sourcing for some years. We have attentively been watching what happens when our will is opened intentionally – besides our mind and heart – and is held and practiced collectively. It evokes real emergence, whereby something totally new arises.
Partners are Maria Scordialou and Sarah Whiteley, who founded Axladitsa, a learning center in Greece that is researching Living Wholeness in action. Other partners are Ria Baeck and Judy Wallace who initiated the training Women Moving the Edge, which will soon have its sixth iteration.

ASSUMPTIONS
The whole is getting bigger
In order to live fully in a world with more complexity and ever more uncertainty, we know that we have to go beyond what we already know. Whatever context we find ourselves in – the corporate world, public sector, non-profits or engaging in our communities – we need to learn to hold many levels of paradox, conflict and disturbance. It is our basic assumption that the whole that we need to live into and embrace is getting bigger and bigger. We have to include all the wholes that we already know of and transcend them.

New Human Capacity
To live this wholeness we need new practices, new organizational patterns, new ways of planning etc. In general we need to activate a new human capacity. A capacity that sees the world more in terms of organisms and ecosystems instead of organizations.
In the gathering, the Edge of Collective Sourcing we are building or activating this new human capacity: the capacity to collectively hold both the highest question and the deepest sourcing. It is innovating a new collective practice, a secular practice. It is removed from new age kinds of spirituality and removed from ‘normal’ religious practices.
This new capacity is also a shift from being an individual to being of service to and through the collective – whatever that is.  Our point of gravity will shift from being ‘me in relation to the collective’ – the old way of communal – to a new expression of ‘being the collective’ or ‘being part of an ecosystem’.

The field of potential in need of us
We came to see that there is a collective field, a collective presence, or a collective potential that exists in itself before we gather(ed). It is not us individuals coming together and then creating ‘this field’ between us. The field with its huge potential to manifest newness was probably guiding us to come together in the first place. The field is in need of us, human beings, to make it visible and to make its potential manifest. It is only through us that it can be embodied and can result in wise actions.

We can see each individual in the circle as holding a pole of awareness, being in inner alignment. In between the poles – and in the awareness of it – the field becomes tangible. The program Edge of Collective Sourcing invites participants to practice this double awareness while doing it collectively, for collective purposes.

Restoring Balance
One of the aspects of the whole that is getting bigger in our consciousness is moving beyond our ‘global village’ to ‘being a part in the ecosystem of the Earth’. In other words, we aim to restore the balance between ‘being Citizens of the World’ and ‘being Inhabitants of the Earth’, because as both we constantly interact and mutually influence at the same time.

MENTAL MODELS WE BUILD ON

We build on three mental models that have given us deeper insights and a framework to make sense of our many deep experiences. We assume you are familiar with these models, as we only speak about a specific piece of each of them.

Spiral Dynamics
Spiral Dynamics is a developmental model to see how societies, organizations, tribes – all collectives – evolve over time, depending on the environment they are in.
Our practice of Collective Sourcing is a second tier practice, and has distinctions from the Green level – also collective – and the Yellow level. We are developing and prototyping a Turquoise practice in which this new way of being in the collective is in service – or in alignment – with the Earth, all this from a perspective of the bigger whole, which is the universe.

Presencing
Collective Sourcing is, in the language of Scharmer, a field 4 practice. The difference is maybe that we are very explicit that this is a collective practice. Although it is quite implicit in Scharmer’s theory that this generative space is where ‘I exist, because you are’. It is the consciousness where you live in a constant mutual exchange with other human beings. We add to that the constant mutual exchange with place and non-human beings.
It is also where we live in the space of Open Will, besides of course, the Open Mind and Open Heart. Collective Sourcing is living in this Open Will collectively.

Art of Hosting
From the Art of Hosting community we take the pattern that we saw emerging and which we named The Fifth Paradigm. This pattern takes the known organizational forms of Circle, Triangle, Hierarchy/Bureaucracy and Network to a next level where all core elements are integrated into a new organism, fitting our new wholeness.

UNDERSTANDING EMERGENCE: SPIRIT – SOUL MODEL
(I have been writing different pieces of this model over the last months/years. Soon more will follow, you can find an article about it on EvolutionaryNexus).
Creating from Source
Living the Turquoise level seems to us also about ‘seeing and acknowledging what is’ and creating from and with the potential. Giving form to Spirit, or creating Spirit on Earth, is to create from Source. A partnership with Source allows us to create beauty.

Wholeness of Knowing
“What if words aren’t the medium?”

“I remember speaking vividly about the difference of feminine knowing and masculine knowing. It was more a showing than a speaking actually! Masculine knowing is taking a step back (see me stepping away from the experience, it its talking about something, it is building a concept after the facts… Feminine knowing (not to be confused with women’s knowing! Men know this too!) is knowing IN the experience (see me stepping into the center again). It is about ‘getting something’ while drawing you never understood before; or ‘getting’ what you need to do next while walking in nature. The knowing is in the totality of your being, not just in your head; it is as if your cells understood something.

“I see a spiral staircase, a double helix, one band thin and one band thick. The thicker one is the downloading and the rational, the thinner the more insightful and intuitive. These are the threads and our intention is to create the weave of wholeness. The pole in the center – the evolutionary thread – is what connects us to what has gone before and what is emerging. This is Collective Sourcing. The challenge is to not disconnect from the thread. The staircase can connect us to the next level.”

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PRESENCING, ART OF HOSTING AND SOURCING
In the bigger framework the practices of Art of Hosting can be understood as aiming at opening the minds and hearts of the participants who engage in it. It can be seen as helping people travel down the left side of the U as we have come to know it through Otto Scharmer.
When people have practiced the opening of the mind and of the heart – and personal practice is being a part of it – they become ready to be at the bottom of the U. This is the point where we have access to Source, to the unmanifest potential; either of ourselves or of the project or the group we are in.
Seeing it in this way, the process of Presencing – going through the stages – differs from Sourcing, which is a direct connecting to the deep levels of unmanifest potential. Sourcing is being able to plunge directly to the bottom of the well and still being connected with the manifest level of daily life.
When this capacity is shared by more people, and we go directly to the bottom of Sourcing, our guess is that the right leg of the U-curve will become different than described right now by Otto Scharmer.

NEW HUMAN CAPACITY

Ongoing Spiral between Holding the Potential and Staying in Inquiry creates New Wisdom
There is an ongoing dynamic  – like a spiral going back and forth – between the level or depth of Sourcing and the level or depth/height of Awareness or Spirit.
The depth of the potential can only become accessible for manifestation and action when we are equally able to become aware of the intention or the clear purpose. This explains to us the importance of finding the good guiding question(s). If our question comes from a higher level of awareness it will invite in a deeper possibility of sourcing. In this widened field of wisdom, through many cycles, new wisdom can be generated.
The ship with the highest mast needs the deepest keel.

Embracing more Complexity
Related with this – and drawing it in the model – we realize that this dance between both poles in the spiral also relates to widening our reach in the manifest. The depth of sourcing and the height of the intention make sure that we can embrace more of the whole, which is so needed in dealing with the challenges of our time.

CONDITIONS – PRACTICES FOR LIVING WHOLENESS
Staying in not-knowing
The underlying condition to get to the point of Collective Sourcing is the ability to keep the space of possibility open until the collective clarity of intention arises. This means that we need to be able to stay long enough in the not-knowing. It isn’t only a mental not-knowing, but we see it as a total letting-go; the ability to sit in the void with no clue of direction or possibility. The not-knowing is a place you haven’t been before, it is a place of newness and innovation.
The ability to stay in the not-knowing is enhanced by the training we receive through our individual practices.

Function of Disturbances
We realized why we say that disturbances have priority. Disturbances make us become aware of some borders or blocking energy in the play of the widening field. Integrating the disturbance means we have to widen our perception, widen our perspectives, widen our holding space, rewording our guiding question. It always is an invitation to open wider; either the mind or the heart or the will.

Capacity of holding multiple relationships at the same time
- Be participant in the process
- Be an observer/witness of what is going on in your self
- Be an observer of the field, the group, the context you are in
- Be a leader, step forward with whatever you see or need or want to bring in
Awareness on all these levels is needed when practicing Living Wholeness.

Living as part of an ecosystem
Shifting our center of gravity from the individual to the collective. By collective we mean here all that is around us, not just the individuals or humans. At some point we used the metaphor of tango, where the man and the woman become ‘a being with four legs’. In a gathering, a workshop – or in life in general – this means one needs to know what the whole is about so that we can keep an eye on it, while at the same time also being aware of our own individual energy.

New Practice of Planning
If we tend to an organism instead of an organization, then what would be the practice of planning? It seems to us that the organic form of this is invitation. The point is to know/sense when and who to invite.

Being a new kind of leader
What does ‘being a leader’ mean in an eco-system?
There is no separation between being and doing;
It is living-as-the-system,
Living-as-the-field.
It is living-what-emerges,
No separation between leader and what is led.
There is no border,
No precipice,
It IS.

Intergenerational

Collective Harvest and Meaning Making

Harvest into the Wider Field

FEATURES OF COLLECTIVE SOURCING AS EMBODIED EXPERIENCE
What leads us to Collective Sourcing is:
•    We are asking questions that lead us deeper into not-knowing and bring us to an edge of clarity
•    We are in a rhythm and pace of speaking and listening that is both waiting and yet searching
•    We are accessing information that is below the aquifer, coming from intuition, story, images, previous experience
•    We are in a field of listening for pop-out points, for clarity and for newness.
The moment collective sourcing arises we can notice some elements of it.
•    we use our subtle sensing
•    there is a slowing down, we speak and act in a different pace
•    silence comes in naturally and spontaneous
•    our small self is gone
•    I am a vessel through which the collective presence speaks and acts
This means that Collective Sourcing is an embodied experience, and not (only) a state of mind.

OUR GUIDING QUESTION
What if Collective Sourcing is
becoming a human ecosystem
that teaches us
to be one, as the Earth?

Or:
What if Collective Sourcing is
second tier partnership?

Or:
Is Collective Sourcing the
next structure of community?

PARTNERSHIP OR BEING IN RELATIONSHIP
Partnership or Being in (Mutual)Relationship seems to be crucial in Living Wholeness. This Being in Relationship we have to understand on many levels, not just on the human level alone. These are the levels that we see right now and that we keep being aware of:
-    with other human beings, the ones present
-    with place: Axladitsa is very much a place where consciousness about ‘us and the land’ is lived day to day. For our gathering now, we keep the question in mind: How can the different physical places inform – show – amplify our different mental models?
-    with history and future: How can we balance local tradition and lineage on one side and innovation on the other?
-    with local and trans-local
-    with the weather, the buildings, etc.: the human and non-human environment
-    with all other non-human beings present here on the land

More inspirations:
Without love for the whole, collective sourcing is not possible.

Creating for beauty is feeding the wholeness.

What you find here below was written by Maria Scordialou, Sarah Whiteley and myself when we had five days of intense learning and living together in May ‘08 (Axladitsa Guardians Gathering). It gives a beautiful, and rich description of what is asked from us now.
Unless we engage our authentic selves, we cannot live the future now.
Unless we engage our fullness, we cannot take the leap individually and call in collectively.
Unless we tremble collectively, we cannot presence the new.
Unless we take a leap together, we cannot access and live the next level of our humanity.
Unless we are willing to hold the space open long enough for our collective clarity to emerge, we cannot shift our systems and behaviour for the better.
Unless we fuse the streams of practice and inquiry, we cannot see what else is possible and be prepared to meet our chaos.
Unless we acknowledge our collective identity, we cannot co-create our real work.
Unless we unlearn our complicatedness, we cannot find the simplicity of the next elegant step.
Unless we share our new insights immediately, we cannot not serve evolution.
Unless we live through our collective identity, we cannot become whole.
Unless we engage our authentic selves, we cannot live the future now.
Unless we engage our fullness, we cannot take the leap individually and call in collectively.
Unless we tremble collectively, we cannot presence the new.